Watching So You Think You Can Dance Top 20 Showcase Performances

Finally Season 8 is out! It's been a while since I was really into any TV shows these days. Season 7 was slightly wonky because of the change in format, and the stage was somewhat too big for TV, so I didn't really have a lot of good things to remember about it, except that Elastic Girl Lauren Froderman won, and Freakshow Kent Boyd came in second. Anyway, Season 8 for me has been exciting thus far. Early stand-outs like Jordan and Melanie, who are now in the top 20, blew me away. Right from the get-go I found the girls more beastly than the guys. The top 10 boys routine didn't really do it for me, especially after the whoop-ass intro video, I thought the routine would be as so. It looked slightly under-rehearsed, probably because it was a mixer of numerous different styles, and not all the boys were trained to dance a la LXD, they didn't really look like they danced together. Then again, who can blame them? It was the first time that they danced together ever.

The girls routine was fantastic. Probably the best one of the night? It was a style that almost all of them (except may be Iveta) were trained in, and Sonya is really a nut-job with a lot of flavours to bring to the table. The eleven of them together translated into one combustible reaction, and burn the stage they did. The world champion (and this season's only) Russian ballroom bombshell Iveta was a beast dancing with Pasha that night. The whole routine was entertaining from start to finish, kudos to Ausi-born Jason Gilkinson who made use of the cape splendidly. I would say he was the best ballroom choreographer they'd had on the show, or perhaps he would be neck-to-neck with Jean Marc and his wife, France. Alex da Silva was brilliant, but he was then indicted for some sexual assault, so there goes his career on the show. The same happened to Shane Sparks. Sigh. Anyway, it was refreshing to hear Nigel thanking Iveta for, in his words, humbling herself to join SYTYCD. I think he did that because effectively she would end up giving free crash-course ballroom lessons to whomever she would partner on the show. Can you imagine the first time you get those leather shoes on and you have to partner a world champion? And she held the title for all ten genres. Gotta be hard to wear the pants in that partnership.

The hiphop number was a snooze for me, not necessarily because of bad dancing or bad choreography, but again it felt like the guys didn't dance together as a group. There were these sporadic energies on stage that didn't synergise to elevate the routine to the next level. OMG I sounded like Lil' C. Another bugger, he should stop talking. He ruined it for me big time. I literally had to skip his comments because it was too painful to hear. Someone please get him an English dictionary, not a thesaurus.

My favorite routine of the night was Stacie Tookey's routine to In This Shirt by The Irrepressibles. Melanie was a stand-out. This girl was something special. Watching her during the auditions, I really thought she would be one of those vanilla dancers-- technicians with little performance quality, kind of like the dancers in Season 6 and may be 7? But in this routine she was some-heavenly-infant creature that was just stunning. She definitely ticked all the boxes on the list, my list. Speaking of good dancing and good technique, the choreographers needed to find another freak-show stunts for their routines, anything other than the ponche thing that the girls had been doing the entire night. Jordan did it once in the Sonya's Jazz routine (assisted by Marko), some did it in the Geisha routine, Miranda in Stacie Tookey's, and some others in the Little Bird routine. That's a whole lot of ponches in one night, and the same one at that.

Anyhoo like I said, this season has been exciting, and I've got the feeling that this season will give birth to more Katie-and-Joshuas or Twitchingtons. One thought that keeps bugging me: Ryan was a ham-- don't know why, just gotta say it. Congrats to Mary for the successful surgery she had had before the show kicked off (it was her throat I think), and for now not being the one with the highest Botox-content on the judging panel. Anyway, cheers to a start of a great two months of a lot of beastly dancing!

Denpasar Moon

Les Contes Des Fées

Of Places, Memories And Musings

Wonder what would have happened if I had never left.

Joye Sanz Fyn

After much drama over me missing my flight and the aggravating altercation with the rude airline staff-- may your Allah punish you well-- I finally managed to rest my feet on this long-forgotten motherland of mine, and sink my teeth into the much-missed gustatory goodness galore.

