Bottle Flip For the Ages
May 25, 2016 1:51 PM   Subscribe

Mike Senatore is a high school senior with a hidden talent. He can flip a water bottle. So he did. In front of his whole school. History was made and the world went crazy.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates (70 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
In the future everyone will get tens of thousands of retweets.
posted by chavenet at 1:55 PM on May 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


My favorite part is how the crowd loses its shit.

My old manager was cleaning out his desk this morning and he had a bunch of old bottled waters in there, and he left them for me, so I saw this video for the first time with four different shapes/sizes of bottled waters RIGHT NEXT TO ME.

Suffice it to say, this afternoon has been a shitshow of failed attempts.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:55 PM on May 25, 2016 [34 favorites]


Suffice it to say, this afternoon has been a shitshow of failed attempts.

Secrets are revealed in this link if you are to click it!!
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 1:57 PM on May 25, 2016 [5 favorites]


#keepMeFiRealLifeweird
posted by jacquilynne at 2:02 PM on May 25, 2016


By gar, it's been awhile!
posted by petebest at 2:03 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Guys, I hate to bring down the vibe in here but I have some serious concerns about whether that bottle was sufficiently inflated.
posted by cortex at 2:04 PM on May 25, 2016 [20 favorites]


So that's what being a popular kid must have been like.
posted by R a c h e l at 2:05 PM on May 25, 2016 [112 favorites]


So, Water Bottle Flipping Guy for President, 2036? (He *is* going to school for political science...)
posted by jillithd at 2:06 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yes we bottle!
posted by chavenet at 2:09 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


Even a popular Will Ferrell parody account posted it.

I spend A LOT of time attached to social media but sometimes I still can't understand the world I live in.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 2:15 PM on May 25, 2016 [21 favorites]


I enjoyed that. I think not knowing what was coming would have been ideal!
posted by SpacemanStix at 2:16 PM on May 25, 2016


truly, upcoming generations will say that they but stand on the shoulders of gnats
posted by pyramid termite at 2:21 PM on May 25, 2016 [6 favorites]


White privilege
posted by shockingbluamp at 2:22 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


Man, that school's got weak-ass music and drama nerds if they can't even protect their talent show from the depredations of the jocks.
posted by MattD at 2:23 PM on May 25, 2016 [18 favorites]


So that's what being a popular kid must have been like.

And you just know that the kids before him, playing like, Pachelbel's Canon flawlessly on the oboe and singing Nessum dorma in pure bel canto style were met with a collective yawn.
posted by Flashman at 2:25 PM on May 25, 2016 [37 favorites]


This morning I watched a guy DO THIS
posted by Postroad at 2:28 PM on May 25, 2016 [8 favorites]



Secrets are revealed in this link if you are to click it!!


This link makes the kid look like not so much of a jock or a guy doing it for lulz though.
posted by zutalors! at 2:30 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


And you just know that the kids before him, playing like, Pachelbel's Canon flawlessly on the oboe and singing Nessum dorma in pure bel canto style were met with a collective yawn.

In fairness, though, those kids got good at those things by practicing a lot, whereas this guy has a talent.
posted by The Tensor at 2:33 PM on May 25, 2016 [7 favorites]


This morning I watched a guy DO THIS

I saw that on Facebook earlier and now I have new life goals
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:33 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


playing like, Pachelbel's Canon flawlessly on the oboe and singing Nessum dorma in pure bel canto style were met with a collective yawn

I'll agree that the guy presents as pretty popular-alpha, but I suspect that if the framing had been more "person takes piss from vaunted HS institution that is The Talent Show with deadpan concision", we'd be falling all over this as with one voice.

No one is assessing his performance by the same metrics you'd apply to Nessun Dorma, I suspect.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 2:35 PM on May 25, 2016 [7 favorites]


Flashman: And you just know that the kids before him, playing like, Pachelbel's Canon flawlessly on the oboe and singing Nessum dorma in pure bel canto style were met with a collective yawn.

I remember the moment I realized - it was during a team-building exercise at my first Real Job, in my twenties - that there's the obvious game you play within the formal rules, where the object is to win according to those rules, and I was good at that... and then there's a whole other social game that people are playing, sometimes to win but more often to connect, to make people feel good and laugh and be social.

This guy is winning the metagame.
posted by clawsoon at 2:37 PM on May 25, 2016 [52 favorites]


I'm going to go ahead and assume that these kids have a keen sense of the absurd. Please, nobody burst my happy little bubble.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:40 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


the plans he had for a friend’s stool fell through

Sentence of the day.
posted by chavenet at 2:45 PM on May 25, 2016 [14 favorites]


Maybe its just because I work at a high school, but I would have lost my shit if that happened here, too. That isn't just a great bottle flip - its evidence of hours and hours of time practicing between classes and while waiting for your parents to come pick you up. Its like proof that hours of practicing something pattently absurd can pay off with the ability to do something pointlessly cool - like a Letterman stupid human trick.

