Just a little something to make your day a little brighter.
But not just any run of the mill sunflower, a TINY sunflower!
Tons of tiny sunflowers are getting ready to bloom all over Z’s sunflower plant. And before they bloom they look like little mini Audreys from Little Shop of Horrors:
Love it!
What’s making your heart feel super happy this morning?
First, I should say that I LOVE this show, and want it to continue on into eternity. That being said, having watched the show from the very first episode, I have a couple (well, 10) suggestions to make it even better. I should also add that this list is in no way comprehensive, just what I’ve been thinking about today.
Warning: This post was written in full snark mode. Proceed accordingly.
1) What is it with the bottom dancers simply repeating the solos they did the night before? LAME! The solos done on results night might not change anything, but honestly people, show us what we’re going to miss if you leave! Make us regret the votes if you get sent home. To paraphrase Mia Michaels- Step into your glory! Shine! And while I’m on solos, can they please be a little longer? The show is so chock full of filler, surely we could cut a couple minutes of Mary screaming in order to actually, you know, watch people dance?
2) Stop the emotional extortion. If the choreographer wants to take on a weighty subject in their routine, fantastic. I’m all for dance expressing deep things. But leave it at “This dance is about a woman suffering from breast cancer”, “This is about a father and daughter reuniting in Heaven”, not “This dance is about my own, personal friend who is going to die” or “My daddy just died and this dance is what I picture reuniting with him will be”. Because those second examples are just plain manipulative. How do you say “Wow, I really didn’t like that dance” without sounding like a total jerk?
Case in point- Mia Michael’s piece which has come to be known as the “dead daddy dance”. It was nice, but there wasn’t much actual dancing in it, just a lot of running around and jumping and flowers. But how do you say, “Mia, your vision of reuniting with your father is kinda stupid” ? Or the waltz that that one guy (whose name I can’t remember at present, was it Jean-Marc? I think it was Jean-Marc) created for his daughter who can only vaguely see movement? It wasn’t all that great, but just thinking about this poor little girl straining to see Kherington dance made everyone all teary. (As did the fact that if she was going to see anyone dance it was going to be Kherington. Ooooh, that was mean! Who said that?)
In comparison, look at Mia’s addiction number. Spectacular. It completely stood on it’s own merits, and the merits of the people dancing it. But if she’d started in on how this was about her own experience or the experience of someone near her it would have killed it for me. In the worst case, you have bad dancing and bad choreography given a pass because the story behind it makes people cry. In the best case, you have fantastic choreography, and gorgeous dancing, which is hard to complain about, except…
3) Stop overbooking the choreographers so that some lucky souls get the aforementioned, heartwrenching dances of pain and woe, and the rest get some random cha cha. If you’re going to try for Emmys (which is what the cynical side of me thinks a lot of the choreographers are trying for now with the hard hitting numbers), bring in a bunch more choreographers and let each one pour their heart and soul into the one or two numbers they do that season. Seriously, there have (HAVE!) to be more people choreographing hip hop in the world than Tabitha and Napoleon. Give them a break, for goodness sake! In previous seasons when they over booked Wade Robson and Shane Sparks, the quality of their numbers really varied over the season, which you can only expect from people asked to come up with 7 or 8 pieces. But this season we’ve had maybe 2 numbers and a group number each from those two, and all of them have been spectacular.
At some point in the season, Mary Murphy said to Janine (I think), who was in the bottom 3, that she couldn’t think of anything to tell her to do differently. My response? Luck out and get Wade or Mia next week. Because if you draw Mia, or Wade, or (most of the time) Shane out of that hat, you’re golden. Unless you really can’t dance, and then you’ll flop horrendously. But then you kind of deserve it.
I want to see spectacular dancing. I want to see pieces that make me think and feel and cry. But it’s just not fair to have dancers competing for votes when one partnership is dancing about the horrors of genocide (no, they haven’t actually done that one) and another is dancing about an alien trying to impregnate the last man on Earth (yes, yes they did).
4) Stop, just stop, trying to be an After School Special. Just because you feature a dance (and, again, a really really good dance) about breast cancer does not mean that you’ve shined a light on it and can now hail yourselves as activists. You’ve shared perhaps a piece of what someone’s experience might be, but there was no information about breast cancer prevention, testing, anything, not even a website or phone number. And really, as dumb as you might think your viewership is, (Thank you so much for introducing us to ballet! We’d never seen it before. Nutcracker? Never heard of it! Or Bollywood!), I can guarantee you they are not watching it saying, as B so perfectly expressed, “PEOPLE CAN GET BREAST CANCER? WHAT? NO WAY!”.
