(NOTE: Due to a staggering lack of home internet connectivity, no Who’s Who entry this week. Sorry.)

The problem with having Napoleon and Tabitha as judges is that apparently the only other hip-hop choreographers available to SYTYCD right now are Cicely and Alyssa. This is problematic, because Cicely and Olisa’s specialty is a subsection of hip-hop popularly known as “shitty.”

Jessica and Will: Jive followed by jazz. The theme of this week’s judging of Will is “you’re just too good for Jessica.” Jessica gets buried by the judges and takes all the blame for her and Will’s mediocre jive routine, which is dramatically unfair because he was struggling just as much as she was. This is not to say that Jessica is great shakes; she’s arguably one of the weakest female dancers remaining. But that fact doesn’t mean Will is being held down by her; he’s just not as great as the judges keep pretending he is.

The jazz routine with the shirt is better (albeit still somewhat laboured), but the judges fall over themselves praising Will’s technique and carefully ignore the fact that his performance with Jessica was kind of bland; it was very much a “do the moves right” sort of performance, with very little connection or chemistry. Still, that is about as great as Will and Jessica ever seem to manage. SO HOORAY FOR WILL (but not Jessica).

Comfort and Thayne: Broadway and smooth waltz. The good news: somebody other than Tyce-fucking-Diorio doing choreo for “Broadway” style. The bad news: it still kind of sucked. Comfort is a one-trick pony and Thayne isn’t good enough to cover for her. Still, the judges give them both a reasonably nice judgement, mostly I suspect because they want Comfort to stick around until top 10.

The smooth waltz, though, was honestly pretty decent. Thayne’s hands were kind of all over the place, but his lines were decent and he led Comfort well enough. Comfort did not screw up and was entirely tolerable.

Kourtni and Matt: hip-hop and mambo. Nigel really doesn’t like Matt much, do he? Because in the hip-hop (which was barely a pop number, but oh well - btw, Cicely and Olisa are terrible) Matt was easily the better of the two, what with actually being on time and all. But every judge criticized Matt to death for not hitting the beats hard enough, while Kourtni was doing her best impression of Mr. Heavyfoot or something and got mostly ignored. With a better partner Matt would have been fine.

The mambo was genuinely good; a bit laboured in places, but what do you expect, it’s Alex da Silva, who gets off on creating insanely difficult choreo that untrained dancers will have an insanely difficult tie with. (I firmly believe he is genuinely an asshole.) The judges got nitpicky and went to the “no chemistry” well, which is a fair comment because Matt and Kourtni don’t have chemistry, and gee whiz sometimes that happens. This is the flaw in the “stick with partners for the first half” model the show follows. But what are Matt and Kourtni supposed to do, go to the Chemistry Store and ask for a half-litre of chemistry each? They’re a bad pairing and they’re suffering for it.

Chelsie and Mark: jazz and foxtrot. Mark’s really starting to remind me quite a bit of Rhys from SYTCTD Australia in that he’s a weirdo who can do just about anything really well. The jazz routine was excellent; he and Chelsie complimented each other nicely and it was just generally fun and exciting.

The foxtrot was a bit tougher for them; were this a first-week performance I think the judges would have creamed their pants, because really the only flaw was that it failed the Foxtrot Test of appearing completely effortless. You could see the strings, so to speak, and just as much on Chelsie as on Mark. Still, it was fine.

Kherington and Twitch: paso doble and contemporary. Well, this was a great week for Kherington, as she overcame her two biggest criticisms in one night: first, by dancing in heels and doing so splendidly (there is a conspiracy theory over on - you’ll be shocked here - the TWOP forums that Kherington can’t dance in heels) and secondly by not having a big fake smile for her performances.

Twitch got slammed for the first half of his paso doble, which isn’t entirely his fault because, come on, paired unison cape-swirling? Ugh. Once he got rid of the cape, he was actually able to enter into proper paso doble mode by pumping the macho up to 11 (seriously, that was some goddamned manly paso doble in the old-school “looks like he’s about to grab his woman and throw her across the room just to show her her place” way). And the Mia Michaels was a Mia Michaels in the good way.

Katee and Joshua: contemporary and West Coast swing. On the other hand, this Mia Michaels started to veer a little bit into Bad Mia Michaels - when she’s on, she’s on, but Mia Michaels does have a definite tendency to occasionally just choreo a bunch of hyperactive flailing and call it a routine. (See: Danny and Lauren last year.) But it only went that way a little, and there were a couple of moments of genius in it (Katee’s suspended “run” across the dancefloor was brilliant). And they were both quite good in it.

