Idol Gives Back

For Idol Gives Back, I was glad to see the So You Think You Can Dance stars, including Benji Schwimmer, Nick Lazzarini and Pasha Kovalev. I was a little frightened by Mary Murphy's threat of screaming all night until people contributed though. I had the phone in my hand but fortunately she stopped in time.

The script writers made Miley Cyrus seem like both an egotist and a fool. Her agent should have vetoed it. I have never been sure why she's popular. I don't think she could have made the finals on AI. A video was shown of her father Billy Ray taking her to a trashy part of Appalachia. Question: how can people make something of themselves if they won't even pick up the garbage in their yard? It doesn't take money just to pick up trash and put it in a bin.

Reese Witherspoon made an appearance on the show. Where was Jake? As a consolation, I was happy to see David Hernandez again. David Archuleta showed how much better he is than every one else when he sang is part in "Seasons of Love". Robin Williams did a tiresome mockery of a stereotypical Russian. Didn't that routine finish its course in the 80s?

On the charity part, I just don't agree with repopulating New Orleans unless it can be made safe from flooding. There's no reason to create another catastrophe-waiting-to-happen. If NOLA has half as many people as it had before, that's okay. There are other parts of Louisiana or the U.S. where we can build houses. To continue to talk about displace people is ridiculous. There are thousands of people who have moved to other parts of the country permanently. To keep treating them as if they are still residents of New Orleans is crazy.

Digest Of Week Ending 03-14-08

Saturday, March 8. Mad TV. It was a clip show of past sketches, which was a reminder to me of how good the show was before it was hijacked by Bobby Lee. His characters are so unfunny and it is ridiculous to make almost every sketch something about Asians just to suit him. Is he getting all the airtime by blackmailing someone or is it because he works cheap? Mad TV has a history of losing the actors that get too popular. Presumably they want more money than the show is willing to pay.

Sunday, March 9. 60 Minutes. There was a segment about two lawyers that deliberately kept a secret for 26 years that allowed an innocent man to stay in prison. It shows how evil you have to be to be a lawyer. Hopefully something in this life will give them a taste of the cruelty that they inflicted and may the furnace of Hell give them both the eternity of unimaginable pain they deserve.

Big Brother 9. I could have done without seeing Joshuah Welch's morning routine of shaking his spare tire. He is an interesting character but he seems to be following the Dustin Erikstrup path to eviction. He needs not to show himself as a power center. Also, I don't think it was fair that the meeting of the "bros" didn't include the 'mo. Sad note: the house stalker Natalie Cunial is so embarrassingly stupid, counting 27 letters in the alphabet by including the "and" between "Y" and "Z".

Monday, March 10. There wasn't much on so I just watched the news channels to see the election stuff.

Tuesday, March 11. American Idol. It was nice to see an update to the set and the opening animation but what really needs to be replaced is Ryan Seacrest's "This -- is American Idol." I don't like the way Ryan talks anyway, and that line and the way he contorts his mouth to say it is like nails on the chalkboard. Thank goodness for fast-forward. David Hernandez spoke about working at a pizza parlor. Pizza Boy, He Delivers. He worked the stage, showing himself as a charming performer. Overall though, it was boring. David Archuleta was as cute as ever, but his performance was not good at all. It contained several major flaws.

Big Brother 9. Sheila Kennedy received the resurrected red unitard from season 8. As I mentioned last year, most people would rather have seen the red unitard as one of the two finalists that season instead of both of the Donatos. Not sure why "Mrs. Robinson" was played as Sheila put it on. Anne Bancroft was sexy but Sheila is a scag.

Wednesday, March 12. Big Brother 9. Natalie acts like a psycho slut, once again showing the inadequacy of the psychological testing of show applicants. I had hoped that Alex Coladonato would come back to the house but I was unhappy to hear him talk about supporting Matt Mcdonald. Matt is a terrible person for several reasons. He uses a mentally unbalanced person for sexual and personal gain and he called Joshuah a bad word. I was so glad that the houseguests voted back James Zinkand (since it would screw over Matt a little). Julie Chen asked who looked better in the red unitard, Sheila or Jen. How could anyone say that the old Medusa/sea hag hybrid Sheila could look better than Jen?

American Idol. It was so sad seeing Jim Carrey whoring himself by wearing an elephant costume for Horton Hears A Who. How the mighty have fallen. It was even worse to see AI take their finalist slaves to shill for the movie while wearing mini elephant ears. David Archuleta, little baby gnome, said how glad he was to meet Jim Carrey because he was one of David's favorite actors. I didn't realize David had progressed past cartoons yet. David Hernandez ended up in the bottom three, but his performance was pretty bad (both nights). I was sick to my stomach that he left. He has lots of charisma and could have done very well.

Thursday, March 13. Celebrity Apprentice. Why am I still watching this? I don't care about any of the "celebrities" and the tasks are stupid. They sold $2 sandwiches at Quiznos. Now if the chain would actually sell sandwiches for $2 I would eat there at lot because I like their food. I think their prices are a little too high for fast food.

