Alone and Unobserved

I have a tradition of watching Fox’s summer reality show So You Think You Can Dance and blogging breathlessly about how hot the contestants are. Unfortunately for you, my avid readers, Twitter has taken over a great deal of that role in my life (which is one reason for the sparse updates here), which means that maybe, just maybe, you aren’t aware of my SYTYCD crush, Summer 2009 Version: Evan Kasprzak.

Here’s Evan and his brother Ryan’s audition video:

Here’s a jazz routine, choreographed by Tasty Oreo:

Here’s a contemporary routine choreographed by Mia Michaels, in which Evan is sadly fixated on his partner’s butt:

And here is the samba Evan danced last night with partner Randi.

SO HOT. Now, his samba’s not great, and in a lot of ways it’s not even good. But… somehow I don’t care.

Anyway. There you go! That’s my current crush.

Oh, and here’s the Mia Michaels routine that blew everyone’s minds on Twitter last night, and which looked like it was really going to suck in rehearsal and then turned out to be very powerful in the actual performance:

Here’s the routine were Jason danced with his shirt off the whole time (rowr):

And here’s the Wade Robson routine that closed out the night last night and made me really glad that Wade Robson is back as a choreographer on the show, and why the hell don’t they have him every week:

And oh my gosh I can’t post all the dance routines. The above videos are via Rickey.org—go watch the rest there, too. TTFN!

…it’ll be too late, and then you won’t have to worry about it, right? Right??

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhDRVKDcXQo&hl=en&fs=1]

Dear J. Crew:

While I haven’t bought anything in your store or at your website since purchasing that grotesquely oversized saddlebag two years ago—at which point I gave you both my email and physical addresses in order to receive a significant discount on said item—I appreciate receiving your catalog every month. As I have no use for women’s clothes, women’s jewelry or women*, I always page immediately to the back one-seventh of the catalog and look through the menswear section. This gives me literally seconds of enjoyment before the catalog ends up adorning either my trashcan or my settee.

I have one complaint, however, and one request.

You know that I’m not reading your catalog for the clothes, right? So why do only one or two of the menswear pages feature attractive models, as opposed to the majority of the womenswear pages? Is the lesbian vote more important than mine?

On the same note: in the future, please make sure to feature the following model in all of your catalogs, instead of only in most of them. I think we can both agree that “most” is not good enough when it comes to Mr. Teh Hotness.

Mr. Teh Hotness, as currently featured on jcrew.com

Mr. Teh Hotness 2

Thank you.

Sincerely yours, &c.,

Sean Tibbitts

* Ladies, I kid! I of course exempt black pencil skirts, drop earrings, my mother and my sisters** from this unfair generalization. (back)

** Well, some of my sisters. (back)

Rufus Wainwright. I am so, so in love with him and his voice right now. So y’all get to suffer along with me!

Between My Legs
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b83WpEExtUs&hl=en&fs=1]

Going to a Town

California

I spent the past two days at the Pride Festival in Salt Lake, getting sunburnt and stuffing myself with greasy State-Fair-type food. Saturday I just kind of mooched around, listening to music and surveying the booths. I watched the Righteously Outrageous Twirling Corps (ROTC) of Salt Lake perform (righteously outrageous, naturally), followed by a group called Cavedoll (off-pitch, but enthusiastic), and lastly Meshell Ndegeocello (groovy/funky).

Cavedoll

Meshell Ndegeocello

Yesterday morning I watched the Pride parade with Craig (which is when a great deal of the sun-burning happened, for both of us). Some of the floats were fun, but somehow huge gaps appeared between each of the participating groups, which meant we had to stand in the hot sun for several minutes at a time twiddling our thumbs before the next float filled with half-naked go-go dancers showed up. SO HARD TO BEAR, THIS WAITING.

Craig and Me

“Yes, you too can be a lesbian!! Inquire within.”

After the parade, we went to the Festival and hung out with two gay BYU students as well as with Scot and Rob (of UtahCog), their twin boys and various relatives and friends of their family. (I need to learn how to take photos when people are facing me. I’m working on it.)

Alan and Scot

Rob, Scot and Brian

Right before we left, I stopped by the “Gay Latter-day Saint” booth and stuck another pin in the Catania, Italy mission with my name on it.

Anz. Tibbitts
Catania, Italy

Utah Pride 2008 Flickr set

Last night I saw Kung Fu Panda in the theater (fun, but nothing special) and Atonement at home on DVD (OMG AMAZING THERE ARE NO WORDS). And then I went to sleep, ready to go back to work this morning.

So You Think You Can Dance is back, as of last night, and I am all aquiver. The auditions are, if anything, crazier than those for American Idol, but are somehow also much more watchable—yes, you get the weirdos like “Gold Inferno,” but you also get sick, amazing acts like Robert Muraine’s or polished performances like Leonidas and Aliona’s. (David “Sex” Soller has never been the slightest bit watchable, of course—he invented “skeevy,” turned it into an art form and then bludgeoned us to death with it, and I really wish he would just stay home next year.)

But the REAL reason I’m so happy, the REAL reason I got so worked up over the return of the show, is that Season Two second-placer Travis Wall was on camera for a few fleeting moments. Ah, Travis, how we’ve missed ye. For old time’s sake, here is Travis and Heidi’s duet from Season Two (a routine that won choreographer Mia Michaels an Emmy).

Travis and Heidi in Calling You
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqLNCZD-7Jc&hl=en]

He showed up to teach a simple routine to the contestants, and I’m hoping (fingers crossed!) that he makes several more appearances this season in that capacity.

P.S. Cherry season has begun. Mmmmm!

