September is my liminal space. It’s not quite summer (although technically it is for most of the month, AHEM). It’s not full-on spooky season or baking season (although I’m sure some of you maniacs already have one of those ten-foot skeletons in your yard.) So what are we left with? School season.
Now BACK-to-school season already happened. All major retailers start trickling in those fears into our brains in mid-July, so kids can have the specter of homework hovering over them for a month every time they walk past a Staples. Now all the kids are fully in school, so it’s school season. And luckily there are also dance moves for school season:
I LOVE a music video set in a school. As a theatre1 kid who also loved to sing in the hallways, it would have been my dream come true to have my whole school suddenly get up and sing and dance a fully choreographed dance number together. It also would have been my dream come true to have lip gloss so sparkly and powerful that boys would chase me after school.
This video just reminded me how long ago 2007 really was. Like if I think about 2007 in a “vibes” way and not a “mathematical, scientific” way, I would say it was 11 years ago. FALSE. It was 17(!) years ago, as demonstrated by some of the relics in this video, like:
A computer lab full of blue iMacs
Everyone wearing skinny jeans
Swoopy bangs
Also you should know that Lil Mama is turning 35 in just a couple weeks. ANYWAY.
The premise here is that Lil Mama’s mama gives her some very special lip gloss to help her fit in at school.2 It’s in a real shiny case that looks like a Zippo lighter and it can clip onto her bracelet!
What I want to know is: did her mom also know it was going to possess the entire school and make spoons dance??
Lil Mama enters strong, empowered by her new sparkly lips. I like that she not only enjoys her new power, but she uses it for good by giving everyone else a glow up. First she transforms these girls:
So now they can all do this hilarious strut with her, which is absolutely the latest way I want to enter a room. Something about it makes me wish she was twirling a pocket watch with the other hand and I can’t explain why, but you see it, right?
She then gives us the classic movie moment of transforming a nerd into a cute boy who can dance:
Meanwhile, the cafeteria is divided between the kids who can dance really well:
And the kids who want to make beats with their trays:
This tray situation feels very much like a game we used to play in the music wing in my high school where we sat on the floor and rhythmically drummed and flipped cups around in a circle in a way that must have been maddening to everyone trying to walk down the hall. So I figure these tray kids must be the band and choir kids.
Oh and this when the spoons seem to be possessed and dancing on the beat. What is in this lip gloss? Shrooms??
Then we take a quick break into another dimension, or at least another area of the gymnasium, for a breakdown. There aren’t really any moves here but I have to acknowledge it because she’s a great rapper and every few frames she’s randomly holding a cute baby:3
We come back into this dimension to learn that Ms. McClarkson, the perfectly-named dean of this possessed school, has also been struck by the lip gloss fever and demands that Lil Mama write down where she got hers. She appears to write something down (probably “my beautiful witch mom”) but then also hands her a decoy lip gloss. No way is she going to hand over the real power source!
We wind down the magical day with more big group choreography in the gym (yay!!):
Where the lip gloss fumes are now making this jump-roper jump to superhuman heights:
We get to the end of the day as Lil Mama returns to the car and her mom reveals: “It wasn’t the lip gloss, it was you all along.” AHA! So LIL MAMA was actually the witch! I get it now!
Happy school season, everyone! Maybe you’re a student, maybe you’re a teacher, or maybe you’re just wistfully brushing your fingertips across gel pens in Staples. No matter how you celebrate, embrace this in-between time and use your sparkly lip powers for good.
By the way: my favorite lip gloss is Burt’s Bees tinted lip gloss in Daisy. It’s basically lazy lipstick and my hair doesn’t get stuck to it. I be lovin’ it. Almost as much as I love you.
See you next month when I might finally allow spooky season into my life!
Love and jazz hands,
Molly
You know I’m serious because I used the -re version.
It’s very “these have always brought me luck.” Imagine if Lil Mama had the magic lip gloss AND White Diamonds!
And that baby probably has their own grandbabies now because 2007 was actually 75 years ago!!