NTKOG #73: The kind of embarrassingly enthusiastic girl who gets up and dances her friggin’ face off to the horror and delight of everyone in the arena.
I am: being so honest with you when I say I shouldn’t be allowed to dance in public.
I am not: really well-suited to getting my face broadcasted fifteen feet high. Especially when it’s my white-girl dancin’ face.
The Scene: Agganis Arena, watching the BU men’s basketball team terrierize (ha) Bucknell. At the end of the first half, they announced the dance-off for an iPod. Last time I was at Agganis, for an ice hockey game, I was captivated by the dancing fools during the competition and vowed that one day my face too would grace the Jumbotron. So even though I swore never to dance again, the champ came out of retirement for ONE LAST DANCE.
The game was fairly sparsely attended, so not many people jumped up. One of the few was a friend of my sister’s who we were sitting with and, well, looking at her dancing compared to how I knew I looked — guys, I am not merely affecting self-deprecation when I say that I am truly the worst dancer I’ve ever seen. Comically bad but then, after watching this trainwreck for a few seconds … kind of uncomically.
I didn’t even look at the Jumbotron while I spastically flailed, but after a while, I noticed my sister’s friend sit down, so I went to sit down as well. “Keep dancing!” my sister hissed. “You’re on!”
Sure enough, there I was on-screen, doing The Sprinkler. ‘Huh,’ I thought, ‘I really need to invest in a more supportive bra.’ Then I looked away and kept ROCKING THE FRIG OUT, thrilled to have achieved my goal.
A bit later, people started clapping. Congratulations! the announcer boomed, You just won a free iPod! AND HOLY SHIT, GUYS! Up there on-screen? It was TKOG, seizing like the final spin of an industrial washing machine. After a horrifying victory spaz, I picked up my stuff, grabbed Sister, and ran upstairs to collect my gorgeous Terrier-red special edition 8 gig iPod nano. Holy shit, guys.
It didn’t dawn on me how truly, truly horrific I must have looked up there until, as I climbed the stadium steps, everybody sitting on either side of the aisle started clapping and hooting, still laughing from my performance.
TKOG: Dude, Sister, be honest with me. On a scale from one to Kathy Bates naked in the hot tub in that one movie, how bad was it?
Sister: It was. Um. Your. There was a lot of boob going on. It was honestly pretty bad.
TKOG: At least I was only on for a few seconds, right?
Sister: Uh, you were on for a long time. The camera kept going back to you. It was bad.
But whatever. Free iPod.
The Verdict: GUYS! Now that I have tasted life on the Jumbotron, I can never go back! I’m already planning some choreography for my next dance-off attempt. I mean, okay, so I actually neither needed or even wanted the iPod (merry Christmas, Sister!), and I was literally shaking from mortification until well into the second half. But it was hilarious and wonderful.
Then, as though that weren’t enough goodness: Sister and I were there as part of a BU Alum event with a raffle which featured quite a few good prizes — chief among which was a set of front-row tickets to the Weezer concert tomorrow. WHICH WE TOTALLY WON! OMFG! Just to try our luck, after the game we picked up $5 worth of scratch-off lottery tickets and actually won $6 back. No clue what I did to rack up such killer karma this weekend, but thank you universe! Between this onslaught of random winnings and seeing Barenaked Ladies from ten feet away on Saturday, this was offically A Weekend Of Note!
” ‘Huh,’ I thought, ‘I really need to invest in a more supportive bra.’ ” – Ok, I’m male, but I think this has a lot to do with why you won! 😈
TKOG vs Daylon Trotman for all the marbles. It needs to happen.
omg, I just YouTubed him! Sooooo cute! Now I’m tempted to go to a Celtics game to stage a dance-off…
I have a friend who says she ‘dances like an epileptic kangaroo’; I dance worse. Meanwhile I did something similar recently – I was drunk already when I started to get ready for a night out, so (of course) my outfit and make-up choices were, well, choice words would be ‘dubious’ and ‘lurid’ – I looked like a prostitute who had been brought up in a circus, basically…! And then I decided (why, oh why) to go up with three other girls from my flat and do karaoke to ‘Man, I feel like a Woman’ in front of the entire Students’ Union. Probably (retrospectively) the most embarassing moment in my entire life because we were laughed and catcalled off stage – and when I’m *sober* I can sing, which makes my drunk singing even more embarassing by comparison!! Still, by the sounds of it, you were all too sober!
