They All Fall Down: Domino Extravaganza in Brattleboro | Live Culture

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

They All Fall Down: Domino Extravaganza in Brattleboro

Posted By on Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 1:16 PM

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

There is something terrifically satisfying about watching a careful array of dominoes collapse. Maybe it's the pleasing clickety-click, or the careful design, or (my candidate) the ephemerality of the whole thing. It takes hours, maybe days, to set up one of those complicated, thousands-of-dominoes arrays, and just a couple minutes for the whole thing to come crashing down.

But then, that's the whole point, right?

Aficionados of tiny, colorful, clacking controlled chaos need to get themselves to the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center for the Seventh Annual Domino Toppling Extravaganza on Monday, February 17, at 5 p.m. Thousands upon thousands of the colorful little tiles will fall on cue to the delight of onlookers.

Last year, the event set a record: 27,134 dominoes. The video of that event is huge fun to watch. Check it out below.

 

And if your memory, like mine, is clogged with pop-culture detritus from the 1980s, you'll get a kick out of this related video. Please take note of the hilarious attempt at "rapping."

 

Ethan de Seife

Ethan de Seife was an arts writer at Seven Days from 2013 to 2016. He is the author of Tashlinesque: The Hollywood Comedies of Frank Tashlin, published in 2012 by Wesleyan University Press.