Belly Laughs

Cover

Title Belly Laughs

Author Rod Long

ISBN 1-890916-50-1

Publisher Talion Publishing

Category Humor

Shira's Rating (On a scale of 0 to 5)

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What It's About

This book is a series of short anecdotes about belly dancers who have either performed for famous people or had something funny happen during their shows. The stories are about true experiences, but told in the voice of the writer who tied them all together.

The book is intended primarily for "the general public", rather than being intended for those of us who dance ourselves.

Its Good Points

I love to hear stories about the experience my friends have had doing belly dance performances, and I enjoy sharing stories with them about mine. As dancers, we encounter an endless stream of funny situations: peculiar audience members, unusual performance venues, hilarious bloopers, and more. This book is a collection of stories about the experiences various dancers have had in their performing careers.

As an experienced dancer myself, I enjoyed reading about the assorted odd things that happened to other people. It was fun to imagine myself in their situations and wonder what I would have done in their place. My favorite story was the one about Dianna's feather-farting boa.

I think a beginning dancer who aspires to launching her own performance career would probably enjoy this book, because it provides insights into the unexpected things that can happen when doing a gig, and tells how the dancers responded. It may help someone who is new to performing get ideas on how to prepare for the unexpected.

The book offers a realistic picture of belly dancers, and is generally friendly and sympathetic to the dancers whose stories it tells. I am grateful to Talion for publishing this and other books that portray dancers as hard-working professionals with interesting stories to tell.

On The Negative Side....

When the publisher first started soliciting for contributors to the book, the following text was part of the e-mail message: "IMPORTANT: It is much easier to promote book authors who can drop names of royalty and celebrities. A PREREQUISITE FOR THIS BOOK will be that each contributing author have at least one story about rubbing elbows with a rock star, movie star, royal family member or politician."

Sadly, that emphasis on telling stories about brushes with famous people greatly weakened this book. Too many of the stories it told were nothing more than boring celebrity name-dropping with minimal dance-related tie-in. For example, nine pages of perfectly good paper and ink were wasted telling about a fan trying to get close to The Artist Formerly Known As Prince. No, there was no dancing whatsoever involved. Yawn. It so happens that Prince's wife is a talented dance artist, and the fan whose story was told happens to be a dancer. That's the weak tie-in that apparently justified including it. I wanted to read about funny things that happened in people's dance performances, not about celebrity stalking by someone who nowadays happens to be a dancer. Most of the I-Danced-For-Somebody-Famous stories were so boring that they never would have made the cut for this book if they had been about ordinary people. I wonder how many dancers with truly hilarious stories to tell never bothered to submit them because of the publishers' emphasis on famous people. It seems that some stories did manage to make it into the book about people who had not danced for celebrities--but I can't help but wonder how many people who did have funny stories never bothered to submit them because of the "PREREQUISITE FOR THIS BOOK".

Rod Long tied the anecdotes together by telling the stories in his own way. While I like the idea of bringing consistency to this type of book by having a single individual retell all the stories, Long was a poor choice for that role. His narrative style really grated on me. He came across as a Dave Barry wannabe, but without Barry's skill. Many times, while reading the book, I had to go back and re-read a section because I wasn't sure just what had happened. He often omitted things that would have been important to understanding what was going on.

I felt that Long came across like a self-indulgent child trying to be the center of attention. His focus was not on sharing other people's funny stories--it was on calling attention to himself. Long made up his own words (for example, "Gill behind the ear: how you can identify the aliens amongst us. This is a true fact.") He then kept reusing these words throughout the book until I wanted to scream, "Enough, already!" If he had chosen dance-related themes for his funny made-up words, maybe it would have worked. As it was, his frequent references to "buckwheating" and "gills" and other Long-isms kept jarring me out of the flow of the stories and back into thinking, "Oh, the writer is trying to call attention to himself again."

A common element of stand-up comedy is to introduce a funny joke or story, and then make references back to it throughout the act. I've roared with laughter when I've seen this done well. Unfortunately, Long chose some rather dull things to refer back to. For example, he introduced his "gill behind the ears" reference in conjunction with a story about a dancer who performed for a UFO museum. But that story didn't report anything particularly funny actually occurring--it was simply describing the amusing ways that people dressed who came to the event. While the unusual setting and people-watching was worth a mild smile, it wasn't a laugh-out-loud kind of story and the frequent references to the gills throughout the rest of the book got tedious very fast. Someone needs to tell Long that if you're going to refer back to a joke over and over, be sure to pick one that was funny in the first place.

The book particularly dwelled on telling stories about Tamalyn Dallal and Jodette. There were 12 stories about Tamalyn Dallal and 10 about Jodette. Of the 32 dancers featured in the book, most got only a couple of pages, but the stories about these two dancers went on and on and on and on, ad nauseum. By the end, when I came to yet another story about one of these individuals, I found myself moaning, "Not her again!" If each and every one of those stories had been truly entertaining, I wouldn't complain, but in several cases upon finishing the story I wondered, "Where was the punch line?" Out of all the people whose stories made it into the book, I've met only one of them (Amaya), and I've had only the briefest introduction to her. So no, I'm not whining about the fact that one of my friends was slighted.

In Conclusion

If I had it to do over, I probably wouldn't have bought this book. I could read only a little bit of Long's purple prose in one sitting before I found myself needing to put it aside and go do something else. I got tired of reading un-funny stories whose sole reason for being included in the book was the fact that they did celebrity name-dropping, and I got tired of the excessive emphasis on two dancers in particular. It's a shame that such a promising concept was executed so poorly.

Lest you wonder, no, my negative comments are not sour grapes. I did not submit any stories to this book, and I don't know of anyone who did other than the people who did get included. When I first picked up this book, I expected to have a lot of fun reading it--and I was disappointed when I encountered its shortcomings. I wanted to like it. I truly did.

Even though I was not impressed with this book, it's possible that you might like it. Maybe you'll like Long's particular storytelling style more than I did. Different people have different tastes in humor--his style wasn't right for me, but maybe it'll work for you. The celebrity thing is another area where your opinion may differ from mine--I'll admit that I have very little interest in reading about celebrities, and I rarely look at magazines like People or Us. If you have a stronger interest in celebrities than I do, then you might enjoy this book more than I did. I see there were several customer reviews on Amazon.com who liked it a lot, even though I didn't.