The District, just like any other city, has traditions to which we cling. One is the HBO Dance, the timeless gyration which accompanies the opening to each film presented during the yearly Screen on the Green festival.

Does the HBO Dance need to be tinkered with? No, it does not. (See the above? That’s the way to do it. End of story.) But that’s not going to stop people from encouraging such blasphemy!

This year, to inject a little bit of “fun” into proceedings — just who do these people think they are? — Friends of Screen on the Green are holding an HBO Dance contest, handing out prizes for people who film themselves performing the “Most Washingtonian,” “Most Creative” and “Largest Group” HBO Dances, and encouraging folks to engage in a “spontaneous explosion of frivolity.” However, anyone whose been taught properly knows that there’s only one way to do the HBO Dance: a simple pogo, with arms flailing back and forth to the beat of the epic “Starship” score.

Put another way, such variations on the HBO Dance just shouldn’t exist. To think, my predecessor — who once definitively declared that “the HBO Dance is not a freeform, wiggly enterprise comprised of flailing about however you feel like it” — must be, well, up in arms.