Dancing made me feel awkward and gangly and extremely stupid, like I had no idea how to operate the various limbs attached to me outside of walking and occasionally running. It followed that I saw no point in dancing, as from a nonparticipant’s standpoint it resembled ritualized exercise in the service of mating ritual at best and more active standing around the rest of the time. I went to exactly one dance in elementary school and was shockingly disappointed to realize the only things to do there were a) stand around and b) dance. I assumed they’d have carnival games in the hallway or activities, you know, something to actually DO while you were there. For some reason this lesson didn’t stick as I assumed the EXACT SAME THING when going to prom. And again I was shocked to find no mini-haunted house, no apple-bobbing, just a big ol’ dance with fancier dresses.

The rest of my family, however, had no problem with this strange coordinating of limbs and in fact quite enjoyed it. My mom was a disco diva through and through, with her only prom disappointment being three ‘Stairway to Heaven’ themes in a row, thanks to the stoners running prom committee. My sisters took several years of dance classes- jazz, modern, no ballet though; those kids looked like fierce automotons. I have hazy memories of attending a recital, mostly because my parents bought a video camera to tape the occasion and I was fascinated by the device. The girls grew into champions of the dance floor, absorbing new moves with ease. One sister in all seriousness wanted to be a Fly Girl when she grew up and I thought this a perfectly appropriate and possible job opportunity for her.

To this day they’re still ace, with the other sister working towards her dream of one day becoming Dance Hall Queen of Jamaica (good luck beating that crazy Japanese girl who won in 2010).

I, on the other hand, still flounder. While having vastly improved my Robot skills, the flailing of limbs to rhythmic beats still leaves me slightly panicky and extraordinarily self-conscious. Therefore I was shocked to discover how much I enjoy ‘Just Dance’, a Wii game, over this winter break. My mom, still loving dancing, had purchased the game as an extension of her ‘Zumba’ classes. To this day I am still unsure what Zumba is/means but was nearly driven insane listening to her class remix:

(Skip straight to 1:19 for the majority of what I was hearing. Please imagine your mother driving around shouting these lyrics at the top of her lungs while fistpumping violently).

The game is simple as its title: move along with the dancers on screen while holding a wiimote, and try not to punch your fellow gameplayers out while doing so. Through the same magic that convinced thousands playing Rock Band they were musicians, for the first time in my life I thought, huh! I can dance! And thanks to Mom’s overexuberant buying sprees, I had at my disposal Just Dance, Just Dance 2, Just Dance 3, and Just Dance: Michael Jackson Edition.

As someone with exposure to every iteration of this game in a short span, I noticed an evolution – the first ‘Just Dance’ is merely a ‘Now That’s What I call Music’ compilation brought to choreographized, rotoscoped life, aimed squarely at those who enjoy and enjoy consuming disposable pop culture, ie tween/teen girls and teen girls at heart. ‘Just Dance 2′ takes into consideration the other members of the family with songs by The Jackson 5 and The Rolling Stones for mom and dad, some Beastie Boys and Wham! for older siblings and relatives, Harry Belafonte and Quincy Jones for Nana, and…Boney M, for the historian with an appreciation for rhythm.

‘Just Dance 3′, the one I purchased, is insidious in how it considers those who would normally just sit and watch and LURES THEM IN. What be this madness where a Madness song, not even a radio hit, makes it on?! And there’s an interpretive dance thing to ‘This is Halloween’, yes, from ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’- WHAT?! Even Brahms is represented (well, as ‘played’ by the ‘Just Dance Classical Orchestra’). Well, now I’m hooked. I still don’t want to get on the dance floor, but should I have to I’m less inclined to run as I’ve become acclimated to this strange jiggling of body parts called ‘dancing’ through this silly game. Below is a breakdown of the standout hits (for me) of the game:

Madness – Night Boat To Cairo: The theme’s a little on-the-nose with mummies and a camel. Bonus points for including actual Madness dance moves including the Group Stop & Swoop and Everyone Step Together.

(For your dancing consideration.)

Donna Summer – I Feel Love: This one’s extra sneaky. You think you’re getting a straight disco song only to find they’ve crossed Klaus Nomi with Kate Bush for choreography! Plus a very Björk hairdo! Sooo fun.

Chemical Brothers – Hey Boy, Hey Girl: This is the closest I ever hope to come to a rave. Still, points for letting me dance inside the head of the glowstick set while being an extra in ‘Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See’.

