SYTYCD

The winner is Russell! Yay! I felt so on because it came down to my picks. I was surprised Catherine left in 3rd place, but it was so tight for the final 3. Jacob was 2nd. He was sooo goood! I would have been as pleased if he won. But it was Russell, another street dancer like Joshua two seasons ago.

So now that's over, what do I watch? It's the Xmas season, there's nothing much to watch anyways.

The Best Dance Show

So You Think You Can Dance. I love love love this show! It's honest, refreshing, and it's not about a fan base, it's about who is the best dancer. As it should be.

The judges don't score, but their opinion counts for a lot when it gets to the viewers' votes. There are guest choreographers, and some of them were dancers in previous seasons. Occasionally different judges.

I like the judges for the most part, but Mary Murphy gets on my nerves big time. Her horrible screechy voice is bad enough when she talks in a normal tone. Thank god I DVR so I can zip past her banshee wails. She's gotten real old real fast.

So what's going on this season. I haven't really picked favs yet. I can't remember all the names. I know who I don't care for. "Legacy". This guy is really winning over the judges, and I have to admit he's a pretty good dancer most of the time. But he's a crybaby! I hate that. So I'm against him. I'm not too crazy about his name either. The last one-name guy was Stitch, but he was good! Really good and really likeable. His name suited him. I don't get where this guy Legacy gets his name. Uh oh, am I the bad guy bashing a dancer for something other than his dancing? Maybe. I just don't care for him. So there.

Ryan (half of the husband/wife ballroom pair) is pretty good but he's too pretty for me. His wife is just as good looking and it almost looks like a genetic experiment when they are seen together. Like they both said, "I found someone who looks just like me". Weird. But both are pretty good dancers in the styles they've been given.

I love some of the new dance styles they're bringing. Last season they introduced Bollywood, and there's already been a great Bollywood routine this season. Last night, there was the Lindy Hop and that's so cool. I'm not real crazy about Contempory or Jazz, but sometimes they are interesting routines. Broadway and Disco are usually fun to watch. I like Hip Hop type routines if they are set to hard hitting music. Set to softer music, they just don't wow. Of course, any Ballroom is good to see.

All for now.

I'm a dancing fool.

Well, more accurately a dance-watching fool. I'm hooked on the dancing shows. Didn't get into the singing shows like American Idol. America's Got Talent is the most annoying talent show I've ever seen. I'll rant about that in another blog. Right now I want to talk dancin.

The first show that caught me was Dancing With the Stars. Oh yeah! Glitz, glamor, fun, celebrities, and pretty darn good dancers. And some really bad dancers for laughs. I was hooked big time.

Then I became really annoyed. The fans have way too much clout. Bad dancers were saved while good dancers hit the road. I heard through the web grapevine there was a site or something that encouraged voters to back the underdogs. And we had to suffer through more bad dancing while the better dancers were cut.

Lowlight 1: Master P or whatever that rapper was called. He was saved time and again and he wasn't even trying to dance. He looked like he hated it but was just honoring his regretted commitment. He was a big galoot gulumping around the stage with his little pro partner making the best of it. It was the worst thing! The judges tried to get him off with low scores, and the rapper fanbase kept saving him. Finally the lowest judge scores ever got him off.

Lowlight 2: Cloris Leachman. Oh criminy! What the hell was that! Why was she still there for so long? She didn't dance. She hobbled. She tried to steal the show with her unfunny antics and wasted everyone's time. Because she's an 82 year old woman, everyone tried to be nice and go along with her bullshit. Good dancers left, and we suffered.

Lowlight 3: Sabrina (can't remember her last name). This girl could dance! Right out of the gate, she was winning judges' hearts. And boom...week 3 and she was voted off! What!!! Everyone was stunned! I can't even remember who else was in that season, but I do know no one could hold a candle to her dancing talent. She would have been a contender for the Mirrored Ball. She never got the chance. And we had to watch less talent.

