Entries Tagged 'Blogging' ↓

Big semi-final week, with scores of 60-60-59-58. I bet Apollo feels pretty dumb saying that he's aiming to be the first person to score 60, and not only doesn't he do it, but two other people do it in the same night.

Here's some trivia. This weekend, My Big Fat Greek Wedding was on tv. Know who plays cousin Angelo in that movie? Joey Fatone. He even gets to dance a bit.

This week Joey is the first to be safe, and then Laila, so it's down to Apollo and Ian. The obvious guess is Ian. He made a valiant comeback, but he's not as strong a performer as the others.

You know, when the musical guest (Julio Inglesias) just sings and there's no dancing, I think we're pushing it a bit. I think that the combination of a musical guest with a dancing demonstration is absolutely brilliant, combining the best of several worlds into something that is completely unique on television today. But then they go and fall into a pattern — sing an old song that everybody knows (Let Me Be Your Hero), and then sing something to promote your new album. Which would be fine, except why wasn't anybody dancing during the second number? Lame.

The flamenco (am I spelling that right?) demonstration looked….weird. I swear it looked like a bunch of guys in an ethnic neighborhood sitting around on the front steps banging on the side of the house while a guy in his pimpsuit pretended to be Michael Flatley Lord of the Dance. I guess it just wasn't for me.

And after 25 minutes of filler and 30 seconds of payoff, Ian goes home as it should be. Everybody's happy. He got his 10s.

Every day I get a couple of stragglers in my referrer logs where the URL is somebody's resume. I'm not quite sure what sort of moron you have to be to think that spamming your resume is going to get you jobs, but it's never really bothered me, I just blacklist them all. Today, all of a sudden, there are dozens of them. Not dozens of different ones, but dozens of hits from the same URLs over and over again. Not really sure what's up with that. All the same, they're all going in the blacklist. What I should really do is follow the link, get the email address and then put them personally in my blacklist just so that I'm sure never to hire them.

As we wind these shows down to the big finale, it's almost not worth recapping every little instance. The highlight this week should have been the presence of Muhammad Ali to cheer on his daughter Laila, but they really didn't make that much of a deal about it. Probably because the man can barely stand any longer. Billy Ray was the most excited of all, running over to shake his hand during the middle of a performance.

The other big note was Bruno calling Billy Ray's performance crap. That pissed him off like I've never seen before. Billy Ray's got a good point, that is pretty rude. Karina said it best, "Every week I tell Billy Ray to take what the judges say, and try to work on something to improve on the next time. But what can you do with crap?"

It's apparently an omen, however, as Billy Ray finally goes home. It was a little scary there when Joey, rather than Ian, also made it to the bottom two. What does that say about the fanbase? I thought for sure that Ian would be the next one (after Billy Ray). Maybe Cheryl's got the fanbase to carry them both.

Oh, and how weird did Nellie Furtado sound? I always thought she was nasal, but it sounded like she was doing a satire of herself tonight. Yuck.

Man, watching Meatloaf sing these days makes me sad.

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No surprises, Leeza got kicked off. Called that one in my sleep. I expect John to go next, and then Clyde. After that it'll get interesting.

Who, exactly, are Big and Rich? Or is it Bigg? I don't really care. Man, I felt like I was losing IQ points just looking at them. Who comes in costume anymore? Which one looked dumber, the guy who looked like a 7yr old who just got a new Black Bart cowboy costume for Christmas, or the one that looked like a well-dressed hobo who just jumped off the freight train? Where was his stick with a hanky tied to it?

The one cool thing of the night was when they did "Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy" which is the song that Cheryl and Drew Lachey won with back in season 2. She even wore the same outfit, and when they were doing the same choreography I pointed this out to Kerry. Sure enough, who shows up? Drew Lachey pops up right in the middle to finish off the dance. Very cool, and not the sort of thing you ever get on American Idol.

It continues to amaze/pain me that they stretch the show out to an hour just for a 30 second payoff. At least there were no psychics this week.

It's actually becoming painful watching them try to fill an hour. Just make it half an hour and accept it. This week we have Sierra sing, whoever that is, which is just insulting because there's not even a ballroom demo that goes with it.

Then we get Survivor doing a version of Eye Of The Tiger that would have had them booed off of American Idol. Some folks don't age well.

And Josh Groban? Man, he's not getting the bookings he used to.

And then came the psychics. Wow, that is hard to watch when you consider that people actually believe that stuff. We go through a whole bunch of the psychics saying generic things like "Laila likes to be in control" and then the producers cut in a clip of Laila taking charge, as if that's supposed to prove anything. At least they go so far as to get predictions – the numerologist says Laila, and the guy who sees auras says Ian. Two reasonable choices. I wonder if they actually interviewed half a dozen psychics and then only showed the ones who picked the potential winners?

