Moosic
Music and such
Now relegated to Blogblivion...Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Classic Valerie
Nope, she wasn’t trying out for Blue Man Group: The Junior Edition. She’d found a rogue crayon of Sadie’s. Compared to that, how bad could it be to let her try the chili? Which she loved.
As of today she seems to have grasped and run with the idea she should grin face-wrenchingly for the camera, so she’s gone from serious in most shots to big smiles much of the time. This seemed more spontaneous, and is a classic picture.
Now if we could get her to sleep all night…
Thursday, August 17, 2006
You Know You Have Kids When…
Snakes on a Plane? Amateurs. Here we have crayons in a speaker:
This ancient set of computer speakers I bought years ago for my Pentium 200, after I bought a SoundBlaster Gold card for it. Since that sound card has traditional speaker jacks and these speakers have the same, the two go together. I use the speaker cables from a stereo I bought at Zayre in or around 1978.
Because the computer has not been hooked up, the speakers have been kicking around near my desk. Both kids loved playing with them.
When I went to hook them up the other day, I found the controls had fallen into the case, barely lining up with the holes. Not useful. So I opened it up to fix it, and the picture is what I saw; crayons everywhere! Apparently Sadie had been pushing crayons into the speaker unobserved. You’ll notice that no crayon is allowed to remain clothed. The wrappers must be torn methodically off each and every one as soon as possible. She’s so funny.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Music By Rob
Never got a chance to hear Rob “Acidman” Smith perform? Courtesy of Catfish, we don’t have to miss out. This is just one mirror copy, using spare bandwidth for as long as it holds up. Please right-click and save to your own computer before playing My Door Is Always Open.
Saturday, June 10, 2006
“Surpassingly Bad”
Via Billy Beck, via Trey Givens, a rendition of The Star Spangled Banner that will make you laugh and cringe, and be so happy you are not the lyrically dyslexic singer - or the person whose funeral it apparently is.
This is probably funnier than any of the American Idol tryout disasters some people watch the early episodes of AI to see.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
Something Stupid: Not Just for Frank and Nancy Anymore
So imagine you have a network, with various NT4 servers, including a mail server (Exchange 5.5) and BDC named foomail and a proxy server named foonet. Your internet domain is something like foofoo.com, and for as long as you’ve been connected to the internet, via partial T-1, you’ve had an A and MX record out in the wider world for mail.foofoo.com, which brings you to IIS on server foonet, mainly to use Outlook Web Access.
One of the three drives in the RAID array on foomail starts to die, and space is becoming an issue anyway, so you buy a new server.
Cost being somewhat an issue, you see that you can save $900 by ordering a server with serial ATA (SATA) drives in a RAID5 configuration, rather than SCSI drives as would be traditional. Then when it arrives, you find out NT won’t support SATA and you have to spend $1200 or so for Windows 2000 Server instead. Some savings.
You get it all setup, Exchange installed, added to the site, made primary in the site, mailboxes and stuff all migrated, internet mail connector on foonet pointing to it, and it’s great. Since it has more disk space then every other server combined, and you’ve had several gigs of docs stored in a temporary location since server foodocs died, you even migrate the documents to the new server. Which turns out to be the brightest spot in all of this, making access to them far faster.
Subsequently, there are lots of RPC errors in communication between the new server, named simply “mail” because you can’t reuse foomail and descriptive simplicity seems sensible, and the rest of the network, mainly foonet. The very manner in which internet mail transfer functions also spontaneously changes to something that seems worse, but at least seems to work. Perhaps particularly telling in retrospect, OWA wouldn’t work until I increased the timeout to five minutes.
Sybari Antigen works great on the new server, too, continuing to kill infected e-mails and purge out banned attachment types with utmost reliability.
Sybari Antigen with Spam Manager runs on foonet to do the spam filtering, and that doesn’t go so well. It stops catching everything reliably. The product is so outlandishly good that virtually no spam ever got through before. There is good reason Microsoft became first a customer of Sybari after lab tests showed no other product came close, then bought the company.
Worse, periodically it stops all e-mail flow to and from the internet, eventually getting to where the only resolution was completely removing and reinstalling Sybari’s software, and hoping it would last more than a few weeks this time. When we renewed the license in March, we went to a newer version and that was even worse.
But I am getting unintentionally long-winded here.
Yesterday I installed HP Digital Sender 4.0 software, which had to go on the server named mail because it has to be on Windows 2000. It gave me trouble.
