Unfinished Dad

So You Think You Can Dance, Top 6

Dear Joe-

Thanks for waiting til morning to send your thoughts, fortunately I watched both episodes last night. I was so excited that we got to see all those routines from last season again, but was it just me or were they not quite as amazing the second time around? Don't get me wrong they were still great, but I guess when they aren't in competition it's hard to be as wowed (is that a word?) by them. 

I can't believe Evan is in the finale!! Ade deserved the spot so much more, but you're right the show kind of screwed him over by not highlighting him early on. He was definitely a more adaptable dancer than Evan and was way more impressive to watch as the season went on, but I guess that's how the show works. I guess we'll just have to see what the finale dances look like. I hope they can do something amazing enough with the girls to overshadow Evan's lame-ness a little bit.

You're right about the dances not being all that great this week. I really liked Brandon and Kayla's contemporary and Ade and Jeanine's moving out hip-hop routine was pretty cool too. Do you think they keep saying that this is the best top 20 they ever had to keep us from thinking that this season really hasn't been as exciting as past seasons?

Anyway, to answer your questions. No I don't think Will had those tattoos last year and I don't think Chelsea got fat I think we're just used to looking at Kayla's near-anorexic body that we forget what normal sized people look like. Plus I think she got a new haircut that made her face look a little chubby.

Ok that's it for now. Talk to you later and don't worry I'll actually be watching the live versions of next week's shows!

Emily

So You Think You Can Dance, Top 6

Dear Emily,

The rumor here at Unfinished Dad is that you have a life outside of SYTYCD watching.  I was both happy and sad that you were not able to see this week's episodes live.  And in your honor I chose not to email you until this morning, allowing you the chance to catch up.  If you haven't seen the results show yet (you missed Kaytee, Twitch, Will, Joshua, Jessica, Chelsea and Mark by the way) stop reading now, get our your remote, and rock that DVR!

There is only one place to start this week.  Evan, a dancer that I picked out of the masses last season, is just not holding up his end anymore.  He is not bad per se, but he certainly is not Brandon or Ade.  He needed to go home this week so that we could have a powerful male half of the finale.  Now we know for sure there will be no over the top guy on guy routine next week, a la Twitch and Joshua.

As for Melissa, well, she just didn't have the personality of a Jeanine or the (cringe) lines of Kayla.  Plus, she was dealt Evan as a partner, blahfest.  I think one of my co-watchers summed her up pretty well last night when she said, "That girl is too old to be a 'naughty ballerina.'"

Oh, I started this as if Evan and Melissa went home and not Ade and Melissa.  Poor Ade.  He was a great dancer who got a late start in the image game.  Brandon and Evan were household names way before the top 20 were even picked.  Weak job by the judges/producers and yet another example of their biased and seemingly unscrupulous ways.  So Ade went home because nobody said he was "annoying as shit" and because he didn't bring a brother along to get cut just before the top 20.

Was there a dance Wednesday night that we have to talk about?  Not really, all the non-Evan pieces were strong and Brandon and Kayla's contemporary piece was the best, but overall it was kind of blah.  Sonya's group dances were the standout and I think the judges knew it.

The best part of the week was seeing season four's best dancers (minus Courtney Galliano) come back for a few dances last night.  Especially Kaytee and Twitch's door routine—that kiss still shocks me, it was Kaytee's coming out moment.  I have a couple of quick ones for you.  Did Will have those Tattoos last year?  Did Chelsea get fat?

Okay, good place to stop,

Joe

Tilda In Pictures

Happy Birthday Matilda Claire "Two" Poulas

July 28, 2008—1:56 P.M. 

Ask your average person, hell, your average pregnant person, how long women are pregnant for and they will tell you nine months. Movie titles are based on this and the whole world seems to trust this number. It's like the 52 week year, or the 162 game season. 

So tell me again how it is that my wife is now 40 weeks pregnant? Her belly is larger than I would have ever thought possible and you can literally see the baby's head sitting on top of her pelvis...waiting to take the plunge. Every day now we assume that we will witness the birth of "two" and every day we go to bed disappointed or happy, depending on whose camp you are in. I can't wait to meet her, but each day she doesn't arrive is another full night of sleep. My wife on the other hand just wants her out, out, out.

We keep putting ourselves in situations that we can look back on and say, "wow, that was stupid" when we tell the story of "two's" birth day. Today, Dani and I played tennis for two hours leaving Kristen alone. Yesterday we drove out to the Poconos (about an hour and a half drive) just to have lunch, let Annie eat her first handfuls of sand, and turn around to come back again. On Saturday my mother in law and I went out for a walk with our dogs and forgot to take our cell phones with us. All this, so that we can force my wife into labor by being totally unprepared and irresponsible. Pretty smart, no? I think tonight we are going to drive down to Washington, DC to see some friends.

