Just getting a chance to see last night's show/elimination. WTF?! Russell had to dance for his life? If he got cut, I won't watch this season. Seriously. (I'm about to watch them dance for their lives now.)
Relieved to see that Russell was not cut. The other little dude who was brought in as a replacement the day before the show, then was cut got a really bad deal. Since he's been in the top 20, he isn't technically eligible for the show again. But it sounds like Nygel will do him right and get an exception for him.
- Jason Huebel
I think that was bull. She could have danced with the choreographer assistant and them not gotten that guys hopes up just to let him go the next day (literally).
- Amber, Random Time Lord
Can't argue Amber. I think they really did a HUGE disservice to that kid. They brought him in, he killed himself to be ready for the show the next day, then they cut him. And to matters worse, the judges cut him-- not the public. So he was basically just a sacrificial lamb so they wouldn't have to cut one of the other male dancers.
- Jason Huebel
April, I bought from Damsel in this Dress but they were at the PIrate festival and could do a real fitting for me, I really believe that is important. Also mine is a little costumey because that is what I was looking for. Mine is like this: http://www.damseldress.com/pirate... but with leather front panel, blue and gold trim and no sleeves. She has other less cosumey ones too....
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- Rachel Lea Fox
Yeah, I fell asleep in front of the TV...
- Kevin Fox
kittens make you sleepy, its just a fact! ;)
- Rachel Lea Fox
That is sooo true! Put a warm snuggly kitteh on me and I start yawning in no time.
- Katy S
Boomer was snuggling down more before he noticed I was taking his photo too. I wish he had stayed put, but try telling a cat anything. ;)
- Rachel Lea Fox
Going to the SYTYCD finale show!!!!! Well, hopefully! We are day tripping down to LA and we have our pre-tickets but then you have to stand in a few lines and they don't guarantee that you will get in, but we are going and crossing our fingers and hopefully it will work! Wish us luck!!! Can't WAIT to see the show!!!!!
Not only will they not let us take pictures in the theater, they won't let us in with cellphones! Which presents a problem when four of us are flying down just for the day, without anyplace to stash stuff. I mean, it's not like we can leave our cellphones at home for the day while traveling (or waiting in line for hours *cough*bejeweled*cough*)
- Kevin Fox
That's awesome! I went last year for...Top Fourteen I think, and it was so totally amazing. Finale is even awesomer!
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
SO JEALOUS! Went last year for a show and it was fantastic. Kind of want to go see the tour this year because of the awesomeness that is the dancers and routines.
- Lis Miller
Jandy & Lis & anyone else who has gone to a taping, how strict were they about not permitting cell phones? I understand not wanting people to take photos or video and get any information about the show out before the episode airs but we need to be able to call a taxi to get us to the airport in time for the last flight of the night and it will be tight. How did they deal with things when you went?
- Rachel Lea Fox
Lis, do you remember? I think security had big bins outside the set for you to leave your cellphones, and then you picked them up when you left.
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
Glad you pointed this out Rachel. I've been doing some online research and it looks like they've got a system for you to check in your cell phones and pick them up after the taping.
- Paul Wilcox
Paul, Sounds good. Do you think we can check in all cell phones under one name so only one person has to do that line? Course another line after the show and before we can call a cab will make it tighter for our flight. We may need to set up a taxi before the show. One that will meet us and wait for us or something. We should all chat tonight or something.
- Rachel Lea Fox
Jandy, thanks so much!!! Any other info anyone has so we can be prepared would be great! Thanks all!
- Rachel Lea Fox
Rachel -- not sure since it's not clear to me yet if it's just at the coat check or a separate system.
- Paul Wilcox
Rachel -- UPDATE: I just found this "Yes, when I went to the taping in July, we were escorted through metal detectors, and they searched your purse. All cell phones, blackberries, etc, got your name put on a piece of paper and rubber banded to your phone, and the phones all went in a giant bucket. I can't imagine having to be the poor schmuck babysitting that bucket! We were only 74th...
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- Paul Wilcox
Rachel -- Another update: I just chatted w/ a coworker who attended a taping, and she confirmed the system I just posted above.
