This is the Rope of lipdub videos.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.
Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.
No one could have predicted…
Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.
This blog will pay for itself.
“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”
Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?
Come on, man.
White supremacy is terrorism.
We are aware of all internet traditions.
Celebrate the fucking wins.
We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.
New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.
… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop
Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.
Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.
Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.
Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.
Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.
Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.
Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.
With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.
Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.
Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.
jeffreyw
This is today’s installment of Breakfast! Now showing: Sunny Side Up!
Trollenschlongen
I saw this video a few weeks ago. I am not sure why, but I found it very moving.
Nethead Jay
Yep, saw it featured a couple of weeks ago on The Rachel Maddow Show blog. It is simply a wonderful video, both moving and festive. And extremely well planned.
JGabriel
Slightly nitpicky, but Rope has obvious cuts every 20 minutes, for commercial canister changes. This is more like the Wavelength (a few obscured edits) or, even better, the Russian Ark (longest non-edited single take movie) of lipdubs.
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Krysalix
That’s my town in the video. An open call was made to the public to come and participate. They did 5 takes and used the last one. It took just about 4 hours to complete filming. It was in response to Newsweek naming Grand Rapids one of the top 10 dying cities in America. Newsweek’s article used flawed methods of determining what was a dying city and based it on loss of population between 2000 and 2010, so even though the losses happened early in the decade, and GR has been growing and improving for the past several years, we still haven’t caught up to where we were and that was enough for Newsweek to write us off. People here took great exception to that and this was the community’s response.
karen marie
@Trollenschlongen:
It’s seeing people join together to create something for which the only reward and value is joy.
alex milstein
I thought I’d check it out for a few seconds, until I got bored, but I ended up watching the whole thing. I kept wondering what (or who) would be next.
Amazingly well organized and carried out. I have worked in Hollywood for the past 33 years, and this just goes to show you that real talent exists everywhere, and that the ‘entertainment industry’ doe not have a monopoly on it.
MarkJ
That’s my hometown, and I was moved by this when I saw it a few weeks ago as well (Roger Ebert called this lip dub the greatest music video ever made). GR is a pretty great area: it’s got a thriving arts scene highlighted by the annual Artprize contest, a lot of civic pride, and they’ve revitalized downtown and a number of other older commercial districts elsewhere in the city over the past decade or so. Plus, the natural amenties – including Lake Michigan beaches less than 40 minutes away and a multitude of smaller lakes closer by – are pretty fantastic.
Besides which, if I were Newsweek I’d be pretty careful about putting together “dying” lists, because I’m pretty sure the publication would be at the top of some of them. I should add that I live in DC now, and can’t say that it’s much if anything of an improvement.
john walters
I was also born & raised in GR, and have commonly thought of myself as a refugee, lucky to have made my escape. When I was a kid, it seemed a remarkably closed-minded place — the buckle of the devoutly Calvinist West Michigan Bible Belt.
Of course, I only knew what any elementary-school kid knows: his neighborhood, his circle of friends, his (absolutely closed-minded) church and relatives. There was a lot more to Grand Rapids at the time, and it’s become a much more diverse, open, creative place in the years since.
Seeing this video was one of the few times I’ve been legitimately proud to call Grand Rapids my hometown. (And yes, I blogged about it.)
Loneoak
Lots of Grand Rapidians around here, including myself and Andy K.
I might be the only person from GR to really dislike this video, probably because the song is the kind of anthem uncreative, sexually repressed white dudes wearing cargo shorts and polo shirts would choose on the jukebox after drinking Coors Light all night. It reinforces my worst feelings about GR, which, like john walters, has improved greatly in my estimation since I’ve grown up a bit.
Which neighborhoods did you all grow up in? I’m from Easttown/EGR.
piratedan
OT:http://failbook.failblog.org/2011/07/07/funny-facebook-fails-the-usa-on-facebook-from-history-to-today/
Thought this was worth a smirk, chuckle, smile and wanted to share
MarkJ
I’m a West Sider – grew up in the vicinity of Valley/Garfield and Leonard, but a few blocks West of Leonard toward Richmond. I graduated from Union High in ’88.
GR did seem somewhat sleepy as a teenager – sort of like what John described above, but I lived there for a couple of years as a full fledged adult in the mid ’90s and again for a year in the mid 00’s and got a much better impression of it.
I’m not sure whether I just didn’t have the funds or mobility (or ID) to take full advantage of the city as a teenager, or whether it really has gotten much more interesting. I think a combination of both.
Loneoak I feel you on the song choice, but there aren’t that many 10 minute up-tempo crowd-pleasers in the pantheon. I think the “this’ll be the day that I die” was intended as a sarcastic jab at the Newsweek article, and they wanted a long song to make the single-take lip-dub impressive.
Brachiator
OT: Rupert Murdoch gets slapped hard.
It’s a good start. Maybe he will lose all his shit by the weekend.
patrick
I live about 30 miles due west of GR, and I don’t pay attention to newsweek. the GR metro area seems to be about the only place in MI that’s been growing and thriving, thanks to a lot of growth in the medical community, so it suprises me to hear it is a “dying” community…after my visit to my homeland, I’d put that label on my juvenile stomping grounds, the Duluth, MN/Superior, WI area…
stormhit
Yeah, GR decided to do that video since they threw a hissy fit after discovering that decades of wanting nothing to do with Detroit did in fact end up hurting them.
MarkJ
Well stormhit, you have a point and I won’t deny it. Giving up on Detroit was a really bad decision that the rest of the State is now paying for. My only defense is that we’re far from the only State to make that mistake, but it seems to have been particularly common in the so called rust belt (Cleveland, Pittsburg, St. Louis etc.)
