Just Dance (like its 2012)!

 

The venerable Wii remote used in the "Just Dance" app. Brings back fun memories.

Today is the 20th birthday of my twin nieces. It seems like yesterday they were rushing into my arms as three year olds and I was throwing them up into the air and catching them, something they made me do for years whenever I saw them, until they got too big.

I just got to see them two weeks ago. We had dinner together, at the invitation of my sister, their mother. Then I got to see them again a few days later in Estes Park, at a horse show where they were both riding in a jumping competition. It was a lovely time.

Today I got up early so I could I be the first ones to text them on their birthday. They both replied enthusiastically to my birthday wishes by text. I figured they would be off with their boyfriends doing young people things and maybe have a party at my sister's house of some kind.

Just a few minutes ago, as I was thinking about them, I was scrolling through my Youtube feed and something uncanny happened. The algorithm decided to suggest the video an old obscure pop song from twenty years ago, one that I only know because during one of my visits (I want to say it was July 2012, over their birthday that year) was one of the songs that my nieces liked to dance along with, with their "Just Dance 4" Wii app in the basement of their Westminster house. The app is one where you hold the Wii remote and try to perform the dance moves you see on the screen, being performed by cartoons outlines of dancers, and it tallies up the score based on how well it thinks that you performed the moves, and you get bonuses if you do it especially well.

It was the first and only time I ever danced with the Wii. They were old pros by then, even as seven year old and had to show me what to do. I was tremendous fun to dance with them that way. 

I had never heard the song I mention before that day, or heard it since then. But today of all days the Youtube algorithm decided I needed to be reminded of the song. Here the original is below. The lyrics are in Spanish and impossible to understand, so don't bother. Some of the syllables are just nonsense sounds. Evidently it was massive hit in Europe and much of the rest of the world, but it didn't make much of a splash in the U.S., which is why I probably had never heard of it before that day in the basement. I learned all this from the Wikipedia article about it (link).

Just imagine the 47-year-old me doing those hand flutters that culminate in that pose with the hands on the front and back of the head, trying to shimmy my knees at the same time, alongside two seven year old girls bouncing up and down with the music doing the same thing. Very, very good memories.

Edit: Ha! I think I might have found the Just Dance video itself. Beautiful memories. One of the best days of my life. Now you can dance along too, if you dare. Hope you like a flamenco rhythm. The colored hands of the dancers are the ones in which one is supposed to be holding the Wii remote.

From Wikipedia:

"The Ketchup Song" is about a young man named Diego who enters a nightclub. The DJ, a friend of Diego's, plays Diego's favorite song, "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugarhill Gang, and Diego dances and sings along to the song, imitating its chorus with Spanish gibberish.

"Aserejé" is, therefore, a meaningless word, with the chorus "Aserejé, ja, de je, de jebe tu de jebere ..." being a somewhat incorrect imitation of the Rapper's Delight's "I said a hip-hop, the hippie the hippie to the hip hip hop

The song is quite an ear worm and can drive you crazy if you hear it too much. If you dare, here is the original music video, which is what popped up in my feed today, unleashing this whole memory stream. The dance moves of the young women in the original are more sophisticated than anything one has to do with the Wii, but the Wii is more fun. Nothing wrong with fun.

Y la baila! Y la goza! Y la canta!

(And the dancing! And the fun! And the singing!)