Gary Brolsma
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gary Brolsma (otherwise known as the 'Fat Dutch Kid') was born January 14, 1986. A resident of the state of New Jersey, USA, Gary gained worldwide attention after posting onto the internet, at the end of 2004, a webcam video of himself miming to the song "Dragostea din tei" by Moldovan pop band O-Zone. It was known as Numa Numa, after a phrase in the song, and became an Internet phenomenon watched by millions of people, leading to mainstream media exposure for him. He initially withdrew from the attention, but returned with a band and a new video New Numa in the late summer of 2006 and began to do interviews.
Contents |
[edit] History
Gary Brolsma has stated [1] that he first discovered the song in the Japanese Flash animation [2]. His own Flash-based video, showing him lip-synching the song energetically on his webcam, brought the Numa Numa phenomenon to the US (video). He first published his "Numa Numa Dance" on the Newgrounds site on December 6, 2004, where it has since been seen more than 14 million times.([3]) Since then it has been reproduced on hundreds of other websites and blogs. One misconception was that Brolsma is Dutch: the video showed up on several sites with the title "Funny Fat Dutch Boy" (although his surname is Dutch, he is from the United States and the song is Romanian).
He also created tweaked variants of the video since it became popular. One version also contains some puns, among them pictures of "feta cheese" during the lyric "fericirea" ("happiness") and a LEGO representation of Bob Ross during the singer's words: "sunt eu, Picasso" ("it's me, Picasso"). Other versions include a "Showdown," between him and a German Kid getting angry at his computer. The video also had a brief cameo by the Star Wars Kid.
He made appearances on ABC's Good Morning America, NBC's The Tonight Show and VH1's Best Week Ever, but then became uncomfortable with the amount of attention.[4] According to The New York Times, he was an "unwilling and embarrassed Web celebrity." [1] He stopped taking phone calls from the media; he cancelled an appearance on NBC's Today Show on February 17, 2005; and he did not cooperate with The New York Times for their February 26, 2005 article about him.
A story in The Believer (June/July 2006) explored the song's spread and global homogenization, while arguing that Brolsma's video "singlehandedly justifies the existence of webcams . . . It’s a movie of someone who is having the time of his life, wants to share his joy with everyone, and doesn’t care what anyone else thinks."
[edit] New Numa
On September 8, 2006, a New Numa video was posted on Newgrounds, and promoted on a dedicated website, NewNuma.com. This was an unexpected move, though one which he had been urged to make by fans of his original video.[5] The video was produced by Experience Studios (Seattle, WA). It features Brolsma and his garage band, The Nowadays, lip-synching and dancing to New Numa.[6] The song is a repeated Russian children's rhyme and performed in heavily accented and barely understandable Russian by Chad Russell, a singer/songwriter from Fridley, MN, for producer and DJ, Variety Beats, on the BeLive label.
Раз, два, три, четыре, пять / Вышел зайчик погулять / Пиф-паф, ой-ой-ой / Умирает зайчик мой.
(Rough translation: One, two, three, four, five / Rabbit comes out for a walk / Pif-paf [sound of riffle], oh-oh-oh / My rabbit dies)
New Numa has had mixed reactions, much as its predecesor did. Some of those who have viewed it find it an amusing and entertaining video, and are happy to see Gary back to Numa again. Others complain that New Numa contains too much style and too little substance, focusing more on visual flair than on Gary's personality, the opposite of which being what made the original Numa so popular.
To coincide with the video release, a $45,000 contest, in which entrants submit their own user-created one- to ten-minute long "New Numa" music video, was launced on the website. The contest is currently slated to end in March 2007.
There will be 2 winners, stated on Gary's NewNuma site itself, with a charge of $0.99 for the music needed to produce the video. All he needs is at least 45,000 people to take part for the prize net.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ "Internet Fame Is a Cruel Mistress for a Numa Numa Dancer", The New York Times Metro Saturday, 2005-02-26, p. B6.
[edit] External links
- Numa Numa Dance on Newgrounds - Numa Numa Dance where it was originally submitted.
- Dustball's New Numa Animation - Animated version of "New Numa" by Dustball.
- NewNuma.com - Gary Brolsma's new site for his new video
- Gary Brolsma's MySpace profile - Gary Brolsma's MySpace profile
- The Nowadays MySpace profile - The Nowadays MySpace profile
