Take a look around at choady Myspace or Facebook profiles and tell me I’m not right. When choads gather together for photographs, the shirts come off, the chins tilt up, the gang signs get thrown, and at least one person in the group flashes the Blue Steel. The irony of this would have me rolling on the floor laughing were it not such a tragic commentary on our times.

Remember Zoolander? Of course you do. He was beautiful, well dressed, charming, and one of the dumbest characters Hollywood has ever spit forth. And the film was a hilarious parody of the fashion and modeling industry, complete with drama, attitude, after parties, killer make up, superstar cameos, and an assassination plot to kill the prime minister of Malaysia. And Derek Zoolander, the creator of the legendary “Blue Steel” facial expression, was the painfully obtuse protagonist who was manipulated, cajoled, and corralled into being the fall guy in an evil scheme by the Fashionista powers that be.

So I wonder… am I the only one who finds it utterly hilarious that choads are imitating the lovable stooge’s facial expression in their photographs now? Do they realize they’re glorifying a character that was a specifically designed mockery of all the things they try to embody? Let’s go down some of Mr. Zoolander’s choady qualities:

Sound like any of the choads you know? I don’t want to crack on the character too much, as he did show some growth toward the end of the film, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that Zoolander IS in fact a choad. If you remember in the opening scene when the forces of evil are trying to select a model for their criminal deeds, they describe their subject as “a beautiful, self absorbed simpleton that can be manipulated and molded like Jell-O.” Sounds like a choad to me. And before you argue with me, think about the MTV culture of commercialism around us that has guys shaving their chests, hitting the tanning salons, and sporting clothing labels they can only barely afford. Choads really do want to be Zoolander these days don’t they? It’s more important to be beautiful and well attired than intelligent or talented.

Oh well. I get a giggle out of the fact that Hollywood made fun of pop culture and then, as if on cue, the masses picked it up and started celebrating the very thing Hollywood mocked.

A friend and I were hanging out at my place one night a couple months ago. Neither of us had enough money or inclination to go out and actually do anything, so we cracked a couple of beers and took a stab at channel surfing. Despite having over a hundred movie channels, nothing interesting was on.

My companion and I looked at each other skeptically. “When was the last time you saw this flick?” he asked. It had probably been 10 years since I’d even thought about the film. It was cheesy even in the early 90s, when cheese was already pretty out of control. But we had a 12 pack of beer and enough bourbon and vodka to take down Lindsey Lohan, so we decided to drink ourselves silly and see if there wasn’t some unintentional comedy in this film worth a look. Thus, our Point Break Drinking Game was born.

It was difficult to decide what the drinking should be based on. There are so many wonderfully choady qualities about Point Break as a whole, it was hard to determine what was gulp worthy. I think we ended up agreeing that any line Keanu, Swayze, or Gary Busey delivered that was clearly a surfer or “cops’n robbers” cliché would be a swill line. You can guess what happened from there. 20 minutes into the movie we were tanked and laughing like idiots at every “whoa” and “dude” and “brah” that came out of anyone’s mouth. But from within my booze haze I began to notice something about the 3 main characters: They were all, in their own special way, big ass iconic choads.

Consider the protagonist, Mr. Johnny “the quarterback” Utah, fresh out of the Academy in Quantico and eager to take down criminals in the name of glory, justice, and the ever powerful FBI. As if the horrendous screenwriting didn’t do him enough of a disservice (some of the lines this character utters are bewilderingly bad,) he’s played by the most stilted and unconvincing actor since Kevin Costner. This poor character never had a chance. He wants desperately to be the “good” guy in the beginning of the film, but gets seduced by elements of the dark side without realizing that he’s merely the white robe sporting Luke Skywalker to Bodhi’s Darth Vader. His straight and narrow FBI mind isn’t prepared for the existential trip Bodhi takes him on. By the end of the ride, he’s a long-haired Zen spouting surfer dude dropping hideous lines like “Vaya con dios” and tossing his once coveted FBI badge into the ocean. After that little move I was surprised they didn’t come back with a Point Break 2 starring Johnny Utah as the good guy gone bad. They could have brought in Ashton Kutcher as the man who’s gotta take him down, and Haylie Duff as the pretty and slightly bossy surfer girlfriend. Either Ashton’s OR Keanu’s.

Agent Angelo Pappas, played by the weather beaten Gary Busey, was an exceptional choad as well and nothing screamed it louder than his wardrobe. I haven’t seen a collection of Hawaiian shirts like that since the Beach Boys last toured. He was the perfect cliché—a savvy but aging agent, set in his ways and unhappy about being paired with some snot-nosed newbie fresh out of FBI school. Busey nailed the part right down to the bad jokes, the contempt for his younger boss, and the overcompensating for being the “old dude” on the squad. Old, and still fighting for respect he thinks he deserves while wearing flowered shirts and punching out his superior… if that ain’t choad, nothing is.

The biggest choad in the film though wasn’t the dried up Pappas or even the Adonis rookie Utah. When it comes to true, unadulterated choadiness, the clear winner was the defiant Bodhi. Part thrill seeker, part philosopher, part bank robber, ALL CHOAD. The hair alone qualified him for choad status—unless you were in an 80s band that had at least one person check into rehab for heroin, you had no business sporting that shoulder length highlighted frizz mop. His obsession with adrenaline rushes was also supremely choady. He referenced the “ultimate thrill” entirely too many times in a 2 hour movie to not have his picture in the choad Hall of Fame. And let’s not forget, his entire posse was killed as a direct result of his shenanigans. This is SO the kind of guy who would leave you puking in a parking lot after a hard night of drinking to go chase hot tail at an after hours party.

But we found good use for these 3 choads. And should you ever find yourself in the same position of having nothing to do and nowhere to go, and this film happens to be on, put them to work for you. There’s this version of the Point Break Drinking Game (plus several thousand other movie drinking games brought to you by the boys at LazyDork.com) or you can go with the Choad Network version…

And, if you’re feeling really saucy…

You saw the film—Zoolander, starring Ben Stiller as the ultra beautiful male model with the dazzling smile and room temperature IQ. That goofy character seems to have achieved a sort of immortality, as modern choads began faithfully offering up worship to designer labels and hyperstyled hair, and giving their best “Blue Steel” in their photographs. But as we started looking at the film career of Mr. Stiller, we realized that Zoolander wasn’t the only choady character in his repertoire. In fact Ben Stiller has made a career out of playing choads of varying degrees. And since we have that kind of time on our hands, we put together a little graph to demonstrate the many choads of Ben Stiller:

Going back to 1994, Stiller hit an 8 on the Choad Scale playing Captain Corporate in the 90s slacker angst film Reality Bites.

In 2001 Stiller hit what was potentially the greatest moment of choad history with the title role in the ultimate choad tutorial film Zoolander. Totally hot, totally vacuous, totally warped, Derek Zoolander started off as a cartoon version of a choad, until real choads started to genuinely adopt his behavior. Who knew the popped collar and lip gloss phenomenon would catch on like that?

Then in 2004 Stiller appeared in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story as the notoriously choadtastic White Goodman. Complete with fake gritty voice, bad guy mustache, and full blown Napoleon complex, Stiller spiked the choad charts again in his muscle obsessive, feathered hair role.