Mike Fagan
SSQQ Lifetime Achievement Award for Iconoclasm
1987

Mike Fagan is pretty hard on me as a rule. One time on a near lay-down grand slam in Bridge, I led with the Jack instead of the Ace. Mike told me I played Bridge like a girl. I got so distracted I lost my transportation to the board (a major Bridge mistake) and lost a certain Slam. Despite the fact that he is always teasing me about my stupidity, on the other hand he marvels at my dance career. He calls me the "Dance Idiot Savant", you know, someone who is basically stupid, but is a genius at one thing. More than anything I have ever done, Mike marvels at the Halloween Line Dance I made up called the "Monster Mash". One time he showed up early for a Halloween Party and saw 70 people paying $10 a pop to learn the Monster Mash. This accomplishment absolutely stunned  Mike. You see, he tries to make money the old-fashioned way. He earns it. He couldn't believe grown men and women would pay $10 a person to learn how to dance like a spastic. Mike believes most people can just get out on the floor and look that bad without needing any training at all. His exact words were something like, "You mean you can get people to pay $10 to learn how to look bad dancing ?" He calls my Monster Mash the most amazing scam of all time with the Beanie Baby phenomenon a far distant second.

Like Tom, Mike possesses a unique sense of humor. Now Tom picks on himself a lot, but Mike picks on everyone else. In particular, he likes to needle me, but there are many others as well he picks on. If Tom is Rodney Dangerfield, then Mike is Don Rickles. Mike also likes to tease his girlfriends. For example Mike claims any time he wants his girlfriend to go home all he has to do is turn the stations on his TV until he finds a basketball game. According to him you can count the minutes till they leave on one hand. I honestly believe he would have no social life if he wasn't a dancer.

Mike believes the Earth should be defoliated and paved with streets and parking lots. He thinks we would all get where we are going a lot faster plus we wouldn't go anywhere since every place would look the same. He believes this would help traffic congestion immensely.

Mike has always felt sorry for my daughter Samantha because there is a chance she might turn out to be stupid like me. Fortunately, he says, like me she can always teach dance for a living. Mike was nice enough when Sam was 3 years old to teach her many new words. Mike and I like to watch Basketball together. During the Rockets-Knicks World Championship Playoff series back in 1994, Mike and I watched every game glued to edge of our seats. Mike gets excited sometimes and says things to express his feelings. One night while Mike and I were watching the game, Samantha climbed into my lap and asked, "Daddy, is that scumbag Patrick Ewing playing tonight ?"

Mike Fagan is responsible for the name of our Martian Whip class. Here is the story.

Ever see anyone Moonwalk a Whip Basic?  No one would have cared except it turned out that Mike possessed excellent dance ability. He loved the music and loved the dancing. He picked up material quickly. Not only did Mike have good leads, he had one particular strength that lady Whip dancers love: he had perfect timing ! 

Soon Mike was asked to enter Whip contests. Every Sunday at a dive called the Four Palms, there was Whip dancing to a live band called the "Soul Brothers". The joint was off of Telephone Road. It actually had a sign on the door that said, "Check your guns and knives at the door" (compare that to SSQQ's "please turn off your cell phone"). The Four Palms had a low-key "sign up and enter" Whip contest every week. One night on the spur of the moment Mike decided he would give it a try.

Well, Mike did fine by his standards, but in the eyes of the old-timers he didn't do very well at all. Mike preferred to dance the Whip his way. This included anything from his background from Break Dancing : head rolls, jerks, twitches, body waves, Robotic-style arm movements. The get-down-and-dirty old timers had to look away in horror and disdain.

Mike was a Rebel. He heard what people were saying about him, but wouldn't dream of changing. Mike continued to dance the Whip his way. His partner Pat was encouraged to dump him. "Too weird", she was told. "You have what it takes, but first get a different dance partner, someone who dances the Whip the right way."  

After a few months of this, Mike decided to ask Mario Robau, considered Houston's finest male Whip dancer, for his opinion. Mario replied without hesitation, "Mike, you have great leads, great moves, perfect timing, but your footwork is strictly from the Planet Mars."

Undaunted Mike had the nerve to continue to compete. Let's face it, he was and is a great dancer, but his style was simply too different to win acceptance from the old guard. Mike continued to develop his dancing. Mike found a new partner named Debbie Anglin who meshed more with his style. Mike caught a break. Due to the Dallas influence, a new competition category was created called "Contemporary Whip". Mike smiled like the cat who discovered the canary. This format was a perfect fit for his natural style. To heck with the less forgiving Traditional Whip. Mike and Debbie developed a routine based on acrobatics, break dancing, and jazz dancing, plus spectacular moves that only Mike had the natural ability to lead. Their hard work paid off ! 

Mike and I had the unusual experience of getting thrown out of Cooter's one night in 1987. Mike and I used to clown around at our studio parties by dancing Whip together. Mike would lead and I would dance the girl's part. Not only did I get pretty good at dancing the girl's part, I found the experience very helpful in understanding how to follow. 

On Tuesdays SSQQ used to go to a club over on Richmond named Cooter's for Whip practice after class. One night a couple people dared us to dance the Whip at Cooter's. There weren't any signs posted, but I knew we were crossing a line. Nevertheless we decided to give it a try. We attracted quite a crowd. People thought we were a riot including many who were not with SSQQ at all. The bouncer came over to see what was going on. He was not amused. Maybe he was envious of how cute we looked together. Without a great deal of discussion he gave us an unceremonious heave-ho. If I remember, he got our attention and just pointed to the door. About 20 of our friends left in protest laughing hysterically. This remains the only time in my life I was ever thrown out of a club. Mike gets me into more trouble !