Friday, March 14. 20/20. There was an episode about age of consent laws. My view is that when both partners are at puberty or beyond, it is ridiculous to treat one as a victim and one a perpetrator. At whatever age it is illegal to engage in sex, the law should apply to both partners equally. The teenage partner in the Beltway Sniping case was treated as an adult defendant even though his partner was an adult. Right now a teenager can willingly choose to commit murder of innocent people, but cannot choose to get busy.

The Archuleta Effect On Hernandez

Singing sensation David Hernandez was the first of the 12 American Idol finalists to go home and it had nothing to with a previous job as a dancer at gay club. Hernandez was adversely affected by the well-known phenomenon of voting pattern peculiarities that have famously put out talented singers before those decidedly less so. Specifically it has to do with sub-groups of the viewing audience splitting or focusing their votes depending on the events of the week. In this case it wasn't that Hernandez' fan base thought any less of him this week than before, but rather that they were more concerned with saving cute little baby gnome, David Archuleta.

Many viewers, especially at this early stage, have several contestants that they like. When it comes time to vote, a viewer has to decide whether to split their multiple votes for all their favorites or focus on just one. The decision may be based on which one of their favorites really blew them away that week, or maybe on which one they think really needs their help in order to be saved after a bad performance. The problem is that if enough voters happen to be like minded one week they may overvote on one of the worthy few while leaving the others so undervoted that one of the best singers gets removed too early.

This kind of situation is particularly a problem within the natural subsets of singers that form because they either are similar in style or have largely overlapping fan bases. Consider the enormously talented set of Fantasia Barrino, LaToya London and Jennifer Hudson, who all ended up in the bottom three during season three. The peculiarity that occurred that week was that their mutual fans split their votes so evenly that all three were at the bottom while the focused voting on the less worthy singers kept those performers safe. If anyone still has doubt about the effect of split and focused voting, think of one word: Sanjaya.

Unfortunately for David Hernandez (and Danny Noriega for that matter), his obvious fan base is going to overlap with David Archuleta. Well, our little David A is incredibly popular (and the most talented) so many David H fans are going to vote for David A first and as often as they need to to keep David A safe. As most people would agree, Archuleta really flubbed up this week. The natural reaction: power voting by the Hernandez and Archuleta fans for Archuleta. Every vote for one person is a missed vote for someone else and the result was a lot of missed votes that might have gone to Hernandez that got diverted to Archuleta.

The power of the gravitational pull of the Archuleta star has and will be something amazing to watch. This week's display of its effect is a good harbinger of who will win this season. Now that Noriega and Hernandez are out, their would-be future votes will be focused on Archuleta making him unstoppable.

By the way, the few but vocal nut jobs that have tried to make something scandalous out of Hernandez' former job are just the loser types that kept getting beat up in school and now think they have an opportunity to bring down a popular, good looking, and talented man, so that they can feel better about themselves. They are also the people who could only get a lap dance by paying the $40 because no one else would want to be anywhere near them.

American Idol: The Top 12

3-4-08. Each of the guys did a video clip describing their most embarrassing moment. David Hernandez, the talented clothes-free dancer for a discerning male clientele, said his most embarrassing moment was finding out he had something hanging out of his nose during a photo shoot. I would have thought the most embarrassing moment would have been having the entire country finding out about his doing $40 lap dances. I guess we all get embarrassed by different things. Actually the nose thing kind of killed the excitement of the stripping thing. Fortunately with a lap dance I would be in a position where I wouldn't have to see what's coming out of his nose.

Luke Menard sang "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go". His voice is so thin. I agree with Simon that Luke's singing voice is weak and "girly". He can't make it to the top 12.

David Archuleta, the cute little baby gnome, sang "Another Day In Paradise". He may be able to sell more CDs than Justin Timberlake someday. He certainly sounds a lot better than JT. Again, it is clear that the contest is over. Just look at the idol forums. The "Archies" rule.

Danny Noriega sang "Tainted Love". I've always disliked that song. I don't know why anybody likes it. I loved it when Ryan Seacrest told him that he hadn't noticed Danny's purple streaks in his hair and Danny replied "uh-huh". Danny wasn't believing it.

David Hernandez started out strong with "It's All Coming Back To Me Now". He kind of got out of tune in the middle and it was really noticeable on the long notes. A Celine Dion is next to impossible for anybody to do and a man doing it is nigh on impossible. So for David to do what he did was really fantastic. He deserves to be in the top 12. Randy said, "You got that big ol - voice." Paula said, "You've got some of the best - vocals." Are these euphemisms for his zippered prize package? Don't know.

Michael Johns sang "Don't You (Forget About Me). He's like the drunk at a party who is singing with the stereo right before he pukes and passes out. Not an Idol winner. I fast forwarded through David Cook - he's creepy, as is Jason Castro. His clods remind me of what our old family dog would get in his hair that we had to cut out. Chikezie is pretty good but his style isn't in style.

3-06-08. Danny Noriega didn't deserve to be voted out. His problem was that his fans are probably the same set that would be voting for David Hernandez and David Archuleta. The fans only have so much time to call in and they spent it on the Davids. Speaking of Hernandez, he was pretty animated on Thursday. Maybe we will get to see a pole dance after all.