July 29, 2008—8:04 A.M. 

A little bit of cramping since 5 A.M. Hmmmm.

July 29, 2008—10:25 A.M. 

Um, yeah. We are now timing contractions. We induced last time, so this whole natural labor thing is new to us. Hope this isn't a false alarm, but if any of you have a name idea it may be time to submit them. My sister in law Dani will be posting for me today via text message. 

July 29, 2008—11:35 P.M. 

6 cm dilated and going to the hospital (had to stop for slurpees on the way).

July 29, 2008—2:56 P.M. 

We seem to be in a holding pattern. Two won't come out until she has a name. How about Trixie?  Editor’s Note:  Was Trixie a serious name?  It’s hard to tell a year later when someone was texting blog posts during a birth. 

July 29, 2008—4:48 P.M. 

Contractions are four minutes apart. Two seems to be getting closer. 

July 29, 2008—8:42 P.M. 

7lbs. 9 oz.

20 3/4" long

No name yet, mom and Two are doing great. 

July 30, 2008—9:05 A.M. 

At about 14 hours old Two has grown into a name: Matilda Claire Poulas

Living With Pearl Jam, Louie's Take

Jopie Joe,

Family, friends, and loved ones are critical to our souls, but extraneous outlets in the forms of hobbies, whether sports, outdoor activities, books, whatever, are critical to one's happiness.  Find something you love and pour your heart into it, it's a simple as that.

Pearl Jam has been one of our outlets to happiness for almost 20 years now, and I can distinctly remember old conversations between us wondering how long the band would be great, and even after their second album Vs, wondering if they would be eventual members of the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame, which at the time, seemed more important than it ended up in actuality.

We'll indeed get to why we love their music, and debate the merits of one album vs another, but I am not sure I could put into words how much the band, as strange as it sounds, means to me.  They've accomplished what few bands have ever done - connected to their fan base in a way that makes us feel we know them personally.  Amazing when you think about it.

When I put my mind to the "why question", it wanders off into tangents - and maybe it's best to just put it down and hope for the best.

My memory is shot, and not shot in a way that most people in their 30's undoubtedly deal with.  I have such little recollection of my younger days it is frankly worrisome at times.  Things that I historically thought were the most important in my life, take High School Tennis as an example, are completely evacuated from my memory banks.  I have literally spent hours trying to recall matches I took part in and the only one I can honestly remember is a loss to Sussex Vo-Tech that shook our beloved  Coach Gersie to the core of his foundation.  My doubles partner, not you at the time, was even accused of cheating once, but I have no details to share - it's gone.

Similarly, my life has gone through changes with my infatuation with professional sports.  I used to have room for baseball, the NBA, NFL, heck even some Hockey.  I planned my weeks around Charles Barkley on TNT and NFL primetime.  Now add Tennis, the Olympics, colleges sports and more and you can see how I fit the mold of the stereotypical sports lover.

Years later, only baseball has stuck, and likely because I am obsessed with it (I have access databases, 100's of self written articles, 6 fantasy teams, one simulation league, etc).  But for how long?  I am deeply saddened that as I grow older I literally feel a time, far off in the future but steadily growing closer each day, where baseball will take a final back seat.

Make no mistake, this progression is routine for many, especially those with families.  For me though, it illustrates why Pearl Jam is special.  Despite the dozens of major changes in my life, despite the sad times and the good, Pearl Jam is a constant, always matching my mood when I need them, and always providing a bridge between the ever changing lives of brothers.

Enough of the sap talk and lack of brevity, next time, I promise to keep to your purpose!.

Living With Pearl Jam

Dear Louie,

I feel that old pull again.  I’ve felt it seven times over the last 16 years and I like it, a lot.  The first time was my junior year in high school and I remember relying on some kid’s article in the school paper for more background and information.  The last two decades have seen me feel it in different cities and with different people—remember that time we ditched work for an hour and listened to Binaural?—but every time the symptoms are the same.  A little rapid jumping up and down, a little stimming, and some very repetitive playing of a favorite initial track.

With The Fixer’s release last week, that feeling started again.  Now tour dates are popping up—nothing in DC yet—and this week I stumbled across some other maniac’s plunge into the Pearl Jam catalog.  The feeling is back full force now.  Coping with two months of this will be difficult thanks to the age of hyper-information that we live in, but September 20^th and the release of Backspacer will get here soon enough, I promise you.