Once in a while Mike would develop some new footwork. Brilliant, different, and easily bored, Mike was always looking for some way to change how he danced the Whip. Almost always his discoveries managed to irritate or offend some Whip purist. I have little doubt he did it deliberately although I have never gotten him to admit it. One night a lady named Janet was bragging how good she was getting. Half in humor and half in spite I dragged her over to Mike at the Safari Bar Club. Intimidated out of her wits, what Janet didn't know is that Mike never dances above someone's level. Instead he will amuse himself by trying out his new footwork while leading the Basic Step. Sure enough, 30 seconds later I heard Janet scream, "What are you doing !  I can't watch your feet !"  Mike had started to dance the Charleston during his Whip Basic, but this weird footwork blew her concentration. He laughed and said, "Oh no, Janet, you should never watch my feet !"

By coincidence the following week I was dancing next to Mike during intermission at a State Whip contest when I heard the same words from another woman, "What are you doing; I can't watch your feet !"  Only this time the lady Mike was dancing with a two-time State Whip champion from Dallas. Even someone with her vast experience managed to lose her concentration. A Whip dancer losing her Basic is like a priest forgetting the Lord's Prayer, but what can I say ?  I have little doubt if Mike danced with the Priest, that exact thing would happen. 

Two weeks later Mike and I are fooling around dancing the Whip together at the Halloween Party. Suddenly I realize I can't dance with Mike anymore !   Something he is doing felt weird, so I made the mistake of looking at his feet. There he is doing the Charleston.  I was too rattled to keep my feet going, so I had to ask him to stop and start over. Another one bites the dust.

As I have mentioned, Mike just happens to be a real-life genius. Dr. Mike is now head of the Rice Computer Science Department. But like many people in academics, he doesn't always get paid as well as he deserves.  Mike regularly slaves long hours for little pay investigating the secrets of computer engineering. 

As smart as Mike is, there is one thing about me he has never been able to figure out. The question that has bothered Mike ever since he has known me is how one night in 1992 I managed to get ONE HUNDRED people to pay me $10 to teach them how to look ridiculous while they dance poorly. 

After all, Mike may be a highly-educated genius, but he doesn't always get paid very well despite his incredibly difficult work. On the other hand compared to Mike, I am a moron. Yet to Mike somehow in the grand tradition of PT Barnum I manage to separate hard-earned cash from seemingly bright people with amazing ease. In a sarcastic yet oddly affectionate way, to this day Mike remains stupefied that people who appear to have brains and jobs would fork over $10 to take a Halloween Line Dance Crash Course. 

1992 was year I first unveiled the Monster Mash. There's your answer right there to why so many people showed up. No one knew what it looked like and a bunch of people were curious. I had announced in every class for weeks that we would teach the Monster Mash and all the other line dances in a Crash Course that began just before the party. It sounded like fun and a bunch of people decided to take it as a group. On the night of the 1992 Halloween Party, we had 100 people show up at 7 pm the night of the party to be the Very First to learn the amazing 'Monster Mash'. That's right: 100 people!! I sense that the reader is having a hard time believing this too. It's true: 100 people.

Shortly after we started, Mike Fagan came to the studio early to help us set up for the party. He wondered why the parking lot was so full of cars and wandered into Room 1. He stopped at the door and watched in amazement as 100 students practiced the precise footwork of the Monster Mash such as the Monster Stomp, the Igor Shuffle, and the Frankenstein Twist. 

It was all Mike could do to restrain himself. For one thing, the students looked pretty silly dancing the Monster Mash. But it was harder to hold back the belly laugh when he realized just to how seriously the students were taking the instruction. One man asked me how far to turn his toe in on the Frankenstein Twist. From the corner of my eye I thought Mike would rupture. 

But at break time Mike discovered I had made $1,000 for teaching the Crash Course. He hadn't realized I charged MONEY to learn this dance. Now he nearly went into shock. His mouth fell open in astonishment. His eyes became glassy. This was nearly two weeks of work for Mike yet I made this much in an hour. 

He looked at me and said, "How do you do it?" in the classic 'I am not worthy' tone of reverence. Mike shook his head for the rest of the night. It was probably the only time in the 20 years I have known him where he showed me any respect. Perhaps you might imagine how much I savored this moment. In fact I enjoyed it so much that I had an evil idea. With a smile I told Mike I usually got even more people and that this was a slow night. It took him several years before he realized I had been pulling his leg.

Mike has never recovered. Each year at Halloween Time Mike gets that haunted look and rants to anyone who will listen how amazed he is that I continue to persuade people year-in year-out to part with hard-earned cash for the privilege of looking awful. 

What Mike didn't know was that the huge numbers were a one-time aberration. Mostly it was just curiosity and the chance to get in the mood early. I am sure if most of them had a clue how goofy the dance was, the numbers would have been much less.

And to be honest, I was pretty surprised myself at the number of people who came. I hadn't expected to have anywhere near this many people show up, but Mike Fagan had no way of knowing this. I fooled him into thinking I got 100 people on a regular basis. 

One more thing - we haven't charged people to learn the Monster Mash in years. I started teaching all the Line Dances for free during the week before the party long ago. But I have never told this to Mike. He continues to believe I make $1,000 every year for teaching the Monster Mash. Let's leave it that way. Please don't tell him. It is the only thing he respects me for.