Let's dance like it's 1958 in Idaho.

That's nice and slow. I think you can all learn that, and I think it would be nice if kids today learned that dance, maybe in gym class. I think it would help them in many ways. And feel free to dress like that, even unironically.

I found that because YouTube suggested it after I watched this 1965 clip from the TV show "Hollywood a Go-Go" with Del Shannon singing "Runaway" and the "Hollywood a Go-Go" go go dancers were dancing around him doing some dance that represented running away, even though their forward motion only took them in a circle so they never got away. It's faster and more frenetic dancing, but I think you might be able to figure out the moves, even though we never get to see the feet.

Seemingly bridging the time gap between the first and second video — and also suggested by YouTube — here's Little Eva singing about the brand-new dance "The Loco-Motion." I say "seemingly" because it looks early 60s and the "Runaway" dance looks later 60s, but in fact, both clips are from 1965. A lot of old and new intersected in 1965. Personally, I was 14 years old, and I was rooting for progress. I watched "Hollywood a Go-Go" and "Shindig" (the show Little Eva's on), and I tuned in hoping to see British invasion stuff like The Kinks or folk rock stuff like The Byrds. I would have regarded Del Shannon as an intrusion from the pre-Beatles era. "Runaway" was a hit in 1961. It was one of the singles we played at slumber parties when we were children.

"The Loco-Motion" was a hit in 1962. Little Eva — Eva Narcissus Boyd — was a maid who also worked as a babysitter for Carole King and Gerry Goffin: "It is often claimed that Goffin and King were amused by Boyd's individual dancing style, so they wrote 'The Loco-Motion' for her" — but maybe that's not true. Little Eva doesn't look too interested in dancing in that "Shindig" clip. The notorious song "He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)" was based on what Little Eva told Carole King about her relationship with her boyfriend. That song was originally recorded by The Crystals — produced by the not-yet-a-murderer Phil Spector — and in recent years, it's been covered by Courtney Love and Grizzly Bear — with some unknown degree of irony.

"She said her cat died after getting entangled in piles of Etsy fabrics..."

"... boxes of paperwork, trash and other possessions, while a dog died allegedly after swallowing a pile of Love’s pills."

"why would you leave me and my life in tatters like this and get angrier and angrier to justify it, i feel you missing me and i miss you too..."

"... just come home,. it took a year but i got the sickest townhouse in the village, theres 4 floors, just come home, i pray to god snap out ofit... i love you but your 18 now do NOT allow any guardianship to continue whatsoever! theyll lie to you tell you it 'has' to,. no it doesnt!... i shouldve hooked up in some loveless marriage to a powerful hedgefund guy then youd be safe, im sorry i didnt. for your sake.i love you..."

Marie Antoinette, Anne Boleyn and Lady Jane Grey — "We always seem to get rid of the good dames."

"[Courtney] Love is keen to align herself to these historical figures [who appear on the cover of her new album]. Strong, misunderstood women, all of whom met a grisly end."

Also pictured on the album cover, Courtney herself: "This picture is when I was very skinny - I'm almost six feet tall and at this point I'm about 101 lbs. No drugs, just total neuroses making this record."

6 feet tall and 101 pounds? If you say that's strong, then you will be misunderstood.

These super-skinny people who claim it just happened when they so focused on work. Such dedication to art that they forgot to eat. I've got to suspect they are lying, but if they are not... try writing the diet book about that weight-loss method.

If your suspicion is that Courtney is using drugs, this is a funny sentence: "The 45-year-old says she has been sober for 'seven years' and currently only takes prescription medications." Oh? Prescription medications? Okay? Or... grisly.

(Or, at least, gristly.)

"The name Courtney Love is a way to oppress me."

"We've all decided we don't like her any more ... We love her when she goes onstage, but I don't need her in the rest of my life."

But she's not actually changing her name: "In an e-mail to MTV News, a spokesperson for Love wrote that the quote was taken '100 percent out of context.... She's not changing her name, unless it's to "Courtney Love Mellencamp" or "Big Baby Jesus."'"

That's either amusing or really, really tiresome.

"Nobody has ever loaned me money. I mean, I was going to die on a few occasions. Johnny Depp gave me CPR on one."

"That’s as close as I ever got. I was watching that movie where he plays Dillinger, and I was like ‘Motherf***er, I never had myself any JD except CPR."

Yeah, Depp's adorable.

"The first film I worked on was Mommie Dearest. I used to measure people nipple to nipple. The first line I heard from Miss Dunaway was: 'Who is that fat girl in my eyeline?' I was terrified."