The West Coast swing was frankly pretty bad; this was no Pasha and Sara from last year, and Joshua in particular didn’t seem comfortable with it and Katee wouldn’t stop with that hideous grin. Still, Katee is probably the best of the girls overall and Joshua is Joshua and will do fine, and the judges lurve them, big duh.

Courtney and Gev: hip-hop and broadway. Gev took a lot of slack for not doing Cicely and Olisa’s routine well, which to me says he understood that the routine was terrible: the same boring, generic crap Cicely and Olisa always seem to come up with for this show. (How do they get work? Are they much better professionally and just slacking off for the routines here?) Courtney was fine doing the boring routine. P.S. Napoleon has no business complaining about anybody not being “ghetto” enough. Don “No Soul” Simmons is more ghetto than Napoleon is.

The Broadway was pretty fun; it’s no shame on Gev that he couldn’t quite imitate Gene Kelly because most people can’t. And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.

Bottom three: Matt and Kourtni, Jessica and Will, Comfort and Thayne.
Going home: Jessica and Matt.

As a further bit of explanation, and to demonstrate where I’m coming from, I will go through this week’s offerings and tell you how I plan to consume them. My rampant downloading will no doubt anger some comics professionals, but until that new copyright bill gets ass-rammed through Parliament I’m not technically breaking the law (since I’m not offering the items for download and thus “trafficking” the materials).

Note that wherever I mention “download,” it is shorthand for: “download, read it, then delete it soon thereafter.” The stuff I tend to download and keep tends to be either stuff I don’t own and is out of print (Golden and Silver Age stuff), or stuff I already own and want a digital copy of for my own use (my complete runs of Starman, Hitman, et cetera).

So:

ALL NEW ATOM #25: Download, if it’s not too much trouble to find it. This is the sort of comic where I am not really invested in the story; if I were at a shop, I might pick it up, leaf through it, then put it back down and never think about it again. Mostly because I have downloaded probably about half the issues of this comic, and every time my reaction is the same: “….eh.” It’s not a bad comic, it’s just kind of there. (Sorry, Gail Simone!) This probably adequately describes at least half - if not more - of my comics downloading.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #564: Download and read. It’s really easy to find the newest Spider-Man comic for downloading, and I like following the storyline. I just don’t particularly want to pay for it. When the first trade is released, if it’s a reasonable price (read: less than the pure chiseling that was the pricing on the World War Hulk trade), I might pick it up on a whim; the stories in the comic thus far are enjoyable Spider-Man stories but entirely disposable, so I don’t feel any particular urge to own this.

(Sidenote: I own the entire run of JMS’s ASM in trade, which is another run of Spider-Man that I first read online through downloads. Yes, I (mostly) liked JMS’ Spider-Man run, and especially liked it when he was working with John Romita Jr., so sue me that the new, unmarried Spider-Man isn’t as interesting to me. Maybe in fifteen years when death’s cold fingers are a bit closer to me and I desperately want to relive my childhood, okay?)

Also, I can’t remember if this is a Dan Slott issue or not, but I download anything Dan Slott writes just in the hopes that it pisses him off a little. I even download Avengers: the Initiative, which I don’t even read or like. FEEL MY FIT OF INTERNET PIQUE, DAN SLOTT!

ANGEL AFTER THE FALL #10: Maybe download? This is probably on par with All New Atom for level of interest; I just find it mediocre. Whatever interest I have stems from leftover curiosity about what “officially” happens to Angel after the show ends, but that’s dropping fast thanks to the incredibly ugly art on this comic.

AVENGERS INVADERS #3 (OF 12): Download, because I am curious to see if they can go anywhere after the deeply retarded second issue, where the Invaders figure out that they’re in the future and then more or less arbitrarily decide that the Avengers are Nazis because of an offhand comment made by Bucky. Likelihood that I will ever pay money for this comic in any form: practically zero, because it is terrible. But I love a trainwreck.

BATMAN #678: Download because it’s Morrison. Might buy in future, I dunno. Grant Morrison is a great writer and all, but a lot of fans tend to forget that when he screws up, he pancakes hard. Then again, I have lots of Grant Morrison stuff on my bookshelf, so the odds are generally good I buy it eventually. Then again again, I don’t have The Filth. Then again again, when they put out the inevitable one-volume collection of All-Star Superman i will probably buy it, despite having already bought the initial hardcover.

BILLY BATSON AND THE MAGIC OF SHAZAM #1: Download, read, strictly first issue “try before buy” basis.

BLUE BEETLE #28: Download and read with eventual plan of purchasing trade if/when it comes out; I already own the first three trades of this title and will buy the fourth when it comes out, and the fill-ins thus far have been decent so I figure the fifth will join them.

