Out with the OLD and In with the NEW

The surgeon gave me a set of pictures taken during my ACL reconstruction and Meniscus repair.
While these procedures are well known, proven and 'nothing new', it's always more interesting when it's ones own knee that's being looked at.

The first picture shows my old torn ACL which has literally been hanging around and doing nothing for a decade, it was removed.

The second picture shows the guide wire that was used to thread the donor ACL graft into place. Holes were drilled in my upper and lower leg bones to allow the replacement ACL to be drawn into place by pulling on the attached guide wire. The replacement ACL was then screwed into place with the amount of tension that is required for it to perform it's binding function.

The third picture shows the new ACL graft in place. It's the fuzzy white blob in the middle. As the graft doesn't arrive until shortly before surgery, I requested of the surgeon that he abort the surgery in the 1/1000000 chance that the donor graft looks deficient in any way. After the operation he told me that the graft looked good and was 9mm in width (mmm.. slightly more than 1/3 of an inch).

The fourth picture shows the meniscus repair. The edges of the torn meniscus were roughed up to make them bleed which stimulates the growth of repair tissue. The surgeon stapled the ends together to hold them in place and the body will do the rest. There's a 90% chance that the repair will take and that I will emerge from my 5 more weeks of crutch-encrusted life with a whole, complete meniscus.

I'm really looking forward to a future with a strong and healthy knee !

My Last Stand

For a while...

I reported to the Hospital at 6am this morning for ACL reconstruction surgery on my knee (thanks Sis and Mom for getting up so early to shuttle me over !).

10 years ago I completely tore the ACL (ligament) out of my right knee during my fight at a full-contact martial arts tournament. I had gotten knocked back and fell backwards onto my knee 'the wrong way'. My corner man had kept urging me to 'go for the kill' as I had stunned my opponent numerous times with strong but nearly undetectable body blows which left him completely open and defenseless against any quick followup attack. I found out in the ring that I had no desire to beat down a helpless person for sport (it would be a completely different story in cases of real combat or legitimate self-defense, of course !). So, I hobbled out of that match gaining some self-knowlege but losing an ACL.

Barring a few minor mishaps, the torn ACL had not been an issue until I took up dancing 3 years ago. Through all my dance training and classes, when I would start to advance to the next levels of technique my knee would have trouble handling leaps, jumps and general hopping off the floor (well, the landing parts of said manuvers anyway). I would get swelling and painful knees and have to take a break to recover. Finally, having been through numerous of these hop-injure-recover cycles, the time has come to finally have the ACL reconstructed, especially before it leads to more serious injuries: cartiledge damage and arthritis (which a torn ACL will eventually lead to dancing or no dancing).

There are a number of techniques for reconstructing the ACL. All of them involve attaching ligament material to the leg bones where the torn ACL was. Some of the methods involve taking the ligament material from yourself (patellar tendon or hamstring tendon) and another involves using a ligament taken from a deceased donor. I've opted for the 'Frankenstein' donor method. Miraculously after the foriegn donor graft is 'accepted' by the body (there is only a slight chance of rejection), the body begins to grow blood vessels into the graft and accepts it as it's own !
The long post-surgery recovery time (6-9 months) is required to regrow the drilled out bone material (holes required to able to thread and secure the new graft into the bones) and for assimilation of the donor graft..

It will be nice to able to hop about on an uncompromised (well, less compromised) knee after the recovery is complete !

Update: 16:20 I just got off the phone with the surgeon. Looks like I've gotten a bonus Meniscus repair in the back of the knee.. 6 weeks on crutches while it heals ! I need to see about getting a handicap permit !

Stuntman the 'Thelonious Monk' of BBoying

Rarely within established styles of artistic expression do we come across an individual with a developed style that is truly unique and is also at the top of the 'expression' game.

In the 'classic Jazz' realm, Thelonious Monk was one of those artists. His style was 'off-beat', totally unique and supremely expressive. I don't think I've yet run across another pianist that plays like he did.

Similarly, in the BBoy 'Breakdancing' world I've noted the unique dancing style of 'Stuntman' with 'Originality Stands Alone'. Over the years, 'Breakdancing' has come to have a staple of 'classical movements': Headspins, Air Flares (legs in the air spread out a stretch and spinning like a helicopter blade), etc. Often watching Breakdance contests can be like witnessing a gymnastic or ice skating competition, there are a number of well known moves and you judge their execution (and because this is dancing, also on their musicality): OK, here's the Air Flare, now a Headspin, Oh wait, that 6-step seems to be rushing ahead of the beat. 'Stuntman' on the other hand has a completely unique style that doesn't really utilize much of the repertoire of 'standard' moves, but still fits within the boundaries of the BBoy style. I really like it. It's imaginative and it's highly expressive. It takes a complete disregard for convention to show up
at a BBoy contest and dance like no other dancers do, judges be damned. Kind of like Thelonious Monk was when he played the piano and made music in his own unique way.

YouTube: Stuntman, Originality Stands Alone vs Hound Dawg Truckers

Stuntman @0:00 @3:04

Dancing is for the Birdz

It was great a weekend of dance artistry for me. Saturday night I joined some co-conspirators and enjoyed a spectacular performance at Yerba Buena Center by

Alonzo King's Lines Ballet

I have to admit that for me the overall style took some adjusting to on my part, but once that was done I was thoroughly engaged. I can add nothing in words about the experience, it has to be seen in person for full effect !