- Paul Wilcox
Okay, I'm bringin' the Gen 1 iPhone, just in case it disappears from the bucket. :-)
- Kevin Fox
K, looks like I leave my iphone at home and rely on Kevin. :)
- Rachel Lea Fox
Yes, it's all the same line, IIRC. You don't have to go someplace separate to drop off your phones, they just take them as you go through security.
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
Jandy - I don't think they took our phones (but I could be wrong - they also said no flipflops and I wore them anyway) but we weren't in the general line. And, yes it's all one big line.
- Lis Miller
Jandy and Lis, but is it a different line while leaving to pick up your phone as opposed to just leaving, no phone needed?
- Rachel Lea Fox
As I recall, they just had the tubs outside the door as you went out. You'd stop and pick yours up if you had one, but just keep going if you didn't.
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
Was there any kind of security or just "Hey, free iPhone!"?
- Kevin Fox
There was security, I think. I mean, like, security guys standing behind the table with the buckets. We didn't have fancy phones at the time, so I wasn't quite as paranoid as I probably would be now.
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
So its two bright shades, Napalm Orange and Nuclear Red, I separated them so you could kind of see in the second photo. Mostly the orange is on top and the red in layers below it. The brown color is in the same family as the reds i normally do, but about a 1.5 shades darker. Because I didn't tell her too far in advance we were doing this today we didn't have time for a full style (she always makes it look so much better than I do) but we got the color and a touch up to the cut and I love it!!!
- Rachel Lea Fox
from iPhone
Thanks everyone!! I haven't done the fun colors in a about 2 years and it feels good!! I think I need to go put a different shirt on though. The white embroidered flowers don't seem to go with the hair so much. ;-)
- Rachel Lea Fox
Trish, I do okay with the reds and oranges. Kevin often likes to do the blues and purples, but we have a hard time with those staying.
- Rachel Lea Fox
That looks great. Red is the new Blue.
- Mark Krynsky
Thanks Mark. I'm loving it. And I don't know about being the new blue. Blue is awesome as well, I just tend to usually use warm colors. I might try purple at some point though.
- Rachel Lea Fox
looks cool. one time i had a friend that dyed her hair red on the underside, so it was black on outside and red on the underside where she could show it whenever she wanted.
- Pokai
I liked the video so I took a look at his site. Also interesting so I check out his book. Looks good (& I've got an Amazon gift certificate), so I go to order... and it's not available for Kindle. Huh.
- Karen
"I attended the So You Think You Can Dance performance finale last night! With last minute invitation from Kevin and his wife Rachel to capricious_k and I, and a lot of last minute scrambling, we managed to pull of a day trip down to LA for the show. It required a lot of things to go right, but the stars aligned and we had a blast."
- Kevin Fox
from Bookmarklet
I'm too lazy (I mean busy!) to do my own trip report today, so I'm linking to Paul's instead!
- Kevin Fox
Not grokking the Spotify excitement. Lala, Napster have better interfaces, greater accessibility, & far better pricing on ad-free version. Why's everyone so crazy about Spotify?
One word: addressability. Every track has a url and so does every playlist. This means it's ridiculously easy to share music with other people. For instance we use a collaborative playlist for London's TGIF.
- Adewale Oshineye
LaLa - Listen to (from what I can tell is) a broader catalog... any song for free, web listens for 10 cents a pop. No ads on the site, no ads in the audio. Napster - Listen to any album free up to four times, or pay $5/month and get 5 MP3s plus unlimited streaming from what (again, based on my perception) is a FAR larger catalog than what Spotify offers. About the only thing going for...
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- Adam Lasnik
Ade, but lala (though sadly still in the U.S.) offers exactly the same thing... and those URLs are actual Web URLs, no client download required. Also, http://free.napster.com -- again, same thing. (or at least each album has a URL, last I checked... I should doublecheck if you can reference a song via a Napster URL). So what's so revolutionary about Spotify, given that?
- Adam Lasnik
Okay, just verified that on Napster, you can also reference an individual track easily (http://free.napster.com/player... for my fellow Americans or those faking Americanship). Your URL, in contrast, requires download of the client app. My guess is that a lot of the excitement over Spotify is from non-Americans, who have previously been rudely shut out of a lot...
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- Adam Lasnik
Looks like you're right. Lala has more of the tracks on my obscure(ish) artists list and cleaner urls. On the other hand Spotify is usable by non-americans today.