BOYS #20: As Blue Beetle. I own the first two trades, eagerly await the third. I just don’t like having to wait for the trade and I refuse to buy a fucking comic book twice.

Some may argue that the cost of the floppies is a purchase price for immediacy, and that is a fair argument. It’s just one I’m going to ignore entirely. Guess what, comics: I’m your market. There are a lot more of me than there are completists willing to buy every issue they’re interested in reading right away, and I spend a fair amount of coin on you so it’s not like you don’t get anything out of me.

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #16: Download, wait for trade again, already have the first two, thoroughly entertained by this title, happy to buy it in trade, not going to wait.

FABLES #74: Same again: I have every Fables trade and the 1001 Nights of Snowfall hardcover.

HOUSE OF MYSTERY #3: Download, because you know what? I missed the first two issues entirely. (This is the downside of downloading comics as your primary means of reading them on a weekly basis.) I’m curious, what can I say. (This, incidentally, shows one of the strengths of the downloading-at-very-low-cost delivery model for comics; there’s a lot more opportunity to try out a book. It’s a lot less common now for someone to pick up a random issue of a book like this for a tryout basis.)

JOKERS ASYLUM THE JOKER #1: Prior to copypasting the “coming out this week” list from Savage Critics, I didn’t even know this existed, so what the hell. Back in my purchasing days this might have been an impulse purchase. Now, not so much.

JONAH HEX #33: I’ve been thinking about getting the first trade of this for a while now. Not that downloading this issue will influence me one way or the other. But it’s on my “maybe” list. The problem I have is that most of the stories in Jonah Hex tend to flow together in a sort of same-ish way.

LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #43: Will buy the actual issue. Legion is the one comic of which I buy single issues because I just like having the single issues, even though I buy the trades. Which is fine. I understand that for some people this is what they feel for every comic. (Not for me, though. The trade paperback release this year that made me happiest were the reprints of the old Denny O’Neil Question series, because I thought “thank god, I can finally get rid of those fucking single issues.”)

MANHUNTER #32: Probably download? I’m not emotionally connected to this book like it seems the entire rest of the comics internet is. If it’s stuck in front of me I’ll read it, I guess. (And yes, I read the earlier issues, I know it’s quality product, it’s just not a story I’m really that interested in.)

MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #41: Same as Manhunter. I’m not in any rush to find this and read it, but if I see it, I’ll download it, read it, delete it, and fifteen minutes later I’ll be hard-pressed to tell you what the story was about, but I’ll remember being vaguely entertained.

NORTHLANDERS #7: See, I love Brian Wood’s other work, but this is another case where I read maybe the first two issues, liked it, then lost track of it entirely. I’ll probably pick up the first trade when it comes out, because my memory of it is good. (Of course, sometimes that backfires - I read the first few issues of Desolation Jones online, thought it was good enough, then bought the trade and hated the ending and sold it at a used books place.)

PATSY WALKER HELLCAT #1 (OF 5): Wait, there’s a Hellcat limited series? Well, huh. I don’t care, but I’m impressed there is one. (This really has little to do with the topic at hand. I am digressing.)

RANN THANAGAR HOLY WAR #3 (OF 8): I read the first issue and it was so bad it almost became good. (Almost.) I might download this just for laughs, if I don’t have to look too hard for it. That “looking hard” for a download of this title involves maybe a minute’s worth of clicking tells you how invested I am in reading another issue of this comic.

SECRET INVASION FRONT LINE #1 (OF 5): Another train wreck waiting to happen. I eagerly await the new adventures of Sally “Stupidest Bitch In The Marvel Universe” Floyd. What stupid thing will she say this time? Truly, Paul Jenkins is one of the great comedic minds of our time.

SQUADRON SUPREME 2 #1: Yeah, I’ll give it a look. And then probably lose interest again, just as I usually do with this revamp of the Squadron Supreme.

SUPERGIRL #31: I kind of download this one every month, in the hopes that I will see a Supergirl that I actually want to read about and maybe even spend money on. It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m optimistic.

TRINITY #5: Maybe this week it gets good.

WALKING DEAD #50: Another “download until the trade comes out” one. I like Walking Dead.

And that’s that.

Lister Sage, in comments from the previous post:

Maybe the biggest problem with comics is not the direct market, it’s not the price, it’s not even that kids aren’t reading them, maybe the problem is the general reluctance of people nowadays to just sit down and read. Newspaper sales have been getting poorer and poorer as well.

The problem with this hypothesis is multiple.

