Click here for my latest article. Last night's men's show was fantastic. Ending with Bo Bice's "Whipping Post," that may have been the best episode of Idol so far. Nikko Smith, Mario Vazquez, Anthony Federov, and Bo put in exceptionally good performances. (Travis Tucker and Scott Savol acquitted themselves quite well too.) Tonight I was expecting the women to follow suit with more strong performances. Unfortunately that didn't happen. Besides Jessica Sierra...
Click here for my latest article My Idol commentary is going up a bit later than usual tonight. I was in at work doing some parent-teacher conferences. Coming home to watch the show back on videotape, I was blown-away with how well the men were able to perform as a group. Tonight's show was fantastic. There were a few downsides to tonight's show: Constantine , Anwar , and David Brown are beginning to fall below expectations. It appears that Constantine can't sing as well as expe...
A while back, my wife opened an account at a local bank. One of the "perks" for opening an account was a free DVD. (A DVD is the least they can do considering the hidden-charges of your everyday commercial bank. But hey, we need to use the coin counter at the grocery store branch on a daily basis.) After a bit of thought, we decided to order "Man on the Moon," an Andy Kauffman biopic starring Jim Carrey. The movie is really good. It is a look at the life of a mod...
As some of you know, I write frequent blog entries on the "American Idol" television program. I recap shows, and give opinions of each program. My "Idol" articles are among the most widely-read ones that I post. In order to keep my forum discussion timely, I place a link to my latest article on each entry. Regardless of that, I have recently found responses to my American Idol articles in all sorts of different articles. I have found some replies to the curre...
This afternoon at work (I am an elementary school teacher) I went out to the playground to gather a few of my students. After looking around a bit, I found the kids whom I was looking for. Two of the kids that I found were playing in a rather animated group of first graders. There were about fifteen kids picking up handfuls of freshly-fallen snow, rubbing it in their hair, and exclaiming: "Look at me! I'm George Washington!" (I took a picture of this, and I e-mailed it...
Click here for my latest article On Monday night during the critique following Constantine's song, Randy Jackson sang a note to make a point. After Randy sang, it seemed like Constantine said, "You'd better stick to rap." Now I didn't quite hear it clearly, so I had been wondering about it for the last couple of days. In fact, I spent about 45 minutes last night searching around the internet to read some report about what was actually said. (Randy didn't look like ...
This morning as I was driving into work, I heard excerpts of Barry Bonds' press conference. I have been thinking about it all day, and it has been making me a bit angry. What I gleaned by listening to it was: it is the media's fault that athletes are getting caught "making mistakes", and that he must be doing something right because 50,000 fans show up to "boo" him each night. I think that Barry Bonds is making a mistake that a number of overpushed "heel" pro wrestlers make. Bo...
Click here for my latest article. Last night was the men's turn, tonight it was the ladies. As a group, the ladies were less impressive than the men, but there will eventually be enough standouts to make the competition interesting. Is it me, or does it seem that this year more contestants are being seen perform for the first time in the sound studio round than before? Sarah Mather, Melinda Lira, Celina Rae, Jessica Sierra, and Aloha Mischeaux basically made their singin...
Click here for my latest article. How exciting! The first night of the American Idol "voting stage" has begun. Tonight's show featured the twelve male finalists. After Wednesday's results show, that field will be narrowed down to ten. As a group, this batch of contestants was extremely good. Nearly all of the songs were at least passable-to-exceptional. Tonight's top five notable performers: 1- Nikko Smith sang a really nice version ...
My wife was sitting with my one year-old son at the computer a little while ago. My wife was crocheting, and Kenny was playing on the Teletubbies website. (He was having an awesome time!) After a while of playing, (dragging, clicking, and moving) baby managed to shut off the computer somehow. (He was having a great time before he ended up turning off the computer.) Now ever since I turned the computer back on, it is doing something strange. I hear a little popping nois...
This morning I was listening to the "celebrity birthdays" bit on the radio. Turns out that Yoko Ono (or OnoYoko for my friends in Japan) is 72 years old today. I was a bit surprised to hear that she is already in her seventies. Yoko is an interesting one. Sure her music is painfully horrible, but she certainly had an interesting affect on her late husband. If you haven't seen the documentary "John Lennon Imagine", I'd recommend it. Watching it, one can see how Yok...
Click here for my latest article Tonight's show was really interesting. Three weeks following their last performance, the judges met to determine the fates of the final 44 Idol contestants. Out of the final 44, 24 would be sent on to the next round. Beginning next week, we'll have the chance to vote for our favorites among the final twelve men, and the final twelve women. The Twelve Male Finalists: 1. David Brown - Obvious pick. 2. Nikko Smith - A good decision was made to ...
Click here for my latest article The pool of contestants on American Idol stands at 44 following tonight's show. Tomorrow night (in somewhat of a change in format) the judges will review past performances, and interview contestants in order to trim 20 more contestants, to bring the final number to 24 for the phone-in voting part of the competition. Tonight's contestants were split into four rooms, each room's story told as a retrospective of the contestants' day. In the end, ...
Our little one-year-old loves to copy mom and dad. (That's not unusual.) Now that he is more mobile than ever, he is able to climb up on the chair by the computer. He loves banging on the keyboard, moving the mouse around, and clicking the buttons. Once it seems that he's getting too excited, or the computer starts making funny noises, we have to take baby away from the computer. Then -of course- he throws a fit. It is really cute to see how excited he gets when ...
My wife and I were having an interesting conversation in the car today. I mentioned to her that I had seen "The Simple Life" (A TV show) for about ten minutes the other day. I told her that I found Nicole Richie to be pretty, fun, and charming. Think about for a minute. I am as surprised as you are. Seeing photographs of Nicole and Paris in tabloids, magazines, on television, and online, the pair seem like vapid starlets with little redeeming qualities besides their appearance. I have ne...