healingmirth: Delahoy from the Unusuals, unimpressed (unusuals - delahoy)
2011-09-27 10:17 pm

dee dee dee

still not dead.

I wish I had not performed so abysmally in my one and only programming class in college, because I could totally be making a living now as a third-rate website developer, if I'd bothered to learn.

I am amused by the import page at diigo which now says

"In case you are wondering why it is taking so long, basically, in the last day or so, tens of thousands of users have entrusted us with millions of precious bookmarks collected over the years, which means that we have to process 1000 times the amount of database write that we normally do! But rest assured it will be done.

We are re-writing codes and adding new servers to make sure it goes faster and smoother."

Robert Roldan was on DWTS tonight, with that chick from last season with the giant blond curly hair, some other woman I didn't recognize, and a guy whose face they never showed.

And a bunch of other people. I wish they'd credit the dancers.
healingmirth: Glitch from Tin Man: "o.O" (Glitch)
2011-08-30 10:34 am
Entry tags:

(no subject)

Chaz Bono is going to be on Dancing with the Stars next season. (Hooray? I hope. IDEK.) So is Nancy Grace. (What is the opposite of victory arms?)
In other news, Hurricane Irene passed directly over without so much as causing the clock on my microwave to reset, but towns a bit North and East of here were reporting 100% of CL&P customers without power, and last time I checked, a lot of places were still hovering around 50%. There are many random people staying with my neighbors, and my mother came over yesterday so that she could check her e-mail.
healingmirth: textual victory arms: "omgyay" (\o/)
2011-08-03 08:20 pm
Entry tags:

sometimes I still love SYTYCD

Lil C just gave the best explanation ever of why the people who suck at hip hop do so. It almost makes up for having to listen to Mary say "in the pocket" yet again.
healingmirth: Neil Patrick Harris as Barney with a six-pack of beer (NPH)
2011-07-20 10:30 pm
Entry tags:

So you think Neil Patrick Harris can dance?

I think this year's top ten is more consistently good than last season's, but last season had bigger personalities. Consistently good is not engaging enough, but thankfully the choreographers continue to make up for it with great routines. (Enabled by the skill level of the dancers, as I'm sure Nigel would point out.)

yeah, this got a little live-bloggy )
healingmirth: Delahoy from the Unusuals, unimpressed (unusuals - delahoy)
2011-07-14 02:25 am
Entry tags:

Things! But mostly grumpiness. I know, it's fascinating stuff.

I feel like this might as well be my default icon now. I haven't used the Deadpool one on a while, because this keeps beating it out for mood-appropriateness.
So I'm catching up on White Collar, and apparently TPTB decided to address that thing they did that pissed off most of fandom, and anyone else paying attention. With the worst ADR ever, seriously. Way to unintentionally hang a lamp on the exposition. It made me sad for Mozzie.
I think I am slightly mad at the world today, to the extent that not even Jesse Tyler Ferguson on SYTYCD made up for it. I am not much of a critic of fanvids, mostly because people vid to songs that I am not cool enough to have known beforehand. It turns out that I have Feelings about how some songs should be vidded. Who knew?
But oh, man, did Jesse Tyler Ferguson try to make the world a happier, better place today. He is a more-than-acceptable substitute for Shankman. Opinions? I do enjoy the performance critiques from fellow viewers than the useful-to-dancers technique critiques. I don't really have Things worth saying about SYTYCD. I have decided that rather than blaming the stage, I am going to blame the director for my lack of engagement with the performances, because I hate the camera work more than anything else. Dear people who understand television - am I correct in blaming the director for choosing which shots make it to the broadcast? Also: I spent a lot of time laughing in incredulity or embarrassment at the TV tonight. Also: I like Jess about a hundred times better when he's dancing than when he's talking.
healingmirth: Chekov from ST:AOS: "Can do that" (can do)
2011-05-13 01:05 pm
Entry tags:

It was a Randy Jackson sort of day

So, top four on American Idol, and top five on America's Best Dance Crew. I think they sent the wrong people home, but if I'd really cared, I'd have voted. (The converse is not true, in case you're going to try to draw a conclusion from my DWTS voting patterns.)

I wouldn't say I'm really enjoying ABDC, but I am watching it in a timely manner, which is more than I can say about almost everything else I've recording this spring, and I'm not fast-forwarding through the routines like I am on DWTS.

