Your feet have failed you for the last time. Time to play the old “The Girlfriend From High School Who Died” card.

It’s Week Four of Groovin’ with the D-listers and things have not been going well for you, twinkle toes. Your Charleston lacks energy. Your Swing has no pizazz. Your Waltz makes waltzing even more boring to watch than usual. The judges have berated you for everything from form and timing to actually attempting to kill the form of Dance itself, yet, so far, you’ve avoided being eliminated. But even the lonely 35-year old men who consistently vote for you only to ensure that your dance partner’s incredible rack will remain on their television screens week after week won’t save you next time. Unless you want to go back to a life where you’re only known as “that kid from that one show who had that catchphrase,” it’s time to break out the big guns.

“This dance is dedicated to my high school girlfriend Veronica,” you’ll tell the judges, “who…” Choke up a little here. It’ll look great on camera. ”...died while buying me a HP Pavilion P7 Quad-Core Desktop computer on the anniversary of the day we first kissed.” You’ll hear sniffles from the in-studio audience as you explain that the card her parents found in her bedroom explained that she had picked it out just for you due to its reliable 3.2GHz AMD Athlon II 650 Quad-Core processor and expandable 8GB DDR3 memory. The judges, even the one who acts all stone-cold all the time, will begin to tear up when you talk about all the mix-CDs you wanted to make her on the SuperMulti DVD burner with LightScribe technology, all the photos you hope to fill a memory card with and then transfer to the 1TB SATA hard drive via the front-panel 15-in-1 memory card reader. And when you announce that you and your partner will be using the very same Windows® 7 Home Premium machine with ATI Radeon HD 4200 integrated graphics as the centerpiece for tonight’s performance, the audible gasp you hear from your opponents will tell you you’ve already won the night without a single twirl or spin.

Your dancing will still be awful, of course, but the standing ovation and sympathy “nines” you get from the judges will ensure you another week in competition. Sure, in the weeks to come, you’ll be disgraced when several reports confirm that no girlfriend ever existed, but that’ll be way after the Final Dance Battle. Even better? When the guy who used to be the little boy in the hit series Small Wonder accidentally punches his partner in the face during a Fox Trot, their dismissal will be just an episode away. Good. That guy had a “my mother’s got the cancer” story that might have given him the whole competition on a pair of wingtips.

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