Internets, it has been a NIGHT.  Let me tell you.  I mean…I don’t even know what I mean, that’s what a night it’s been.  See, this blog post was originally going to be about those silly shoes I’ve seen cropping up around town, the one with the toes all individually packaged and looking very uncomfortable.  I don’t like them.  So I was going to tell you about that.  BUT INSTEAD, you get this.  And it’s much better.  Oh so much better.

Tonight I was one of several thousand Portland residents to witness the most amazing, baffling, anticlimactic social media experiment in history.  Not to mention an epic #FAIL moment for Mr. Dave Chappelle, comedian, and an opportunity for me to publish porn for the first time.  Yes me!  I’m beginning my meteoric rise to porn industry domination!  Or not.

Let’s take a little journey along this story, shall we?

So I heard rumblings in the Twittersphere of some Dave Chappelle something or other.  Seeing as I was DJing tonight, and that it may or may not have been my last time DJing at Tonic, and my pal and DJ teacher @mrballistic was gonna show up, I was a bit preoccupied with other more relevant stuff.

Incidentally, I’m still not exactly sure if I’m DJing again there in two weeks.  Either way, there will certainly be more gigs.  I’ll keep you posted.

So I did my DJ thing.  There was technical difficulties not of my own doing (Helps if you don’t give your speakers to unreliable folk, just sayin’) but the night went off without too much trouble.  And now, @mrballistic and his friend @jetstream were talking about heading down to the square for this Dave Chappelle thing.

Huh.  Dave Chappelle thing?  My set over, I dived into the stweam (twitter stream! ha.) to see what the hubbub was about.  Mind you, it’s right around 11:00pm.  What’s this?  Rumours are abounding that Dave Chappelle is going to do a free show at the Pioneer Courthouse Square tonight?  And there’s thousands of people down at the square already?

Well.  This bears witnessing, I thought.  No really, I really did think that.  I thought, and I quote: “Well.  This bears witnessing.”  I really think like that sometimes.  And then sometimes I think “Dude I gotta check that shit out STAT!!!!!  ZOMG!!!!!”  Ahem.  Anyway.

So, impulsive chick that I am, I hop in my car and instead of heading home as I intended, I headed Down Town.

Parked without too much difficulty pretty close to the square.  Now normally, around 11pm on a Tuesday, things are pretty quiet in downtown pdx.  But tonight, there were cars and people wandering around.  Not a lot, but certainly more than normal.  That is, until I saw the square.

IT. WAS. PACKED.  Literally, thousands of people were there.  A madhouse.  Throngs of people.  Gaggles of people.  Groups and gangs and masses of people.  All at the square, at 11:30ish, on a freakin TUESDAY.  There was a stage in the middle, and people had climbed everthing imaginable to get a good view of that stage.  They climbed chairs, walls, onto the starbucks, onto the random sculptures, onto the empty foodcarts, anything that could barely (certainly not safely in some cases) hold the weight of a human had a human on it.

Whoa.

Ok so.  Because most of these people didn’t really *know* that this was happening for *sure*, after about 45 minutes of waiting with no sign, people either a. started to leave or b. got cranky.  I mean, there was a lot of people all crammed up against the stage, lots of drinking I’m sure, and I seriously got a contact high from one spot I tried to get a good view.

Now, there had been no substantiated evidence that this really WAS going to  happen.  This huge crowd was the result of rumour, speculation and hearsay, from Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, and all the other social networks that are changing the face of our world and our existence these days.

Think about that for a second.  Thousands of people, at the square at (now) midnight, all because of rumour on social networks.

A-freakin-mazing.  Really.  Really!

Well finally, he shows up.

Here.  Video:

And now for the part when I become a porn director.

If you watched the video up there, you’ll see people started yelling about not being able to hear anything.  Pretty much he came out with a mic attached to a tiny little amp, and no one further away that about 20 feet from the stage in the direction the amp was pointing could hear.  Not anything.  Nothing.  So a crowd, waiting for an hour for this guy to show, he shows, and now 95% of the crowd can see him, but can’t hear him.

That’s when the FAIL began.

Fortunately at first, there was a bit of a distraction.  And now is where I become a porn director.

Suddenly I notice three people standing on top of the roof of the starbucks.  One girl, two guys.  And the girl and one of the guys had no shirt on.

And they they started a striptease.  All three of them.  On top of the Starbucks.  In front of thousands.

Here.  Video:

Uh….huh.  I’ll be making the porn beeelions soon, hangin with my porn peeps, doin my porn thang.  And with all my new porn connections, maybe then I can publish this little short story I’ve been working on…

Ahem.  Right.  Back to the thing.

This little distraction couldn’t last with all the Portland Police on the scene.  No, our men and women in blue were ON IT.

Except that I saw those same nekkid folks, somewhat nekkid again, down in the fountain pool a few minutes later.

Again with the video:

So now we’re back to a crowd, waiting for an hour for this guy to show, he shows, and while 95% of the crowd can see him, very few can hear him.

Apparently there was some discussion down near the stage that a sound system was being figured out.  This figuring lasted about another hour.

So there was a lot of crowdsourcing the running of speaker cords and electrical cords and umbilical cords and all sorts of cords running over and under and around the crowd.  And then it was all hooked up, and ready to go and….

Nothing.  NOTHING.  That’s right.  Dave is still using the tiny amp, no one can hear him, and people are starting to drift away slowly.

The culprit?

So after a bit more of this, suddenly we all realize that Dave Has Left The Building.  Or the Square, in this case.

I’ll leave the analysis of exactly how, why and when and what types of #FAIL this was to folks in the morning.  It’s 4am, and I’m beat.

Thanks Dave.  Not sure for what.  Something to blog about, I guess?  I hear that the people down at the stage thought you were pretty funny.