Adventures in DWTS Blogging
[originally posted at I Fry Mine In Butter.]
I professionally blog about the television show Dancing with the Stars (DWTS). This fact is still hilarious, ridiculous, and amazing to me. It came about as a matter of necessity, I was a movie reviewer, but the budget for that ran out and they needed coverage in the area of television, and so I jumped on board and immersed myself in the world of DWTS, chatting up friends I knew who’d watched it from the beginning. At the end of the season, my editor contacted me about doing an interview with Mya, who was not really on my radar that season, I was voting elsewhere, but I wasn’t going to turn down a big break into the illustrious world of celebrity journalism, i.e. a chance to sit on my bed in my pajama bottoms and talk on the phone to the woman who sings Ghetto Superstar about any possible backstage gossip on the show. See, it was my job to care, and I can take a job seriously when it comes to immersing oneself in a world and observing what is happening in it, that is what writers do. And I won’t lie, she softened my heart to her plight after that interview, I have mad respect for Mya’s work ethic now, even if I will never own any of her records.
So I am not a DWTS superfan, I wouldn’t proselytize the show to anyone the way I would about say, Parks and Recreation or Friday Night Lights, but it has become my beat as a writer, and so now I care. I watch the show every week, twice a week, I’d write up recaps at night and wake up early to scour the web for clips to add to my posts at Popnography. This season I decided to take matters into my own hands, I dug out a wire that came with my little flippy cam, and I snipped and posted my own clips of the show (and I’m now waiting for my first youtube cease and desist notice, too, I’m sure). I uploaded them last night, and my blog recap hasn’t been published yet, but people on youtube have found my clips anyway, over a thousand views in twelve hours, and monitoring what conversations are happening there is already proving useful.
The ex/current-(who knows/cares)-Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger is at the top of the leaderboard this week and here is her viennese waltz:
Half of mtherfckers are praising her elegance, and the other half have already ordered a round of haterade and started in on the “she’s a professional dancer already, it’s cheating”. This is the same complaint made against Mya last season. I’m not totally in disagreement, but I just think it’s odd how this standard gets applied to r&b singers who dance in videos. Why not distaste for the gold medal figure skater? His athleticism and training is just as advantageous. Oh wait, it’s probably because he’s a hunky white dude.
My votes are with comedienne Niecy Nash. And while I am nervous about how ABC will edit and portray her, as this show is not exactly progressive in format or audience, I am choosing to trust that she has enough strength, talent, and panache to hold her own among the the potential assclowns.
Between her and Cheryl Burke dancing every week, I am not mad.