It asked me to pick a server to configure, defaulting to the one it was on, and displaying the name mail greyed out. Going with that, it failed, unable to find server “mail.” I ended up choosing the option for another server, getting the IP address of mail, and entering that. In the end scanning the the Digital Sender 9200c didn’t work anyway, apparently because it won’t scan to a network location - all configured and enabled - if you have not setup the e-mail portion of things, even if you are never going to use the e-mail part. Either that or it couldn’t see the server or who knows. I have to return to it and puzzle it out.
In the process of trying to install the Digital Sending software on mail, I noticed something.
The NetBIOS computer name, for backward compatibility, is indeed “mail.”
It also asks for a “primary DNS suffix” for the computer. I had, apparently based on something I picked up in my travels, filled that in as foofoo.com, and that makes the server think that its full name is:
mail.foofoo.com
Doh!
Can there be a crazy conflict between external and internal DNS as a result of such an overlap? Apparently there can. To me it could explain everything. Especially since the server it interacts with most closely, foonet, to the wider world is mail.foofoo.com.
I still have to make the relevant change and experiment with it, but… jeez! What was I thinking?
Earworm
I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to have an earwormy song pop spontaneously into my head and play over and over.
Hail Special Forces! Al-Zarqawi is dead! Ding dong the wicked witch is dead.
As seen pretty much everywhere, but Dean’s post is a fine place to start, and of course Glenn and Wizbang are all over it. I actually heard it first from Deb, who heard it first from the President.
It feels like one of those big turning points, you know?
Monday, May 29, 2006
American Idol: Gone But Not Forgotten
Sadie and I went to a cookout at my youngest brother’s house today. My older brother and sister were there.
Out of the blue my older brother said that he didn’t follow American Idol, but saw a little bit of the results finale. He thought Taylor Hicks was the worst singer on the stage, and is completely baffled that he was the winner.
I thought that was intriguing; sort of like an unclothed emperor moment. All the more so because Taylor has at times reminded me a little of the brother in question. Go figure.
My sister-in-law’s mother and her boyfriend, a blues guitarist whose accent sounds like he could be from Jamaica or elsewhere in the Carribean, were nearby and while they never claimed to like Taylor, were surprised at my vehemence. They were avid American Idol watchers and kept being disappointed that “the good singers” got voted off early. They loved Elliot. They seemed to like Mandisa, and she particularly liked Paris. What I found interesting was that the talk of Taylor made him remark how bad Bruce Springsteen sounds to him; that his guitar playing always sounds “off.” I think that was part of the observation that you don’t have to be great to sell and get rich. They also thought it was a mistake for someone like Katharine to try to cover someone like Celine Dion or Whitney Houston on AI without the chops for it.
And so the water cooler effect continues, despite Idol being done for the season. It’ll be cool knowing there’s another pair of Idol watchers in the extended family next season. Give us something to talk about if we end up at family events together.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
AI 5: Finally Finale
I’m cheering for Taylor, of course.
I have, however, been forced to reassess my deep dislike of Katharine, due to this USA Today article that my darling husband sent me. In it, Katharine’s plastic cracks a bit, so to speak, and she shows both a bit of wildness and a bit of common sense that I find far more appealing than I ever have found her musical style. To wit:
While her favorite past time is dance class, she says, “I haven’t worked out in four months. I feel like I’m a big blob. I don’t have any muscle in my body. I’ve definitely not been dieting. I’m an anti-dieter. I don’t think it works. I’ve totally struggled with body weight. I was up and down with my weight. I’d get good feedback from bookers — we’d love to book her, but… it’s a shame you have to be so skinny and so in shape. I met a dietitian before American Idol and she just taught me to eat normally and have peace with food. Now I just don’t have any kind of emotional eating anymore. I still have weight on me. I’m still not what Hollywood wants — stick skinny. But I’m happy with food and able to eat and that’s what women should be able to do — eat food and I don’t think twice about it. After American Idol, I’d love to have a trainer who gets me to the gym two or three times a week because I surely don’t do it on my own.”
I just can’t hate her anymore after reading that.
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Freddie and the Soul Patrol
Freddie Garrity, of Freddie and the Dreamers, has died at 69. I am familiar with the catchy song “Do The Freddie,” but was unaware of the background:
It was on an American television show that Mr Garrity was asked about his stage antics.
“It’s a dance,” he said, “It’s called the Freddie.”
Within weeks, the band was back in the charts with a song called Do The Freddie.