A-Ha! – Take On Me: So…so much twirling.

The Sugarhill Gang – Apache (Jump On It): Thanks to a generation’s exposure to this song through ‘Fresh Prince’, they took the delightful lazy route and went with similar choreography. Best done in groups and surreptitiously filmed.

African Ladies – Pata Pata: Whee! You and a pal get to coordinate easy moves and learn the basics of body rolling!

Scissor Sisters – I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’: for when you DO feel like being sassy.

KISS – I Was Made For Lovin’ You: This song is proof positive KISS sucked at being a rock band (but excelled in self-promotion). The choreography acknowledges this and takes it to another level with line-skipping and coordinated fist-pumpery.

Robin Sparkles – Let’s Go To The Mall: A friend had to explain to me this isn’t a ‘real’ song, but a character from the TV show ‘How I Met Your Mother’s Canadian 80′s pop hit. The strangeness of a fictional character’s actual song appearing in a dance game outside its fictional reality aside, the song is indeed infectious and Canadian. Man, I hope other countries make fun of us with as few tropes as we use to mock Canadians. ‘Eh’, ‘aboot’, hockey, politeness, maybe a mullet. That’s it, that completely covers mocking Canada for the United States.

I recently learned of the existence of ‘Just Dance: ABBA’ and will be purchasing it as soon as a used copy turns up at the Bushwick Game Stop (this may be a while).

Alternate titles: Confessions of a Wii Addict, Apache: Jump On It, Dance Dance (Secret) Revolution, Indoor Jazz Hands, Strange Love or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Just Dance

Want to know what they’re looking at? (Thanks to Matt Munro.)

Yes, it’s not truly a State Fair without a wizened man of the land sitting on his horse in the middle of the street, waiting to answer any questions you might have about farming or life.

I saw small children clutching enormous Rastabananas tottering around the food stands. It’s either due to a mistranslation in the Chinese manufacturing company’s order sheet or the trendspotting companies responsible for such pap have officially resorted to random word generators. I defy anyone to connect bananas and Rastafarianism. Wait a minute…

(The secret is to offer them a nice picnic lunch in exchange for their honey.)

The Family Nail Box, with something for everyone! Tiny wood tacks for little Susie, steel bolts for Mom, and don’t forget roundhead screws for Dad’s special projects!

Speaking of which, it wouldn’t be a large gathering in the Midwest without at least one Juggalo sighting. Here, I came across an entire family (no, the baby was not wearing face paint):

Yep.

Just outside, anachronisms ran rampant at the Civil War reenactors’ tent site. He is so irritated by that tie-dye!

Over at the 4H tent, this fellow represented endangered species or something:

I am still unsure how not seeing a snake is inconveniencing.

There’s something poetic about this man, gazing upon a purple tractor as the warm summer twilight falls around him.

State Rocks! All the excitement of geology plays out state-by-state RIGHT BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES!

A nested WTF within WTFs, this model railroad had its own (delightfully air-conditioned) room, right next to a special snake exhibit. Pretty much a modified trailer, the entire room save one narrow pathway around contained a glass-walled enclosure filled with an enormous model train set. I got to walk around with a 10-year old who ran ahead of his family (or, more likely, they left some lag time), calling out the name of each train, car type, rail system and engine number like he some kind of train-specific form of Asperger’s. I got the strange impression he said all this out loud assuming persons nearby (ie me) would be impressed. We were not. However, I was taken by some of the smaller details in the gigantic tiny world; it seems model train makers are a mischievous sort as opposed to the dour caricatures of them portrayed in so many movies and TV shows. Some highlights:

Faster than a speeding bullet! Tinier than a G.I. Joe! It’s…Superman! Off to destroy something with some rock he found!

I’d like to think the placement of the Batmobile in this wee parking lot was an obscure nod to the classic monorail episode of the Simpsons, where a mention of help from Marge has Homer query “Is it Batman?” “No, he’s a scientist.” “Batman’s a scientist.” “IT’S NOT BATMAN!” Then I looked over at Lil’ Rainman rattling off train cars as they went by and kept the thought to myself.

A slice of everyday Americana, if your neighborhood constantly reenacted North By Northwest. Given the ridiculous stunts people pulled with small aircraft in the past (playing tennis, doing the hully-gully on the wings), flying one under a train bridge towards a small-town bike race wouldn’t surprise me too much.

