Breakin'

Oh my good lord, I'm re-watching Breakin', which I haven't seen since I was like 10 years old. It's a freaking GOLDMINE. My god, I can't stop laughing. Notes from Breakin', since it's too crazy for me to even coherently put my thoughts together.

1) There's a Jean Claude Van Damme cameo! Right in the beginning, in the park, where a bunch of people are standing around watching people breakdance, he's standing there saying nothing, for no reason.

2) Ice T is the rapper in the underground club that they breakdance at.

3) Breakdance fighting is hilarious. I mean, dance fighting is always funny, but we forget how much breakdancing has improved since 1984. If you go back and watch Breakin, their dancing is so freaking GAY. It looks like the Villiage People doing West Side Story.

4) Acceptable decorations for one's house are hubcaps from cars, and spray painted murals that say things like "poppin".

5) I'm completely unable to determine what wins a dance fight. At some point, everyone in an entire crowd just gathers around one team or the other, in complete unison, and the fight is over. At which point the losers have to glare angrily, shake their heads, and stalk away.

6) In the 80's, any white man in a suit is Evil. Unless you can get him to tap his foot to the beat. In which case he is your friend.

7) No matter how poor you are, in the "ghetto", you still own a convertible.

8) The only "street name" cooler than Ozone is Turbo.

9) OMG a breakdancing cripple! Breakdancing on crutches!

10) No one can resist an 80's girl with a dyke haircut, spandex pants with a bikini bottom OUTSIDE of them, and ankle warmers.

11) You can rip the sleeves off of any shirt or suit with little or no effort.

12) You can apparently prance around in glittery half-shirts as a male in the ghetto and lose no street cred.

13) The avant-garde street dancing theater production at the end is worth watching the whole movie for. It's like a bunch of gay pimps doing Cats on Broadway, in a glitter storm.

14) There's a freeze frame at the end of the movie of the three stars jumping into the air in slow motion! Oh my lord the cliches! I'm drowning!

15) At the end, Ice T says "this story proves the way to part two". They knew that the greatest movie ever made, Breakin' 2: The Electric Boogaloo was yet to come. And indeed, it's the next movie in my Netflix queue.

As hokey as this movie is, there are some great moves in it. Every time I watch a movie with breakdancing, I want to learn how to do it. If I could just break out with popping and locking in the middle of a meeting at work, and then jump up on the table and spin on my head, that would be the greatest thing ever.