The Nittany Turkey

Primarily about Penn State football, this is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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Home 2009 Archives for March 2009

Archives for March 2009

Who Bites the Dust?

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Prettyboy entertainer Adam Lambert pulled off a miracle on American Idol on Tuesday night. He turned The Redhead into a believer.

Lambert’s weird rendition of Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire on a night dedicated to the Grand Ole Opry proved to be a show stopper. Set to a spooky, minor key, sitar plucking, seductive rhythm, the arrangement mesmerized the audience and the so-called judges.

At age 27, Lambert is a seasoned performer who goes to extremes unthinkable by the other contestants, most of whom cloister themselves in safe material, lest they screw up. No risk, no reward. You can’t hit a home run if you don’t step up to the plate.

Another risk taker is this year’s tattooed lady, Megan Joy, who bet the farm that she could make us forget Patsy Cline while listening to Megan’s version of Walkin’ after Midnight. She did. Her sexy arrangement was much more Peggy Lee than Patsy Cline. If you ever want to get tattoos then you should go for it and maybe use a Tattoo Numbing Cream.

Although Simon dissed what he referred to a prom dress, it was a sexy, sultry, gauzy thing that showed off Megan’s best features. My only criticism is that the brown of the boulder holders clashed with the red/green of Megan’s gigantic right upper arm tattoo.

Anoop Desai, on whom I had all but given up, having predicted that he would go down last week, came back strong. He also took a risk, singing Always on My Mind, a country classic strongly identified with Willie Nelson. Anoop succeeded in “making it his own”, delivering one of the standout performances of the night.

Allison Iraheta, Danny Gokey, Kris Allen, and Matt Giraud also sang well, although they didn’t pass the Mouse’s Morning After Test: if I can’t remember anything other than that they sang well last night, I wouldn’t buy their recordings. This is not to say that they were bad. They were fine, just not memorable. Nevertheless, I think they’ll be safe for another week.

Michael Sarver, the roughneck, had great fun up there and I think it rubbed off on the audience. Country is a good genre for Michael. He won’t wind up in the top three or anything, but I believe he’ll be safe this week.

So, who’s going to leave?

I believe it will be either Lil Rounds or Alexis Grace.

While Scott MacIntyre’s bland performance left the so-called judges making lukewarm, waffling comments, this Mouse believes that he’ll squeak by yet another week.

Back to Alexis, she injected no energy and left no memories. Actually, I agree with the so-called judges about Alexis. She doesn’t smile and she did well with her hard-ass, bluesy, down and dirty stuff during the auditions. Leaving that behind for straight renditions of wan material is a mistake. That was her only edge. She pledged to “get dirty” next week if she returns. But that return is in doubt due to the weak performance this week.

Lil was out of her element doing country and it showed. She took a huge risk by choosing Independence Day by Martina McBride, her signature song. She made the further mistake of trying to sing it like Martina, which could only lead to unfavorable comparisons. The song has been overplayed, and much of the audience knows every note. Lil provided no surprises in an uncomfortable performance.

So, it will be goodbye Alexis or goodbye Lil, as we pare the group down to 10. This cut has additional significance: the remaining 10 will participate in the Idol Summer Tour.

11 and Counting

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Last week’s American Idol results show, replete with the expanding Kelly Clarkson and the insipid Kanye West both hawking new CDs, was the end of the road for little, lovely Jasmine and handsome, smiling Jorge. No great loss in either case, but little Jasmine was quite pretty. Fortunately, the voters kept Megan Joy and Alexis Grace around for another week. Mouse needs his eye candy.

The “Judges’ Save” was introduced as a safety net measure for preventing the repeat of such erstwhile early exit travesties as Chris Daughtry and Jennifer Hudson. Judges will get to save one, single contestant who is eliminated by the popular vote during the finals. They must confer during one of the commercials and their decision must be unanimous. This is like George W. Bush losing in the popular vote, but the Supreme Court of the United States declared him a winner, anyway. (I’m getting a great kick out of myself here.) Anyhow, assuming that the public knocks out someone whom the judges feel to be worthy of continuing, they can make the save—just once. Alas, the judges unanimously chose not to save either the weeping Jasmine or the pragmatic Jorge.

