That's Dancing 2025 Winter Showcase Performances

The Winter Showcase at That's Dancing Ballroom & Dancesport Center had "Country Christmas" as its theme. We stuck to the theme with two dances, a Rumba to George Strait's I Just Want to Dance with You and a Foxtrot to Christmas Cookies, also by George Strait. As usual, they had professional videographers and photographers so I can pass on the joy to you!

As I look through the pictures, the opening looks an awful lot like the final bow!

Crossover Side Rocks or Final Bow?

The rest of the choreography was fun.

Underarm turn

Two-hand hold

Closed position

A fancy turn

Crossover Side Rocks or Final Bow?

The second song, "Christmas Cookies," had a more fun flavor, especially since it featured actual cookies!

The "oven" was our toaster oven from home but the cookies were real, as were the sprinkles that I didn't really sprinkle over the cookies.

Getting them out of the oven

Adding those "sprinkly things!"

The oven mitt that matches the apron was a new item made by a precious aunt (who made the original apron for a previous dance of ours, that one involving cake). 

Showing off

Ready for a change

About to get rid of the mitt

Originally, dancing our way back to the oven was just to use the floor space, but we hit on the idea of eating a cookie right in time with the music.

Going back for a bite

Yum!

Back to dancing

Swish!

The second time, when we fed each other, we thought it was extra-cute.

A bite for you!

Back to dancing

On our way

The first bow

We had a lot of extra cookies and distributed little boxes of them to each table, including the judge's table! The bribe didn't really get us anything.

Giving out the last box

The final final bow

At the end, we received the usual certificates and gifts.

With Carlos the studio owner and Christina our instructor

A beer glass!

Book Review: Usagi Yojimbo 25 by Stan Sakai

Usagi Yojimbo Book 25: Fox Hunt written and drawn by Stan Sakai

More adventures of the rabbit ronin...

Kitsune Gari--Usagi and Gen are traveling and come to a crossroads on the way to the next town. The beggar sitting there tells them one is a shortcut and warns the travelers to stay on the path because nine-tailed foxes inhabit the woods. Coming to a bridge, Usagi reluctantly crosses. It collapses just as Gen tries, forcing him to backtrack. On the way, he discovers another shortcut off of the shortcut. He hopes to beat Usagi to town but things don't work out like that. The story is a lot of fun.

Sakura--Usagi and Gen arrive at another town and run into Gen's old friend Sakura. She is a talented performer who is on a mission, so she travels a lot picking up odd jobs here and there. She works for a local gambler and discovers he has enslaved a young girl because her father couldn't pay his gambling debts. The father is now dead after falling into debt again. Sakura tries to pay for the girl, only to be rebuffed. She cold-cocks the gambler and takes the child on the run, which of course brings Gen and Usagi back into the picture. The typical action and excitement ensues.

Snitch--Usagi and Gen get the Yojimbo treatment as a snitch takes payments from them for money on a bounty while also getting money from another bounty hunter across town. The scheme eventually breaks down which is not good for the snitch. It's another fun story and an interesting reconfiguring of Akira Kurosawa's classic.

Saya--Usagi accidentally bumps the sheath of another swordsman who demands an apology. Usagi is initially reluctant but does apologies. That's not good enough for the other swordsman, who assumes he is superior and deserves more respect from a mongrel ronin. They go off into the woods to fight with a surprise result.

The Beggar--Usagi is followed from town to town by a ramshackle beggar, or is it just a coincidence? Paranoia is not Usagi's strong suit, so he does some of his own sneaky work to figure out what is going on. This is another interesting story.

The Fortress--Usagi runs into old friend Chizu, the disgraced leader from the Neko Ninja Clan. She tells him the procession they see below is doomed--they are going to claim a fortress as a reward from the Shogunate, but an ambush awaits them. Usagi naturally wants to warn them. He gets drafted into the procession to see if he is right. It comes true, leading to a lot of bloodshed. This is an interesting one-off showing more about Usagi and Chizu than developing a larger plot.

