Not very Shag-tastic at all.

If there is one dance that I wish would be taken off the face of the earth, it is the Shag. Popularized in the 1940’s by beach music loving fraternity kids in the Carolinas, it is in many ways the bastard stepchild of swing dancing and the not too distant cousin of country line dancing. But more importantly, shagging may be one of the primary reasons that black people make fun of the way white people dance and a large cause of bar fights. Here are other reasons of my aversion to the dance:

1)Shagging is the IED of dancing.

You never know when it is going to break out. And it is indeed explosive. You could be in a packed bar with not an iota of room and if Brown Eyed Girl comes on the speakers, there will always be at least three couples in the room that decide that there could be no perfect place to shag than in the inches of free space which they occupy. And we all know what comes next: A Chip and Mitsi buzzsaw, sending everyone in a 10 foot radius and their beers in disarray.

2)Shagging has no conscience.

Once Chip and Mitsi return from their pastel-laden, erotic, caucasion spinfest, they will almost always give no acknowledgement to the destruction which they have left in their wake. At best, Chip will brush his frop(mop haircut preferred by most current and 1-5 years removed Southern fraternity guys) to the side, glance around, and give the person closest a curt,” What the fuck are you looking at?” or my personal favorite, the silent blue blood “eat shit” smirk.

3) Shagging acknowledges no musical style or taste.

Certain people will find a way to shag to ANY form of music. Case in point, last night at a local bar festival. Band playing Metallica? Shag faster with the occasional devil horns hand gesture added in. Tommy Tutone? Use more of a new wave skip to your shag. I have even seen the occasional indie rock show shag. I wondered how they stumbled in there. It was hilarious. You would have thought from the look on some of the local indie crowd’s faces that the couple had drawn lewd doodles on a Ben Gibbard portrait.

4. Shagging is the equilavent of shaking your drunk girlfriend or prospective hookup up like a beer can.

First of all let me say that despite my despise for the shag, there seem to be a wide array of girls of all types that love it. I even admit have even performed the dance(begrudgingly) to humor a girl or two in my past. But I don’t really get why they like it, other than to possibly reclaim that odd sense of euphoria one got as a kid when they spun in circles in the backyard until they got dizzy, fell down and in some cases yarfed. But back to the main point, in almost every case of the rowdy bar, shag induced IED explosion, Mitsi is almost always found later, as you leave the bar, either being drug comatose by Chip out the door or sitting on the asphalt in the parking lot with her head buried between her legs as her friends chatter away on cellphones circled around her. So if you think of it, the shag as a pick up form is much like playing russian roulette. While it may pay off and create the perfect rush to get her a little closer to ones bedroom, there is a good chance the wrong chamber loads and good ole Chip is now the proud owner of a projectile launcher for the night.