Firstly, kids love to read them some manga. Remember, when we talk about declining sales of comics, we’re only talking about western comics. Manga sales are great and manga publishers (other than TokyoPop, which has its own special set of individual problems) are entirely content with the current state of affairs (or at least a lot less worried than American publishers are).

Secondly, kids love to read in general. Three out of four kids still read for pleasure according to most studies, and in an age where they have TV, video games and intertubes, seventy-five percent is actually a hell of an achievement as far as the simple joy of reading goes. So it’s not that either.

Third, the decline of newspapers has less to do with people not liking to read and more to do with the fact that I’m not going to spend fifty cents on a newspaper when the same news is available on the internet for free, and usually from the same newspaper anyway. The newspaper industry is currently trying to figure out a new revenue model in an age where their old model has lost relevance. (Sound familiar?)

And I would say that the entry barrier to kids reading comics is hell yes price. Individual issues are expensive investments for kids, especially considering what you get (twenty pages of story for two bucks minimum?). Compare that to an issue of Shonen Jump or even an Archie digest. (Again: why don’t the big two issue digest editions of comics? DC used to do this. Their digest editions of Adventure Comics were formulative for me as a youth.)

I’ve argued before for a new delivery model for comics as necessary to keep the business alive in the long term.

Before I go any further discussing it, let’s tack on one more reason why going to a download-supporting sales model is a good move for comics companies: the electronic transfer of .cbr files is vastly more environmentally friendly than the continued printing of single issues (”floppies”). I’m not suggesting that .cbr files immediately replace floppies on a permanent, one hundred percent basis; however, I think that the gradual shift from floppies to digital is already underway, and it is healthier for comics companies to accommodate it and profit from it rather than fight it on the basis of supporting an outmoded method of sale which has only resulted in a gradually decreasing audience.

So, what should this model look like? Well, let’s make a few bullet points, first, about what people like about digital comics right now.

They are free. Now, obviously, a for-profit business can’t offer all of its product for free, but this tells me that the individual price of a downloadable comic (whether a definite, tagged price or a price derived from average use of a purchased e-collection) has to be low. Very low.

They should be .cbz or .cbr files with high-quality images. Some will argue that comics companies should pursue a more protectable format. This is stupid because there is ultimately no such thing; copy protections are more easily broken every day, and besides, the success of .cbr and .cbz files is not something that arose out of a vacuum; people tinkered with zipped collections of jpegs and PDF image collections before finally settling on .cbr and .cbz for their online comics reading.

This is a perfect example of the market determining its preference for delivery, and it is stupid to fuck with the market - especially when .cbr and .cbz files can so easily be encoded with ad pages and when the interface doesn’t easily lend itself to skipping the ads sight unseen. (Hell, some comics scanners already include the ad pages.)

They want to download the issues and possess them themselves. Or, more simply, Marvel’s “storing house” plan is, for the moment, a bad one. Maybe down the line consumers may become more receptive to the idea of “stored ownership,” of owning the right to consume an artistic work stored elsewhere. But right now it’s probably not great shakes.

They aren’t interested in locked material. No consumer ever is, and DRM-laced creative product only enhances the public desire for an unlocked, pirated version. This is why music companies are finally giving in and releasing unlocked mp3s.

They prefer individual issues. Although in a digital world there’s no need for arbitrary issue individualization (if I want one megafile of, say, Preacher, I can have one rather than individual issues), readers still prefer that the serial format continue to be recognized as such and distributed in such a manner. This is worth knowing because some people have suggested removing the monthly serial format altogether as part of the digital move, and I think this point argues otherwise.

Now, if we consider these points, what potential business models exist for online comics vending? (Marvel and DC will both, no doubt, try to have their own online store, regardless of the fact that this is stupid and we already know, thanks to the music industry, that it won’t work, so let’s ignore company-specific strategies and look at broader concepts.

The “dip a toe in” model. This is the most timid strategy I came up with beyond “do nothing and hope it works.”

Pick a low-selling title in which you have critical faith. Let’s say Blue Beetle.

Put the entire thing online in the following manner: Webcomic-style page layout (”one page per day/one page per click”). Your online version of the comic is black-and-white, rather than full colour, and it publishes one to three months behind the actual issue on the stands.

This is the most timid model because at heart, it uses the internet not as a delivery system but as a marketing tool; revenues will still primarily be derived from hard-copy sales of the comic (in floppies or trades), relying on fans to want to read the story “the moment it’s available” rather than in three months’ time, relying on fans to want to spend money to read the comic in full color, et cetera. In short, it’s a stopgap solution at best, designed to placate the internet-hungry crowd by doing as little as possible while still being able to honestly point at it and say “hey, internet!”

And it’s still better than doing nothing.