I saw Rize when it was released on DVD, either five or six years ago. I think at that point, Dancing with the Stars had premiered, but maybe So You Think You Can Dance had not? This was definitely in the period before I had Opinions about dance, and my dance experience was limited to watching some friends' recitals, my own very short-lived dance class attendance, and watching Center Stage once. After a few seasons of Lil' C, (and Russel, and the chick from SYTYCD Canada who we will not discuss) I think I have a better appreciation for what Street Kings are doing this season on ABDC, and I'm vaguely curious to rewatch Rize and see what I get out of it now.


Unrelated, for Netflix peoples: The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Easy A, and Kick-Ass are all available for instant viewing now. Among other things, I'm sure, but those all popped up on my recommendations. Also Seasons 1 & 2 of Sons of Anarchy.

(also, five seasons of Rescue Me, which I mean to start watching every time I see a commercial, but never do)

Mostly, I need to return Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, More than a Game, and Milk, because I am just never going to watch them, and I'd really like to move on to Deadwood.
healingmirth: Abby from NCIS looking skeptical (abby)
2011-01-02 09:45 pm
Entry tags:

New Year's things

I have had a very posting-in-communities evening. For me, at least.

a poll about Yuletide at [livejournal.com profile] yuletide and a post anticipating Live to Dance at [community profile] dance_on_tv, which you should join, if you haven't yet.

I am really glad, though I feel guilty about this, that the wave of recs from yuletide are over with, because I could barely look at my LJ flist without my eyes glazing over, but didn't want to move yuletide off my default view in case something non-rec and interesting was posted. I feel like I missed some legit entries in there this week.
In an occurrence that I doubt will ever happen again, Frank Iero's tweets summed up my New Years Eve...

#1: Whoa new kids on the block, the back street boys, kesha and ryan seacrest all on one stage!? What a fuckin loser convention. Happy new year!

#2: Jeez nivea is all over this holiday like stink on farts.


I was home with TV rather than in Times Square, but I could have been in Times Square if I'd really wanted to be.

Carson Daly, looking eerily like Dick Clarke, definitely won the evening in terms of quality of show on the broadcast networks, but I recorded Kathy Griffin and Anderson Cooper, and it was the funniest thing I've seen on TV in a looong time. It was a solid hour of Kathy being inappropriate and Anderson saying "no, no, that's not true," and chuckling nervously. So awesome.

I know I've been living under a rock re: MCR, but I was very surprised to see them show up on my network television, and really need to buy that album before a few years pass by, as is my habit.
Also, as I don't think I've mentioned, I fixed my old computer like a total grownup and with significant input from google, and suddenly I have bookmarks and saved vids and whatnot from like three years ago. My love for Counting Crows pretty much knows no bounds, and there was a time when [personal profile] synecdochic's Recovering the Satellites Sam/Cam stories were my favorite thing in the world (they're still way up there, but my fannish world is so bewilderingly large now...) and anyway, I found her Satellites vid, and it made me happy to remember that she had created it.
And now off to keep up with day two of New Year's resolutions, which were to do the push-ups and sit-ups which are well within my physical ability but not my will-power, and to Write Something OMG.
healingmirth: Jon stewart as an old-timey radio broadcaster (jon stewart)
2010-10-31 09:30 pm
Entry tags:

mua-ha-ha-ha?

I have a coworker who is a comic fanboy, to levels that ought to be entirely inappropriate for his job in our workplace, except for the fact that there are so many dysfunctional things about our workplace that this doesn't even register.

This isn't relevant to anything, except for that we've bonded over the fact that neither of us understand why they're making a Thor movie, and that was a conversation I never expected to have at work.
This Weekend in TV, I caught up on a month of The Daily Show (and watched the rally) and then watched the second half of SYTYCD Canada Season Three.

SYTYCD Canada ended more or less how I expected it to. There was some good stuff there, and everyone whose dancing irritated me was gone before top ten, for which I was thankful.

this cut tag mostly hides links to videos from this season )
I'm not sure how tagging on Hulu works, but mousing over the episodes of Chase gives me the "awful writing" tag, as well as "actually good" and "great cast"
I carved a cat jack-o-lantern, cheating from a stencil, and on the wrong shape pumpkin, really, but whatever, it was awesome. Doorbell rang twice, but the good news is, didn't run out of candy. Happy Halloween!
healingmirth: Abby from NCIS looking skeptical (abby)
2010-10-26 10:07 pm

dancing on tv! and sitting still at home!

Travis Wall's choreography for DWTS was tonight. Nick Lazzarini was one of the dancers. Other than being pleased that people continue to pay them to work, nothing else noteworthy there.

