Ginger’s dress is practically another character in this scene.
Astaire gets more eye time, if only reflexively, because his costume color contrasts with more of the set.
If I’m not mistaken about the timing, there was some wildly acrobatic dancing practiced by couples in a “balloom” setting with jazz music. Astaire makes those moves, greatly exaggerated, with no indication of difficulty at all. As I said years ago, he neither jumps nor lifts. Instead, when it suits him, gravity simply ceases to exist in his immediate area and the vertical move or lift is without the slightest effort. Indeed, it might get away from him. Rogers is infinitely graceful doing moves that would put an ordinary person on the floor and seeming so secure in them. “Making it look easy” doesn’t even start applying here. We can picture ballet dancers with the barre and the mirror, we can see their muscles in certain outfits, we can see them doing incredible things, but with these two, the impossible simply happens.
Richard Aubrey:
Nice writing!
Fred “gay divorcee” Astaire and Ginger “rascally” Rogers dancing with equal and complementary talent in carefree abandon and having a ball.
Re: Kelly Slater at Tahiti Pro
Kelly Slater is hands-down the greatest professional surfer of all time. Eleven times World Champion from 1992-2011. He has been retired since 2024. He occasionally makes appearances at special events.
He is now 54 years old. Nonetheless, he was wildcarded into this year’s Tahiti Pro tournament at one of the monster tube breaks in the world, Teahupo’o. He was competing against pro surfers 20-30 years younger.
Slater won his first heat, then his second. And that second performance was a work of art against Gabriel Medina, 34, 3x World Champion. Slater scored a near-perfect 19.03/20 with two beautiful tube rides. Here’s one of them:
A tube ride is when the surfer rides as the wave breaks over his head. If he times it right and doesn’t fall, he disappears under the lip of the wave and then comes out the other side. Cowabunga!
When I watched that ride, I really didn’t think he was going to make it.
He’s 54!
If I’m not mistaken about the timing, there was some wildly acrobatic dancing practiced by couples in a “balloom” setting with jazz music. — Richard Aubrey
A friend of mine teaches Lindy Hop. She pointed this vid out to me, though being a little over 60 now she says, “My feet stay on the floor.” I wonder what her dancing was like in her youth.
It’s about a 90% shun, so fairly comprehensive. Libs are nursing intense hatred of Trump, and won’t get over or let go of it. The magnitude of their closemindedness is breathtaking.
One interesting thing about this scene is that what you are looking at is the first take of the dance. Why? Watch at about 1:40 in this clip. As Ginger Rogers twirls her sleeves slap Fred Astaire in the face. That dress is heavily beaded and is incredibly heavy those slaps HURT. In every other take, Fred flinched or ducked as the sleeves whirled by. Fred was an absolute professional, but even he couldn’t easily overcome self-preservation.
RE: The inclusion of Muslim “Wudu” foot washing facilities at Texas’ Dallas-Ft. Worth airport.*
It seems like a “little thing” but, it’s not.
It’s one more step in a very broad-based campaign by dedicated Muslims to muscle aside the traditional Christian religion, culture, and norms of this country, and to make/force us non-Muslims to accept and to conform to the various dictates of Islam, of the Qur’an, of Islamic religion and culture, and to give Islam and it’s dictates a privileged position in our society; it’s not about some benign, harmless “pluralism,” its about Muslims claiming ever more ground for Islam.
Seen news reels of troops and women, college kids at parties, so forth, doing some pretty acrobatic stuff, of which this is a fabulous next-dimension example,
I’m always keeping a close watch on Iran. My thought is as soon as the Washington is on station Trump may ramp up the action. I asked Chatgp about best estimate and it came back sometime in the next 3 days.
Tousi TV has been reporting that the Iranian resistance has also been carefully organizing and arming.
Calm before the storm??
My thought is as soon as the Washington is on station Trump may ramp up the action.
physicsguy:
I’m curious, but not sure what you mean.
Financial news today highlights a new cancer therapy utilizing an mRNA “vaccine.” Hmmm. Well, cancer is not an infectious disease, so again I’m not happy with the vaccine nomenclature. I’m guessing from the following blurb that right now this is exceptionally expensive, although sometimes these things can become vastly cheaper over time.