5) Just get rid of the ballroom dances already. They’re boring and no one likes them. I know they’re keeping them on because Mary Murphy is a producer, and there wouldn’t be a point to her being a judge if ballroom was gone (like there’s really a point now…), but they drag the whole show down. Keep Latin for variety, cha cha and jive and paso doble are fun (or is it tango that’s latin and paso doble is ballroom? I always forget), but the waltz, quickstep, foxtrot, etc. have GOT to go.
6) And speaking of Mary, can we change up the judges please? If you must have Nigel there then fine, seeing as he is in charge of the show. But Mary hardly ever says anything useful, she just repeats what the person before her said. I have it on good authority that Adam Shankman is at almost all the tapings, put him on the panel. He actually says things that are constructive and specific, and he doesn’t scream and make me skip past what he’s saying. The third judge can continue to rotate, but please, never again have Toni Basil as a judge. Please? I get tired of hearing how the rhumba is actually “street”.
7) Stop claiming the results of previous contestant’s talent, skill, and years of work and dedication as due to your influence. All of the judges were falling over themselves as they patted themselves on the back for making Travis into the choreographer he is today. His mother is an award winning choreographer and teacher. I’m sure he was doing just fine before he was on the show, and would still be choreographing (and just as brilliantly and professionally) if he’d never been on the show. Perhaps he’d even be choreographing for the show. So just stop. If you’d like to pat yourselves on the back for giving unknown dancers like Twitch or Joshua a forum to be seen and cast in movies, then that’s ok. Because, see, you actually did that.
8 ) And speaking of former contestants, DON’T EVER BRING BACK LAUREN TO CHOREOGRAPH. Just don’t. Travis? Marvelous. Benji? Fantastic. Pasha and Anya? Bliss. Dimitri? Wonderful. Dude even got nominated for an Emmy. But Lauren? Don’t even think about it. If you must have her choreograph for auditions because of whatever pact you have with the devil, then fine. But leave her there. Seriously.
9) The fact that the “highlights” reel from the past 5 seasons includes horrible dancers and a good 5-10 seconds of the dancer known as Sex speaks volumes about what the producers think we want to see on this show. THEY ARE WRONG. This is why delusional and or crappy dancers audition, and if you’re going to glorify them then stop complaining about them.
10) I understand that people want to win Emmys, and you want to have great routines to get people to shell out the big bucks for tickets to the tour, but I miss the old days of choreographers sticking to the style they were assigned, coming up with a representative dance, and holding the dancers to the choreography. I’m all for using a dancer’s particular skill if it fits within the confines of the dance genre, but changing a Waltz into a lyrical contemporary piece or dumbing down the choreography isn’t fair. The point of the show is for the contestants to show that they can pull of any kind of dance, not to choreograph around them to hide their flaws. If Melissa gets ever gets hip hop, I have no doubt it would be choreographed by Tabitha and Napoleon to Sk8ter Boi by Avril Lavigne (“He was a punk. And she did ballet. What more can I say?”) with Melissa as a literal ballerina. And that is stupid. And wrong. And unfair.
and I know I said 10, but lastly,
11) Never, and I do mean never, have the rhumba on the show again. Ever.
Do you ever feel yourself pulled between two parts of your own personality?
I do, all the time. My inner conflict of the day was set off by visiting Anthropologie.
It set off the deep seated conflict between my warring aesthetic preferences.
Modern:
vs.
Boho:
Our place has little pieces of both — far too much clutter to be either — but oh how I love the boho. And yet I’m really not sure I could pull it off in mass quantities without it just looking wrong.
I’d dress boho if I thought in any way I could do so, (you know, minus the big fur hat)
but I know I can’t, so it’s black on black for me, and that’s ok most of the time. It’s just when I visit meccas of boho such as Anthropologie that I want to start a revolution in my bed and change everything up.
So if you were me, what would you do? Do you covet a style you feel you can’t pull off? Discuss.
Extra points to anyone who can name where the title of this post is from.
My friend Stephanie just posted this picture on her blog, and I immediately asked her for a copy, because it captures the essence of Zoe like no other.
This was taken at her birthday party, as she was surrounded by her “little boys” as she calls them (“Is my little boy Ben going to be there?”), basking in the attention in which she is so at home.
Ah, I love it.
