My Horses.

Hollywood Week was a blood bath for all the interesting women who were promoted by American Idol.  Rose Flack, Deanna Brown, Emily Wynne-Hughes... all gone.  So we move on.

I've been obsessed with this group performance from Day 2:

They were the first to go, which is always tough.  But it gave us a better intro to Kris Allen (the one in the argyle), who is my fave guy so far.  He only had this itty-bitty intro:

Here's a longer interview:

A quick Google search is showing that Matt Giraud, the first singer, is getting all the buzz because of his Elliott Yamin-iness.  Forget that Justin dude; he's awful (and he's the voice teacher!).  And India... I think she really did forget her lines but covered it up with a slick rap.  That and she's clearly limping.  I had to look her up -- she's the one who auditioned with her much, um, sturdier sister, and, yup, she was on crutches but she also saaaang.  She's not just a one-rap pony.  I'm keeping my eye on her.

Still, my fave girl still left in the mix is Anne Marie Boskovich.  She's the one who remembered seeing Kara sing a song at in Nashville.  



Kara's website gives a shout-out to Anne Marie for the quick plug, although, come on Kara, I won't make fun of your (massive) overbite if you manage to spell Anne Marie's name correctly.  Jebus.  You get all up in people's grilles when they say Kah-rah instead of Care-ah.  Anyway, Kara goes on to sing the song, and frankly, it's actually really good.  It starts around the 3:30 mark.  (The other crap is them gushing about Nick Lachey and David Archuleta.  I know, right?):

Whatever.  Archie's adorable.

The Truth About Twilight: Part III.

It sucks.

Even I hate it.

I'm like half way through, and I just can't go on.

I have a high tolerance for crap.

This leaps over that in a single bound.

Puke.

Part II was here.

The Buck Stopped.

I'm too lazy to link to stuff properly.  So just take it from me when you read this entry five years from now that President Obama has been having issues with getting his cabinet appointees confirmed.  Oh, you know, because they don't pay taxes properly.  (Honestly, who does?  The tax code is friggin' nutso.)

But what's amazing is that Obama has said flat out: "I screwed up."  Gone are the days of "mistakes were made" and other passive-voice horrors.  I can't believe that a politician in this age of media soundbites would actually take responsibility for an error, let alone one that really isn't his fault so much as it is the fault of the ones being appointed.

I'm not saying that this makes him a good president necessarily.  Duh, of course I'd prefer a president who never needs to apologize for a screw-up.  But, setting aside that fantasy along with flying pigs and Colin Farrell knocking on my door to say hi, I think it shows a depth of character that is all too rare amongst our public figures.  

It's a little thing, but it means a lot to me.

A Year.

Weird, I've had this blog now for just a little over a year.

With that, and the afternoon gassiness, and the grunting when getting up from a seated position, and the extra-fast growing nose hair, and the drinking of white wine because red wine gives me a headache, and the reasonable bed time... I'm feeling old.

American Idol, Season 8!

I'm obsessed with American Idol.  Ever since Season 1, when I called that Kelly Clarkson was going to be in the final (granted -- I thought it would be against Tamyra Gray, not Justin Guarini -- but who's keeping track?), I've been on a rampage.  I've posted to chat rooms, I've read recaps, and yes, I've even voted (just once -- and you won't be able to guess for whom).

I'm not crazy about the audition rounds.  At this point, I feel like the crappy singers are doing it just to get on TV.  At least in the first few seasons, there were some genuinely deluded singers -- and it was especially fun to see the audience not know what to do with itself with them (see Jim Verraros and William Hung).  But now, like, Sanjaya's and Bikini Girls and Picklers are getting famous for no good reason.  Well, anyway, that's why I'm saving the blogging until now.

Hollywood Week eps 1 and 2 have now aired.  Reason #1 I love this part?  It's the only part where Paula actually takes her job seriously.  She tells people when they're bad, and she tells people when they're actually good, and not just pretty.  It's a week where the judges aren't playing for the camera, and you finally get to see why they are judges.

Reason #2?  The group day!  The.  Best.  Drama.  Ever.  So many self-righteous people who TOTALLY throw stones from deep within their glass houses show just how ugly their souls are.  It's awesome.  

Reason #3?  This is where you start to separate the wheat from the chaff.  I'm totally digging Kris Allen this season.  I like Danny Gokey and his bromance with what's his name, but I'm thinking they're peaking too early.  Those singers almost never win (see Tamyra, David Archuleta, Melinda Doolittle).  The winners are almost always ones who grow somehow over the course of the season.  A bunch of the really memorable girls (i.e., the ones with tattoos and piercings) got cut.

Yeah, I could write about this stuff forever.  I can't wait for the rest of the season.

North Carolina: 1, Northeast: 0.

I just got a phone call from the apartment complex that I lived in during law school in North Carolina. They were letting me know that I received a piece of mail from the North Carolina DMV regarding a license renewal (turns out it's not relevant since I changed over to Massachusetts). It's been almost nine months since I moved out, and they are still watching out for me. Moreover, it's a complex that houses a lot of students, so there is a LOT of junk mail and other flotsam that still gets sent their two, sometimes three tenants afterward. Not easy to pick out the important stuff, let alone care enough to call. That's loyalty, dude.

That would never happen in the northeast. If anything, someone would have stolen my identity and gone on a motorcycle equipment buying spree* with my license. Color me impressed, South, and that's not easy.

*Actually has happened with one of my credit cards.

Why Lost Gets On My Nerves.

After the debacle that was season 3, I almost gave up on Lost, Heroes-style. But then came the news that the producers were setting a specific end date, which meant that they wouldn't have to unnecessarily prolong dumb side stories. Instead, they could refocus on the core mythology and--even better-refocus on the core characters (seriously, Sun is friggin' awesome).

I just finished watching my DVR'd episode of the season 5 premiere, and while it was good, it still fell prey 3 times to the crappy writing that made me such a skeptic that the producers knew what they were doing. Here's a generic example:

Person 1: What's going on?

Person 2: There's no time to tell you!

Person 1: You WILL tell me!

Person 2: Don't you get it? There's no time!

This happened two and a half times in the premiere. Which is down from a gajabillion in season 3. This is what I hate about the show. It's flat out careless writing. At first, I gave the show the benefit of the doubt that they were just being careful about revealing too much, but after episode after episode of the same motif, I finally realized that the producers had no idea what they were doing. They were just feeding strands to the viewers to keep us coming back, but they rarely, if ever actually resolve these threads (remember the polar bear?). It's the equivalent of a TV Ponzi scheme.

I'll admit that season 4 made up a LOT of goodwill that had been, ahem, lost, especially that episode where Desmond has to find Penny twice. For now, I stick with the show because I've invested so much time into it already, and there have been several other shows that I dropped midway only to find out that their last season kicked ass so I of course had to go back and wade through all the crappy seasons to get to the halfway decent end because I'm an insane completist when it comes to TV shows. (Best. Run-on. Sentence. Ever.) You know, like Alias and Angel.

You're on notice, though, Lost. I dropped Heroes, and I'm fairly certain that show will never right itself again (I mean, the first season kinda blew anyway -- I just watched it because I'm a geek). But don't think I won't snap you in two the same way.