Gone Krumpin'

Ok, for parents and grandparents alike, there is a distinct possibility that you will have absolutely no idea what this post is about. I suggest a 'smile and nod' approach.

First of all just let me state that with the passing of my fuzzy friend, last week was quite shit. I'm still sad, but I'm concentrating on working and organizing my future travel plans in hopes of keeping my mind off it. The roommates have been pretty good to me as well ("Open wide Meggy... here comes the Chardonney express!").

So, in the spirit of moving on: I got a pretty cool assignment this morning. Anyone whose been keeping up with the lastest trends in Hip Hop, has a tendancy to watch music videos on occasion, or caught last season of America's Next Top Model, should know what krumping is.

For those who don't let me give you an image: Picture an African-American male, most likely dressed up in a clown suit, flaling around as though he may have been recently electrocuted. That's krumping. A more official definition is "an eratic, free-form style of dance." Dance? That might be stretching it.

Anyway, Tommy the Clown and the Hip Hop Clowns (the ones who made an appearance on Cycle 6 of ANTM) are coming to New Zealand this week. They have performances in Auckland and Wellington, and have made plans to spend a day in Tauranga providing "krumping workshops" to a few area schools. It should be an awesome show, especially since the morning workshop begins with a Maori dance performance in order to give our visiting krumpers some local culture.

Jo-Marie, our head reporter, gave the assignment to me because I was the only one in the newsroom who knew what it was. After I accepted it and explained it to everyone else, the jealousy level rose a notch or two. Gotta love it when the new kid steals the cool story.

For a more indepth look and Tommy and his krumpin' style, check out the Tommy the Clown website and click on the video. It's quite an education.

Bah, I should probably get to work. I've got crazy amounts of stories to write or prepare for at the moment, including a "day in the life of a bus driver" piece (a follow-up on a story we did last week about a 10 yr old who got kicked off the bus on a busy road 3km from home because she was misbehaving), a piece on the 25th anniversary of the Falkland Islands war, one about a pair of internationally renoun tango dancers making an appearance at the local jazz festival (I didn't ask...), and finally a story about three generations of the same family going to Mt. Maunganui Primary School (which may not seem like a big deal, until you realise that at the time the grandfather went to the school, there were probably no more than a few hundred people living in the city, very few of whom are still around).

Anyway, krumping isn't til tomorrow, but I'm really looking forward to it. There are definitely some interesting an often quirky perks to this job!