DWTS Running Journal

So I got hooked on Dancing With The Stars, thanks to Nicole Scherzinger and Erin Andrews. Their 'tractor beams sucked me right in; just like Lloyd Christmas I was helpless. And now the 2 hour Finale is here and I won't lie to my audience...I'm fired up right now.

I think Nicole has this thing in the bag, but honestly I'd be fine with Nicole or Erin. So I'm breaking out the running journal...that's right I'm blogging in real time to Dancing With The Stars....like Ke$ha said "maybe I need some rehab".

AND HERE WE GO....

9:01: Tom Bergeron just greeted us. I could go without Tom but I can't knock the guy, who would have guessed Celebrity Squares would have led him to the #1 show on television. If that's not the American Dream I don't know what is.

9:02 : The early season castoffs are back for an opening number. I'd like to have some stern words with the panel who chooses some of these "stars". In what world is Kate Gosselin a star. Its not called "Dancing with D-List Reality Show Hosts". Gosselin literally just made me induce vomit.

9:04: First shot of Bruno.....it was MAGNIFICENT!

9:06: A nice little profile of Nicole Scherzinger...it really wasn't fair that she was invited on the show being that she's a professional singer/dancer, but good God am I glad they asked her on. I wouldn't have started watching if they hadn't. By the way...her and her partner are definitely banging, no questions about it. Derick must be thinking "all those years of being harassed as a teenager has really paid off".

9:10: First dance from Nicole. Len Goodman, the tough judge loved it. UNREAL reaction from Bruno. He's doing his trademark half stand and yell..."the SEXUALITY was RIVETING!" according to Bruno. My new favorite impression to do is Bruno, how has there not been an SNL skit yet, this is a layup.

9:15: Evan Lycechek is up. He really creeps me out, he looks like a wax statue of himself. His Russian dancer has really grown on me, must be the accent.

9:26: Erin Andrews is up and she looks intense. She just seduced me. (They're definitely bangin too. On last night's episode when Erin was rolling around (see picture) on a bed, Bruno said they had a minor slip up on the bed, and Maks goes "Thats not the bed we practiced on". Good job by you Maks.)The dance was kind of bland, looked good, but not dazzling. Judges loved it though so shes still got a chance. Great reaction from Bruno.

9:30 : Just got a close up of the judges "deliberating". It looked so forced, like they were faking it. If you recall the Seinfeld episode where Jerry and Elaine are renting a car and they see the agent talking to her supervisor behind a door. They're not saying anything they're just gesturing so it looks like they are really busy. This looks like the judges are trying to solve a Chinese Algebra equation.

9:32: Nicole takes the top spot after the first round of dances, followed by Evan and then Erin. I have a conspiracy theory that ABC is showcasing Erin Andrews (ABC owns ESPN, the company that Erin works for) after her awful situation with a stalker. If this is at all true, she will survive the first round of voting.

9:33 Just got a shot of Edyta, one of the professional dancers that got eliminated early. And....Smokeshow.

9:38: Question, was Kate Gosselin the worst contestant in the history of the show? I think so. This is the only season I've watched and I'm about 97% confident on that statement. Steven Hawking could dance better.

9:40: Edyta is dancing, if only we were fortunate to have her around for the entire season. I'm completely mesmerized. As you can see from her picture here.

9:41: HAHA most unreal entrance ever by Buzz Aldrin. They have the Star Wars theme playing for the space hero. I don't think he was on the show long enough to be banging his partner, but who knows, those astronauts move quickly. Good for Buzz, and guess what, he's a much better dancer than Gosselin.

9:52: A preview for Sex and the City 2 just aired and it really bothers me. You mean to tell me that Sopranos can just end, but we have to deal with 2 miserable movies of Sex and the City. The one girl is like 60 years old. That's not a cougar, that's Garfield. Come on HBO, you're better than that.

9:55: WOAH, one dancer is about to get eliminated. This caught me way off guard, I didn't think the elimination was until the last hour of the show. I'm nervous, if Erin doesn't make it I'm gonna be pissed. Close up of Erin, she looks concerned. Close up of wax doll, no emotions. Close up of Nicole, man she's hot.......NOOOOO Erin is gone.

9:56: Erin is starting to get choked up, great speech from her. "I came here with crummy circumstances in my life, and you've helped me get my smile back". Maks is choked up also. They are 100% dating. Full tears from Erin while watching the recap of their dancing experience. They get an extra long last dance. I obviously knew she was quite attractive prior to this, but man she is a serious catch. She's got a rare combination of looks, personality and passion for sports. In the words of Champ Kind...."I like the way you're put together....WHAMMY"

10:04: Just got a commercial for "Wipeout", quite possibly the greatest guilty pleasure show on television. You get to watch people get crushed and fall into pools of water while trying to finish obstacle courses.

