Mayo Alanen on Dancing with the Stars

We watched "Dancing with the Stars" Season 1 which was a fun summer replacement and enjoyed it, but lost interest as its popularity and complexity grew. I was flipping through the channels last night bemoaning all the “reality shows” wondering how crazy is it that people watch "reality" with a script and camera crew, believing it is real. Everything from housewives gutter sniping, to brides being bridezilla, to the obese exercising in the desert, to little people going to work, to fashion police trashing wardrobes of sweats and t-shirts, to parents raising 8 children with the papparazzi: all so the fans can thank God for their own lives. Then suddenly I saw this flash on the screen “Mayo Alanen” and a phone number to vote. I nearly fell out of bed! Unfortunately, that's all I saw--he had already performed to be voted on as the professional for next season.

Mayo’s father Erkki, a very talented tall, blond architect and cartoonist, lived with us for a few weeks back in the early 70s when he first came to the United States from Finland. Eventually, he and his wife settled in El Paso and raised three children. I have school photos of the children sent with Erkki’s original Christmas cards, although I can’t tell one boy from the other now that so many years have gone by. Somewhere I think I have a either a bookmark of a website or a disk of him and his dancing partner that his mother sent us.

Anyway, our phones are dead again, or I would have voted for Mayo Alanen. Bio and details here .