Dumb and Dumber

Once upon a time, I chanced upon a blog of a friend of mine.

In reality, she was this bubbly bright spark on crack, always smiling and happy. However, when she penned her thoughts into chunks of lengthy paragraphs, that image that I had of her was totally shredded. Through her words, she became this suicidal, drug-abusing, punk-rock chick who just seemed to turn everything into sombre black-and-white. I still remember telling myself 'What is up with this girl?'

There and then, I promised myself that I would never turn into one of these emo-kid, uberly sensitive, misanthropic pessimists if ever I made a blog of my own.

How easy it was to say it then? Exactly 24 hours ago, I foolishly brought my idle self to check my email. One email caught my eye. Little that I knew, it was a ticking bomb lurking to crunch my much-protected and vulnerable ego. As I laid my eyes on those words flashing across the computer screen, this invisible force grabbed me with its firm fist and refused to let me go. On and on I read the email, each word a blow to my frail ego.

For the past weeks, I had pressed the protection shield button, and managed to shut the blinds behind which lied this painful truth, which happened to be encased in the email.

There was an adage that said sticks and stones can break my bones but words would never wound me, or something to that effect. My reply: BULLSHIT. Words are the most annoying bitch out there. Sigh. The worst thing was that I actually let that beast in and devour that weakest part of my ego. Crap. Crap. Crap. I should have been more ignorant. That was a dumb move. My succumbing to this self-imposed paranoia, however, was dumber.

Catharsis

It was pretty much akin to the endeavour to zip up my luggage before every trip I had ever taken. Profuse sweating, ceaseless cursing, noiseless grumbling and immense tension on the fingers. An utterly teething experience.

Once the ordeal was over, I just sat there dumbfounded, or this time may be just dumb. Sigh, that was all I did. Interminable wait dissolved into a split second buried in my memory. It was over. It was over. It was over.

Thirst for Spiritual Awakening

This is one of those moments where I am thrown into this pensive mood, and suddenly reminded of the dulcet times in my childhood, when my life was simplistic and mundane. I was such a dumb child back then, with no curiosity whatsoever. My life revolved around comic books, senseless obsession with drawings of ducks, going to the malls in droves with my equally dumb teenage friends and the epic battle with the fact that I was fat, short and curly. Regardless of the stupidity which admittedly was the highlight of my childhood, I was able to seek refuge in God without any reservation. Not that I was particularly a very devout and spiritual person. Trust me, I have committed some of the most abominable sins condemned by Man. I was no a saint. Yet, there was this naivete, or should I say innocence, which convinced me that God would still be there for me.

However, now that I am older (and not necessarily wiser), I seem to have retarded my own spiritual progress. After a series of unfortunate events, the details of which will forever be buried in the darkest corner of my consciousness (sorry to be unnecessarily verbose and pretentious phrasing), I had something like a paradigm shift, which subsequently turned me agnostic. It actually took me some time to arrive to this revelation, and even more time to actually muster enough courage to utter words of acceptance. Primarily, I hesitated because I was fearful of the Divine intervention which would befall upon me should I have the audacity to do so. It was the whole 'If I don't say it, it does not exist' kind of thing.

Notwithstanding, now that I have lived a life liberated from any form of spirituality, I feel (yes feel, not think) that there is something missing in my life. Sometimes I think back about my life experience and wonder whether this whole chapter is actually just a result of hormonal imbalance, a by-product of what teenage life is all about. I know I read too much into things. Anyway, coming back to my point, now I feel that I have this craving for that abandoned path of spirituality (or specifically, Christianity) I have so proudly repudiated before. I remember the time when I was in midst of worship, the music was playing, the singers dissolved into this uncanny transcendent state, blissful half-smiles on their faces, and I could tangibly feel that my problems slowly evaporated. It was real, as if this thread that was pulling my spine down disappeared inch by inch into thin air, and there was a certain feeling of lightness which was awkwardly uplifting. I know I probably do not make any sense right now. You guys probably think that I am this stupid pretentious freak-of-nature who's in desperate need of some shrink.

But the question is, why now? Why do I suddenly lapse into this state where spirituality matters again? No, it's not because I just finished a statutory memorandum on religion. Is it because life has sucked so badly, that I am now turning back to my old lifeline with which I had severed ties during my brief moment of happiness? If so, how could I be so shallow? I take God when I need Him (arguably, Her), only to denounce Him the second He becomes a liability. Or is it just a vicissitude of life, for someone to take God and be happy, and to go astray once that happiness is obtained, and to return once that happiness is gone? Is it very human to fall into this cycle?