10:06: There doing some college challenge, and I could care less. Although they are dancing to a Pussycat Doll song. This is very interesting. Foreshadowing anyone? I wonder what Nicole is thinking right now? This has got to be a good Omen. (Side note, I just got off the phone with Dicky and told him Nicole is a pure lock. I really hope I didnt just jinx it for her and have the trophy go to Wax Doll).

10:10: A little celebrity opinion piece. Larry King and Mario Lopez just made cameos haha what a pairing that would be. Let's get Larry on the show, hell we had Buzz on this year, no reason not to see Larry in some suspenders burning up the dancefloor. Final line of that little piece goes to Regis, but I can only think of Dana Carvey doing his Regis impression when I actually hear the real Regis.

10:17: I legitimately just cringed and had to look away from the screen. Kate Gosselin just gave a shameless plug for her 2 new shows. This bothers me so badly, I'm so mad I could spit. I'm sitting in my room and contemplating spitting on my own floors I hate her so much. Horrible job by DWTS here. And now she's dancing to a Lady Gaga song and somewhere Lady Gaga is thinking "this girl has problems".

10:22: Back to business...Nicole is back. I feel like the Seinfeld episode when Newman eats a broccoli and needs to chase it with a shot of honey mustard to cleanse his pallet. Nicole just cleansed my eyes (I would have never thought being compared to honey mustard would be a compliment but thats what Kate Gosselin can do for you)

10:26: Just got taken into Nicole's dressing room. Never thought I'd get to experience that in my life.

10:29: Nice little cameo from Pam Anderson. Like Mike Tyson in the Hangover...."shes still got it".

10:31: Neicy Nash just said "jiggly parts" for the 1,217th time this season.

10:36: We've got smoke machines and flashing lights. It's go time.

10:38: A nice little retrospect piece with Nicole. This piece confirmed they are banging, again good job by Derrick, can't knock the hustle.

10:39: Nicole's last dance. Love it already and I've only seen her for 2 seconds.

10:40: LOCK IT UP. this contest is over.

10:41: The judges are blowing up Nicole. They loved it, the crowd loved. 10's across the board. LOCK IT UP.

10:47: Time for Wax Doll's retrospect piece. His partner Anna, definitely grew on me, she's not on the Edyta/Nicole/Erin level, but shes pretty nice. Wow, looks like these two are banging also, good for Evan.

10:49: I'll give it to Evan, it was a good dance, but he's got no chance. It wasn't even close to Nicole's level. Bruno gave him the thumbs up, but it sure sounded like a consolation prize speech. Same with Len and Carrie Anne Inaba.

10:51: Carrie-Anne Inaba gave Evan a 10, uh oh. Len gives a 9 and so does Bruno. And now were going to get 8 minutes of commercials and cliffhanger moments until they finally reveal the winner. Real quick, how many cliffhanger moments will they cram into the next 9 minutes? My guess is two "And the winner of this season's Dancing with the Stars is.......going to be announced after the break". Bite me textbook ratings ploy.

10:56: HOLY CANOLI...no cliffhangers, we're going right in...A buildup speech by Bergeron and Brooke Burke. And the winnner is................wow really long pause...........NICOLE!!!! Well that made this whole experience worthwhile. Nice 2nd place speech from Wax Doll and now the moment you've all been waiting for.

10:58: Trophy presentation for Nicole and Derrick. Shockingly, there were no tears from Nicole. She had to have expected to win, so she really can't be too shocked. The ceremony was kind of short, I was expecting more, maybe a last dance and a little speech. But I'm nitpicking.

I knew Nicole would win but I'm still satisfied. I have to say overall, this was a good television watching experience for me. I haven't had a lot of shows to follow recently and DWTS gave me what I was looking for. I do think most of my enjoyment came from watching Nicole and Erin, and it really helped that they made it through to the very end. It will be very interesting to see what stars are picked for the next season. I'm saying that my status to watch the next season hinges on what stars are picked, but Pasquale doesn't believe that for a second. He thinks I'm hooked regardless. For your viewing pleasure I've added another picture Nicole just for fun. Nothing wrong with that.


Dancing With The Stars returns September 20th, will I be back to watch? We shall see.....

Anniversary Week Continues

Anniversary week rolls on here at ETC ETC ETC and what a special edition this is. Before we get into the action, make sure you check out the Nic Cage Tribute Video from the last post in case you missed it.


