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Shut Up
On Monday afternoon I heard some frantically excited crowd-screaming and sporadic clapping outside. At first I figured it was just another nothing I want to look at over in the park.
Turns out I was right about the park, wrong about wanting to look.
There was a stage set up catty-cornered to the intersection of Park and 17th, with piles and piles of pretty gift boxes set up, and a dressing room tent across from that. Okay, semi-interesting. Maybe they’re a big brand giving something away? Then where’s the big brand signage?
I kept it in the back of my mind to investigate, and ended up leaving my office for the front window another five or ten times to check it out. All but one of those trips found a bunch of pedestrians gawking at nothing on the stage, which I found curious, since they were still wooing at intervals.
Two girls stood off to the side, looking like they were maybe a little nervous to get up and say what had to be said. But the crowd was too small (and not angry enough) for a typical rally, and the stage was too well put together to be a charity event, and again, missing signage for a brand event.
The last time I went back to check was after a major howling, and while I missed the action, I now knew the source: it was “Stacy and Clinton of What Not to Wear!” Nobody looked poorly dressed enough to merit an intervention, but maybe I missed their target. What I didn’t miss was how the WNTW sausage is made.
I stuck around to watch as a producer stood on stage next to a camera, and instructed the crowd to agree. The masses nodded enthusiastically, some even shaking their heads horizontally in such thorough agreement. Then, he asked them to show their disapproval. Like tennis, all the heads went enthusiastically back and forth. Finally, he said, “what would you do with A THOUSAND DOLLARS??!” They all woo’d.
And that’s your B-roll, ladies and gentlemen.
I did notice that off to the side, Stacy and Clinton were super magnanimous minor celebs, posing for photos for many, many minutes on end with any joker who tapped one of them on the shoulder. They’d usually assume the same pose, flanking the stranger, their hands meeting happily behind the back of their photo friend.
[Aww.]