Honestly, I do not have the answer right now. But one thing that I know is that I want to go back to that state of worship, where the music is playing, everybody on their feet with their hands in the air, blissful half-smiles in every direction, and that uplifting sense of joy burrowing its way up the spine. God, is that you?

My Take on Sytycd S6 Top 20

Welcome... to So You THINK You Can DANCE!!! YAY! The best damn show on television is back! After months of interminable wait, it is here and now. I'm so psyched about Season 6~! Ok, may be not so much. I honestly think that there has been way too much drama, and Cat Deeley has tried way too hard to convince us that this is gonna be the best season yet.

Here's a piece of advice, almost everyone on the show (with an exception of Lil' C) has to develop some new vocabulary because what they say is getting very predictable and boring. Another point of revelation is that tapping (or is it clogging?) is not as exciting as I though it would be. They sorta did a showcase before the real competition started, and the top 20 dancers were grouped according to their genres. The tappers... were not very entertaining. I think Ryan Kasparzak (I'm sure I misspelled his last name) is the only one who can capture everyone's attention for more than 15 seconds in tap. I mean, sure there's a lot of technique involved and it's not an easy genre to do, but it was just not as entertaining. Talk about maximum input for minimum result. Unlike contemporary, tap is very very very (and if I haven't made my point yet) VERY grounded. There's no grand movement or crazy-ass traveling across the floor or intense emotions involved in it. It's kinda banged on the soft rhythmical cling~and~clung which you can't really hear if there's a loud music playing. I think with tap you need more people, more than 3 at least.

Anw, since we're on the subject of the showcase, I gotta say that the ballroom item that night stole the show. I know most people probably do not see eye-to-eye with me on this, but the item was simply awesome awesome awesome. I never thought that you can have a threesome in ballroom. And it was not the sleazy type of ballroom, but a sleek one. The dancers were great, the chemistry was great and the concept was great. You could actually take some moments to absorb the extravagance that was served in front of you, unlike the other contemporary items ( and I would argue that JAZZ = CONTEMPORARY) where you could only see limbs hitting every corner of the stage. In the showcase, the contemporary choreographers were way too worked up on trying to show off how technical the dancers were that they forgot that what made contemporary so appealing was not technique. It was the story line and the emotions and the like.

So, let's come down to the crux of the show: the competition itself. Btw, I have wikipedia page opened on a separate window so that I don't miss anyone. First to come were Channing and Phillip. The netballer and the cocky tapper. I didn't really like the item, and truthfully I don't really like jive in general. To me, unless it is danced by a trained ballroom dancer, it just looks sloppy. It is also kinda hard to show inner personality because the dance is very showy, so most of the time what you see on stage is just these jumping jack and jane with plastic smiles plastered on their faces. Bottom line is it was not memorable in the good way.

Next was Ashleigh and Jakob, and they did Broadway. The married woman and the dance prodigy. I kinda need to give nicknames to all the dancers because otherwise I would not be able to tell who is whom. Anw, this item was good. The guy is really talented. I mean, his arabesque is no joke, and you can tell that he's proud of it because he did it about 10 times during the showcase. But not just that, he is a very well-rounded dancer. I have to agree with Nigel that the last drop at the end was crisp. It caught me by surprise. He fell to the floor faster than lightning. Good job Jacob! The girl on the other hand looked really old. (I realise this has nothing to do with dancing.) They really need to do something with her make-up because you would not want to see a teenage boy dancing and doing romantic stuff with an older woman (or worse, with a MILF). Ashleigh really needs to step it up, not only because she is paired with probably one of the best dancers in the history of Sytycd, but also because she just does not exude enough confidence to convince that audience that she is genuine.

Ok, moving on. We have Ariana and Peter doing hip-hop to one of my favorite songs Black and Gold. I thought the concept was cool, the costumes (him being black and her being gold) were awesome, but I was kinda hoping that they would dance more to the verse of the song. And I did not know why the dancers looked as if they were dancing to thin air. The musicality did not come across as on point, which was so disappointing because I really really liked the song.

