(Hey, remember the Olympics? When everybody is the biggest sports fan in the world, then immediately forgets about them and doesn't mention them again for 3 years and 11 months? The two most annoying timeframes in the social media world are 1. Presidential elections, and 2. Olympics, by a huge margin. But even I can't digress this far, this early in a blog post. Moving on....)
Both JDub and I caught on to this shimmy separately, and immediately began incorporating it into our lives. Shortly thereafter, we were teammates in beer pong at a house party, and we were absolutely insufferable (even more insufferable than normal, I should say). If you fool around and put
FYI, because you care so much about the rules and regulations of my top 5 lists, I defined "shimmy" as a dance move which could be accomplished in a couple seconds or less. Unfortunately, that rule eliminated these beauties, since these are more dances than shimmies:
- Kevin Youkilis/Jonathan Papelbon, 2007 playoffs (starts at :20 mark)
- Danny Green, before every UNC home game in his college basketball career (couldn't embed it, starts at :18 mark)
- Michael J. Fox's dance in Teen Wolf (starts at :31 mark)
- And, of course, the infamous Carlton dance from Fresh Prince. Forget Michael Jackson or Justin Timberlake or Paula Abdul or Christopher Walken or whoever....for my money, Carlton is the greatest dancer of our generation.
Which leaves these as my top 5:
5. Jack Black in High Fidelity
Specifically, the little spin move at the :37 mark. This one might rank higher, but the one time I tried to pull this off in public was the summer after graduating high school, attending the first wedding of my life in which I was, as the expression goes, "drinking my effing face off." Somebody requested "Walkin' On Sunshine", I tried to spin around with the same grace and agility of Kung Fu Panda, and I spun out of control and headbutted the bride. In my defense, I had been drinking all day before the wedding, the college kids were corrupting the shit out of me, and it was easily the drunkest I had ever been in my life at that point. I'm not sayin, I'm just sayin.'
4. Charlie's Butt Dance from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
This one gets two versions. The first one has the shimmy more well-done and on a loop, but the second one includes the manic Charlie giggle that is impossible to impersonate, and part of why he's one of the greatest TV characters ever.
3. Jamie Foxx as Steamin' Willie Beamen in Any Given Sunday
I've talked about how I'm bitter about this character since the writers clearly stole the name Willie Beamon from my imaginary football league from when I was in elementary school and playing with toys.....but I can't punish this timeless shark-fin classic (at the :49 second mark).
2. Kevin Durant in the Olympics
This spot seems about right. Part of the appeal is it's such an out-of-character move from somebody who's usually so quiet and reserved.
1. The robot dance guy from Chappelle Show
For those of you who didn't watch Chappelle, this is the guy who randomly showed up every few episodes or so, never having a speaking line, never doing anything but his robot dance, but always drawing huge laughs. For those of you who did watch Chappelle, you're probably familiar with this guy. For those of you like me who live and breathe Chappelle and have entire sketches memorized, you probably knew at the beginning of this post that this guy would be #1. (My apologies for the youtube video inexplicably playing 'Sandstorm' like it's a K-State home basketball game-- I hate when people jack around with videos on youtube with dumb songs-- but it's the best version I could find with multiple instances of the robot dance.) Either way, this dude is the greatest.
