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So You Think You Can Dance Top 8 Couples

Dear Jenny,

I think this is what the kids today call "live blogging." I'm watching So You Think You Can Dance and I'm typing. Oh God. I'm already falling behind.

My highlight, week after week, is seeing what Cat Deeley is wearing and what she's doing with her hair. Today she's wearing what looks like a wedding dress, only super-short, and her hair is a little rough.

Adam Shankman is the guest host, which means we've got some Mia Michaels choreography coming up. So cool. He just said "Adam Sandler Christmas movie," though, which is deeply weird and is making me very anxious.

Cyd Charisse is dead, which is sad, although I'm guessing she was quite old. Cat Deeley is only 5'9". The Hell? Are all these dancers dwarves?

Commercial break, thank God. I am also making dinner, as the kids call it today. That Eddie Murphy movie, though . . . You know.

Twitchington. Some time killing at the beginning. Twitch laughs like a bear and Kherington has a shopping problem. Now we get highlights from last week's Celine Dion baby angel bullshit. Sorry. Viennese Waltz. They get a Tabitha and Napoleon piece this week and not so surprising, it's really cool. Nigel pretends that he's going to have something bad to say and . . . we get it.

Wow. Mary Murphy is sparkly tonight. And it's almost 8:25 and we've had just one performance. This blows.

Gev/Courtney. This was boring, but the judges seem to be going for it. I think these two are very safe this week, if only because Courtney is kind of naked? She's still got the best hair of the competition, which must help, plus we learned that she is learning to be a special ed teacher. Oh, and? I still kind of think that something is going on between her and Gev.

Nigel is like your pervy uncle. Adam Shankman just compared Mary to a disco ball and now he's rambling some  . . .Nigel is making a deal about that. He should be happy -- we have a lot of time to kill.

The Dark Knight trailer. I can't stand how much I'm looking forward to that. Ditto Fringe. The Sarah Connor Chronicles? Not so much.

Chris/Comfort. Confirmed: Chris has a weird body. I think this whole thing was a hot mess. (Mary is "disinterested.") I don't think it's the choreography's fault, and neither does Adam Shankman. Comfort, though? Still too big for this freaking show.

Space Chimps. Wow. I haven't seen Wall-E, but I know that Space Chimps sucks. L.C. and Brody Freaking Jenner are shilling for AT&T. Whatever.

Will/Jessica. Holy crap. So the pre-routine patter for them is deeply ironic. Jessica says that Will is a true gentleman -- opening doors and what not. Then Doriana Sanchez says that the routine is all about giving Jessica a chance to shine (because everyone already loves Will); the subtext seems to be, "Shape up, Ariel, because we will not let you be an albatross around the neck of our darling Will." Then Will steals the performance yet again. Unless one of the remaining couples really screws the pooch, these two are going to the bottom and Jessica? Is not coming back.

Julia Ormond is in that Kit Kittredge: An American Girl movie? The one with weirdly blond Abigail Breslin? Julia Ormond is still working?

Matt/Kourtni. New choreographer, piece about superheroes fighting and flirting? I don't know about that, but this was Matt and Kourtni's best performance so far, the only one that I've actually enjoyed -- and it made me like Matt for the first time.

Thayne/Chelcie. Quick step. Wow. I don't care. I hate quick step and these two drive me insane. Nigel says something about them being Band-Aids with smiles plastered on, which . . . has he been watching the past three weeks? This isn't a new development.

Mark/Chelsea. More Tabitha and Napoleon. Sucky music, good routine. I still love these two.

Joshua/Katee. This is actually kind of funny -- Joshua says Katee screams like a boy, which she does. I think I sort of like Katee. Her awkward moment dance thing is funny, too. Huh. Another half-dress. That seems very en vogue this week. You know Nigel is going to like it. Pig. I can't decide what I think about this routine because I'm distracted, thinking that they should have done this to "Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing" -- which they played during the rehearsal footage. Oh, wait. Oh my God. Nigel is now an equal opportunity harasser? He just drew everyone's attention to Joshua's "bum." Then he directed the camera to Joshua's father's ass as well? And I died? I can't tell which is driving me insane right now -- all of that or Katee's hair. Or Mary Murphy bringing up the stupid hot tamale train again.

