Dancing With The Stars: First Impressions, Men’s Division

My thing with Penn Jillette is that I don’t really know whether it’s possible to be built like a freighter and dance gracefully. His feet look like summer squash in shoes, he’s about eight-foot-sixteen, and his toes turn out…a lot. I wonder whether his toes have to turn out like that to distribute his weight side to side, lest he hit the ground like a toppled oak. The guy clearly has experience with something similar to choreography, certainly with precision timing, and obviously with hambone performance techniques. But I admit: it looks like if you turned off the music, you’d be able to hear the sound of Sweetums pursuing the Muppets.

The big surprise to me was Jason Taylor. Football guys are really hit-or-miss — Emmitt Smith was great; Jerry Rice was infectious but not a great dancer. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a guy bust out posture like that on a first try — it was like he was dancing around with that weird shoulder-shaping apparatus stuffed inside his jacket. He’s got tremendous body control (he’s got the body control of a horny gazelle! — sorry, I was just translating into Incoherent Bruno for native speakers of that particular language); when they say “lock your arms,” he locks his arms. My guess right now is that he’s your winner. I wouldn’t mind, because I really like Edyta, and aside from Joey Lawrence, she’s danced with Evander Holyfield, George Hamilton, and John Ratzenberger. I don’t know who a lady’s gotta suck up to so she doesn’t get stuck with every arthritic and/or potato-footed wedge of Gouda in the competition, but I’m glad she got a little luckier this time. He executed a couple of turns at the end of that dance that were, for a football player who claims to be uneasy about dancing, pretty crazy-impressive.

I did not recognize Cristian De La Fuente. It’s a good example of sauce for the goose and sauce for the gander, because this is an example of a guy who’s just as bland, random, and unknown as the spindly model-actress cannon fodder they line up every year. He clearly believes that he was born for Latin dancing, and at first, it looks like he knows what he’s doing. But then you realize that there is a sort of “I am all that and a bag of [tortilla] chips” attitude surrounding him that’s making him look better than he is. Where Jason Taylor has the locked, lifted shoulders, Cristian has the sort of scrunchy, droopy ones. (Also, in the intro video, I seriously thought he was about to make a reference at one point to dancing with his genitals, which I did not need to hear, but it turned out I was worrying for no reason, as it turned out he was merely appealing to his “Latin hips.”) In the end, I raise this question: If he weren’t this particular brand of hot, would there be any particular appeal to watching him dance? I think not. I watched the dance pretending he had an ugly person’s head, and it just wasn’t the same.

I’m never sure how I feel about Adam Carolla. I really liked old-style Loveline when he was on, but when he goes out on his own, it goes to a very Man Show place. I think I was assuming, based on all I know of him, that he would be the disaster; the Master P of the group. So even though he wasn’t good at all, I wound up thinking, “Well, that was respectable.” I think Master P set such a poor example a couple of seasons ago that everybody looks good now. All you have to do is try. All you have to do is be willing to wear the shoes, and everybody’s happy for you. Adam owes a lot to Master P. I think it’s possible that Adam will wind up in contention for the award for Dancing The Greatest Distance Above His Natural Ability Of Absolutely Zero, previously won by Harry Hamlin.

If there’s a ringer among the men, it’s Mario. He’s kind of an R&B guy, and not to make it too obvious, but the “R” in “R&B” doesn’t stand for “Real Tin-Eared.” (Oh my God, what a horrible joke. I am embarrassed, and am leaving it there only as an example of what my brain will sometimes do without Ye Olde Formerre TWoP Bullpenne to conk me on the head.) Now, the cha-cha that he and Karina performed is so far inside his wheelhouse that it is his wheelhouse defined, so it’s not clear yet whether he’s going to waltz very well. But pop musicians always seem to have something of a built-in advantage (see: what’s-her-face the Cheetah Girl last year, as well as Scary Spice), and it looks like he’s another in that category. I didn’t go for this dance, because I was so distracted by the white pants and the white shoes. But talent-wise, he’s got the stuff.