I had a student a few years ago who absolutely mastered the art of pen twirling. She showed off her amazing yet pointless skill at a school assembly and received a similar level of shit-losing cheers from her classmates - and she wasn't one of the popular kids. The rest of the students just knew how much time she must have invested in to make her pen twirling so dope.

Anyhow, bottle flipping dude is my hero of the hour - maybe even of the day.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:48 PM on May 25, 2016 [43 favorites]


Guys, I hate to bring down the vibe in here but I have some serious concerns about whether that bottle was sufficiently inflated.

#BottleGate
posted by Fizz at 2:50 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


My favorite part is how the crowd loses its shit.

My kids watch Dude Perfect on the web and cable and, apparently, this is the core of the whole show.
posted by JoeZydeco at 2:55 PM on May 25, 2016


This is maybe the most high school bitterness I've ever seen concentrated in one thread.
posted by windbox at 2:57 PM on May 25, 2016 [32 favorites]


Metafilter: This is maybe the most high school bitterness I've ever seen concentrated in one thread
posted by zutalors! at 2:59 PM on May 25, 2016 [20 favorites]


my old high school is now a burmese cultural center

you just never know ...
posted by pyramid termite at 3:00 PM on May 25, 2016


This is maybe the most high school bitterness I've ever seen concentrated in one thread.

You could toss this thread in a mustard dressing and call it a chicory salad.
posted by howfar at 3:01 PM on May 25, 2016 [5 favorites]


This is maybe the most high school bitterness I've ever seen concentrated in one thread.

Gosh, it seems really mild to me. Maybe I have more unresolved issues than I thought.
posted by teponaztli at 3:05 PM on May 25, 2016 [5 favorites]


Even at school, people were just individuals, being lucky or hardworking, decent or shitty, and mostly a mixture of all that, according to whatever forces determined the particular flow of their lives. We were all just people, and we still are.
posted by howfar at 3:20 PM on May 25, 2016 [8 favorites]


This thread has gone down a strange path.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 3:28 PM on May 25, 2016 [18 favorites]


So, Water Bottle Flipping Guy for President, 2036?

He'll never make it to president. Once he becomes Senator Senatore, voters will never let him be anything else.
posted by honestcoyote at 3:30 PM on May 25, 2016 [32 favorites]


howfar: "Even at school, people were just individuals, being lucky or hardworking, decent or shitty, and mostly a mixture of all that, according to whatever forces determined the particular flow of their lives. We were all just people, and we still are."

haha ok breakfast club settle down there
posted by boo_radley at 3:33 PM on May 25, 2016 [58 favorites]


I also thought "he must be really popular" when I saw this video, and it did remind me of being, er not popular in high school. I resented tons of people back then, because I knew where I stood on the social hierarchy. Anyone outside my little friend group was assumed to be hostile: the popular kids looked down on me for being weird, the high-achieving kids looked down on me for being a slacker, the artsy kids looked down on me for not being weird enough, and so on.

A few years after high school I was working at a grocery store, and one of the customers who came in was one of the super popular kids from high school. I was still wrapped up in high school drama at the time, but she turned out to be a really nice, friendly person. We chatted for a few minutes and I realized I'd formed my opinion of her without actually talking to her. A few years later a friend of mine ended up going to school with another one of the popular kids, and the two of them ended up being friends despite having been in very different cliques in high school.

So as I got older I realized people weren't as hostile as I'd imagined them to be, and that in some cases I'd been the hostile one.

Then I ended up working with another former classmate and I realized some of really were total jerks. But such is life, and I don't actually resent people as much as I say I do when I'm kidding around.
posted by teponaztli at 3:35 PM on May 25, 2016 [21 favorites]


That dude can flip a bottle like da business. I'd flip my shit too.
posted by Annika Cicada at 3:37 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


and then I would cry when the girl up next sang "Breakaway" by Kelly Clarkson over a youtube karaoke video made in Korea.
posted by Annika Cicada at 3:40 PM on May 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


because that's the right way to do high school, remember
posted by Annika Cicada at 3:41 PM on May 25, 2016 [3 favorites]


in some cases I'd been the hostile one.