I haven’t posted for a while, and feel like I should, but I don’t really have any concrete “post” kind of thoughts at the moment, so here are some random things I’m thinking about.
Spiritual gifts: How do you determine what spiritual gifts you’ve been given but may not yet be aware of? I’ve been studying this for about a week now, and everything I find talks about seeking after the best gifts and praying/fasting for the gifts you want, but doesn’t talk about ferreting out the gifts you already have been given. Any ideas?
We’re not going to Comic-Con this year, and I’m pretty ok with that. I’d like to see everyone, but the thought of keeping track of Z and A in that huge crowd gives me nightmares. Maybe in a couple years.
I really need to make a dentist appointment.
This is my second week of working out on a regular basis, and I’m dying, but in a good way. The first week I just did the elliptical machine 3 times a week; this week was elliptical every day for the beginning of the week, and then Jillian Michaels’ 30 day Shred DVD for two days. My goal is to do it every day for 30 days (as per the title) excepting Sundays. We’ll see how far I get with that- she’s pretty much Death in a sports bra. But I’ve read in a couple places, from reputable sources, that you can’t change the shape of your body (not the shape you’re in, but the actual shape shape) unless you use weights. And goodness does this use weights. So we’ll see how it goes. I’m really looking to lose inches, not weight necessarily, so I’ll update as I go.
Zinnias are the coolest flowers ever. Did you know they sprout stars? It’s true! Look!
Before
After
Isn’t that awesome?
Z has a fever today. I’m trying to decide if I should stay home with her, or if B should. I’ll see what he thinks when he gets up.
Z’s sunflowers are getting close to blooming- I’m excited.
We got the car back from the shop, good as new. The whole process was much faster than it could have been, and appears to be cheaper than we thought it would be, so that’s really nice.
We found out that our apartment complex will be offering the option of Comcast cable in a couple months, this is truly a cause for rejoicing. Rejoice!
That’s all for now, I’m going to see if I can sneak in a little nap on the couch while the kids watch TV.
Things making me incredibly happy right now.
Zoe and B are watching Mythbusters together as I type. Z thinks it’s the coolest thing ever as the cars crash and launch over fences. B thinks it’s the coolest thing that she’s so excited about it.
I got to take a 2 hour nap today. It was lovely.
Tiny had pizza for dinner for the first time today. That’s a big thing in Snell households. She enjoyed it. It’s wonderful having a child who eats.
A hummingbird drank from Z’s zinnias today. I didn’t see it- Zoe and B did- but just the idea of it makes me incredibly happy.
Lots of interesting (to me, anyway) thoughts rolling around in my head. Expect a rather long post soon.
What’s making you happy today?
So You Think You Can Dance last night had 2 of the best routines I’ve ever seen on the show.
The first is by the insane, amazing Wade Robson. Ever since he did the routine back in the day to Roisin Murphy’s Ramalama and we got the album, I’ve been waiting for him to choreograph something to her song Ruby Blue- it just seemed perfect for his style. And oh my goodness, I was so right. This is probably my favorite thing he’s done, putting it above his awesome crazy Fosse number. ( I can’t find an online source to link to for that one.)
So go here and watch it. There’s a combination at :38-:43 that had me rewinding at least 10 times to watch it over again, and clapping delightedly each time.
The other was a stunning routine by Mia Michaels, who previous to this point in the season was dead to me. I say stunning and I mean it, I’ve watched it 8 times now, and each time I’m left completely breathless at the end, like someone punched me in the stomach. It’s about addiction, and it’s the most compelling, intricate piece I’ve seen of hers. She often talks about dancers needing to come from a place of truth and authenticity, and I always kind of shake my head, because a number of her pieces just feel kind of pose-y to me, but this is so raw and honest and painful.
What makes it even more horribly beautiful is the pre-interview (which isn’t on the video I’m linking to) where Kupono explains that one of his best friends had a serious drug problem that almost killed him. Then he goes on to say, through tears, “I really don’t want to play this character [of the addicting force] for a whole minute thirty. I don’t want to play it for 2 counts.” But he does, and he’s amazing.
And as an extra, some videos I found today:
Just a special something I stumbled across- especially for all you Wade fans….
Oh, and this.
And just for Jeff: Twitch on The Wade Robson Project
And just for B and this too, specifically the move at :38.
OH MY GOODNESS, POSSIBLY THE BEST THING I’VE EVER FOUND ON THE WHOLE OF THE INTERNETS, EVER: Wade Robson doing Smooth Criminal and Thriller. I think I could die.
