Deeley’s little black dress was the most conservative I’ve seen her yet. I was expecting something more of a pop-can and fishing line arrangement as a logical progression from the recent fashion wierdness she’s been suffering from.

Judges

The guest judge tonight was Toni Basil, of “Mickey” fame, who’s been making a living choreographing the elderly lately. Of note was her cute old-lady racism, at one point making the implication that the “funk” music favored the colored folk, but whatever. She’s a cute old lady.

Things that should just stop

• Touching your right shoulder with your right hand. I don’t care what it means, please stop doing it.
• The judges pretending to be surprised at the dancer’s capabilities outside of their pigeonholed-genre. Especially as it comes to light that all these dancers cross-trained…even Comfort, who gets the asterisk* more than anyone else.
• Girls’ costumes which somehow conspire to leave an entire stripe of flesh from shoulder to foot exposed. I like the bodies as much as the next dude, but there’s got to be some variety–oh, wait, did they make Katee dance in a trash bag?
• Judge “fake-outs”. Especially Mary. Its not funny, its not shocking, it just makes me groan and pinch the bridge of my nose painfully. Pretending you don’t like it and then revealing that–surprise!–you really loved it is not high drama.

Continue reading ‘SYTYCD, Top Eight Perform and Toni Basil is OLD’

From the Desk of Arthbard:

    Yes. I’m very lazy. Hopefully, this announcement might make up for it to a certain degree.
    Well, I’m kind of excited about it, anyway.
    What you may not know about dear, old Arthbard is that before I was blogging, or even using the name Arthbard, I wrote a book. Approximately 60,000 words worth of book. Okay, it’s not War and Peace, but a lot of work went into those 60,000 words, and, while I did make some effort to have it traditionally published, that never happened, and it’s been more or less sitting there, taking up space on my hard drive ever since.
    But, hey, wouldn’t you know it, print-on-demand technology (as employed by, say, CafePress and Lulu.com) has made self-publishing as affordable as masturbation–perhaps even more so, depending on your particular kinks. This, of course, means that every pathetic loser with more enthusiasm than talent now has the opportunity to see their poorly plotted, badly spelled, childishly written manuscript in print. Including me!
    So, you will soon (very, very soon) have the opportunity, if you so choose, to own, like, a real, damn book written by me.
    “But,” you may ask, “Arthbard, I’m extremely cheap, poor, and/or illiterate. What about me?!?”

Continue reading ‘Coming Soon to an Internet Near You’

In somewhat of a surprise at the top of the show it was revealed that not only had Jessica been suffering from an undiagnosed case of broken ribs but that consequently the show is bringing Comfort back regardless of last week’s elimination. Last Thursday it had already been announced that Comfort was going on the tour despite her elimination, and I wonder if that announcement was related to this Jessica situation at all?

Also, it was noteworthy that the guest judge’s chair was filled by “crump” expert Li’l C. I hate crump. I wish there were no crumping anywhere on Earth at any time; its absence would make the world a happier place. That said, Li’l C’s gift for metaphor and instinctive grasp of dance without necessarily any technical expertise outside his field led to some of very entertaining critiques.

Dances

Joshua and Courtney
    Hip-Hop
    Danced to “Skippin,” by Mario.
Choreographed by Dave Scott, this number had Courtney taking on the role of sexy-undead-thing to Joshua’s lusty necrophiliac Dr. Frankenstein.
Through judicious use of frills, wardrove made Courtney look very well endowed indeed. I had to re-watch it once just to make sure there weren’t prosthetic boobies in there someplace.
The closing electric kiss was a nice effect, helping cement the routine as a memorable piece of theatrics while simultaneously being a forgettable dance.
Afterwards, the judges gave Courtney the asterisk*. You know, the one that leads to the footnote “-for a girl dancing outside her genre.” And while the judges were probably right in calling Courtney out on an aborted move, my wife observed that Courtney’s shoe looked like it stuck in that turn…providing a bit of mitigation, right?
Continue reading ‘SYTYCD, Top Ten Perform and Buck is Defined Definitively’

I’ve decided to write about the only “reality” competition show I’ve ever really liked and here we go.*

Mark and Chelsie
    Salsa
    Danced to “Fuego,” by Joe Bataan: very old fashioned sounding number, appropriate to the dance but nothing to write home about.
This couple, whom I’ve taken to thinking of “Dude with Crooked Pinkies” and “Blonde I’m Sick of Hearing Described as Tom-Boy” started with a salsa number that was completely forgettable, especially since I can’t get Joshua and Katie’s samba from last week out of my head. I found their lead-up video package the best of the night, however, as Mark and Chelsie behaved more realistically than what I’m used to in the typically hammy rehearsal footage. Mark’s exasperated “uhh! you guys make it look so easy” after watching Alex and his partner demonstrate a particular move seemed very genuine and human.

