Trick question. Who went home on last night's "So You Think You Can Dance"?
No one.
Never, ever, ever! That's right. "We've never done this before," judge and producer Nigel Lythgoe gushes. I'm not sure that's true, though. I seem to remember that happening when there was an injury last season -- with Billy Bell. OK, after a quick search, here's proof that it happened last year: ‘SYTYCD’ SHOCKER! For The First Time Ever, No One Is Eliminated'. At the time, I wouldn't have minded seeing Billy go, but the injury was a good excuse not to cut him. Anyone remember if that's the only other time?
Maybe Nigel meant they had never not eliminated anyone on the first elimination show, with 20 contestants, when they were supposed to send two home. Maybe? Pretty specific "never, ever" criteria. Nigel says he "wants to see more" of the dancers, but next week, they'll be sending FOUR dancers home (so they say; we'll see). So after next week, he wants to see much, much LESS of the dancers. Interesting.
I can't imagine which dancer deserves to be sent home on tonight's "So You Think You Can Dance" (8 p.m. EDT June 16 on FOX). None of the dancers were weak. None completely messed up their style. None were especially annoying. Here are a few thoughts.
Best choreography: Our own Virginia Beach native Travis Wall had the best overall choreography for the night -- the animalistic jazz dance and the statue dance. He was blessed with my two favorite dancers on the show so far -- Sasha Mallory and Melanie Moore. One of my favorite choreographers, Sonya Tayeh, didn't have her best work for Caitlynn, but it did show nice flexibility and cool lifts. It was also nice to see Robert from Season 7 dance again so soon. I look forward to seeing more of her stuff.
First of all, I love Sonya Tayeh. Stunning choreographer. To all dance fans (and I'm not talking about "Dancing with the Stars"), the judges have picked the top 20 contestants on "So You Think You Can Dance," and it looks like a great lineup. As I should have expected, only four of the names from my audition highlights post survived the cut: Melanie Moore, Sasha Mallory, Jordan Casanova, and Jess LeProtto. Also, Ryan Ramirez, who should have made the show last year and my highlights list, finally gets to the big stage. Here's the list:
Wow. That's the first thought to come to mind after watching the initial auditions for "So You Think You Can Dance." With the auditions in Atlanta, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, New York and Los Angeles, the show heads to Vegas tonight to narrow the incredible dancers down to the top 20. How the judges will do that, I can barely imagine.Were this season's hopefuls incubated in a dance factory? The judges will have to put them through the ringer and really weed out the dancers who have no ability out of their own styles -- and almost none of them have ballroom experience, so that should be interesting. Poor Mary Murphy. Oh, and be sure to rewatch the L.A. audition episode at fox.com/dance for the "ballroom" joke at choreographer/judge Tyce Diorio's expense -- adults only. Does anyone else think Tyce tends to yap too much?
Apparently, they're planning a hybrid of the top 20 contestant format and the successful all-star format from last season. When the top 20 are narrowed down to 10, they will introduce the all-star dancers. Now the big question after they pick the top 20 will be, who will the all-stars be?
Here are some highlights of the season 8 auditions, in no particular order:
I found out recently that a good friend of mine won't miss an episode of "Teen Mom."
Me = perplexed. I don't know the demographics of the "Teen Mom" audience, but I doubt a highly intelligent 27-year-old with a penchant for political history and JFK memorabilila is the "Teen Mom" target audience.
But then I think about all the drivel I've consumed in the past ten years, and I understand.
Besides the shows I believe still stand the test of time ("Buffy," "My So Called Life," "Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman") I've watched some really, really bad TV.
Currently, there's "Jersey Shore." So many of my friends watch this show, so I'm ALMOST unashamed.
But would they judge me if they knew my love for "America's Next Top Model?" What about "Toddlers and Tiaras?"
I've seen every episode of "One Tree Hill." I KNOW. This is the show they clip on "The Soup" because at one point last season, villain Dan looks on as a dog EATS the donor heart for which he's been waiting months.
