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.