31 Days of Happiness: Day 1

OK, I’ll bite. Grace, Julie and Ryan are all doing this, and I’m nothing if not a follower, so here I go with it as well.

Every day in August, you list something which makes you happy. I hope this won’t be too difficult.

So things that make me happy. OK, this one’s a little esoteric. It’s a little bass fill in Letters to Cleo’s superlative Here & Now. Close to the end of the song, somewhere around 2’50”, while Kay is singing the chorus for what might be the fiftieth time Scott puts a little twist on the bass. I’ve head this song about eighteen quintillion times, and EVERY stinking time that little fill makes me smile. It’s just so...cool. The whole song is great, but it wouldn’t be nearly as good without that bass line, and that little twist at the end...ah, that just gives me a little something extra to look forward to.

OK, so that’s a little weird, but then so am I. Deal with it. :)

31 Days of Happiness: Day 2: Electric Boogaloo

So moving on with this theme/meme/thing, the next thing which makes me happy is watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance together. They’ve got such a deep rapport when they dance. You believe that for these two people the world doesn’t extend any farther than the stage they’re on and includes no-one but themselves. That said, one of the most impressive routines I ever saw Astaire in wasn’t with Rogers (they only did a total of nine films together, if you can believe it). It was in Holiday Inn, a genial little film with Astaire and some singer named Bing Crosby. Astaire, dumped by his partner arrives at Crosby’s inn stinking drunk and engages Marjorie Reynolds in a dance. To see him acting drunk and still holding his coordination and remaining as graceful as ever is stunning. It’s even more stunning to realise he actually WAS drunk at the time. In an interview on the DVD Astaire’s daughter claims he’d drunk two shots of whiskey before the first take, and took another shot between takes. Eventually with NINE shots under his belt he pulled off this performance:

( Click to see what he's babbling about: )

So anyway, that’s day two. I think now I shall go to bed.