Steve Guttenberg needs to stop wearing that ecstatic expression on his face, like he’s found bliss. It’s creepy. A foxtrot is supposed to be romantic and dreamy, but you’re not doing a commercial for antidepressants, and it’s okay to close your mouth. You don’t have to look like you’re literally frozen saying “aaaaah, life is maaaarvelous” all the time. He’s pretty stompy, and he needs to stop mugging, and it would be nice if I couldn’t almost hear him counting in his head. But I allow that he was obviously trying very hard, which — ironically — is kind of the story of his acting career also. The Stonecutters will be pleased to know he was well received by the judges, though.

Here’s The Thing About Judge Judy

I realize that for many of you, my love of courtroom television seems odd. And perhaps it is odd. But I challenge you to watch this case — all the way to the end; that is critical — and not be a little entertained.

After the jump, I will tell you what the TWoP posters call the defendant in this case.

Dear Hand-Wavers On American Idol

Every time I look at American Idol now, people are putting their hands in the air and waving them like they just don’t care. You can’t sing a ballad on this show anymore without the hand-wavers. “We just don’t care!” their hands cry out. “We just don’t CARE!” Okay, I realize that the cigarette-lighter-style wave is different from the hip-hop “He-ey! He-ey!” wave, and maybe it’s the second one that means you just don’t care, but seriously, people: get a hold of yourselves.

I understand that David “Let’s Hear It For The Boy, And By ‘It,’ I Mean ‘Ch-Ching!’” Archuleta’s rendition of “The Long And Winding Road” moved you practically to tears, because you were so happy that he remembered the words this time. And maybe because he sang the actual melody most of the way through once, which is more respect than he showed poor “Imagine,” the melody of which he was kind enough to rewrite — you’re welcome, John Lennon. Please note that in that clip, you can see him practically begging you through the screen: “Do you see? DO YOU?” He thinks a lot about world peace, you can tell. Note also that in that performance, you hand-wavers forgot to show up. Maybe you care. You really care. You also failed to arm-wave when he sang “Another Day In Paradise,” so maybe you know that it’s disrespectful to wave ‘em like you just don’t care when he’s singing about homeless people.

At any rate, last night, you just didn’t care when he sang “The Long And Winding Road,” and you just didn’t care again when Chikezie sang the beginning, ballad-y part of his arrangement of “I’ve Just Seen A Face.” So apparently, you don’t care about public works projects or people’s faces. I hope you’re happy.

Today, There Is Stuff

If you’re not familiar with indexed, today is a good day to try it. I’m also a big fan of this one.

That site, by the way, is a great example of why, if you haven’t already, you should familiarize yourself with Google Reader (or something like it) and get all your daily fixes in one place. I’d never remember to look at all the sites like that one every day if I didn’t have them in my Reader.

In political news, via Best Week Ever (the show is a little much for me, but the blog is excellent), I will have to admit that I do not understand why John McCain’s site needs to be running an NCAA tournament pool. I never understand the philosophy that goes, “Here’s a thing that exists, that sometimes people like, and I have a web site. Therefore, my web site should have that thing that exists that sometimes people like!” That is stupid…John McCain.

I gave this book to the Music Stylist for Christmas. I’m pretty sure it changed his life.

Someone who lives in Brooklyn takes a picture of her breakfast every day. It’s one of those lovely, weird internet things, where I’m not sure there’s much of a point, other than that (1) the pictures are often pretty; and (2) it’s a novel way to document your life. I think of “here’s what I had for breakfast this morning” as the very definition of what every bad eighth-grade diary sounds like when it’s written by someone with nothing to say yet, but somehow, this is charming. (Via thekitchn.com.)

Don’t forget that the new Survivor is tonight instead of tomorrow night, because of the NCAA tournament, also known as “Linda Cries Over A Probable First-Round Upset, The Way Things Are Going.”