January 24th open thread: Pick Yourself Up

Here is the open thread for Sunday, January 24th. Please feel free to post links to interesting articles and to discuss whatever issues arise during the course of the day. Nothing is off-topic here.

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  Now onto the musical selection: A couple of times in the past I had thought about posting a video of one of my guilty pleasures in the open thread only to back out at the last minute, but in the comments section of last week’s open thread Lou tricked me 🙂  into revealing that little secret so this week I have decided to reveal it to anyone who missed that exchange.

  My family knows that I am a huge Fred Astaire fan and that I own every musical he was ever in, but until now I have kept this knowledge hidden from everyone else. Today the veil is lifted, here is Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers performing “Pick Yourself Up” from the movie “Swing Time.”

  In this scene Fred Astaire pretends that he does not know how to dance in order to get a free dance lesson from his love interest Ginger Rogers. After purposely stumbling his way through the lesson they go into “Pick Yourself Up” and then she tries to teach Fred Astaire how to dance again. Fred Astaire stumbles again which leads Ginger Rogers to declare she cannot teach him how to dance. The owner of the studio hears this and fires Ginger Rogers. Fred Astaire then shows the owner of the studio how much Ginger Rogers has “taught” him to the amazement of both the studio owner and Ginger Rogers. In this humorous scene Fred Astaire puts his hand up every time he dances by the owner as if to say “can you believe this?” She is immediately hired back.

  You Tube did not have the scene in its entirety so the first video has the song while the second video has the dance, enjoy:

frui diem