Then we have the foxtrot with Russell and fellow big-haired choreographer Melanie Lapatin. Thank goodness that he already had a fan base because otherwise, he would have been out next week. Foxtrot is one of those genres which do not really help you get votes. This is made worse by the fact that Russell is all alone, his partner is still recovering from something that looks like a major leg injury. NEVERTHELESS, I think the judges liked him. Actually it was quite obvious that they wanted him to be the next Twitch and Joshua. You know, the whole 'You have no dance training! It's insane for you to be able to do what you're doing' or 'You have GROWN tremendously! And this is what the show is about!'. This whole thing about growth is getting really old and really annoying, but I don't think they judges would stop harping on it anytime soon.

Then there's Bianca and Victor. Who's Victor??? Bianca is the tapper who is hailed as the best female tapper the show has seen (which is not that much of a compliment considering the small number of female tappers who audition). Funny fact: If you're a black girl and you have short hair, then your name has to be Bianca. This is true for most of the US reality shows. Kinda a weird fact. Anw, they did a contemporary piece about him ignoring her. I though it was not memorable. The only thing that I could remember about the item is that the stage was way too big for the two of them. They should really work the camera angles more because now at some parts the stage looked a bit too empty.

Goodness, this is taking too long than expected. Next is cha cha by Karen and Kevin. OH!!! I remember these two! Jennifer Lopez look-alike and Vitolio version 2.0. I don't really care much for the guy actually, but the girl is BEAUTIFUL. She's a hot tamale. I didn't really think that she was much of dancer when I saw her during auditions, but now she's kinda growing into me. I hope that she could do other styles so that I can join in her fan club without any reservation.

Next were Ellenore and Ryan Di Lello with Sonya Jazz routine, the heaven/mythical creature dance. I thought it was cool. Too bad Ellenore had to shoot my expectations up to the roof with her comments that 'it would probably one of the best performances of Sytycd'. It was not THAT great. It was GOOD, but just... good. Next time she should just keep her mouth shut and let the dance do the talking. Better still, she should say something funny so that her personality can shine even more.

The next two items were just SAD. Pauline and Brandon looked like they were dancing at a high school prom in Hong Kong when they did the smooth waltz. I really pity Brandon though. He's totally treated like a toilet paper by Sytycd. It's like 'Ow, we kinda need you to fill in because one of our best dancers just pulled out, but don't think that you will stay for long since we both know that you're not good enough.' I hope he comes back next season and be the best dancer then, so that he can slap Sytycd in the face. The second hip-hop number is by Kathryn and Legacy, the caveman item. It was ok... I guess. Nothing interesting to catch my eyes. The judges went crazy about this item. I though it was given too much credit than it deserved. Here's my idea: they complimented Dave Scott (the choreographer) so much so that he would stay on the show and replace Nappytabs. The duo have been struggling to top themselves since S4, and Nigel even expressly says that he has been disappointed with the hip-hop number in S5.

LASTLY, Mollee and Nathan with their disco. They really looked like 12 twelve year-olds dancing together. I think they will definitely stay long in the competition. Nathan's center is ridiculous. He can do 20 pirouettes faster than I can spell the word 'pirouettes'. And Mollee is just a goof ball of likeableness. They did good with their item, and obviously they already have a fan base out there.

SOOO...

Ariana and Brandon got cut. Nothing much to comment on because it's still very early in the competition. I'm definitely rooting for Ms Jennifer Lopez though, for now. Haha. Anw, this has been a fairly long post. Until next week,

Ciao!

Hey! It's Calvin doing a recap on Sytycd S4!

Ok, I know it's been a little too long, but S6 is taking its own sweet time, and since I have been needing a dose of at least 4 episodes of Sytycd every day, and thus been re-watching S4 episodes, I cannot help myself but to say a thing or two about S4. As you have probably guessed, I have been having Sytycd S4 marathon (yet I complain that I've no time for my studies), and I am now reminded of how AMAZING the season is.

Three words: PERSONALITY, PERSONALITY, PERSONALITY. The S4 dancers really knew not only how to dance but also how to engage our attention with their tiny and subtle quirkiness (does this word even exist?). A couple of interesting things which I missed last time were: Lil' C's penchant for verbosity, Kherington's outburst saying 'The judges hate me!', and Courtney's amazing personality.