    Broadway
    Danced to “I’m a Woman,” from Smokey Joe’s Cafe original cast recording: Appropo of nothing, this song always reminds me of this Enjoli ad from my youth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X4MwbVf5OA …the eight HOUR PERFUME?
This second number was a Tyce routine the judges liked alot but which I found a bit boring, even though Mark has been the best at passing for straight while dancing amongst the obviously homosexual men this year.

Continue reading ‘SYTYCD, the Buck episode’

I think the last two weeks have eliminated exactly the right people, and next week I’m sure Comfort will be gone as well.
Comfort is supposedly a “b-girl,” and sometimes is described as a hip-hop dancer.
I don’t know, but it seems that there’s always a big asterisk next to any assessments of her solo work. If you follow it to the bottom of the page it usually ends up reading as the condescending “-for a girl.” But on its own merits she just isn’t that great. Hardly any b-boy tricks and pitiful use of the stage mark the average Comfort performance.

But on the boys end there’s no one left that I think just ‘needs to go’. Each year there is much made of which side is stronger, the girls or the boys. This year its pretty obvious that the boys are towering over the girls with a huge lineup of dudes with show-stopping skill, right? None of the girls (except for the young Chelsea, who seems to be as good an actress as she is a dancer if her command of emotive expressions is any judge) have done anything noteworthy beyond making their partners look good. Compare this to earlier years and its a bit sad, and I wonder what went wrong?

I guess, in short, you were to ask me if I think Kourtni should’ve been kept a week longer than Comfort I think its a moot point since they are likely only a week apart in their departure anyway.

Now! Even more accurate with Amazing Additions!

On the 4th of July in 1776 America declared independence from our oppressive colonial masters. The surviving humans of the North American slave colony of New Jersey discovered, with the help of Ben Franklin and the then time-traveling Theodore Roosevelt, the fatal weakness of our alien masters, the D’Aret Krang.

Ben Franklin research indicated that the D’Aret Krang, a race of beings so genetically pure that they shared a single set of chromosomes, collectively suffered from a genetic propensity for epileptic seizures when exposed to bright, flashing lights. His rudimentary experimentations with electricity had failed to yield reproducable results, so Theodore Roosevelt was summoned once again to assist in finding a source for blinky-blinkies.

Unfortunately, Theodore Roosevelt’s time-travel machine had only one seat and this, combined with Thomas Edison’s homophobic fear of sitting on the manly lap of the massive Roosevelt, led the rebels to conclude that Edison’s would not be a part of the solution this time. Without Edison there was scant technology available to the desperate slaves of the time to take advantage of the newly discovered weakness.

Fortunately Dolly Madison, through her youthful journeys in the orient as a Ronin, Ninja and silk-trader, had an extensive collection of aesthetically pleasing incendiary devices. A deployment of this technology was quickly organized by Paul Revere and El Quakerudo* which culminated in the simultaneous detonation of approximately 50 metric tons of saltpeter, gunpowder, and ‘fireworks.’

The D’Aret Krang fell as one to the ground in a jiggly, hooting mass of alien flesh. George Washington and Nathaniel Hawthorn led bands of men in dragging our quivering former-masters into the very space craft that brought us the hateful overlords. They then programmed the ships to dive into the sun and America celebrated as the fleet of invaders burnt itself to cinders in the heliosphere if our favorite star, Sol.

So join us in celebrating our victory, planet Earth! Thanks to our American forefathers (and a time-traveling Teddy) humans have been free to oppress themselves in peace ever since.

FREEDOM IS OURS! -peace out.

* Quakerudo is a musical group made up of youthful Quakers. As they discover their degenerate suxuality** they are replaced with fresh-faced and prepubescent replacements. There are always more…

** I know what I said.

    In the early nineteen-nineties I remember looking over my brother’s shoulder at a computer design periodical which featured some early images of the characters from Toy Story, including this disturbing doll-head-spider thing*. From that moment on I’ve been amazed by Pixar’s visual artistry.

    And, other than during the late nineties when they seemed in danger of becoming the “buddy picture” factory (see Toy Story 1 &2, Monsters Inc, and to a lesser extent, Finding Nemo), they have consistently surprised me with story choices that avoid the handful of approved Hollywood formulas normally seen in children’s fare.

    Wall-E is no exception. Consider this: an animated movie for which the first half hour takes place in a bleak, post-apocalyptic metropolis on a seemingly dead Earth which nonetheless manages to be light-hearted and delightful from the first frame. A movie with a robotic protagonist who only speaks a handful of nearly unintelligible words and yet manages to more effectively convey emotions than your average overpriced human star/starlet.