Ladies and Gentleman, boys and girls I promised you a special week and we have something really special. Way back when the blog first started, we were blessed with a Gripe from Dicky and it was stellar. The readers demanded more and Dicky was the hottest writer in the blog-o-sphere and then like Keyser Soze, we never heard from him again. Well the anger has boiled over and now he's back and he's taking aim at the social media. It started with a simple email comment in which Dicky said "there's no way people are this happy in real life". So without further adieu.......Heeeeeeere's Dicky


Dicky's Gripe


I have just recently become familiar with the phenomenon known as Facebook...yes i realize that makes me seem either very old since it seems like everyone and their mother has been on facebook for years, or completely out of the loop, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it until recently when I was forced to for business purposes. Now I know what you are asking yourselves: "Dicky, what is wrong with you, how have you lived without Facebook for all of these years." Quite well actually.


There is something to be said for having some sort of privacy in your life. Don't get me wrong, there are some redeeming qualities of social media. It certainly makes it easier to keep in contact with old friends from college etc. etc. etc. (see what I did there). Plus, who doesn't enjoy "creeping" (to borrow a term from a friend) around facebook pictures every now and then. However, it has recently come to my attention that either there are some of the hap hap happiest bunch of assholes in the world on Facebook, or you're all a bunch of liars. The amount of exclamation points and smiley faces being used on facebook is slightly disturbing. "Just had the greatest breakfast ever with my favorite people in the world!!! :)".........really? It's just breakfast, get over it. In an hour you will probably be sitting on the toilet because of that breakfast and if I see someone post "Just had the greatest shit ever in my favorite stall!!!" I'm just going to snap.


I refuse to believe that everyone is really that thrilled with the way their day is going, and if you are I would kindly request the name and number of your drug dealer. Maybe its filling some sort of void in your actual life, and you feel you have to come across as the happiest person in the world on facebook. Maybe you are trying to make everyone else jealous of that amazing breakfast that you had for whatever reason. I can't put my finger on the reasons behind why people feel the need to just gloat about their day, but let's tone it down a little bit shall we. I know I may be a little more cynical than most (its genetics) but I don't think I'm the only person that feels this way. I know for a fact there are several contributors to this blog that have in fact rid themselves of facebook because they couldn't handle it anymore. I won't go that far because like I said, it can have some redeeming qualities but I propose this advice: lets try to keep it real people


Great to have you back Dicky.


For those who have followed the blog I'm sure your remember The Pauper (if you don't check the archives. and shame on you). His cross country trip of enlightenment has put him on the road to becoming a doctor. After 1 full year of Med School he doesn't seem any more doctor-y to me, aside from the expert opinions he provides and the white lab coat he's been sporting lately. But he's got one last summer of relaxation and has agreed to a new role here at ETC ETC ETC. Every Thursday the Pauper will review whatever we want him to review....a movie, tv show, sporting event, news story, fine wines, rare cheeses, new flavors of gum....whatever we want. So we will open up the phone lines for requests and anything can be submitted via comments on the blog, email or facebook (see what I did there Dicky). For his first piece, I asked the Pauper to see and review the movie Robin Hood, the number 1 most anticipated movie of the summer. So here's the Pauper in his new segment that I'm calling........

Ask A Doctor

“Thank god all the bad guys wear dark eyeliner or else I wouldn’t be able to tell they were bad guys…” commented one of the females with whom I saw the movie (Don’t read into that statement) Robin Hood invoking a timeless observation of good and evil.

This is a useful trick (less a disappearing card and more a James Pancotti Halloween tactic – crude and effective) that lots of filmmakers use to emphasize dichotomies in a story – one that anyone who didn’t lick a frog or snort cat’s pee when they watched Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator knows. Nevertheless, this brings us to an important point: You didn’t care or even notice in Gladiator because the story was utterly engrossing, linear and reasonable. In Robin Hood a viewer picked up on these subtle things because the story didn’t keep you interested – Malarkey from Band of Brothers making wise-ass jokes, the pissed-off commando from Lost scouring the English “jungle” for large women and Cate Blanchett telling Crowe that she sleeps with a knife and she’ll cut off his genitals. Somewhere among all of this Robin Hood breaks apart when you attempt to work out in your mind what precisely you are watching.

So how does this occur and why? Imagine you’re ready an extra ½ hour to an hour early one morning for work or school. You snag your cup of Joe and you say to yourself - “Yes, this is my f@#$ing day”. You hop into your tunafish can-colored ‘96 Chevy Impala and decide to take the long scenic route to get to your destination because you can. It will be fun you say and you may learn something new about a back road that can save you time in the future. You can imagine where this is going – You get lost, blow the suspension, spill the joe on the Dockers and waddle into work only to hear “Goddamn it Johnson, this isn’t a Creed concert – please, on time and without piss stains on your pants” We are in the backseat of Ridley Scott’s Impala. I don’t want to discourage this among the fledgling filmmakers out there – sometimes that road goes somewhere and you learn something new about the trip or yourself. In this case, it didn’t. The journey was quite novel and picturesque through the window (if those goddamn back windows went all the way down it would have been very scenic), but he lost touch with the realistic “historically accurate” story of Robin Hood that he proffered. His story sits in a no-mans land between the epically imaginary and the historically accurate (see Crowe putting an arrow through the carotid artery of the villain at 500 yards out).