I need to lie down.

Love,

-- Pete

P.S. Where is Mia Michaels?!

Any of You Boys Know How to Shovel Coal?

As GOB said about wireless crapability, this one sells itself:

There Are Six Things I'm Mad About

I wonder how long I can go, using Arrested Development quotes for titles.  Anywho . . .

Tricia Helfer has landed a job on something that sounds awesome. Here's the story:

http://www.zap2it.com/tv/news/zap-helferinseparablecasting,0,5645756.story?track=rss

(Note also her great hair.) We love Shaun Cassidy as a television producer -- even more than we love him as a Teen Idol of Yesterday.

I Just Don't See It as a TV Series

You probably already heard the latest about the Arrested Development movie (probably a go?). This interview with Jason Bateman implies that it's on . . . kind of. Can't really tell. But also? Jason Bateman has really nice kicks. Are they Sambas? Anyway, good talk.

Teenage, Wasteland

Little Brother, Cory Doctorow. I think this is going to be a huge book. Obviously, young adult literature is where it's at right now, in terms of big sales. I think that this could be a big school book, too, though, something that winds up in a lot of classrooms and summer reading lists.

Doctorow of course is a pretty famous thinker about technology and civil liberties, and so it's not surprising that he's found an effective way of tying that to his career as a science fiction writer. It's hard to spot even a single mis-step with this book. Pacing is excellent -- even when he has to step back from the story to explain some bit of techno ephemera, he never lost me. He maybe pulls his punches a little bit at the end, but I'm not sure how else he could have ended the book. Oh, and he maybe name-checks his organization, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a little hard. There are two separate passages -- one pretty long -- singing the praises of EFF, which . . . fine. I'm a fan of them. I get it. But considering that the book ends with an extensive annotated bibliography including another long reference to EFF?

Whatever. These are small quibbles. Read this book. Find some young person to give it to.

Take My Camel

The Towers of Trebizond, Rose Macaulay. Another pretty book from our friends at NYRB. This is also the third or fourth in a row that's actually lived up to its book design. Um, this photo doesn't do this book justice, though: the blue of my copy is much nicer.

Anyway . . . This is a very British sort of funny novel. The narrator is traveling in Turkey in the 1950s with her or his (about this more later) aunt and an Anglican priest named Father Chantry-Pigg. Aunt Dot and Father Chantry-Pigg want to introduce the Church of England to Turkey, but keep running afoul of imams and Billy Graham (no, really), as well as fellow Brits, all trying to write books about Turkey. Meanwhile, Laurie, the narrator, is struggling with a broken heart.

I'm cribbing a little bit from Jan Morris's introduction when I point out that one of the things that makes the book really work is the sadness under the humor. Morris sees Laurie as female and her relationship with her married lover, Vere, as heavily autobiographical. I see Laurie as pretty ambiguously-gendered. There's really nothing in the text specifically referring to Laurie as a woman and a fair amount of circumstantial evidence that he is in fact a man.

Chris Is Not a Tree

. . . as in, he did not leave. Get it? I know and I apologize. Anyway, yeah. So You Think You Can Dance results show. I called it, right? Susie and Marquis? Also, re: sad. That was even worse than I expected. Did you see the uncomfortable part where Marquis was hugging Cat Deeley and it would not end and you thought that maybe he had forgotten he was on-stage? Anyway, I mostly agree with the judges, with two exceptions:

1. I thought that Marquis's solo was better than Chris's. Interesting that they saw Marquis's as "tricks," and not "dancing." I don't know if I agree or if that means the judges are smarter than I am. I'm thinking it definitely means that the SYTYCD judges are smarter than the American Idol judges (also, obvy).

2. I do think that the judges seem to have been blind to how great Comfort is. There was no question that her solo was vastly superior to Susie's, for one. And also, she was really good with the slightly lame krumping Wednesday night. The problem, as I said before, was the wardrobe was crippling -- too much hat and kerchief. I actually think -- based mostly on the first week's whole "click, click" thing -- that Comfort might actually be too good for this show. Sorry.