I don't really know what "I used to measure people nipple to nipple" means but that seems like an amusing thing to say. To do.

Anyway, the speaker is Courtney Love. Here she is reminiscing about her daughter, Kurt Cobain's daughter, Frances:

"[W]hen Frances was about nine, there was an awards ceremony that Michael Stipe, her godfather, was singing at, and Bono was picking up an award. “Frances was holding Stipe’s and Bono’s hands and she goes, ‘You guys are jealous of each other, aren’t you?’ It was the craziest moment. It was so brilliant. Genius. I was so proud of my child at that moment.”

"Francis wants her own hotel room."

"Who can blame her?"

ADDED: I cut and pasted a misspelling. The girl's name is Frances.

"I have to restore myself to not looking ridiculous."

A quote from Courtney Love, talking (only!) about getting her face redone after screwing it up with plastic surgery. From an article about bad plastic surgery, linked by Glenn Reynolds, who says: "My theory is that certain celebrities and socialites are around so many people who've had lots of work done that what looks weird to everyone else just looks normal to them."

But what is normal? The standard is constantly changing, and these socialites and celebrities are on the leading edge of that change. We've already adjusted to some of the things that looked abnormal to us a few years back. In a few years, seeing a smooth, tight, immobile face won't cause us look awry... and that's assuming our own faces will retain any capacity to look awry.

"I don't want my gobblegook nonsense 'Romantic' cathartic unstable keening published."

Writes Courtney Love in her book of gobblegook nonsense "Romantic" cathartic unstable keening that gets a pretty good review in the NYT today. The reviewer, Emily Nussbaum, confesses a fair amount of love for Love.

There was a moment — let’s say 1989, since that’s when I discovered her — when Courtney Love seemed like the solution to every girl’s problems. A brazenly feminist punk rocker with big hips and a sloppy grin, she was the first female celebrity in a long time who wasn’t embarrassed to take up space.

Nussbaum's right! I've long specialized in approving of Love when others are out to get her. Read my old posts:

Untitled. I regard Love's wild behavior on the Letterman show as an actor's performance, playing a character, and quote what she says about judges: "The thing about judges that's cool is they're a lot like rock stars. They just get their own damn way."

"About a girl." I tell you to leave her alone, as she attends "American Idol" with her beautiful daughter.

"Courtney and the Pamela Anderson Roast." Again I defend a wild performance that other people trash: "So the show was utter crapola but somehow everyone wrote about Courtney, because apparently it's so fun to attack her. Interestingly enough, it turned out that Courtney had the best control over how to do a celebrity roast right. Everyone was holding a drink and badly faking high spirits, but she outdid them all, convincingly displaying a roasty attitude. When it was her turn to speak, she did her part perfectly. She played the rocker who deigned to stop by to give Pamela real rock cred because she loved her. She did her lines and her moves and then she kissed Anderson's high-heeled foot. Well played, Courtney! Chez Althouse, we love you!"

Chez BlogHer.

My conference session is over and I'm re-ensconced at my posh hotel, where I'm nibbling sushi and sipping Pouilly-Fuissé and listening to a guy bang out "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" on the grand piano. The question for me now is do I know the way out of San Jose and what kind of meandering route home am I going to take? I came via the southern route, and I'm circling back home through the north. I've got one really excellent posh hotel stop on the way home, and I've got two national parks I intend to see by car. Yes, I'm one of those ridiculous people who love the national parks but barely -- eek, bears -- get 200 feet away from our cars.

Anyway, how was the conference session?

Well, they'll have a podcast for you in about a month. I may have a couple audio clips of myself for the next podcast. I'm deeply troubled by letting more than 7 days go by without a podcast, but some podcast fans would welcome a return to the old Sunday pattern.

But the session, the session, how was it?

Well, first of all, I was way older than the other four bloggers on the panel, old enough to be their mother. And they were all progressive/lefty/liberal, and I'm basically not. But my main theme was one you regular readers must know too well: I'm in this blogging game for the intrinsic value, for the real love of self-expression and expressive community. But the other women were into self-expression too, even if they had more focused political goals.

I have a lot of admiration for the hyper-local bloggers. Lisa Williams, who emcee'd expertly, blogs all about Watertown. Courtney Hollands is all about Plymouth, and she's fabulously excited about her town. I mean, I love Madison, and a lot of what I do is in some sense celebrating Madison and also seeking to reach out beyond Madison for some counterbalance to Madison, but I wouldn't want to just write about Madison. I almost never mention the mayor or the the city council, but I'm impressed by people who love to provide that coverage, much more than mainstream media will.

