So You Think You Can Dance: Season 9 – L.A. Auditions

E: Last week brought us dancers from the usual two day long auditions in both New York and Dallas. By contrast, this episode was a two hour feast of a single day’s auditions.  Was the team really only in LA for a single day?  Or was the first day that great and the second day, terminally boring?  Either way, there’s a lot to talk about.

Joining Nigel and Mary at the judges table is “superfan” Jesse Tyler Ferguson.  I still honestly don’t know how I feel about that (he’s fun and funny, but is it really fair to the dancers to put a non-pro in a power position?) but he acquits himself well enough.  He’s confident in his opinions and seems generally to concur with Nigel and Mary.  Except when it comes to groping oneself and booty shaking, that is; he’s in favor, but Mary is not.

So You Think You Can Dance: Season 9 – NYC and Dallas Auditions

E: YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  They are back, baby!  Cat!  Nigel!  Mary Murphy!  And the most amazing, mindboggling, fantastic dancers.  Such good times.

Unlike American Idol, the audition rounds on So You Think You Can Dance have a really special charm.  First, they’re much better at not making fun of people; there are a lot more great auditions then there are awful ones.  Second, and most excitingly, we get to see a wider variety of great dancers than the ones who make it on the show.  The live performance rounds require a particular skill set; you need to be able to partner, do lifts, and be flexible enough to pick up lots of new styles.  Clearly, this tips the scales toward contemporary dancers.  But in the audition rounds, we get to see spectacular breaking, tapping, clogging, whaacking, you name it.  We get to see people who excel in their own genre, even if they don’t make it on to the live shows.  And I love that!  So while the auditions on American Idol are generally painful, these?  These pretty much rock.

Now, okay, granted, we didn’t see any clogging last night.  But did we have fun?  Did we see some really unique, personal performance styles?  Oh yes we did.  It’s the good stuff that interests me, and that’s mostly what we got.

We are experiencing – difficulties

E: So, Good Wife fans, I seem to have deleted my 2/3rds completed recap, and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do to get it back.  Picked a bad time for it, too, since WordPress’s “support” staff is apparently unavailable for the next week plus.  Excuse the noise of me bashing my head against the computer, as I figure out what on earth I’m going to do.  Shorter recap?  Rewrite it all for later in the week?  Right now the thought of re-doing all that work just about makes me want to weep…

A New Look – Your Thoughts?

Hi all, M here.  This is just a quick post letting you know that we decided to give a slightly changed look and feel for the web site a try.  Ok, so that’s a singular “we”, and I decided it because E and C have offered little to no feedback, positive or negative, over the last several weeks.

Anyway, please let us know what you think of the new look!  If more people prefer the old one we are perfectly happy to change it back.

Top Chef All Stars: Reunion

M: I have to say, I don’t usually care to much for the reunion shows, and Andy Cohen annoys the crap out of me, but this one was REALLY funny at times.

E: Gah, Andy Cohen.  But yeah, there was plenty of interesting stuff here.  Witness the bro-mances.    Remember when guys could be friends and no one thought that was weird or required its own name?  Men hugging?  Being supportive?  Oh no!