I’m waiting for the bus on 50th Street, having just eaten fried pizza at the new and much-hyped Don Antonio’s. It’s cold and raining, and the girl next to me is gawking as I struggle to pull on my gloves while keeping my umbrella upright. She had already been at the bus stop when I arrived, so I’d of course stood to her left to form the beginnings of a line. Another girl walks up moments later, stands to my left, and consults a bus map that’s no doubt of very little help, since the MTA refuses to actually mark the stops on it for some reason.
We wait for ten minutes, and the line gets longer. People keep stepping off the sidewalk to get a better look down 50th Street, our umbrellas blocking each other’s views. Finally the bus arrives, and I close my umbrella, knowing I’m going to be second onto the bus and not wanting to hold anyone up behind me.
But I see that in front of the girl next to me–the girl who had been alone at the bus stop when I walked up–an old lady has appeared out of nowhere. And in the time it takes for the bus to pull up and stop, an old man hobbles over on a cane and stands behind the old lady.
I’m not the sort of person you’d look at and think, “Now there’s someone who can probably cut a rug.” I’m fairly awkward, certainly clumsy, and not exactly, um, built like someone with a lot of rhythm and grace. (Although I want to cut the judges on “So You Think You Can Dance” when they scoff at a good dancer just because she doesn’t look good in a belly shirt and cameltoe shorts.) But I really love to dance. I don’t need to pound four amaretto sours to feel comfortable doing it, and I don’t care if other people are gawking at me.
So I was overjoyed when my best friend, Tracey, bought me Just Dance 3 for the Wii for Christmas. Having basically no experience with pop music, I was worried that not knowing LMO from LMFAO would make it less fun for me, but the makers of this game somehow managed to find only tracks that would wedge wildly into my brain for days at a time.
My immediate favourite was Nelly Furtado’s “Promiscuous”, because I’d actually heard it before and also used to love Nelly back when she wasn’t a slutty sell-out (nothing against slutty sell-outs):
My next earworm came from Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite”. I had no idea who Taio Cruz is, but I was so pleased that his song talked about Galileo:
I throw my hands up in the air sometimes
Saying ayo
Galileo
“Now there’s a man who doesn’t care about alienating his uneducated fans,” I thought. And then I learned that he actually says, “Gotta let go.” But it was close enough for me.
My other favourite song is now “Boom” by Reggaeton Storm, which is literally the last genre I would ever expect to get stuck in my head. And since it’s in Spanish, I sing ridiculous nonsensical lyrics to myself all day. Like:
Boom
Bop bop
Can I get a b’rito?
That’s right. I leave letters out of burrito in my head to make it fit.
Kamran’s leaving for California at the end of this week to take the bar exam out there, so he’s been waking up with me in the mornings and studying while I play the game. And since he has a one-room apartment, it’s meant a lot of him sitting around and critiquing/mocking my performances as he lounges on his bed mere steps from me. But he gets the songs stuck in his head just as hard as I do, and I feel like that’s revenge enough.
The funny thing is that the earworms only make me want to play the game more. I play in the mornings before work and then spend all day thinking about how I can’t wait to get home and play again. I can’t motivate myself to go to the gym unless Kamran’s threatening to put me in one of those 1950s-style vibrating belt machines that jiggles your fat off, but this game is so fun I actually look forward to it and want to keep playing long after my knickers are soaked with sweat and I need to go shower for work.
I was concerned it was going to be too easy after playing the Xbox Kinect version, Dance Central, where the creepy Kinect camera watches your full body with its beady robot eyes. I figured I’d just move the one arm with the Wiimote in it and let the rest of my body hang limply if the Wiimote couldn’t sense it and judge me accordingly; I thought about playing the game sitting down. But it turns out that Just Dance is harder than Dance Central. Where Dance Central is repetitious, Just Dance throws an intricate move at you once and then goes right on to something else. Just Dance doesn’t have any differing difficulty levels, but you’ll find yourself making your own as you start dancing first with just the arm holding the Wiimote, then with both arms after you’ve played a song 150 times, then finally with your legs. All while looking like an octopus with epilepsy.
Now I’m dying to try Just Dance 1 and 2 and am envisioning a future version where I get to choose my own songs from a list of a hundred and then receive my personalized game in eight to ten business days. The only thing I’m wishing for is a glove that I can strap the Wiimote into so I don’t have to hold onto it while I’m dancing; I’ve actually thought about buying Wii boxing gloves but wonder if that’s even weirder than holding on to the thing myself.
But hey, if my biggest complaint about the game is that I want to get more into it, they’re doing something right. If this is the thing that gets me fit, it’s going to be sooooo hilarious.
Kamran and I were doing laundry in the basement of his building this weekend. We’re under the impression that we’re the only people who even bother to clean out the lint traps in the twenty or so dryers in the laundry room, so it was no surprise when, after we put our own clothes in one of them, we noticed something left by someone else sticking to the inside of our chosen dryer. I was about to reach for it wordlessly when Kamran noticed it, too, and plucked it out before I could.
Unrolled, it was sticky on one side, quilted on the other, wide at one end, and tapering off at the other end to a very thin strip. Neither of us freaked out about it, because we’d never seen such a thing.
“This isn’t a maxi pad, is it?” he asked, mostly joking.
“Um. I think it’s a thong pantyliner,” I said with a mixture of dread and wonder.
And so Kamran danced around the room, trying to fling off this thing that was now stuck to his hand. And then he wiped his hand on me.
So, is this a real thing–a thong pantyliner? And does it make anyone else feel bad that:
a) this thing exists because there’s an actual market for a product that lets you show off your butt while also collecting your vag drippings, and
b) you weren’t feminine enough to know about it, either?
The only thing to do when you’re a wannabe photographer with a nosebleed? Whip out the camera and try to forget about the drips hitting your white t-shirt.
I'm Katie, a farmgirl originally from Ohio who moved to NYC in 2005 for no apparent reason. I like vintage-looking things that are actually new, filagree everything, people who don't make me feel awkward, meaning it when I say "no sleep till Brooklyn", and not trying too hard.
