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CeeeJay:
tex did u see the comparision from Philip from south park and Phil ?? lol i posted it yesterday in the mess of top 10 or wahtever that topic was.

i don't like phil anymore!! i don' tlike his voice he sounds like kermit the frog or something lol

CeeeJay:
American Idol’s Sanjaya survives because he’s fun - Tuesday April 3/07

ALL SANJAYA, ALL THE TIME: There are other singers competing on American Idol this season, though it seems so very long ago now that we were talking about LaKisha Jones’ virtual lock on the prize, especially now that we’ve entered the Sanjaya era. One day we’ll all look back and laugh about this I’m sure – and if we haven’t, it’ll be because it has really been an alien plot, and we’re toiling in the guano mines for our sentient pigeon masters under huge murals of a porcelain-toothed, pony-maned Sanjaya.

According to Tom O’Neil on a Los Angeles Times entertainment blog, Sanjaya is a master showman of camp, playing on the same forthright but largely ignored strain of enthusiastic bad taste that gave careers to Liberace and Tiny Tim. He’s really just Taylor Hicks with better hair – a middling talent at best, but an enthusiastic performer delivering the goods to an audience that could care less about “song choice” or vocal chops.

“Sanjaya,” O’Neil wrote, “is exactly what "American Idol" deserves. Early on in the TV season producers played up the worst acts as a way to pump ratings. Now it's their own fault that one deliciously, hilariously lousy act survived and is drumming up legions of fans the same way that camp rockers like Ozzy Osbourne fill football stadiums - because they know how to ENTERTAIN.”

The rest of the contestants are exhausted and running on fumes, but Sanjaya is thriving, according to an L.A. Times blog devoted to Idol insider news. (If case you thought Metro was devoting a lot or resources to Idol, the L.A. Times should probably rename itself the L.A. Idol.) Joanna Weiss, TV critic for the Boston Globe, thinks Sanjaya is a master player, galvanizing a disparate fan base using everything from charm to appeals to pity, while the perverse element behind movements like votefortheworst.com tip the balance, and individuals like Brian Brickley of Burlington, Calif., who says he’s voted for Sanjaya about 300 times to amuse himself and make his fiancée mad.

“Sanjaya is bringing out all the people who would love to see the show a) brought down a peg or b) destroyed,” writes Ken Barnes on USA Today’s Idol Chatter blog. “They're the folks who would love to see Sanjaya win so the show takes a huge credibility hit and hordes of viewers decide never to watch again. They'd love to see it become a laughing stock. They'd love to see Simon squirm over his pledge to quit if Sanjaya wins. They're the kind of people who are sick of Idol striding over the contemporary TV landscape like a Zilla and would love for it to suffer a crippling blow.”

In the meantime, a woman who calls herself J has called off her hunger strike after 16 days for medical reasons, after pledging to starve herself to protest Sanjaya’s reign of terror, and none other than Little Richard told Access Hollywood’s blogger Laura Saltman that he loves Sanjaya but won’t see him win since “they will call American Idol a joke.” As for me, I’d be blissfully ignoring all of this if I wasn’t being paid to spend many, many waking hours contemplating it all; if anyone deserves pity right now it’s me.

CeeeJay:
published april 4, 2007

Bennett saving some Idol face
....But then he tells Sanjaya he’s a personal fan
 

Tony Bennett's stint as celebrity coach on last night's Idol felt like deja vu, as Bennett did his time in the same role on Canadian Idol last year. As Ryan Seacrest announces him with a career montage, I realize that I'll be deprived of some of my bile for this show; I actually like Bennett quite a bit - he's not the instrument he once was, but he still knows more about delivering a song than the sum of every charting Billboard artist working today. I can only hope Sanjaya does something particularly gruesome.

The first singer up is Blake Lewis, who tells us that he's doing Mack The Knife. Tony - am I just projecting when I hear a note of condescension? - tells him that the song is "pre-rap, Mack the Knife being a very sharp gangsta." He worries that Blake won't be able to deliver the meaning of the song. Blake actually doesn't have a bad voice for this sort of thing - there's a bit of Mel Torme in his tone, and he has fun with it, and spares us the beatbox once again, which means he's taken the warning about embodying a gimmick to heart.

Phil Stacey does Night And Day with a bit of Torme tone and a lot of Sinatra phrasing; if nothing else, the show's vocal coaches are giving the male singers decent records to listen to while rehearsing. This doesn't mean he does a good job, but at least the next 60 minutes will be endurable.

Melinda Doolittle comes on next, blows I've Got Rhythm all over the ceiling, gets a standing ovation from the crowd, and an avalanche of praise from the judges, except for Simon, who says - as if filling a weekly quota - that the first half was "a bit cabaret." Whenever he says that, I keep thinking he means it reminded him of Joel Grey in whiteface and Nazis.

Chris Richardson's Don't Get Around Much Anymore is cruise ship Ellington, with a pumped-up backbeat and a showy finale. The judges call it "hip," which is only true if you've forgotten - or never knew - just how hip Duke Ellington actually was. Jordin Sparks does On A Clear Day You Can See Forever; she's sweet, and a bit underwhelming, but I'm starting to believe that she's going to win this, and that makes me sad.

