All That Chaz!

TUTTLE MODE

by James Tuttle

Gentle Reader,

This season’s Dancing With the Stars debuted this week with its first new ballroom soundstage in thirteen seasons.  The set is bigger, taller and, as if that wasn’t enough, they have the largest damn disco ball in North America in there.  It’s nice that the folks at ABC are giving them a little extra room but, with the rows of multi-colored LED lights lining every balcony, it looks like a tribute to Show Boat on a tacky Carnival Cruise ship with lighting design by someone who normally does white stretch limos.

Scott and I first tuned into this show a few years ago when our wonderful friend Gilles Marini was competing.  He danced brilliantly and breathtakingly and was robbed of that coveted mirror ball trophy by some trick who’d won an Olympic medal or some shit.  He was pretty unknown at the time unless you had watched the first Sex and the City movie, in which his butt should have had it’s own credit, but shaking his groove thing on DWTS got him onto Brothers and Sisters and now his career is looking pretty healthy.