Dancing With the Stars Premiere: Who Impressed? And Who Just Depressed

Who's ready to kick off the most hyped season of Dancing With the Stars yet?!

Ready or not, here they come. A dozen celebs of varying stature hit the ballroom tonight with the pressure already on: One of them is going home tomorrow.

As usual, we've got reality stars (including a member of the E! family), athletes, singers, actors, etc. But all are created equal when they first step out on the floor—and it's the steps they make afterward that count!

So, who were the surprise hits and who totally missed the mark? Let's start with Chaz Bono...

MORE: Chaz Bono on Dancing Partner: "We Have Really Good Chemistry"

Knowing he was the one that audiences were most anxious to see, producers craftily saved Chaz—the show's first-ever transgender contestant—for last. But he was definitely not least!

The author and Becoming Chaz star made the most preseason headlines, but he showed up ready to rumble, er, rumba! Under the tutelage of Lacey Schwimmer, Chaz wasn't the best dancer, but he may have been the most pleasantly surprising.

Not to mention "cute and cuddly," as Bruno Tonioli duly noted.

Clean-shaven and looking like a teenager, David Arquette waltzed two-time champ Kym Johnson around the floor like a guy with something to prove! (Or at least with someone to impress—daughter Coco and his still legally wedded wife Courteney Cox had front-row seats in the audience.)

And his effort was not wasted, with none other than head judge Len Goodman saying he was "very, very impressed" by what Arquette put out there. Of course, he's got the energy of an unbridled pony, so he has to tone it down a bit, but the eight-months-sober Scream star had great lines and infectious enthusiasm.

Ricky Gervais thanks God, shares his Twinkie

Leave it to Ricky Gervais to spice up an awards show -- without benefit of being, as he put it, "allowed on American soil." For the 2011 Emmy Awards, the self-styled Golden Globes bad boy delivered a taped message to Jane Lynch and whole Emmys gang. A taped, edited message. Just in case.

Said Gervais:

"Hello. Firstly, sorry I can't be there live in person. Not allowed. Not after the Golden Globes. In fact now, during any awards ceremony, I'm not even allowed on American soil. This is prerecorded and the Emmy bosses have warned me if I say anything rude or controversial, they will edit it out and you won't know the difference."

We won't know the difference? Whatever you say, Ricky. Video wasn't available immediately Sunday night, but here's the rest of his message -- edited, of course. Not that you'd notice.

"What a bunch of cowardly [edit] countrymen like Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan. We're proud of you. I've won a few Emmys myself. I've lost a few too. I was up for five last year and I lost them all to other shows that in my opinion were absolute [edit] 'Schindler's List' but then went on to do TV with 'Band of Brothers' and 'The Pacific' for HBO, which in my opinion is the greatest channel in the world [edit] apart from [edit] fox [edit] that is, [edit] obviously.

"Anyway, I've been rattling on for about 10 minutes. I hope I didn't say anything that you found offensive. Though if I did, I don't care. You can suck my [Twinkie]. Thanks for listening. And finally, thanks to God for making me an [edit] absolute idiot. There I said it. Again."

Covitz's NFL blitz: Vick returns to Atlanta, this time in style

The first time Michael Vick returned to the Georgia Dome, he was still a disgraced figure.

He had been banished from the NFL, served 19 months in Leavenworth for his role in a dog-fighting scheme, and as a backup quarterback with the Philadelphia Eagles, mopped up a 34-7 rout of his former team, the Atlanta Falcons.

Sunday night marks a triumphant return to Atlanta when Vick, named the NFL Comeback Player of the Year for his play in 2010 and with a $100 million contract in hand, directs the Eagles, a team picked by many to reach the Super Bowl.

“It’s going to be exciting just to go back,” Vick told reporters last week. “This is a business, but from an emotional aspect, it’ll be good to go back to the dome. I think we just have to focus on the game, and I think that’s going to be my approach. I don’t want any distractions, and I just want to go out and play the best football that I can play.”