If you will remember, you and I had a fierce debate last spring about the band’s greatest efforts of all time.  And while I took that debate to a confrontational place, I assure you it was only for the sake of art and readership.  So I ask you, Lou, would you like to blog with me about Pearl Jam again?  They are the single biggest unifying experience of our two lives.  Through thousands of arguments, and only slightly fewer beatings, they have been a constant.

I don’t want to review every track that Pearl Jam has issued—we can leave that for the childless—but I would like to share our love with the world in a reader accessible way.  You may have noticed my obsession with So You Think You Can Dance lately, it isn’t pretty.  So let’s spare the public and keep it simple.  We can post once a week about anything PJ relevant and as long as we commit to over sharing and informing with brevity I think we’ll be okay.

Let me know what you think,

Joey

P.S. At some point we will revisit your epic mathematical ranking of every single Pearl Jam song, we just have to.

Andrew Bird, Still

I came accross this clip over the weekend and thought I would make another attempt to get you to listen to Andrew Bird.  If you haven't heard, or seen, any of his work, notice that all of that sound is coming from one man.  And yes, he does list himself among a very rare group...professional whistlers.

So You Think You Can Dance, Top 8

My friend Joe,

Amazingly, in your long winded dissection of last night’s show, you only posed three substantive questions.  So this should be a short post.  You first asked me if I thought that Randi and Kupono were really that bad.  Um, yes.  Randi was hopeless for a good portion of her time on the show.  One of the judges nailed it early on when he said that she looked “heavy.”  While in the real world she must look great, in the SYTCYD world she looked mushy and hard to lift.  What was that line from Bring It On when one of the girls asked about the point of going on a diet?  “Because! In cheerleading we throw people into the air. And fat people don't go as high.”  As for Kupono, he was great at adopting the character he was given, but his dancing was a bit sad.  He was just a poor man’s Mark from season 4.

Okay, I really loved the Zombie routine.  It was one of my all time favorites, from the costumes, to the music, to the characters.  Best of all were the little nuances thrown in, like Kayla smearing the black makeup and Jason’s funny little dance over her dead body.  Shane was a little light on the hip hop, but he perfected the “Thriller” feel of it.  And Jason just nailed the character.  His facial expressions were priceless.  Also they get bonus points for selling the neck lift at the end.  I know her weight was supported on his elbows, but that was cool.

So was it Robsonesque?  I say yes.  Wade has some more original moves overall, but the key point is that you talk about the routine the next day and say, “Wow, that was cool.”  For the most part I don’t remember individual steps, but I can’t get some of Jason’s out of my head.  The other way to make something Robsonesque is with great costuming, and the production crew did this one perfectly.  I’d love to know who had the idea for Kayla to spread her makeup.  I doubt it was Shane.  While we are on the subject of great individual moves, would you have had the guts to try and throw yourself off the stage like Melissa and trust that Ade would catch you?  That was crazy.

That makes for a good segue Joe.  Melissa and Ade’s contemporary piece by Tyce was almost as good as Kayla and Jason’s big number.  They were beautiful together.  Your question though, was whether or not I thought it would be as powerful without the background first.  On one hand I say no.  I may have appreciated the routine as a whole, but without knowing that she was dying, I don’t think I would have been as emotional as I was.  I was no Mia, but seeing Melissa’s tears and her faux bald head was a pretty powerful thing.  Now on the other hand, maybe it was just the dancing that moved everyone.  Do you remember Mia’s dead father routine by Neil and Lacey.  That was the worst piece of crap they ever sold us, and we knew beforehand that it was about her recently deceased father.  I guess you have to figure out how much of a cynic you are and then decide this one.

Okay buddy, that’s enough for one episode.  I’ll talk to you after the results tonight.

Joe

So You Think You Can Dance, Top 8

Dearest Em,

We are woefully late with this post.  I don't think that you will have time to respond until after tonight's superfantastic 100th episode.  Therefore, I will pose some questions to the void, then reach up and grab them and answer them myself.  We spoke briefly about the show this morning and you sounded waist deep in your swim lesson empire.  Consequently, you sounded tired and disappointed with last night's show.

I think you have to look at the night as if it were two different episodes.  The first four dances were all pretty basic and the last four were all good to great.  I think the producers got it right to back-load the show like that.  Incidentally, you know if you are the couple slated to go last (Kayla and Jason) you are in great shape.  The producers also must have spoke to Ellen about her stale jokes and overall monotony, because the second hour found her more subdued and the show moved all the more quickly for it.