Ah, bringing some much-needed gravity to the comical world of models. Here we have a reenacted scene from COPS: Iowa. Is that show still on? Is it just 90% meth arrests now, or do they still get the occasional shirtless convenience store robber caught down the street (still shirtless) sitting at the local bar?

The cemetery was just a tad too far away and underlit to get a proper, focused photo, but rest assured, that’s Beetlejuice sitting on a tombstone. No sight of the Maitlands though. So meta!

(click for a larger image)

Eventually I snapped some photos in a continued attempt to figure out what the point of this all was. Dinosaurs didn’t go extinct, they were drowned in the Great Flood, maybe? A friendly older woman came up to me and said all the pamphlets were free; I could take what I wanted. I took several before my friend dragged me away; I think he thought I’d angrily start correcting her, when really the only thing I wanted to ask was ‘what are you trying to tell people?’

After reading the pamphlet, detailing the hows and whys of dinosaurs being left off the ark, along with a confusing tangent about animals being ‘paired in twos’, not necessarily male/female couples (God would take care of it?), I was more confused than ever. I think the point of the exhibit wasn’t dinosaurs at all, but how the Earth is much younger than scientists believe. If anything, the experience was a comfort- no matter how well-funded and deeply believed the silliness is, without competency the message doesn’t get across.

Piles of sticks, tiny trees, and the llama’s deadliest foe, the ground pheasant, all traversed bearing bags of water about the neck.

After that, limbo time! Several handlers, along with audience volunteers, the Iowa Llama Queen and the State Fair Queen, were randomly paired up with available llamas, all which were shaggy-coated, pokey-eared, and adorable. One of the audience volunteers was a 7-foot tall former Iowan, current New Yorker, which made him the brunt of constant ‘city slicker’ jokes the entire contest despite his coming in second place. In a limbo contest. With a llama. While being over 6 feet tall.

The State Fair Queen and her randomly assigned llama ducked successfully under the bar. I was impressed she managed to do so well with her foot-tall crown on.

The costume contest began after a short break to prep and gussy. Now, the point of the contest is to highlight how trusting, confident, gentle and trainable llamas are, in a fun way. That’s why the costumes have to completely cover the face and body, with extra points for heavy, jangly bits and crinkly fabrics that would terrify lesser animals like cats and dogs. Unfortunately the net effect was less ‘cute animal costumes’ and more ‘Texas Chainsaw Llamas’:

Yeaaaaah. It didn’t help part of the cutesiness was supposed to stem from the handlers’ costumes matching the llamas, resulting in some unsettling pairings. Babe the Blue Ox and Paul Bunyon at least make sense.

This just has so many strange implications.

Seems a bit on the nose.

This was the winner for the mid-age group, mostly because of the hula skirt’s crinkliness.

This should’ve been the winner, but apparently the legs weren’t covered enough or something. Come on, it’s Dino!

This was the winner for the older age group; I think the llama was supposed to be a mobile haunted house or something. The judge lost her mind over the pumpkin booties.

‘Get a Workout While You Walk’.

Not available on instant view. Well, that’s ok, I have an ace up my sleeve for perfect Labor Day viewing – a classic comedy about the great suburban nightmare, starring America’s Most Likable Guy Tom Hanks! ‘The ‘Burbs!’

Not available on instant view. FINE. Well how about the live-action Fleisher Bros. cartoon ‘The Forbidden Zone?’

NO?! WELL THAT’S IT, I GUESS THIS WEEK’S MOVIE WILL HAVE TO BE ‘DEF BY TEMPTATION’ THEN, WON’T IT? WE’LL JUST HAVE TO SETTLE FOR DWAYNE-WAYNE IN A MOVIE DESCRIBED AS ‘An evil succubus is preying on libidinous black men in New York’, THEN, HUH?

FIIIIIIIIIINE. Unless, of course, anyone else has a suggestion.

Lucky for everyone, the State Fair website has a handy itinerary feature. Just choose which days you’ll attend, and all the possibilities at every moment scroll before your wondering eyes! Merely click on those that intrigue, and when you hit ‘Plan My Itinerary’, all choices are cross-listed by time and place. What convenience! I’ve certainly booked a full day for myself, and screencapped my selections as I doubt anyone would believe they were real otherwise:

Somehow ‘mystery sack’ and ‘adults’ sounds worse than ‘mystery sack’ and ‘kids’. I don’t even know who would qualify as ‘celebrity’.

