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June 21, 2004
Stonewood, Stonewood, Stonewood, Stonewood.... Rocks!
We must apologize for the dirth of posting over the past few days. We have been in the ICU with Girl-E, recovering from a frightening and traumatic experience that we can hardly believe we survived. She's normally pretty street-smart, and as vigilant as would ever be expected by the Department of Homeland Security, but everyone gets complaicent every once in a while. So it was during one of these lapses in alertness that she found herself facing a screen playing the 1990 cultural atrocity, Lambada.
If you have not seen this "film", cherish those 104 minutes of your life and never let go. There are good movies. There are bad movies that are watchable in the right context. There are bad movies so bad that they are good. And then there are bad movies that are so bad, they move beyond being so bad they're good, to an entirely shocking realm of suckage. In that last category resides Lambada.
In the spirit of the final climactic scene of the movie, we will challenge you to a friendly Super Quiz. Which of the following statements are true about Lambada, and which are we totally making up because no filmmaker could possibly consider them worthy of public consumption:
a) Hot but "dorky" Beverly Hills math teacher by day, black leather and knife-shaped earring-clad motorcycle-riding Lambada king known as "Blade" by night at tough and unforgiving night club in East L.A.
b) Patrons of club are all recalcitrant Black and Latino teenagers who dress in florescent clubwear and do the Lambada all night long.
c) In addition to being the best dancer at the club, Blade is actually there to run "Galaxy High," where he prepares said hopeless minority teenagers for the GED in the club's pool room.
d) Wayward teenagers are completely engaged in each and every lesson.
e) Except for Ramone (spelled like that), the intense gangbanger in gold lame jacket played by choreographer Shabba-Doo, who is threatened by Blade and his attempts to be the Great White Hope of the barrio.
f) Until Ramone learns that Blade is, in fact, a "homey," because he was raised in East L.A. by Mexican parents who gave him up for adoption to a nice white family when he was 14, an event which apparently transformed his appearence to something that could not be less Mexican.
g) Blade teaches Ramone the "rectangular coordinate system" and how it can help one make a difficult shot in 8-ball.
h) Blade actually uses a protractor on the pool table which he whips out of his leather jacket.
i) Ramone is later seen hiding in a corner of the club with a book. And a protractor.
j) Spoiled and popular Beverly Hills student Sandy somehow ends up at East L.A. club, sees math teacher all radded out, and fantasizes about doing the Lambada with him on a motorcycle.
k) Sandy can, in fact, believe that the Lambada was outlawed in Brazil.
l) Blade is disgusted, and yet oddly aroused, by Sandy's subsequent advances.
m) Fat white biker-with-a-heart-of-gold owner of night club procures a bus for Galaxy High, spraypainted especially for them by East L.A.'s finest tag writers, so that they can go across town and break into Stonewood High in Beverly Hills and learn computers.
n) Upon learning of Blade's antics, cranky evil Stonewood Principal fires him.
o) Until slightly less-cranky Beverly Hills Superintendent proposes a competition between Stonewood and Galaxy students to determine Blade's fate, to be known as the Super Quiz.
p) Galaxy students pull algebraic equations and trigonometric identities out of their ass.
q) At the final quiz-winning point, Ramone is up against Sandy's asshole Don Johnson wannabe boyfriend.
r) The question is to explain the "rectangular coordinate system".
s) Ramone freezes up until Blade pulls an 8-ball out of his briefcase, and proceeds to give a nonsensical answer which the Superintendent decides is correct.
t) Blade gets on stage and makes a speech about how we all have more in common than we think, no matter what color our skin or zip code we live in.
u) Galaxy and Stonewood students spontaneously begin to rapturously embrace.
v) During which time some of the Galaxy teenagers set up a massive sound system in the parking lot.
w) To which all teenagers run in extreme joy.
x) And begin to Lambada in mixed-race couples.
y) Except for Blade and his wife, who suddenly accepts Blade's strange activities and gets down and dirty.
z) It starts to rain hard, which makes everyone extremely sexy, and apparently has no detrimental effect on the massive sound system because the ass-o-rific Lambada theme song is playing loud as ever.
Please place your answers in the comments box. And think carefully, this is for world peace y'all.
Posted by The Twins at June 21, 2004 11:28 AM
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Comments
When I worked at a video store we would totally put that on every Saturday night. I gotcher Forbidden Dance right here, pal.
Posted by: nikita at June 21, 2004 12:39 PM
All. Except p), if meant literally.
Posted by: Jess at June 21, 2004 01:02 PM
Dear God. What hath Brazil wrought?
Posted by: Girl-C at June 21, 2004 02:11 PM
N- I cannot begin to process that.
J- Were the movie not utterly and sadly tame, despite its attempts at "racy", I would not have put it past them.
C- I should note that there were no more than about 6 minutes total of actual Lambada in the movie. Brazil had less than nothing to do with it.
Posted by: EV at June 21, 2004 02:17 PM
that's it. i'm writing a movie.
Posted by: Jules at June 21, 2004 02:24 PM
i am sure TBS will pick this up and play it ad nauseum. this has saturday afternoon crappy movie written all over it.
Posted by: snowy at June 21, 2004 04:04 PM
Saturday afternoon? I'm not sure, this is THE LAMBADA we're talking about.
Posted by: EV at June 21, 2004 04:13 PM
Just to let you know, we take ZERO responsibility for this.
Posted by: Brazil at June 22, 2004 08:17 AM