James and Angela have been keeping up with Dancing With the Stars, and James showed a bunch of us the most recent episode. Thanks to the joys of TiVo, he was able to fast forward to the best portions, namely three dances:

Drew Lachey dancing to "Thriller"
Jerry Rice dancing disco while wearing a giant afro wig
Drew Lachey freestyle dancing while wearing a leather cowboy vest, blue jeans, and cowboy boots

A few snippets of the two Drew Lachey dances and the Jerry Rice dance are up at the show's website, at least until the finale on Sunday. The clip quality isn't great, and the image isn't large, but even so, some of that awe-inspiring goodness comes through. Sadly, YouTube only has a really low-res copy of Drew Lachey's "Thriller" performance. And in this case, high res is necessary to appreciate the genius of Drew Lachey's many facial expressions, especially his closing gaze into the camera in "Thriller" and his dance-closing "blow out my six-shooter baby" move in that cowboy dance.
Of Sasha Cohen's long performance at the Olympics the other day, commentator Sandra Bezic cooed, "That's the difference between Sasha and other skaters. Everyone else skates to Romeo and Juliet. Sasha is Juliet." Along those lines, I'd add, "Everyone else dances to Michael Jackson's 'Thriller.' But Drew is the King of the Undead."

"Nick, bro. Just watch. And learn."

As one judge said, "Drew, you're ready for the lead in Brokeback Mountain the Musical."

"Throw me the ball! I'm open!"

"I. CAN'T. HEAR. YOUUUUU!!!"

Also enjoyable are the occasional pans over to Nick Lachey in the audience, who has to be thinking that he's seeing his future enacted before his very eyes. Let's hope that he brings down the house by bringing out Drew's "Thriller" cape for a tribute performance of the "Thriller" dance on Dancing With the Stars 2008.
As for Jerry Rice, I'm just glad the audience has had the wisdom to continue to vote him in week after week despite the fact that the judges have done their best to score him out. Last year's show lost all appeal for me after the judges evicted Evander Holyfield. I'd love to remember Rice for all his fingertip catches for the 49ers, all those blowouts he provided me in the first version of Sega's Madden Football, but the thought of him in the huge afro wig may be too powerful and indelible an image to move out of its position in first recall.
"To me it's just like the Super Bowl, I want it really bad," said Jerry Rice in his post dance interview about the Dancing With the Stars championship. Really?
What's even odder to me is that all three of the dances referred to above earned great scores and rave reviews from the judges which shows you how little I know about ballroom dancing. After the "Thriller" dance, I thought to myself, "Hey, those are some moves I pulled out after a few too many trips to the cash bar at the last wedding I attended."
Then the first judge came out with her verdict, "The pasa doble is all about passion and power, bringing control to the dance floor. You dominated that dance floor!" And I thought to myself, "I've been doing the pasa doble all along?!"