Naturally this made me think of pending American Idol season 5 winner Taylor Hicks (you could say he has it all sewn up). Perhaps he should come out with a similar song; “Do The Taylor, Woooh!”
All joking aside, I’m telling you now rest in peace Freddie.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
American Idol and Other TV
I neglected to post about American Idol after Tuesday night’s competition, but I didn’t have a whole lot to say. Here’s a great long post, including a results update.
Did anyone notice if the blonde skater girl selling us Diet Coke is the same one employed as the lead in the latest Old Navy commercial? Or is she just that similar looking? It was odd seeing her twice relatively close together for different products, kind of like if you saw Zoe Bartlet telling you migraines are for real and of course Excedrin helps, then telling you in the same half hour that her Secret is she’s fluent in Italian and just wants to jump the hunk.
Anyway, I thought Elliot was quite good overall. On another night, Open Arms might have been enough to blow away everyone else, but sadly Katharine stepped it up when it mattered and boobs alone might not have saved her, and Taylor was going to get a pass even if he hadn’t. I didn’t care for two of his three songs as such, but he did them well, even making me like them better than I might have.
Katharine was decent in the first number, astonishing with Over The Rainbow, and decent on the last number apart from the damn smile. I have the blues… *GRIN* I’m in such a sorry state, but look at my great teeth! I have never heard that intro to Over The Rainbow before, so when she started singing, I was like “is this a different song by the same name? Weird!” I was glad she told off the judges after the first song, when they criticized song choice of a song Clive Davis picked. Duh.
Taylor showed he has a voice. I loved Dancing In The Dark, starring Paula Abdul as Courtney Cox, as I observed to Deb on the rewatch. She was out, so I saw the whole thing and part of House before she got home, then we watched Idol on tape for her benefit. She was too squicked by the revelation that a digestive system can reverse itself, just as she arrived, to watch the part of House prior to that. Plus it’s not the same once you know how it turns out. I think it’s time for them to have a parasite that’s been mutated by a virus to thrive on heavy metals and is triggered by a fungus to secrete a toxin that gets worse the more you lie. Or something.
You Are So Beautiful was good, showing he has a voice and not just a schtick. The fact that his voice cracked on the “to me” line only bothered me mildly, because it kind of fit the song. Which to me is a “meh” song, so all the better I liked it when he did it.
I hate hate hated his last song. That was what he wanted to do for love songs week? Yeesh. Hated the song. Really hated the performance. But then, I know he was supposed to be amazingly great and all, but I don’t think I have liked any Otis Reading song ever that wasn’t Dock Of The Bay.
All three made weird self-selections. Elliott gets a ton of credit for being the most consistent. I can’t necessarily say he wasn’t the worst of the night, but he was more than good enough to justify going on rather than the cumulative ugh of Toothy McPheebot. She is one lucky girl to have made it far enough to get into the finals, and I hope she remembers that.
The thing is, at least the top four were so similarly talented that it made this a tough year to pick. A lot of it ends up being other factors. I was surprised they were that close, when they showed the percentages. DialIdol made it seem like Taylor had far more of the vote than that and was nowhere close to the others.
Speaking of Taylor, I had seen people griping about his barking out of “soul patrol” but somehow I had never noticed it myself. I think it was a set of sounds so unexpected to me that I was hearing “ooh ooh!” or something like it as he pumped his hand in the air. This week I finally caught it, and boy was it annoying and overdone, the latter I think intentionally on his part.
WTF is a “soul patrol” anyway? Something of his invention that’s part of his schtick?
I find myself lacking enthusiasm for next week’s competition show, though last year the final results show was fun, seeing all the performances by people who’d been voted off and other musicians. Taylor Hicks will win unless something really weird happens. Kat will get a recording contract anyway, as will Elliott, and as will Chris. Chris will have the most staying and selling power over the decades.
At least Top Model had good results, if also close. Jade screwed up and talked back when she had a chance to go through to the final and win. Hate her or not, she was good. Joanie will do well and can really turn it on for the camera. Danielle, though, she has presence, a glow you could really see in the finale. No, I don’t watch this regularly, but we caught parts and even all of some of them. It’s a far better show than I would ever have imagined. Besides, Twiggy is one of the judges.
