So far, the holiday
flash mobs I’ve featured
have been unsponsored. (Well, the LAX
one might be quasi-official, but I didn’t see any ‘sponsored by’ indicators.)
So here are a couple with corporate connections. Interestingly—they’re both
from airlines.
This comes to us from a carrier I personally have
never heard of. WestJet livened up things for late-night passengers at the
airport in Calgary.
Now, I don’t know that it meets the criteria for
organic flash mobs, inasmuch as participants in these phenomena are meant to
appear suddenly, do their singing/dancing schtick and then melt back into the
crowd. But it’s certainly stylish & entertaining. & the passengers on
the red-eye headed to Toronto looked a lot happier than you’d ordinarily
expect.
Plus—that whole Blue Santa thing: extra points for
the style statement.
This one features flight attendants of Cathay
Pacific strutting their stuff for charity. I’ve got to say that considering
these men & women have an actual, you know, day job, they do remarkably
well at pulling this off.
I like the woman pushing the service cart through
the aisle of flight attendants, flinging packets of peanuts around. Plus—they totally
get into it when the Macarena comes up, as it apparently usually does in an
airport flash mob setting.
Today’s holiday flash mobbery comes to us from
airports—since airports feature heavily in many of our holiday plans.
The first one takes place in Orlando International,
and is “Hallelujah”. It sounds to me like the singers get out of synch for part
of it, but that has to be one of the hazards involved in doing a choral work in
this kind of venue. Still—props for pulling it off.
Now this second one—well, it’s going to take you a
while to get through it, but well worth it. It comes from LAX, & let me
just say this: those baggage handlers & cleaning staff got some moves on them.
Crank up the volume & join them. You know you
want to.
Continuing the theme of holiday flash mobs, today I’ll
move away from “Hallelujah”.
This one, at a Connecticut mall, is a little more
than just a bunch of people showing up to sing or dance. It’s by a group called
RedefineChristmas.org; you’ll see what they’re redefining.
For another kind of surprise, here are a saxophonist
& a couple hundred of his closest friends from the University of Minnesota
school of music. They showed up one day at the Carlson School of Management to
show the MBAs-in-the-making that there’s more to life than ROI.
I can’t tell you how sad I am to hear of the death
of Daniel
Inouye. The Senator who represented the people of Hawaii since 1963, died
today at age 88.
The man served the people of the United States
pretty much all his adult life. He lost his arm in action in Tuscany against
the Germans in 1945 as a member of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
For his courage truly above and beyond, Inouye was awarded the Congressional
Medal of Honor (initially the Distinguished Service Cross). Following his
recovery from his wounds, he earned degrees in political science and law, and
began his political career.
Inouye absolutely embodied the concept of public
service. In an organization marked these days for veniality, pettiness and
rabid ideology, he never lost sight of the greater good. I can’t think of him
as a “politician” when the term applies to the likes of our Congress.
I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but I was
expecting another week between now & Christmas. Someone apparently sneaked
in & burgled it while I wasn’t looking.
At any rate, it’s time for holiday flash mobs. First
up—because you can never have too much “Hallelujah Chorus” is a couple from
Ireland.
This one, from a South Dublin mall, is remarkable to
me because the setting is so depressingly like every mall in the US. Couldn’t
they have built something not quite so vanilla?
(I was also struck by the yahoo who rode the
escalator down with his/her kid in one of those fold-up strollers. Apparently
Irish yuppies have no more sense of child protection than American ones—can’t
be bothered to take the elevator, just jam the rear axle on the tread &
hope that disaster doesn’t strike.)
Okay—I’m being a bit churlish there.
So by way of atonement, here’s one from Cork—apparently
in the university dining hall.
