Dirty Dancing is actually 20 years old as of yesterday, I think. A 20th anniversary! Of something that I was actually alive for! God, that’s weird.
Anyway, the more amazing thing to me about its 20th anniversary is that people actually cared enough to put it back in the theatres for a couple of days to mark the occassion, which seems like a little more money spent than need be. I mean, it’s already got two, count ‘em, TWO collector’s edition dvds. And that’s not a 2-disc set, that’s two separately released collector’s editions. I mean, what?
This isn’t to say that I don’t watch the movie (every couple of months ::ahem::). It’s just to say that, despite Eleanor Bergstein’s obsession towards the contrary, I am fully aware that it is among the worst movies ever made. Sally and I have pretty much the whole thing memorized ’cause we’ve seen it so many times, but there’s just something so gross about the whole experience. I mean, there are few things in life more unsatisfying than seeing physically unappealing people sweat all over each other. The entire movie has this sheen over it. And especially knowing that Eleanor Bergstein wrote this movie to not only reflect things that happened on one of her own summer vacations, but that she actually used to, at least up until the movie was being made (and possibly still!), dirty danced herself. Ew! I’m not adding more exclamation points because frankly I don’t think there are enough exclamation points in the world to equal my horror.

Anyway, better than just seeing the movie again for the umpteenth time in the theatre, I’ve prepared a bit of a list of the Top Twenty Grossest Dirty Dancing Moments.

20. That Stupid Guy With the Blue Socks

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That would be the Dirty Dancing Concert. If you’ve never seen the concert, you have to watch it on the Collector’s Edition dvd. It’s from 1988 and they went all around the country with Eric Carmen and Merry Clayton and the Contours and Bill Medley and all those nasty dirty dancing dancers, and the audience is filled with huge hair and huge glasses and big button-down shirts tucked into high-waisted calf-length skirts, and it’s just awful.

Thankfully, they didn’t invite Zappacosta along, but you still have to hear that disgusting song Overload, performed by Merry Clayton who actually might make it worse than the original, if that’s possible.

The concert on the dvd was filmed in LA and no viewing of Dirty Dancing is complete for us anymore without watching the following awesome bits:

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