#27: Ya' gotta give me somethin', honey!

[ldyjocelyn]

Good Lord, is that man cute. And his smile lights up a thousand Broadways. But damn kf for stealing that picture as an avi.

LdyJ, you are welcome to take it if you want it as I remain in your debt -- long, long time. I'm sure I can find another picture JUST AS CUTE! He has a tendency to photograph CUTE !!!

:F_05BL17blowkiss:

Nah, I'm fine with you having it....as long as you try to post once a page, so I can stare at it. *g* Besides, I like my "cute Clay trying to sign almost-as-cute-as-Clay Tom" avi.

Wow he looks graet in the new pictures. I may have turned the corner on the blonde hair.

You know, I was thinking the same thing. I think for me it's just I'm finally used to it.

But one thing remains the same always = that smile..omg he looks so damn happy.

Oh yeah. That smile. He simply lights up when he smiles, and that makes me just smile as well.

His eyes look a litle devlish!

Does this mean he's changing record labels?

[annabear]

Hey all you dieters, I'm feeling kinda lonely in the Shaping Up forum these days, have y'all fallen off the wagon?

Is that wagon anything like the cart that Not Dead Fred doesn't want to be on? :chair:

From scrpkym at CB:

Well, I just made it home from my mini-vacation to NYC. I'm glad you all enjoyed the pics I posted from the last two nights. I wish I could just move to NYC for the next two months and take pics of him every night!!!

I'm not very good at recaps, which is why I usually just stick to the pics, but I wanted to mention a couple of small change ups I noticed. It's been mentioned many times, but every time I see the show, Clay seems to get better......even when you think he couldn't possibly do it better. I love noticing all the little differences and watching for the ad-libs especially when he's not on mic. I loved the way he delivered the line "African swallows are non-migratory so they couldn't carry a coconut back ANYWAY", with emphasis on "anyway".....so cute! And he also changed up some emphasis in the Not Dead Yet scene too. He said "I can't take him like THAT!" when the emphasis used to be more on "can't" It's just small little changes, but they make a big difference.....especially since he's just much more comfortable and natural in his delivery.

During the French taunter scene, he is so funny when tying up his horse. On Tuesday, Patsy seemed to be worried about Clay's horse, so Clay made this action as if to say "It's okay -- he's okay" and then pet the horse. Very cute! And then during the "le vache" part, Patsy's line is "what could they possibly do with a cow?" and Clay makes a milking motion with his hands and says "milk it?" with this confused look on his face. OMG! Soooo cute!

His big number is AMAZING!!! I loved how he warmed up before he started playing the piano. He floated his fingers above the keys, but kept moving them around....as if he wasn't sure where he was going to start playing. It was very funny!

And the guard scene is THE BEST!!! I laugh more and more at that every time. He's just sooo silly! And now when he starts to leave the room with Herbert's father, he does this little hop-kick before he starts to walk -- soooo cute! I LOVED THAT!!!

And he changed up the finale too. You've all seen the video from the TV footage where he says he's found his grail....."MUSICAL THEATER" He used to do it with his legs spread, arms out and knees bent. Well, now he's doing it with all his limbs pulled in before he bursts into his song and dance.

I'm sure there is much more.....more than I even noticed. I LOVE THIS SHOW! And I can't get enough!

I haven't read that part before in any recaps about milking the cow! Add me to the list of those who are bummed about missing Chris S.

Well, the 'white death' has arrived in my neck of the woods this morning. I wasn't really expecting much until they said on the news that this storm could rival the one we had just before Christmas 2004. I remember that one well - four of us took off on the snow covered, deserted roads the next morning for Detroit. We had to get off the parking lot that was I-75 and take back roads, but we were sure we'd be fine as long as were heading north - hee!

Is it April YET???

ETA: OMG!! How funny is it that the theme for our campaign drive for the Fine Arts Fund here at work this year is - are you ready for this?? - "MONTY PEYETHON"!!! The flyer they just passed out even has the Holy Grail & flying la vaches on it! :lmaosmiley-1:

[muskifest]

ooooh....keepingfaith's avi is a keeper...guy in the picture ain't to bad, either. Here's the thing about the hair for me: he looks great in these stage door pics with the tousled mop and the color doesn't do me one way or the other. But....the texture looks as if his poor hair has been subjected to treatment after treatment of color and...

wait, it already is.

heh.

No, really. Jamie had better be careful with boyfriend's locks, y'all. It looks pretty straw-i-fied to me.