    I loved this movie, and while I don’t discount the possibility that I’m suffering from a cinematic infatuation, I am tentatively putting it in my top ten movies of all time**. Congrats, Pixar, you now have earned a place in the worlds least significant pantheon***.

    No, this isn’t a full review of the movie. Many many others have already done it and far better than I probably could. But there are things in this movie I want to talk about, and I have no one to talk to about it, so…

* This character is named “Babyface,” and is actually quite friendly. He/she/it is willing and able to reassemble you should you become unexpectedly dismembered.

**** Unless it gets turned into a ‘quirky’ small-town indie film in time for this year’s Sundance titled Unwrapped Hope

    I’ve actually had a Flickr account for a while, now, but I’ve never really used it for much. I just got a new digital camera, though, and had to take the opportunity to take pictures of some of the local nature. The good thing about this is that I didn’t even have to go anywhere. I can pretty much walk right out of my front door and, boom, trees. Pretty groovy.
    Anyway, having taken some pictures, I was suddenly struck with the urge to do something with some of them. So, Flickr.
    In taking these photos, I realized there were a few with a certain, shall we say, theme. One of the things I played with was my camera’s “macro” mode, the point of which being that you can stick it right up close to something to get a very close-up photo. Super. But it got me thinking …
    If you want to take artsy-looking pictures, this is pretty much all you have to do. You just stick the camera right up close to something–it can even be something mundane and boring, doesn’t matter–and take an extreme close-up of it, preferably with the background behind said object all fuzzy and out-of-focus. Just keep doing this and … Tada! You’re an artist!
    Here are some of my samples exploiting this technique.

    This weird, knobby stick thing I found growing out of a tree is one of my favorites, because, if you look at the right-hand side, you can see something that vaguely resembles a creepy, upside-down skull face.
    This is, of course, one of the major differences between myself and some other people. I look at this and see a creepy upside-down skull face. Because I’m more or less an atheist. A Christian would have just assumed any image growing in the side of a tree must be that of Jesus. They would have declared it a miracle, called all the local churches, contacted the media, and the stick would probably have been printed in a couple of tabloids. But, no. I just see an upside-down skull.
    Anyway, this picture also illustrates another aspect of arty photos: Don’t frame the subject in the center. No. Framing things in the middle of the picture is for people taking crappy vacation snapshots. For artists, what you want to do is frame it off-center. Pretend you don’t even care that an interesting-looking stick is even there. Not caring makes you look cool. You want to give people the impression that you were just out to take a blurry picture of the backdrop, and, what do ya’ know, that stick just happened to be there, precisely positioned to just happen to be in perfect focus.

    This is my other favorite. It’s also a stick, but it’s not even an interesting one. This is pretty much a perfect illustration of the whole theme of my post. It’s a twig. It just happened to be there, hanging down from a branch overhead. There’s nothing notable about it. In fact, there’s this great, big, interesting landscape right behind, but, no, I focused on the twig.
    This makes people think. They ask themselves, “Why on Earth would this obviously gifted photographer take a picture of this twig? Why would he ignore the great scenery behind it?” Their minds then run wild, and they start inventing all sorts of theories. They ultimately decide that the picture of the twig is a brilliant metaphor for human life, as people become so caught up in the bad, the unpleasant, the everyday humdrummity of life–unduly focusing in on the twig, as it were–that they completely ignore the wonderful aspects of life and the beauty of the world around them–a la, the great, big, blurry background.
    They would then probably give me some kind of award and offer me a lot of money for my picture. Which would be a little silly since I can print out as many of these fuckers as I want, so it’s not like they’d be getting a one-of-a-kind painting or anything. But, they’d pay that money anyway, buy a print, hang it on their wall, and explain to all visitors about the subtlety of the composition and the profundity of the underlying themes.

… But really, the twig was just getting in the way of my big, pretty landscape, so I took a picture of it, instead.

    Since I’ve got this stuff on Flickr, I reckon you can always go there if you care to see more of my crappy photography. There may even be more of my crappy photography there in the future, depending on if I feel like it at the time.

    Greetings to everyone in SafeTinspector-land! I probably ought to introduce myself on account of I haven’t posted here since roughly the Cretaceous Era and I doubt very much if very many people reading this blog still remember me. But, you see that name at the top of the page? The one right under “SafeTinspector?”
    You know … the red one …
    Well, that’s me, I’m Arthbard, and I used to post here on a somewhat regular basis before falling prey to the interventions of life and a pronounced tendency to just be rather lazy.
    Anyways, I’m back, I’ve got my own whole domain (arthbard.com) with its own whole WordPress blog (arthbard.com/blog), and I’m going to be cross-posting some stuff here, since I’ve actually been doing some sporadic posting over the last couple of months … Also, my name’s already on the logo, and we’re both too lazy to change it.
    So, here’s a cartoon! Yay!