white people, dancing

There's a game I learned from a friend at a club once, it's called the Dance Like That Person Game. What you do is choose somebody else dancing in the club or the party and then you try and dance like them. It's great fun, and it allows you to covertly mock people from across the room, the real reason anyone ever goes to parties.

So last night I went to a party where I didn't know anyone minus my friend who invited me. It's the best strategy for leaving the house at this point, going places with as little familiar people as possible, and these people were definitely unfamiliar.

Well, their taste in music did strike a chord. Their CD player was playing a mix of Beck, Modest Mouse (at a party, I'm serious), and G. Love and the Special Sauce. Now, I really enjoy G. Love, but even I have to admit that there's a certain undeniable frattiness about his music. I had always wondered what other types of people listen to his music besides me; now I finally had my answer. I can't say I was too far off in my estimation. These were the type of people who (a) get kegs of Mirror Pond for a relatively small party and then (b) do keg stands making them all (c) very drunk. This was the first time in a long time that I had seen an entire party approach high school grad night levels of intoxication. People who were already noticeably trashed were doing keg stands, barely able to stand upright once they were finished, with "I really gotta hold it together so I don't puke" written all over their face. It was all very novel for me.

I should mention that there was some hip hop on the stereo as well, which under other circumstances might make me glad, as it's generally my favorite music to dance to. It wasn't a groovy, dance-y mish mash of hip hop tracks, though, it was only Atmosphere, the whitest of all white people rap. I counted, the song entirely about how much Slug likes Minnesota was played a full two times, exactly two times too many. Still, the people at the party would dance to Atmosphere, because, hey, it does have an easy to follow beat. As much as I wanted to play along and dance a little, I really had no choice but to sit down during "Shoes", the song whose chorus goes, "You've got your shoes / I've got my shoes / We've got issues." I'm sorry, but while there may be a few noteable exceptions, it's still a pretty safe rule that songs about past relationships are not the best dance material.

Thankfully a live band showed up eventually, some bluegrass ensemble complete with a washboard percussionist and a guy with an upright bass. They played upbeat bluegrass and the dancing started to pick up, except I must admit, I have no clue whatsoever how to dance to bluegrass. Something tells me colla poppin' is not the move of choice in this context. So I resorted to the DLTP Game, studying these keg-standers, these Atmosphere dancers, these McKinleyvillains (my friends confirmed it, there were definitely natives present), trying to mimic their bluegrass moves and enthusiasm, and I realized that I was terrible at copying these people. The hostess had these feet moves which, for me, were impossible to recreate, simple maneuvers like arm-in-arm hoe-down stuff was more of a challenge than it seemed it should be, and I kept waiting for the breakdown and build-up to try some of my faux poppin' and lockin', but it never came.

So last night I bombed the DLTP Game. I just couldn't keep up with the bluegrass and the Minnesote love songs. Although everyone was very friendly, I had a good time, and I liked all the people at the party, there are few times I've felt more out of place.