Lowlight 4: Emmet Smith (last name?) The football player. He won. On his fanbase, not his dancing ability. The runner up was better. Sure he was likeable. I liked him. But he was a big football guy. He was not that light or agile on his feet.

This last season was such a disappointment, I wonder if the show is in its death throes. No big stars that we could really get behind. Ok there's Donny Osmond and a few other names we knew, but it's looking like the show is scraping the bottom of the barrel now.

I do like some of the new things they've added to the show, like the dance-offs and team dances. I enjoy Kenny Mains and Jerry Rice on that recap thing they do. That's pretty funny.

Since it's fresh in my mind (I should of been blogging these things all along, eh?) I'll rant about the finals.

Donny Osmond won. Whoohoo. Not. He had the entire state of Utah behind him. Jeez, his family alone would cover a majority vote! I saw it coming and hated it. Mya so had it! She was the best dancer from the getgo, and having Dmitri for a partner was a plus. Kelly Osbourn made it to the finals over a better dancer. She annoyed me with her little girl voice and demeaner. I want to watch great dancing! Not fans' choice that has nothing to do with dancing.

Ok ok, Donny can dance but he wasn't the best dancer, and this is a dancing show, dammit!

I do admit Mya and Dmitri blew it with their lackluster Freestyle. They could have rocked our world. I don't understand why Dmitri backed off more challenging choreography. He's usually a risk-taker. In the rehearsal footage, Mya wanted to be more daring but he won out for some reason. Too bad. I think that lost it for them.

So now we have to listen to them go on and on about Donny's win. blah blah.

Oh and my favorite ballroom dances? Pasa Doble, Quickstep, Jive, Samba, Tango. I love to see them done really well and with good music.

In the next installment, I'll talk about the best dance show.

Daily Gripe - amateur web designers

Why is it that anyone who owns Dreamweaver or some such software assumes they are a professional web designer? They begin advertising their services, sometimes for outrageous prices. In some cases, these (often young) amateurs actually do have some talent, but more often than not, their own websites are very childish and sometimes downright disasters.

Case #1: A young person who cannot even spell advertised that he would build sites for a fee. A sample of his writing skill: "i built websites." He claimed he had built many sites. When asked to provide links to sites he had done, he said he had done one for his mom who bought it from him. His mom? Nice, Mom. I appreciate your boosting your child's confidence, but to encourage him to go into business because he created one website?

So I tried to visit his site. I could not get in there. Something on the home page was hanging up my browser. BTW, I have IE, the most commonly used browser, which can handle anything reasonable. I couldn't get past this logjam. He explained it was a media player and his mom wanted it there. Ok. So I asked for an internal link so I could get in. He provided a page with the extension ".php". Now this is a format for things like forms, guestbooks, etc. Not appropriate for a static webpage. Again, I was unable to view the page. Another person tried as well, and found the same problems. She was able to get farther than me, and discovered very oversized photos.

I have to rant about spelling. This young person cannot spell, or doesn't try. I shudder to see what the site looks like if I ever get in there. There's nothing that peeves me more than poor spelling and grammer on a website. I can forgive an occasional misspell, but across the board is unacceptable. Hey, I'm not a perfect speller either, but I keep a dictionary handy. Capital letters where required, commas, periods, and paragraphs are simple things that make it readable.

I believe texting will be the demise of proper writing. Young people are so busy texting, they are forgetting how to form a sentence with fully spelled words and punctuation.

The next major fault of amateurs is images. As mentioned, this site's photos were way too big. For someone with a slow connection like me, that's a sin. A web designer needs to have the software and knowhow to properly optimize images. Even in this day of high speed connections, there are still many out here on dialup, and any webmaster worth his salt will build for everyone, not just their own computer.

So how do you tell a young person he doesn't have the talent or skills to charge for his work?

