Donut Dance Break - March Xness Edition

Hello my donut-loving friends! I hope everyone is doing well & have been eating some wonderful baked goods since the last time we chatted. I have been making my way through the Twin Cities donut scene & have consistently been pleasantly surprised. I have found a favorite (Donut Hut in Little Canada!) but the real joy of living in a metropolitan area is that I can choose a donut to fit my mood. Sometimes I want a silly little cake donut—other times I want a decadent monstrosity. I can go on little pilgrimages—I can check out the chaotic bustle of downtown Minneapolis to try to get a Coffee Cake donut in the Skyway.

A common question I get is “if the world ended tomorrow, what donut would you eat”. The answer, undoubtedly, is a Boston Cream donut from the Dutch Farmer’s Market in Flemington, New Jersey. One—it is quite large, and I’d want a final meal of some substance. It also provides a comfort: both being a nostalgic food of childhood, but also of a Boston Cream (the name of this here newsletter!), a donut that when done well, you really can’t go wrong. My other answers vary in regards to what I would do at the end of the world, but that one seems pretty consistent.

I say all of this to talk to you about something else that is near and dear to my heart: 2000s dance music.

Every few years I participate in March Xness, a March Madness-style bracket where essayist write about one of their favorite songs. The essays/songs are pitted against each other and the public votes on their favorite. I am happy to report that this year’s theme is 2000s dance music & I am representing my good friends LMFAO and their song Party Rock Anthem.

I unironically love this song. It’s so joyful, unapologetic, and, much like a Boston Cream donut, carries a great deal of weight & substance beyond first glance. It may seem like empty calories, but anything that brings us joy can’t truly be empty, yes?

I’ve attached the essay in this newsletter, but I ask of you to please vote for the essay here—the longer I stay in the competition, the more eyes there are on my essay. And that’s what writing (well the publishing aspect) is all about, yeah?

Please vote for me here & check out the other fantastic essays on total bangers. And enjoy the essay below: https://marchxness.com/thegames#/1strd-lmfaovspeaches/

In March of 2012, a short documentary film by Invisible Children, Inc. was uploaded to YouTube. It was a highly dramatized and stylistically beautiful plea to the world at large: we must make Joseph Kony, a Ugandan cult leader and war criminal, go viral. The alleged purpose of this is to unify the world to dedicating themselves to capturing Joseph Kony and making sure he atones for his crimes. The reactions were swift—millions were encouraged to purchase Kony 2012 bracelets, as well as hang up posters across cities to raise awareness. Oprah herself tweeted:

Thanks tweeps for sending me info about ending #LRAviolence . I am aware. Have supported with $'s and voice and will not stop.#KONY2012

Through celebrity support, Kony 2012 became YouTube’s first video to receive over one million likes on the platform, and therefore the most liked YouTube video in history. In less than two weeks, millions of people had clicked play on the video to be greeted by the sounds of Nine Inch Nails’ “02 Ghosts I” and these words on a black background:

Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come

Eighteen days later, the title of most-liked YouTube video was usurped by a different video with a similar aesthetic beginning. In dark red Impact typeface, it read:

On March 1, LMFAO’s Redfoo and Sky Blu slipped into comas after excessive party rocking.

The next morning, their new single “Party Rock Anthem” was released to the world.

In 2012, the world was ending for the last time. It was supposed to be the end of calendars—something that the Mayans predicted, apparently—or at the very least we would be spiritually awakened before earth crashed into a mythical planet, triggering the end of something and the beginning of something else.

As one would expect with the end of the world, there was simultaneously a loud and dumb reaction alongside contemplative reflection—as if this could truly be the end of things. That regrets that we carried in 2011 and those early months of 2012 would become permanent. All of those promises to become a better person would drift away the second that we got clear enough of the doomsday date—accounting for basic clerical error, the slowing down of the earth’s rotation, various gravitational pulls.
But for the most part, the end of the world in 2012 was FUN. This was the party apocalypse—apocalypse Carnivale, apocalypse Fat Tuesday. It was filled with blue iMessage bubbles wondering if this would be the last night of our lives. It was reflected in our music and dancing as well: from Britney seeing the sunlight (or incoming nuclear winter) and not stopping, to Usher Raymond telling us to down drinks like there’s no tomorrow before burning the roof of the club down, to Pitbull and Ne-Yo imploring everyone to grab someone sexy and tell them “hey,” because we might not get tomorrow. We are in on the joke and the joke is that we’re all gonna die.
What is it about wanting dance immortality you need to acknowledge your own mortality? To be fair, the 2010s were unleashing a new phase in ephemera—the concept of “going viral” was really taking form, as social media expanded its audiences: throwing plenty of material at the wall and seeing if it stuck. To that end, mortality seemed like a throw-away pick-up line in the club, and was utilized as such: how else are you going to get your love to have one more drink, one more dance, one more move to the afterparty if by not insisting that tomorrow is not promised? The threat of the end of the world can only be utilized so much until it begins to ring hollow—no one truly believed that someone like Britney, or Usher, or Mr. Worldwide were concerned with the sun not rising up the following morning. They are blessed—here to live in the moment, but also with a full awareness that the moment will be followed by other moments; a mosaic of bliss and glitter and bottle service and Dubai in the morning. As a result, the urgency rings false—the beats a little too sparkly, the crooning a little too measured.

