Recap! Sure It’s All About Atomic Ballroom…

…but it’s my home away from home, so why not!

Last Sunday was Video Game Night at Atomic Ballroom. While under publicized, it was still a tremendous success and a blast. If only I didn’t have 9am classes keeping me from playing video games until 3 in the morning! Grrr.

We had 4 gaming stations set up:
on the atomic screen with tim’s projector we had an xbox 360 with halo 3, dead rising and only 2 controllers
on a bed sheet in front of the disco ball with charlie’s projector we had DDR with a real metal pad on my playstation 2
on a tv brock brought we had an xbox with halo and 4 controllers
on the studio tv (behind the bar) we had guitar hero: rock the 80s with 2 wireless guitars and a wii with 4 wii-motes, mario party 8 and wii sports

A lot happened during the week especially since I was SOOO tired. I’m just not suited for staying up to midnight and then waking up from 9am classes and it’s so damn frustrating, because I have to take these classes at the only time they’re offered in order to graduate. When did school become such a chore? Anyways.

Friday night was the first night that Atomic Ballroom started teaching the Thriller choreography for an event called Thrill the World. Basically, this dance instructor got it into her head to break the Guinness World Record for “most number of people dancing simultaneously” with Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”. She put together a DVD that very effectively teaches you the dance. She also uploaded the DVD in sections on YouTube. I started watching them Friday afternoon and actually got pretty far in the time allotted. Oh, and when I say the Atomic Ballroom started teaching it…I mean I started teaching it. I wasn’t the only teacher up there, but I was the primary instructor. I basically fed the class the YouTube bits I’d been watching, but there’s always more to it than that. When I had first introduced the OC Team Leader (Tom, a friend from college) to Atomic Ballroom, I hadn’t been influenced negatively or positively by the concept. I’d never really watched the music video or listened to the music that mush, so I was just kind of “eh…” But now having done some of it, it’s really fun!

Yesterday was the Richard Simmons High Hair Hop at Club Slimmons in Beverly Hills. The gig had been on the calendar for a while (Jerry did it last year), but all of a sudden on Sunday night, they asked us to do a number to music from the movie/musical Hairspray to coincide with the theme of the party. So the teams got together, created a medley of three songs, choreographed a number and mastered it in time. It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun. But the best part of the whole gig was the after party. We drove up to Burbank for a late dinner at Bob’s Big Boy. At some point, we lost a birthday card from Richard Simmons and spent a lot of time looking for it (going so far as to dig through the trash with our waitress). Eventually it was found inside a menu at another table. Since the other party that had found the menu had graciously reported and returned it, we decided (as a dance team) to honor them with a free performance. We caught them on their way out the restaurant, lined up on the sidewalk in front of Big Boy and performed one of our routines. We didn’t have music, so we sang along. It was so much fun. This was why I joined the Atomic Swing Teams. It’s not just about swing dancing…it’s about having as much fun as freaking possible! 😀

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