Anyhoo...he's real purdy and I'm getting super excited about seeing him finally Mar. 26th. I am bummed, however, that I won't be able to see the special give and take he seems to have with Chris in the Galahad role and since the new Galahad will only be in his second performance when I'm there, I'm just hoping that there's nothing lost in the overall effect of their stage time together. BTW, has there been any word about who will replace Chris?

My sixteen-year-old daughter is flying high---she and some pals are getting pedicures today after school in preparation for the prom tomorrow. Hee! She and a girlfriend are each other's 'date'; another girl and a girlfriend are another 'couple'; then three other girls with their boy dates and they are all renting a limo and going to and from the prom together tomorrow night. Fun. All the girls are getting ready together at one of the girl's houses and the girls' families are doing a pot luck there before everybody leaves! I'm supposed to be bringing a vegetable. (Does mac n cheese count as a vegetable? Clay?)....

[claytonic]

I don't understand why Clay has had this 'reputation' for not being able to dance.

This video (Christmas 1999, I believe) shows him moving to music very well indeed. And I also don't understand the big deal made of his 'bad' dancing when he did Grease on Idol. His hip movements then were just fine to me, and I am not at all surprised he is doing so well with his dancing on Spamalot, anyone who is so musically talented as he is WOULD have some ability with rhythm. And he has lot of ability.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vvr5uk8VhtA...feature=related

I don't get it.

[KAndre]

Mainly, because he says he can't dance, and honestly? Most of the time he's absolutely right. I see him as having some rhythmical moves occasionally. And honestly, on the Santa thing? That's not particularly good dancing - that's not embarassing yourself. With a LOT of hard work and training, he was an extremely competent dancer in some very choreographed routines in Spamalot in that first show and apparently has improved by leaps and bounds - I love the man but he is not a natural dancer. I think Clay has some basic moves memorized and he can shag fairly well (that has been seen in concert), but especially watching many of the group performances in AI (they had the boy in the back for a reason), his lack of improvision. And oddly enough, a lot of people who can sing have no dancing talent at all. Two completely different talents, and impressive when they overlap - there was a reason that for years the majority of pop singers stood at a mike and sang or sat on a stool and sang. The ones that are really talented at both? Elvis. James Brown. Michael Jackson. Prince. Maybe Tina Turner. I can't really think of too many other artists - Justin Timberlake/Usher/Britney I find to be much stronger dancers than singers, maybe Beyonce.

Keep in mind I tend to have as high a standard for a "dancer" as I do for a vocalist - and to me, in many ways dancing is harder, with a much shorter career span. Ask Paula.

[luckiest1]

Eh, I always thought Clay could dance well enough, but he lacked the confidence and training. I think he's got both of those things now, and look out world! There's no stopping him.

I can't wait to see this whole thing with my own eyes next week. From the little clips we've seen, he's come a looooong way from those group numbers on AI2!

[claytonic]

Mainly, because he says he can't dance, and honestly? Most of the time he's absolutely right. I see him as having some rhythmical moves occasionally. And honestly, on the Santa thing? That's not particularly good dancing - that's not embarassing yourself. With a LOT of hard work and training, he was an extremely competent dancer in some very choreographed routines in Spamalot in that first show and apparently has improved by leaps and bounds - I love the man but he is not a natural dancer. I think Clay has some basic moves memorized and he can shag fairly well (that has been seen in concert), but especially watching many of the group performances in AI (they had the boy in the back for a reason), his lack of improvision. And oddly enough, a lot of people who can sing have no dancing talent at all. Two completely different talents, and impressive when they overlap - there was a reason that for years the majority of pop singers stood at a mike and sang or sat on a stool and sang. The ones that are really talented at both? Elvis. James Brown. Michael Jackson. Prince. Maybe Tina Turner. I can't really think of too many other artists - Justin Timberlake/Usher/Britney I find to be much stronger dancers than singers, maybe Beyonce.

Keep in mind I tend to have as high a standard for a "dancer" as I do for a vocalist - and to me, in many ways dancing is harder, with a much shorter career span. Ask Paula.

Well I agree he is certainly not in the same class as Michael Jackson and James Brown, but few are. I wasn't comparing him to them, I was comparing him to the all the others who can't dance any better than he can, and no one made a big deal about branding them as a crappy dancer. They moved to music as adequately as Clay did.

I thought they had Clay and Ruben at the back because they were both over 6'! Carmen could not dance either, and actually I don't think any of them from AI2 could dance very well, except maybe Charles and Corey. But no one made a big deal of any of them except for Clay. That was my point.

Pawler is an awesome dancer, but I will never understand how she managed to sell 30 million records as a SINGER!!

[ldyjocelyn]

I don't understand why Clay has had this 'reputation' for not being able to dance.