‘I Milked A Cow’ sounds like a very dull noir film, though paying a dollar an hour seems pretty sweet if you get to keep the milk.

Yep, sounds about right for the Budweiser stage.

DEMOLITION DERBYYYYYY! Of course, they used to crash trains:

And by ‘something special for kids’ they mean thousands of painful stings.

There is no way in hell I’m missing the Llama costume/limbo contest.

MILK WAS A BAD CHOICE.

Chili boots prepped and ready.

Why run dairy goats through an obstacle course? Wouldn’t that be bad for the…you know what, whatever. I look forward to seeing heavy-teated goats slaloming around poles.

Oh, Shenaniguns. Taking violent tools of death and making us laugh.

Of course, variations on a theme existed long before they were defined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, ‘The Selfish Gene’(thanks, Wikipedia), but this was a perfect confluence of a phenomenon needing a name and a word floating around sounding all sciency: the meme. Now, one cat picture passed around does not a meme make. A hundred variants of Nyancat (Mexican, Rasta, Nazi, flying over various cities, IRL, sans cat, plus Bollywood) however, is the very essence of the thing. Something grabs hold of the collective’s attention and mutates outward to all possible permutations. The result: something so far removed from the original, so rich and saturated with humanity, it becomes as strange as a fairy tale (themselves the burnished results of many hands).

Now that the lecture’s out of the way, may I have the honor to present: THE RESULTS ARE IN, a site devoted to the best moments of Maury Povich. Many of these chosen moments are not those of revelation, immediate physical violence, or fat babies stuffing their face with M&Ms. That’s far too easy (plus they have a separate site devoted to just that). No, whoever crafted (and I do use that word with care; these images were lovingly chosen out of thousands in an episode and placed together for maximum effect) these went out of their way to select that which we might have otherwise overlooked.

Several articles have cropped up touting the GIF as THE medium of the decade. I beg to differ as I’ve been a fan of the animated GIF since I found out they existed. Sure, it’s awesome now that people are using them to make wizard photos (seriously it’s like Harry Potter except shouting ‘accio remote’ still doesn’t work), but the GIF’s true genius lies in repeating a moment in time much as it might play in our heads over and over, allowing all the strangeness, harshness, silliness to play fully before our eyes. GIFs bring back that which everyone claims the internet takes away from us- that everyone sees only surface and plumbs no depths. With the GIF, all viewers become expert in a chunk of time, stretched to infinity.

And so I’d like to thank the fellow behind THE RESULTS ARE IN! for choosing only the best audience reactions, eye rolls, and weird freeze-frame facial expressions and sharing them with the world.

…when in a city where even the police uniforms are impeccably tailored and you’re from the country that invented the X-Treme Gulp, they picture you like this:

That’s the unfortunate reality in Rome; no matter how hard you try, you are a tourist. It’s surprising how similar New York City and Rome are in that respect; many people who live and work in both cities come from somewhere else, and yet the constant influx of more temporal visitors turns the ‘locals’ against them. New Yorkers are more defensive about it; one of the rudest insults you can say to someone who lives here is they’re acting like a tourist. It’s why most people who pay too much to stay in NYC still haven’t seen the Empire State Building or Ellis Island, and avoid Times Square like the plague. ‘That’s not New York’, they say, and yet it is. If I went to Rome and studiously avoided every famous landmark, would that mean I’d really gone to Rome somehow?

Being from the city where genuine excitement equals lameness made being a tourist all the more acutely painful – now I was the out-of-town yokel impressed by the 45th street Sunglass Hut (true story; the whole beflip-flopped family stopped dead in their tracks and pointed like Jesus just appeared). What’s worse, I was surrounded by thousands of the above stereotypes in the flesh, sandals, socks, visors and all. Were sharp-dressed Romans looking at the swarming mass and lumping me in with them? Probably not because they were on their way to work and/or didn’t care. My ego competes only with my paranoia in scope and size.

Still, the New Yorker in me shuddered to think, and remained irritated by the slow-moving, gawky crowds despite being one of them. One of our early stops was the famous Trevi Fountain:

Surprisingly not pictured: A MILLION PEOPLE, including numerous Nigerian and Indonesian men selling balls that would splat and reform, glowsticks, and something you could stick in your mouth to make irritating duck noises. I have no idea how every single person vying for a photo opportunity with lenses rivaling the Hubble’s sticking hither and yon managed to avoid my framing. And this was at night, during moderate rain; I hate to imagine what the crowd’s like on a pleasant day. I was going to say the surrounding circus cheapened the fountain’s beauty, but look at it. It’s a giant, over-the-top baroque fountain. If anything the circus atmosphere sort of heightened its original intent of being a ridiculously ornate fountain.