Oh hooold on a second. Is that Mark dancing with Kylie Minogue? Haha, and breathing with, uh, intensity, in the space behind/between Tom Bergeron and Kylie in the closeup interview afterward.

I like Bristol Palin much more than I like Audrina Patridge, not that this should be surprising.

Commercials inform me that Skating with the Stars premieres in November. I can't remember what the British show was/is called, but I bet our version is worse.
In light of all the hubbub this week about the GQ pictures of Lea Michele and the Glee cast, her Dove commercial duet with Julie Andrews' Sound of Music footage is sort of frightening. Might just be frightening on its own merit. At least it's not Barbra.
I have a meeting in the morning which will be a new and exciting circumstance in which to disappoint my boss. I don't know if I'm somehow genetically predisposed to work better at night than during the day, but whatever tendencies I had were set in concrete by grad school. I look forward to the day that I will be able to write grant narrative or pitch documents in the office during the day, but that might have to wait for a day where my office isn't upstairs from a nursery school.
healingmirth: Glitch from Tin Man: "o.O" (Glitch)
2010-09-24 06:56 pm
Entry tags:

Who doesn't love The Hoff? Me.

There's a Top Gear marathon of every episode ever starting tonight at midnight. I don't actually need to watch every episode ever, particularly not the chopped-up versions that air in the US, but I think I'm going to have a hard time keeping away from it. However, starting this season they're actually airing the entire episodes, which is awesome. This should be very exciting for people like me who are too lazy to shake the internet until the unabridged versions all out.
I don't usually watch Top Chef. Top Chef Masters and Chopped are more my type of cooking competition, because they are relatively free of drama llamas. If someone who regularly watches Top Chef would like to comment on the WTFery that is Seth on Top Chef: Just Desserts, with respect to whether Top Chef usually casts for stuff like that, I would be interested to know. I'm not sure whether I can tune in to watch him again. Also, Yigit reminds me of someone, I think, but it could just be that he reminds me of every J. Crew model and CW star from the 90s.
I am continuing to watch SYTYCD Canada. Mostly I am perplexed by this Blake McGrath/Mia Michaels situation/rumor/whatever. I have to imagine that it started with a drunken mistake following a taping of the show and that it will end in tears, probably on both their parts, but perhaps I am wrong.

I think at this point last season, I had people who I looked forward to watching, and this season, I sort of don't. I don't know if that's casting or audition pool, or what, but I think after this season is over I'm not going to remember any of the contemporary dancers, with the possible exceptions of Danielle and Sebastian. Also, I like Amanda a lot better now that someone else is doing her makeup. Right, they're all lovely dancers and appear to be very nice people, but it's just not working for me.

And, because I started typing this up days ago... this season on Dancing With the Stars: Unexpected nostalgia for <i>Oz</i>, the return of father-son competition, Bristol Palin has an identity crisis, and I cheer for yet another Disney star. Also two - TWO! - MTV reality stars take the floor. Why? )

So, that's posted. On to less-rambly things!
healingmirth: Abby from NCIS looking skeptical (abby)
2010-09-09 06:58 pm

The LXD: I've contributed my penny of advertising revenue for the day.

I finally finished watching the rest of season one of The LXD. (I don't know whether it's available anywhere outside the US, and Jon M. Chu seems to live on YouTube, so I'm sure he's been searching and swinging the ban-hammer at anyone who's been uploading episodes in an easily-findable way.

I think it's worth watching, if you're a fan of SYTYCD or Step Up or whatnot, but...

The rest of my opinions, and my favorites: under the cut )
healingmirth: (Default)
2010-09-08 01:42 pm
Entry tags:

Three things about SYTYCD Canada this week

Mia Michaels did a really cool stylized 60s-ish group routine for SYTYCD Canada this week: Let Go. It's pretty sharp, but it's also a little bit like, after spending all season on SYTYCD telling people that their Fosse wasn't slinky enough, she decided to see if she could teach people to be slinky. Except in really, really brightly-colored suits.

I don't understand why people keep asking Benji Schwimmer to choreograph. He keeps choreographing really wacky routines, and you need to be able to do his stuff like he does for it to look good.

I still love Stacey Tookey. Her choreography is becoming more hit-or-miss for me, which is inevitable with more routines, but she will always, always, always be my favorite on the TV for the video packages of rehearsals, where she's all "Yes, yes, yes! Good!" and then, a half-second later: "almost!." and also because she has fuchsia lipstick on to match her fuchsia shirt.
healingmirth: Delahoy from the Unusuals, unimpressed (unusuals - delahoy)
2010-08-25 10:48 pm

we're coming to you slightly delayed and in black and white

The agony that was beach volleyball is over for the year, thank goodness, and as parting gifts I have two new cuts that are going to take forever to heal. I hate that beach, so, so much. Also, sort of hate my teammates, considering that only two of them (of six we needed, of eight on the team) were there by 15 minutes after the game was to have started. We probably would have played better if the dude and I had just played two on six.