Since most of our traffic comes from female celebrity names, usually female (what is up with the sicko who got here with David Caruso nude?), usually with the words nude, naked, without clothes, undressed, topless, fake, photos, and so forth associated, and since have written about Idol enough to be surprisingly far up there when searching American Idol Results, I should add some of those names. You know, Kellie Pickler, or Kelly for the misspellers, Katharine “Kat” McPhee, Melissa McGhee, Lisa Tucker, Mandisa, Paris Bennett, Becky O’Donohue, Stevie Scott, Brenna Gathers, Heather Cox, Kinnik Sky, and local Idol-milking minor celebrity Ayla Brown. Of course, for the gals it’s Chris Daughtry who should be mentioned together with words like nude, naked and so forth. Perhaps these will help sustain our search traffic through the summer, until Erica Durance, Alexis Bledel, and so forth return. Or not.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
True confessions: AI edition
So when I got home last night Jay was holding the phone, a sheepish look on his face. And so ended our glorious non-voting pact.
Of course, I took the phone from him and voted for Elliott like 20 times. Because the McPheebot must be deactivated!
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Over The Rainbow
Allegedly the judge’s choice for Katharine this week, selected by Simon, is Over The Rainbow. Interesting choice indeed. It could make or easily break her. Here’s hoping for the latter.
That song was a huge favorite of mine when I was very young. I liked to sing it, and would attempt to play it on my grandfather’s organ, using a song book that told you what to press without having to know how to read music.
When I was in first grade, I don’t remember how or why the topic of songs came up, but I sang the beginning of the song in class. The kids made so much fun of me - not for my singing, but for the lyrics and choice of song - that it was a major formative experience in making me more rather than less introverted, and skittish about performing in front of others or making my likes known to others. Other experiences reinforced the “singing in the presence of others” thing over the years, most memorably ones involving a cousin and a stepsister, but that’s where I remember it starting, associated with Over The Rainbow.
Friday, May 12, 2006
No Relation to Mack
Paul Burgess is knife blogging. Isn’t it purty?
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
American Idol: Results from an Alternate Reality
Did you see how shocked Katharine was? As well she should have been, since it took an awful lot of people being on crack to save her with their votes.
At the same time I’m disappointed, and concerned that we’re headed for a “false idol” year, I think it may be better for Chris. He’ll get to record, but perhaps being in fourth place will keep him from being as overproduced as Bo’s first album was. We’ll be ready to buy it when it’s released. I can’t see eagerly awaiting albums from any of the others, or buying at all from Katharine.
And yet I can still appreciate that all four have talent, which really showed in their group medley tonight. Even Katharine, who seems to do better that way, whether because it’s in a group or not under the stress of competition.
Thinking a bit more, it could be that Taylor just sewed it up. The battle of Chris versus Taylor would have been epic, and he was the one who might have beaten the Taylor juggernaut.
Then again, if Clay Elliott keeps ratcheting it up, not only being a great singer, but performing non-boringly, who knows.
Katharine has become the Scott Savol of this season. Imagine Scott having knocked out Bo and made it to the finals. Ugh.
If what I see on the newsgroup is correct, next week’s theme will be one song each selected by the judges, contestant, and Clive Davis. That certainly could be interesting.
It’ll be weird without Chris though. It’s like the fabric of reality just shifted to some weird alternate timeline.
So Much AI Blogging, So Little Time
If you need something to do while awaiting the results show when Chris Katharine (please?) gets the axe, then check out some of the best and funniest Idol blogging I have seen, by Doug Williams.
SarahK, your Idol blogging now has worthy competition.
Well, then there’s always the not-necessarily-funny takes by Dean, Kate, Kate, Sharon, and Ann.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
American Idol Final Four: Katharine’s Death By Elvis
I’ll just copy and paste from my spoiler post earlier and comment on the performances, which did wind up being of those songs.
Taylor: Jailhouse Rock and In the Ghetto
Amazing performance on the first one; easy to see why he has such a fan base when he’s at his best, and that was about his best of the season. I’d happily see him perform it live. Hold that thought and see later in this post.
Oh, Valerie watched him intently during this performance, but didn’t make a sound.
His second song, not so much, and disappointing compared to my expectations from Taylor. I love that song and know it pretty well, and didn’t like how it was changed - and I don’t mean the trimming to fit the required duration. It was okay, even good, but not all that to me. Deb had a more positive impression, and we talked about how different our perspectives are on Elvis, given that she’s not old enough to remember him being alive.