The Outlaw--Gen and Stray Dog wind up parting ways over a large bounty. They are on the trail of the titular outlaw when a fork in the road has no clue as to which way he went. So they split up, with the deal that whoever gets the guy get three-quarters of the bounty. The story follows Gen who cleverly discovers the outlaw but gets a lot more than he bargained for as he takes the bounty alive. The story is very interesting and touching, a great finale to a nice set of stories.

Recommended, highly for Usagi fans.

Movie Review: Wicked for Good (2025)

Wicked for Good (2025) directed by Jon M. Chu

See my review of the first film here!

The story returns to the land of Oz where Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) has been cast out and branded the Wicked Witch of the West. The smear campaign is orchestrated by Ms. Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) who is working with/manipulating the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and Glinda (Ariana Grande-Butera). Elphaba continues her campaign to free magical beasts, especially those enslaved to build yellow brick roads from Oz to other cities and towns like Munchkinland. She wants to reveal the truth about the Wizard's ambitions and his lack of abilities (he uses a lot of mechanical inventions and passes them off as magic). Glinda still can't do magic but is on board with Morrible and the Wizard, accepting a "magic bubble" so she can fly around just like Elphaba does on her broom. The conflict gets more complicated when Glinda is engaged to Captain Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), who might be more romantically interested in Elphaba. Elphaba's sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode) tries to win the heart of Boq (Ethan Slater) who has a thing for Glinda more than Nessarose. The romantic complications lead to more trouble as Morrible summons a tornado to drop a house on Nessarose.

The movie suffers from a lot of the same problems of the first one--a bunch of characters are unlikeable and/or shallow. This movie is still amazing-looking though the songs are less memorable and fun. The plot moves along so fast it skips a lot of explanations, leaving gaping plot holes that are very hard to ignore. The themes of disregarding the truth in favor of the popular and the lionizing of evil choices is hard to swallow. The film does try to move away from that at the end, but it is not very believable. The happy ending for Elphaba is especially dumb and feels tacked on because that's the way stories are supposed to end. The film has too many unsatisfactory elements. The actors do a good job with what they have, but the script is a failure.

Not recommended--maybe they should have left The Wizard of Oz alone instead of trying to subvert it.

TV Review: Agatha Christie's Seven Dials (2026)

Agatha Christie's Seven Dials (2026) adapted for television by Chris Chibnall from Christie's novel

Hosting a swanky party at their dilapidating mansion in 1925, Lady Caterham (Helena Bonham-Carter) and her daughter Bundle (Mia McKenna-Bruce) wake up the next morning to discover one of the guests has died. Not just any guest, either, but Gerry (Cory Mylchreest), a bright young fellow working the Foreign Office and soon to propose to Bundle. Circumstances make it look like suicide to the bumbling junior detective called in. Bundle, who is clever and likes to ask questions, does not buy that interpretation and begins her own investigation. The clues are very mysterious, like the seven alarm clocks set up on the mantle in Gerry's bedroom (even though eight were planted throughout the room as a practical joke) and a mysterious half-written letter to his half-sister that mentions "Seven Dials" with no context. As Bundle follows the trail of clues and bodies, a grander conspiracy is exposed.

The story starts off very promising. Bundle is the sort of spunky young woman most parents hope their daughter grows into--she has enough self-will not to get steamrolled by anyone and she's smart enough not to be hoodwinked. Random clues are revealed and suspicion gets tossed around in the typical Christie way. Unfortunately, in the last half hour the explanation of what is going on comes and it is rather preposterous. The bigger conspiracy does not quite hang together and many bits of action at the end are very implausible. The story veers off from cozy mystery into international espionage, a transition that is very abrupt. The ending is a bit silly and opens up the possibility of sequels more in Ian Fleming's genre than Agatha Christie's.

Barely recommended--this is eight- or nine-tenths good, but failing at the end hurts a lot.

As I write this (January 2025), this is only available streaming on Netflix.

Book Review: God, Freedom, and Evil by Alvin C. Plantinga

God, Freedom, and Evil by Alvin C. Plantinga

A popular problem in theology and philosophy is how an all-powerful and all-loving God could allow evil in the universe. Atheists use the Problem of Evil as a proof that God does not exist. In confronting the problem, Alvin Plantinga takes an unusual route--hard-core logical analysis. 

