Dan Zanes Redux

You just haven't lived until you've rapped the alphabet song with Father Goose. I mean it. Dan and his crazy-dressed band rocked the house, and the middle-aged boho white people and their pampered offspring rocked it right back at him. Best time I've had since I can remember. Which may tell you something about my life.

Dan brought Tony Saletan on stage (and his daughter--Dan's daughter, that is--which made M unbearably jealous) (and then I showed her a picture of Madonna and Lourdes in US magazine and she was jealous again) (the child really could do with famous parents) (of course I wouldn't mind making that dream come true) (yes, at the ripe old age of 41, I still want to be famous) (and, remarkably, this run-on parenthetical digression has led me to where this anecdote is going: one of my brushes with fame) (sort of).

Way back in the day, at hippie private school, my fifth grade teacher--one of the best teachers I ever had--was a caller in a contra dance band. Her boyfriend was the...guitarist? He taught at old-style progressive private school, where P and B's kids went. And we just kind of knew them around town.

One day Tony Saletan called up S, my teacher (it was hippie private school and we called our teachers by their first names), and said he needed kids for two TV shows he was doing: one on singing games and one on contra-dancing. S rounded up me and a bunch of other kids, and we spent a day playing singing games and contra-dancing for the cameras with Tony Saletan. It was the first money I ever made: $25. Tony Saletan was lovely. And I got pretty into contra dancing for a few years, until I got into the Grateful Dead and other things that will go unmentioned for the benefit of the grand-maternal readership of the blog. But I still love a good contra dance, and Tony Saletan is still a great guy.

(And M was really jealous when I told her I'd been on TV.) (Though, now that I think of it, she too has been on TV, and she made much more money than I did.)