What’s the difference between someone who is having a seizure and someone who is attempting to clog while inebriated? Turns out not too much.

You may or may not have noticed, but lately the American television stations have been flooded by a wave of dance related reality shows. We’ve been treated to such crap as “So You Think You Can Dance”, “Dancing With the Stars”, “America’s Best Dance Crew”, and “Superstars of Dance”. They do their best to showcase all styles that the country and world have to offer and lately I’ve noticed that forms of traditional Celtic clogging are moving to the forefront. Yes, that’s right. Clogging. It’s the dance where people rapidly move their feet, stomp to the rhythm, stand up perfectly straight, and keep their hands pinned at their sides. I also like to refer to them as “corpse marionettes”, as that’s how they look to me.

Often times when cloggers perform, it’s with a large, identically dressed group where they all stand in line and twitch their legs rhythmically. It occurred to me that while on these dance shows, the cloggers could never in a million years get away with dancing while intoxicated. I think that we would notice if the guy on the far left of the line had a few too many cocktails before hitting the stage.

He would step out of time with the rest of his crew and unavoidably look like an uncoordinated adult playing hopscotch for the first time. If he’s lucky enough to maintain his equilibrium and make it to the end of the routine, he would celebrate as though it were a flawless performance. He may even point to the sky and kiss his crucifix necklace.

At seeing this we would first express concern… Oh no! Is he having a stroke? Then we would try to be sympathetic towards the situation… Aw, they let the “special” guy dance on TV, how sweet! Finally we would settle on the awful, unavoidable truth… Oh man, that guy is hammered!

After their routine is over and that guy has unknowingly squashed his teams’ hopes of ever winning the cash prize, he will be banished to his hometown, never to live down the experience. However, in a strange twist of fate he will become employed with a pest control company. I mean, someone has to step on all those bugs.

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