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It's a pretty good example of why people wax on about the nature of music as a universal lanugage and mystical bullshit like that, because it's not quite entirely bullshit. It's hard to imagine anyone not catching the infectious enthusiasm of that.
This made me smile recently, albeit for less mystical and more cartoonish reasons.
(I know there was a question on AskMetaFilter recently in which people commented on the intrinsic humor value of watermelons. The anticipatory glee of a watermelon leaving the frame for a beat before delivering the final satisfactory splat! is just unparalleled, in my opinion.)
octothorpe reminds me of the anecdote of the American concertgoer at a Mahler festival who complains that the symphony is too long. "It is a cultural difference," his host replies drolly. "In Austria, you see, we enjoy music."
I'm fine with long symphonies but long commercials that don't tell you what or who they are selling just make me annoyed. You want to shout at the TV, "Just get it over and tell me what i'm supposed to buy and stop with all the dancing." I only got 1.5 minutes into this one.
Octo - I feel sad for you because you can't get through that. A bunch of people got together, learned all that dancing, plotted the whole thing out, did all the logistics for it, executed it flawlessly and made a bunch of sad sack commuters joyous and uplifted, but you can't sit through three minutes of just looking at it?
I feel not sad for, but somewhat bemused by, people who feel sad for other people who don't like things they like (and probably aren't concerned, one way or the other, with the sadness of the party of the first). I had a grandfather who excelled at that sort of sadness on others' behalf. "Boy", he would say, truly and deeply sorrowful, "you just don't know what you're missing." This sort of comment would be occasioned by, for example, my refusal to accept a proffered shrimp from the appetizer plate (and abetted by a deep-seated belief that if I threw up and stopped breathing from eating one of the vile things it's just because I wasn't making a proper effort to appreciate one of the finer things in life.)
I'm sorry that I offended your appreciation of the fine art of TV commercials LT, it just seemed like a tedious way to sell soap [or whatever it was that they were selling].
They were selling phones, "Life is for sharing" and yep I skipped to the end but I was just dying to know what tagline was gonna tie that party up. I was disappointed.
During the kickoff of Alaska's 50th Anniversary year celebrations a few weekends ago, after listening to Sarah Palin do some short speech or another because everyone was freezing at -20°F, my boyfriend and I hopped around downtown checking out the live performances. One was a local dance troupe who, while skilled, weren't very interesting.
As we stood in the back of the room deciding how much longer we could watch, the current Miss Alaska came over and offered us 3D glasses with which to watch the fireworks later. She stood chatting with us a bit, and then said that if the dance troupe didn't break into Thriller in the next 90 seconds then she was leaving.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
