It was beyond awesome!
Update! Record set. As of this update (Oct. 29, 2009) 22,923 dancers, in 32 countries, participating in 278 global events, raised $85K for 80 different charities worldwide. ROCK ON.
Here's our Thrilling in Los Angeles, in the plaza between the Nokia and the movie theater. If you know where to look you can see me dancing for a good four minutes, total! (Warning - shooter never stops moving the camera for some reason, so look away when you get dizzy. On the other hand, my guess is shooter was perhaps trying to get a little bit of everybody in at least once.)
Word is the participant count for TTWLA is around 2,300. Pulling on extensive experience elsewhere, I'm calling that number off. I think more people danced than officially registered. That felt more like a neighborhood of 4- to 5-K crowd to me.
Since you don't know where to look above, a couple of screencaps!, helpfully labeled "ME" (in the handwriting of H.P. Lovecraft).
I made tons more, but I think that's enough. O wait, I like this one:
And from the video of this kid, who danced and filmed himself at the same time:
I could hear Moi chattering on his video - fave line Ooo I just saw my hair on the jumbotron! He also accidentally got a shot of Moi on-the-ground at the start of the dance. He was a nice kid:
Oo, here's a still from Gary Leonard, in whose gallery I see parts of myself all over the place, but only this one near-whole body shot! Really, it's like Where's Waldo. This pic is from one of the early rehearsals. I'm just happy I have a pic of me taken by the great Gary Leonard. (It's not just me. When it comes to chronicling Los Angeles, it's like if Gary Leonard didn't shoot it? It didn't happen.0 No, really. If Gary didn't shoot it, it didn't happen. I took his picture once because he happened to walk in front of me at a Thing. Still giggle about that. Man o man, to get a look at his archives...
Then there was this, which I found out about on Monday when the CrackBerry exploded. For the record "it was horrors" was not what I meant to say. I was ambushed after 3 hours straight of teaching day-of newbies the dance; there was a disconnect between what was in my head and what came out of my mouth. As usual:
I've got a bunch of posed shots of me with various uberFun people, but that's enough. I'll hold onto those for myself.
So basically, Sunday was sleep for a very long time, then do as little as possible. I pretty much just searched for photos and videos all day, astonished and delighted watching all of the different videos from all over the world. I must have went through at least 200 of them, but I'm calling these two teens from Sao Paulo my fave:
I shall explain why these two are my fave at a yet-to-be-determined later date. I'll also add the one thing I found hilarious after the fact. At the time, after three hours, I was like PLEASE SOMEBODY COME SAVE ME.