Case #2: A little over a year ago, I took over the maintenance of a club website. It was designed by a someone who charged professional fees for their services. This wasn't a pro, it was just a person who had web publishing software. I don't own any special software. I read and write pure HTML. In order to work with this site, I had to go through the entire thing and rewrite it. I had to weed out unneccessary and redundant code so I could see where the hell I was. I bet I cut the file size by half! This webmaster did have a good eye for design, but didn't have a clue as to how a webpage works. I preserved the original look of the site with a few tweaks. It's clean, loads fast, and easy for me to maintain. BTW, I'm not charging for this service. It's my contribution to the club.

Just because you own the software and built yourself a site, it doesn't make you a professional. Professionals earned (usually) the right to call themselves pros by taking classes, and proving they have the skills. Even though I have most of the skills, I'm self-taught and don't consider myself a pro by any stretch. Why do these people think they are when they don't even have the skills? All they have is some software. And they can't spell!!!

The Ultimate Scam

scam: To defraud; swindle to obtain property or services unjustly. A fraudulent or deceptive act or operation.

Our great country was founded on one of the greatest scams of all. The Constitution guarantees certain unalienable rights and freedoms, but something actually took them away. Organized Religion. Religion is one of the richest businesses in the world, supposedly separate from government, and yet it enjoys tax exempt status, and has input in every government decision.

For whatever reason, man has always had a need to believe in something greater than himself. In the beginning, myth explained things that early man couldn't explain. Along the way, certain myths became doctrine perpetuated by powerful men. Doctrine became law. Freedoms were taken away, and despicable acts were employed to enforce the law, and ensure the powerful retained their power.

And then came the Bible. A collection of stories and myths that became belief and law. So strongly did the powerful enforce this belief, it now commands most of the world. No one knows who wrote the Bible (although they say they do), but how can they know unless they have a time machine? Aesop's Fables or Grimm's Fairy Tales could just as easily have been the basis for a religious text, having been written by numerous people of which we know little about. So who's to say the Bible wasn't just a collection of bedtime stories? Well, the all-powerful Church said this is Truth. Gullible and frightened people went along with it, and the Church became richer and more powerful.

Don't get me wrong. I think the Bible is a very good book of rules to live by. Do not kill, do not steal, etc. And maybe a fractured history, although riddled with myth. But hey, so is the Illiad. There's some evidence that the New Testament was written in response to the political times (the oppressive Roman empire) and has no relevance in modern times. If this is true, and it makes perfect sense, religion was based on politics.

We are currently in one of the worst economic situations in history, and taxpayers are paying the price for the fixes. However, one of the richest sources of tax revenue isn't required to help. Organized religion. The Church is tax exempt under the cover of charity work, but seems to have more money than even big business.

Businesses can write off their charity contributions, and gain some tax relief that way. Organized religion is big business. Why is it not required to operate in the same manner? Churches have employees to pay just like a business. They own land and buildings (expensive land and buildings!) just like a business. People pay to use their facilities and services which generates income just like a business. Business has political ties, and although religion is not supposed to interfere with government, it's a well-known fact that it does. Organized religion manages to use its wealth to sneak around the restrictions to get its agendas accepted. Religious agenda becomes the law of the land, and they don't have to pay.

Religious freedom? It doesn't exist. We are supposed be allowed to practice our faith as we please, and that includes not having faith. Organized religion has dictated what we can and cannot do, even if we don't believe in it. Non-believers are supporting the Church through taxes and government decisions. Perhaps more than the members of the Church.

So why are we, the people, allowing this to happen? Because most of us don't have the money or power to do anything about it. Our country is in big trouble as the very things it was founded on are being eroded away in favor of those in power. Yes, religion is the Ultimate Scam.

In The Beginning.....

.....God created....... oh wait, that's debatable.

Fair warning to readers who stumble across this. I am an agnostic and liberal child of the 60's. I'm opinionated, and confess to a little intolerance for some things. Rants will happen.

If I offend anyone, I apologize in advance. But not too much. This is my opinion and you chose to read it.