Biggest realization ever. So much of High School is thinking you know what's going on, when you really have no idea.
posted by cell divide at 3:50 PM on May 25, 2016 [6 favorites]


So, getting back to the actual video...
Watch it again. Rewind to just before where he throws it and watch it a few times. There's an amazing sound composition there that I'm sure is a big part of the popularity.
The music stops. There's a fraction of a second of total silence. Then there's a perfect "bip" when the bottle hits the table, another fraction of a second of perfect silence, then the crowd eruption.
It's art, really.
posted by crazylegs at 3:53 PM on May 25, 2016 [14 favorites]


This is maybe the most high school bitterness I've ever seen concentrated in one thread.

I think that a lot of Mefites did not have a good time in high school.
posted by Aizkolari at 4:02 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Once he becomes Senator Senatore, voters will never let him be anything else.

Actually, I like the sound of President Senator(e).
posted by Edgewise at 4:03 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


I think he could win major, major respect with a name like that.
posted by howfar at 4:05 PM on May 25, 2016 [3 favorites]


Everybody was part of the bit, that's the best kind of joke.
posted by Divine_Wino at 4:22 PM on May 25, 2016 [8 favorites]


Once he becomes Senator Senatore, voters will never let him be anything else.

Actually, I like the sound of President Senator(e).


In a perfect world he would marry someone named King or possibly Pope and hyphenate the surname.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:24 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


"And do you, Alison Godemperor, take this man to be your..."
posted by cortex at 4:52 PM on May 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


Heh. Four days ago Mike tweeted "I love what the internet can randomly do for people" in reference to Chewbacca mask mom.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 4:57 PM on May 25, 2016 [10 favorites]


In the story AHWO linked to bottle-flipping kid makes a point of saying he has no real athletic ability so I'm not sure why several of you are calling him a jock. Also, clawsoon nailed it.
posted by photoslob at 5:03 PM on May 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


He'll show up on Ellen. The meme is then destroyed. That seems to be the way things work these days.
posted by davebush at 5:16 PM on May 25, 2016 [3 favorites]


SAN DIMAS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL RULES

This morning I watched a guy DO THIS

He's not my type, but I admire the technique.
posted by rhizome at 5:18 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


The obvious: Warhol, prophet.
posted by davebush at 5:24 PM on May 25, 2016


I still remember where I was when I first saw bottle-flip guy do his thing.

Right here, on the sofa.
posted by kcds at 5:30 PM on May 25, 2016 [3 favorites]


Can we put some beans in the bottle to aid the overthinking?
posted by awfurby at 5:31 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


If he serves long enough and has a kid, could he be Senior Senator Senatore, Sr.?
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:18 PM on May 25, 2016 [10 favorites]


And if it turns out he's descended from Spanish nobility, he'll be Senior Senator Señor Senatore, Sr.
posted by honestcoyote at 7:45 PM on May 25, 2016 [3 favorites]


A. That isn't just a great bottle flip - its evidence of hours and hours of time practicing between classes and while waiting for your parents to come pick you up.

vs.

B. Everybody was part of the bit, that's the best kind of joke.

So which is it?!?!? I really assumed it was B (i.e. flipping a water bottle takes very little talent) and the crowd going nuts over a rather pedestrian accomplishment was supposed to be the funny part. It strikes me as kinda stupid now, but I would have probably thought it was funny in high school (I was a popular kid, fwiw, and I stlll mostly hated high school.)

But are some of you actually impressed by the bottle flipping? That confuses me. Maybe I'm all wrong! (Or maybe Ms. A is pulling my leg. If so, well done!)

vaunted HS institution that is The Talent Show

Aside from fancy art/music schools, was anyone's high school talent show a vaunted institution? We had one, and some good talent, but nobody really cared.
posted by mrgrimm at 9:49 PM on May 25, 2016


It matters because "Is already popular" doesn't fit with the narrative of "Kid upends social hierarchy with one weird trick, the cool kids hate him!" that people are desperate to hang on this video
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 9:50 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


And you just know that the kids before him, playing like, Pachelbel's Canon flawlessly on the oboe and singing Nessum dorma in pure bel canto style were met with a collective yawn.

And deserved it. My high-school kid can play Rachmaninoff's Prelude in G minor but is smart enough to know that for a high school talent show, you plunk a few chords behind your buddies playing the Pirates of the Caribbean theme on their saxophones and then sit down and cheer for the kids doing goofy dance routines and funny stupid human tricks.
posted by straight at 9:50 PM on May 25, 2016 [7 favorites]


In high school, I would have been the guy who got up after him and did the exact same trick, but with a bowling ball. That would have then rolled off the table, into the orchestra pit and actually hurt one of the theater tech kids hanging out down there.
It would not have received much applause.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:11 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


Man, that's such a well done trick. The timing is so solid. If he really did improvise the walk up, as the article says, he has a fantastic, natural sense of showmanship. Mad props. What an amazing way to end your senior year of HS.
posted by mosk at 12:16 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


honestcoyote: "And if it turns out he's descended from Spanish nobility, he'll be Senior Senator Señor Senatore, Sr."

