Most of us have either played and/or been invited to one of those songwriter shows. You see them all the time. You know the ones... three or four songwriters pick a venue, invite their friends and fans and voila: a heartwarming show ensues. Lives are changed. Tears are shed. Etc. But we all know the truth. More often than not, if you put that many songwriters on a stage, it's an utter snoozefest. Total wrist slitter. Pass the Prozac.

I just heard that flossing your teeth reduces your risk of heart disease.

Think about that.

Holy shit. FLOSSING YOUR TEETH REDUCES YOUR RISK OF HEART DISEASE.

When did this happen? It kind of sounded like a joke to me... but I looked it up. It's true.

I'm not writing about this to raise awareness... (Although, now you know!) I'm writing about this because it's the first data point on my newly-minted WHEEL OF INEXPLICABLE CONNECTIONS. I just made that up, but I think I might start using it... the WOIC.

A friend recently asked, "Which comes first the lyrics or the music." It's a question you hear a lot. It's kind of like asking a photographer, "Which comes first, the lens or the camera body?" Or asking a painter, "Which comes first, yellow or blue?"

A friend gave me a Mr. T talking key chain years ago. At the time, I didn't realize that it contained a nearly endless source of wisdom, tough love and thoughtful, nuanced advice for one's life. It just sat in a drawer, waiting. The other day, I pulled it out and tentatively pushed a button. It spoke to me. I had received my first message. It said: "Quit your jibber-jabber!"

I quickly put the talking key chain down. I'll admit, my first reaction was a painful mixture of confusion, hurt and even a little anger. (This is a normal reaction to raw, universal truth.) But the more I thought about it, the more Mr. T's message sunk in, the more it made sense. It's about talking less and doing more. It's about the value of action over the value of words. That's some deep shit, mang.

Let's be honest: Most records are painfully self-aware pieces of trash. They're uninspired, navel-gazing, banal, cliche-ridden, ego-stroking buckets of awful. Yes, occasionally you run across a record that is utterly brilliant. But most sound mediocre-to-good-enough for a few days until our eye catches a shiny object across the room and -- whoosh! -- there goes another disc into the wasteland of our cherished CD collections.

I got into an arguement with my friend Robby about something I wrote in my column about why I don't dance. (I think I said dance music sucked.) She went on and on, basically defending dance music. I tuned most of it out, actually. But as she was talking, it occurred to me that what dance music has going for it -- even the worst dance music -- is its ever-present beat (turned way, way, way up in the mix). EVERY dance song does that one thing, consistently. It's reliable. You can count on it. It never forgets its central mission: ass shaking.

This is my Personal Anti-Dancing Manifesto (PADM). It is a point-by-point, painfully honest examination of my dancing disability. My hope is to lay bare the ugly truth of this disability and in doing so, motivate you, the Reader, to dance in my place.

Some people dance. They dance freely. The Dance flows loosely from them like the languid unrolling of a sheet. They look beautiful in their ease. They inhabit their own rhythm, smiling, and meaning it. They look like an uncaged bird, free at last. They actually enjoy being looked at. Look at them now: see how they revel in their comfortable power? I don’t begrudge them their dancing… Hell, I’d do the same thing -- if I could.

When I was a little kid, my two older brothers were both privates in the KISS ARMY. (Did that mean they kissed privates?)