Dancing

I mentioned a little while ago that Omri turns out to be a bona fide dancing bear.  Laszlo, who is a trained tap dancer (he was never a professional, but this was mostly just because he wanted a career in government), was delighted when this came up in conversation.  So the two of them have taken to dancing in the evenings most days.  Here they are:

Some caution is required in dancing with Omri, since he's got pretty impressive claws, but he and Laszlo seem to have worked that out.

Omri's pretty good at other types of dancing, too.  He was pretty excited when he found out that AJD and I have been going salsa-dancing lately, although disappointed to learn that bears aren't allowed to go.  But he offered to help AJD figure out a few tricks.  It's much harder to go social salsa-dancing as a beginner when you're a guy.  Girls have it easy; you just sort of let the guy twirl you around and try to stay on the right foot.  Guys are expected to know how to do the twirling.  Here are Omri and AJD practising.

AJD says that there are obvious readjustments in technique when one is salsa-dancing with a bear, but not so many as you'd think.

Omri's first love, naturally, is vaudeville, so he and AJD have been having some fun with that too.  I took this picture last night when they were working on their rendition of "Simon Smith and His Amazing Dancing Bear."*

* This song, interestingly, is sort of the reverse of "If You Could See Her Through My Eyes" from Cabaret, if you know what I mean.

This is really getting ridiculous

I missed most of Jeopardy! tonight because I stayed late at work, and this is a shame, because it was a very eventful game.  Not only did a college student win $48,000 without breaking a sweat, either.  

When I got home, the Double Jeopardy round was not quite halfway over and Laszlo and Navarre were downstairs watching with AJD, Gilly, and Zebulon.  This was, naturally, due to the effects of Hrithik's alarmingly effective meditation routine.  Laszlo had won an honourable mention because the winning contestant's anecdote was about getting in-between a female moose and her offspring (moral of story: this is a bad idea).  And Navarre really cleaned up, because there was an entire category about lions in the first round.  It's not clear whether this counts as a five-game win or as winning one game five times, but either way, this is an unprecedented accomplishment.

Hrithik, naturally, is claiming all the credit.

This is on top of AJD's recent discovery, mentioned in the comment thread on an earlier post, that the conference he's attending next month has sessions on the dialectological situation in Madagascar.  We'd joked before about Murchison needing to monitor Team Malagasy for suspicious behaviour, but it must be said that since Zebulon got here and Hrithik started meditating, things have been strange.  What is next, and what is going on?  Madagascar gets to host an Olympic games?  Madagascar suddenly becomes a world empire? 

Group Hug!

Ungulates are so cute sometimes.  Need I say more?