Chris: Suspicious Minds and A Little Less Conversation
I wrote earlier: “The first is perfect and can really show some range for Chris.” Wow. He so totally nailed it, and got the red-blooded American women Deb speaks of when he performs warmed up for what was to follow later. I said above I’d enjoy seeing Taylor live covering Jailhouse Rock. The difference is that Chris could have a radio hit covering Suspicious Minds. Looked at like that, no comparison.
Valerie started cooing at Chris in response to this song! We just abount flipped. I don’t know if I have mentioned how much she loves music and how strongly opinionated she seems to be about what she’s hearing, but there you go. Taylor she was rapt and quiet. Chris she was rapt and audibly approving.
I found the second one to be a station turner when it was hot a few years back, when someone discovered it mouldering in a vault and got it high on the charts posthumously. I’d never heard it before then. No appeal. No interest. Chris made me like the song. Elvis? Not so much. It doesn’t get much better. Deb strongly invoked the red-blooded American women factor.
Elliott: Trouble and If I Can Dream
But not in that order. I loved If I Can Dream, and he performed more appealingly than ever tonight. Not so much my song, but he was great. I’d really like to hear Mandisa do it, with its gospel leanings.
Valerie went nuts for Elliott’s performance, cooing and ahh-gooing and just loving it.
With his second performance, Elliott won the night. He deserves first place this week. If he is voted off, it will be more than just another case of people getting voted off the night they do unexpectedly well, it’ll be tragic.
Katharine: Hound Dog/All Shook Up and Can’t Help Falling In Love
That was really bad. Started not so bad, but it was utter folly to make it a medley, never mind forgetting words and getting breathless. I think I actually liked it a lot better than Deb, if I am remembering right. Just not enough to keep it from being hands down worst of the first set and probably the night.
Valerie opined on Katharine too. It made her cry. That was funny.
Her second performance wasn’t much better. If it wasn’t worse. Sure enough, she picked an easy song for me to be unimpressed with, and succeeded in unimpressing me.
So tonight there is no question that Katharine was the worst. It’s not even close. First through third we’d say it’s Elliott, Chris, and Taylor. Which probably means Elliott and Katharine will be bottom two, but it’ll be a major shocker if Katharine doesn’t go home.
After she’s gone, as Deb says, any of the remaining three could win and we’d be happy. They are all that good.
Now to go see whether other bloggers were on hallucinogens or agree with me this week…
Update:
Has the DEA checked the water supply nationally for hallucinogens? They appear to be widespread in the populace…
Fox Threw a Party on a Tuesday Night…
In our referrers I noticed a search hit for “American Idol spoiler list,” where we are on the first page of results because after last week’s show I talked of having seen a list of alleged songs in advance, not believed it, and been surprised it was totally accurate.
There is a similar list on the AI newsgroup this week, so for the insatiably curious, I will post it, hidden below the fold for those who don’t wish to be (maybe) spoiled. The post author actually attributes it to a mainstream article this week, rather than inside information as last week’s list apparently was. That article is here and you can see all of them by scrolling the slide show. Or just click to expand this and see the raw info (and let’s not forget my wonderful commentary) below.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
A running runner who runs.
Well, actually more like a mothering mother who mothers right now.
Busy, busy day. Busy busy day tomorrow.
But I have to say that I think we might have seen just the slightest bit of evidence tonight that Katharine has a little place, deep inside, that is not 100% plastic, thus making her makeup 99.47% pure faking faker who fakes. Like freaking soap or something, but in this case purity isn’t really a selling point.
Did I steal “faking faker who fakes” from someone? If so, my apologies.
Seriously, did you see her face when they panned back to her while Elliott was singing? She looked like she knew that it was just wrong, candidate.
Anyhoo, back sometime tomorrow...maybe. I have plans involving a sponge and my kitchen floor after we get home. Must. Clean. Floor. ‘Til it shines like Kat’s plastic smile.
Ahem.
Busy But…
I listened to the MP3 files of all the American Idol performances last night, which is always an interesting exercise as the performance aspect has no influence on how you think you heard the song.
Taylor’s performances suffer a lot under that scrutiny, for all they were still adequate and Something sounded less Elvis on the second pass.
KathArine’s second performance benefitted greatly from a blind listen, and while she mangled the first song and nothing changes that, what hit me as diction problems on the second may have been more about the nature and styling of the song.
Chris stayed the same or improved, to me. I also didn’t hear him so much as the lead singer of The Calling, but I could still see him singing this.
