Dance tips for the lead-footed Net slave

Wondering what to do with your time now that you're laid off? Desperately seeking an antidote to cube-life? Try dancing.

Two Web sites -- whose URLs have repeatedly fallen into our inboxes this week -- offer a few lessons. They're essentially video primers, aids for the tragically unhip, the head-bobbers and hand-clappers who dance like seals and should be forced to mate where they do -- not in clubs, but rather far, far out at sea.

Each offers all the moves necessary to avoid being a wallflower. The German film production company, Raketik for example, teaches everything from technodance to the samba -- all of it performed by a thin German man wearing a tie and pleated pants.

The How to Dance Properly site, which is actually an invite for a March 30 party in New York, goes even further, offering tongue-in-cheek commentary to go along with its repeated loops of a few classic moves. "Hanging out ... Casual," in which the dancer moves his hips, shoulders and arms but not his feet, tells the story of shy beginner. "It says 'I'm hip but enjoy the quiet side of nightlife. Please respect that," the site says. "Excellent when used with the 'playing hard to get strategy in the dating scene.'"

Meanwhile, "Smacking that Ass" is slightly edgier, "a folklore inspired dance form" in which "the dancer imagines a huge behind and begins to smack it, at first playfully, then perhaps even fearfully."

"Stir the Pot of Love," "Who's Your Daddy" and other dances have stories of their own too, but the real joy and humor comes from watching the clips. Even the not so rhythmically challenged ought to take a look. -- Damien Cave [12:45 p.m. PST, March 28, 2001]

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StrangerInYourBed.com: How low can the Net go?

When we first discovered Am I Hot or Not?, we thought that there couldn't be anything more lowbrow. We were wrong. Stranger In Your Bed, a spinoff of the Hot or Not phenomenon, asks: Which totally random, potentially disease-ridden piece of ass would you like to have sex with?

Can the Net possibly make Jerry Springer look more like an after-school special? This must be truly the bottom of the barrel.

Well, maybe not. Here's our top five picks for yet-to-be-invented even more tasteless Hot Or Not ripoffs:

1. EatenAlive.com: Which animal would you rather have gnaw off your extremities? Rabid ferret or toothless rat?

2. DeadinYourBed.com: Which famous dead person would you rather screw the rotting corpse of? Kurt Cobain or Jerry Garcia? Marilyn Monroe or Janis Joplin?

3. FrenchKissingFido.com: Which animal would you rather tongue? Chimpanzee or bulldog?

4. MakeYourBed.com: What revolting substance would your rather spend the night in? Pool of vomit or puddle of diarrhea? Fans submit their own photos of gross substances.

5. PublicHumiliation.com: Wetting your pants while giving a speech or naked at your own wedding? Your angry voicemails to your ex-boyfriend are put up on the Net as MP3 files vs. you accidently send a steamy e-mail to your company's staff e-mail list?

Sadly, we realize that even our choices do not represent the outer limits of potential Net nastiness. If you have any of your own nominations, send them to the In Box. --Damien Cave and Katharine Mieszkowski [11:45 a.m. PST, March 27, 2001]

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Does it get sicker than Psychoexgirlfriend.com?

Imagine the most embarrassing messages that you've ever left on your ex's voicemail -- the pathetic sobbing, the petty insults, the humiliating, futile vows of revenge.

Now, imagine those messages converted into MP3 files and posted on the Web, available for listening and trading by file-sharers everywhere. That's the chilling premise of Pyschoexgirlfriend.com, a site which contains some 50 voicemails from a jilted girlfriend. The woman is never identified, but the sound files capture her voice in all its emotion as she brags about the dates that she's going on with other guys and digs at her ex-boyfriend that he needs to lose a few pounds.

The mastermind of this exercise in sicko voyeurism -- the jilting boyfriend -- explains the site this way: "It's hard enough getting over someone. When she leaves you in excess of 50 psychotic voicemails, it makes it even harder. So, let's have some fun getting over her by starting a Web site. I hope you enjoy my personal pain as much as my friends have."

But many posters on the site's message boards on the site have more sympathy for the so-called "psycho" than her boyfriend. "Building a Web site to publicize the darkest moments of a person you were actively involved with -- during the time that she made these phone calls -- is terribly, terribly sad," writes one 30-year-old man.

Another visitor to the site accuses the vengeful boyfriend of the worst kind of airing of dirty laundry: "Remember you're hearing his side of the story. You're hearing her pain. Have you never ever been so desperate for someone to believe you -- whether in a relationship or any other situation -- that you said things that seemed crazy at the time?"

However grotesque it may be to broadcast these voicemail messages to the world, they have a prurient appeal beyond the limits of any reality TV show. It's the relationship 25-car-pileup that's impossible not to listen to.

Since the messages are voicemails -- which, by definition, the caller knows are being recorded -- she'd have a hard time making a legal case against them being circulated on the Web.

It's a reminder that these days you don't have to be Monica Lewinsky in the world's most public adultery case to find your most intimate private moments broadcast to the world. -- Katharine Mieszkowski [11:15 a.m. PST, March 26, 2001]

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