Moreover, the people in the entertainment industry and those being entertained have this growing need for our entertainment to be “historically accurate” as if a make-uped Russell Crowe is not enough to dismount that claim. I have no problem with this trend in general. A demand for factual foundation could do all of us and ESPN a little good. The problem exists in using it as a ruse, which I hate to say Ridley Scott does here. There is a scene where Robin Hood demands of the King of England “liberty by law” and prepares a document to that end. Historically, we know this coerced document to be the Magna Carta of the year 1215, an early harbinger of republican government and a heftily cited “ground zero” for liberty in Western Europe. Thus the following thought albeit lengthily worded (I apologize in advance) ensued in my head:

Am I being asked to believe that Robin Hood - a man who by virtue of not being a clergyman was likely illiterate - was

1) the brains behind arguably the most important document in Western European history espousing republican principles and

2) a well-nautilused, brawny, sinewy “William Wallace” who led armies and charged beachheads giving the King of England advice on tactics?

Ridley Scott may beg to differ and forcefully reply back “Are you not entertained!!” I could only reply: So Mr. Scott, what is Michael Bay drinking these days? Still demolishing those bay breezes like they were on-set buses?

Don’t get me wrong. I like Ridley Scott. I enjoyed Kingdom of Heaven, White Squall and Blade Runner among others. I loved Gladiator. He has ability, he has creativity and he has style. Nevertheless, we see Crowe and Ridley Scott together here as a victim of their own success. Robin Hood was always a dude singing forest hymns and wearing a green leotard until Costner and Crowe donned leather hoods and cloaks. His story, like King Arthur’s, is a constellation of myth and fact set in a watershed moment in English History. After this movie we remain in a similar limbo about Robin Hood. Some will enjoy the mottling of action sequences threaded together throughout the movie but the fact remains that Robin Hood does not give them a reasonable context. Even though the beautiful scenery of this movie illuminates a 12^th century world we have yet to see on screen as fully and as masterfully as Scott imagines it here, Robin Hood nevertheless falls short by attempting to crystallize a legend in a neat and tidy way with all the historical corners tucked in, a legend that probably is not meant to be crystallized.

So this kicks off a summer series of reviews. Each week, probably every Thursday I will write a review for the blog. As you know this blog prides itself in being accessible and interactive, we will be accepting any and all suggestions. I am willing to review any sporting event, TV show episode/series, movies including and especially movies like Plan 9 from Outer Space (Seinfeld fans will know this as “the one that works”).

(Sidenote: I actually saw that movie recently as well as the Tim Burton biopic about its odd cross-dressing director, Ed Wood - Johnny Depp stars. Its like pretending to drop acid on Wednesday afternoon)

All ideas are welcome including reviews of mid-80’s McEnroe v. Connors Wimbledon matches.

Please forward all requests to the godfather himself, Mr. Ryan Cazalet.

Please forward all hate mail his way as well and he can give me an itemized list of my wrong doings with the phrase “Good morning Mr. Phelps” at the top.

So if you liked this review or hated it and know I can do better, I invite you to join me every Thursday night this summer with a fresh Marlboro 100 (maybe Snus and a beer these days) or a glass of milk and cookies, on your iphone or on your computer, at the bar or in bed and we will share in the simple delights of civilization. Every writer (I use this term very loosely with myself) likes to imagine his readers with both a pleasant summer breeze and a slight smurk on their face under a deep purple orange twilight. So meet me there if you dare, I’ll have the box of wine.

Thanks Pauper for that insightful critique. I have now adjusted my Summer Movie Preview, and officially declare Inception to be my new number 1 most anticipated.

I asked the Pauper to use the Nic Cage Movie Review System for Robin Hood ....

Me: So let me ask you for your official review of Robin Hood on the Nic Cage Movie Review System, 1-4 Cages, 1 being Bad Lieutenant and 4 being Stan Goodspeed in the Rock

Pauper: 2 cages and a "Caster Troy" = 2.5

So here it is...2 Cages and a Castor Troy. The Request lines are open for anyone who wants to "Ask a Doctor" and have something reviewed. So until next time, as always....STAY CLASSY!