Sheena is a Punk Rocker

It was my first outdoor movie of the summer and hopefully not my last.

After a three course dinner with a favorite musician discussing a May Dweezil Zappa show at the National where middle aged men smoked pot openly, why "Hazards of Love" may be the greatest Decemberists record of all time, the appeal of the new "Mad Max" movie and why an omelet is better for you for breakfast than a salad, it was on the the great outdoors.

Okay, maybe not the greatest of outdoors, but the grassy lot across from Lamplighter and behind Yesterday's Heroes Vintage. While surrounded by buildings, street and cars, there were clouds overhead in a deep blue sky and recently cut grass underfoot. And lightening bugs, lots of them, twinkling all around us as I set up my lowest beach chair by the fence with a great view of the movie screen.

People brought blankets and snacks, chairs and beer and a few sat on the wooden picnic tables near the back. Clouds scuttled overhead and the organizers delayed starting until the sky morphed from blue to dusky before beginning.

Before long a couple of guys set up camp next to me, one described as having a good heart and the other nicknamed Cowboy. It was he with the hat and vest (which he'd sewn himself, making him a most unusual but talented cowboy) who turned to me just as the movie was beginning, holding a beer and raising an eyebrow to see if I'd like one.

Thank you, no. Besides, from the first frames, I was too enchanted with the 1979 gem "Rock 'n' Roll High School," a Roger Corman-produced film that had to have been an instant cult classic by 1980, to do anything else.

As probably the only person in the crowd who remembers 1979, the first thing I noticed was that the star of the football team wore a tie to school. Listen, children, and you shall learn: no guys were wearing ties to public school in 1979. And no freshmen were wearing beanies, either.

Hollywood, pure Hollywood.

The corny film had every cliche firmly in place: a principal who looked more like a prison warden with lipstick and fitted uniforms, a character named Coach Steroid and teen aged girls in the shortest of '70s gym shorts (oh, we all had them) and the brightest of fitted tank tops (or possibly body suits, just as popular at the time).

During a scene in the gym where a student successfully climbs the rope only to fear coming down (she slides, which if she'd done in real life would have removed the skin from her palms), a fate I recall clearly from 7th or 8th grade. I wonder if kids even have to climb the rope anymore in gym class.

In a scene that surely was seen by the makers of "Spinal Tap," the principal demonstrates the destructive powers of rock and roll by cranking the music in her office. What's hysterical is the settings on the volume control, which begin with Pat Boone, go up to Donny and Marie and continue through Kansas, Foreigner, Led Zeppelin and the Who.

At the top of the volume meter is the Ramones, the source of all the trouble at Vince Lombardi High, motto: "Winning is better than losing." So naturally, the student body's favorite band is the Ramones.

Our heroine is Riff Randell, a girl with enormous, long hair tied up in pigtails with yellow yarn (soooo '70s), who defies authority and plays the Ramones on school grounds. Scandalous!

While the movie used plenty of Ramones music, much of it played by the band as they join the plot, there were also other bands of that era. "Smoking in the Boys' Room" accompanied a scene in, where else, the boys' bathroom, where clouds of pot smoke masked a line that snaked to one stall where a savvy student helped others with their dating woes.

Just so we didn't forget it was set in a time long, long ago, there was a shot of a teenager reading Crawdaddy magazine and another where glass bottles of milk were delivered by a milkman. No, really.

But the essence of '70s-era cliches was the football star's tricked out van, a place he hoped would get him laid.  At one point, he used the red, push button phone in the van to call up a girl and tell her he was in his van, on the water bed, listening to his expensive stereo. "Wanna go out and get drunk?" he proposes suavely.

Some men are masters of the romantic approach.

The movie was funny, both intentionally - "My daughter Kate? I thought she was in the basement splitting photons." - and unintentionally, as in when the Ramones pull up in their car (license plate: Gabba Gabba Hey) singing a fully electric version of "Come on Let's Go," except their instruments aren't plugged in and there are no drums to be seen.

Mostly, it was a cliched rehash of youth versus authority with enough bad '70s hair and clothing (in one scene Riff wears a striped bodysuit with alternately striped tights and a scarf, causing one guy to comment, "She looks like Grimes." Actually, that would be Grimes aping the '70s, but no matter) to keep the crowd agog constantly.

During the scene where the Ramones played a concert in their town, the words to "Teenage Lobotomy" scrolled underneath the footage of them singing, like some bizarre punk singalong.

Now I guess I'll have to tell 'em
That I got no cerebellum

One of the coolest parts of the entire film was the ending where the photon-splitting smart girl (nice touch for 1979 for it not to be a guy) sets off a bomb to blow up the school and thus prove to the principal who's in charge. Turns out it was the actual demolition of that L.A. school they used in the filming.

The only thing that could top that was the scene of the Ramones and Riff singing "Do You Want to Dance," a song, I admit, I hadn't even known they'd recorded.

Movie Club is always a learning experience. And if I'm learning things from it, god knows the Grimes contingent is.

Afterwards, there were trivia questions with prizes for those who knew the answers, but if you ask me, the real prize was watching the Ramones, hair hanging in their eyes, awkwardly sing and act their way through "Rock 'n' Roll High School" under a canopy of stars.

Vans with waterbeds, tube socks up to your kneecaps and black marks on your permanent record. Good times.