Vick, the first overall pick by Atlanta in 2001, spent six seasons with the Falcons, was selected to three Pro Bowls and took the Falcons to one NFC Championship Game. He is not sure what kind of reception he’ll receive from the fans, but there will be plenty of No. 7s in the house; some will be his old Falcons red jersey, others Eagles green.

“That’s something I haven’t thought about and don’t want to get into,” Vick said. “I still have a lot of love for the fans down there, but keep in mind that I am with the opposition now. I don’t expect it to be in my favor since I’m out there for the other team, but we’ll see. That’s the fun part of the game, and we’re just going to enjoy the game.”

Last week in St. Louis, Vick started his first season opener since 2006, when he was with the Falcons. He threw for 187 yards and two touchdowns and added 98 rushing yards in 10 carries in the Eagles’ 31-13 victory.

“I think maturity has been the biggest reason why I’ve been able to accomplish the things I’ve accomplished since I came to Philadelphia,” Vick said. “With age comes the maturation process, and everything happens in turn.”

Vick knows what to expect from the Falcons defense.

“I’m expecting the blitz, and that’s what we’re preparing and practicing for,” Vick said. “I expect to see that until, I don’t know, the fifth or sixth game of the season. Teams think that’s the way to get after us, but we have so many weapons and so many ways to counter that, how much can you do?”

Three who need big games

Vikings QB Donovan McNabb may have RB Adrian Peterson to lean on, but 39 yards passing? Come on, he’s got to do better than that.

Washington RB Tim Hightower, a former Arizona backup, carried 25 times in last week’s win over the Giants and gets a crack at the team that traded him during the offseason.

Chiefs S Jon McGraw steps in for Pro Bowler Eric Berry at Detroit and will cover dangerous tight ends Brandon Pettigrew and Tony Scheffler.

Jay Bothroyd suffers 'ugg-trocity' at the hands of fashionista Joey Barton

It seems it hasn't taken long for Barton to settle in at QPR, and when the players arrived for a team photo at Loftus Road on Thursday it was Bothroyd who copped the brunt of some dressing room banter.
A pair of grey ugg boots first appeared on Barton's Twitter at around 10am with a post reading: 'Bothroyd has bowled up in ugg's today, he's 6'3 and size 11. I think they'll end up in the shower.'
With the 29-year-old's fashion sense on the line, things went quiet for an hour as 'someone' plotted the fate of the comfortable footwear.
Eventually Bothroyd's re-designed uggs surfaced on Barton's Twitter page - although the pair looked slightly worse for wear after the left one lost its top.
'Oh no, the tops only fell off his new ugg's.......go get a refund @jaybothroyd #unacceptablefootwear,' Barton gleefully posted.
As Bothroyd searched high and low for the culprit, Barton refused to claim responsibility for the 'ugg-trocity' saying he was 'out of the building'.
Luckily Bothroyd has a good sense of humour and Tweeted a picture of defender Fitz Hall, who he compared to Rs first-team coach Keith Curle, wearing the lopped-off ugg top on his head.

The Seahawks full of new, mostly young faces on offense

NFL teams don't change overnight.

Sometimes it takes a whole week.

The Seahawks showed that in the seven days after the longest work stoppage in NFL history ended, making changes that were as significant as they were sudden. They signed Tarvaris Jackson and left guard Robert Gallery, added Pro Bowlers Sidney Rice and Zach Miller and then waved goodbye as quarterback Matt Hasselbeck signed in Tennessee and defensive captain Lofa Tatupu was released.

And when it was over, coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider took a look at the team they inherited two years ago and marveled at the change.

"We thought it would take three years to really get a young football team in here," Carroll said.

It took less than two.

Just don't call it a facelift. This was more than cosmetic surgery, and a procedure that cost millions of dollars and took months of patience.

