We hunker down and cry: Dance, photobomber, dance!

The neighbors talked about driving to Roanoke to outrun this year's version of the storm of the century.

Friends called with jokes about sandbags, and your online news feed was nothing but photos of remarkably dry basements. But from inside your family room, which had not yet lost power, where you decided to stay and face a homewrecker named Sandy, you saw it there on the TV.

"This is serious business," WAVY reporter Anne McNamara said in a serious tone in a serious raincoat from Ocean View.

You have been here before. Flooding. Stranding. Sandbags. Closings and detours. Kayaks floating nonchalantly down the street. Anxiety. Water to everyone's porch steps.

Then, on the screen, first one, from behind the dune, and then another.

Two guys. Galloping in the background, dancing to "Gangnam Style." Live on television, playing the fools during a severe weather event and ruining the live shot.

As beautiful as sunshine.

Maybe the photobombers heard about the voluntary evacuations, but probably not. Maybe they filled their tubs with water and stored away a grocery store's worth of canned foods. Maybe they had enough gasoline to run generators for a month in a house 35 feet above sea level, but, at that point, who cares?

The quickness of their choreography and their lack of costumes showed they believe no storm deserves this much gravitas. Certainly not some vamp named Sandy. Hurricane? What hurricane?

So, what's a viewer to do? Pray for their safety? Laugh at their antics? Cry for humanity?

Then, before anyone can judge their dancing, before anyone can critically mete out style points like Carrie Ann Inaba, they are gone, washed into more footage, dissolved into B-roll.

Godspeed, ye treacherous storm photobombers. Thank you for the entertainment.

Maybe you remember, amid the horror and anticipation of Hurricane Irene last year, the streaker who stole the show at the Oceanfront in Virginia Beach.

Here was a reporter from the Weather Channel, parachuting in, just trying to get his live shot and scare the bejeezus out of the plains states about the weather back East.

And then a half dozen teenage guys ran by. (Aren't they always dudes?) The bravest pulled down his shorts and exposed a full moon. A flood-proof oversized white pickup truck splashed past with someone hanging out the window.

"I don't even want to show it. I don't even want to show it anymore," the exasperated reporter said to the dry folks with dry hair at the dry anchor desk.

As if on cue, more people scurried past.

The reporter kept pouting. "It's just setting a bad example. And, honestly, it's depressing."

Yes, yes. We know. We should be indoors.

Even better, we should be indoors laughing at the funny people running past on TV.

Because, c'mon now. No one is going to melt. No one is made of sugar, even the shirtless man who went for a jog wearing a horse mask at the same time an NBC reporter in Washington talked about Sandy. The man posed no danger.

And so, straight from my hurricane survival kit, here is a toast to the jokers and the fools sprinting in the background of the 53-inch flat-screen. We have prepared accordingly. We have done everything the weather people have asked us to do, even picked up extra batteries for a weather radio. Now we must rewind the DVR one more time. We must watch the extreme weather photobombers again.

Amid the cleanup and the yard work and repairs that washed into this week's and this weekend's plans, we must allow ourselves a moment of levity.

This is serious business. Gallop. Dance. Disappear.

We can laugh for a second before working like fools.

Mike Gruss, 757-446-2277, mike.gruss@pilotonline.com, PilotOnline.com/gruss