Elliot and Paris didn’t really budge for me with the MP3 listens. The both still did a good job, but Paris is still doomed, especially since I have seen a surprising amount of pro-Katharine sentiment. And I mean sentiment of “her second number was the best AI performance ever and she won the night!” variety, not just the “we loved his audition so no matter how bad he is we will think he won every week” variety that kept Taylor alive no matter what. Puzzling. But hey, if he’d been voted off when deserved, we’d have missed the fun of Taylor in the Wild Cherry tree last night.
Okay, back to billing, because getting paid is a really Good Thing.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
American Idol - The Guys Rule
It was tough not coming right into the office to write about American Idol as soon as it ended, but then there was House - and ooh, they actually lost a patient and especially broke out of the more traditional mystery illness of the week - and there was the tape of Gilmore Girls. Finally, here I am.
What an episode. It’s going to be a contest between Katharine slipping that badly and being the hands down worst of the night, and the anti-Paris sentiment that she has evaded so remarkably. Not to mention the common feature whereby someone with an unexpected good performance - for them - gets voted off that week. Plus Katharine can’t go; she’s one of the annointed. But it’s clear, if nothing else, the guys won the night and none of them will be leaving.
Last week I joked to Deb that Taylor should do Play That Funky Music, which as I recally horrified Deb, and of course seemed too surreal to be possible. I was kidding. Today I saw alleged spoilers on the newsgroup claiming knowledge of the songs being performed tonight, and it freaked me out to see that there. Of course, the list had to be wrong, since Something was on the list, and that was a Beatles song - ah, but apparently it’s not “Beatles” so much as the Lennon/McCartney collection that’s off limits - as well as not current. But wait, there are all kinds of crazy things on some Billboard chart or another, so it and the entire rest of the spoiler list proved true.
Elliot has sprouted a personality and broken his mold, or at least bent it, doing an excellent rendition of the George Benson cover of On Broadway. I found it entertaining, and for the first time felt I’d want to see him perform or maybe hear his album. I had no such urge before, no matter how good his voice (and this is Kat’s big problem, maybe more so). On his second song, something about wanting to go home, I joked about not asking to go home, channeling Simon in advance. Again, more expressive, sincere, well done.
Paris did a Prince song alien to me that worked when it ought not have. She also hit the entertaining button. The second song suited her, also worked pretty well, and didn’t bore or turn me off, even if I am not in the market demographic. I think her future is assured, and would be even without being from a musical family.
Renegade is one of my favorite Styx songs, from the year I graduated high school, and one I have seen performed live by the original artist. Chris just nailed it. My notes simply say “wow!” A shame it was truncated. Easily the best performance of the night so far. His second song, I Dare You, made me think of the lead singer of The Calling during the first lines. I liked it, but it did get a bit shouty and strained; no surprise his voice is going. The sound could be shouty and remain compelling though, so he loses nothing having a good performance on top of an outstanding one.
Phil Collins is hardly my favorite, but against All Odds is an okay song that Katharine should have been able to handle, yet butchered instead. As one of the judges said, it “ran away from you.” It was the first lousy performance of the night, and the only one of the first set. She recovered some for her second number, bizarrely performed on her knees, with unclear lyrics. She was having serious diction trouble tonight. It sounded like the song could have been catchy in better hands. Having the worst and arguably the second worst performance tonight could mean so long for Katharine, but she has an inexplicable fan base, and has whatever propulsion TPTB annointment can convey. It will be between her and Paris, and frankly on this week’s performances only, Paris edges her out for another chance. This has to mean Paris is gone tomorrow.
Taylor gets huge points for making Play That Funky Music work for him and pulling off a great performance. It fit his abilities and his style wonderfully. This is the kind of thing that explains Taylor fandom, thought you still have to be pretty die hard to have ignored - or from what we’ve seen at other blogs, grossly misheard - some of his rock bottoms of other weeks. Finally. Elvis does George Harrison, passably and with his own style rather than making it worse by playing straight. Ballsy. (What’s a ballsy?) I hated the embellishment at the end, where he did something approximating his “woooo!” routine. Maybe that was my problem with Taylor; my first exposure going something like “and he shall be Levon - WOOOO! - and he shall be a good man - WOOOO!” That’s enough to turn off anyone with an appreciation of music and music-like sounds. But I digress.
Clear bottom is Katharine. Top is arguably between Chris and Taylor, probably depending on fannish predisposition or preconception. Elliot is very close to those two, this time, and Paris trails him but exceeds Kat. Paris is likely toast.