Edited to add: Watching Wade dance Smooth Criminal inspired me to watch the original again- I often cite is as among my favorite choreography, but I haven’t seen it in a really long time. (I remember hoping and hoping it would come on MTV- thank goodness for the convenience of YouTube.)Upon watching it I have three thoughts. First, can you believe the audacity of a 10 minute + music video? You couldn’t get away with that now. I LOVE it. Second, my memory served me correctly, it is among my favorite choreography. From 6:40 to the end is the part I love. Third, you can argue (as was done in a recent article I read) that Michael Jackson wasn’t really that great of a singer after he hit puberty, but he was one hell of a dancer. (Pardon my expression.) That’s what I’ll remember him for, more than anything else.
For those of you who don’t know, I have a deep seated catty streak. It doesn’t come out all that often, but it amuses me. And it matches well with Bruce’s snark, and sometimes the two come together quite beautifully. So today, in honor of B’s birthday, our IM conversation from earlier today about an album of pictures on Facebook. Unfortunately I can’t link to the pictures, so you’ll just have to imagine them. I will describe the first, which was a picture of a man and woman standing on either side of the back of a Mercedes, that had the license plate PLSE RCYL and a sticker boasting that the car ran on vegetable oil. The woman was looking off into the distance, away from the man. That stance was to be a reoccurring theme throughout the pictures. There was also a picture of them sitting on the far ends of a bench from each other, and one of her leaning on him, but only her elbow was touching his shoulder and the rest of her was about a two foot away from him.
Oh, and did I mention these were engagement pictures?
And here we go:
Bruce : I’m going to vomit. This is an “engagement photo”
Maryanne: What are you talking about? That’s hands down the BEST engagement picture I’ve ever seen! It so expresses the environmentalism that already sits at the center of their relationship, driving them slowly but inexorably apart. Notice her already complete distraction, as evidenced by her still open passenger side door- wasting the very vegetable oil that holds them self-righteously together. Um, I mean, nice picture
Bruce: You are wonderful
Maryanne: lol, thanks. I was going to say something about how his goatee would never live up to her expectations, but it didn’t come together
Bruce: You should check out the last pic in the gallery, I think the dude thinks he is some kind of troubadour
Maryanne: i LOVE that they’re like 5 feet apart in all the pictures. it’s like there’s a restraining order in place
Bruce: lol
Maryanne: but they still had to get the pictures taken to get the invites out.
Bruce: One pic looks like he’s going to bean her with the guitar
Maryanne: And SERIOUSLY, what’s with picture 12, with their rings on top of a spike surrounded by barbed wire??
WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE???
Bruce: I think there’s an amazing story to be put together around those pics
Maryanne: I believe there is. And all of their friends are liars. These pictures are neither beautiful nor are they soooo cute.
Bruce: lol. Look, you already won for the first comment…it’s like you’re trying to get extra credit or something
Maryanne: OH MY GOODNESS! I just got to the picture where he’s about to bean her with the guitar.
Bruce: lol
Maryanne: and look at the next one in that context, it looks like he did hit her, and now she’s just slumped against him. Ok, seriously, who are these people? where did you find them?
Bruce: You’re right, he knocked her out. Why are they kissing in front of a rusty old truck? [Note: This truck wasn't just rusty, it was out in the middle of a field, disintegrating.]
Maryanne: I asked myself the same thing. Perhaps it’s eco concious?
Bruce: It must be. And they’re kissing from like 5 feet apart. Do they argue about recycling? Like maybe she’s not that in to it?
Maryanne: I’m telling you, it will drive them apart. Ok, we’re headed for the pool. And you know this whole conversation is ending up on my blog.
And it did. True story.
And don’t try to figure out who it is, none of you know these people. And thank goodness for that. 
And edited to add: We don’t actually really know these people either, they’re tangentially connected to a facebook friend. So don’t go worrying that we talk about our friends (like you) like this.
One of Z’s favorite shows is Ni Hao Kai Lan. When we went to Target today, she discovered that the merchandising has finally caught up with all her deepest desires. There are Kai Lan toys and clothes. She got to pick out one thing, and this is what she picked.
Those are all her own poses, by the way- a born model, that one.
