Made You Stare » cool

Evolution Dance Party, Just Grows and Grows!

Stewie — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:20:15 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

We’ve all been there, or if we haven’t we’ve all seen it: the lone dancer who’s overindulged too early in the day and started dancing on his own, oblivious to the fact the he isn’t part of something bigger and better. But this clip has a happy ending because that lone dancer attracts a whole bunch of others to join him and turn an awkward bit of solo pleasure into a full-scale party.

In only a pair of shorts, the lone dancer

makes some oddly camp moves at first, thrusting his hands up in the air as if he is in a girl band. He then looks overjoyed to be joined by someone else in a green top whom he immediately starts dancing with. Green top seems as out of it as lone dancer because he looks a bit on the wobbly side and spends a bit of time on his hands and knees but that doesn’t matter – there are more guests on their way to this impromptu party and things are gonna get funky. At around the 1 minute 20 mark the party has gone viral with 9 then 10 then 11 then 12 then tons more ravers gettin’ on down to it. This is where the clip becomes quite remarkable and things get rather exciting – you wouldn’t have thought there’d be enough people interested in joining in but there really are.

The lone dancer should feel proud of himself for starting something special.

Maybe he’s a seasoned rabble-rouser who specializes in generating large crowds for various purposes: political rallies, street parties, etc etc. Maybe – and this is the more likely explanation – he was just out of his tree at this fun-looking festival and other kindred spirits thought, ‘Yeah sure why not – he is so I might as well be’. It’s always hard to be the first, to be a trailblazer, a pioneer. But that lone dancer is one and his fine work has made for an awesome and funny clip that people will want to watch over and over.

T-Mobile Spectacular Mass Dance-Off at a Major Train Station

Lou — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:32:58 +0000

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Nowadays everyone is too businesslike, always in a rush, no time for fun. Places like train stations are associated with boredom and stress but this advert by T-Mobile turns that on its head as we see maybe a hundred people dancing to a succession of classic songs, among them ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’ by Rainbow, ‘Shout’ by Lulu, and ‘Don’t Cha’ by the Pussycat Dolls and Busta Rhymes. The humor in this sequence lies in the fact that the last thing you expect while boring yourself rigid at a train station is a bunch of wannabe Michael Jacksons taking to the stage and showing off their funky dancing.

The real surprise here is the way

the dancers are totally synchronized with each other, bowing and jiggling and pirouetting at exactly the same time, as if this whole thing had been painstakingly rehearsed. There’s a bit of smoke and mirrors here because all the dancers are dressed as if they are the usual commuters – in suits and ties or hoodies or overcoats – but it’s clear enough they are trained pros as soon as they start shaking their booties. They subtly adapt their dancing styles to each genre of music as it arrives on the P.A., so they are happily waltzing along to Mozart one second and then disco dancing to ‘Get Down On It’ by Kool and the Gang the next.

The tagline of the commercial is ‘Life is for sharing’

and this is backed up by the shots, about halfway through, of other commuters filming the whole event on their camera phones or grinningly phoning their friends about what they have just seen. Oh isn’t commercial-world so much more cheesy than the real world? But then this clip kind of mixes the two because you can see the shock on the faces of real commuters when all this staged funky dancing kicks off and a sort of publicity stunt has been pulled. Perhaps this would have been funnier had completely untrained dancers been employed to do their thang, being all clumsy and making total jackasses of themselves. Just a suggestion for a sequel, that’s all.

Flight Attendant Turns Bad Boy Before Take-Off

Lisa — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 09:51:54 +0000

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Chuck D, Ice-T, Skee-Lo, KRS-ONE, Kool Keith, Tupac… and now an unknown flight attendant on a US domestic airline. This clip will have you giggling with surprise at the way this dude spits and rhymes all the information the passengers need while getting them to stomp and clap along to him. Lines like ‘We don’t take cash so you have to use plastic/If you gotta coupon that’s fantastic’ will hardly get this flight attendant into the hip hop hall of fame but his decision to entertain the passengers must have put a smile on their face and made the journey go a bit quicker. There are shots of some of the passengers whose expressions seem to say “I don’t like hip hop,” but then others give the hip hop gesture for “gimme some more”.

On the whole, though, everyone on this flight seems to enjoy themselves.

You can’t help but wonder how planned this little hip hop show was given that a camera was filming the whole thing from the point of view of the flight attendant because why else would anyone want to film a boring domestic flight? But never mind, the point is that, while this won’t get into the hip hop hall of fame it is quite impressive and, more to the point, very funny. I’m kinda surprised that, given all the post 9/11 security madness, this flight attendant was allowed to rap as I guessed there’d be some Homeland Security rule about informing the passengers of everything they need to know and generally not messing about on airplanes. There’s some laughter from the passengers at the closing comment of the flight attendant:

“You will not get that on United Airlines I guarantee you!”

Maybe the rap approach could be exported to the other areas – 50 Cent rapping the weather forecast, MF Doom rapping the sports results, etc etc. Based on this clip, rap should penetrate the rest of our lives in other ways as it certainly makes things more entertaining as long as you have someone as skilled as this flight attendant doing it.