So You Think You Can Dance? As a matter of fact, I do!

Next week is the SYTYCD season finale and let’s face it – the winner will either be Sasha or Melanie. As a former dancer myself, I want to share a few thoughts about these two superlative creatures.

I’ll state outright that I’m Team Melanie. Here’s why:

Melanie combines perfect technique with an artistry that is un-matched in this competition. Each and every movement is completed to its absolute limit – she dances through to the end of her very fingertips and then out beyond them. There is a fullness of movement that is glorious to watch. Each step is given such integrity, even a "mere” plié – and by using quotation marks my pointe (ha!) is that there is no such thing as a “mere” plié and this is something that I think Melanie inherently understands. There is an articulation to her dancing that makes me cry, so stunning is it to watch.

Sasha is incredibly talented, there is no doubt about that. But over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed something that bothers me. Yes, she is a generous performer, giving herself fully to her partner(s) and each piece. As the judges have commented many times, she dances with terrific abandon. But I’m often left with the feeling that I’m watching someone perform a series of steps rather than a cohesive assemblage of those steps. (The exception to this was her routine with Twitch which was extremely exciting and in my opinion her most successful). I often feel her rushing – that in her obvious love to dance she gets caught up in a whirlwind and doesn’t settle into the piece. This is especially true (for me, at any rate) in her solos which seem hurried and distracted – they strike me as more a collection of unconnected steps, unlike Melanie’s which have a throughline, a story that she is telling. (This criticism of the solos – these disjointed leaps and tricks that leave me cold – can be applied to many dancers on this show, both of the current season and of seasons past. The desire to show off and the ridiculous 30 second rule mean that few of them risk stillness, even a moment of it. Nor do many of them seem to construct their solos in a thoughtful manner – again there is a lack of storytelling that irritates me. And by storytelling I don’t mean the oftentimes cheesy narratives that the choreographers give to the routines on this show. I’m speaking of storytelling in a more abstract way).

When it comes to Melanie, I can think of several routines that standout – naturally her first one with Marko, the Travis Wall choreographed “Statues” piece, the lyrical hip-hop with Marko, the Mandy Moore routine with Neil (and I cannot believe I’m complimenting a MM piece), the recent Spencer Liff routine with the mirror, her solo this past week (the one Lil’ C called “beefy”), and the Sonya Tyah piece with Sasha, during which, try as I might, I couldn’t take my eyes off Melanie. I re-watched it in order to focus solely on Sasha and my attention kept getting pulled to Melanie.

Now, dance, like all art, is subjective. Whichever of them wins this competition, they will both be just fine and go on to highly successful careers, I’ve no doubt. I like Sasha a great deal and am thrilled to see her in the top 4. It seems highly likely that the top 2 dancers will both be women, a first for this series (correct me if I’m wrong on that) and that is tremendously exciting.

Enough.

If you vote Republican, you are supporting a party willing to throw the global economy into turmoil for the sake of its cherished ideology.  The Congressional Republicans, held hostage by extreme Tea Party shenanigans, were willing to throw the global economy into a tailspin because they don't want taxes raised ever, not by any amount, not even a measly 3% on those who can most afford it!  These people, these irresponsible, cynical, cowardly, unreasonable people, told America that they were more than happy to continue their temper tantrum even if that meant bringing on an economic crisis greater than the one we're already going through and barely recovering from.  They care nothing for shared sacrifice, for the common good, nor for their fellow citizens.  They care about power.

You can tell me all the things that are wrong with the Democrats - and I'll likely agree with you on some of those complaints (not the least of which is that the Dems need to learn how to stand up against the blatant blackmail practiced by the Repubs).  But the basic problem is this -- Republicans do not see ANY Democratic president as having legitimacy.  They wanted us to default because they saw that as a path to gaining back the White House in 2012.  For these individuals, compromise is a dirty word.  How dare they behave in such a reckless manner and how dare anyone support them? 

The Republican Party of the 21st Century does not care about governing. They care about power and that is all.  If you vote Republican, you are supporting a party that cares more about naked power than they do about this country's well being. Full stop.

WHAT is going on????

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/opinion/05collins.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

I’m not sure which part of this op-ed is the most dispiriting.  A strong, strong contender for first place has to be the fact that a state legislator was reprimanded for saying the word “uterus.”  Are you kidding me?  How do people like this get elected?  It is a part of the human body!  Was the person doing the reprimanding (I am going to go ahead and assume said person was male; yes, I’m assuming facts not in evidence and I don’t care), offended because a uterus is part of the FEMALE body?  Someone please tell me what is so icky about the word uterus.  This is appalling.  (And I haven’t even touched on the rest of the piece regarding the horrifying, hypocritical, backward, punitive, nasty bills and amendments to laws being pushed through statehouses all over the country, not just in Indiana and Florida). 

