By Cathy Maestri
InstantPride.com

This season’s “Dancing With the Stars” favorite is the one whose name no one knows — Mark Dacascos, the nimble Chairman from “Iron Chef America.”

Sure, just like everybody else, we choked and did a doubletake when we heard disgraced former Congressman Tom DeLay was announced as one of this season’s 16 competitors. DeLay has certainly danced around plenty of issues, not to mention laws, in his career, but we’re guessing he’ll pull a Tucker Carlson and exit early. Though we hope he’s around long enough that we get to see some sort of surreal exchange between DeLay and Macy Gray.

But the man to beat is Dacascos. In fact, it’s hardly fair to even let him compete — have you seen the intro to “ICA”? (Check out the clip below.) That’s no stuntman. The Hawaii-born Dacascos is a martial artist/actor who’s been winning karate and kung fu championships since he was 7. And he can rock it in a suit.

Frankly, we worry about Dacascos’ partner being able to keep up.

We’re so excited, we’re almost looking forward to watching KABC-TV’s (Los Angeles) endless self-promotion of this year’s contest. (The extensive newscast coverage means we don’t have to actually watch the show itself. Which is fine by us.)

This season’s other contestants include Mya, Melissa Joan Hart, Michael Irvin, Ashley Hamilton, Aaron Carter,
Kathy Ireland, Debi Mazar, Donny Osmond, Joanna Krupa, Kelly Osbourne, swimmer Natalie Coughlin, snowboarder Louie Vito and fighter Chuck Liddell.

Filed under Entertainment

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Not working? Click here!