Outlandishly Hot Men, Will Dance For Stardom

So You Think You Can Dance just murders American Idol. For one thing, it's got more great legs than a volleyball tournament. More importantly, though, you never have to hear a judge talk shit about a contestant's "song choice" one minute, then turn around say a Celine Dion ballad is a "great great song" the next. If a song is treacle on American Idol - and around half are - it sinks the performance, barring a spectacular vocal turn. But on So You Think You Can Dance, half the charm is in the potential trainwreck inherent in watching an Asian breakdancer attempting a smooth-waltz with a contemporary-lyrical 6' cornfed whitegirl to an Avril Lavigne song.

That's not quite true. Half the charm is in the fact that these people who have nothing in common almost always pull it out, and in spectacular fashion.

It's certainly more exciting is that than watching "the rocker" try to sing Sinatra. Sure, it doesn't have the pins-and-needles peaks of AI when a gospel goddess is firing on all cylinders. But it has none of the lows, and AI barely sticks its head outta the valley these days.

The storylines are better, too. Partly because these people don't seem as asinine as the Idols - one-to-one, they've got a fuckton more character and charm and, especially, warmth, with none of the aseptic Idol stage banter that usually sounds like conversations I have with my doctor when he's trying to figure out whether or not I'm dying. But also because you can try to speculate about which partners are dating each other. Last year the money was on the kittenishly chubby Donyelle, a black modern dancer with a lip ring, and Benji, a stick-thin pasty national swing dance champion who had done Christian missionary work. Benji ended up winning the whole competition- shortly after eliminating Donyelle. I mean, come on.

That's entertainment.

Still don't believe me?

Booty clap, bitch.

It's also better than Dancing With The Stars, where you have to watch a bunch of mawkish and uncomfortable people be celebrities first and dancers second and slowly come into their own. Sure, that's part of the charm, but the level they reach at the end of the competition isn't even close to the in-built expertise of these superfit 20-somethings and late teens on the first episode of SYTYCD. And if they do a Shane Sparks hip hop routine, woooooo-boy, lookout, because that man might set your TV on fire.

But I won't lie to you. One of the most strangely appealing things about this show is the way it's jam-packed with outlandishly hot men, from all walks of life. I'm not saying the women aren't hot, because they are - in fact, this year, for the first time ever, the women, on the whole, are probably hotter than the dudes. But that doesn't change the fact that the ratio of men::doability has been as high on this show as is probably possible.

There was Blake

and there was Jamille

and there was Ryan (my favorite)

and there was Travis (whose myspace "who i'd like to meet" section includes, "i still havent met justin....and like what im trying to do with dance, i think he started a new art of music. along with timberland [sic]."

God, this is a good show. Can I get an amen? Actually, to hell with that. Lemme get a Ryan Conferido breakdancing routine. This man is a god.