Now to go see what other blogs had to say…
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Soon, we will have no other content. Because the baby quit sleeping again. And it’s fun, too!
And people keep joining in! Now Kate is back to Idol-blogging, too. Yay!
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Overheard In Our House, AI Edition
What I said in reaction to Kellie “the Hideous Pickle” Pickler being voted off American Idol:
“Oh my God, Sarah must be having an orgasm!”
Yeah, it was time.
I never wrote my AI post from last night, though mostly that amounted to ”what Dean said.”
I was unusually impressed with Taylor, as for once he gave some reason for his fan base to exist and keep him in it even when he’s awful.
I was unusually impressed with Katharine, though we still aren’t keen on Her Plasticity. Listening to the MP3 afterward made it more impressive. Watching the video afterward with no sound made her seem even more ridiculous than when there’s the singing to distract you.
Elliot did what Elliot does best, maybe more so than normal, but ultimately the song bored me no matter how well performed.
Paris was better on MP3 afterward than I credited her at the time, despite her song choice.
Chris was just perfect. Good choice of artist and apparently this time nobody minded the choice of a more obscure song. At least, I’d never heard of it. He not only had the voice, but he meant it.
Kellie was the particular blight on the evening, between song choice and performance. Unchained Melody is just too big, too famous, and too Not Country for her. For me it goes further, much the way Taylor did on Queen night.
When Taylor sucked doing Crazy Little Thing Called Love - which should have been a fine choice for him - one of the things that bothered me was that it’s a popular sing-along song for me. There are two dangers there. Once is changing it, and the other is being open for negative comparison to me. Since I thought Taylor sounded no better than I would singing that song, I considered it an awful performance.
Which led me to muse about the odd fact that one of my favorite songs to sing along with is Bridge Over Troubled Water, which led me to think a Simon & Garfunkel theme week might be entertaining.
Which brings us to this week, when Kellie did Unchained Melody, which I also particularly like to sing along with, though it’s more in the “difficult to do well” realm of Bridge Over Troubled Water than, say, Crazy Little Thing Called Love. Thus is offended me similarly to the way Taylor offended me a couple weeks back.
Anyway, only five to go. Wow! So that’s… four more weeks? Wow. Go Chris!
AI, AI, oh.
Yep, we’re behind with the Idol posting. (You’d think we stopped to watch House and then the Gilmore Girls afterward instead of posting about it or something, and then collapsed into bed because wow! what a night of television.) So behind. But Dean isn’t, and neither is SarahK, and neither is Ann Althouse, and they all have links, too, and can I just say that Sharon summed it up nicely for me? Oh, yeah.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
AI5, Top 6…the anticipatory post.
I’m so scared of Bocelli night, but that’s probably because it really isn’t my favorite sort of music anyway. Am I the only one who feels like they’re trying to steer who winds up in the top few by the choice of genre and the order of the weeks here? Not sure how I feel about having an artist consult every. freaking. week., though it’s sort of fun, too. I *am* interested in what, precisely, “classic love songs” will wind up meaning.
Anyway, I just wanted to throw this statement from Ann Althouse out there, from the comments to her results post last week:
I think the final will be Kellie and Taylor. But Katharine is gaining strength. At the auditions stage she was my favorite… But now she bugs me. Paris bugs me too. Oh, hell, they all bug me. Except my dear, sweet Chris...
Dunno about the prediction, and I didn’t watch the audition shows, but Oh, hell yes! they all bug me. That’s exactly it. Except for Chris…
My predictions: Paris sings something too old for her. Taylor sings something good but lends it inappropriate energy. Elliott sounds incredible but is impossible to look at because he keeps making those odd hand gestures. Kellie sounds better than she did last week. Katharine is impossibly good, all but for the empty eyes, and once again I find myself saying that she doesn’t grasp the meaning of a single note-perfect syllable. And Chris? Ah, Chris. Hot, hot, hot.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
AI 5: Bye, bye, Ace.
So what exactly is it that inspires this phenomenon? Ace is another good example: guy deserves to go. Guy stays and stays. Guy does better than he normally does. Guy gets voted off.
WTF?
And yet, Ace needed to go, so I can’t feel *too* sorry for him. I just think it’s odd that it happens that way so often. Next week I’ll have to be on the lookout for who stepped up…
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
AI and the Seven Standards
As Jay just said from his spot over on the couch, this is going to be a popularity contest vote as much as anything. These kids (ha!) are pretty evenly matched doing this sort of music, at least to our ears. Rod Stewart was surprisingly entertaining helping them out.