Then he needs to marry one of William Shatner's daughters.
posted by chavenet at 2:52 AM on May 26, 2016


(╯°□°)╯︵ 🍼
           ┳┳

posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:54 AM on May 26, 2016 [30 favorites]


[Ok, deleting a few comments; if your feeling is who cares or this sucks, or let's fight about jocks, please go do something else.]
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:33 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm angry because that teenager is celebrated by teenagers more than I am
posted by beerperson at 11:13 AM on May 26, 2016 [7 favorites]


So which is it?!?!?

OK, in the spirit of scientific inquiry, I attempted to teach myself this trick for 30 minutes today. I used an unopened 16.9 fl oz bottle of Dasani water. My office desk - which is a typical height office desk - served as the landing pad. I flipped the bottle over 200 times and didn't land it correctly even once.

There's a bunch of factors you need to account for.

You need to apply just enough force to the spin so that the bottle's base hits the landing surface first. The bulk of my trials failed because I either overestimate or underestimated the necessary torque.

Next, plastic bottles tend to bound even if the base hits first. so you need to account for your release point's height vis a vis the landing surface. Too much height and it will bounce instead of landing.

I imagine that different bottles with different amounts of water in them would work differently, so you need to have the right bottle with the right amount of water in it.

I suspect that there might be water:bottle ratios that make this trick a little easier and a little harder. I don't rule out the possibility that there might be one weird trick that makes this super easy.

However, while I am convinced that I could teach myself how to do this with enough practice, my trial has proven to me that this is not an easy thing to do so I stand by my initial statement regarding the hours of practice one would need to put in to make sure they could do this on demand every time, even with the pressure of one's entire high school looking on.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:10 PM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]


This water bottle landed right in an invisible plate of beans I had set there earlier, and a few preliminary results are in. Turns out there are so very many amateur-made things on the internet that are so capable and look so very much like professional things that this sort of thing is quite relieving. Groups of silly people around the world are capable of making such intensely good stuff (from a production standpoint) that it really puts the pressure on anyone trying to be creative who doesn't know how to edit or record good sound or catch the right camera angles at the right time.

A simple video with happy people in it of a moment with extremely simple production is going to give everyone hope, maybe, that they can have these moments in their own lives and can be caught celebrating it. The clear evidence of a single performer winning over a room of people who are ready to be won is what we all now hope for in our lives. To have the understanding that this can still be done, without tricks and without extensive post-shoot music or Foley artists, without a live studio audience or a great deal of training? That sounds nice.

This very silly video that I very much liked is evidence that all over the world, people are probably still doing very silly things to rooms of people whose opinions they have considered. And it still works. I had a friend in high school whose talent show piece was called Sandwich. He stood up on stage and calmly brought out a sandwich to very dramatic music. And he ate that sandwich, in normal-person time. To very dramatic music. It elicited about the same reaction at the end, when he crumpled up the sandwich wrap and nodded and bowed. People like when you think about them.

Anyway, after the beans autopsy, it turns out that audiences still like it when you make it fun for them. I would guess that the generation of people coming up in the land of internet probably like that it is still possible and worthy to do it in person and need to be reminded of that.
posted by lauranesson at 2:19 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]


Metafilter: This is maybe the most high school bitterness I've ever seen concentrated in one thread

You must leave most threads too early then.

If you wait long enough they almost all eventually boil down to concentrated high school bitterness that is then packaged and shipped to Hollywood for use in nerd movies.
posted by srboisvert at 3:09 PM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


My high-school kid can play Rachmaninoff's Prelude in G minor but is smart enough to know that for a high school talent show, you plunk a few chords behind your buddies playing the Pirates of the Caribbean theme on their saxophones and then sit down and cheer for the kids doing goofy dance routines and funny stupid human tricks.

Ha! In high school, I also studied classical piano on my own time. But what made me beloved at school was that I could play Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy for the choir girls to sing along with on lunch breaks. And the theme from Peanuts.
posted by not that girl at 6:32 PM on May 29, 2016


I'm angry because that teenager is celebrated by teenagers more than I am

I just wanted to take a moment to marvel at the fact that we've come to a particular time in history when lack of a period is a clue to the modality of a particular statement, and as such, I'm more apt to recognize this as sarcasm.
posted by SpacemanStix at 6:47 PM on May 30, 2016 [5 favorites]


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