Easiest answer to the question: Clay says it himself. A lot. Anytime someone says to him "you can dance," he says "no way." I honestly think he'll never change with that either.

Personally, I'm with luckiest in that I think he moves pretty well, and I think with training (such as what he's getting via Spamalot), he'll get better. But I sincerely think he'll NEVER EVER fully admit to "being a dancer," or even "I can kinda sorta dance on occasion." I think much of that is his way of playing down things -- his self-deprecating humor.

[Couch Tomato]

I think Clay moved consciously and you could tell he wasn't comfortable with it on Idol. With dance you can't do that or you'll never be good. I don't know if anybody else on idol looked like they were counting or concentrating on where their next step went. So I do think it's a little more than Clay saying he isn't good although I know some of it is schtick. The bottom line for me is he thinks too much. And I totally agree that he lacked confidence and training. Spamalot is definitely a triumph for him.

The hip shake? He didn't believe!!

[rohdy]

Clay may not be a dancer...but I do believe he loves to dance. From the AI trained routines to WDC...to dancing with his mom at the Christmas concert.....to the TV themes this past summer....he feels and like to move with the rhythm.

And I like to watch.

And giggle.

And swoon.

And salivate.

And *sigh*......

[KAndre]

I think also because people generally don't refer to the others as dancers at all or in the context of dancing period - in general most people and even a lot of entertainers aren't. I can't remember any comment of anyone else from AI's dancing at all (and frankly beside a little sidestepping, most of them don't dance) in general they don't really dance. I think it first started with Disco night on AI2, Clay planted those big ol' feet in one spot and and staying like he was nailed down, with only a couple of hip twitched and Paula started ragging on him about dancing and he did the standard response of 90% of the guys I know: "Oh no, no no - can't do it". Did the Grease thing and had fun with it; made a point of announcing his major accomplishment of finally doing a shoulder shake that Trenyce had been trying to teach him for weeks.

For me, managing to do a grapevine, or a 1-2-3 kick or even the Bump does not a dancer make. Clay moves OK, if not great - there is a lot of awkwardness in both his positioning and general motion and I really do see his hyperflexibility and the size of his feet contributing a lot to that (and if I never, EVER see him turn his feet around again, it will be too soon - I shuddered to see that). Clay really has an amazingly graceful flow to his hand movements in just about everything that he does that to me shows a HUGE counterpoint to the awkwardness of his legs and feet. I have lots and lots of clips of his hands....

I think Couchie is right - he tends to be overly conscious of his body movements and is much better when he just moves instead of thinking about it - but I still don't think he moves to the level of what I would call a dancer - either amateur (and I mean club dancing) or any level of professional.

[atinal]

I think Spamalot has proven that Clay can be taught to dance. I also think Clay would have been considered a good dancer if you'd had put him up against most of the guys I went to school with. You know the ones that would muster up enough nerve to ask you to slow dance, but if a fast song came on they were long gone. It's funny, my son, who is Clay's age, when he is goofing off looks like he would be a pretty good dancer, but I'm pretty sure that if you put him on a dance floor, well, he just wouldn't do it.

I guess this is another case of everyone having their own filter, ha. If you were exposed mostly to guys who were made to feel self conscious or less masculine because they liked to dance or where just good dancers, then you probably think he's pretty good or at least has the potential to be pretty good. I can't think of a single guy I knew "back in the day" that would have been able to "shag" as well as Clay demonstrated during Still the One on the NAT. I wish he'd have continued doing that. On the other hand if you put him next to the "boy band" and other choreographed artists, I don't think he's that good, but he wins on the singing end and that's mainly what I'm here for.

[Lotus]

I don't understand why Clay has had this 'reputation' for not being able to dance.

Easiest answer to the question: Clay says it himself. A lot. Anytime someone says to him "you can dance," he says "no way." I honestly think he'll never change with that either.

Personally, I'm with luckiest in that I think he moves pretty well, and I think with training (such as what he's getting via Spamalot), he'll get better. But I sincerely think he'll NEVER EVER fully admit to "being a dancer," or even "I can kinda sorta dance on occasion." I think much of that is his way of playing down things -- his self-deprecating humor.

It does sound as tho those big turning out feet of his gave him problems in sports and probably do with dancing. I can't say that I saw anything in that Christmas clip that would indicate that he can do anything more than the bare basics of the shag, dance that is.

With lots of practice Clay has learned the simple, tho in the case of the bottle dance physically difficult, dance steps required of him for Spamalot. I hope that it will give him the confidence to try to dance a bit more in the future but it will mean that he will have to really work at it and maybe he just doesn't see being able to do a choreographed dance at his concerts as important.