Lil' C came on the show bearing the title of the king of krump, and since Sytycd was on a rampage in educating the world about dance and dance vocabulary (I can't believe I just said that...), the two became a match made in heaven instantly. However, when he came on that panel and made comments about the dance performance, GOODNESS, it was not a pretty sight. It was like putting a primary school kid in a French philosophy class. It was really REALLY painful to watch. He just could not make a decent comment. In addition to his in-the-hood (read:ungrammatical) version of a language which we affectionately know as English, the content of his comment was just simply empty wind. I think only after some time, or perhaps out of humiliation, he started to get the hang of things. But if there is something the king of krump and his dance style have in common, it is the lack of moderation. He was utterly transformed, no, TRANSFIGURED into... shit... how do I put it nicely... A FRENCH SCHOLAR IN A PRIMARY 1 CLASS. Sytycd probably installed an electronic thesaurus with a Wikisearch engine attached to it on his desk which he must have referred to when the dance was going on (i.e. he did not pay attention to the dance), so that he could sound intelligent at the very least. Ironically, he did sound intelligent, but UNintelligibly intelligent. His linguistic capacity grew absurdly and precipitously from that of an 3-year-old to that of 30-year-old English-literature-major Harvard graduate. IT'S ANNOYING!

Okay, I can't believe I just spent 20 minutes just on Lil' C. This is to be revised and to be continued. I gotta do my laundry. Till next time,

Ciao!

My Take on Sytycd Top 4 Finale

Finally season 5 of So You Think You Can Dance is OW-VER!!! I can't believe it's over. How fast and unmemorable this journey has been? Don't you agree? To put things in a nutshell:

JEANINE WON. Big surprise?

HOORAY!!!! (Throwing trumpets and blowing confetti for 5 minutes)

Anyway, let go through the top 4 performance finale, starting from the group routine choreographed by the Emmy-winning choreographer, Mr. Wade Robson. I have always had astronomically high expectation for him because his track record has been simply out-of-this-world, in a good way. No one would and could have ever expected the eclectic styles that had sprung out of this creative genius. So when I read on sytycdism.com that he was choreographing the top 4 group routine, especially knowing that all of top 4 dancers were trained dancers (unlike last season's, i.e. Josh and Twitch), I was so psyched about how Wade was gonna play up the incredible strengths of Brandon, Kayla, Jeanine and Evan.

UNFORTUNATELY he came up with this bad concept of high school jocks and cheerleaders flirting and flailing their pom poms frantically all over the place, which by the way WAS the opening item for the finale show. LIKE WHAT THE ~FLIP~? Was that choreographed by the SAME PERSON who came up with RAMALAMA and SEXYBACK? This bad high school cheerleading I-wouldn't-even-say-dance thing totally did not show how amazing the top 4 dancers were in terms of their technique. Even if it did, the whole high-school thing is such a blah concept and unbefitting for a show that had at least 3 thousand people watching live in the Kodak Theatre. LIKE WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT, Mr. Wade 'Genius' Robson? Been watching too much 90210 an Gossip Girl, haven't you? Guess some people never graduated out of high school...

~ Ok, confession: I actually came up with the first part of this post 2 hours after I watched the show, but something came up (which I do not even remember what or why), so I gotta put it on hold. Soon after, I was just busy, busy, busy, and now I'm trying to redeem myself. Gotta pay my dues.

I have vague recollection of what went down on that finale night, so let's just see what I can fish out from the back of my head. 

BRANDON'S SOLO. Wak, wak, waaakkkk... Same style, same level of insane difficulty, same song? Didn't he have anything else to showcase? I mean he's been dancing for practically his whole life, and to get those muscles JUST FROM DANCE means that he must have done like A LOT of dancing. So, why the lack of variety? Why the monotony? The season was already boring and flat as it was, the least thing that he could do as the front-running finalist was to come up with something different, not necessarily better, but at the very least you know, different. Of course having said all this, I do not deny him any of the due credit that he deserved because nevertheless his solos were truly irreplicable. 

Then, came along JEANINE. This girl is love, love, love. Her solo, I can safely say, was the most memorable solo I have ever seen on the show. The costume was great, the musicality was great, the techniques were great, and the dancing was Jeaniliciously crisp. She was awesome, not to mention drop-dead gorgeous, and definitely, definitely the most likable and lovable dancer this season. One thing difficult to take in though is the fact that SHE'S YOUNGER THAN I AM! SHE'S 18? I mean, LOOK AT HER! I'd look like a primary school kid standing next to her. 

The rest of the night was kinda forgettable. I chuckled a bit when I watched Mia's let's-race-from-one-end-of-the-stage-to-the-other routine. Cool concept, but I imagined if the stage were 10 times the length of the original stage, it would have been some pretty retarded race, especially having Jeanine and Kayla shedding their gazilion-layered skirt throughout the routine. Still Kayla was clearly the better technician (hence, better dancer? LOL. Discuss!) of the two, a bitter truth to swallow for me, a now Jeanine-worshipping convert.

