Where the Hell is Matt?

My Twitter feed is starting to become my best source for finding interesting things scattered across the metaverse. Don’t worry, I’m not going to become one of those weird spammers “internet marketers” who attempt to follow everyone on Twitter in order to keep a finger on the pulse of the internet. I do, however, enjoy checking out links the few people I follow offer up.

One such link, recently served up by @Overshee (evidently originally offered by @DrHorrible), is so cool that I had to share it here. It’s so cool, in fact, that my feeble writing skills won’t do it justice. Check this out this excerpt from Where the Hell is Matt:

A few months into his [post-qutting globe trotting vacation], a travel buddy gave Matt an idea. They were standing around taking pictures in Hanoi, and his friend said “Hey, why don’t you stand over there and do that dance. I’ll record it.” He was referring to a particular dance Matt does. It’s actually the only dance Matt does. He does it badly. Anyway, this turned out to be a very good idea.

As is the case with the internet these days the video ended up making Matt somewhat internet famous. Then, in a very bizarre turn, Stride Gum found Matt and offered to send him around the world so he could film his little dance at the far corners of the earth. Why Stride Gum? Who knows but Matt isn’t stupid and took them up on the offer. Crazy? It’s not even done yet. Again, from Matt’s own website:

In 2006, Matt took a 6 month trip through 39 countries on all 7 continents. In that time, he danced a great deal.

The second video made Matt even more quasi-famous. In fact, for a brief period in July, he was semi-famous.

Things settled down again, and then in 2007 Matt went back to Stride with another idea. He realized his bad dancing wasn’t actually all that interesting, and that other people were much better at being bad at it. He showed them his inbox, which, as a result of his semi-famousness, was overflowing with emails from all over the planet. He told them he wanted to travel around the world one more time and invite the people who’d written him to come out and dance too.

The Stride people thought that sounded like yet another very good idea, so they let him do it. And he did. And now it’s done. And he hopes you like it.

That’s right, he looked a gift horse in the mouth and asked to do it again, bigger and better than the first time. Evidently Stride Gum has the money to send a happily unemployed 31 year old resident of Seattle around the world twice. The result is pretty impressive. I present to you Matt, dancing, with the people of the world.