The “iTunes.” .cbr files available for download on a pay-per-issue basis. Simple. Straightforward. Easy to understand. Downloads of this sort should be relatively up-to-date; initially maybe a month behind printing schedule, tops. (The beauty of an online delivery system is that when the time is right, switching to simultaneous digital delivery is essentially instantaneous.)

The benefit of the system is simple: it’s a familiar model that already has some success. The downside is that its cost to the consumer ramps up very quickly (AKA “who the hell actually spends ten thousand dollars to fill up their iPod” syndrome) and it’s really a very poor model for profiting most highly off the enormous back catalogue possessed by most major publishers. Finally, it becomes difficult to balance pricing - companies tend to become enamoured of a single tier price (”99 cents an issue, cheap!”) regardless of whether that price is, you know, any good or not. (And digital comics should be way cheaper than 99 cents per issue.)

The “eMusic.” .cbr files available for download from a central site via a subscription model: ten dollars a month gets you, oh, let’s say thirty downloads. These are full-color, high quality downloads. Ads are permissible so long as they aren’t perniciously overexposed. Again, you may start out delivering digital issues on a delayed-action basis then shift forward as the market alters.

Many companies aren’t fans of this strategy because they always look at the model in terms of lost potential revenue. “Fifteen dollars for thirty downloads, that’s thirty-three cents an issue! If comic fans were buying those thirty issues in the store, they’d be spending over a hundred dollars on our books! A hundred is more profit than fifteen, even when you account for additional cost of production!”

The reason this argument is crap is because New Avengers sells one hundred thousand copies per month and Thunderbolts sells thirty thousand copies per month. Many of those New Avengers readers, reading a Marvel comic regularly as they are wont to do, are presumably at least willing to read an issue of Thunderbolts - they are not, however, willing to spend the three dollars plus to buy the copy of Thunderbolts. Thus, the revenue loss is essentially neutralized, with one key difference; under the eMusic scenario, the consumer may, after trying out an issue or two of Thunderbolts, go buy the trade paperback.

Since the vast majority of consumers under this model are the sort who would only purchase one or two books per month, what the remaining downloads per month amount to is nothing less than free advertising. Needless to say, this is the model I support, as should all right-thinking individuals.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to get me some ribs. Happy Canada Day.

On the rare occasions I eat at McDonald’s, I almost always get the same thing: two regular hamburgers and a medium fries.

It’s what I like at McDonald’s. The bigger hamburgers, I have discovered, after much consumption thereof and time spent actually tasting the food, are nasty and I do not like them. And large is just too much fries. (Note, of course, that I refer to Canadian portions, which are all about a size down when compared to American portions. The last time I was in an American McDonald’s, I ordered a medium Diet Coke and got this frigging vat of pop.)

On very rare occasions, when it is available, I will indulge in a McRib. However, since Loblaws introduced the President’s Choice BBQ Riblet (cheaper and better), these occasions have become even rarer.

But I have one fatal weakness when it comes to McDonald’s: whenever they introduce a new large sandwich, I feel compelled to try it. I am not sure why this is, since inevitably the same thing happens: the sandwich is terrible and leaves me feeling nauseated and gross for hours afterwards. The latest culprit is the Southwestern Chicken Sandwich, which was like a bag of ass sandwiched between two slickly slippery buns with hot sauce on top.

(Traditionally at this point a hippie shows up and tells you something about commercialism.)

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

The old standby: the movie quote quiz. Full points for guessing movie title, actor, and character, so a possible three points per flick, up till question #34, which is a trick question and therefore worth one point. NO FAIR USING GOOGLE. If I find out you cheated and used Google (I am not sure how I would do this, but I have ways and means), Ima cut you.

Of course it’s relatively easy to cheat off other people’s answers as well, but it’s not like there are valuable prizes at stake here.

As a special bonus to make it easier for you: no actor has more than one quote on the list. (One director is represented twice.)

Truck full of fire extinguishers catches fire.

#2,491,017: Spaniards, when they are excitedly celebrating a football victory, will play impromptu games of “toreadoro” with oncoming bicyclists as the bull, themselves as the matador and the Spanish (or sometimes Canadian) flag as the cape.

#2,491,018: If by doing this, a Spaniard causes you to crash your bicycle into something hard and unpleasant when you swerve to avoid the sudden thing in your face you weren’t expecting, they will be very apologetic and immediately offer to buy you a beer or a coffee or a gelato. (I heartily recommend that if you are, by chance, near La Paloma on St. Clair, that you exercise the third option.)