Gina Glocksen's version of Smile makes me sad, too - it's a lovely song, and perfectly in its simplicity, but between Gina and the arrangement, there's far too much going on. And then I think I must have had an acid flashback, because I think Tony Bennett told Sanjaya that he was a big fan. I kept replaying it over and over with my TiVo, but there it was, again and again. Kids: Stay in school; don't do drugs.

He's dreadful, as usual, but rocks the hair and dances with Paula at the judges' table while sweetly slaughtering Cheek To Cheek. God help us, but he'll probably survive tonight's vote, and I feel even sadder.

As far as I can tell, Tony tells Haley Scarnato not to sing Ain't Misbehavin' like she's a total slut. Her performance is about on the level of Renee Zellweger in Chicago, which is just about what we deserve these days, but she'll make it easier for Sanjaya to stick around another week. LaKisha's Stormy Weather starts out shaky but gets big fast, and I know in some dark place of my heart that every mistake she makes will only make it easier for Idol's voters to eventually vote her off in pursuit of something well to the south of excellence.
 
 

CeeeJay:
published april 12, 2007

First Idol elimination

After the usual throat-clearing small talk about the previous night’s competition, this week’s elimination episode of American Idol began with a mournful group singalong to Enrique Iglesias’ Bailamos.

It’s the first hour-long elimination episode, though the fact that a long segment is devoted to Ryan Seacrest doing street interviews about the contestants suggest that the producers are struggling to fill the hour.

After an entirely unnecessary musical number by Akon, this week’s Ford music video/commercial is unveiled — the remaining 8 sitting in a boxy auto lip-synching to Happy Together while their faces morph together — a digital gimmick that was once groundbreaking, but can obviously be knocked together by an intern with an old Powerbook nowadays.

The unlikely comic highlight of the night comes during a sequence devoted to Seacrest and judge Simon Cowell’s trip to Africa, where some

schoolgirls inform Cowell that he has man boobs (or “mannaries,” which is the scientific term, I believe.)

We’re halfway through the show before the elimination actually begins.

Phil Stacey isn’t safe, but LaKisha, Jordin, Blake and Melinda are. Haley Scarnato isn’t, and neither is Chris Richardson.

Sanjaya — as confidently predicted in these pages yesterday — lives to agitate the country’s cultural nervous system another week. Seacrest tosses Chris back to the finalists, leaving Phil and Haley to dangle while Jennifer Lopez does her guest spot.

Lopez hits the stage in so much dry ice fog that I’m certain she’s doing a song from Yes’ Tales From Topographic Oceans, and I start scanning the stage for keyboardist Rick Wakeman in his trademark cape.

Alas, it’s merely a number from her new album, which she sings while dancers dressed like death squad paramilitaries dance menacingly behind her, an ominous prelude for Haley Scarnato’s exit from the show.
 
 

CeeeJay:
Published April 18, 2007

It’s country night on Idol
Least distinctive singers get a chance to shine before the finals
 
It’s country night on Idol, with celebrity coach Martina McBride. Country has been well-served by Idol — as much as R&B or whatever euphemistic update of MOR is represented by Taylor Hicks and Clay Aiken. At this point, though, one is forced to point out that we’re talking about New Country, and not the very different music made famous by Hank Williams Jr. and Tammy Wynette. It’s a world as far away now as the Internet is from cave paintings.

Phil Stacey is up first — I’m still unable to refer to anyone (but Sanjaya, and that hurts) by their first name; it’s a measure of how Sanjaya has managed to stand out, which says everything telling about Idol. Phil has exactly the right sort of voice for new country — keening, a bit playful, and almost entirely twang-free.

Jordin Sparks does a McBride song, pulls it off as credibly as Phil, and judge Simon Cowell openly suggests the possibility that she could win. Sanjaya chooses Bonnie Raitt’s Something To Talk About; it sums him up better than, say, All My Rowdy Friends Are Comin’

Over Tonight. He’s weak-voiced and occasionally off-tempo, but I’ll eat my Kinky Friedman t-shirt if he’s voted off tonight.

“I know this has been funny for awhile,” says Simon, before insisting that he’s gone far enough and must stop now. LaKisha is next, and chooses a Carrie Underwood song that’s a long dusty road away from her comfort zone. Chris Richardson, on the other hand, sounds “nondescript, nasally and tinny” in Simon’s words; Chris defends his nasal tone as suitable to the material, and he’s right — you’ll hear singing like this any time of day on CMT.

Melinda Doolittle sells Julie Reeves’ Trouble Is A Woman like a feed salesman at a country fair, and makes it possible to imagine that she might be the last singer standing. Blake Lewis closes the show with a Tim McGraw tune and the least identifiably country — old or New — vocal of the night; it might as well have been a cover of an obscure OMD b-side. Blake and Melinda are the exceptions that prove the rule that country has allowed the least distinctive singers on the show a chance to shine at least once before the finals.
 
 

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