Joshuah Bearman

In Strasbourg in the 16th century over 400 people were overtaken by the urge to dance, until they died.

Here's a book about it. 

That's one among many medieval dancing manias, including St. Vitus Dance, which started in Aachen sand spread across Germany, eventually encompassing thousands of choreomaniacs. (I think that's the technical term. If not, I'm coining it now.) My favorite has always been tarantism -- when you get bitten by a tarantula and can't stop dancing -- because I love a good tarantella, but especially Debussy's and Chopin's.

Light up Tetris tie

Just now enjoying R. Kelly being interviewed by Will Oldham

And if you missed it, here's how it starts: 

WILL OLDHAM: Do you watch 30 Rock?

R. KELLY: No. What’s that?

OLDHAM: It’s a television show, a comedy, that takes place in all of these hallways. It’s pretty funny. It’s, like, a good sitcom. It’s got Alec Baldwin. You know Alec Baldwin?

KELLY: Alec Baldwin? Yeah! Don’t he have a brother and they all kind of look alike?

OLDHAM: They’re, like, four brothers.

KELLY: Steve Baldwin . . .

That's the best part, but here's the rest.

 

Apparently, there are still 5,000 pay phones in Manhattan, and they have been turned into an art project

If you pick any of them up you can get an oral history of 1993 New York:

This poem got me

On the Origins on the Tornado, from the Kenyon Review.

Petting the Phoenix (while it's napping)

Tag Team's Italo Disco roots will lighten the afternoon mood

So my discovery of the breakthough exploration by 5280, the Denver Magazine, of one-hit wonder Miami Bass classic Whoomp! (There it is), sent me down a pointless research jag. Along the way I learned the following. The Whoomp chant was brought up to North Denver, home of Tag Team, by three strippers: Cinnamon, Chocolate, and Dark-N-Lovely. Whoomp! is one of the most successful singles of all time, putting it in league with, you know, Elvis and all that. Dude's name is DC the Brain Supreme, not "DC who reigns supreme." In 2010, some music video forensics specialists thought they'd identified an extra in the original video as Barack Obama.

The song still nets each half of Tag Team around $50K per year (and that's after getting shafted on the original ownership structure.) I had forgotten that Tag Team made an ill-fated adaptation of their song for the Addams Family movie, called Addams Family (Whoomp!). The distinctive sample comes from an Italian disco single, "I'm ready," by a group called Kano, which is great in its original: 

Italian disco was a short-lived genre of its own, some of which was collected by K-TEL: 

Presumably a more authentic, non-K-Tel compilation?:

Listen to Mr. Magoo drink champagne with a husky gal in "Delicious," his Top 40 Hit from 1959

This is one of the weirdest things I've ever heard.

"Every day is new year's eve!"

"I have never stopped loving you"

A lovely story, about a young couple reunited 63 years later by a myster letter: 

So when she received a short but revealing note written in that code last year, she was pretty sure she knew who had sent it, even though it wasn’t signed. But the message was powerful: “I have never stopped loving you.” And so she set out to find him.

And it was no small task for anyone, much less an octogenarian: 

“It wasn’t easy because his return address was a latitude and longitude. He wanted it to be that, if I really wanted to get in touch with him I would,” she told Yahoo! Shine in a phone interview from her home on Monday. “The only problem was, when he wrote the latitude and longitude, he gave the wrong one.” 

Eventually, she found him and he revealed he'd loved her for six decades: 

“I really loved that woman from day one,” he said...He’d kept every paper towel note she’d written over all these years, and would look at them and think of her with a fondness from time to time. And after two marriages—one ended in divorce, and his second wife died in 1989—he felt ready to get in touch with her. “It seemed to me the time was right to send it,” he said of his note. 

 

Rick Daniel Myers was arrested on drug charges and one count of possession of an alligator

The alligator was in his backpack.

I don't know what the fuck this is, or how that computer horse learned to play the sax

But I love it: 

They almost called it the Pepperdroney

Or the Flyin' Hawaiian. The new Domino's Pizza flying delivery drone: 

In the soul's dark night, a digital solace

From Opinionator, a retelling of internet addiction as existential salve: 

Ever since my own birth, it seems, I have dreaded nightfall and the silence of the evening dark. As an adult, I have been granted some solace. The iPad is a perfect nightlight. It is the fatherly reassurance that Freud says we all crave. Mine comes from a man named Steve.

I push a button and, as the argentine glow washes over my face, my dread begins to recede. The image of an apple appears; it has been bitten and I can not help but think of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden. But in a moment the apple disappears, and – lo! – is replaced by salvation: orderly rows of apps, bright columns of faithful soldiers in my own private war against solitude and disorder and oblivion.

 

Japanese family trains penguin to run errands for them, while wearing a penguin backpack

Ancient Graffiti

This item about Ding Jinhao's graphological indiscretion at Luxor being part of a long line of visitors leaving their mark on antiquity made me want to see some examples from the days of the Grand Tour. So I collected some, starting with an example from the apprently profilic graffitist Belzoni: 

Then there's the famous etching by Arthur Rimbaud, itself a tourist destination now. (Presumably he got a chance to put his name in the sandstone when traveling through Africa, where, at one point, the poet spent some time as a gun runner in Abyssinia.)  

If David Hockney worked for NASA

He too might photo-collage Mars' polar ice cap: 

Via Slate, where it is noted that the "counter-rotating aeolian-carved boreal icy spiral arms" are carved by the wind. Here's the full resolution image, which can get you into real detail: 

Mary Roach visits former head hunter territory to witness world's hottest pepper eating contest

In Smithsonian Magazine. Choice summary: 

The chili pepper does not want to be your friend. It wants to hurt you so badly you turn it loose.

But I also rather like the post-game synposis:

Out in the arena, beyond the stage, the festival has moved on. The squeals of a greased pig contest provide soprano counterpart for the low tones of digestive torment. Backstage, the carnage has reached a peak. A paisley of curled up, writhing youth covers the floor. The drinking water cheerfully dispensed a half-hour ago is coming back up. The Christmas elves are abandoning their posts. From the far corner, Aaron, the photographer on the story, yells without taking his gaze from the lens. “Mary! Is my camera bag on high ground?”

In the tradition of the post-game interview, a chat with the winner seems to be in order. He’s now lying against a wall in the fetal position, his head supported by the caved-in cardboard Nestlé’s box. He speaks little English, but manages to convey his state: “Very no.”