On Sunday afternoon I played videographer for

Kathy Mata Ballet

to capture the performance put on for the residents at the Sequioa's Senior Center in San Francisco. It was a pleasant couple of hours of serious and playful Ballet, Mambo, HipHop, Belly Dance and a great piano vocal duo Jack and Adele performing favorite standards and hits (e.g. 'I've got you under my skin')

Over the years I've wondered what it is that drives people to make music and to dance. Every culture (except for those espoused by the likes of the Taliban whom advocate the abolishment of music and dance) has their form of music and dance all commonly bound by concepts of rhythm and melody (and where there's absence of rhythm or melody, usually it's that way on purpose to make a statement about rhythm or melody, as in: 'hey, guess what's NOT here ?'). One of my favorite 90's music videos is by the B-52s and features clips of people from various cultures doing their dances (you might be able to find 'B52s Roam' on YouTube subject to the whims of the controlling Music Industry Dinosaurs).

Back when people bought music by walking into stores and sampling CDs, I remember watching a group of IQ challenged students come in to listen to some CDs. Regardless of differences in the brain from 'persons of normal IQ', they definitely felt and enjoyed the rhythm of what they were listening to and were happily rocking their bodies to the beat. Clearly, there's something innate in humans that allows us to create music and dance.

It turns out that this ability may be broader than something common to human kind though. Some researchers conjecture that dance may be something common to all earthly beings that have the ability to speak. Speaking requires the articulation of particular body parts at the correct time, the theory goes, and this ability to coordinate these actions to create speech implies the existence of a sense of rhythm. Included in the beings so blessed are talking birds, as reported in this

2008 NYT article: Avian Dancing

The article refers to videos of 'Snowball' a dancing bird. To test that Snowball was not bobbing and stepping in time with the music 'by coincidence' the researcher varied the tempo of the music and found that Snowbird adjusted his movements to whatever the tempo of the music was. Yes, that bird was dancing !

Video of Snowbird Doing It

So Dancing is for Birds, and I'm loving every minute of it !

DanceWright Night Delights

I went to see a concert put on by the SF DanceWright Project at Dance Mission Theatre in SF.

The DanceWright Project

It was a marvelous evening featuring 4 companies:
DanceWright
Labayen Dance/SF
Kat Worthington and Dancers
DAC PAC

All but DAC PAC performed premiere works that evening and the air was especially electric with the freshness of the new works being presented to the packed house.

I was particularly stunned by the performance of DAC PAC.

DAC PAC were amazing. Aside from the flexibility and energy that one might expect from young (pre-18 year old) dancers, the real surprise was the level of ensemble work. When the choreography called for homogeneous group movement, I don't think I've ever witnessed a group that has performed more tightly. Everyone was exactly on beat, even when falling to the floor (which yielded a satisfying unified 'whump'). When arms moved, they all moved at the same time and AT THE SAME PLACES. Even the smallest movements the hands and fingers were in sync. The effect of this was to feel a powerful wave effect from the group, like a school of swimming fish suddenly changing direction. If any member had been off in time or space, this effect would be diminished. It was not. And the effect was maintained and not diminished for the length of the entire piece.

Amazing.

I highly recommend catching DAC PAC when you can !

Lazy San Francisco Sunday

It was a beautiful, sunny and warm Sunday in San Francisco.
The day started off with some time at a cafe doing a little bit of work that needed to get finished. At one point I looked out the window and noticed 2 cyclists taking a break outside the window. I used to be quite the avid road bicyclist myself but I'm apparently of the old school. When we took breaks back in the day, we'd stand around, drink water and talk to each other. I notice here that when the new cyclists take a break, rather than go for the water, out come the phones so that they can separately communicate with persons not physically present. How times have changed.

It's time to go to afternoon Ballet class downtown. As I'm packing up to go, I notice that someone has hung an inflatable blue octopus outside their window. Nice surprise.

Ballet class over, I'm to meet up with some dancers at a cafe to plan a rehearsal schedule for a group dance piece that I'll be performing in at a charity dance concert in November. As I pulled up to the cafe, I saw that the mural on the outside of the cafe wall looked like the perfect backdrop to absorb the bike.

Michael Jackson: Live in Japan 1985

After getting the Michael Jackson live in Bucharest (1992) DVD

Michael Jackson Live in Bucharest

I was happy to see this Michael Jackson Live in Japan Tour DVD at my local video rental store (yes, I physically go to a locally owned video store where they have people who know me and recommend good movies from their own experience (not from inferences made by computerized data mining and correlation)).

I rented it and had a look.

Wow, what a difference 7 years makes when comparing this 1985 performance to the 1992 Bucharest show.

The younger Michael is far more energetic. Where one move was done in 1992, in 1985 he does 3 or 4. Where one spin was done in 1992, he does 3. The body movements have more articulated parts moving around, his balance on one foot is more precise and the 'moonwalk' is comparatively smoother with no uneveness...

In contrast to Michael's more catchy dancing in 1985, guitarist Jennifer Batten's hair was a lot more tame in the 1985 show as compared to gloriously expansive puff that it was in 1992. Well, win some, lose some..

The video quality is not great, but seeing MJ perform like that supercedes any disappointment that was felt over the fuzzy picture !