Moderna Stock Soars
Moderna stock soared Wednesday after the company released the topline results from the Phase 3 INTerpath-001 trial, which uses mRNA-4157 (Intismeran autogene) in combination with Merck & Co.’s (NYSE:MRK) Keytruda. The trial covers patients with stage IV melanoma.
The results show that the combination and personalized mRNA treatment could keep advanced skin cancer from returning. The vaccine is designed specifically for each patient.
This marks the first Phase 3 win for mRNA cancer therapy and has provided optimism for the future of the treatment against skin cancer and the potential to advance other personalized vaccine options for cancer.
Merck and Moderna have nine Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials in the INTerpath clinical program that cover melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer, bladder cancer, and renal cell carcinoma, along with Phase 1 trials for lung, gastric, and pancreatic cancers.
From Benzinga.com via my secure brokerage site.
Huxley,
USS George Washington CVN 73.
August, when most American kids now go back to school, always reminds me of a book written by Lewis E Lawes, who was warden of Sing Sing prison from 1915 to 1941. The title of the book is Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing—that title refers to the aggregate lengths of the sentences of the men in the prison at a typical particular point in time.
TommyJay, I’ve previously seen reports about an mRNA shot which prevents recurrence of melanoma. This sounds like an improved version. This is the only mRNA shot I would consider taking.
There’s a new mRNA flu shot which Alex Berenson says has an unacceptably high rate of serious side effects. I won’t take it. I’ll insist on the traditional shot if any. And just today he reports on a clinical trial, at last, on Tamiflu, and the results are shockingly bad: https://x.com/AlexBerenson/status/2090048736231571516?s=20
TommyJay, thanks. Wish I know who these people were. I got tired out just watching them.
Pure elegance. On impulse and for the first time, I concentrated on Astaire and Rogers’ footwork. It gave me a whole new appreciation for their skills, each foot perfectly placed and when done correctly, the rest of the body naturally follows.
I happened to watch one of Michael Jackson’s videos this morning. Did Astaire ever express any opinion about Jackson’s performances?
@mongo: Did Astaire ever express any opinion about Jackson’s performances?
Indeed Astaire did. He complimented Jackson on his dancing in “Billie Jean” when Jackson debuted the Moonwalk.
________________________________
Jackson would later say of the phone call that “… it was the greatest compliment I had ever received in my life.”
I’ve long been touched by that story. I love it when great artists recognize each other. Not always the case.
huxley, thanks for sharing that blast from the past.
I saw “Michael” last spring (Antoine Fuqua dir., who also did the action series *The Equalizer) with Denzel Washington).
Michael closes with the album “Thriller”. And announced a sequel coming…maybe 2028?
I believe the actor playing Jackson did not use MJs real recorded singing voice until “Thriller.”
Part 1 was an big international hit, too.
huxley, that tube ride was gnarly!
I’ve been hearing (YouTube) that the UAE want’s a Southern Channel through the Strait of Hormuz.
Axios now reports that it is a US effort, going at night, and shipping up to half normal oil flow delivery. Good News!
EXCERPT
The U.S. military has quietly established a shipping corridor in and out of the Strait of Hormuz to transport millions of barrels of oil each day — a notable success even as the broader war remains at a stalemate, two U.S. officials told Axios.
—Under the operation, which has been underway for the last several weeks, 15–20 tankers have entered and exited the strait each night through a southern channel along the coast of Oman.
—About 10 million barrels of oil a day — roughly half the pre-war volume — are being transported out of the strait and injected into the global energy market, the officials said.
__ __
— “We have been controlling the southern lane of the Strait of Hormuz for two months now. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps can be a nuisance, but they don’t control the strait. We do,” one of the U.S. officials, who has direct knowledge of the matter, said.
Something I note about a lot of movies from that era: they were very talented at putting the actresses in dresses where the light would basically let you see their entire body with only a thin gauze of cover, such as this one.
Wait! Wasn’t there another post up after the “Spent Many Hours” post? One about Vindman & Nixon perhaps? I’m hitting “Refresh” many times but am not seeing it any more. Or did I just imagine the whole thing?
mkent:
You are absolutely correct. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Something got very screwed up in the blog and that post about the Florida primary completely disappeared; I have no idea why. I finally managed to find it, hidden in a revision (earlier version) of a completely different post. I’ve re-published it, and the comments even came back. Plus, as part of all of that, there were other strange anomalies that I think I’ve fixed.
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Ginger’s dress is practically another character in this scene.
