I LOVE SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE!!! I have missed it. You may have been able to discern a creeping apathy towards American Idol over the past few months, what with the lack of posting and all. Some of that was due to busyness, yes, but some of it was also I didn’t feel like putting up with it when it was actually on. But I feel nothing but excitement for SYTYCD. Let’s hope it keeps up. There is one note of apprehension about this season, and that is that apparently Wade Robson is no longer doing the show (perhaps he’s doing a group number, but not being a judge?), and neither is Shane Sparks. That pretty much leaves Mia Michaels as the only choreographer who consistently wows me. But we’ll see.

Here’s a handy list I made watching tonight for why SYTYCD is better than AI. And this is just from the auditions:

• The audition section isn’t a joke. Yes, they have their share of terrible and funny dancers, but the humor is not as mean as on AI. The focus is always on the audition itself rather than backstage shenanigans/sob stories, which means you get a good sense of individual auditions rather than just a montage of clips separated by three or four longer numbers. And the ratio of good auditions to bad ones is much higher.
• Cat Deeley. She’s beautiful, she’s British, she’s genuine, and she knows how to host without hogging all the screen time. I swear, she was on-screen tonight for a total of about four minutes, in a two-hour time slot. Ryan is on-screen probably 1/3 of the show, taking time away from the people we’re supposed to be watching.
• The human interest stories aren’t played as much for sobs and feel more sincere. One auditioner tonight was visually impaired, and while she didn’t get through, the judges all struck a sincere note of gratitude for her attempt and inspiration while being honest that she didn’t have a chance in the competition.
• I’ve said it twice: sincerity. I believe the judges, especially Mia, when they say things, or when they’re moved to tears. I do not believe Randy, Paula, and Simon anymore. They aren’t sincere anymore.
• Relatedly, the judges care about this, and they’re having fun with it, too. Especially this year, the AI judges don’t seem to be having fun anymore. If you look back at earlier AI seasons, even Simon seemed to be enjoying many of the auditions, good and bad. Now he’s just bored and frustrated most of the time. I love Simon, I really do, but something’s gone wrong…maybe just time for a judge switch or something. (Interestingly, he seems to have far more fun on the British version, The X-Factor, than he does on AI.)
• The judges are critical without being mean. Most of the time. They can be mean, and were more so a couple of years ago, but generally they’re good at actually giving constructive criticism.
• Continuity with previous seasons. Of the auditioners featured tonight, five of them had auditioned previous years, and I remembered all but one of them. And the judges brought up the criticisms and encouragements they’d made in previous years and noted how the dancer had improved or not in those areas. These repeat auditioners (with notable exceptions) are serious about improving their dancing to get on the show, which says a lot both about them and about the show - it’s seen as a place to test yourself, to try new things and learn to become a better dancer rather than as only a showcase for your existing talent. This year American Idol tried to emphasize the singers’ growth and treat it as an avenue to better performing, but it’s not that (Australian Idol is to a greater degree, just sayin’).
• Continuity with previous seasons, part 2. Not only are the auditioners repeats, but former contestants show back up. Travis Wall, runner-up in Season Two, was running the choreography segments tonight. Last year’s b-boys Dominic and Hok were in attendance, checking out the auditions from the side boxes. Last year, Season Two winner Benji choreographed one of the best routines of the season, and Season Three contestant Lauren had worked as an assistant on the show earlier. Where American Idol relies on outside celebrity talent as guest coaches and performers, So You Think You Can Dance relies on internal talent and thus is much more meaningful to repeat viewers. It has to, to some degree, because dance is a less celebrity-driven profession than singing, but it makes the show feel much more homey and familiar.

Is it next week yet?

I replaced the normal WordPress comment system with comments powered by Disqus. Disqus is a centralized comment management service that keeps track of all the comments you make on Disqus-enabled blogs - basically providing you an identity that follows you to different sites, making it easy for you to comment and keep up with the threads you’ve contributed to. It also allows threaded comments (I can never decide whether I prefer threaded or non-threaded comments; right now I’m on a threaded kick), video comments powered by Seesmic, and comment voting, which isn’t necessarily a huge thing with as small a blog as I have, but hey. Disqus is also the comment system of choice for Tumblr, which doesn’t have native comment support, and I’ve had it enabled on my Tumblr since I found that out.

If you don’t comment on a lot of different blogs (particularly tech/early adopter ones, which is where Disqus is the most popular so far), don’t worry, you won’t have to sign up for an account on Disqus if you don’t want to. You can continue to just put in your name and e-mail address (and website, optionally) if you want. If you want to sign up for Disqus, just click “verify my comment” when you comment the first time, and it’ll give you the option to log in or sign up. The next time you comment here or on another Disqus-enabled blog, it will remember who you are. The Disqus comments will only replace the comments on new posts and on older ones that didn’t have any comments already; comments that you’ve made here in the past will remain.

We’ll see how it goes; I’ve waffled back and forth on whether I wanted to do this, and I may go back eventually after all. A lot of negative feedback on Disqus has centered on how it removes a certain amount of control from the blogger (I can accept or reject Disqus comments, but I can’t edit them, as I could edit WordPress comments - I never actually did that, though), and also doesn’t support trackbacks when other people link here from their blogs. I do sort of hope Disqus comes up with a solution for the trackback issue, but as far as comment control, the debate seems to center on whether the blog owner or the commenter “owns” the comments and the content in the comments. And I’m feeling very democratic lately, and I think the commenter should own their comments. Moving to Disqus shifts control to the commenter rather than the blog owner. So there you go.

Oh, the other thing I changed was just to put three Twitter entries in the sidebar in text rather than the Twitter widget. It’s just cleaner that way.

Is it just me, or were they REALLY pushing Archuleta for the win? I pretty much picked Cook over Archuleta every round, and then Simon did the opposite. Not that the judges and I usually agree, it just seemed like both Simon and Randy were giving Archuleta more praise than he deserved. His first song was not flawless, and the songwriters’ song he chose was not better.

So here’s the question. Are they pushing Archuleta for the win because they really think he’s better? Because he’s more marketable? Because they secretly want Cook to come in second because he’ll have more creative freedom without Idol’s contract? Because they secretly want Cook to win and they’re using reverse psychology hoping to motivate Cook’s voters? I’m totally overthinking this aren’t I?

And then the question for me, and how/whether I vote. I want Cook to win because I think he’s ten times better than Archuleta. On the other hand, I don’t want him to win because I don’t want him to make Idol’s record, I want him to make HIS record. Maybe I’ll just let it alone and save my cell phone bill. :)

In unrelated life news, I’m all moved out of Waco and am back in St. Louis for a couple of weeks before I drive out to LA and find an apartment. And a job. Hopefully will have leads on that before I go out there. So that’s what’s going on, for those of you wondering.

Who can write 20 pages of academic prose in one day when she really sets her mind on it? That would be me. That moment when procrastination turns into focused concentration? Good moment. Although it apparently hit too early this time, because I had two hours to spare. ;)

So that’s my last assignment ever for my last class ever. Of this Master’s degree. I have very little faith in my ability to stay away from school for ever. But for now. Yay.

The paper was on Godard, and I’ll probably post it on The Frame once I get it back and, you know, have confirmation that it didn’t totally suck. I feel good about it, which is usually a bad sign, so we’ll see.

Wow, you know what this means? I can read ANYTHING I WANT before going to bed now. I haven’t done that since…well, Christmas, but even then I was trying to read ahead for classes. So, then, since 2006. Really. I’m not sure I remember how to make reading decisions on my own. I’m a little overwhelmed by the possibilities.