The Seahawks signed the big-name receiver they'd been seeking for more than a year by adding Rice. In Miller, Seattle acquired a tight end it considered an elite, Pro Bowl player for years to come. Jackson has been given the chance to prove he's a viable starting quarterback in this league while Gallery is a veteran added to stabilize an otherwise young offensive line.

Seattle isn't rebuilding its offense anymore. The offense is rebuilt, and the question is how long it will take for the group to come together and show progress.

"I don't think you put a timeline on that," Carroll said.

It's a new era in Seattle because of all the adjectives that might be hung on this team, old is not one of them. There isn't a projected starter on offense or defense older than 31, and only two players on the entire roster were born before 1980.

For all the roster moves Seattle made a year ago — there were 284 of them — the majority affected the lower third of the roster. The starting lineup wasn't overhauled that dramatically.

This season is different.

The quarterback of the most successful decade in franchise history is gone, the middle linebacker who stabilized the defense of its only Super Bowl team was released. Only one of the 11 players expected to start on offense was a Seahawk before Carroll became coach: center Max Unger.

The offense that was Seattle's signature in the Super Bowl season of 2005 had aged and atrophied. For all the millions Seattle spent on veteran wide receivers from Nate Burleson to Deion Branch to T.J. Houshmandzadeh, they never found a Pro Bowler for Hasselbeck to throw to.

For that matter, Seattle never found a potential successor to Hasselbeck in the draft, nor did the Seahawks draft someone to replace Walter Jones. At least not until last year when the first draft pick of Carroll's tenure was used on Russell Okung.

Jackson was considered a youngster in Minnesota, but he looks around his new locker room and sees a team full of peers.

"More people that I can probably relate to a lot more," he said. "Most everybody is around the same age, if not just a little younger."

Quite a change from three years ago when the Seahawks were hoping Jones could come back from knee surgery at the age of 35 and Edgerrin James still had a little left in the tank at 31. The Seahawks were relying on a free-agent wide receiver that year, too: Houshmandzadeh. He was 31 at the time.

Look at the offense this season.

There's Jackson, 28, under center, seven years younger than Hasselbeck. Rice is lined up outside. He just turned 25 last week, and at 6 feet 4 he's the kind of No. 1 receiver the Seahawks have courted for more than a year. The Seahawks played footsie with Brandon Marshall before he was traded from Denver to Miami last year and they sniffed around San Diego's Vincent Jackson. Rice just might be the NFL's best receiver not named Larry Fitzgerald when it comes to going up and over the defense for a reception.

Miller was the cherry on top of Seattle's free-agent sundae. Only four tight ends in this league have caught more than 50 passes in each of the previous three seasons, and he's one of them. The Seahawks' needs at quarterback and left guard took precedence the first couple of days in free agency, but when the dust began to settle, the Seahawks couldn't believe Miller was still on the market.

The Seahawks' commitment to youth was so extreme that they needed to acquire experience. Left guard Robert Gallery, 31, is Seattle's graybeard in a strictly metaphorical sense.

His beard is as black as it is formidable, the length making up for the fact that it isn't all that thick.

But the left guard learned he would be the salty veteran expected to season this offense when he met the rest of Seattle's offensive line.

"I didn't really realize how young it was until I got here," Gallery said.

Gallery has been in the NFL for seven seasons, appearing in 92 games. The other four starters on Seattle's offensive line have a combined total of four seasons of NFL experience and 27 regular-season starts.

"I've been lucky to be under some great veteran guys in my career," Gallery said. "It's my time to help lead these guys."

The fact Seattle would have to import veteran leadership gives an idea of just how young this team has become.

That inexperience breeds uncertainty, but there's also some excitement in the mix. This may be Carroll's second season as coach, but it marks the start of a new era for Seattle's offense.

"This is one of my favorite starts to a season ever," he said. "The excitement of a T-Jack coming in, a new receiver and the upgrade in the offensive line. It's a big shift."