So You Think You Can Dance Top 9 Couples

Another exhausting night. I still love this show more than anything (excepting Project Runway, of course). Moments last night did leave me completely slack-jawed, in the best possible way, but even so -- two hours, dudes. I wandered away at different points to look things up on the internets and to make limeade. I think I saw all of all of the routines. God, this must be a good show for Tivo, though. Nine two-minute dance routines over 120 minutes? That, Mia Michaels, is banoodles.

Thayne/Chelsea. This sucked. Is it possible Mandy Moore is kind of a lame choreographist? Because I thought her "Tainted Love" bit last week was bad, too. This is a whole new dimension, though -- who do we blame for the costume design?

Mark/Chelsie. I still really like these two. Funny that Mia said, in re Mark and Chelsie, that her two favorite things are "beauty" and "quirkiness." Argentine tango is always really exciting, mostly because usually the music is good. 

Will/Jessica. This was better, more interesting and safer than last week's whatever they did. I think the judges are right that Will is probably pretty safe for a long time, on dance skills alone. Jessica's hair was bad during rehearsal but cute during the routine, a reversal of last week's. Huh.

Matt/Kourtni. Whatevs. I think these two might be toast: Matt is starting to look like he's got some problems. That wouldn't be a big deal, if he had a really good partner (ie, someone like Twitch or Comfort -- a big personality who can also dance) to prop him up, but I didn't think Kourtni was extraordinary this week, either, and isn't really popping with the judges, either. 

Gev/Courtney. This was great, I thought. This is exactly the kind of piece I like on this show and the kids were great. Courtney's also got really good hair -- maybe she was the one (not Jessica) whose hair was so good last week? I like Gev, too, and they have great chemistry, like are they secretly doing it? That kind of chemistry. [This was a Mandy Moore piece. So I like some of her stuff. Maybe she's better at working with short people?]

Joshua/Katee. Joshua continues to be a favorite, but I actually thought that Katee stole this routine. Not as overwhelmed by it as the judges were, because I didn't really care about the emotion of it. Really impressive, though.

Susie/Marquis. Wow. These two are done, I think, and it's going to be really freaking sad, too. I mean, I thought this routine was kind of lame and I agreed with the judges about shoulders and whatever, but both Susie and Marquis seem like really nice people, and you know they're going to cry.

Twitch/Kherington. Eh. I guess I can't really criticize this because of angel babies and whatever, but it was Celine Dion. Come on. Oh, the business where Mia just went off for about 15 minutes about whether or not Kherington's fake smile should have danced the entire routine and then all the other judges and Twitch (albeit much less weirdly than anyone else) and the choreographistes and maybe even Cat Deeley argued about whether or not Mia was right to hate on the smiling and more baby angels and I give up.

Comfort/Chris. OK, wicked funny that our first krump routine was assigned to Chris, the whitest kid in this whole thing (um, Thayne might be whiter). Pretty good, funny exchange at the end about whether or not Chris can actually be menacing or I think the word was "gangsta," as uttered by 80-year-old Nigel Lythgoe of East Barmington, Hants., England. My criticism: wardrobe sucked. Chris looked silly in his enormous neckerchief and that's why he wasn't "gangsta" enough for Princess Margaret. Comfort was lost in her weird hat.

"East Coast Queen of the Night"

I already said I love Kelly Cutrone, right? I think I said that. Here's why:

http://www.observer.com/2008/dark-angel-hills?page=0%2C0

You can't make that shit up, right?

The CW: Deaders?

Will the CW make it through next season?

http://www.tvweek.com/news/2008/06/tribune_plans_safety_net_for_s.php

This is pretty sad. Not that I have much affection for the C-Wub -- I like Gossip Girl and I'm looking forward to 90210, but this is the network that inexplicably canceled Everwood to make room for a re-animated 7th Heaven.  On the other hand, remember the WB? It's sad to think of its botched offspring limping to the finish line, only three years old.