Astaire gets more eye time, if only reflexively, because his costume color contrasts with more of the set.
If I’m not mistaken about the timing, there was some wildly acrobatic dancing practiced by couples in a “balloom” setting with jazz music. Astaire makes those moves, greatly exaggerated, with no indication of difficulty at all. As I said years ago, he neither jumps nor lifts. Instead, when it suits him, gravity simply ceases to exist in his immediate area and the vertical move or lift is without the slightest effort. Indeed, it might get away from him. Rogers is infinitely graceful doing moves that would put an ordinary person on the floor and seeming so secure in them. “Making it look easy” doesn’t even start applying here. We can picture ballet dancers with the barre and the mirror, we can see their muscles in certain outfits, we can see them doing incredible things, but with these two, the impossible simply happens.
Richard Aubrey:
Nice writing!
Fred “gay divorcee” Astaire and Ginger “rascally” Rogers dancing with equal and complementary talent in carefree abandon and having a ball.
Re: Kelly Slater at Tahiti Pro
Kelly Slater is hands-down the greatest professional surfer of all time. Eleven times World Champion from 1992-2011. He has been retired since 2024. He occasionally makes appearances at special events.
He is now 54 years old. Nonetheless, he was wildcarded into this year’s Tahiti Pro tournament at one of the monster tube breaks in the world, Teahupo’o. He was competing against pro surfers 20-30 years younger.
Slater won his first heat, then his second. And that second performance was a work of art against Gabriel Medina, 34, 3x World Champion. Slater scored a near-perfect 19.03/20 with two beautiful tube rides. Here’s one of them:
–Surfer Today, “Kelly Slater’s 9 Point Ride at Teahupoo” (1:03)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9jjUWMpEGE
A tube ride is when the surfer rides as the wave breaks over his head. If he times it right and doesn’t fall, he disappears under the lip of the wave and then comes out the other side. Cowabunga!
When I watched that ride, I really didn’t think he was going to make it.
He’s 54!
If I’m not mistaken about the timing, there was some wildly acrobatic dancing practiced by couples in a “balloom” setting with jazz music. — Richard Aubrey
You mean like this?: (Dance starts at 2:45)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzc7vY9VTnk
A friend of mine teaches Lindy Hop. She pointed this vid out to me, though being a little over 60 now she says, “My feet stay on the floor.” I wonder what her dancing was like in her youth.
Interesting update in The Atlantic on Dershowitz getting shunned by Martha’s Vineyard libs: Alan Dershowitz Won’t Forget What Larry David Did to Him.
It’s about a 90% shun, so fairly comprehensive. Libs are nursing intense hatred of Trump, and won’t get over or let go of it. The magnitude of their closemindedness is breathtaking.
One interesting thing about this scene is that what you are looking at is the first take of the dance. Why? Watch at about 1:40 in this clip. As Ginger Rogers twirls her sleeves slap Fred Astaire in the face. That dress is heavily beaded and is incredibly heavy those slaps HURT. In every other take, Fred flinched or ducked as the sleeves whirled by. Fred was an absolute professional, but even he couldn’t easily overcome self-preservation.
RE: The inclusion of Muslim “Wudu” foot washing facilities at Texas’ Dallas-Ft. Worth airport.*
It seems like a “little thing” but, it’s not.
It’s one more step in a very broad-based campaign by dedicated Muslims to muscle aside the traditional Christian religion, culture, and norms of this country, and to make/force us non-Muslims to accept and to conform to the various dictates of Islam, of the Qur’an, of Islamic religion and culture, and to give Islam and it’s dictates a privileged position in our society; it’s not about some benign, harmless “pluralism,” its about Muslims claiming ever more ground for Islam.
• See https://redstate.com/kyle-becker/2026/08/14/that-is-illegal-texas-governor-speaks-out-on-muslim-foot-washing-at-dfw-airport-n2205627
Tommy Jay
Thanks.
Seen news reels of troops and women, college kids at parties, so forth, doing some pretty acrobatic stuff, of which this is a fabulous next-dimension example,
I’m always keeping a close watch on Iran. My thought is as soon as the Washington is on station Trump may ramp up the action. I asked Chatgp about best estimate and it came back sometime in the next 3 days.
Tousi TV has been reporting that the Iranian resistance has also been carefully organizing and arming.
Calm before the storm??