LMFAO has no such issues.

In LMFAO’s view, the end is already here—there is no anticipatory nebulous concept of the apocalypse. Instead, it has come on swiftly, and, more importantly, they are the ones to have caused it. They have flown too close to the party rocking sun, causing both of them to collapse from exhaustion, furthered by creating a song in a lab that turns everyone into Melbourne Shufflin’ party monsters. When the duo wakes up, they are confronted with their deeds—a world where everyone is dancing in the streets, dressed in neon t-shirts, skinny jeans, and animal print sunglasses—a nightmare of their own making and their own personal apocalypse.

And isn’t that the point? All of our fears about the end of the world are typically tied dramatically to our greatest fears—some believe the world ends in fire, others in ice, but it tends to lend itself to the person experiencing the trauma. If you fear God, God is coming. Climate change. Aliens.

Instead, LMFAO appears to fear themselves—in the video, they are ultimately having to pretend to party rock rather than actually party rocking in an attempt to blend in with the brainwashed masses. It’s a prescient concept—one that predicts a future where everyone is attempting to go viral with less than organic content. We all can’t help to have a tiny British child with an affinity to bite their older brothers. Instead, the landscape gets flooded with KONYs—deliberate attempts to go viral in an attempt to raise “awareness” for its creators. LMFAO has seen the end, they have brought it upon all of us, and they are dancing through the consequences.

And so, there is an odd earnestness to their act. Make no mistake about it, Party Rock Anthem is dumb as hell. But no one would claim that partying is solely a stupid activity—there is value in dressing up in animal print vests and drinking jägerbombs, lemon drops, buttery nipples, Jell-O shots, kamikazes, and three wise men with friends and total strangers, and possibly a robot, and also a very bored blonde British lady who was in a knock-off European version of the Pussycat Dolls. There’s value to the song as well: it helped re-usher big room EDM music into the mainstream—outlandish synths, multiple hooks, and frenetic beat drops.

In November of 2011, my world ended—at least in that very specific and minute moment: Alabama had lost a football game. Not just any football game, mind you, “the game of the century,” a 9-6 slogfest against hated rivals LSU that ended in overtime on an ugly field goal. I was scheduled to DJ after the game at the delightful Tuscaloosa dive bar that just had the energy sucked out of it. I looked over at the bouncer who would be setting up the PA with a sheepish trepidation—he shrugged and said “fuck it, let’s dance.”

And we did. Not because the world was ending, or had ended, but because the world is constantly ending over and over—a constant stream of doomsdays that somehow we find our way through until the next one appears. There are days when they are layered—ends of the world strung out end over end until they eventually loop back upon themselves. We have already lost our minds, but we are willing to lose them once again as we shuffle through whatever it is the despair presents to us on any given day. In that sense, party rock can be seen as an ominous nebulous darkness—it is in the house tonight, and will be every single night—an acknowledgment of the absurdity of the potential of the end, rather than the end itself. There is little left to do but to just have a good time: just being the key word.

LMFAO had already given themselves into the end—they stopped making music in 2012, entering an indefinite hiatus. In that sense, LMFAO figured out how to be both temporary and eternal in a way that seemingly unlocks the mystery of humanity—the desire to both be here in the moment with all of our friends attempting to do the shuffle on Vodka-Red Bull soaked floors, but also above it all, peering down with all of the wisdom of the angels. The seven trumpets giving way to the voice of God, the Devil, Oprah, whomever singing “Party Rock is in the Hoooooouse Toniiiiight.”. But fear not: the end of the world can’t last forever.

Thanks again for reading & voting! Everybody just have a good time.