Eideard

Holi Festival, Chennai

The trailer for Michael Jackson: The Experience claims the game “will electrify the world.” At the very least, it’ll piss off the downstairs neighbors.

The first video for the new dancing game, released Thursday by gamemaker Ubisoft, depicts people on the street re-enacting the late Michael Jackson’s famous moves, paying particular homage to the iconic video for early ’80s hit “Billie Jean.”

The message of the trailer is that before all the private ugliness and his untimely death, the King of Pop brought smiles to the faces of millions and inspired more than a few to moonwalk.

With the wild success of Just Dance, there’s a chance that Michael Jackson: The Experience could be another smash hit for Ubisoft.

The major stumbling block in my mind is convincing today’s kids to try listening to music that isn’t made by Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber. There’s a good reason that Harmonix’s Dance Central draws, mostly, from the last 10 years of pop: Kids don’t always go for old tunes.

And if you rely on crusty folks who remember the old days to drive sales of your game, you risk a mediocre showing. So-so numbers won’t cut it when you’re licensing expensive music from rights-holders with lots of caveats about how their likenesses can be used.

We’ll find out, soon, won’t we? I think the reviewer is a stiff.

Just look at the tracks that are popular with Guitar Hero. The same people who play air guitar in the bathroom will dance with Michael Jackson in the living room.

Click on photo for video…

The beer is flowing, the polka band is playing, and dancers are twirling across the dance floor. Blob’s Park lives again.

The popular Bavarian beer hall and weekend nightspot had closed its doors in 2007, the victim of an unlikely foe: progress. Developers, eager to build on the 400 acres of prime real estate in the bustling Baltimore/Washington, D.C., corridor, had purchased the 400 acres upon which the dance hall sat.

It was the end of an era for the farmland first owned by Max Blob, a German immigrant, who, among other things, helped found America’s first “Oktoberfest” 70 years ago…

Private developers are expected to build townhomes, condominiums and retail storefronts on the rolling hills of farmland where Blob’s Park stands. But that’s somewhere in the future. For now, the economic crisis gripping the country has played a role in the revival of Blob’s Park.

Eggrel spent five months renovating the hall, and in January 2009 he and his employees reopened the doors to the public. The customers who keep coming back to the hall week after week have as much fondness for the hall as the owner himself.

“Every week someone else comes up to me and thanks me for opening it back up,” Eggrel says.

Sounds like the kind of place I grew up next-door to. We went square dancing, polka dancing, round dancing every Saturday night.

The exercise didn’t do us any harm either.

Eric Schmidt on Meet the Press – last month
Daylife/Getty Images

Google, whose chief executive endorsed Barack Obama during the campaign, is having a party when Obama takes office. “We’re calling it an alternative to traditional inaugural balls,” said a Google spokesman, Adam Kovacevich.

The party, on Jan. 20, is meant for both Democrats and Republicans.

“The guideline that we follow here is that you can’t get anything done in Washington unless you build relationships on both sides of the aisle, and that is our guiding principle to approaching Washington,” Kovacevich said…

Instead of charging guests, as most inaugural balls do, Google is asking them to contribute to five nonprofits, including the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, which is a co-sponsor of the party. Google is matching those contributions.

There will not be any performers at the event, Kovacevich said, but there will be a dance floor.

Asked whether the Democrats or Republicans make better dancers, Kovacevich, well versed in the ways of the capital, declined to answer.

“This is definitely a bipartisan event,” he said.

Isn’t there something about dancing to a tune – and paying the piper?

Of all the drugs young people can use at clubs, the latest trend in New York may be the least hip among all circles: Preparation H.

New York bouncer, blogger and author Rob Fitzgerald has noticed a trend among many of the macho young men waiting outside his clubs. He says the guys are slathering up their torsos with the hemorrhoid cream Preparation H to make themselves look “ripped” for the ladies.

Fitzgerald asked one of these guys to describe the practice for his blog, Clublife, “The way you use it is to take your shirt off and rub it all over yourself before you go to the club,” a man who gave the alias, Peter Minichiello, says. “If you want to get [lucky], you have to know how to dance, and if you want girls to dance with you, you have to look ripped.”

Human beings are fracking hilarious.