arbofo

Okay, I’ve seen Dancing Matt on a number of blogs by now, but I have to include him here- he’s too delightful to pass up.

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Here are this week’s favorites!

I’ve noticed that I have a strong preference for the lyrical pieces on the show- a bit of a surprise to me because I love to watch street dancers, and I try to attend Latin ballroom competitions whenever I can. But these dance forms/choreography don’t translate as well onto the show as the lyrical/jazz/contemporary pieces do, possibly because they tend to require more precision and speed. Regardless of whether one dance form is “harder” than the others, some forms are less forgiving to amateurs/first-timers. Whatever! SYTYCD is a guilty pleasure- I shouldn’t ask so much of it, and there is definitely some amazing dancing that happens on the show. Once again, I couldn’t pick just one, so here are my top 3:

Will/Jessica:

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I have a lot of pent-up energy today that needs to be spent. As soon as I get home, I’m totally going to dance along to this video:

OMG.

…is all I can say about Courtney’s dress.

There were several really strong dances for this week’s sytycd! I had three favorites, which I managed to narrow down to two… but I can’t go any farther than that. First up are Courtney and Gev, performing a contemporary piece. Like Courtney, I am a sucker for this kind of romantic-style choreography:

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Tonight was the premiere of SYTYCD. And, um… even though my roommates and I have DVR, my decision to attend various social events miiiiight depend on whether Cat Deeley and friends are making their scheduled appearance on Fox…

Cat performer, originally uploaded by fofurasfelinas

It’s your birthday
We gon party like its yo birthday
We gon sip bacardi like its your birthday

-50 Cent “In Da Club”

…yeah, I wish.

I’ve got a final exam on John Singer Sargent that I have to prepare for, so no parties for me. I did take the day off so I could bum around and run errands, though. It was nice! I shopped for basil and flowers at a nearby garden center, alongside elderly ladies who held up pots of rosemary at me and beamed. I traveled to the public library to pick up some dvds. Then I stuffed myself with pizza and cheesecake for dinner, and promptly slipped into a food coma.

I haven’t managed to do any studying yet, but the books are right in front of me, so you know… osmosis?

Sifting through my neglected rss feeds, I came across Jezebel’s birthday salute to Janet Jackson (she’s 42). It was good that I saw this, because I sort of forgot that other people were born on this day, too. But wait a minute. Why does it seem like my day is kind of a bummer, as far as famous birthdays go? Let’s take a look at the highlights for May 16th:

• Tori Spelling
• Tucker Carlson
• Liberace

Oy.

Okay, okay, there are some cool people on this list. Like Debra Winger and David Boreanaz (yup, I’m a fan of the Joss Whedon oeuvre). I shouldn’t be complaining.

It’s my birthday
Ain’t gon study like it’s ma birthday
I gon sip diet coke like it’s my birthday

• 100 best first lines from novels.
• Did you have to memorize the Gettysburg address as a school kid? If you had as hard a time with it as I did: revenge alà PowerPoint!
• But you probably shouldn’t use PowerPoint to analyze your relationship.
• Dooce uses Twitter.
• It could be interesting if Prince Philip did too! [via BoingBoing]
• 100 best last lines from novels.

As a kid, I loved maps. World maps, imaginary maps, treasure maps, you name it. I had a globe that doubled as a lamp, and envied my brother’s inflatable constellation ball.

Today, the obsession is still there, even if I no longer adorn my room with a National Geographic map. The Mary Baker Eddy Mapparium (as wells as the adjacent Hall of Ideas) is among my favorite places in Boston.

BoingBoing linked to a heat map yesterday of news coverage around the world. They also showed a stop-time video of Walmart’s expansion in the US from 1962. All this map craziness reminded me of when they wrote about England’s oldest accurate road map, which is kind of an insane artifact in itself.

Also in recent map-dom… Shakespeare’s Sister had a touching post about Tibet, which linked to a map on Wikipedia about the conflicting land claims at play.

And if maps, aren’t really your thing, maybe you should check out the Ten Most Beautiful Bridges via TreeHugger.

UPDATE: Here’s a link I forgot to include - see how many countries you can name in 5 minutes without looking at a map.  My roommate and I both got about 63ish, and my coworker just scored 77!