I’ll just let Emma Donoghue say what needs to be said, as she was so eloquent on the CBC earlier this month:

In Ireland, it’s a constant fight for basic civil rights. Chris wouldn’t be recognized as the parent of my children and every day would be a struggle. Here in Canada, though, I can go months at a time without thinking, “hey, I’m a lesbian.” Once you get the civil rights out of the way, you can just worry about your mortgage like everybody else.

Damn straight.

Everybody else has already said it and probably more eloquently, but: if you have not already done so, go see WALL-E as quickly as humanly possible. It is probably the best picture Pixar have ever made.

Let me repeat that to make sure it sinks in: this is the best movie that Pixar Studios have ever made.

(If there is a creative force on this planet equivalent to Shakespeare in his prime, folks, it’s working for Pixar.)

EDIT TO ADD: And since a couple of people have asked me now: yes, it’s also a fantastic children’s movie. I always try to catch a matinee of any Pixar release because I like to see how the intended market takes it, and A) my theatre was crammed and B) the kids around me were goggling, enraptured, completely and absolutely lost in the story.

People forget that storytelling without using words is exponentially more difficult than simple dialogue, and vast chunks of this movie are completely dialogue-less, which just makes the creative achievement here all the greater; this isn’t just Pixar topping their previous works (which already set the bar for excellence in animation and in movies in general), this is Pixar topping themselves after they intentionally handicapped themselves. It’s utterly unbelievable how perfect their achievement is.

Also, the short (”Presto”) is ludicrously good.

Was anybody else hoping that Blizzard would, I dunno, release an entirely new game rather than going back to the same old wells again and again and again?

I mean, they’ve got some of the best creative staff in gaming, period, both from a design/coding and story/art perspective. Surely they could manage something a bit better than the same old same old?

(This isn’t me saying that I won’t play Starcraft 2 or Diablo 3, mind. But I’d like to see them pull a different rabbit out of the hat.)

People in charge of regulating domains open up a veritable shitload of new domain types.

So Poptown and Sims and Church are busy competing for the “most 90s comic book cover ever,” and I think I have a contender right here.

I would like to make the additional point that DarkChylde more perfectly encapsulates the 90s comic experience than any of their entries, because as a title it lurched from pathetic tiny publisher to pathetic tiny publisher for the better part of a decade, finally collapsing with a “Last Issue Special!” one-shot in 2002.

Dear god: please give Mary Murphy laryngitis forever and ever. Thank you in advance.

Kherington and Twitch: hip-hop. Passable, although as usual Kherington’s problems (most notably the Smile That Never Goes Away and more than one or two points where she just wasn’t hitting the beats hard enough) are glossed over in favour of Twitch’s plusses (which are, in fairness, pretty damned enormous). Not Tabitha and Napoleon’s best routine, either; they’re much better on the lyrical side of hip-hop than the street side of it, to say the least. (I think Shane Sparks or Dave Scott would have ripped this routine apart.) But passable, and Twitch remains excellent, and that’s all that matters.

Courtney and Gev: rumba. Firstly: whoa, that was a dress. Secondly, this is the third week in a row where Courtney and Gev’s obvious and excellent chemistry livened up a relatively straightforward and uninteresting routine; large chunks of this thing seemed to be run through at half-speed, like they were saving up energy for the really big tricks (which were excellent). There’s a limit to the amount of “stately” I can handle in one routine, and this one came up right against that limit. But it wasn’t bad. Then Adam Shankman makes the mistake of giving intelligent, constructive criticism and Nigel and Mary get bored with it because he’s not telling jokes or shrieking or anything.

Comfort and Chris: jazz. Firstly, Tyce Diorio’s “African jazz” routines are about as African as I am. (Which, since my father is South African by birth, means “not a whole lot.”) Secondly, this is the second routine in two weeks where Comfort and Chris needed to hit every beat with full force, and the second time where they did not do that, not even close. Interestingly, Chris was better than Comfort this time, and I think the novelty of Comfort being a talented female hip-hopper with very little ability to extend that talent is about gone now. So: bad routine plus bad dancing. Bottom three, no chance they’re not.

Jessica and Will: disco. The curse of Doriana Sanchez continues, because Doriana Sanchez knows what a disco routine needs: endless, endless lifts! She managed to wait a whole minute this time before going to a chain of momentum-sucking lifts (four in a row, for crissake), and it’s a shame because somewhere in there was a really, really good disco routine; what happened to first-season Doriana Sanchez, who understood that part of the fun of a good disco routine is doing the cheesy, fun handwork with pride? Anyway, this is the third week in a row where Will and Jessica have gotten a complete blowjob from the judges, and the third week in a row I’m hardpressed to call it anything better than passable. Jessica can’t keep up and Will is far sloppier than the judges are willing to admit.