KAYLA WAS 4TH??? Grossly upsetting at first, but indeed her personality and her ceaseless throwing of tricks in the solo performances just did not make her cut-out to be America's favourite dancer. (I made a long, sad frown when I accepted this fact :(, although I did throw my McKendrick, which is three times thicker than a normal Bible, at my old PC when I learnt of the infuriating result.)

ANYWAY, I'm kinda SO OVER Sytycd S5. It's time to pump myself up with the upcoming season!!! SEASON 6 of So You THINK You Can DANCE is coming up on o-nine-o-nine-o-nine! (Just in case you didn't catch that, the season premier airs on 09/09/09~!) CAN'T WAIT!!!

I know this post is kinda lame for a season finale of the awesomest show on TV, but hey, it's been a while and the season wasn't all that memorable in the first place. Will blog more interestingly (l love this word! Lol, random!) in the future. Until then,

Ciao!

My Take on Sytycd Top 6 Elimination

First and foremost I just wanna say that the fact that I was motivated to blurt out and ramble on this blog right after I finished watching the episode shows how uninteresting the show was this week. So here's our TOP 4 dancers:

Kayla, Jeanine, Brandon and Evan.

Ade got the boot! SHOCKER... not! I didn't really like Ade in the first place, and ironically regardless of some of his performances being the most memorable routines of the season, the thing that I remember most of him is Nigel's comment saying 'What a difference Ade makes!' Here's the thing: he was indisputably one of the strongest technicians this season, matched (and outshone?) only by Brandon, yet all the same, there's something that bothered me when I watched him dance, especially in his solos, which consequently deterred me from worshiping this 'gentle giant'. Perhaps it was his musicality that was just slightly (read: grossly) off beat, or his never-seemed-to-be-forgotten-to-included-in-his-every-solo back flips (which was awesome when I saw it for the first time, but after having seen it over and over and OVER again, the gentle giant gotta go get a bit more creative).

This brings to me to a very important point: BRANDON AND HIS PHYSICS-DEFYING SOLO. He received standing ovations from all three judges, and Nigel even remarked that his solo was probably the best solo that they had even had on the show. One CRUCIAL point that everybody seemed to miss was that WE HAD SEEN IT BEFORE. It was Brandon's audition item, which I could safely assume that 1) was not choreographed by him and 2) been practiced a gazilion time before he came to audition for the show. Some might argue that this was SO You THINK You Can DANCE, and not So You Think You Can Choreograph (*absurd pause due to sudden memory flash of Kupono's horrible solos* X_X). SO... there was nothing wrong with him recycling some of his good ol' stuff. BUT!!! This is the FIFTH season of Sytycd, the benchmark of at least my expectation was astronomically high!!! Come on! Let the environmentalists do the recycling! Those in the CREATIVE industry should just simply CREATE! Furthermore, they had been doing the show for so long, didn't some of these dancers realise that they should have a couple of solos thought of in advance before they embarked on the Sytycd journey? This is (though self-acclaimed) the BEST DANCE SHOW on television I'm talking about! No excuses allowed!

News just in! Flashed in the last few seconds of the episode was a line that went:

'The dance pairings and styles were randomly assigned.'

YEAH, RIGHT! SURE! TOTALLY! Melissa getting the very first ballet routine on the show? Coincidence. Katee and Will being paired together to perform the very first pas de deux on the show? Coincidence. Ade and Melissa getting the breast cancer routine? Coincidence. That's a lot of coincidences for one show. Can you really buy that statement now???

While I'm on the subject of Melissa and breast cancer, let me just comment that she really really REALLY looked like a cancer patient in Tyce's routine, in a funny and uncanny kinda way. Seriously. Her flat torso (please note the euphemism here) and the head scarf truely hit the jackpot in making her looked like a cancer-wrought patient. Don't get me wrong! I'm not being sarcatic about it, and the item was in totality very well performed. So kudos for Melissa and Ade!

Now, who's gonna step in Joshua's shoes and be crowned America's favorite dancer???
I'm rooting for Kayla! Though as I have said before, Jeanine would probably get the title because she's more likable. I'm fine as long as it's not EVAN. Some justice please! America, please, do not make this show a pity contest.

Anyway, I'm quite excited for the finals. Heard Mia, Wade, Sonya and Tyce are choreographing. Hope they keep those creative juices flowing! Until then,

Ciao!