Jarah Euston is devoted to Fresno. Fresno! And she really cares. That's beautiful!

Kety Esquivel's concentrated place is not geographic but spiritual. She's progressive. And she's Christian. For her, to be Christian is to be progressive. You might feel insulted if you're a conservative Christian, but she's passionate about wanting to counterbalance the political weight you know you have.

Lindsay Beyerstein, who looks exactly like the picture on her blog, is more like me, blogging in a somewhat similar fashion, but much more politically committed. See, she's bitching about the Comtrex just like me and wants more cool gadgets. I imagine she hates to think we're alike, because, after all, I voted for Bush. I even mentioned it in the session. I think she's insulted me a couple times on her blog, but what the hell? She's a passionate, serious blogger, and I wish her well.

There were great comments from the audience, including one from a woman who impressed me terribly by saying she came up first on Google if you searched for her first name: Betsy! Wow! How about Ann? I'm sure I'm not first, but am I at least on the first page? Yes! Oh, how I love the internet. All my life, I've felt that Ann was an absurdly plain name. It's practically like not even having a name. Ann? It's like, the. An article. An Althouse. Yeah? Which one?

Just this little woman hiding out in the lobby of a posh hotel in San Jose, listening to the piano player murder "Don't Get Around Much Anymore."

BlogHer... and plotting the trip to San Jose.

Are you going to the BlogHer convention next week? I'm on a panel on day two, which is described like this on the website:

Political Blogging:

Same shit, different day? What did political blogs accomplish in 2004, besides bringing down Dan Rather and selling tickets to Farenheit 911? Will poli-blogs and hyper-local citizen journalism sites really make a difference in 2006 and 2008? Are bloggers better off trying to influence their own communities or sway the masses? Lisa Williams talks with Jarah Euston and Kety Esquivel, Courtney Hollands, Lindsay Beyerstein and Ann Althouse...bloggers representing all types of blogs, and with a range of opinions on what they expect to achieve with those blogs.

Any advice? I've got to say that if I weren't on this panel, I'd be more interested in one of the other panels going on at the same time. I'm really not that interested in politics, and I usually like to keep it at arm's length. But that will kind of be my topic. Political blogging is not just for politicos, and being not the political type is an angle on politics that can work in blogging. It drives the really political people to distraction.

This is going to force me to leave Madison, which I've been avoiding for the longest time. I've spent a lot of time looking at maps. Yes, of course I'm driving. I love my car and I love to drive across the western landscape. It's a long way to San Jose, and please don't mention that song, which is hard enough not to think about when you're going to San Jose. And the person in the song is just trying to get to San Jose from L.A. How hard is that? What a loser!

Plotting my route, I kept my eye on two things: the green dotted lines representing the scenic drives and the one motel chain that made it absolutely clear that they have wireless internet in every room at every location. Do you know how many chains brag that they have high-speed access ... in the lobby? My favorite example was one that showed a beautiful woman in a bathrobe sprawled across her bed, smiling with delight at her laptop. Some lobby that must be.

In the past, I've driven long distances and just figured out where to stop as I was traveling, which can cause some trouble, like the day I drove all the way from Madison to Salt Lake City and then thought I might as well go on to the next town. If you don't know how stupid that is, look at a map. [ADDED: Speaking of being driven to distraction!]

So, I've picked my stops, which I hope will keep me from doing foolish things and free my mind for the true aesthetic and spiritual experience of crossing the landscape. I'm taking three days to get to the destination and somewhat longer driving back, which will include a stay at a very posh resort. So I'm driving a big loop, for a total of well over 4,000 miles, with stopping points in two places on the way to San Jose and three places on the way back to Madison.

Photos of the Year.

40 from Reuters. (Via Metafilter.) Somehow, both Madonna and Courtney Love found a place among the many sad pictures of war and flooding. And then there's the young girl's tongue with the eclipsed sun casting a bright crescent on it. I remember once years ago walking out on Bascom Hill during a partial solar eclipse and seeing all the sunlight shining through the tree leaves making strange crescents all over the sidewalk. Quite amazing. So I like the idea of marking the solar eclipse by photographing the curved light on the stuck-out tongue of a girl who is gazing at the sun itself. The routine photograph show either the sun or the faces of people staring through various protective devices.

Courtney and the Pamela Anderson Roast.