Moyer, a 48-year-old starting pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies, has announced that he will undergo ligament replacement surgery on his elbow (in baseball, it’s known as the “Tommy John Surgery”) that will force him to miss the entire 2011 season. But he plans to be back pitching again in 2012.
I needed to hear that. I really did.
Understand that baseball matters to me. It matters to me to an unreasonable degree. It’s one of the primary ways that I mark the passage of time in my life, and for that reason, Jamie Moyer matters to me, too.
Because when he retires, I will be older than every player in professional baseball.
I began keeping the list several years ago, when there were eight names on it – ageless hitter Julio Franco, the big hoss righthanded pitcher Roger Clemens, and a half-dozen lefty pitchers (who can hang around a lot longer because they are in shorter supply). One by one, those players retired – or were retired – until only one name remained on the list.
Jamie Moyer, born Nov. 18, 1962, and therefore older than me by 247 days.
He’s had a fine career. He’s won 267 games, and if you told me he would stick around long enough to win 300, I couldn’t swear you were wrong. He doesn’t throw very hard anymore, but he is smart and resourceful and efficient.
Last season, on May 7, he pitched a 2-hit shutout against the Atlanta Braves. That made him the oldest guy in major-league history to pitch a shutout. (That same day, shortstop Starlin Castro of the Chicago Cubs became the first person born in the 1990s to play in a major-league game. Isn’t baseball great?)
So Moyer won’t be pitching in 2011, but he has made it clear that he is not retiring.
I needed to hear that.
I don’t want to be older than every player in major-league baseball.
As long as there’s still life in Jamie Moyer’s left arm, it's all good.
Mike Holtzclaw is a senior reporter at the Daily Press who has not one, but four baseballs on his desk. He can be reached at mholtzclaw@dailypress.com.
Those of you that know me also know that I'm a bit of a cycling enthusiast. Almost everything I do is somehow cycling related. So when the chance to watch an exciting cycling documentary in the theater comes around I have to announce it to everyone as loud as I can. The movie, "The Race Across the Sky" documents one of the most remarkable mountain bike races there is; the Leadville 100. This race is a 100 mile "out and back" style race. This means the cyclists go fifty miles one way, and then turn around and come back. Did I mention this is through the Rocky Mountains, and over two peaks.
The race came about when the mining town of Leadville, Colorado was starting to go under. One of the miners, Ken Chlouber founded the race as a way to bring the failing town a fresh source of income. This race is insane, and usually fewer than half of the starters finish before the 30 hour deadline. Anyone can race also. The way starters are picked is through a lottery. You submit your registration, and the max number of riders is picked. Everyone except the previous winner is put in the lottery, no exceptions. The movie follows cyclists throughout the entirety of the 2011 race in which Levi Leipheimer (Team Radio Shack & longtime Lance Armstrong team mate) wins, and destroys Lance Armstrong's record set only a year earlier.
Well, I just finished watching Dancing with the Stars’ 200th episode, and it was quite the experience. Overall, I haven’t enjoyed watching this show since its 2nd season (we’re on the 11th) and they are really starting to scrape the bottom of the “star” barrel. Kate Gosselin… Really? Bristol Palin? Huh? What gives these people the right to be called “stars?” But I digress… Overall this season, I have enjoyed the routines by the “stars” and their professional partners. Standouts this season have been actress Jennifer Gray (Dirty Dancing), singer Brandy, actor Kyle Massey (Disney’s Cory in the House), and basketball player Rick Fox (who, unfortunately left tonight — so wrong…). Additionally, the “Macy’s Stars of Dance” sequences have been lovely and the professional dancers dancing to the professional singers that are guests on elimination nights (like Taylor Swift was tonight) have also been nice. (But I do have to say, just so my bias is known, once you have watched So You Think You Can Dance, DWTS seems a bit like amateur hour, no matter how A-List the star.)