Really, my family might not have been blessed with the brightest of all minds, the most statuesque of all physiques, or the most bad-ass of all talents, but we know good food and we know how to find it. To actually witness with my own eyes the lengths to which we would go (and had gone), coupled with the timely display of agility of mind, in hunting those obscure havens where they store the country's royal secret to obesity, is really mind-blowing. It is so stupendous, it really borders on predatorial. The only one thing that is greater than these uncanny gustatory instincts is our cumulative waistline. This inane acuity transcends cultural, racial and taxonomical classifications: the only reason good enough--and I am guessing here-- to cage the beasts is the sometimes-unreasonable pricing. Thankfully, having lived in a third world country for almost the entire span of our lifetimes, we are now equipped with the "blink" a la Malcolm Gladwell to sieve through the cornucopia of gustatory teasers, and to winnow out pleasantries from pleasures.

We be going to Bali on Sunday, and oft you hear normal people giving their pedestrian gushing about the Garuda Wisnu Kencana, the sightseeing, the water sports adventures, blah blah blah, but not so much with my folks. All I hear is ribs, pork and seafood treats by the beach-- which is always a reason to smile. Long time ago I was told that "Nothing tastes better than skinny!", but whoever said that obviously never had a foot-long strip of unagi-tempura sushi shoved to his mouth at dinner after having binged on a plate of honey glazed pork ribs for lunch, and of course there were other things too. It's kind of hard to translate this taste-buds titillation into prose, but rest assured the food here is one of those stuff that makes one's mouth water and armpits juicy. Joye sanz fyn.

Gratitude

I can't believe it's here. After so much waiting, anxiety, repression, depression and self-censorship, it is here. There have been times where I wanted to write something on this space, where I thought everything was possible, and I could pen down everything that I wanted. But at some point, it became difficult, very difficult. Each time I wanted to chronicle something, though unrelated to this seed of anxiety, it's like opening a Pandora box. I constantly got reminded for what could have happened, and it was always about the ultimate worst-- imagining how I was going to go about things, to rectify the situation, to cover it up, to quit something which appeared to have lost its luster. It was hard, really hard.

There was a time where I actually thought of living dangerously, that I would do whatever I wanted to do and regret about the repercussions, should they arise, afterward. To regret over something I have done, instead of to regret something I wished I had the balls to do. However, now I see the sweet taste of living a life prudently. It does not necessarily mean that there will be fewer battles to fight, just that one has got to choose their own battles prudently-- select those which are really worth fighting in. The waiting, the anxiety, the repression, the depression and whatnots, they are not worth it. Guess this is what being mature is all about: it is not simply suck it up when shit happens, but it's about laying out expectations, weeding out the ones which are unrealistic, and to fight hard and die hard in meeting those expectations. Being mature is about knowing oneself enough, so that one does not disappoint anybody because having experienced it once is more than what a human soul could endure.

I thank God for letting me off the hook this time. As cliched as it may be, at the toughest times, when comfort food just doesn't do it for me anymore, it was really that blind faith that kept me away from clinical care. Thank you. God is good.

A Letter To God

Dear God

Hello there, Sir. I know it's been a (long) while since I spoke with You. No excuses. I guess I was just too preoccupied with too many things in life, and truth be told, perhaps there was something that made me wanting to do otherwise. Sincerest apologies. Anyway, like many other mortals, I turn to You at tempestuous times, well not really, since now it's more like the lull before the storm. What I am saying is, there have been times where You let things happen which threw me into a state of tumult, no clear solution, just a jumble of question marks and exclamation marks. For most of the times, things resolved themselves rather swimmingly-- something we, mortals, oft call 'blessings in disguise'. It's all good, in the end at least. And now, it is one of those moments where my gut tells me that the axe is about to be swung in my direction, and all I can do is to armour up for the blow, and to prepare a plan B-- palliative care-- lest I get disemboweled. I know, I know, let's not jump the gun here. But perhaps for just these few seconds, I gotta say: I'm scared. I'm at my wits' end, and all I can do is to have faith. Have faith in You. Much can be criticised about this concept of faith-- of me having one, for that matter-- but whatever this is, be it theological hoax, or pseudo-science, or puny psychological bargain, right now, it's my best bet. Have faith that things are going to be okay. I promise I will try my best to jump over any rational hurdle separating me from it. All I'm praying for is for You to push the storm, should it come soon, to some other time in not so near future, such that when it strikes, I can be the only casualty. If I am to learn something from it, let me learn, but let me learn alone. I know prayers are not a matter of transaction, but I'm just hoping that You see right through all this verbiage. I thank You.

Yours truly

Clueless