Remember in one of those WRAL clips about Spamalot he said that he just mouthed the words of the chorus because he can't breathe.

Anyway it has become part of Clay's schtick that he can't dance and he loves to play up on it as he did this summer. He gets such a roar of delighted approval from his audience when he does manage a simple dance move. As long as he continues to move about the stage with joyous exuberance and occasional sexiness, I'll be happy to drink it in.

[KAndre]

I think atinal has a point - it's just in my high school, hell in my family now, guys who can dance are hot, desirable, seriously cool, seriously maculine - club/party dancing is a much desired skill among guys - those guys who can dance are lionized, step shows/drill teams are still a big deal; in talent shows singers and dancers are split equally. What Jacob (and Quiana and Angela) did would be what I would call a bare minimum amount to be called any sort of dancer - and they weren't all that.

[keepingfaith]

One of the jocks on the new DWTS wears a size 14 shoe -- let's see how well he does.

(This is my post for this page, LdyJ)

[playbiller]

Ai2 contestants and dancing.

Charles was a dancer and moved all over the stage, unfortuneatly he was not a singer.

Ricky created the dance step that Clay could not learn for the tour.

Trenyce is the one who created a cheat Clay could do on the tour when everyone else (including Ruben) was doing Rickey's leg leg shoulder shake step.

I think the kind of dancing Clay is talking about is being a Justin T. type of club dancer. Timberlake does not do ballet or tap. Clay is not a club dancer, but dances quite well for the men I have been around who think dancing is wobbling back and forth between the feet wtihout actually moving on the floor.

[luckiest1]

I have had to log in probably 20 times already today..........grrrrrrrrrr. (And that's not an exaggeration) I wish we could figure out why it happens to some of us. It doesn't happen to me on other boards, but every time I refresh or try to post or edit a post, or even open a PM, it logs me out.

Clay is 100x the dancer I am or ever will be. I can slow dance (barely) but have no idea what to do if the beat picks up. LOL. The most terrifying dance-related time I can remember is my own wedding - having to do that first dance with my father. I did it. Thank God there is no video (at least I don't think there is!) Heh, maybe I've just got a mental block about it.

The blonde hair (sorry, I know that topic has passed, but I never weighed in) - it has really grown on me! I didn't like his previous blonde phases, but this one looks fabulous. I like both the messier, stage door hair, and the cool, slicked back hair he's sported for interviews, etc. I think I really do prefer him with no bangs, even though I liked his ATDW look too. My favourite hair ever is probably the long, dark hair from the JNaT era. And yet I loved the simplicity of the JBT hair. As always, I guess I'm just easy when it comes to Clay.

[annabear]

They're sending us home early, which NEVER happens, so ya know it's pretty bad out there.... I'm off to clean the car and head towards home, hopefully arriving in the next few hours. At least I'll have visions of Clay dancing to keep me company!

[rohdy]

Drive safe Annabear and let us know you have arrived home safe and sound.

[wandacleo]

This time Monday I'll be sitting in the Denver airport between flights--waiting to board for NYC.

:nana:

Not that I'm excited or anything.

[luckiest1]

Hee, this time next week I'll be sitting right where I am now, at work, looking at the clock and wishing it would hurry up, so I can leave and go home and pack and get to bed and sleep and wake up at 4:00 am and get in the car and drive to the airport to fly to NYC!!!!!

Hyper-excited? Who, me?

[Claygasm]

Speaking of going to NY......

I know everyone seems to flock to Junior pre and post, but frankly, I wasn't impressed. Now that may be because the only thing I could eat on the menu was the grilled cheese sandwich and there was way too much bread and way too little cheese.

Does anyone have any other suggestions for pre food and post food and definitely drink that is relatively near the Shubert (since it will probably be pouring!)??

That isn't too expensive of course!

If people have suggestions we could put it in the Spam thread, but I didn't want to put the question there where it could get lost if people don't use "View New Posts"!

[luckiest1]

Good question, CG. I was wondering the same thing.

[cindilu2]

I enjoyed John's Pizza (on the same street as the Shubert). Crowded and noisy, but a fun atmosphere and the food was good. I like Mexican/Southwestern food, and really enjoyed Chevy's, which is on 42nd street - five-ten minutes walk (as guestimated by a lazy person who hates to walk).

[rohdy]

Ahhhh....this time next week I will still not be seeing Spamalot. *sniff*

However! I will be getting together with my 3 Clay buds for 4 days of girl time......always a good thing!!

So YAY!! I have something to look forward to!

And we will get to enjoy ogling Clay...backdoor pics, video and detailed reports....whatever....together.

Thanks to all who provide for the needy. :F_05BL17blowkiss: