Hammond Hypnotized

Rubbish! I had respect for Paul McKenna 'til just then. Bah.

Go Hometown Girl Stephanie!! I loved how she was able to think on the fly after the disaster of the left-out-of-the-fridge pork (Dale couldn't have been serious about possibly serving that, was he?!?), and the judges loved the pork-skin salad she served instead. I think her plaintain pancakes are what put her over the top, though--the guest judge really got into those.

William is the guy who danced to the spoken word "music" in his audition.

Ah, right.

Las Vegas Weekly piece updating where Las Vegas cheftestants are now.

Grub Street reaction to this week's episode.

Eric Ripert has a blog!

Avec Eric

And Grub Street talks to Antonia.

OK, so I'm just watching last night's Vegas SYTYCD:

Kinda painful to see, because now it's actually people who are mostly good dancers, but more interesting--THIS, I could watch in more and more detail for hours, really...I'd love to actually BE there! Though the scenes of trying to learn the choreography in a pack of 100 people makes me *cringe*, I can't imagine trying to do that, how can you possibly see what's going on from the back??

I was surprised that I really really liked Tyce's Broadway choreography. That's a genre that when they do it for the show, it's usually annoyingly cheesy, but what they did for the auditions looked fun. Though I noticed, looking at some stuff from last year, that Pasha and Sara's "West Coast Swing", which is a genre that *dancing*, I find to be incredibly hot and sexy, seeing them do it it was so over the top and ridiculous that I didn't at all enjoy watching it (though perhaps that was because Benji choreographed it), sometimes it's more about putting TOO MUCH into it for a performance than because of what a dance is like...it's not that I don't like "Broadway", it's that I don't like how much fancy they put into it to try and make people like it?

OK, that last "sentence" got a little out of control there. Um. But I think you get what I mean.

I'm only halfway through so I'm sure I"ll have more comments.

On a different note: I'm getting some folks together to watch the show, and want to suck some newbies in. Can you name some super memorable dances you'd show them if they are skeptical about this show?

Ones I'm thinking already, though it's clearly biased towards Season 2:

Zombie Dance
Top Four SexyBack
Heidi and Peanut's Bench Dance for a contemp
maybe the Ivan/Allyson umbrella one, for a hiphop?
Why am I drawing a big blank on Season 3? I just saw it! I know I loved things in it!

I need some nice ballroom. A latin? I loved Danny and Anya's waltz, but I'm not sure if that's a good choice. I didn't see Season 1, not sure if there's anythign good from that.

Season three- the table dance with Sabra and Neil, the two princes dance with Neil and Danny, and the hummingbird dance with Hok and _______.

Kameron and Lacey's contemporary to Dancing from top 20! i also really, really liked Lacey/Danny's samba to Hip Hip Chin Chin.

I actually prefer Allison/Ivan's contemporary to Why over the umbrella one.

for silliness, how about Benji/Travis hip hop from the finale or even Benji/Donyelle's hip hop from the top 20.

also? i'm really put out that they didn't put Evan in the top 20. i am happy Twitch and William are there though. this season is chock full of contemporary!

Oh, yes, the hummingbird dance with Hok and Jaimie, I was thinking of that one. And I did consider the table dance.

I've forgotten the two princes dance, but I know I have it on my TiVo, it was in the last few shows.