How Mandy Got her Groove Back

Over the past couple of months, I've totally lost my swagger. It would probably be best to acknowledge that I never really had any real swagger, but whatever pizazz/oomph/zing/shazam I had has been sucked out of me for an assortment of reasons that I'm just going to call--for simplicity's sake--Composition. Now. I have a pretty sweet life. (And by that I mostly mean my fantasy football team is KILLING it.) I should be jolly. But just as Gollum cannot be without his Precious, I cannot be happy without my swagger. I woke to my alarm (Boston's "Amanda." Duh.) at 4:15am one Monday morning and discovered that my bathtub hadn't drained from my last shower. I seriously thought something along the lines of, "Screw you, shower. I'm getting my swagger back." Then I did some Mark Wahlberg moves courtesy of Boogie Nights. And by moves I mean Karate moves, sickos.

The best way to get one's swagger back? Make out with a vaguely attractive filmmaker over a vent while drinking slurpees. This should be done in 3d. If that doesn't work for you, you can always watch the cinematic masterpiece that is Step Up 3d. It will give you an admittedly false optimism about how life works (just like how the Mighty Ducks made me believe that the flying V was really the best idea ever during hockey games), but I eat that stuff up like Harry's green-flecked French Fries.

While it's true that watching dance movies can restore swagger, not all dance movies are created equal. I recently watched Stomp the Yard : Homecoming, and I was so disappointed. A dance movie can have a transparent narrative arc, bad dialogue, and lots of bad voiceover about the Power of Dance, but it needs to have super awesome dancing, preferably involving water or fire at some point. In the opening sequence of StYH, the hero gets involved in a dance battle in hopes of paying his way through college. (Like all strippers.) Here's the thing. The guy he's dancing off against is obviously a better dancer. At least to me, and I'd say a solid 100% of dance movie afficionados. But everyone in the movie world is cheering on our hero like his moves are the best thing since Michael Jackson. Our hero ends up "winning" the battle but gets swindled out of the money. The movie wasn't a complete failure, however.
Observe the movie cover.


EVERY TIME I see the cover, I HAVE to put my hands up in that pose. Have to. I'm doing it now at the smoothie shop. If that pose doesn't say SWAGGER, then I don't know what does.