Martial Arts, Zumba, Ricky Martin, Channing Tatum, and Mia — all in one post.

I managed to miss most of the music from the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st Century.  Don’t ask me how.  I just did.  So I also  managed to miss Ricky Martin entirely.  Here’s how I learned about him, and one of his songs:

The other day, my husband and I watched the movie The Eagle (which started off okay and then jumped the shark so badly, I walked out on it).  As yet another part of my two decade pop culture amnesia, I had no idea who the star, Channing Tatum, was.  I looked him up and learned that he got his big break in Ricky Martin’s She Bangs video.

The next step was to find out who Ricky Martin is.  I learned that he’s a former Menudo singer (even I’d heard of that group), who developed a massively popular solo career singing Latino pop fusion songs.  I like Latino pop (great for dancing), so I checked out She Bangs.  I saw neither hide nor hair of Tatum when I watched the video, but I decided that I really liked the song.

Here’s the video.  It’s a very vulgar video, with women whose hips are so loose they look as if they’re going to disintegrate in the middle, kind of like a paper clip bent once too often.  But for those of us who like to dance (that would be me), it’s a fun song:

(If you’d like to see a less salacious version, please enjoy William Hung doing his version for American Idol.)

Believe it or not, I’m still working my way up to a matched set here. Considering how much I liked the song, it occurred to me that I might want to try a Zumba class. I understand that it’s aerobics to Latino pop music. I’d probably like it, but I have to admit that it seems too ordinary for this martial artist. Fortunately, America’s First Sergeant has a much better idea for mixing Zumba and martial arts.

And lastly, this is not quite part of the match, but related enough to belong here (it is about music and dancing, after all): The Mellow Jihadi riffs off of the vulgarity that the slightly loopy, paranoid, and hypocritical MIA managed to slip in the Superbowl half-time show.