This gives the judges a raison d’être for the finals. Otherwise, they have no real purpose, other than to provide inane commentary and inimical diatribe (in Simon’s case) after each performance, the whole of which carries no weight at all.

I think they ought to implement an analogous procedure called “The Judges’ 86.” This would allow the judges to confer and unanimously boot an unworthy contestant such as Season 6’s Sanjaya Malakar, even if an asshole with a huge following, such as Howard Stern, for example, tries to manipulate the popular voting to make a mockery of the show, which does quite well in making a mockery of itself without his help!

The Redhead just pointed out to this Mouse that this year, like other years, we have a subplot about which Christianophobes can assert conspiracy theories. Some contestants have religion and other believers vote for them because of it, perhaps unfairly to the other contestants who are not religious. Like, duh! This is news only to those who wish to make it news.  The American Idol voting public is motivated by things other than talent? No kidding! It’s a popularity contest, any way you slice it, and common interests, good looks, a decent personality, and, perhaps, a desire to punish other contestants will get the votes over ability anytime—just like presidential politics. But I digress.

This week is Grand Ole Opry Week. So, we can look forward to Carrie Underwood, the most successful Idol thus far, hawking yet another album on the results show. Good thing she stopped dating Tony Romo or she wouldn’t have time to do all this. She would be busy indulging him about how bad the Cowboys suck and what a dick T.O. really is. Anyway, we’ll also get to hear how these contestants handle country music. We’ll see just how versatile they is!

Opening Night Jitters?

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So, we had our first night of the American Idol finals. Most of the performances were pretty mundane but there were a couple of standouts who might go pretty far in this year’s competion.

First, let me ask what in the hell was that feathery thing on Paula Abdul’s shoulder? It looked like a damn bird tried to commit suicide by flying full force into her, winding up as a pile of lifeless feathers.

OK, that was a smokescreen because I don’t have a lot to say here. Last night while I was supposed to be watching this lame-ass show, at times I was watching a more important NHL game while texting my niece-in-law about it, as she and her old man (my nephew) are avid supporters of the “other” team. So, I missed some performances, particularly as the hockey game went into overtime and, ultimately, a shoot-out. But I digress.

Simon announced that two contestants would perish on Wednesday night, and from the post-mortems I’ve read about the show, apparently, the judges will be involved in the eliminations somehow. Sounds like a Kim Jong Il sort of voting situation. Either vote for who we want or the judges will fix the election!

Anyhow, the performances I liked were Lil Rounds, Allison Iraheta, and Adam Lambert, not necessarily in that order. I honestly thought everyone else had opening night jitters and via either shitty song selection or just stage fright—being overwhelmed in a new situation—they did not perform up to their potential.

Honorable mention goes to Megan Joy, who I find to be a veritable slurpette. Alas, she only gets a mention here because she’s hot. She butchered her crappy choice of a song, “Rockin’ Robin.”  The other blonde I like, Alexis Grace, sang at a crucial time during the hockey game, so I have NFI how she did. (Some sloppy-ass reporting here, ain’t it?) My co-judge, The Redhead, thought she was “terrible.”  However, she also thinks Alexis is a teen. She hasn’t been a teen for two years, and she’s a mama to boot. I still want her ass.

I believe that Adam Lambert is the one to beat this year. He’s a seasoned performer who knows how to take command of the stage and his audience. He has an excellent voice, too, and he gave Paula an orgasm just by watching his performance. Most importantly, however, he’s got the type of looks that attract the vacuous teeny and tweeny demographic. Paula ain’t the only one who’ll be having orgasms dreaming of Adam. I think he’s got a large voting block already cemented, so to speak.

The other standout was Allisan Iraheta, who has been doing stuff like Kim Carnes and Heart thus far through the auditions and the preliminaries. She’s very young, 16 to be exact, but she has a smoky, powerful voice that can pull off the rock alto kind of stuff. She sure as hell doesn’t have any trouble getting up there and belting out a rock ballad.

Who is going to go? Well, poor Jorge sucked big time doing “Never Can Say Goodbye.” He should have tried a falsetto to sound more like the young Michael Jackson. What an ironic choice of a song for Jorge, because he will have to say goodbye tonight. No-no-no. No-no-no. No-no-no!  And man, Anoop was completely out of his league attempting “Beat It”, which came off looking like bad karaoke. Another ironic choice of songs here. Anoop will beat it tonight!