- Adewale Oshineye
and savvy Americans :P. Seriously, though, I look forward to the day when (somehow!) all music is available to ALL people on ALL devices at reasonable cost. I am not among those who believes all music must be free; artists should be compensated for their work, IMHO. But I am hugely delighted by Lala and Napster (and, admittedly, with Spotify albeit to a lesser extent), and I hope these services are indicators of what's to come internationally in my lifetime :D
- Adam Lasnik
I'll tell you what would leapfrog Spotify to the top in my mind, though: them coming through with an Android app, as suggested in this article - http://www.slate.com/id.... Neither lala nor Napster offer subscription/discovery services via mobile. Spotify would be the first, and what an impressive first, too. Unlimited on-demand streaming in the cloud. Would be amazing!
- Adam Lasnik
I've seen both iPhone and Android versions of the Spotify app in real life. They're both awesome and have offline support. Obviously Apple are never going to let them launch the iPhone app but when the Android app launches I'm going to have to seriously reconsider wandering around with an iPhone.
- Adewale Oshineye
But would you pay the 10 pounds / month for it (the current Spotify Premium membership). Personally, though I would love having access to songs on my G1, I don't think it'd be worth that much to me.
- Adam Lasnik
Once I almost signed up for the premium account but gave up when I realised that they didn't use Checkout so I would have to deal with the horrible VerifiedByVisa system. The other problem is that £10 a month for the rest of my life feels like too much of a commitment. I would prefer a system where they 1- used Checkout 2- Let me pay £10 whenever I felt like having a month's worth of ad-free music with no commitment after that month.
- Adewale Oshineye
I hate (HATE!) the increasing use of georestrictions on website. I understand the licencing realities, but for those of us in the third world (ie, Australia) its terrible to hear Spotify vs Napster vs Anything. The best have is the iTunes store.
- Nick Lothian
It's the fact that you can listen to anything you like for free. Whole albums, not just random music that's like another artist. The ads are infrequent enough that it doesn't really bother me, and the catalogue covers everything I want to listen to.
- Rich
I wasn't a huge fan of the hippy routine, but I think it was more the choreography than the dancing. It just didn't appeal to me. For me, Jason finally showed he has a personality tonight.
- Shannon Jiménez
I agree, there was one dancer who I previously wanted gone and impressed me so much tonight that I voted for them twice. And the Hair routine was great (hippy routine), it was one of the only times I've really liked one of the Broadway routines. Too often the Broadway routines are not true to the musical or to the music or are not done well or any number of other things. I might be more...
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- Rachel Lea Fox
So it's elimination night. Figure I can say who I changed my mind about. It was Jeanine. After the gold hooker outfit she wore in her solo last week, I was done with her. But this week I loved the routine she did with Jason. I also like Jason more for the same reason.
- Jason Huebel
from iPhone
And no, I don't know who is eliminated tonight. Our TZ hasn't finished it's airing yet.
- Jason Huebel
from iPhone
For me it was Jason that gained my respect. I've been done with him for quite some time, but he really showed me last night that he had skill. Jeanine, while not my favorite has been on my good list for a while but she has been held back by Phillip. Phillip tried hard, but he just didn't have the skill she did. Now I think she will shine more as she gets to be with other partners.
- Rachel Lea Fox
Yeah, she doesn't have to waste a lot of time carrying her partner now. It should give her the opportunity to grow more than she was able to with Philip.
- Jason Huebel
from IM
Not a fan of sites with Flash intro... plus it does not display on phones.
- David Lanning
DO NOT WANT. In my opinion, Flash should only be used for things like YouTube.
- John (a.k.a. dendroica)
NO, but if you insist don't make it autoplay (for those who have bandwidth limits or additional charges) and DO let us SKIP it. Have you seen my post "The Serious Drawbacks to Using FLASH for Web Design: Usability, SEO, Editability" at http://www.growmap.com/flash/ ? If you're going to use Flash you REALLY need to know the pros and cons!
- Internet Strategist
Agreed. Nothing against the two eliminees, but they were the right two to go.
- Rebecca Sun
It's the next day, so I think it's okay to say it. I'm really glad Melissa didn't get cut. To be honest, I pretty much lost interest in Caitlin. She just wasn't all that dynamic. So I wasn't disappointed to see her go. As for the guys, Philip was probably the most logical choice to be cut. I liked the guy, but the other dancers were better.