Kourtni and Matt: contemporary. Hey, two contemporary dancers doing a contemporary routine! I wonder if they can do a good job of that. Sonya Tayeh gives them a routine where they flirt with one another, and it’s automatically an uphill struggle because Matt is either gay or really, really weird. (I’m not sure which yet, but I’m leaning towards the latter.) Anyway, it’s a fun, odd number, and they’re wearing ugly clothes, and mostly the judges talk about the clothes, because they are ugly, and because giving Kourtni and Matt compliments might be nice but it’s not like either of them are winning this thing and everybody knows it. Really, it’s hard to comment on their routines, because Kourtni and Matt are just marking time till they go home. It might be a while, but it’ll happen eventually.

Also, Matt has a HUGE NOSE.

Chelsea and Thayne: quickstep. “Hey, America! Here’s a thing about Thayne America doesn’t know: he’s gay.” (Oh, come on, you were thinking it too.) Anyway, this week they have the quickstep, and they laugh and laugh at the ballroom tradition of “having a given frame within which to dance,” because it’s so strange and odd to them! Look, if for some reason I was a contemporary dancer selected to appear on this show, I would spend the entire goddamn three months in between selection and the first show doing crash ballroom training and nothing more; quickstep and salsa and cha-cha-cha are only difficult if you don’t have any practice in them at all. Master the fundamentals and your lyrical training can handle the tricks, kids!

Anyway, their choreographer is some very white lady I have never seen before. How white is she? She sets their routine to Phil Collins. That is how white she is. Whatever, it sucked bag and they’re bottom three most likely. Mary goes to extreme lengths to keep her retarded Hot Tamale Train metaphor alive. THE METAPHOR IS A ZOMBIE NOW.

Chelsie and Mark: lyrical hip-hop. Really, really good. More lyrical than hip-hop, to be honest, but so what. I have trouble finding things to say about this; that’s how good it was. No, wait, here’s something: Chelsie is dancing up to Mark’s level now! Which is pretty damned impressive, all things considered. Hm. What else can I say about this routine? “Tabitha is hot and Napoleon is lucky,” maybe, but that’s not strictly about the routine. Still, I suppose it will have to do.

Katee and Joshua: samba. This was fantastic. They raved about Joshua, and rightly (although I do wish they’d stop pretending he’s just some breaker off the street; he’s got contemporary training at least and possibly some ballroom as well), but Katee is one of the strongest girls in the competition this year and she absolutely fucking owned this piece. Great Latin dance demands a passionate performance, and Joshua and Katee skillfully made it look like they wanted to fuck on the dancefloor through the whole piece without ever being tawdry. And then Nigel demands to see Joshua’s father’s ass, just to see if it is genetic, because that’s exactly what a piece of this calibre deserved to be associated with.

Bottom three: Comfort and Chris, Chelsea and Thayne, Kourtni and Matt.
Going home: Chelsea and Chris.

Okay, I know that Tomahawk is DC’s Revolutionary War hero (complete with vaguely NAMBLAesque sidekick situation, just so you know he’s a DC property), but even so, the idea of a dastardly villain who is a British officer is still kind of comical. It’s totally a mindset thing; you have to initially shake off the mental image of him saying things like “Pip pip, cheerio, old boy - oh, Tomahawk, you dasher, you’ve winkled my plans but good, you Yankee devil you!”

But I really love the art here, because it really does make Lord Shilling look like a nasty badass, or like Jason Isaacs’ total bastard character in The Patriot (a movie which, while often kind of silly, at the very least had Jason Isaacs in it - plus, Donal Logue as A Racist Who Learns A Lesson!) - competent, merciless, and one hundred percent All Business. Lord Shilling doesn’t have any superpowers beyond being an excellent athlete and a brilliant spy, but he doesn’t need any powers to fuck you up. And if you beg Lord Shilling to show you a gentleman’s mercy, he’ll do it by cutting your throat open. He’ll be polite, though, and wait until after you’re dead to remark upon how bloody stupid a request that was.

Really, the more I look at Lord Shilling, the more I like him. He’s from the other school of British characters, the James Bond/John Steed/anonymous badass SAS colonel mode. He’s exactly what a good bad guy should be: competent, cool, can shoot your eyebrow off at fifty paces with a flintlock pistol, and likely has a cutting remark for any situation, even when Tomahawk barely manages to one-up him.

Still - shame about the wig, though.

There’s been a recent spate of right-wing blogs all saying the same thing:

“Now, I’m not racist, but how come all those small-town Iowans are so much more supportive and self-reliant than those big city New Orleans folks were during their disaster?”

