KEY POINTS:
If Footloose taught us anything, it was that Kenny Loggins was in the zone (not the danger zone; wrong movie) and that dance is a powerful force for good.
Certainly our own Queen Bea, Beatrice Faumuina, has backed up that theory during her time on Dancing With The Stars.
Before her foray into hit reality TV, Faumuina slumped to a disappointing fourth place in the discus at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games.
While bulk is a key component in throwing events, many observers believed Faumuina had suffered from a case of too many Tim-Tams, not enough gym jams.
The great athlete was reluctant to admit she was out of shape but reality revealed the truth. How could she expect to win when she was puffed halfway through a paso doble?
Suddenly, Faumuina had that champion's glint in her eye. She didn't want to lose to Rodney or Danyon, so she drove herself to excellence and shed kilos in the process.
Faumuina took the silver medal behind former Miss Universe Lorraine Downes. Afterwards Faumuina went straight into a gruelling campaign of tell-all women's magazine stories in which, she said, dancing helped her become a better athlete.
Evidence of that was realised last week when Faumuina threw her best this season of 62.20m to win the discus at QE2 Park on Wednesday.
That distance would have taken gold in Melbourne a year ago. South Africa's Elizna Naude won with a throw of 61.55m. Faumuina could only manage 59.12m.
This clearly proves the benefits Faumuina gained from throwing that little bald guy round the dance floor.
He was a 68kg weight that got Faumina's training back on track for the Beijing Olympics, which are next year in August.
Faumuina still has thighs that could crush a watermelon but that's okay, because they're dancing thighs, and with them she pirouettes across that circle and hurls a disc further than most pro rugby players can kick a ball.
All power to Faumuina. Many of us could take a leaf out of hers and Loggins' book, and cut footloose.
Web before cricket
Cricket headlines must improve before next month's World Cup.
This from an Australian website: "We're missing stars: Hodge". Yes, Hodge was right. Australia were indeed missing Ricky Ponting, Andrew Symonds, Adam Gilchrist and Brett Lee. And the sooner they woke up to that fact the better.
On a cricket website the South African captain inspired this headline: "We want World Cup, Pollock"
Because Shaun Pollock was proclaiming this, the comma isn't correct. Even so, let's just presume everyone playing in the tournament wants the World Cup, shall we?
Fagan ritual
It's possible the mainstream media have beaten me to this but musician Andrew Fagan has just spent six weeks in a leaky boat. Well he fixed the leaky windows in week two as the former lead singer of The Mockers broke the record for the smallest vessel to circumnavigate New Zealand (solo).
Fagan made the 57-day journey in his 1972, 17ft 9in (5.4m) yacht, Swirly World In Perpetuity, which Fagan has described as a bathtub, a little tank and a big dinghy.
Starting in Auckland, he stopped in Gisborne, Lyttelton, Dunedin and the Auckland Islands (200 miles south of Bluff) where seals and penguins roam. "It's like being at Kelly Tarlton's but they've all been let out," said Fagan.
He then sailed non-stop from the Auckland Islands to Auckland in 19 days.
His last big trip in Swirly World was the 1994 solo New Plymouth to Brisbane yacht race which took him 18 days.
This time he encountered swells over 5m, near the Auckland Islands, and was close to the spot where transtasman kayaker Andrew McAuley sent out a mayday call off the coast of Fiordland.
"A lot of people thought the mayday call was me. I was looking around for him. I knew he was really close. The conditions were tough. Every second wave was breaking. I thought: 'I wouldn't want to be out there in a kayak'; he would have been incredibly fatigued."
Fagan's only problem with sea life was with a stray albatross in the middle of the night. "It flew into the sail and smacked on the deck. You should have heard the noise. I turned the light on and it realised what it had done and took off."
He didn't write any songs during the journey, but then most sailing songs have been done when you factor in I Am Sailing, Sail On, Sailing Away and seven songs called Sailing. Instead, Fagan spent his time listening to talkback radio and reading two books about the history of the planet.
Fagan, 44, will now return to his job at Kiwi FM, where he co-hosts the breakfast show with his wife Karen Hay.
Asked which was more satisfying, the circumnavigation or Forever Tuesday Morning almost topping the charts, Fagan said: "The circumnavigation, for sure."
Forever Tuesday Morning made it to No 2 behind Do They Know It's Christmas early in 1985. "I'll never forget it," said Fagan.