The first part of the book looks at the problem from the atheists' angle, assessing whether an omnipotent and omni-beneficent God could make a world with evil in it. Plantinga's prose is clear and precise, whittling down various possibilities and interpretations, including concepts like "the best of all possible worlds" and whether a world that has evil could have more good in it than a world only with good in it. He reaches the conclusion that the actual world does allow for a God who desires good in that world while allowing evil to take place in it. The second part of the book reviews three main arguments for God's existence: the Cosmological Argument, the Teleological Argument, and the Ontological Argument. He dismisses the first two arguments rather quickly and then focuses on the Ontological Argument, proceeding from Anselm's first formulation of it, going through the historical reactions to it (especially Immanuel Kant's), concluding with his personal analysis. Plantinga finds it a creditable argument.

The book is written with a lay audience in mind, so the logical analyses are not overwrought or full of technical language that requires prerequisite knowledge. The thinking is disciplined, so readers have to focus to follow the arguments. Plantinga has a lot of references that point to more thorough discussions in other books (many of which are his own). The writing is clear and the book is short, not more than 120 pages.

The book is not entirely satisfying. While the disciplined, logical analysis of the arguments is interesting and convincing, they don't make the final step into certitude. Plantinga admits as much--he's showing that there's no logical or systemic contradiction in an all-loving and all-knowing God creating a world in which evil is allowed to exist. It's not an incoherent concept like a square circle. But coherence (a system of truths that does not contradict itself) is not the same thing as correspondence (a system of truths that represents the world the way it is). When it comes to proving God's existence, he naturally prefers the Ontological Argument which is based in theory to arguments that are based on the contingency of the world (cosmological) or orderliness of the world (teleological). The challenge that Plantinga does not acknowledge is that logic is only as good as the premises it is based on. Logical arguments need a prior metaphysical base in order to be more than a word puzzle that works out they way you want. 

Recommended, though it is a bit challenging and not fully persuasive.

Encanto Park, Phoenix, AZ

Encanto Park in Phoenix, Arizona, has a lot of stuff spread out all over.

A large recreational lake is at the north end of the park. The Clubhouse and boat dock were built in the 1930s as part of the Public Works Administration. The clubhouse has that period's look, a bit of the Spanish Revival.

Clubhouse

Encanto Lagoon

The lagoon feeds into a bunch of waterways. Fishermen are welcome at the lagoon and the waterways, as many signs provide help to assess catches.

How big was it?

The Little Red Bridge was also built in the 1930s and became something of a local icon. Back in the day, lots of people took family photos or wedding pictures there. A tree crashed into the bridge and local officials decided to haul off what remained. A local contractor took on the task of rebuilding it, helped by local volunteers.

Relaxing waterway with view of Little Red Bridge

Little Red Bridge

I saw some ducks enjoying the water too!

Those who live in the park

A small amusement park is located here though we came too early to enjoy the rides and such. They have a railroad and the oldest working carousel in America.

Enchanted Island entrance

At the southern end of the park is a sports complex with a nice playground.

Encanto Playground

Tennis, someone?!?

An empty swimming pool (it was December)

We had parked up by the lagoon so that's where my son did most of his playing.

Rocking the boat

Book Review: Spy x Family Vol. 15 by Tatsuya Endo

Spy x Family Volume 15 by Tatsuya Endo

After an extensive and sober backstory about Eden Academy Headmaster Henry and Martha Marriott (a sort of nanny to Anya's best friend at school) and their doomed young love decades earlier, the story gets back to comedy and character bits with several short stories about specific characters. My favorite is a charming one about Frankie, the weapons/tech guy for super-spy Loid. Frankie has only bad luck with women until he gets some movie tickets that one of his possible amours really wants to see. The story ends up a bit like Henry and Martha's, but not so extensive or sobering. In another tale, almost all the kids from the Academy show up at a city festival, leading to more comedy and hijinks.

This is another fun volume and worth the read, even if the larger story only moves forward half a pace.

Recommended.