- Jason Huebel
That said, I'm glad they'll get to go on tour with the top 10.
- Jason Huebel
Totally agree. I think they knew they had to drop the guy, but also REALLY want his special talents on the tour. I respect that they did the right thing for the competition and still got what they wanted for the tour.
- Rachel Lea Fox
Yeah, I haven't found any serious fault with any of the judges decisions this season, amazingly. Last night was no exception, though I agree that they may have chosen differently if they couldn't bring tonight's losers on the tour with them. Seemed like a bit of a cop-out to 'make the right choice' while still getting to bring them on tour.
- Kevin Fox
I also really appreciated how frank Nigel was about how they decide who gets cut. He basically came out and said they already knew who they would cut.
- Jason Huebel
I agree with everyone about Caitlin-- she wowed me in the auditions and then never lived up to my expectations. The only thing that surprised me last night was that Randi and Evan escaped the bottom three. I thought that they would be there and Jeanine and Philip would pass again. I'm just so happy they cut Philip. He seems like a nice guy and all, but he has proven he really can't dance outside his genre. I think it's a nice compromise that he'll be on the tour.
- Shannon Jiménez
Each iPhone version seems to add another letter or two to the name. Apple has clearly painted themselves into a branding corner, which is rather unlike them. They must know they they'll have to revisit this approach with the next batch of iPhones.
- Brett Lider
Since they're now at the equivalent stage as the Mac IIci-era of names, the next iPhones will use arbitrary numbers, a la Quadra 605, 610, 630, 650, 660av, 700, 800, 840av, 900, 950
- Mihai Parparita
It'll be interesting to see where they go. I don't think they want to, long-term, be in a place where they have an s-class phone separate from the consumer-line. That being said, maybe they will go down the "iPhone" / "iPhone Pro" path to make the difference more tangible to consumers than a single letter that can also be mistaken for the plural of "iPhone 3G."
- Jonathan Terleski
I remember the day my dad brought home a Centris 610 to replace our LC III. I was so excited and Kid Pix never rocked so hard. I even hacked the boot screen to show a picture of Mario.
- Jonathan Terleski
(33 photos) "Early evening on the 2nd of Janurary we went out for a zodiac ride around Duchayland Island where we found some spectacular ice formations, some beautiful ice textures, a whole lot of leopard seals, some nesting skua, and an all-around wonderful time. Heading to the far side of the island we found place to land and had a short hike before heading back to the boats. On the return, several of us tried our hands at driving the zodiac boats. All in all a great way to end a beautiful day." Click through to see the rest!
- Kevin Fox
I'm starting to think I keep painting things around the house blue because I miss the blues and whites of Antarctica.
- Rachel Lea Fox
Beautiful! Did you journal daily to record your experiences as well as the factual info? If so, together or separately? Just curious to know if you shared the writing/editing duties as well as the photographing? Does your recall differ at all?
- Anne Bouey
"I swear there must be a penguin artist arranging the icicles." -- great line!
- Stephen Mack
Anne, Kevin did a little bit of journalling near the beginning of the trip but got too busy as we kept going. One of our guides, Tim, did daily reports about the places we went and things we did and gave us the word files for all of them. Also our captain gave us a chart with place names, activities done there and the GPS coordinates for them. Because we took so many photos every day it...
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- Rachel Lea Fox
Yeah, I figure I'm in trouble when you get home, huh?
- Rachel Lea Fox
You know where I'm going next don't you Kevin?
- Rachel Lea Fox
If you're talking about the ziplock baggie in the shoebox that contains the folded-up newspaper article that my grandma kept with her until the day she died, about me winning the Egghead Essay Contest in 1989 with a pimply picture of 10th grade me in it, then yes.
- Kevin Fox
:D I don't care about the new design anymore!
- directeur
Glad to help directeur! More funny old photos (baby kevin, prom kevin, super kevin, antarctica kevin) linked from this post: http://friendfeed.com/e...
- Rachel Lea Fox
Really a great set! Thank you Rachel! :)
- directeur
I'm always happy to embarrass Kevin a little!
- Rachel Lea Fox