As stated previously, it felt useless trying to capture well-lit images, forget the emotional grandeur, of most tourist areas. Instead I focused on smaller, more tangible details like these love-locks. They’re usually found in abundance on well-trod bridges; romantic couples click a lock on something and toss the key into the water to symbolize as literally as possible their eternal, undying, thief-proof love. These were tucked far up in a darkened corner of an ornate wave-swirl, hidden away in plain sight.

Seriously. Baroque. Let’s just have the sculpture look like a jagged rock with a root growing a shield with a lion on it as one tiny fraction of the whole shebang, because why not. And throw some tassels in there while you’re at it.

A few days later, Angry Jim and I decided to brave the crowds at the Spanish Steps.

Jim was not impressed.
And understandably so! They’re steps. Maybe if they weren’t covered in a thousand tired families yelling to each other I could perhaps walk down them quietly musing on the famous footsteps that once trod the same. Or I could buy a fake PRADA purse; there were plenty enough sellers shouting about that too.

Now THIS is a fountain. It’s also a half-submerged boat! Whee, baroque!

And what awaits you at the top of the fabled steps? More fake PRADA-pushers. Also a church, because I think Roman law states it’s illegal to go 10 steps without being able to run in somewhere and confess your sins.

Inside the church confused tourists milled about, perhaps expecting some sort of light show about the steps they just walked up. Per historical custom important members of the church were buried as close to the alter as possible, so everyone walked over decades of Medieval Roman high society, not that many seemed to notice.

Not noticing was fairly understandable; the markers were of the same marble as the rest of the floor and most were worn down to illegibility from thousands of feet shuffling over them every day. I’m sure there’s something very deep to write about the juxtaposition of tourist feet wearing away that which marked a local’s hopes for the eternal, but that’s why a picture’s worth a thousand words.

What do you think, horned Moses?

S’aright? “S’aright!”

We missed the Bocca della Verita the first few times around, as I expected it out in the open (as seen in ‘Roman Holiday’). Where a buck can be squeezed, so it shall be, and the Bocca was no exception. Hidden at the end of a gated atrium, tourists can queue up and ‘donate’ a few euro to take their picture in front of the face, and if they feel like it check out the church it’s attached to. Jim and I were so peeved at this blatant tourist tax we took pictures of other people taking pictures instead. This greatly confused the man directing the line.

The church itself was no small shakes; the Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin is an older church (which is saying something in a city featuring the Coliseum) in a mostly Byzantine style, with layers of history visible on its walls from the various era’s restorations.

Plus, for another euro, you could check out a crypt where they kept…someone….someone important…I forget, maybe Constantin? Hey, there were a lot of crypts and saints and historical personages to remember.

AAAAAAAAH! DEAAAAAAAATH! Oh, it’s just Jim.

AAAAAAAAAH! DEAAAAAAAAAAAATH! Yes, look over your guidebooks young ladies. There’s nothing in there on stopping the inevitable reaping of each and every one of you.

And right across the street from all this history, more history! This is a Roman mini-temple to a minor deity. The god of proper turn signals or something.

As we delighted in walking past crumbly ruins in the bright sun, a noise so vulgar and familiar I didn’t even register it snuck up behind us. Yes, this is why that caricature above is how Italians see us: a pile of American tourists zipping by on SEGWAYS shouting at the top of their lungs.

To forcibly prevent me from lunging at them, Jim suggested we walk around soaking in some more history. After a bit, we knew we were in the vicinity of the Pantheon but were shocked to see it right there after turning a corner.

(It’s right there!) This church has been in constant use since Roman times, with the only big change being a statue rotation from Roman gods to Catholic saints. IT’S SO OLD! Also quite well-preserved, and filled with famous folk, but more on that later. This was one of the few places so stunning on its own the horde of shouting, shoving, cell-phone waving tourists from all parts of the globe couldn’t diminish it.

Out in front, a Tom Waits fountain.

NO HANDRAIL?!?! Oh, Il Vittoriano, that is the least of your tacky, tacky problems.