ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

You have probably seen all your friends and even your favorite celebrities blowing up Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram with this tag video. ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease, affects the nerve cells of the body, shutting down control of the body. For the past few years, ALS Association has been using the ice bucket challenge to raise awareness and money for the cause, but it hadn't been so popular until this year.

The official site for ALS describes it as:
"Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons  die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed."

Woah. Even though ALS has been known since the late 1800's, it wasn't until famed baseball star Lou Gehrig retired after finding out he had ALS himself. The disease has taken many lives and so far there is no treatment that stops or slows down the process, only drugs that make living more comfortable.

If you haven't seen the ice bucket challenge yet, here's how it works. You take a giant bucket (I've also seen bowls, Gatorade tubs, and coolers), fill it with ice and then water, and turn on a video camera. In the video, you say you are raising awareness for ALS, who tagged you, if someone did, and then three people you want to tag. Then you pour the ice and water on your head. Some people have done this fully clothed, while some are brave and go down to only a bathing suit. 

Here's the catch though: if you don't do the challenge, you have to go to the ALS website and donate $100. Last year, it raised just about 1 million dollars. Today, August 16th, ALS Association announced that the donations have surpassed 10 million dollars! This money will be used to help people with ALS, and to continue in the search for a treatment.

Now, this is a theatre blog, so I've got to throw Broadway in this somehow. The Once cast on Broadwya have done the challenge, and now put the Once touring cast, the Pippin cast, and the Les Mis cast up to the test as well. I just hope none of them catch a cold!

Are you up to the challenge as well?  Let us know what you think!
Kendall