I admit that I will follow the results of American Idol in passing, mostly thanks to my mom who really likes the show. I’m always amused when people get up in arms about how people who were deserving got kicked off the show because they were outvoted, like has happened with Michael Johns last week. I think this highlights AI’s biggest weakness as a vehicle of finding new talent. At the end of the day, the show can dissolve into little more than a personality contest with people voting for a particular singer even if they don’t deserve it because they like them, or they hate that the judges are mean to them, etc. Remember that little girl Jasmine Trias that was on a few years back? Simon was especially mean to her because she was not a great singer, but the voters banded together (especially in Hawaii, where she was from) and kept her on the show until damn near the bitter end. Who knows if they finally just rigged the voting to get her off because it would have been a travesty to have her win? Cowell was only doing his job. Music industry people aren’t paid to be nice to mediocre talent. They’re paid to find someone who will make huge loads of money by selling a large number of albums. This is the way of things.
The fact remains that the fact that who moves on is based on the voters has really highlighted the mixed success of the show. Kelly Clarkson is the only winner to really “make it” after her time on the show. Could anyone have imagined she would turn into a worldwide pop superstar? Maybe only she did, but it happened. The other success stories from Idol have all come from people like Chris Daughtry who were voted off the show by fickle fans only to have been memorable enough to launch their own careers.
At the end of the day, people who get so involved with the singers on this show need to sit back and remember the reality of what this show is. It can be a launch pad to a career if a singer plays it right. Beyond that, though, it’s a popularity contest; a spectacle left up to the will of voters who seem to love generic blonde country wannabes and those who they feel the judges have come down way too hard on. Nothing more and nothing less.
Technorati Tags: american idol, jasmine trias, michael johns
So I’m finally bringing back a feature of the old (old!) d6 with the return of the MeroMusic Minute; some quick thoughts about what’s new in music
I’ve decided to focus the first MMM installment on Gnarls Barkley’s The Odd Couple, the successor to 2006’s St. Elsewhere. The album’s first single, Run, is a fun and catchy tune with an even catchier video (with a fun Justin Timberlake cameo and the possibility of inducing an epeletic seizure). Sadly, it’s the only really great song on the album. Whereas St. Elsewhere shined with a number of memorable cuts, The Odd Couple flounders in places as Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo try some new musical terrain. The album feels a bit more down-tempo, and I think that might be where it flounders.
I won’t call it a sophomore slump, because the album was enjoyable overall, but it’s definately not St. Elsewhere 2.0.
Technorati Tags: gnarls barkley, st. elsewhere, the odd couple
Here’s a fascinating review of different regional pizza styles.
I’m from NJ and I’m a total pizza snob (and not afraid to admit it) and my favorite is definitely the thin crust stuff. No super doughy crust for me.
Technorati Tags: pizza
Still powerful:
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
Stand up. Be proud. Don’t let the dream die.
Technorati Tags: i have a dream speech, martin luther king jr.
Ten years later, and this monologue rings truer than ever:
Why shouldn’t I work for the N.S.A.? That’s a tough one, but I’ll take a shot. Say I’m working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I’m real happy with myself, ’cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never met, never had a no problem with get killed. Now the politicians are sayin’, “Oh, Send in the marines to secure the area” ’cause they don’t give a shit. It won’t be their kid over there, gettin’ shot. Just like it wasn’t them when their number got called, ’cause they were pullin’ a tour in the National Guard. It’ll be some kid from Southie takin’ shrapnel in the ass. And he comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, ’cause he’ll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them, but it ain’t helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And they’re takin’ their sweet time bringin’ the oil back of course, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin’ play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain’t too long ’til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy’s out of work and he can’t afford to drive, so he’s got to walk to the fuckin’ job interviews, which sucks ’cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin’ him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he’s starvin’ ’cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special they’re servin’ is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I’m holdin’ out for somethin’ better. I figure fuck it, while I’m at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.
Technorati Tags: good will hunting, matt damon
