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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Da Kid is Back

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On American Idol Tuesday night, the seventeen year-old who looks all of thirteen, David Archuleta, stole the show. He will have no problems advancing to the next round. Hell, even in a bad week he probably gets more votes than anyone else because he is king with the age 9-17 demographic. Carly Smithson, Ramiele Malubay, Syesha Mercado, and David Cook also turned in credible performances, not necessarily in that order.

Who were the duds? Well, I’ve mentioned six names, so there were five significantly subpar acts, from this Turkey’s standpoint. This is elimination day, so we’ll dwell on the negative for a bit. Kristy Lee Cook will be the goodbye girl this week. I said it last week and I am not giving up. Unlike Sanjaya last year, whom I kept eliminating week after week until the sense and reason of the voting public finally caught up with me, Kristy cannot possibly have a huge base of committed voters spurred on by Howard Stern. In fact, anyone with any sense of what comprises “star quality” would jump off Kristy’s sinking ship at this point no matter where they wore their socks. Yeah, only old farts like this Turkey, who wouldn’t mind seeing Kristy’s statuesque blondness hang around another few weeks would vote for her at this point. I really did like her sassiness telling Simon that she could knock his socks off any day and he knew it. Alas, I do not believe that she’ll be around another week to do any socks-knocking.

Brooke White better watch her ass, too. She looked silly in a bright yellow 1960’s go-go shift as she sang “Here Comes the Sun.” Simon was all too happy to point out that he could have predicted when he heard her song selection that she would come out in a yellow dress with yellow lighting. Sarcastic, but it hit the mark.

Chikezie, after being last week’s star, took a big chance and blew it this week. Admitting that he hadn’t ever picked up a harmonica until this week, he incorporated it into his performance. He’s getting a bit formulaic, starting slowly, changing gears, and then energizing his act. In this case, he threw in a harmonica solo just before the gear change when he should have backed off on the gas and double-clutched.

Michael Johns tried to take a big, long song in “A Day in the Life” and condense it to the requisite one-and-a-half minutes. It was a failure. He’s personable, he can sing, and he’s got a lot of fans, but he has to choose his material better. In this case, he said it was a departed friend’s favorite song.

Finally, Amanda Overmyer didn’t choose the right song, either, in “Back in the U.S.S.R.” She was one of my favorites for a while, but there is an inevitable sameness about everything she does now.

So, here’s to you, Kristy Lee Cook…I’ll miss those legs.

P.S.

On the judging front, Paula seemed actually lucid for the second time in a row. Simon was his usual acerbic self, but it was pretty much an off night. Fortunately, there was not very much fight picking between Seacrest and Cowell.

It’s the Cs

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Chikezie and Carly Smithson nailed their Lennon-McCartney performances Tuesday night on American Idol. I’m psyched about Chikezie—when he’s good, he’s damn good. Carly gave me reasons to like her and look beyond her frown lines and body ink. The two of them will bounce solidly into next week.

Brooke White and David Cook also turned in good efforts. They’re safe for another week.

Amanda Overmayr is in a class by herself. You either like her or hate her. I happen to like her, but she’s got to shitcan the Janis jive. Yay yay yay… baby baby baby…

The rest of the performances were pedestrian or worse. Syesha‘s pretty smile might not be enough to outweigh a forgettable leadoff number. She should go, but will stick around for one more week unless she really nails next week. Cute little Ramiele also jeopardized her future with a slacker song selection she couldn’t rescue. David Hernandez displayed his limitations. He won’t be around much longer.

Even David Archuleta showed his vulnerability this week. He’ll coast through because of the forgiving nature of his followers, the 11 year-old contingent.

That brings us to this week’s elimination prediction. I predict that tall, blond Kristy Lee Cook will be voted off the island. She tried to “countrify” Eight Days a Week and failed miserably. Everything about it sucked and appropriately, Simon Cowell called it a “complete mess.”

Simon had asked Ms. Cook to take some risks and show her country roots, but he clearly didn’t like her at all this week, prompting a nasty exchange between Cowell and Seacrest. Their complex relationship has gone from entertaining to tedious and predictable. Speaking of annoyingly predictable, Paula’s gushing over contestants while attempting to mitigate bad performances would be easier to take if she didn’t prattle on ad nauseam and if Simon didn’t add insult to injury by continually mocking her. However, she was much less obnoxiously obsequious this week than at any time in recent memory. Still, Cowell scowled. The judges are children: Fat Albert, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and Eddie Haskell.

Hey Redhead! It’s that time again!

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While other Penn State bloggists dream away their off-season trying to foment discussion by speculating on the great mystery of Joe Paterno’s contract, by pontificating about which recruit will be the next great Austin Scott or LaVon Chisley, by providing blow-by-blow descriptions of each of Terrell Pryor’s pugilistic performances, and by documenting the Centre County trial docket, which is replete with half the Nittany Lions football roster, this Turkey sidesteps all that bullshit until there’s some real damn news, taking his annual sojourn into the true theater of the absurd—the always inane, largely irrelevant, and somehow addictive American Idol. (Sorry, Jed.)