[Image by Poppy Wright]

I finished re-watching Season One of Battlestar Galactica last night, after I was done with the homework I had—once again—been putting off all week. There’s nothing like three hours of watching this to make me forget that I even have a life outside of avoiding/sleeping with/fighting The Cylon Menace. I mean, look who they have on there: Jamie Bamber, Katee Sackhoff, Michael Trucco, Tricia Helfer, James Callis, Grace Park, Tahmoh Penikett, Aaron Douglas, Lucy Lawless . . . it wouldn’t matter if the show sucked worse than MILF Island; like MILF Island, it would still have an enormous following. Unlike with MILF Island, though, I would be watching it.

Is it weird that I think the two singers in this video are cute—the middle one really cute?

Rattlin’ Bog

Or that I think the two guys in this next clip are cute, too?

Wishy-Washy Washerwoman

Or is the weird part that I’m watching videos like these at all?

Discuss.

P.S. Does it help that I found both these clips by searching for “Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee“? Or is that something I should have kept to myself?

Things that have made me smile in the past week:

• Joni Mitchell (always)
• My apartment being clean(ish)
• The taste of really sharp white cheddar cheese

Things that have made me squeal out loud in happiness and excitement within the past week:

• Pushing Daisies, and Lee Pace on said show
• Freddy Rodriguez cuteness on Ugly Betty
• Dexter, and Michael C. Hall on said show
• Edamame
• Shaun Tan’s inventive new graphic novel, The Arrival
• The ACME Burger Company‘s house-made Three-Bean Veggieburger (with herbed goat cheese!)

Thing that has made me shriek aloud in anger and really lose my cool, and about which I will not elaborate at the moment because I don’t want to become crazed again:

1. The idiotic library science homework in my idiotic library science class

My DVR series lineup this season:

Heroes (Mondays, NBC)

After a smashing first season, the sophomore year of this show about “ordinary people discovering extraordinary abilities” gets off to a great start with tons of shirtless Milo Ventimiglia. Oh, and he has a cute new haircut, too!

Chuck* (Mondays, NBC)

The situation: All of the government’s most top-top-secret secrets are accidentally downloaded into the brain of a loser computer geek named Chuck, making him both a target and a hot commodity. But even though the premise is utterly, utterly laughable, like it was thought up by a person who had never touched a computer before, the fact that the whole thing is played for laughs—and by such a great cast!—makes it very easy to suspend disbelief.

Dancing with the Stars (Mondays & Tuesdays, ABC)

Drew Lachey as guest-host. Need I say more? Oh la la!

Reaper* (Tuesdays, CW)

Total cutie Bret Harrison plays Sam, a young slacker/loser type who discovers on his 21st birthday that his parents sold his soul to the Devil before he was even born, and that now the debt has fallen due. Fortunately, Sam is of no use to the Devil in Hell, so he gets the unique challenge of becoming a bounty hunter, hunting down souls who have escaped their eternal punishment in Hell and sending them back where they belong. Besides being hella tasty, Harrison also looks an awful lot like one of my younger math professors, which has led to some interesting Pavlovian reactions from me.

Life* (Wednesdays, NBC)

Twelve years ago, Charlie Crews was a run-of-the-mill cop in the LAPD. That was before he was framed for a horrific crime he didn’t commit, and before he served twelve years in a federal supermax prison before being exonerated on DNA evidence. Now he’s out and on the force again, but after twelve years of absorbing Zen koans along with the inevitable prison abuse, he is a changed man. As he struggles to adapt to life in the twenty-first century, life on the outside, and life as an exonerated convict, he must find out who framed him and why, before they come after him again.

Pushing Daisies* (Wednesdays, ABC)

When Bryan Fuller cited the enormously popular French film Amélie as an inspiration for the whimsical, oversaturated visual style and tone of this new TV show, many people reacted as if he had said something filthy and disgusting. After the preview screeners went out, critics like the NY Times’ Alessandra Stanley trumpeted things like, “It is possible to have loathed ‘Amélie’ and still enjoy ‘Pushing Daisies,’ ” as if only morons would have liked “that insufferably coy French movie.”

Well, I loved Amélie, and I’m fully prepared to love Pushing Daisies as well. Lee Pace (from Wonderfalls, another Bryan Fuller show) stars as Ned, a young man with a startling gift: a touch from his hand can resurrect the dead, but a second touch sends them back for good. And if he fails to administer a second touch before a minute has passed, a random person in the vicinity will die instead. How will he use his gift? What other strictures are there? How does his talent for pie-making come into it? I guess we’ll find out tonight, when Pushing Daisies premieres.

Ugly Betty (Thursdays, ABC)

After last season’s devastating finale, Season Two starts out strong with the hilarious/wrenching episode “How Betty Got Her Grieve Back.”

30 Rock (Thursdays, NBC)

I kept meaning to watch this show, but somehow—despite the fact that I bought the entire first season from iTunes—I just never got around to it. Well, after the show went and won an Emmy, how can I turn my back on it?

Torchwood** (Saturdays, BBC America)

I don’t know what it is about this series, but despite production values more reminiscent of Dr. Who (the show this one spun off from) than Battlestar Galactica, it has grown on me. I’ll give it a few more episodes to really reel me in.

Family Guy (Sundays, FOX)
American Dad (Sundays, FOX)

I usually save a few weeks’ worth of these two shows on my DVR before finally sitting down and watching them. They’re backup to the more important television I watch.

Remember, all the major broadcast channels now have “full episode” features on their websites that allow you to catch up on your favorite series. How many episodes you can watch online depends on the channel and show.

**New to the U.S.; originally aired in the UK between October 22, 2006 and January 1, 2007.