All aboard the hot tamale train

Oh, So You Think You Can Dance, how I love you! Welcome back to my television screen, where I will replay your contemporary, jazz and hip hop routines over and over again until my vocabulary overflows with adjectives like "raw," "organic," and "buck."

On Thursday, we got to meet the top 11. I'm pretty pumped about the new format this season where I get to see some of my old favorites as the all-stars. So far, my new favorites are Lauren and Kent.

The top 11 also got 11 seconds to introduce themselves to America. Kind of reminds me of how we all need the standard "tell me about yourself" response to rattle off in job interviews. (Except in job interviews I don't usually talk about my plan to become a professional contemporary, Broadway, hip-hop, salsa dancer...even though I'm determined to find a way to make this a highly sought after skill in my corporate office.)

If you had 11 seconds to introduce yourself to the world, what would you say? I'm a writer, definitely not a speaker, so my 11 seconds would probably sound something like Kent's when he immediately got tongue-tied. Thinking they'd just do another take, he stopped for a moment and then said "what?! I don’t get to re-do it?" Finally, at about the 10-second mark, he just shouted "I'm single!" Bless his cute little heart. I'm sure we can all think of millions of seconds we’d like to re-do, but instead I guess we just do our best with the one take we get (and hopefully learn to laugh at ourselves for our flubs of all sizes).

Ooo, did you catch that? A life lesson and a dance lesson all in one episode! Nice. Enjoy your weekend folks and don't forget to check out the Tony Awards on Sunday!