Examples range from Tigerhawk’s relatively polite, only implied comparison, to Girl On The Right’s naked white triumphalism.

It’s important to make a few points here.

1.) Reports of looting and violence during Katrina were wildly exaggerated during news coverage of the storm and aftermath. The murders at the SuperDome? Didn’t happen. The shooting at rescuers? Didn’t happen. The widespread looting? Was largely confined to food and fresh water, which in time of crisis is legally allowable. After all the dust (and water) settled down, and police went through all their reports, the total number of murders in New Orleans over the course of the hurricane and immediate aftermath was four - not unreasonably high for a city with New Orleans’ crime rate.

So right off the bat, when someone complains that those horrible New Orleans folks (who just happen to be black) were so horrible with their looting and murdering, feel free to smack them. Given the size of Katrina’s wake as compared to Iowa’s flooding (and this isn’t to dismiss Iowa’s flooding damages as “small”, because they obviously weren’t, but come on, the two events simply aren’t comparable in size - Katrina turned the entire Gulf Coast into one big disaster area while the Iowa floods left Des Moines, the largest city in the state, relatively untouched), New Orleans residents largely behaved in an orderly and civic-minded fashion.

The point here is simple: it’s entirely fair to congratulate Iowans for their civic pride in failing to loot during a much smaller disaster. But comparing to New Orleans, even ignoring the respective difference in scale, is kind of stupid because for the most part New Orleans residents were just as proudly conscious of their duty towards their fellow citizens.

2.) Iowa residents had the good sense to evacuate, while those stupid N’awlinsians stuck around for the hurricane. First, let’s completely toss aside the fact that Iowa residents had Katrina as a fairly effective learning experience. While we’re at it, let’s ignore all those Floridians who survived Hurricane Andrew and then decided to stick around for the next one when given the chance.

No, instead let’s discuss something really, really simple: hurricanes and floods are different things! I realize this might be revelatory to some, but bear with me.

See, hurricanes, before they are hurricanes, are tropical storms. Nobody is going to evacuate for a tropical storm; no politician would order it and most citizens, other than the most storm-paranoid, aren’t going to bother. Because it’s a tropical storm. If you’re not out at sea, that means a lot of rain and probably some wind damage, but stay indoors and you’ll probably be fine. Katrina, like most serious hurricanes, upgraded from tropical storm to category 1 hurricane (rough, but probably not worth evacuating) to category 3 hurricane (time to beat feet) in rapid succession, so much so that New Orleans’ mandatory evacuation was only ordered with less than 36 hours’ worth of notice to get out of Dodge. And when the damage happened, it all happened at once, quickly and with very little opportunity to prevent damages - primarily because of the massive levee breaks.

Now, Iowa. Iowa wasn’t a flash flood; when flooding began on June 8th, it was a steady, lengthy process. People could see the danger coming because floods, unlike hurricanes, are relatively predictable, and this in turn let them do things like reinforce levees and evacuate people by moving them to high ground. (FUN FACT: moving to high ground is not that useful in a hurricane!)

And of course, there are those piddling little details like there being only one major traffic artery in and out of New Orleans (the I-10) whereas Iowa, as a state, is basically roads and fields; the fact that Katrina victims were largely and systematically prevented from fleeing the city, sometimes at gunpoint; and that 20 percent of N’awlinsians don’t own a car as compared to 6 percent of Iowans, and in both cases those percentages tend to be the people too broke to easily afford, say, a bus ticket.

3.) Iowans are self-respecting, self-reliant salt-of-the-earth folks who don’t need no government dollar to get their lives back on track. It’s entirely possible that Iowans believe this, but they’re entirely too happy to apply for that federal aid they don’t need and don’t want (nearly 15,000 applications in the first week), which incidentally is currently estimated to top out between $3 and $4 billion.

Now, don’t get me wrong; it’s good that they’re getting that money, considering that’s probably close to the total damages suffered. But it takes a special sort of blinded gall to ignore Iowans getting reimbursed almost entirely for their damages and then complain that Katrina victims are sucking on the government teat when total damages from Katrina are estimated between 125 and 150 billion smackers and Katrina’s victims have received only $114 billion, or in between 70 and 90 percent of damages depending on whose damage estimate you believe.

All of this, incidentally, ignores the fact that Iowans are about as likely as New Orleansites (Orleanians? Orleandos? I dunno) to be on welfare or to receive food stamps, so in that regard they likewise suck about the same amount of government teat. Of course, Iowans are a lot more likely to receive giant agricultural subsidies, but I understand that accepting such money does not in any way make you less self-reliant or salt-of-the-earth.