Perchance, to Dance.

People often ask me how to fix up their rubbish lives and the world and stuff. At least, a whole series of strangers decided to do that last Friday night in a very weird hour or two at a bar. It turned out that my oracle/life coach skills are at a much higher level than I realised, as every one of these people walked away happy and warmed in their hearts as if little cosy hearths had been stoked there (metaphorically - never try lighting an actual fire in your chest cavity).

I tend not to give advice so this was an exceptional night, but I think that one piece of advice that can never go astray is pretty clear here - you can never really go wrong dancing. I mean, I suppose you can go wrong dancing in lots of ways, but it's never going to deplete our dwindling water supplies or kill a whale or contribute to global warming in a significant way.

My good friend Mark knows me well enough to have emailed me the following link today:

How to do the Robot. As the title suggests, it's a sequence of instructional videos on robot dancing. My favourite part is the fact that the guy doing it seems neither particularly exceptional at the robot nor particularly interested in it. It's as if he wants to be excited, but he'd really just rather be chilling on the couch with a beer and his Wii.

This kid really knows his robot, though; wait until the weedy dude in the orange skivvy shows up, as he actually contributes several original moves to the form. The robot pirouette is at a very high degree of difficulty.

Someone really needs to get over to Europe and work out why so many ravers have become possessed by jumpstyle (this horrible move that becomes quite hypnotic when performed in unison by dozens of the freaks - which is exactly what happens).

Can't stand the music, or the outfits, or the very idea, but how on earth in this day and age can grown people become obsessed with a "move" a la the macarena or something? It disturbs, even moreso since there seems to be nothing written about it anywhere, only youtube videos, so I can't even trace the phenomenon.

The Belgian Jump is even weirder. What's going on with these freakin' kids? It's like one starts doing it and the others get infected with this crazy epileptic move and can't help all rushing out to join in.

In the Nederlands it's quite horrible, taking over shopping malls. Here's a TV spot on it:

But at least it has a strong historical pedigree.