Lazy lazy

I’ve been super-lazy about posting recently, a combination of being very busy with work and being totally worn out from the excessive heat. Here are a few thoughts.

Dancing with the Stars

I am not into reality tv at all, but somehow I have been completely hooked by this show. I love ballroom dancing (if you’ve never seem the movie Strictly Ballroom, I urge you to rent it right now), and this also has C-list celebrities, so it’s a winning combination. The ballroom dancing judges are hilarious, particularly the proper old-school British guy and the effusive and bitchy Italian guy. The only thing that bugs me is the viewer voting. It makes no sense. The General Hospital chick and her partner are terrible. Their score from the first week was way lower than everyone else’s. Their first dance was really bad. Come on, sweetie, you’re an actress—at least try to pretend you like your partner. The judges told her she was too stiff and looked uncomfortable, so the second week she wore a bikini with some fringe, perhaps hoping to distract everyone from her lack of dancing skill. Still, when the audience votes came in, she wasn’t even near the bottow. The bottom two pairs were “supermodel” (and Rod Stewart ex-wife) Rachel Hunter and her partner, who were actually pretty good, particularly the second week, and Bachelorette Trista, trying to add a few seconds to her 15 minutes of fame, and her partner. Trista didn’t make the cut. Perhaps American has finally had enough of her? But really, she was an ok dancer, certainly better than General Hospital and Evander Holyfield (who second performance was severely cringe-inducing). Given the weird audience judging, I felt that I needed to make a call to support my favorite pair John O’Hurley (J. Peterman from Seinfeld) and his partner Charlotte. They were clearly the best pair in the second episode, so they’ll probably be voted off by an audience who clearly doesn’t get the subtleties of ballroom dancing.

Live Aid

On Saturday, a bunch of us gathered to watch the DVD of Live Aid. It’s 10 hours of footage, and we watched about 8 of them. I know I watched at least part of it the first time around, but I don’t remember it very well. I think I didn’t make it up early enough to watch the Wembley part, and I got bored with the Philadelphia part. It was interesting—the Wembley acts included a lot of pretty hip current bands from that time, and the Philadelphia acts were heavily weighted toward dinosaur bands/classic rock. Some of the highlights: Bryan Ferry singing “Slave to Love” (Wembley), Style Council singing “Walls Come Tumbling Down” (Wembley), U2 singing a kick ass 12-minute version of “Bad” (Wembley), Queen doing a really amazing long set (R.I.P. Freddie) (Wembley), Simple Minds singing “Don’t You Forget About Me” (Philadelphia), the Pretenders singing “Stop Your Sobbing’ (Philadelphia), and a very skinny Better Midler totally ripping on Madonna while introducing her. Madonna’s set was not one of the highlights, but her outfit did showcase some really bad 80s fashion. It’s kind of cool to be watching the DVD now, since Bob Geldof (Sir Bob) is organizing a new concert, Live 8.