Giving up on cities is a US phenomenon that I’ve never understood. At its peak Detroit was one of the top 5 cities in the country population-wise, and was a vibrant economic power to boot. To give up on it was the peak of folly – basically the equivalent of giving up on Vienna, Barcelona, Munich, or Stockholm, to put things in a European context.
Loneoak
MarkJ, the city has objectively gotten better. The downtown has a lot more entertainment options and the beer culture has really expanded, most notably Founders and HopCat. And if you’ve never been, Meijer Gardens is really a cultural treasure. I know some people who work for ArtPrize, which is just an awesome and internationally important art festival. The relocation of the entire MSU medical campus to downtown isn’t hurting either.
There are still a lot of things to dislike, most notably the Calvinist exurbs and the hard-right tilt of most of the region, the endless stretches of big box stores along 28th St., the subpar cuisine, etc. But for the first time since I was old enough to consider the question, I think the place is actually livable.
Loneoak
stormhit, I wouldn’t say that GR decided to make the video. It was one entrepeneurial/self-promoter/entertainer guy who put it together with private money. My friends in the theatre scene there know and dislike him well.
MarkJ
Loneoak – +1 on the beer scene and Meijer Garden, both of which are great. If you haven’t been to Brewery Vivant yet go poste haste – the atmosphere is great and the beer is pretty good as well.
Vertigo is definitely one of the coolest brick and mortar music stores still in existence.
The religious conservatism is a drag but they seem to suffer from an ideological blind spot when it comes to investing in the city. I mean the Devoses sound like wingnuts when they talk politics but they fund ArtPrize. Go figure.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
Look at all the white people from the suburbs!
@ Loneoak:
I grew up in what I think would be known as the Greater Boston Square neighborhood, two blocks south of Hall, on Colorado Ave., just a few blocks southwest of EGR. Mulick Park El., Iroquois Middle and Ottawa Hills High (class of ’83).
@ MarkJ:
Damned straight! Herm’s an old friend- we were co-workers for a while at Crazy Larry’s…I was at the store out by the malls in ’85-’86, but I’d pull shifts with Herm and Paul P.(Herm’s then-future partner at Vinyl Solution) in Wyoming once in a while.
You’re probably too young to remember the short-lived Music Magic in Eastown. It was in the space now occupied by the Mexican restaurant, just east of Billy’s. It was a small store, but the staff absolutely rocked! Brad the Mad Lad and Dr. T educated me on funk, soul and reggae when I was 16-18. Leslie J, who looked like a younger, more attractive Elvira was the p-rock goddess who’d take a few minutes to run to Gaslight Village to pick up her dry cleaning, “dragging” me along (“Wanna get high?”). There’s nothing like the looks on the faces of vintage 1981 preppy EGR Middle School girls when they see their first goth chick getting out of her car in their exclusive little village. :D
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
John Walters @9
Funny, because when I was in elementary school years, that Calvinism was something I heard about much more than I saw. One notable exception: The Dutch Reformed family on the street whose kids weren’t allowed to play with the gaggle of heathen ruffians all around them.
Their loss, I suppose. I wouldn’t trade my childhood experiences in GR for anyone’s. Whiffleball, touch football, endless days at the park- the city Rec Department was the bomb!- riding bikes to Cooks to pick up a gallon of root beer….
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
And before I leave for work: YESTERDOG!
MarkJ
@ Temporarily Max McGee
Never went to Music Magic but I am old enough to have goneo to the old Vinyl Solution on South Division (before they moved to the larger store on 28th).
I too heard more about reformed protestantism than I saw it (except when I went to church on Sundays). The NW side where I grew up was Polish central so it was full of Catholics who didn’t take their religion all too seriously. Well, maybe some of them took it seriously on some level, but it didn’t stop them from drinkin’ and fornicatin’. Some of that must have rubbed off on the protestants on that side of town as well, because they were less God Squad than those in the suburbs.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@ MarkJ
A fact that a lot of people around here don’t realize is that Roman Catholic is the single largest denomination in GR. Look at who founded the city: Louis Campau, a French Catholic trader from Detroit. There was already a Catholic mission on the west side of the river, ministering to the Ottawa. As the city grew across to the West Side, there were a lot of Irish over there. They founded the St. James’ parish. St. Andrew’s was originally located where the police station is today at Fulton and Division. There are the two Polish parishes on the northeast side, just north of 196. The St. Thomas’ parish and Aquinas College in Fulton Heights/north Eastown are in a neighborhood settled by German Catholics. St. Stephen’s is about a mile away. Immaculate Heart of Mary is a couple of miles south of that, and St. Paul’s is a couple of miles almost due west of IHM on Burton.
mpbruss
Vertigo Records is the best store of any type in existence anywhere. Heritage Hill is a wonderful neighborhood. GR is a nice place, and I’ve never seen any evidence it’s dying. And Calvin College puts on some nice concerts. I’ve seen Sunny Day Real Estate and Iron and Wine there, and I’ve probably missed more good shows than I could count (most notably Sufjan Stevens).
MarkJ
Heritage Hill is great – the Frank Lloyd Wright house there is a national treasure – and the commercial corridor along Wealthy has really come along. As someone who saw that area in the 80s the transformation is amazing (speaking of which, Cherry Hill and Fulton Heights are also doing very well).
The Northwest side never seems to change at all – I’m amazed whenever I go back at how many of the neighborhood staples along Bridge, Walker, and Leonard Street are still there from when I was a kid – Mieras shoes, Freewheeler Bike Shop, Walker St. Pharmacy, Salvatore’s, Lewandoski’s and Franks meat markets, not to mention every neighborhood bar. And the Polish Halls are still alive and kicking – those kinds of clubs have died out just about everywhere else.