Crank dat!

Sometimes the best things in life don’t make much sense. If you are baffled, just sit back and enjoy the ride. \nThis is my outlook on the latest dance craze sweeping the nation off its feet: Soulja Boy’s “Crank Dat (Soulja Boy).” The number of clips on the Internet of amateurs and professionals doing the “soulja boy” is too high to count. Then there’s the bizarre wave of “remixes” in which “Crank Dat” plays over videos of TV shows such as Barney, Family Guy and SpongeBob Square Pants. When Samuel L. Jackson, one of the coolest guys out there, learns how to do the “soulja boy” on the BET show, “106th and Park,” you know it’s a phenomenon. \nThe song itself is not too different from your typical catchy rap song. The lyrics describe Soulja Boy in the acts of “supermanning” and “supersoaking,” “cranking dat Robocop” then proceeding to the climax of “cranking dat Soulja Boy.” \nI don’t know what he’s talking about. What does Soulja Boy have to do with a 1987 film about a someone who’s half human, half robot, all cop?\nIt doesn’t matter. I can’t help but watch numerous YouTube videos that teach me how to do the intricate dance steps that accompany the song. I couldn’t keep up with clips of dancers working the “crank” in their living rooms, so I switched to a clip of Soulja Boy himself explaining step by step how to do the dance in an empty swimming pool. \n I’m always down for dancing. I do, however, find my freestyle white-girl moves more fun than anything else. I’m also a bit too uncoordinated to learn synchronized dance moves. Yet there’s something about Soulja Boy that makes me want to crank it just like him. \nMaybe it’s because I’ve spent a lifetime freestyling and it’s time for a change, at least during this one song. Maybe it’s the accumulation over a summer of hearing the electronic club duo Justice telling me to do the “D.A.N.C.E.” That song, my summer anthem, was an ode to Michael Jackson. Doing the “soulja boy” could potentially rival “D.A.N.C.E,” my summer anthem, and become my staple dance.\nPerhaps it’s because I felt taken by the story of a big-haired girl from Baltimore in the recent summer flick, “Hairspray.” She just wanted to dance on her favorite TV show, alongside her black friends. (I guess she wanted to do a little more than dance with Zac Effron’s character, but that’s neither here nor there.) \nWe should appreciate the fact that nowadays it doesn’t matter who you are if you want to dance; you just have to be talented. Soulja Boy proved this in his competition for backup dancers. The performances will begin today on TRL. Soulja Boy just wants you to get dancing, and who cares about the rest?\nNow if only Soulja Boy could stop by Bloomington, I could show him some of my moves, too.