On the other hand, there was a random Captain America plastic figure hanging out on our court when we got there.

I am no longer quite so excited about this season on SYTYCD Canada. I can't say that I'm surprised that two of my favorite dancers from auditions and the awesome ballroom mom were in the bottom three couples, but I am nonetheless disappointed.

I must say, I do appreciate the rate at which they churned through the results.

Also, it is creepy how much that one guy looks like the main werewolf guy from Twilight (Taylor something? Jacob?)
healingmirth: (Default)
2010-08-24 08:44 pm

another slow news day in my brain

Am I right in thinking that there is a creepy/possibly dangerous character in a movie who says, "Hello, poppet"? (or 'ello, as it were, with some vaguely British accent) Or have I just creepified the phrase in my memory for no good reason?

I haven't seen the first performance show for SYTYCD Canada yet, but I am about 10x more excited for the dancers than I was for this season's US group. And so many of the people I liked in auditions made it through!

I had an idea for an Arthur/Eames snippet while making pie pastry tonight. Said idea has nothing to do with pie pastry, for the record. I'm considering trying to shoehorn it into silence porn for [community profile] kink_bingo. If anyone would like to suggest a semi-public location (for these purposes, the odder the better, seriously) that would require silence, I am open to suggestion.

Wholly unrelated to any of that: While I am capable of being elitist about many, many things, I am not generally elitist about people's gear in MMOs. However, there's this addon in WoW (that I have been trying to ignore since I started playing again) that assigns a numerical value to people's gear. Literally minutes after installing it, I was having disparaging thoughts about people in my group whose gear was (numerically! theoretically!) worse than mine.

Here endeth the entry.

ETA: ha-ha, I lied, because I hadnt checked ye olde reading page recently.
Glen Weldon at Monkey See writes about Read Comics in Public Day.
What do you want?
To peruse sequential art in the bright light of the upper world without getting accosted by street toughs!
When do you want it?
Now would be good! If that's okay!
healingmirth: (Default)
2010-08-21 12:53 am

my attention wanes geometrically

Dear people who've watched Primeval: I got stuck (like a year ago) a couple episodes into series two, and stopped watching. I think I was mostly not excited about the last episode of series one and the first of series two. It is possible that I just don't like shows that are willing to make surprise! changes like that to characters I've gotten attached to (see also: Angel, which I gave up on halfway through season one, and probably Torchwood now). However, it is also possible that there were just a few dud episodes, and I'll be much happier if I keep going.

So, opinions? Should I pick it back up on the assumption that I might want to watch series four-and-maybe-five?
Some guy from Fandango say 100 movies in 100 days, travelling around the country to different theaters, while working full-time, apparently. He's got a round-up at Day 100: The Expendables which includes the information that he gained 25 pounds. and that seems like a lot, but maybe that's just me )
Still catching up on SYTYCD Canada, and I have reached audition fatigue amazingly early. By the time they got to Halifax, I was watching about ten seconds of most routines, skipping to the judging, and skipping ahead about ten seconds into that.

I have decided that my issues with the Canada auditions follow from my nature as a crass, capitalist citizen of the US, because I am evaluating every ticket to the finals as an investment, and it really bothers me that they're sending people through to what is going to be a very, very stressful week for everyone involved without any proof of a reasonable expectation that they're going to be able to pick up routines at a pace needed for the show.

In other words, I am not appreciating the dancers for the special flowers they are. Seriously, I think I would run auditions like The Gong Show. Is that what [Wherever]'s Got Talent does, with the Xs? I've never watched an audition that someone didn't make it through.

For instance: they sent the belly-dancing chick through to finals? see my earlier objections to b-boys not doing choreo. Read more... )
healingmirth: (Default)
2010-08-18 10:12 pm

Talking! To people! And talking! On the TV!

So, let's talk about how so, so very out of practice I am at dating, flirting, and generally interacting with my gender of preference. Some random guy might have been hitting on me, in his adorable stuttery way, at volleyball tonight. Or maybe he, like the many people up here who get transferred around to random offices, just doesn't know anyone and wanted someone to talk to.