Let's talk couples, yes?  The final eight somehow seems much more talented than the final ten.  Were Randi and Kupono that bad?  You don't get the sense anymore that a couple won't be able to handle a dance, whereas before this episode there was always something cringe worthy, i.e., Randi's Paso Doble.

The strongest couple of the night was Kayla and Jason.  They were poised in their waltz and killed it in their Shane Sparks zombie routine.  Kayla really needed last night, as she peaked too early this year, and Jason kind of surprised me by keeping up with her.  Did you love the zombie routine?  Was it Robsonesque for you?

My number two couple is Melissa and Ade by a nose—and the strength of their Tyce breast cancer number—just beating out Brandon and Jeanine.  Melissa and Ade really benefited from their previous pairing and while I didn't love their cha cha, their contemporary piece blew the place apart.  Did you see how many people were crying?  I was wondering though, do you think this routine would have been that emotional if you didn't know it was about breast cancer?  Unfortunately, while this was one of the highlights of the night it was also a low light, in that we had to watch Mia attempt to cry for five minutes while the other judges spoke.  By the time they got to her she was so over it I saw a production assistant sitting under the desk with a big juicy onion to keep up the waterworks.  She is vomitous.

That makes Brandon and Jeanine number three.  Their waltz was okay and their pop-jazz was great individually.  My problem with the latter was that they only touched each other once or twice throughout the whole routine.  It was like watching two solos.  I wonder if their was some deeper meaning to this that I didn't get.  The bottom line though, is that Brandon is the best male dancer on the show.  And somehow the Phillip-less Jeanine is a bit of a powerhouse.  It wouldn't surprise me in the least if she won the whole damn thing.

So our worst couple of the night is therefore Evan and Jeanette.  Ah, Evan, you Gene Kelly-like old timey dancer you.  You are the last person in the competition who is in over their head.  Emily, Evan's biggest problem is that he doesn't do the whole Kupono-I'm-crying-because-I'm-an-addiction-thing.  If Evan would just let go and not be embarrassed to sell it, he would be fine.  Let's face it, this is about our "favorite" dancer, not the "best" dancer.  The judges care more about your presentation than your skills.  I mean, Phillip was truly the worst contestant to go far that we have ever seen and he didn't care.  If Evan survives, and he won't, then he needs to lose the pretense and go for it.  He should hang out with Mia all week and take crying lessons.

So this is what I anticipate for tonight.  We are going to get a barrage of clips of dances you and I loved, like Wade's vagabond routine, Sabra and Neil's table routine, and Kaytee and Twitch's door routine.  Then we will see Evan and, I hate to say it, Jeanette go home.  Melissa squeaks by because of all the teary eyed lovers of her Tyce routine.  Thoughts?

Reverse Chauvinism

The term reverse racist has been thrown about a bit lately.  And rather than getting all dirty by discussing the merits of such a term, I'd like to relate to you something that I have been dealing with since becoming a stay at home dad.  A friend of mine is on a short at home stint with his son and he recently mentioned that he didn't like the way he was perceived when out and about with his City Mini stroller.  This opened the floodgates for me, and I started ranting about how I am always treated differently from the moms that I see around town, from doors closing in my double-strollered grill to not being allowed to join the Chevy Chase Mom's group based solely on my genitalia.  In the middle of my tirade though, I realized that I lacked direction on this topic.

So today I will start chronicling my long struggle with reverse chauvinism.  Many of the slights I experience are inconsequential—ironically, these usually make me the most angry—but some are rooted deeply in people's inability to accept that I am good at my new career.

Yesterday I was walking through our local giant, picking up a couple of things for dinner.  I had the kids in the stroller and, as is her wont, Annie was throwing a tantrum because I wouldn't let her walk.  Let me preface this next part by saying that on the Annie Richter Scale of 1 to 10, this was less than 3.  Out of nowhere, a woman approaches us and hands the girls some pieces of paper and says to me pityingly, "Here, they have these free coloring books up front, this should help."  Huh?  Where did you come from lady?  As soon as she gave them to us Tilda had one page in her mouth and Annie was asking for crayons.

While scowling at my "savior" I realized that she was the same woman who Annie wouldn't say hello to in the bread aisle.  I'm not usually one to vocalize my disappointment with strangers, but I thanked this woman for giving my 1 year-old something she could stuff in her mouth.  I don't think she understood.

The question is whether or not this woman would have done the same favor for a mother with two kids.  I think you know my stance on the subject.  In reality I didn't need her help, but she saw a dad with two children, one of which was screaming, and she felt she had to rescue me.  Would it not be the same if I saw her at the hardware store and asked her if she needed help figuring out the difference between a phillips head and straight head screwdriver?