Count on The Nittany Turkey for the best off-season crap in all of the blogosphere. We’ll give you coverage of the NFL Draft, we’ll present our gratuitously irreverent take on the Democrat presidential looney bin and its inmates, and now—yes!—we’ll give you all you need to know (or more correctly stated, all I’m going to tell you) about American Idol. And you need to know that.

We’re down to twelve competitors now on AI, the field having been pared down by four on each of the past three weeks. Sadly, Kady Malloy, the hottest of the bunch, got her walking papers last Thursday. Interestingly enough, the official American Idol web site is conducting a poll concerning which eliminated contestant people would most want to see return to the stage but Kady’s name ain’t on it. What are they afraid of? That everybody will vote for Kady? This Turkey sure as hell would! But I digress. Now that we’re down to twelve, there won’t be a girls night and a boy’s night anymore. There’ll just be twelve contestants all competing against one another. Doesn’t that just wanna make your poor little heart want to skip a beat? I thought so. (Don’t worry. It’s just a minor arrhythmia.)

The top twelve contestants get to participate in the Idol Tour, so this is a very significant point in the competition. The stakes are higher in that each of the twelve will reap rewards other than the losers’ consolation prize of a steerage class plane ticket back home to Altoona, Pennsylvania. ??????? ?????? (On a plane, “steerage” means you have to fly clinging to the rudder.) These remaining people can be considered the finalists.

Thus far, up until Kady, I’ve agreed with the eliminations. Now Kady is gone but, hey, I really wanted to see those bouncing bazongas some more. OK. I’ll stop whining now. She wasn’t all that great a singer—her best act was a Britney Spears imitation, probably only because it brought to mind Britney’s bouncing bazongas. Bye bye, Kady.

Also gone is Danny Noriega, a likable but weird kid whose effeminate mannerisms won over a niche audience for him. He tacitly threatened to become the next Sanjaya Malakar if he hung around much longer. What-everrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

My favored blonde now will have to be Kristy Lee Cook, the tall horsebabe, who unless and until she solidly roots herself in a classic country mode, will not be with us much longer, alas! I agree with Simple Simon when he moans that her performances are “forgettable.”

When Kristy goes, the only remaining blonde will be Brooke White, an on-again, off-again pop stylist (who is also a hair stylist). I like Brooke, but her inconsistency, tentativeness, and song choices gonna do her in. Then, there will be no blondes. Forsooth, verily! Oh, poop.

Just because of her diminutive size, her pathos, and her booming voice from such a half-pint babe, I have to like Ramiele Malubay, who except for a couple of hitches has impressed me from the start. Sushi Girl will undoubtedly emerge as a favorite to walk away with all the marbles if she can maintain her self-confidence against the stiff competition. (Does that mean that the competition is a bunch of stiffs?)

For a change, Amanda Overmayr, a nurse, is a strong-voiced rocker who looks the part. Once she gets over thinking that she’s Janis Joplin reincarnated, which I think she has, she’ll be terrific. She’s a lotta woman, and I like her.

Syesha Mercado—what the hell kind of a name is that? Anyway, we’ve already heard enough Whitney and there was only one of her anyway. ????? ???? ????? What’s next? Mariah? Don’t answer that! Anyway, Syesha couldn’t carry Mariah’s jock strap. (Or whatever you carry for a broad.) Unless this babe can break out of the derivative stuff and the runs and shit, she’s history in a few weeks or less. I can’t remember any of her numbers; that’s how forgettable she is.

Finally, Carly Smithson, the Irish babe who runs a tattoo parlor in San Diego, has an excellent voice. Her face has a little too much “character” for my money—her frown lines get in the way and her main incisors are too long. What also gets in the way is that huge tattoo of a face on her arm. Perhaps Jenny’s remedy would be best for Carly: ink a tatt of an arm on her face.

Among the guys, I’d like to see Chikezie, Michael Johns, and David Hernandez go far, but as Randy would put it, they’re just a-ight. (What the hell kind of Ebonic word is “a-ight”?) Hernandez’s performances in a Phoenix-area strip club for male clientèle might earn him a few points along the way, even if posing naked didn’t work for Idol hopeful Antonella Barba last year (as covered in last year’s seminal Idol piece, Idolatry and the Cluelessness of the American Public). She was hotter, though.

David Archuleta has the potential to run away with the whole thing, especially with the under-18 crowd voting in large numbers. He tried to offset his baby face with a morose song last week, and it didn’t work but in proving that he was not invincible, it will make him a better contestant. He’s still got to be the odds-on favorite to win it all. Remember, guys like Neil Sedaka and Wayne Newton went pretty damn far in the music world with baby faces.

David Cook can be snotty and annoying, but he’s a rocker with all the equipment, right down to the Gibson Les Paul model guitar. This is the first year that American Idol is allowing contestants to play instruments, and one has to wonder why they waited so long.

Jason Castro is a very good singer, but I think his shyness will do him in.

I have mentioned everybody. I had to pencil in Syesha and Jason at the last minute because I had forgotten about them. That’s how memorable they are. ????? ??? ???? Hell, at least Jason has the weird hair going for him.