Chances are excellent that I'll never see him again, so there's a mystery for the ages.
I watched the first episode of SYTYCD Canada yesterday, and the one girl (Kirstie Keenan) who I really, really loved, who had interesting movement and a good story, and a good personality even before the story, she was the one who a) got sent to choreography, and b) they specifically showed a clip of Jean-Marc Generaux (or however the hell you spell his name, sorry) saying that the vote to send her to the final auditions was not unanimous. Now, I get that Canada is different and whatnot, they're casting their own show, blah blah blah, but this solidifies that I hate the SYTYCD Canada judges.

Mary Murphy was the guest judge for the first city, which sucked. Next up, Dan Karaty (who I miss!) and Stacey Tookie (for whom my love is already well-established).

Other people I liked, mostly for my own reference: JR Roumain, Jesse Weafer (boring choreography but a great TV face), Andrew Chung (even though I will never understand sending a b-boy straight to finals instead of choreo), and Patrizia Gianforcaro with her sort-of-African-Jazz thing

The two ballet-class hip-hop dancers both reminded me very much of Cody from last season, stylistically, who was adorable, but not my favorite. He's the one that Mia, I think, talked about how he was always in his own sort of little groove, and didn't interact with the audience. I do not generally enjoy the quiet groove type hip-hop.
healingmirth: Neil Patrick Harris as Barney with a six-pack of beer (NPH)
2010-08-13 01:30 am
Entry tags:

when I was in college, we had this thing where we'd dance like Peanuts

OH HAI, Neil Patrick Harris. Enjoying your break after that Rent at the Hollywood Bowl bizzareity? (shut up, that is totally a word.)

My thoughts on the SYTYCD finale can be summed up thusly:

in no particular order, despite the fact that I have numbered them )
healingmirth: Jon stewart as an old-timey radio broadcaster (jon stewart)
2010-08-11 11:07 pm
Entry tags:

SYTYCD Finale, blah, blah, blah.

Also, why so much talking?

Tonight was less about the performances and more about the choreography. The routines that I didn't like and/or didn't understand, I can't imagine that there's a dancer who could have made me care about them. This is good news, of course, for the finale, that I'm not wishing someone else was there to do the routines.

whoops! )

I really don't care who wins SYTYCD Season... 7? But for good reasons, as opposed to how I didn't care who won American Idol this season.

This means that I agree with Nigel about something, so my head should be scheduled to explode shortly.
healingmirth: deadpool, bemused, missing a chunk of his head (deadpool)
2010-08-06 01:13 am

this is how my brain works, or doesn't, as it were

I am almost-perpetually in a state of having just forgotten something, at which point there is a very present feeling of having just forgotten something. This has been known to happen in the time between thinking "I should look that up," while in the middle of a paragraph, and opening a tab to google 30 seconds later. I eventually remember what it is above 90% of the time, though, so it's not as bad as it could be.
Every time I go to sleep with wet hair, I feel stuffy and headache-y all the next morning. Every time! One would hope, as it takes about five minutes to dry my hair, that someday I will cease to go to bed with wet hair. Am about to go take a shower, so we'll see if I learn that lesson tonight.
I'm going to go see the matinee of Lend Me a Tenor with my mother on Saturday, and while I really can't expect my mother to want to walk a mile in the city at noon if the weather's anywhere near as bad as it was today, I sort of feel like a failure for not advocating for taking the train in.

ETA: Why does it never occur to me that there are cabs in New York when I am thinking about transportation? I tend to ignore the subway, too, unless I'm going waaaay up- or downtown.
SYTYCD tonight went as it should have, but I missed the opening routine because of technical difficulties. I really enjoyed both of the musical guests for pretty much the first time ever, but I had to fast-forward through Desmond Richardson's routine, and I feel a bit like a failure for being uninterested in his work. I didn't watch the classical ballet earlier this season either.
Project Runway also went precisely as it should have. A.J. whatisname and Michael Costello are my favorites to watch so far, so I hope their designs hold up at least for a few weeks.
healingmirth: Delahoy from the Unusuals, unimpressed (unusuals - delahoy)
2010-08-04 11:31 pm
Entry tags:

SYTYCD: not as awesome as I'd hoped.

Okay, now that the show's over, I think there was something off with the camera work tonight. That's the only thing I can think of, because there were so many things that I just did not get tonight, even the routines that I really liked. Maybe I needed to sit closer to the TV and have the surround sound hooked up. Maybe - actually, maybe this is it - it's that I'm ruined for TV performances for a couple days since I saw live performances that I love yesterday.

as always, this got long )

I'm going to go vote for Lauren a hundred times, because bottom three last week, what the fuck?