Chris: I still think he’s going to win this thing, and he showed off why that’s not an insane notion tonight. The boy can sing, and he’s got that very sensual charisma that can get a girl all hot and bothered watching him. Combined with that voice: instant star.
Paris: Finally got a good outfit and hairdo. Yay! She sounded absolutely amazing, but the 17-year-old thing bothers me. Maybe it wouldn’t if people would quit damn mentioning it, but I don’t think that child has been within half a mile of a cigarette, let alone reminded of anything by one.
Taylor: Much, much better than he’s sounded the last few weeks. Jay didn’t care for his elaboration at the end. I thought he sounded great all the way through. Safe this time, anyway, I think.
Elliot: Could you hear me snoring, internets? Purple looked good on him, though.
Kellie: For once, she was absolutely right about something. She butchered it. She’s got a pretty voice, but doesn’t always seem to know what to do with it. If she hadn’t played dumb, I’d think the girl might have a career someday. As it stands, she’d better hope the self-effacing routine tonight helps her out some, ‘cause she stank.
Ace: Suddenly looks manly with his hair out of his face. I can see now what might be attractive about him, which is a shock. Much, much better performance than I expected. Impressive.
Katharine: We have no idea what Simon’s been smoking. She was better than she has been, I think, if for no other reason than that she managed more than one facial expression.
Bottom 3 are hard to pick, because the performances were reasonably even but for Kellie and it’s otherwise a matter of whose fans get through. I’d say Elliot, Kellie, and probably Paris, with Elliot getting booted before his time.
Because tonight’s show just isn’t my kind of thing, really.
It only took me almost a week to run across this, but in honor of that I’m dreading tonight’s AI even more than I did Queen night, I’m enjoying the Queen night flashback. You see, I was unhappy to hear all the Innuendo-bashing that went on in the wake of Chris’s performance, and thus was overjoyed to see Bill say this:
The Innuendo album is made all the more estimable by the fact that it was the last original Queen record - Freddy Mercury recorded it in ragged bursts as he was dying, yet still sounds amazing. The lyrics to several songs take on added meaning when you consider his frame of mind.
I was starting to think I was the only one on the planet who liked that album. I feel less alone now.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
So Sad
I was very sorry to see Bucky go, especially after a performance that made me say “he just showed why he’s there” and “he made me want to hang out and watch the rest of his set.” His farewell performance wasn’t as good, but that’s understandable.
I thought for sure it would be Ace, and it was probably close.
A couple weeks back, after I joked about an Air Supply theme, I thought - as a joke - of Rod Stewart, but didn’t blog it. Any more than I blogged about the Led Zeppelin theme I imagined last night. Oh wait, I just did! But guys, I wasn’t serious!
But wait… standards? Not the music of Rod Stewart, but the music of Rod Stewart trying to land himself a Vegas gig to take him through his retirement years? This could be as bad as the worst possible outcome you could have imagined for fifties night. Oh my…
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Kellie
Am I the only person who heard not only “huh? On paper?” when she pretended not to know what that expression meant, but also heard her say “just kidding!” immediately afterward while there was a lot of crowd noise?
People are making fun of her act on account of that “on paper” thing, without having noticed she herself was poking fun at the act.
Not that I am a huge Kellie fan, but still.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
American Idol Queen Week
Wow! Some of them really showed why they are there. That included Bucky and Ace. When Bucky was done I observed that he made me want to hang around and watch the rest of his set. Same thing with Ace. Kellie and Chris were also standouts, and look at the risk Kellie took.
Bottom? There is one clear and uncontestable bottom performance of the week, and shockingly it was Taylor, whose week I’d expected it to be. If he keeps this up, maybe even some of the rabid fans will start to notice the emperor’s wardrobe isn’t all that.
Katharine did herself an injustice and wasn’t good enough to offset the lack of spirit and a performance.
Maybe Paris, if I had to round out a bottom three. Maybe one of the others, but I’d probably need Tivo to decide.
I swear Simon was using reverse psychology an unusual amount of the time tonight; praising people the powers that be might want to manipulate off, and dissing people who did great jobs and need the “to spite Simon” votes.
All in all this was a remarkably good night, especially given how spectacularly bad it could have been. Taylor, amazingly, showed what could have happened the whole night, on what for him ought have been a “gimme” song and performance.
Now I go see what other people have said…