The thing that perplexes me the most is this “new” series, Skating with the Stars, that the alphabet network has decided to start airing after the end of the DWTS 11th season this month. If any of you all watch the reality talent shows for celebrities, you should remember that this experiment was tried on FOX under the moniker Skating with Celebrities for ONE season back in 2006. This was, again, a UK show (known as Dancing on Ice over there), and unlike the success of other UK imports, such as DWTS, American Idol, and America’s Got Talent, Skating with Celebrites only lasted 2 months and was not a fan or critic favorite. The only thing memorable was the affair scandal between actress & celebrity skater Kristy Swanson & Olympic bronze-medal winning figure skater Lloyd Eisler. (They hooked up on the show when he and his wife were trying to repair their marriage. Eisler later divorced his wife, and married and had a child with Swanson.) So why is ABC bringing this back? What are they thinking?
The Skating with the Stars cast is composed of aging rocker Vince Neil, movie and daytime actress Sean Young, Reality, um, “star” Bethenny Frankel, Disney channel standout Brandon Mychal Smith, daytime actress Rebecca Budig, and Olympic skier Jonny Moseley. The show will follow the same format as DWTS: Six “celebrities” will be paired with professional partners and will perform for the first time in front of a live audience. The couple with the lowest ranking, combining public voting and judges' scores, will be sent home the following week.
Here’s the BIG question: Would we really classify any of these people as “stars?” Will the public be invested in these contestants? At least on this season of DWTS we had Mrs. Brady (Florence Henderson) and Baby (the aforementioned Jennifer Gray) that we could root for. But is the public really going to invest their time and viewing hours on these…people? I guess only time will tell. Maybe, I’ll get caught up in the wave of something “new”(ish). Maybe, one of these people will grab my heart the way Joan Rivers did on The Celebrity Apprentice. We shall see…
So, if you're a die-hard, reality show, competition with celebrities junkie, you can tune in to Skating with the Stars when it premieres on Monday, November 22 on ABC. Please share your thoughts on this new venture. We all would love to hear what you think!
Conni Ironmonger-Mann lives in Yorktown with her husband, Don, and daughter and can be found either watching TV from her sofa or writing her dissertation (guess which one is more fun?) You can read her blog at dailypress.com/dpop or follow her on Twitter at @Conniim.
When I think back to my childhood, a very important memory is vivid in my mind: My unrequited love for Ralph Macchio. I fell HARD for him as Daniel Larusso in The Karate Kid (1984) and The Karate Kid II. (Not so much in the 3rd installment — what? No love interest??) I was OBSESSED with him. He was Italian, I’m part-Italian. I thought for sure we would meet & get married & have a family together. His face adorned my bedroom walls for the majority of my middle and high school years. Watching him “Wax on” and “Wax off” was always a favorite. And that crane kick at the end of the first movie – WOW! How could a sequel compare to the original? But, with the change of location to Okinawa, and the addition of the "Drum Technique," the second installment of the series had the same intensity as the first (and who wouldn't want to have a Tea ceremony with Daniel?) Mr. Miyagi had a special place in my heart, too, because Pat Morita was just so darn GOOD in this film. The pride he had in his student Daniel-san was just so believable that from my seat in the theatre, I wanted to make my teachers that proud.
Jump 26 years later to a quiet Saturday night in October. I’m a mom now, and the pictures of Ralph’s face are no longer on my old bedroom walls at my parent’s house. That room has become my daughter’s room for when she spends the night there, and now has pictures from “101 Dalmatians” as its theme.
My husband is a 3rd degree black-belt in Tae Kwon Do, and our daughter has followed in his footsteps, taking classes with him and becoming a green belt. So when The Karate Kid (2010) came out on DVD, for all of us, it was a no-brainer to buy the movie. And we are so glad we did!
Sitting in our family room, memories of my past came flooding back as I watched this new version with my daughter and husband. The movie was fantastic. Even though Dre Parker (played by Jaden Smith in the updated version) is about 6 years younger than Daniel Larusso was in the original, the same qualities and lessons from the movie are there. It has the same heart, even after all these years. Overcoming adversity. Dealing with the loss of a parent or family. Bullying. Practice makes perfect. First love. First KISS! Even the arcade is still there!