You know what I’d like to do?  I’d like to take this particular individual who can't stand the word uterus and wave a magic wand and turn this person into a scared 19 year old girl, one born into poverty who finds herself pregnant.  She already has one child that she can barely afford to clothe and feed because she gets paid minimum wage.  The father of that child took off leaving her without any help.  Her parents kicked her out when she got pregnant with that first child.  She is desperate and alone and afraid and she decides to have an abortion.  Except – ooops! – she lives in Mississippi or South Dakota or Indiana or any number of other states where abortion clinics have been closed and the closest Planned Parenthood clinic is several hours away, not that she’d be able to drive there anyway because she doesn’t own a car – she takes the bus everywhere.  And let’s just go ahead and decide that she can afford the bus fare to the clinic that is several hours away from her home.  What she cannot afford is the abortion itself nor can she take a day off of work and forgo that day’s wages.  It’s too bad there isn’t a Planned Parenthood clinic nearby where she could get help.  Where she would be able to obtain an abortion (paid for with money from PRIVATE DONATIONS not federal funding).  A safe abortion, with sterilized equipment and caring doctors and nurses to remind her that she did not do anything wrong, that she IS not doing anything wrong.  So she becomes even more desperate and even more afraid.  She decides that she’ll perform an abortion on herself with a coat hanger, just like women used to do before abortion was made legal in this country.  So she goes ahead and takes a coat hanger and unwinds it and puts it into her vagina and through her cervix into her uterus (yes, uterus, that evil word that should never be uttered), and she scrapes and scrapes and scrapes and bleeds and bleeds and bleeds.  And she cries because it hurts and she cries because she is all by herself and she cries because she is terrified.  And then she prays and prays and prays that she doesn’t get an infection that could kill her because she was forced to use a coat hanger on herself.  And she prays that she is all right and can continue to take care of the child she already has whom she loves with all of her might. 

And then, at the moment that she is lying there on her blood soaked sheets, wondering if she will be okay, hurting and cramping and crying, I will wave a magic wand again and transform that girl back into the small, pitiful legislator, with the memories of his time as that 19 year old girl completely intact.  And we’ll see what happens. 

The Election is Coming! The Election is Coming!

Here we go again. 

Politicians, pundits, journalists and news-personalities are foaming at the mouth about the 2012 presidential election.  It is April, 2011.  We are almost 19 months away from actual voting -- 19 months!  I was watching the Today Show this morning while getting ready for work (I need my daily dose of Matt Lauer), and Meredith Viera was interviewing Tom Brokaw.  I like Tom.  He's smart and seems to have integrity. However...

In response to a question that I did not hear (I was drying my hair. No, I can't let it air dry 'cause it gets all poofy that way), Tom Brokaw said that the election is coming up fast!

19 months.  Nineteen.  That is not fast.  That is not "right around the corner."  The endless campaigning and jockeying for position and trying to predict the outcome - the outcome of an event 19 months in the future!!!  It is exhausting.  Why don't we do it the way -- you know what? Never mind.  Advocating for a campaign season of six weeks (such as is found in England) is a fool's errand since everyone knows that Europe sucks and we're America and all of our ideas come in a pot of gold covered in gumdrops and rainbows, pulled by a team of evangelical Christian Unicorns and every single thing out of Europe is soaked in rat poop and Castor oil.  How could I forget?

Budget Broo-ha-ha

There is an important editorial in yesterday’s NY Times regarding the House budget plan. The plan (if one can call it that; indeed, even Paul Ryan himself, the Republican chair of the House Budget Committee, referred to it not as a plan but rather “… a cause.”), lays bare the misguided priorities of the current incarnation of the Republican party, especially the new Tea Party members. These newly elected members of Congress have drawn a deep line in the sand and refuse to budge a mere inch from their beloved goals. And let’s please not pretend that those goals are anything other than Grover Norquist’s long held dream of drowning the government in the bathtub (except, of course, for the part where the government gets to control my uterus). An enormous amount of lip service is paid to reining in the deficit and growing the economy – all of which sounds lovely and plays well on talk radio, but is actually horseshit.


The Republicans receive a great deal of flack from those on the left, and many in the center, about their lack of compassion for those less fortunate. In response, the GOP huffs and puffs and takes offense, shouting from the rooftops their favorite myth that tax cuts are the miracle cure for all that ails us, including getting people out of poverty. Tax cuts and spending cuts. Cuts to what you may ask? Not the bloated defense budget that’s for sure. The cuts they salivate over are those to education (Head Start, Pell grants), food stamps, food safety, consumer protection, early childhood care, environmental programs, scientific research – you know, anything that benefits society as a cohesive whole and non-millionaires.

They also mention reforming the tax code in order to simplify it and eliminate many current loopholes. That’s great. We can all get behind that. But what they truly want is to reduce the tax rates on the wealthiest and on corporations. Today’s editorial mentions that if their plan passed, tax revenues would go down by $4.2 trillion. TRILLION. Sure, spending would go down as well, by $4.3 trillion, but that is discretionary spending. It doesn’t take into account the aforementioned defense budget, nor does it take into account that we are involved in two wars.

This bill would lower taxes on the wealthy more “… than even George W. Bush imagined.” How many times does it need to be said? Lowering taxes on the rich does not stimulate the economy. The already wealthy do not spend any money they save on taxes. They do not put it back into the economy. The put it into their already large investment portfolios to make themselves even richer. Trickle-down economics does not work. Full stop. How many times do we need to learn this lesson?

The Democrats are far from blameless. President Obama has let the GOP frame too many issues. He has been far too willing to let them “move the goalpost” further and further to the right, so that when a “compromise” is reached, the so-called center has moved further rightward. And there are just as many Democrats bought and sold by corporate wealth as there are Republicans.

The members of the Tea Party, and the entire GOP for that matter, are not serious about governing. They are serious about power. They are serious about starving the government so that essential services we all rely on disappear. In their fantasy world of “rugged individualism” they seem to forget that someone picks up their trash, paves their roads, lights their safe streets at night, monitors their food so they don’t poison their children, puts out their housefires, delivers their mail, protects the parks they like to visit on vacation and funds research into vaccines and treatments for various diseases that they and their loved ones may contract.

We are all in this together. No matter how much the far-right may hate that, we always will be.