Zulu Fertility Dance

Let me say this about that.

In 1992, a new movie was released called “White Guys Can’t Jump”.  It was a movie about two pick-up basketball players – one white and the other black – and had, as an underlying theme, an ascertion that white guys can’t slam-dunk a basketball.  Stars Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes did a great comedic job of pitting one race against the other without it degrading into a racist pissing contest.

I saw that movie on HBO the other night and it set me to wondering about other innate abilities that one particular race might enjoy, while totally lacking in another.  There is no question that the best basketball players in the world are black guys, but have you ever seen a black guy play the bagpipes?  I didn’t think so.

White guys seem to gravitate towards sports that involve two things – betting and beer.  Perhaps this explains the complete void of Afro-Americans earning a living as jockies or as professional bass fishermen - and possibly more telling, NASCAR drivers.  The one exception to this ‘beer & betting’ rule may the reason only white guys have shown an interest in dog-sled racing.  But this whole line of thought is beginning to make my head hurt.

But, as superior as black guys have proven to be in endeavors requiring…    eye-hand coordination, there is one activity where there seems to be parity – ‘dancing’.  Guys of all races seem to become bumbling gobs of goo when taking the dance floor.  On the whole, I thinks black guys may have a slight edge in the choreographic arts, but white guys, as a rule are fundamentally handicapped.

A few months ago, a group of guys from the neighborhood were brow-beaten into taking our wives dancing.  All of us, being terminally white, knew that this was going to be ugly, but peace in the household demanded our reluctant participation.  All the guys knew we were going to make fools of ourselves, so we unilaterally agreed to dull the pain by applying liberal amounts of tequila prior to arriving at the club.  We were so successful in our preparations that, by the time we got to the nightspot, we actually thought this might be a good idea.

We were wrong.

I don’t recall ever laughing as hard as I did that night.  Each one of our clan, fueled by an over-abundance of ‘Jose Cuervo’, had a unique dancing style all their own.  In order to preserve these dance techniques for study by anthropologists of the future, I have documented each style with a description and a name:

The first guy, who’s name is Elmer, could be described as being physically similar to a bulldog – short, pudgy, and a face that looks like it is being pressed against a window pane – he ain’t too pretty.  Anyway, Elmer seems to enjoy coming up behind his dance partner, grabbing her by the ‘love-handles’, and bumping her repeatedly in the butt with his ‘love machine’.  I named this dance the “Bulldog Watermelon Hump”. 

Good job, Elmer.  Now go fetch a stick.

The second object of my documentation was Herb, a six and one-half foot tall wirey guy with four foot long arms .  Herb, when he first arrives on the dance floor, looks remarkably like a windmill in the middle of Hurricane Katrina.  His arms flail at the air, with complete disregard for any attempt at coordinated motion – that is until Herb begins to ‘feel-the-music’.  At that point, things get really interesting.  Herb sets his feet into a wild flailing display, mimicking the motion of his arms.  You can physically feel the air movement from Herb’s dancing – which I have dubbed the “Oh Crap, There are Hornets In My Hair.”

I don’t expect Herb is going to be married much longer.

If there were a prize awarded that night, it would have gone to Carl.  Actually Carl would have won a couple of trophies – one for drinking the most Tequila, the second (as a result of the first) for actually taking his dancing seriously, and the third (as a result of the first two) for putting on a display of anatomical mobility that has never been performed by any mammal with a skeletal structure.  He starts out by simply walking around his dance partner in a stalking motion as if she were to become his evening’s meal.  But Carl doesn’t walk like most human beings.  Think of one of “Jerry’s Kids” walking across a waterbed and you get a pretty good approximation of the opening of Carl’s act.  Then, for no apparent reason, Carl begins to jump up-and-down, moving only his chin in-and-out, with no movement of his arms or legs.  The motion can only be described as some unholy combination of a ‘Zulu Fertility Dance’ and a ‘Scottish River Dance’ – it’s downright scary.  I was at a loss for any suitable nomenclature that adequately described Carl’s dance until I sobered up the next day.  I now call it “Carl’s Scare-the-Wolves-From-the-Campfire” dance.

So, white guys can’t jump and white guys can’t dance, but as long as there are Chinese guys around, we won’t be the worst at either.

And, that’s all I have to say about that.

Shambo