Oddly Enough Blog

I love it when real news stories are goofier than anything I could make up. It makes my job so much easier.

There is a United Nations ban on the sale of luxury goods to North Korea, see, and we’ve learned that Italy has foiled an attempt to violate that ban.

And what luxury goods were the North Koreans tying to buy? Lamborghini cars? Remy Martin cognac? Bulgari watches?

No, they were trying to get their mitts on “high-quality tap dancing shoes.” I am not making this up.

Our story on this said it was “not clear how the tap shoes might fit into North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s lavish lifestyle, which includes grandiose stage performances by North Korean performers.”

That’s not the only thing that isn’t clear. Here’s a country that has a nuclear weapons program, but it doesn’t have the technology to make its own tap dance shoes? Excuse me? You’ve got leather, you’ve got metal, you’ve got ball-peen hammers, right? What’s stopping you?

I think this was a missed opportunity. Why not flood the country with tap dance shoes and DVDs of “Singin’ in the Rain,” and let the populace tap dance across the DMZ to freedom?

Gosh, I just wish I had been there when they came out onstage to tell Kim Jong-il that due to wardrobe problems, tonight’s presentation of “42nd Street” would be performed in flip-flops. That must have been a grand moment in musical theater.

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Top: Brothers John (L) and Leo Manzari tap dance during a kickoff concert for the celebration of the 50th anniversary of late U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, at the Kennedy Center concert hall in Washington, January 20, 2011. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Right: North Korean leader Kim Jong-il (L) visits the reconstructed Pyongyang University of Dance in this undated picture released by the North’s official KCNA news agency in Pyongyang November 26, 2010. REUTERS/KCNA

Left: Poster for “42nd Street”