THE STORY OF DISCO

I'll begin with some good news. Miss USA R'Bonney Gabriel was Saturday night crowned the 71st Miss Universe 2022 in New Orleans. Yes, this is 2023, but... She was the first Filipino American to ever win Miss USA.

Interestingly enough, we were watching the Hawaii Miss Universe 2023 contest on television because one of the competitors, Kawai Crisostomo, is on the 15 Craigside staff. She did not win but was the highest scoring swimsuit contestant. The new Hawaii representative will be Savannah Gankiewicz of Maui. She will participate later this year in the Grand USA Finale at the Grand Sierra Resort, Reno, Nevada.

Donald Trump owned the pageant from 1996 to 2015, and he had a few incidents. He was forced to sell because of his CREEPINESS. Now being run by a group from Thailand.

I woke up today to disco music, so thought, why not post on The Story of Disco.

Of course, there are those who absolutely hate disco music, as for example, Matt Damon in The Martian.
My world travels began in the 70's, and throughout the world, night life was disco time. While the craze peaked in 1979 with perhaps 20,000 disco nightclubs just in the USA, Asia in particular expanded the genre into the 80s and even 90s. Something about just being in a crowd with flashing lights and thumping music is eternally memorable.

The term itself goes back to the dance halls of Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II, where live music was banned, so phonograph records were used...thus, discotheque.

Then in the 60s, dance clubs opened in the U.S. using records rather than bands. Discotheque was shortened to disco.
American disco had varying origins beginning in the late 1960s.

Philadelphia's R&B scene featuring African-American and Latino songs.
The underground gay community of New York.

That disco ball? Invented by Louis Bernard Woester as the Myriad Reflector...in 1917.
Stevie Wonder and The O'Jays were perhaps among the first performers.
By the mid-70s Gloria Gaynor (I Will Survive) and Donna Summer (I Feel Love) were topping the Billboard 100 with disco hits. How broad can you get when Barry Manilow's Copacabana became popular? He co-wrote that song. Here is an interesting re-mix. There was also Disco Duck by Rick Dees.

One reason for the popularity is that the dancing was sort of hang loose and freestyle where you could just about do anything without any experience. In time there developed the Bump, Boogaloo, Robot and various Hustles.

There were marathons, and Sacramento Disco King Dale Roberts holds the Guinness Recond for dancing 205 hours, the equivalent of 8.5 days.
What did you wear? Anything, but there were disco fashions, tight and loose, skimpy, shiny, bold colors, whatever, and leisure suits with bell bottoms came into prominence. Freedom of movement was important.

Billboard created the Disco Action Top 30 on 28August1976, and the first #1 was You Should Be Dancing, by the Bee Gees.
Disco clubs in major cities supported a drug subculture (cocaine and quaaludes), leading to some promiscuity, the sexual revolution and a hedonistic culture. Donna Summer's Love to Love You Baby (this is the 17-minute version) and I Feel Love evoked orgasms.
Saturday Night Fever in 1977 and Thank God It's Friday in 1978 did well at the box office. SNF was the best (although only 83/71 scores on Rotten Tomatoes) and the 1980 Can't Stop the Music, the autobiography of The Village People, perhaps the worst. (18/37 on RT). Quote from Alonso Duralde: In the pantheon of so-bad-you-can't-tear-away-your-eyes cinematic train wrecks, the film is absolutely a must-view.

Rolling Stone named their top ten disco hits. Soul Tracks provided a top 100 list, and had Shame by Evelyn "Champagne" King at #1, Last Dance by Donna Summer at #2 and Le Freak by Chic at #3.
Disco evolved into electronic dance music, hip hop and the range of waves leading to what we have today.

Some say disco will never go away, for there have been revivals, and the latest into today, BTS Dynamite being definitely of the right beat. Also Dua Lipa with Don't Start Now. Yes, disco still survives.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome. This strain has also been spreading in

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for several months. This is caused by stress more than anythi

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been

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