So You Think You Can Win an Emmy?

So I definitely was happy with some of the Emmy nominees this year, including How I Met Your Mother & Neil Patrick Harris, Jim Parsons of Big Bang Theory and the Flight of the Conchords. But of course there were many ommisions, including Pushing Daisies and for me the biggest: no So You Think You Can Dance in the Reality Competition category and no Cat Deely in the host category. WTF? SYTYCD is by far better than Dancing With the Stars! The dancers and choreographers are more talented, the format is funner and Cat Deely is cooler than Tom Bergeron.

Well at least SYTYCD dominated in the Best Choreography category, nabbing 4 out of 6 nominations. For those of you who are unfamilier with the show I have posted below the nominees. For those of you who are super fans of the show like me, enjoy once more. BTW, Bleeding Love with Chelsea (now on DWTS) and Mark is my fave because Mark was the love of my life last season. Although Mercy is AMaaaazing.

Tabitha & Napolean: Bleeding Love with Chelsea & Mark


Mia Micheals: Mercy with Katie & Twitch


Tyce Diorio: Adam & Eve with Jessica & Will


Dmitry Chaplin (former cast member): A Los Amigos with Chelsea & Joshua (the winner last season)

Best Potter Movie Yet?

Yup, I am a dorky-ass Harry Potter Fanatic. Last night we went to see the Half Blood Prince and we arrived a half hour early thinking it was pretty early. Not so much. The line to get into the theater was out the door and beginning to round the block when we arrived. By the time we got in the best seats we could find were in the fourth row. But we did not care (hell it was like a bootleg IMAX). The whole audience was ravenous for some Potter!!!

The movie, in my opinion, is the best Potter movie yet. Adaptation-wise, there were definite ommisions (some good, some bad) and additions (most of which were good), but for three distinct reasons the movie worked:

CAST/ACTING: The three leads (Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson) have all grown leaps and bounds as actors. They are so much more natural and you can see their natural comraderie that only comes from working with one another for years. The supporting cast is amazing as always. The new addition of Jim Broadbent as Horace Slughorn was perfection.

HUMOR: This is by far the funniest of the Potter flicks. If I am not mistaken, some of the cheeky lines that got the biggest laughs were not even from the books. The screenwriters should be commended. Slughorn and Luna have some of the juciest comic bits, but teenagers in love/lust are funny enough on their own.

MATERIAL: After rereading the last couple books, although I have strong feelings for Goblet of Fire, Half Blood Prince is the best of the series. It strikes a wonderful balance of mystery, humor, dread, hormones and sadness.

If you aren't a dorky-ass Potter fan I really think you will still enjoy this movie. I think I will be giving it a repeat viewing in the theater myself. If anything, this movie has gotten me out of my Twilight stupor. Go Potter!!

An important movie: Food, Inc.

To tell the truth, I am only a part-time pop culture junkie. An amateur of sorts. I enjoy my pop junk, don´t be mistaken, and I gobble copious amounts of random entertainment in all mediums and forms (videogames are important, darn it!), but my true addiction, the thing that keeps me awake at night and really makes me a nerd is policy and politics.

I am a political junkie. Guilty as charged. Better get out of the way if you don´t like it on social occasions, and avoid leaving any opening for me to start blabbering about legislation.

There is a way to mix and match those two strands of my brain, however: the documentaries. I love them. I don´t care about those about African monkeys, killer bugs and crap like that, but I adore those that involve policy or politics. I loved "The Fog of War" (and know that Robert McNamara is dead, it is worth revisiting), I adored "Boogie Man" (if you know who Lee Atwater is, you will understand why) and I was enthralled with "The Smartest Guys in the Room" (Enron, remember?). They are fun. I love them. They teach you cool stuff.

Sometimes, though, you see a documentary that it is not just fun. It is important. Al Gore made one not long ago; now in theaters there is another of its kind, and you must go see it right now: "Food Inc.". "Super Size Me" might have changed the way you looked at burgers, but this one is going to make you change how you think about food completely, and I mean it.

I don´t want to get too much into detail (this is not my policy blog, after all; go gorge yourself with my wonkery here), but the idea is that the food that we eat is bad. Not bad as we make bad choices and don´t eat veggies; it is more about eating meat that is basically produced in the worst possible farms you can imagine, vegetables that are controlled by giant corporations, and all subsidized by a farm policy that ends up being welfare for rich companies and help for the worst possible food.

