Sugar and Spite

Y’all, my brain has been consumed by the dancing. Like it tends to do, if you happen to be a Person That Knows Me. Its partly the fault of the Dance-y Show. Which, by the way, redeemed itself somewhat this week. And also, America. Last week, you totally let me down. But this week you proved that you in fact do not actually suck. Yay! Also I want to snatch up Travis and keep him. He’s so adorable. And I don’t mean this is a sexual way at all. In my head, he has a little pallet in the corner of my living room where he lounges about looking cute when he’s not dancing to entertain me. And I toss him scraps off of my plate sometimes, like when he does something especially pleasing. Ali says this makes me a terrible, horrible crazy. I don’t disagree with her, exactly, but… I can’t help it. So. Precious. And talented!

So anyway, back to the dancing. I am obsessed with Dance-y Movies. They are the place where I curl up and feel safe and happy and as though all is right in the world. It could be the Actual For Real Apocolypse, and I wouldn’t care as long as I had a copy of Footloose and a snuggly blanket.

Despite this, sometimes there will be a Dance-y Movie that will slip under my radar. Possibly for good reason. About two years ago, Ali and I had a conversation very much like this:

Ali: I tried to watch You Got Served, and it was so bad. I had to turn it off in the middle.

Me: Ok…

Ali: I would try to watch it again, with you, if there is booze.

Me: *is terribly confused* … ok?

I did not know what this movie was, at first. For some reason I thought it was about basketball. But for two years, this kept coming back up. How we could watch it. And I would falter for a moment, and then remember that there was dancing, and agree that, yes, someday we could watch it. So last weekend, we did. And then:

Ali: I can’t believe you made me watch that STUPID movie. You owe me.

*GIANT EYE ROLL*

But really. This movie was so bad. And not bad in an entertaining way, either (except for the practice dancing in the rain montage with the SERIOUS music - OMG, so great). It was bad in a “How about we fast forward through all the talking and just watch the dancing” way.

But the dancing is good. Shane Sparks’ choreography rules so very much. But the movie is just an exercise in atrocity. It’s so bad, I had to watch Strictly Ballroom the next morning just to cleanse myself of the bad movie heebies.

And so, in honor of me being an Obsessed Crazy, I bring you my Top Five Dance-y Movies for Lazy Weekends and Dreamy Afternoons (in no particular order):

1. Footloose. Rednecks can boogie, too. And it doesn’t, in fact, hurt the baby Jesus. God, I love this fucking movie. So much.

2. Dirty Dancing. *sigh* Do you know that in fourth grade my friend Chrissy would come over to my house every day after school and we would watch this movie? Every. Day. I haven’t seen her in twenty years, but whenever I think of this movie, I think of her.

3. Center Stage. Worst Acting Ever. And yet, hee! There is no denying the “Hee”.

4. Strictly Ballroom. You have to love this movie. Its Baz Luhrman. It’s arty. And it’s also hawt.

5. Shall We Dance. The original Japanese version, not the Richard Gere/J-Lo one. It relies upon a very Eastern concept of what honor to your family means that does not transfer in the Western version. So charming.

And there you go.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 25th, 2006 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.