Exacting a Cause for Wonder
When I woke up this past Thursday (the 1st of December), I was excited to see a plethora of comments on my Facebook page regarding the skill that would launch my blog. After a moment of deliberation, I decided to leave the choice up to a third party. I didn’t believe I could be impartial in choosing a skill.
Shortly thereafter, I was told that the first skill I would be learning was krumping.
While the term krumping was one I had heard before, it was not one I knew anything about. At best, I would have been able to inform someone asking about krumping that it was a type of dancing. Beyond that, I knew nothing. Someone could ‘kill me off’ and I would have had no idea that it happened.
Over the course of the 72 hours following this past Thursday afternoon, I immersed myself in everything related to krumping. I began reading article after article about the krump sub-culture in Los Angeles. I watched Rize, a documentary about the origins of krump. I subjected myself to YouTube video after YouTube video after YouTube video of krumping for beginners.
On Thursday evening, I spent a solid forty minutes working on chest pops. Chest pops and nothing else. I stood in my bathroom and watched my chest pops look more like chest snaps. Eventually, my ribs started to ache, and my chest was feeling like I had just finished a p90x workout.
On Friday, I was beginning to feel the pressure of my assignment. I knew I was down to 48 hours, and I hadn’t even mastered the basic steps of krump (stomp, chest pop, arm swing). I spent the early part of the day baby sitting, and while it was incredibly fun to play with a 1 year old all day, it did prevent me from getting any serious krump time.
My chest was beginning to tighten. I had less than 48 hours to teach myself how to krump.
On Friday night, I spent four non-stop hours practicing my krumping. By the end of my ‘labbing’ session, I was exhausted. I had gone through 4 bottles of water and my clothes were soaked from perspiration. If chest popping for forty minutes left me feeling like I had done an intense chest routine, krumping for four hours had me thinking I was training for a marathon. Every muscle in my body was worn out.
Prior to taking up this challenge, I had consented to helping a good friend move into a new apartment in New York. While I worried that the time spent on the move would cut into valuable krumping hours, I saw a chance to do something very entertaining.
Below is a link of what happened in New Jersey. Sorry to make you click all over the place to watch, but wordpress wants $99 for me to do that and if you read this blog, you know that I’m unemployed. Anywho, I suggest watching this video before reading the rest of the blog.
Mostly, what I’ve learned over the course of this challenge is that you can’t learn how to krump in 3 days. After watching the above video, you most likely saw weak stomps, uncontrolled arm swings, and chest pops that lack explosion.
Over the course of these three days, I gained an immense amount of respect for those that krump with style. For those that ‘buck-up,’ ‘taunt,’ and ‘kill-off.’ I mentioned in my last post that I didn’t think I would be able to krump without looking ridiculous. My guess is that my meager amount of dance instruction and lack of rhythm put me at an extreme disadvantage in learning how to krump.
While this style of dance is supposed to be largely improvisational, I felt that since I only had three days, a bit of choreography would not be frowned upon. Unfortunately, even with choreographed moves, I was epically bad at krumping. I just couldn’t get out of my head.
So, in reflecting back on my first skill, I suppose it’s evident that I was unsuccessful in truly learning how to krump. I know way more about it, and I plan on continuing to practice so that one day, I can insert myself into a battle and kill-off someone, but that day is certainly not today. I’m 0 for 1. Win or lose, I’m looking forward to learning my next skill.
Check back later to participate in a brand new poll that decides what I’ll be learning to do next!
Also, I’d like to throw out a big thank you to my camera man, cinematographer, executive producer, producer, and editor, Dan Sakamoto. Thanks, Dan!
Who is Mark Mathleton? 