I finally got around to watching the Pamela Anderson Roast I'd taken the trouble to TiVo. As you may remember, I wanted to watch it because of the fuss that was made over Courtney Love's behavior. Well, the show was excruciating, with second rate comics making one bad anatomical joke after another. It was supposedly a charity event for PETA – man, I remember when a politically correct operation like that would not sully itself with rank sexist material – and many, many of the jokes connected the kind of animals PETA cares about with the animal names that are used as slang for a woman's genitalia. So the show was utter crapola but somehow everyone wrote about Courtney, because apparently it's so fun to attack her. Interestingly enough, it turned out that Courtney had the best control over how to do a celebrity roast right. Everyone was holding a drink and badly faking high spirits, but she outdid them all, convincingly displaying a roasty attitude. When it was her turn to speak, she did her part perfectly. She played the rocker who deigned to stop by to give Pamela real rock cred because she loved her. She did her lines and her moves and then she kissed Anderson's high-heeled foot. Well played, Courtney! Chez Althouse, we love you!

UPDATE: Putting Pam and Courtney side-by-side made me want to spin out an analysis similar to the comparison between Jackie Kennedy and Liz Taylor in "Jackie Under My Skin" (by Wayne Koestenbaum). You have two icons and one is pure and idealized, the other is tainted and dirtied. In the Pam/Courtney comparison, both represent sexuality and self-indulgence, but Pam has some how made what was dirty into something utterly polished and glossy – essentially fulfilling the Playboy dream. Courtney is the real-life version of sexual indulgence: this is what trying to live that fantasy will really make you look like. Well, now I'm thinking of another book.

Looks like the Celebrity Roast of Pamela Anderson is a must-TiVo.

And not because of Pam. Because of Courtney:

With Ms. Love thrashing around, it can be hard to remember that it is Ms. Anderson's night. Smoking cigarettes, Ms. Love heckled the comedians and flipped people off, regularly flashing her underwear and pulling up her top. When not lurching toward center stage in raw bids for attention, she slumped so far down in a white sofa that some of the male comedians - particularly the M.C., Jimmy Kimmel - appeared to prop her up. Toward the end of the roast, she reclined entirely.

"How is it possible that Courtney Love looks worse than Kurt Cobain?" the comic Jeffrey Ross asked. Is that line even legal?

But when people joked about Ms. Love's history of substance abuse, she would respond slurrily, "I've been sober for a year!"

"If you're not on drugs," Mr. Kimmel shot back at one point, "you've got problems."

In other Courtney news. She didn't commit suicide. She failed a drug test. And she's got a new boyfriend, to whom she wrote:

“It’s so weird and wrong and good and sweet and evil being with you…You are beautiful my little baby and by the way, I love you too.”

We love you too, Courtney! Good luck!

About a girl.

Leave Courtney Love alone. She looks happy, and Frances Bean is utterly adorable. Oh! They were in the audience at the "American Idol" finale. How strange to think of Kurt Cobain's daughter as an "American Idol" fan. Wonder if she was for Bo or Carrie. Here's another picture. Aw!

Journeys With George. I didn't have HBO back when Alexandra Pelosi's documentary Journeys With George was on originally, so it was nice to finally get the DVD. It's quite enjoyable. Pelosi did not hesitate to some include footage shot from the TV (usually with the camera tilted to give the talking heads that David-McCallum-on-Outer-Limits giant cranium effect). This encouraged me to continue with my TV photographing propensity, displayed below with John Kerry on Dick Cavett and earlier with Courtney Love on Letterman (TiVo helps you get the best frames). I like the effect of getting extra close, which Pelosi did, and forthrightly showing the lines and imperfections of the TV image. It's similar to the way Roy Lichtenstein gets close to a newspaper image and revels in the dots:




So let me give you a frame I liked from Journey's With George, where George Bush is spelling out the letters to VICTORY in cheerleader style. This is the R:

Anyway, it's a cool documentary, quite funny, about what it's like to be a journalist following a candidate around. At one point, there's a telling statement, that the journalists traveling with Gore can't stand him (though they want him to win), while Bush, surrounded by reporters who are hoping he will fail, has "charmed the pants off" them.

Courtney Love, Madonna, CivPro, judges. I rewatched the Courtney Love on Letterman performance and am more convinced than before that she was acting. For one thing, she seemed to be performing. In fact, she seemed to be following the script of the famous Madonna Letterman appearance, which was also, obviously, an act, even though people enjoyed believing Madonna was out of control (a really ridiculous idea). Another reason I'm sure Love was acting is that she's promoting a new album and needs the press: she went out afterwards and engaged in various hijinks. She even got arrested, though it doesn't seem that she did anything to deserve it. I don't know how she gets the police to participate in her stunts, but they did. I liked this info about an earlier run in with the law:

[A]fter her 1995 arrest on charges that she punched several fans at an Orlando concert, the judge dismissed the case, ruling that they had been exposed to no more violence than might be reasonably expected at a rock 'n' roll show.

