Friday Morning Videos: Running With the Night

It’s been a long time, Lerlines, and for that I apologize. Things have been busy in the Burgh. But I’m going to make it up to you.

You see, about 12 years ago–yes, 12–after many hours breaking into random song at a local beer garden, three friends formed a little comedy group. It was the world’s first all-girl boy band, called 2Good4U, and their first show, Dance Dance Dance Explosion, featured such pop classics as “You Didn’t Do It Again” (yes, THAT; you didn’t do THAT for me), “Young” (why should men get all the pedophile songs when there are so many hot teenaged Boy Scouts?), and “Why Won’t You Go Away” (featuring the unforgettable line, “Stop sending your artwork.”).

The show also featured a number of San Francisco then-rising stars, including Kitten on the Keys, who is now pretty much at the pinnacle of the worldwide burlesque circuit, and Robbie Cantrell, who now goes by Rob Cantrell and was recently seen smoking Stephen Colbert’s shoe. (Robbie was especially on that night, telling your very own Melinda that she had to perform certain acts on her boyfriend after the show in apology, due to an unplanned nipslip compounded by the filthy lyrics in “You Didn’t Do It Again.” Her boyfriend is now her husband of seven years and father of her daughter, so I guess the aftershow party went well.)

In any case, at the end of DDDE, as we called it, we members of 2Good4U–yes, your very own SPM Lerlines–gave ourselves a gift, and that gift was a choreographed, lipsynced dance to “Running With the Night.” If I’d gone to school in Nashua, NH, I feel confident we’d have performed the exact same number for the high school talent show.

As it was, we totally rocked it. And we danced with trenchcoats. And also fedoras.

A few notes about this video:

It is Lionel Richie’s best video, and best song. Never have visuals so matched the tune; the song sounds like dark city streets, fedoras, cigarettes and alleys, back when all those things were sexy.  “Hello” fans can suck my silver cigarette filter.

Sexy cigarette smokers. Those were the days.

At the one minute mark, when Lionel shows up, you can hear the gate open. Brilliant.

Creak!

Everyone dances. Everyone. Every second. Bob Fossesque step-toe-limp-hand dances. We didn’t have youtube back when we choreographed our dance, but you know what? We came pretty fucking close. See 1:30.

We let it all hang out.

It also includes a sequence that encapsulates my fondest dream, and pretty much foretells every flash mob, ever: that me and a bunch of elegantly dressed strangers will stride dancingly out into moving traffic and everyone stops and we dance and it’s spectacular and awesome. You understand me, Lionel Richie.

DANCE.

And then I think they’re all in jail, I guess for stopping traffic, but that shit happens sometimes when you’re running with the night. And so they all stride up the steps and crash a wedding, and engage in a dance off, and Lionel Richie is all smooth and snappy. Like, actually snapping his fingers. And the most gorgeous wedding guest in the room, clad in pouf sleeves and massive hair, who is inexplicably dateless at this wedding? She knows the dance, too.

The OG wedding flash mob.

And the bride and groom are all WTF? But they keep dancing and then Lionel OH NO YOU DIDN’T Richie totes gets the bride in on the party, and there’s one white lady dancing badly, and then everyone is dancing through the rip-roaring guitar solo, and then they’re all dancing in a parking garage because why not, and then Lionel saunters off and is all, “My work here is done.”

P.S. What happened to 2Good4U? I left the group, and they brought on two brilliantly talented women, and went on to produce such songs as “Killing Me Softly With Pillows,” “Hell is for Bridesmaids,” and “Mudslides.”