Folks, this is it. I think this is my favorite video on the internet. Over the years I’ve developed a mental Rolodex of videos I like that will always cheer me up. ‘Grape crushing fall,’ ‘home shopping network sword fail,’ ‘not today clip,’ just to name a few.
But this video, shot exactly 25 years ago today, this is it. Just a festival for the senses. Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates, and a bunch of other guys who own 94% of the wealth in the world, going bonkers on stage during the Windows ’95 launch.
I think my favorite part of this whole thing is the backstory I have in my mind about how they landed on THIS as the go-to move to introduce the world to a new operating system.
Microsoft Marketing: ‘Alright guys, we’re about to change the way people use their computers! This will launch our brand into the stratosphere and make a home computer as important as a TV, or VCR, or Nintendo! What should we do at the launch to really set the scene for this moment that will change the world??’
Steve Ballmer (watch this video and tell me he didn’t quarterback this whole thing): ‘I’m going to stop you before we even start spitballing here, picture this: We get the entire production team on stage, we dress them up in their finest polo shirts and tuck those bad boys into our best elastic waistband black dress pants, we click play on The Rolling Stones: Start Me Up, and then we just go apesh!t dancing for the entire song.’
Microsoft Marketing Team: ‘………..well do you want a video package playing? Or at least the Windows ’95 graphic on a screen behind you?’
Ballmer: ‘Did you just hear what I said? Anything you’d put on a screen behind us will be lost in a cacophony of swinging limbs loosely connected to the beat of the music. Do we need to hire a new marketing team?’
Microsoft Marketing Team: ‘Nope! Sounds great, Steve!’
Scene.
Honestly I can’t get enough of Ballmer’s wild gyrations in this 30 second clip. I can’t tell if he reminds me more of Michael Scott on the Booze Cruise, or Costanza when he was giving it to T-Bone:
I think it’s Booze Cruise by a nose, but it’s close.
Anyway, this video always makes me laugh and on it’s 25th anniversary, it felt right to throw it on the blog.
PS: Ballmer owns the Los Angeles Clippers now, and that Window’s ’95 launch party dancing is still there and it is still spectacular:
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