The offense that had aged and eroded from 2006 to 2009 is pretty much brand spanking new. No one knows if it's going to be better, but you can be fairly certain it's going to be different.

Md. State Fair wraps with fashion shows, birthing sows

What 11-year-old Christa Stargill wanted to do most on the last day of the 2011 Maryland State Fair wasn't to ride the giant slide or to eat an ice cream cone or even to attend an informative discussion about bedbugs.

No, what the little girl from Washington wanted to do more than anything was to hang around the Swine Barn waiting for a mother sow to give birth to a litter of piglets.

"Christa, let's go," said her mother, Lisa Stargill. "It could be another three hours. We can't stay here all day."

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Still, Christa lingered, pressing her face against the vertical bars of the cage housing the birthing enclosure. She watched as Thomas Hartsock, a retired animal husbandry professor from the University of Maryland, gently stroked the sow's udder while providing color commentary.

"That should make her turn over," to her other side, Hartsock said. "But if she bites me, I'll end up sitting on your lap."

The Baltimore area was a study in entertainment contrasts this weekend. Toward the south, the city held its first Grand Prix auto race at the Inner Harbor. To the north, the region celebrated the 130th Maryland State Fair.

At the Grand Prix, autos roared through city streets at upward of 170 miles an hour. At the State Fair, an entrant in the Swifty Swines could take three, four minutes to amble around a backyard-sized course.

"We're a completely different kind of event, and we attract a different audience," said Max Mosner, the fair's general manager. "I don't think they hurt our attendance. I don't think we hurt them."

Though Mosner doesn't yet have final attendance figures, he expects the overall number of visitors to the fair this year was down, primarily because Hurricane Irene shut down the fair for much of its first weekend. Overcast skies and periods of rain on Labor Day also kept the crowds lower than normal.

The Grand Prix had many unique attractions, but it couldn't boast the talents of Marty Long, an artist based in Phoenixville, Pa., who fascinated passers-by by sculpting fish, birds, mammals and garden benches from white pine using just a chain saw.

Long trained as a chef and got his start creating ice sculptures, he told the crowd, before turning to the textured edge created by steel teeth. Before spectators' eyes, an open-mouthed fish emerged from a tree stump. A raccoon arched his back, and a bear stood on two hind legs.

About 30 of his creations were auctioned off at the fair, with the proceeds used to create $2,000 college scholarships that will be awarded to high school seniors. One item – a garden bench flanked by two horse heads – generated spirited bidding before being sold for $1,000.

The Grand Prix might have had an interactive booth where kids could create their own prize medals. But it didn't have a demonstration area where a 12-year-old could craft a Christmas ornament for her older sister – and in the process conduct a chemistry experiment.

Ruby Spreche of Timonium poured a small beaker of polyvinyl alcohol into a cup, then colored the liquid with two drops of green food coloring. Then she added to it sodium borate – a compound found in eyewashes – and began to stir.

Gradually, the mixture thickened. The more Ruby stirred, the more solid it became. Finally, a translucent green ball formed that looked as though it was meant to dangle on a fir tree.

Ruby left with two ornaments, one red and one green, and a fact sheet that explained how two transparent liquids had formed such a strong bond.

"I've seen other people do things like this before," she said, "but I've never been able to make that reaction myself."

At the Grand Prix, the roar from the motors made earplugs a mandatory fashion statement.

At the State Fair, 17-year-old Cynthia Garner applied a trace of last-minute lipstick before participating in a ready-to-wear fashion show that featured garments that had been bought on sale.

With her strapless, above-the-knee black floral dress ($9), wide-brimmed lilac straw hat ($1) and lilac leather slides (a gift), it certainly didn't appear that Cynthia's entire outfit cost less money than a ticket to a first-run film.

"To me, there's nothing like the State Fair," said Cynthia's mother, Marie Garner, 54, of Halethorpe.

"It's part of America. There truly is something for everyone."

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