SHALL WE DANCE: Part 1

From the New York Times:

States that supported Donald Trump are the ones hesitant to be vaccinated.  Those who are choosing not:

• 49% of Republican men and 34% of women.
• 6% of Democratic men and 14% of women.
• Why the gender reversal?
• Both Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell have urged all Republicans to get vaccinated.

Gretchen sent me the following:

PBS national is releasing a three-part, three-hour series: Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World on Earth Day, Thursday April 22. 

See your local listings.

Here in Hawaii, we will see it Wednesdays at 8:00 pm on 4/28, 5/5 and 5/12.

Sometimes one gets inspired by a conjunction of related events.  I focus on science, technology, cuisine, travel, the environment and a million other things, including music.  So today, dancing.

Historical studies show that all cultures have dance in some form, said to be 9,000 years ago in India (through cave paintings) and 5300 years ago in Egypt, linked to religious ceremonies.  But more than that, African communities have been dancing since who knows when.  Perhaps when they first formed 2.4 million years ago as the first humans evolved on that continent.  

And, of course, the urge to dance began even before that, for all apes have their way of dancing.  Here, a gorilla at the Calgary Zoo.  Then, too, we have bacteria.  Yes, they too can dance.

But that is going back too far.  I've featured that video of old stars dancing to Uptown Funk a half dozen times.  Just sent to me, this too is dancing:

The inspiration of this series was sparked when I watched Strictly Ballroom, an Australian film directed by Baz Luhrmann, which got 93/87 ratings from Rotten Tomatoes.  Then I noticed that 15 Craigside had on tap Shall We Dance? on our TV channel.  I recorded it, and remembered that there was a previous one, from Japan.  Then there was the 1937 Shall We Dance, with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.  

The 1992 Strictly Ballroom was the first film Baz Luhrmann directed.  This was the beginning of his Red Curtain Trilogy, followed by the 1996 Romeo+Juliet (starring Leonardo DiCaprio at 22) and 2001 Moulin Rouge.  In 1984 Luhrmann and fellow students in Sydney, Australia created a stage play, which led to his successful career.  He was a ballroom dancer as a child, taught by his mother, who was a ballroom dance teacher.  Film won a Cannes Film Festival award in 1992.

There are three films with almost the same title:  Shall We Dance. 

• The difference is that the earliest in 1937 featuring Rogers/Astaire (they made ten films), had no question mark and no connection with the  tune itself, for the song came from the 1951 Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rogers Broadway show and movie The King and I.  

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  The first of the other two began with a 1996 Japanese film titled Shall We Dance? 
• Then Richard Gere, who had previously starred in Hachiko:  A Dog's Story, another re-make, in 2004 with Jennifer Lopez, followed with the third Shall We Dance?

Part 2 will feature the above three films, then heck, what about the 1985 That's Dancing!

My two featured meals this weekend were Pork Tonkatsu for Saturday dinner and a gourmet lunch on Sunday.  15 Craigside supplied the basics, but I fried the PT in butter.

In Japan, they provide a huge mound of finely sliced cabbage.  So that was my primary contribution, plus blue-fin tuna sashimi, hot green tea, hot sake and cold Kirin beer:

Gourmet lunch of foie gras pate', parmigiano-reggiano and romano cheeses, croissant, radicchio, round onion, avocado and potato chips:

One can be creative with this lunch, as there must be a hundred different ways to make a sandwich.  The wine was a Stanford Governor's Selection 2016 Goldschmidt Chardonnay from Russian River Valley, perhaps the best white wine ever from my annual collection.

I end with a family portrait:

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