{"id":134,"date":"2010-11-28T22:26:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-28T22:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theblankscreen.co.uk\/selfdistract\/2010\/11\/28\/duncing-with-the-stars\/"},"modified":"2010-11-28T22:26:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-28T22:26:00","slug":"duncing-with-the-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/2010\/11\/28\/duncing-with-the-stars\/","title":{"rendered":"Duncing with the stars"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I mistimed Ann Widdecombe\u2019s dance: I\u2019d already got a cup of tea before she came on. But as worked hard at getting down to the tea leaves rather than watch her, I had a vision of the future.<\/p>\n

It was a very specific vision, the kind of vision you get only by accidentally treading on your Sky+ remote and starting playback of the finale of America\u2019s Dancing with the Stars. But it came to me like a vision of Christmas future because this year\u2019s finale there had many a similarity to what we\u2019re facing here.<\/p>\n

They had three people in their finale: Jennifer Grey, Bristol Palin and Kyle Somebody. Kyle Somebody plainly made a big impression on me. Jennifer Grey was rather irritating somehow but she could and did dance. And Bristol, daughter of Sarah \u201cWhich is north again?\u201d Palin was the Ann Widdecombe. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s a little unfair. Bristol Palin can\u2019t dance, she has no music in her, but you watch for a moment and all you think is that she\u2019s just young. Have another go in the future, bless.<\/p>\n

But she made it to the final off the back of the public vote: she needed to get votes from ill-informed people who can\u2019t see the evidence of their own eyes so, actually, she was fine there. You could\u2019ve predicted she\u2019d make it to the end.<\/p>\n

The problem was with the judges and this is where it\u2019s scaring me. If we vote Ann Widdecombe into the final or perhaps even to win, we have ourselves to blame. But if the judges copy what appeared to happen in America, they will start giving Ann better and better marks.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve already seen Len switch to the \u201cit\u2019s fabulous entertainment\u201d side. And this week we saw votes that bore more relation to how we\u2019re near the end of the series than to the quality of the dances: Pamela did not deserve 10s, even my previous favourite Kara did not deserve her 9s.<\/p>\n

Kara made a disappointing start because while the steps were there, the musicality wasn\u2019t. Nobody had that this week, nobody. <\/p>\n

They\u2019re just all jiggered from their jigs, aren\u2019t they?<\/p>\n

If I look up now, by the way, I can see the spines of two Titanic books on my shelves. Up in my office I\u2019ve probably got another four. Two weeks ago, I touched a piece of the Titanic\u2019s hull at the Las Vegas exhibition. A real piece. The real hull. The actual metal of the ship. It was a moment like an electric shock.<\/p>\n

And still I couldn\u2019t keep my attention on Ann and Anton\u2019s Titanic-themed dance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I mistimed Ann Widdecombe\u2019s dance: I\u2019d already got a cup of tea before she came on. But as worked hard … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4chyI-2a","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}