I Feel Young Today

Direct youtube link


Back in 1987, I was trying to break into standup comedy, and I spent a lot of time with a few other young comics that were working the same clubs as me. One day, one of them announced that he'd heard that musician Peter Himmelman was going to be shooting a music video at a bar and live stage club in downtown Minneapolis, and there was an open call for extras to play the audience. We all had that day free, and there was kind of a hope that this might give one of us some kind of a break or something. At a minimum, we'd get a free copy of Himmelman's new CD, Gematria, and the food was supposed to be catered. So, yeah, I was in the crowd for an entire day as the director shot, and reshot scene after scene for the song, I Feel Young Today. This was in the middle of the winter, and the very last part of the shooting involved standing outside in line in front of the bar in sub-zero temperatures for 15-20 minutes. I've always liked the cold, so that part didn't bother me.

The years went by, and I always wondered how the video turned out, because I never saw it when it was supposed to air on MTV. A couple years back, I wrote to Peter, asking about it, and he replied back that he remembered that video shoot, and that the song was on youtube. He added that he hoped I'd find myself in the video somewhere. I tracked down the video, and, nope, I'm not in it. In fact, there's very little of the crowd in the entire thing, and I was standing at the end of the line at the front of the bar, where the camera pulled away just before getting to me (to avoid showing just how short it really was). Time passes again, and I forgot the name of the song again. This evening, just before I started writing this entry, I decided that I wanted to include the link to the video in my records, so I tracked it down again and rewatched it. It still depresses me that after something like 10 hours in the bar, jumping up and down during shots, and then standing around waiting for the director to figure out what he wanted next, that nothing directly related to me ever came out of it. But, I did manage to cram my face with free food before anyone else could get to it, and that did make it all worthwhile.

1987, when people had big hair.