A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

ADAM; ADAM & STEVE: We aren't regularly covering the audition rounds of SYTYCD, but I did want to note three things about the show that made me happy yesterday:

• The show announced that Adam Shankman is now a permanent third judge. I don’t know whether this means no more guest judges or they're just going to expand to four (I trust Nigel to keep the show on time even if it's the latter), but it doesn't matter. Shankman is hands-down my favorite of all of the judges, guest or permanent. He's articulate, knowledgable, constructive, entertaining, credentialed, upbeat, and enthusiastic. He enjoys the dancers, enjoys their dancing, and enjoys dancing himself -- he quite memorably got up on the spur of the moment to dance ballroom with an amateurish auditioner last season, softening the rejection quite a bit. He doesn't have a schtick, like Mary's yelling, or a hangup, like Nigel's macho fetish or Li'l C's hatred of the English language. Love this move.
• In one of the "this season on SYTYCD" audition montages last season, they showed a snippet of an insane move -- a guy skittering across the floor on his hands with his body parallel to the floor -- that they never showed on the show proper. Now I know why: it's from this season. That move belongs to B-boy Legacy (who apparently choreographs with Lauren), whose crab walk and slo-mo headstands are amazing. I can't imagine he won't make the top 20.
• Nigel apologized, sort of, for last season's "aren't the same-sex ballroom dancers disgusting freaks?" performance, putting this seasons same-sex ballroom auditioners through to Vegas (after choreography) and acknowledging that he got himself in trouble last season. This was nice enough for me to ignore that the judges' condescending "so brave/inspirational" comments to the same-sex ballroomers immediately followed virtually identical comments to Hot Deaf Girl (also through to Vegas, duh), making it seem as if the judges think gay and deaf are basically the same thing.