Books to catch up on:
I don’t remember if I wrote about Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh, and I’m too lazy to check. I love Waugh, and this book really solidified for me why. Taking Brideshead Revisited out of the picture, which I think is a different kind of book entirely, his books capture an interesting aspect of life that I’ve never seen anyone quite capture before. His characters are often gliding through life, heading in the direction expected of them, when they’re set upon by very random, disruptive, and often damaging events. A wife reveals that she’s leaving for a previously unsuspected lover. A man is kicked out of university for public indecency after having his clothes stolen during a mugging by drunken revelers. A man loses the money he was using to prove he was solvent to his future fiance when, even though he wins a bet, he can’t find the man he made the bet with. Completely unexpected, horrible things, happening to perfectly good people. And he presents them as so commonplace, and with so much wit and good humor, that you end up laughing with his characters rather than feeling sorry for them. Because there really is a feeling throughout that life is good and that it’s a privilege to be alive in this strange world we live in. And I think it’s good to be reminded that going through this earthly experience doesn’t mean that things will always be easy, there will be bad and good, joy and pain, and sometimes, all of them all mixed in together.
This book is about the 2nd scenario above- a young man is mugged by drunken miscreants, and then is kicked out of university for the resultant public indecency of running back to his dorm naked. He loses his allowance, is forced to work as a teacher at a bizarre private school teaching lessons in subjects he knows nothing about, courts the mother of one of his students and is about to marry her when he is arrested for the business he helped her with out of the country, which just happened to be white slavery (which he was completely unaware of), goes to jail in her place, is broken out and his death is faked, and he ends up right where he started, at the university that kicked him out, pretending to be his own cousin. But that’s just the plot. Like every book I’ve read of Waugh’s, every word is absolutely perfectly placed. The characters are hilarious, the timing brilliant. I don’t have enough good things to say about it.
How I wish that were true about Resurrection Club by Christopher Wallace. I picked it up at the library because the back looked interesting, and I wasn’t paying attention and thought it was by Daniel Wallace, who wrote Big Fish. BIG difference. It wasn’t until 5/6ths of the way through the book that I realized that, and the main reason I kept reading that far was because I figured that with the Big Fish guy writing it, there had to be a point to it all. The premise is promising enough- a guy builds a mechanism that holds a heart, a brain, and wants the third chamber to hold a soul. And people are possibly faking their own deaths. But after that it just goes off the rails. There’s a story in present time Edinburgh about a strange exhibition promising to feature a resurrection, and three or four intertwining stories– and because of those you get sucked in and want to find out what in the world is going on, but it never quite comes together. The end kind of ties back into the beginning, but only kind of- Wallace never actually establishes that the mechanism actually does what the characters are claiming it does, and the whole thing just kind of jumbles around. By the time I got to the end I just wanted there to be a point- it didn’t have to be a good one, any point would do- but there really wasn’t one. Which was quite frustrating, because it wasn’t even an enjoyable read for me. It was decent as horror books go, but I like my horror a little less gratuitous.
Still She Haunts Me by Katie Roiphe also had a promising premise, but I ended up just skimming through it to find out the end. It’s about Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and his relationship with Alice Liddell, the child for and about whom he wrote Alice in Wonderland. He and her family had a dramatic falling out, and this book covers the time leading up to that and the theoretical cause of it. It was written well enough, I just wasn’t in the mood for the wordiness. And honestly I just wanted to know what tack she was taking, and I pretty much guessed it accurately- suspected sexuality being at the core. That being known, I didn’t really care enough to go back and read the whole thing.
I’m pages away from finishing You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down by Alice Walker. It’s a collection of short stories, some of which are stunningly insightful. And not in that it’s stunning that Alice Walker is insightful, because there’s not a question of that, but rather the insights themselves stunned me. Two in particular, one about the effects of porn and the other about rape and its effect on people’s perceptions of interracial relationships, were especially eye opening. The first because it was expressed in a way I hadn’t thought of before, and the second because it pulled on Walker’s history with the early Civil Rights movement, and explained how that history shaped her thoughts on interracial relationships, and thus, how events of that time period would have shaped everyone’s perspective. Luckily I have grown up in a different world (at least I hope so- I hope I’m not just that naive), and so this context really helped explain some ideas that previously made no sense to me. Anyway, this was an excellent book, not that that came as any surprise to me.
I’m also almost done with Black Mischief, also by Evelyn Waugh- again, wickedly funny and, in comparison to some of his others, fairly cynical. I’ll write more when I finish it.
And… I’m also reading The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf, which I’ve been reading for months now. It’s lovely and sweeping and I’d finish it far faster if I wasn’t reading it on my phone.
So I’m at 20 for the year so far, I should be at 24, so I’m not too far behind.
What are you reading? What do you think I should be reading?