Hmmm ... I have an old civpro exam about rock show violence. Premised on a tort claim, though, not criminal law. Based on the whole stage diving phenomenon and the extent of negligence by the band and the club and some people at the club. How was that civil procedure? You make everyone from different places with different claims against different parties, and there are jurisdiction and joinder issues galore.

Oh, you know, when I saw Love years ago, she dove into the audience and then, afterwards, accused a guy of sexually assaulting her (touching her in the wrong place when she was crowd surfing and therefore had to be touched a lot). She had the guy dragged up on stage, where she proceeded to yell at him. Let's hope that was all staged too.

Love seems to do well with judges. She had a good line about them on Letterman: "Judges are like rock stars." (I'll have to get the whole quote later. It has something to do with being able to do whatever you want and/or running your own show.) I think the fact that she does well with them is one more indication that her public persona is an act. She doesn't act like that in court.

UPDATE: Here's the judge quote: "The thing about judges that's cool is they're a lot like rock stars. They just get their own damn way." She quotes her judge as saying "I will not have a witch hunt in my state," which she then ties to the Martha Stewart case. She appeals to the audience to side with Martha: "Is that fair? Raise your hand if you think that's fair." A second later she's leaping up, yelling "You are sexist!"

Courtney Love ... Richard Perle ... Jessica Simpson. It was fun clicking from Letterman to Nightline to Leno and back again last night. Courtney was certainly energized. Simpson was funny, telling the story about meeting the Secretary of the Interior at the White House and saying to her, "You've done a nice job decorating the White House." Perle--I don't know--I just found it amusing that he was the meat in that sandwich.

Courtney Love performed in Madison some years ago (at the Paramount, which no longer exists). She didn't like the sound system and kept complaining about it, in elevating stages, ending with her taking off her top, and also throwing food from a deli tray at the audience. We kept some of the food wrapped up in the freezer for a while, thinking it somewhat historic, but it isn't there any more. Not that I think anyone ate it. In a sandwich.

Anyway, breast-baring is a very old routine for Courtney Love. I'm thinking she feels it's not fair that Janet Jackson got so much attention recently for baring a breast and that she's the one who's entitled to the publicity. Hence the Letterman antics. Personally, I think she knows what she's doing, as opposed to being out of her mind. When she had her on-stage freak out at the Paramount, there was a break in the middle, where supposedly people were trying to get her to come back out on stage, and later she did come back out. But during that break, we stepped outside for some air, and she was out there talking to the management, perfectly rationally, about how to deal with the sound problem. That was maybe a decade ago, so who knows? I still am going to guess that she has chosen a role and is playing a part.

UPDATE: Cka3n doesn't want to believe Courtney Love was just acting, but he perceptively realizes the reason he doesn't want to believe she was is that it's only funny if you think she's out of control. The material wasn't really that good. It wasn't as good as Jessica Simpson's Leno material quoted above, and I think that was scripted, by the way, because it's just too good. Simpson may be dumb, but she's not that dumb, and if she were that dumb, she just wouldn't get lucky enough to say the great lines she's famous for. Simpson has writers. Love is doing her own material, improvising, and she's a terrific actress and she's smart, so it works. She may seem a bit old for the crazy punk girl role, but like (Whatever Happened to) Baby Jane, she can entertainingly play crazy punk girl into extreme old age. And if she survives to extreme old age, that's how you'll know it's all been an act. And of course I hope it is. (Oh, and yeah, I TiVoed it. But here's a recap if you didn't. Recap link courtesy of Gawker.)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Let me explain the Whatever Happened to Baby Jane reference. In that film, Bette Davis plays a character who had been a successful child star, and who, though quite old, continues to trounce about in baby dresses, acting all cute and coy. No longer the little girl, she's become a really interestingly deluded old lady. So Courtney Love can continue in her punk girl role and, as she ages, let it become wild and outrageous in new ways, like Bette Davis's character. And in fact, Love might do well generally to have Bette Davis as a role model. Just play a raving old hag and grow old in style. Nicole and Drew can't do that. Bette didn't have to be the prettiest or the cutest to be the best actress of them all, and neither do you. And, readers, if you haven't seen that film, you really must. And by the way, it's another one of the great things about one of my all time favorite years, 1962.