My thought is as soon as the Washington is on station Trump may ramp up the action.
physicsguy:
I’m curious, but not sure what you mean.
Financial news today highlights a new cancer therapy utilizing an mRNA “vaccine.” Hmmm. Well, cancer is not an infectious disease, so again I’m not happy with the vaccine nomenclature. I’m guessing from the following blurb that right now this is exceptionally expensive, although sometimes these things can become vastly cheaper over time.
From Benzinga.com via my secure brokerage site.
Huxley,
USS George Washington CVN 73.
August, when most American kids now go back to school, always reminds me of a book written by Lewis E Lawes, who was warden of Sing Sing prison from 1915 to 1941. The title of the book is Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing—that title refers to the aggregate lengths of the sentences of the men in the prison at a typical particular point in time.
Six Hundred Million Years in K-12
https://davidfoster273133.substack.com/p/six-hundred-million-years-in-k-12
TommyJay, I’ve previously seen reports about an mRNA shot which prevents recurrence of melanoma. This sounds like an improved version. This is the only mRNA shot I would consider taking.
There’s a new mRNA flu shot which Alex Berenson says has an unacceptably high rate of serious side effects. I won’t take it. I’ll insist on the traditional shot if any. And just today he reports on a clinical trial, at last, on Tamiflu, and the results are shockingly bad: https://x.com/AlexBerenson/status/2090048736231571516?s=20
TommyJay, thanks. Wish I know who these people were. I got tired out just watching them.
Pure elegance. On impulse and for the first time, I concentrated on Astaire and Rogers’ footwork. It gave me a whole new appreciation for their skills, each foot perfectly placed and when done correctly, the rest of the body naturally follows.
I happened to watch one of Michael Jackson’s videos this morning. Did Astaire ever express any opinion about Jackson’s performances?
@mongo: Did Astaire ever express any opinion about Jackson’s performances?
Indeed Astaire did. He complimented Jackson on his dancing in “Billie Jean” when Jackson debuted the Moonwalk.
________________________________
Jackson would later say of the phone call that “… it was the greatest compliment I had ever received in my life.”
https://www.grunge.com/678839/the-real-reason-fred-astaire-once-called-michael-jackson/
________________________________
I’ve long been touched by that story. I love it when great artists recognize each other. Not always the case.
huxley, thanks for sharing that blast from the past.
I saw “Michael” last spring (Antoine Fuqua dir., who also did the action series *The Equalizer) with Denzel Washington).
Michael closes with the album “Thriller”. And announced a sequel coming…maybe 2028?
I believe the actor playing Jackson did not use MJs real recorded singing voice until “Thriller.”
Part 1 was an big international hit, too.
huxley, that tube ride was gnarly!
I’ve been hearing (YouTube) that the UAE want’s a Southern Channel through the Strait of Hormuz.
Axios now reports that it is a US effort, going at night, and shipping up to half normal oil flow delivery. Good News!
EXCERPT
The U.S. military has quietly established a shipping corridor in and out of the Strait of Hormuz to transport millions of barrels of oil each day — a notable success even as the broader war remains at a stalemate, two U.S. officials told Axios.
—Under the operation, which has been underway for the last several weeks, 15–20 tankers have entered and exited the strait each night through a southern channel along the coast of Oman.
—About 10 million barrels of oil a day — roughly half the pre-war volume — are being transported out of the strait and injected into the global energy market, the officials said.
__ __
— “We have been controlling the southern lane of the Strait of Hormuz for two months now. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps can be a nuisance, but they don’t control the strait. We do,” one of the U.S. officials, who has direct knowledge of the matter, said.
Details into the new methods Here https://www.axios.com/2026/08/19/hormuz-iran-oil-gulf-trump
Something I note about a lot of movies from that era: they were very talented at putting the actresses in dresses where the light would basically let you see their entire body with only a thin gauze of cover, such as this one.
Wait! Wasn’t there another post up after the “Spent Many Hours” post? One about Vindman & Nixon perhaps? I’m hitting “Refresh” many times but am not seeing it any more. Or did I just imagine the whole thing?
mkent:
You are absolutely correct. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Something got very screwed up in the blog and that post about the Florida primary completely disappeared; I have no idea why. I finally managed to find it, hidden in a revision (earlier version) of a completely different post. I’ve re-published it, and the comments even came back. Plus, as part of all of that, there were other strange anomalies that I think I’ve fixed.