Born to Hand Jive and 20dissidents

Albany is done. George has slept with Izzie. Knicks lose. And Lucky Man's Amazon ranking has not only dropped dropped to 572,000, but (1) someone is already selling it for the discounted rate of $9.22 (plus $3.49 shipping), and (2) recent customers who have bought Lucky Man are also apparently buying the new Taylor Hicks CD as well. Yikes. If all that wasn't bad enough, Chad was booted from Grease - You're The One That I Want! He's so cute in that Casey Affleck/Peter Brady love-child sort of way of his, and so what if he's no triple threat? It's quite painful.

Still, there has been an upside to the Grease-related resurgence occurring my house. And no, its not hearing my five-year old sing "Summer Loving" as nice as that is, but my rediscovering the movie Grease, and in particular the Born to Hand Jive dance sequence. With all due respect to Jennifer Hudson, is there a greater musical number in recent movie musical history? And trust me nothing in Saturday Night Fever touches it. Seriously. The scene might be worth watching for Jeff Conaway's performance alone, man was he charming and so physical - what happened to him, and who was that guy inhabiting his body during Celebrity Fit Club Season Three?

That said, the scene is all about John Travolta. Do you remember what John Travolta used to look like and how good he was? Do you remember how unbelievably cool he was? All skinny and handsome, working that pink shirt and duck tail, grooving with Cha-Cha, and shaking and shimmying like there's no tomorrow. It's magic. Watch it. It will bring tears to your eyes. And it will change your life. Pinkie-swear.

Meanwhile, Lucky Man takes Chapel Hill this coming Tuesday night (that's March 20th for the calendar-challenged) with a lot of help from his friends at 20dissidents - www.20dissidents.com - who will be releasing the new Spring edition of the 20dissidents journal, complete with kick-ass writing and a CD. We will be at Internationalist Books and Community Center - www.internationalistbooks.org/ - which is located at 405 West Franklin Street and we will be reading at 7:00pm. Come one, come all, brings the kids and pets, and make a night of it. It may also change your life. Really.