Jackie Chan (“Mr. Han”) has the same quiet strength as Pat Morita (“Mr. Miyagi”) did those many years ago. The chemistry between Jackie and Jaden is so strong and real it makes their characters that much more convincing and honest. When Mr. Han reveals to Dre the reason why he puts together a car and then destroys it every year is just so heartbreaking. And those lone tears streaming down Dre’s face show that he understands the loss of a loved one as much as Mr. Han. It shows compassion and empathy.
All three of us cried during this scene and got sweaty palms during the infamous tournament scenes. Watching Dre get his leg hurt was just as painful for me to watch today as it was for me to watch Daniel get hurt all those years ago. My daughter (who is 8 — close to Jaden’s age) was cheering Dre on! “Don’t let the bullies win, Dre!” THAT, was really the theme of the movie. When Dre told Mr. Han he had to go back out and fight because he was still scared, as a mother, it broke my heart. But the realism in that statement was so true to life (and with all the bullying that has been in the news lately, a current hot-button issue, to say the least.) His standing up for what was right was such a great lesson for my daughter to see played out in this movie. Don’t let the bullies win. Don’t let others push you around and make you doubt yourself. The same lessons I learned from the original movie 26 years before and continue to live by to this day.
I still missed Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita (who left this Earth too soon), but I have to say, I fell a little bit in love with Dre & Mr. Han. And so did my daughter. “Jacket on, Jacket off” (which replaced “Wax on, Wax off”) is now something I see her practice. Having a bit of “attitude” in her studies of Tae Kwon Do is a new trick. Learning that the real measure of a person is not how hard they fight but how honestly they fight — in Tae Kwon Do and in life — is something I love watching her realize on her own. She’s still talking about the movie, saying “Mommy, remember how Dre was hurt but he fought anyway?” “Mommy, watch how high I can kick!” “I don’t want to lose my family like Mr. Han or Dre did.” “I want to go to China!” and of course, the inevitable, “Mommy, I think Dre is cute…” *sigh* So, after all that, including the lessons that were reinforced to her while watching The Karate Kid as a family, I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw a picture of Jaden Smith soon hanging on her bedroom wall…
Conni Ironmonger-Mann lives in Yorktown with her husband, Don, and daughter and can be found either watching TV from her sofa or writing her dissertation (guess which one is more fun?) You can read her blog at dailypress.com/dpop or follow her on Twitter at @Conniim.
On Saturday night, I went to the NASCAR Sports Grille to watch UFC 121. The event was headlined by heavyweight champion (and former WWE Champion, which will become important in just a second) Brock Lesnar defending his belt against Cain Velasquez. Without going into all the bloody details, never mind the fact that the fight didn't last long enough to even HAVE details, Lesnar got beat, badly. Badly to the point that the fight was stopped midway through the first round, with Lesnar busted open and bleeding from several large cuts to the face. What does this have to do with pop culture, you ask? Here's where it gets poppy...
Among the many celebrities in attendance (the fight was in LA) was WWE superstar and avid UFC/MMA fan The Undertaker. As Lesnar was heading to the back after the fight, The Undertaker was giving an interview. All seemed fine until Lesnar walked past 'Taker. They had a brief staredown with Undertaker asking Lesnar "You wanna do it?". Mind you, he wasn't in 'deadman' character. When pressed about what he meant, The 'Taker seemed to back off a bit, replying that it was 'personal'.
Why is this important for pop? It's the ultimate geek out. For a wrestling fan, it's on par with a WWE guy showing up in rival company WCW years ago, or vice versa. It's akin to the Marvel/DC comics crossover from years ago. It's GI Joe/Transformers all over again. Remember a couple years ago when Sammy Hagar and David Lee Roth, the two former singers from Van Halen, toured together? Well, it may not be that big, but still....It represents a possible crossover of two different worlds. UFC is, for lack of a term, real, while WWE has been very open about being 'sports entertainment' for years now. Undertaker breaking character could mean a number of things. Does he have legit 'heat' with Lesnar, is he trying to lure Lesnar back to the WWE for one more big payday, or are geeks like me reading way too much into all of this? All I know is that wrestling is entertainment, UFC is real, and on Saturday it made me go 'pop'.
