"Numa Numa Dance" is the 2005 version of "The Star Wars Kid"

[Unassisted]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6987134/

You go, Gary! 'Numa' takes Web by storm
Dance to Romanian tune cracks up the world

MSNBC
Updated: 11:30 a.m. ET Feb. 17, 2005

A bespectacled, lip-synching young man from the Jersey suburbs has become the hottest thing to hit the Internet since the Spiridellis brothers started making JibJab cartoons.

Gyrating before a Web cam to the techno beat of a Romanian pop song without ever leaving his chair, Gary Brolsma’s uncanny timing in a video he calls “Numa Numa Dance” has Web watchers cracking up around the globe and cramming the e-mail boxes of their friends with links to the cyber hit.

Featured Thursday on NBC’s “Today” show, the video has already gotten more than a million hits on one Web site, according to one report. On MSNBC.com, “searches for this kid absolutely dominate our site search today,” according to producer Will Femia.

Brolsma, 19, of Saddle Brook, N.J., performs his hit to the strains of O-Zone’s “Dragostea Din Tei,” a song that would be titled “Love Among the Linden Trees” in English. The “Numa Numa” title of the video is from a line in the song.

William Hung channeling 'Star Wars' kid
So what’s the video like? “Imagine William Hung of ‘American Idol’ channeling the ‘Star Wars' kid — the last big cult hit in computerland — and you get the picture,” said the New York Daily News. “The highlight may be the moment when he flicks his tongue at the lens. Or maybe when he raises one eyebrow twice over his wire-rimmed spectacles.”

“You wonder for a second when you’re watching it, is this for real,” Joe Levy of Rolling Stone Magazine told Matt Lauer of the “Today” show. “Is it a phenomenon? Oh yeah. Are people richly amused? Oh yes, very much so.” So much, pointed out Lauer, that Brolsma’s handiwork made VH-1’s “Best Week Ever” list.

Lauer’s own take: While many e-mails don’t live up to their promises to deliver humor, “This one is the real deal.”

I couldn't get the MSNBC video to play, so here's a link to the original home of the Numa Numa Dance .

[TRF]

that was odd.

[WebScorpion]

I thought that was original, weird as hell, and quite funny. The sad part is that it has spawned 30 or 40 copycats...some people have no clue. It's funny the first time, but not the 100th time...run to your nearest grocer and purchase a large carton of originality. : As for Gary, rock on you total freak!

[Johnny Footstool]

Feh.

[TRF]

i have now watched it a dozen or so times.

it's still odd.

but i like odd.

[Unassisted]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/nation...10_star26.html

Teen's 'stupid' lip-synch video a Web hit

A cautionary tale of idiocy, the Internet and instant fame

Saturday, February 26, 2005

By ALAN FEUER AND JASON GEORGE
THE NEW YORK TIMES

There was a time when embarrassing talents were a purely private matter. If you could sing the Star Spangled Banner in the voice of Daffy Duck, no one but your friends and family would ever have to know.

But with the Internet, humiliation -- like everything else -- has now gone public. Upload a video of yourself playing flute with your nose or dancing in your underwear and people from Toledo to Turkmenistan can watch.

Here, then, is the cautionary tale of Gary Brolsma, 19, amateur videographer from New Jersey, who made the grave mistake of placing on the Internet a brief clip of himself dancing along to a Romanian pop song. Even in the bathroom mirror, Brolsma's performance could only be described as earnest but painful.

His story suggests that the quaint days when cultural trinkets, like celebrity sex tapes, were passed around like novels in Soviet Russia are over. It says a little something of the lightning speed at which fame is made these days.

To begin at the beginning:

Brolsma, a pudgy guy from Saddle Brook, N.J., made a video of himself this fall performing a lip-synched version of "Dragostea Din Tei," a Romanian pop tune, which roughly translates to "Love From the Linden Trees." He not only mouthed the words, he bounced along in what he called the "Numa Numa Dance" -- an arm-flailing, eyebrow-cocked performance executed without ever once leaving a chair.

In December, the Web site www.newgrounds.com, a clearinghouse for online videos and animation, placed a link to Brolsma on its home page and, soon, there was a river of attention. "Good Morning America" came calling and he appeared. CNN and VH-1 broadcast the clip. Parodists tried their own Numa Numa dances online. By yesterday, the Brolsma rendition of "Love From the Linden Trees" had attracted nearly 2 million hits on www.newgrounds.com alone.

It was just as Diane Sawyer said on her television program: "Who knows where this will lead?"

Nowhere, apparently. For, in Brolsma's case, the river became a flood.

He has now sought refuge from his fame in his family's small house on a gritty street in Saddle Brook. He has stopped taking phone calls from the news media, including The New York Times. He canceled an appearance on NBC's "Today Show." According to his relatives, he mopes around the house.

What's worse is that no one seems to understand.

"I said, 'Gary, this is your one chance to be famous -- embrace it,' " said Corey Dzielinski, who has known Brolsma since the fifth grade.

Brolsma is not the first guy to rocket out of anonymity on a starship of embarrassment. There was William Hung, the Hong Kong-born "American Idol" reject who sang and danced so poorly he became a household name. There was Ghyslain Raza, the teenage Quebecois who taped himself wielding a mock light-saber and is now known as the "Star Wars Kid."

In July 2003, Raza's parents went so far as to sue four of his classmates, claiming they had placed the clip of him online without permission. "Ghyslain had to endure, and still endures today, harassment and derision," according to the lawsuit, first reported in The Globe and Mail of Toronto.

Brolsma has no plans to sue, his family said -- mainly because he would have to sue himself. In fact, they wish he would bask a little in his celebrity.

"I don't know what's wrong with him," his grandfather, Kalman Telkes, said the other day while taking out the trash.

The question remains why 2 million people would want to watch a doughy guy in glasses wave his arms around online to a Romanian pop song.

"It definitely has to be something different," said Tom Fulp, president and Web master of newgrounds.com. "It's really time and place.

"The Numa Numa dance," he said, sounding impressed. "You see it and you kind of impulsively have to send it to your friends."

There is no way to pinpoint the fancy of the Internet, but in an effort to gauge Brolsma's allure, the Numa Numa dance was shown to a classroom of eighth-graders at Saddle Brook Middle School -- the same middle school that he attended, in fact.

The students' reactions ranged from envious to unimpressed. "That's stupid," one of them said. "What else does he do?" a second asked. A third was a bit more generous: "I should make a video and become famous."

The teacher, Susan Sommer, remembered Brolsma. He was a quiet kid, she said, with a good sense of humor and a flair for technology.

"Whenever there were computer problems, Gary and Corey would fix them for the school," she said.

His friends said Brolsma has always had a creative side. He used to make satirical Prozac commercials on cassette tapes, for instance. He used to publish a newspaper with print so small you couldn't read it with the naked eye.

"He was always very out there -- he's always been ambitious," said Frank Gallo, a former classmate. "And he's a big guy, but he's never been ashamed."

Another friend, Randal Reiman, said: "I've heard a lot of people say it's (the video) not that impressive -- it doesn't have talent. But I say, 'Who cares?' "

These days, Brolsma shuttles between the house and his job at Staples, his family said. He is distraught, embarrassed. His grandmother, Margaret Telkes, quoted him as saying, just the other day: "I want this to end."

And yet the work lives on. Fulp, the Web master, continues to receive online homages to the Numa Numa dance. The most recent showed what seemed to be a class of computer students singing in Romanian and, in unison, waving their hands.

Reiman figures the larger world has finally caught on to Gary Brolsma. "He's been entertaining us for years, so it's kind of like the rest of the world is realizing that Gary can make you smile."