Anyway, as predicted a mile away, Shandi goes home. Next week should be Leeza, then Clyde, then John. Apolo, Ian, Joey and Laila should easily be the finalists. The real wildcard is Heather, whether she'll be good enough to knock one of those four out of their spot.

After mentioning TaxCut in a blog post over at Commute Smarter, somebody from the company sent me a coupon for a free copy of the software (including e-file) which goes for about $75. I'd already bought the program and filed my taxes, so I'm giving it away.

To enter, see the original post for more details. Good luck!

The only redeeming quality of the results show is that demonstrations of professional ballroom dancing. Combining that with a song (or two) from whatever B-list celebrity they have on hand that week actually makes them both bearable, compared with something like American Idol where we have no choice but to sit and listen to Carrie or Fantasia or whoever is legally obligated to sing that week. On Dancing we can ignore Dionne Warwick and watch Anna Trebunskya wiggle her hips.

Anyway, it comes down to Paulina and Shandi, which seems to pretty well demonstrate that all these things are popularity contests, not talent contests. Paulina and Shandi didn't stand out. Billy Ray, even if he's a lousy dancer, has got a following because of his television show. The audience doesn't vote for people they don't know.

Can I take a moment to say how badly Samantha screwed up several times tonight? At one point she said "after the babank" instead of "after the break" which had Tom looking at her strange, and then later she completely screwed up the tease about who was in the bottom two when she said "Paulina and Alec….uhh…." before going on to just list everybody's name. Turns out they were in the bottom two anyway. Bad cover.

Speaking of them, Paulina is indeed the first to go. That must piss off Alec. Remember, he was the season one champion. You have to figure that he was looking forward to making a real showing of it.

Ok, I'm going to start to fall behind here for a little bit since they sprung the premiere on me early, so my apologies ahead of time. Since we haven't finished the show yet at my house I'll save the review of the actual dancers until tonight. But here's thoughts on the premiere itself:

• It's funny how they're hyping "they only had 4 weeks to train instead of 6!" like it's a big thing, and then they say "But the first week there'll be no eliminations." In other words, "We just wanted to get on tv earlier." A week of dancing without eliminations? So, basically, the show is just a 2 hour introduction to the cast? Ummm…
• I'm surprised that the producers haven't yet realized that the professional dancers are becoming stars in their own right at this point. What the heck was up with that mess of an opening number? Kerry and I were frantically looking for the dancers we recognized from past years. I'm disappointed that I didn't see Ashley, the little cute one who got stuck with Master P. I liked her. Why in the world couldn't they have worked in introductions to the dancers at that point? Even when the stars themselves came out, there was a graphic showing the dancer's name, without so much as a "from last season" or anything. They're still using the same introductions for the dancers that they've used since the beginning. Boring. If a dancer's been on the show before (besides Cheryl, we all know Cheryl's going to be the camera darling this time around), show some clips of their dancing.
• And speaking of that chaotic opening number, just how bad is the camera work going to be this year? That was painful to watch. I haven't seen all the pairs dancing yet, but when Joey Fatone was dancing we saw a cameraman or something run across the screen. That's just great.
• Heather Mills would rather be known as "charity campaigner" and "first dancer with an artificial limb" than "Paul McCartney's ex-wife"? This is supposed to be dancing with the *stars*, right? I wonder if anybody will dance to any Beatles covers.
• Oh my god how bad did Billy Ray Cyrus look? I wonder if he'll be the first one gone this time around? That would be karma — his partner is Karina, who pretty much lost the championship last year on her personality alone. Serves her right getting her hair pulled out of her head. Ouch. 🙂
• Did anybody else feel a little weird with the champ from season one out there dancing? I'd almost forgotten about the lost season. You know, the one where it was fixed, before they realized that they might have a hit on their hands.
• Here's some totally trivial trivia. One of the pairs danced to "Ballroom Blitz." In the movie Wayne's World, this song was performed by … Tia Carrere, former Dancing With The Stars competitor. I said it was trivial.

As of this writing I saw Ian, Billy Ray, Leeza, Paulina and Joey dance. Ian was the best, Billy Ray the worst. Leeza was surprisingly stiff, she's not doing her Lisa Rinna spot justice if she's going to dance like that.

Like I said, I'll write more once I see the whole show.
I'm thinking about trying to track the music this year, but that might be pushing my luck.

Scratch one charismatic old guy from the roster. Unlike John O'Hurley, George Hamilton and Jerry Springer, Vincent Pastore has decided that the rigorous training needed for the dancing program is too much for him, and he's bailing out.

Master P, you listening?