Seriously, go see this movie. It is not just fun or interesting. It will make you see things a complete different way by shedding light to a whole bunch of issues that you didn´t even know they existed. I mean it.

Screw MJ: Billy Mays is dead

Billy Mays, king of the pitchmen, master of the spoken word, emperor of the holy TV turd, is dead. He is the one true celebrity big loss this weekend; a man on his prime leaves us, when he was doing his best work.

Billy Mays was awesome. He is the only human being that is allowed to speak in Caps Lock ALL THE TIME EVEN WHEN HE IS ORDERING FOOD AND/OR HAVING SEX WITH HIS WIFE:



Actually, the though of Billy Mays having sex with his wife while selling HIS BIG UNIQUE DICK AND WAIT THERE IS MORE in Billy-Mays-speak is highly disturbing, and I wish I hadn´t put it in your brain. Sorry.

I just did.

Jokes aside, Mays was actually a really impressive individual. He started pitching junk in Atlantic City, and impressed the owner of a little known cleaning product (OxiClean) enough that he decided to put him on TV. He made the brand, and it hasn´t been the only thing he build from the ground.

I really don´t know how he did it (I think his voice is hypnotic, in a bizarro, I am blasting you with the sonic equivalent of a ton of bricks kind of way), but he did sell his stuff. Death of salesman indeed.

The music game we are waiting for: Beatles - Rock Band

The best music game of all time is, no questions asked, Rock Band 2. It is fun, it is challenging, it has the best tracklist ever and it has allowed me to sing Pixies songs in Madison Square Garden.

They have a ton of good songs in this game, but they are missing something. They are missing the holy grail of music games, the band to rule them all. No, it is not Led Zeppelin, you idiots. The Beatles: Rock Band is coming this fall.



As you see from the (excellent) trailer, the game is a trip down the band's career. It looks sweeeeeet. Just in case we were wondering if the guys at Harmonix were going to nail the art design completely, they released recently the opening animation of the thing. And boy, does it look pretty. Check it out.

CeDeLiGa Update: Dead Heat

Well, well, well what an interesting week in Celebrity Deaths. Like they say - it comes in threes and this week was no exception. Ed McMahon, Farrah & Michael Jackson. I have to say I feel bad for Farrah. I mean obviously it sucks for her that she died, but Michael Jackson had to go steal her thunder.

Anyhow...the Celebrity Death List Game is now a dead heat (pun abso-freaking-lutely intended): I have one point for Bea Arthur and my friend Jster in Cali got one for Ed McMahon. The funny thing is that she only picked one and gosh darn it - it hit!! She better get to picking her final two because if Dick Clark goes next she'll be sorry!!

As for this whole Michael Jackson death - I really think it is such a big deal because he truly is the first major death of an idol of the tech generation. Twitter and Perez were crashing when the news broke. I don't think that there will be another freak out like this until Madonna or Oprah goes. I don't feel upset about his passing but if he had died in the early 90s, before his weird ways got out of control, I probably would be sobbing. Don't Stop til You Get Enough is in my top five songs of all time.

The best thing that has come out of MJ passing is this video. Anderson Cooper interviewed Sheryl Crow last night and played this clip. I do not think I have EVER seen bigger hair. Enjoy.

Wait, Wait ... Huh?

If I have not previously mentioned it on the Dump, I am a massive This American Life fan. I know you all must be rolling your eyes, thinking what a tragic hipster. Blame my husband and brother for getting me into listening to public radio. But honestly the show is so frickin good and it makes me laugh and/or cry every week. I highly endorse downloading the podcast, if you do not already.

Anyhow - to the point - this past week's episode was about origin stories and there was one I just had to share. It turns out that Peter Sagal (amazingly funny host of another NPR show, Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!) wrote the script that would later become....wait for it.....Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights.

Turns out Peter was commissioned by Lawrence Bender (producer of Pulp Fiction) to write a gritty script about politics in Cuba during the rise of Castro. Of course the wise powerful people in Hollywood asked him to tone it down and make it more like Dirty Dancing, which had just been a big hit at the time. He did his best but totally hated it and it ended up sitting on a shelf until the early 2000s when somebody decided to take it off the shelf, blow the thick layer of dust off of it and turn it into the gratuitous sequel of the best movie in the world.

I you have no clue who Peter Sagal is, I recommend listening to a few episodes of Wait Wait, then you will realize how absolutely amazing it is that he is responsible for that movie.