However – iPod. Good work!
You’re a brave woman! I don’t get all of the cultural references (what IS a jumbotron??), but thoroughly enjoy reading your endeavours to do something different every day.
Were your moves anything like this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kry53iHR7w
Keep up the excellent work!
Thank you so much! Also: jumbotron = the big screen thing attached to the scoreboard at sporting events. I just learned that this year because I’ve been going to games and stuff! (haha, can you tell I’m super proud to have learned a new word?)
And I’m embarrassed — I’m really embarrassed — at admit that my terrible dance moves are actually slightly worse than Ricky Gervais’s in that scene. I mean, really horrifying.
Trust me, nothing you do could be as horrific as “Short little fat man who sold his dream”. If you don’t understand this, You-Tube Ricky Gervais + David Bowie + Extras. This is simultaneously one of the funniest and saddest scenes in the history of the World! (and I don’t mean that in a Kanye West way)
Don’t go spendin’ all your karma in one place now; you might need it later!
Dear, I just spoke with Sister. I have a lovely ten dollar off coupon for Victoria’s Secret which I will give to you when you come home (along with some cash) to go shopping for said
item. I was under the impression that your win was do merely to interpretive dancing.
My bras are fine! I have perfectly okay bras! I just wasn’t wearing a great one, because I was like, “eh, basketball game. what’re the odds that it’ll matter?”
Clearly I was mistaken.
Also, you’d be crazy to think that my AMAZING DANCING SKILLS were not 100% the cause of my victory. I mean, can we talk about the fact that I am such a terrible dancer that the universe basically handed me $150 was like: “This is only on the condition that you never dance again.” Basically what I’m saying is I AM AWESOME.
Dude, I’ve been there. When I was in St. Maarten, I got called up on stage by a Caribbean dance troupe for an audience dancing contest. Sadly, because of the HORRIBLE sunburn I got the day before, I wasn’t even wearing a bra. The resulting video that Muscles filmed speaks for itself.
Yes it does, sweetie, yes it does. Loudly.
OMG! Requisite screening on New Year’s, please! Too funny.
When first Justice said she could feel my pain, I assumed she’d have a story about dancing, or possibly about inadequate undergarments, but never did I dream the twain would meet. You can go ahead and call me Mario, ’cause my story just got 1-UPed.
I danced for 18 years, but am by no means a good dancer. I scare myself.
Not to alienate your readers, NTKOG, but what culture are people from that they don’t get your “cultural references?” Sumatra? Fraggle Rock? Narnia?
So help me, Muscles, if you drive away my hard-won Fraggle demographic, I will punch you. I have done it before and YOU KNOW I WILL DO IT AGAIN.
Ha ha! This particular Fraggle is from Europe. It’s that continent thing on the other side of the Atlantic. We do have “jumbotrons” – it’s just that we call them “big screens”.
Night night, it’s bed time in Fraggle Rock.
I just found ntkog via universalhub, and absolutely love it- as a fellow Bostonian girl who adores Lush, misadventures and reading, I’m sort of hoping we have a run-in in some Cambridge book store and improbably become bffs!
Side note: the Harvard book store (the coop) is amazing, and completely worth visiting if you haven’t already.
As long as we’re talking classic Boston basketaball Jumbotron moves, can’t forget this kid:
!!!!!!! omg, yes! YES! I need to do that! It’s not even the dance that makes that so magical — it’s just the sheer unadulterated ballsiness of the thing! (Which bodes well for my impending attempt, seeing as how I’m low on dancing skills, but chock full o’ moxie.)
Dude! Weezer! Postponed! WTF?
I KNOW! I could not be more bummed about it. I mean, obviously the most important thing is that everyone is okay and Rivers is healing well, but — [whiiiiine], I wanted to go to the concert!
That sucks. Obviously they were not concerned with your welfare and the joy they would bring to you by performing. Not cool, Weezer! Not cool!
Seriously! Before you go and do something selfish like getting in a bus accident, please have the courtesy to consider TKOG’s happy and well-being. Just plain old good manners, people!
Hey, if you can’t be the best at something you can be the best at being the worst at it. That’s so much better than being a forgettable, dull dancer. And free iPod?! NICE!!!
[…] Near the end of the second interval, my favorite moment of the games: the dance-off for an iPod! I won one of these with my STELLAR flailings a few months back, during a not-so-packed basketball game, and — […]