Bill Watt’s Blog

I am really hating this show. I think it is becoming even more of a joke as time goes on.

• half the singers aren’t even trying to sign during the little canned numbers (I liked Amanda but man, she’s mailing it in)
• the dancing is horrible (sorry Brooke, you stand out for needing to sit down)
• and we have the triple threat of Jason Castro

Ok… those are the performer issues. Here’s the rest:

• The overly long Love Guru promo? (funniest part was sitar hero)
•  David Cook’s guitar hero commercial a la Risky Business
• All the many many performers who sit there and play along (what was ZZ Top doing there?!?)

And my favorite American Idol moment is still the time Ace Young murdered the Queen song We Will Rock You by flipping it into an R&B number and Brian May said, “I can’t do that to my song.” Mariah and Dolly and all the rest go one and smile while their works get butchered but I respect Brian above all those folks. Granted, I understand the creative process has to have people interpret other people’s works… I just don’t think they need to sit there and take it.

Ok, this is becoming a live blogging event for me. Now they brought out the crazy little dude who sang the “brothers till the end of time” song. They also brought out a full on marching band with cheerleaders to play behind him. He couldn’t keep pace and they had to start the commercial music to get him off stage.

PS- Paula needs to watch the top of that dress. We were close to a Janet Jackson moment when she started to bust a move.

See this interview with Jupiter’s Bobby Tulsiani. I like that he ends with, “Give (users) what they want, when they want it and how they want.” He speaks the truth!

And Deanna and I apparently frequently disagree in our blog posts. So it isn’t too surprising when I see this post from her that I immediately think of how I want to respond. So, here goes:

While I typically consider myself a conservative / Republican I basically give the Dem’s a free pass for the last 8 years (some obvious exceptions) because I blame the Bush administration for being exactly who they are. Bush too ran on a platform of “see how high gas is under Clinton?!?” and then managed to 4x it. Click here to see a Daily Show spot called “Crude Awakening” and then tell me what you think.

PS- the free market wouldn’t allow gas companies wouldn’t get huge tax breaks while making the biggest profits ever. Check out this retrospective of gas companies through the years.

Ok… I watch a bunch of bad, entertainment and culture-based things but it is nice to know even I have my limits. Just saw a commercial for the Sex and the City movie and there are few things I can imagine being less interesting with the obvious exception of drama and surgery shows right before bed.

I really dislike the discussions between Adama and Laura. So painful.

I was watching American Idol tonight and I love love love that Randy and Simon took Jason to task for butchering the Bob Marley song “I shot the sheriff” because it was bad bad bad. Simon got really annoyed and tried to tell Jason that some songs are touchable. You do it as the artist did because that is a part of the song. I have to agree, if Jason wasn’t up to the task then he should have picked another song.

Yes! Teach these kids it isn’t all about getting up and winging it.

Look at what Paris does with a catch phrase like, “That’s hot!” and a show where she travels around the country doing stupid things. Now she has a new show where she’s looking for her new best friend. The show is apparently called “I wanna be Paris’ new best friend” and you can see the site on parisbff.com.

If I could make myself into a brand then think of the possibilities!

Seriously… it is like a parody of a real show. I know in parodies they make jokes about the drawing out of results broken up by alternating 5 min of content with 5 min of commercials (take “MILF Island” from 30 Rock). Idol may actually be worse than the joke.

So again I say, “Thank god for Tivo” and my ability to bypass Ryan’s jokes and commentary. Good for him that he’s made it into a career and I hope he’s banking as much as he can.

Oh- as an aside - I wish they had an American Idol / Ryan Seacrest character in the movie Idiocracy. I would “personalities” like this as a sign of the end times for our culture.

From time to time I fall prey to thinking, “this is a really good singer” when I hear these kids on American Idol. I’m just now catching up on the Idol Gives back show from last week. I wasn’t going to but I heard some post show reviews that talked about Fergie and others and what a great job they did.

So- I’m fast forwarding (all praise be to Tivo) and I watch Fergie and John Legend. Pretty good. I generally like her voice if not her song choices. But then she introduced Heart. Holy cow… it is easy to forget what real, seasoned, artists can do. I wouldn’t even say this was the best I’ve heard them sound but it still woke me up. Also, when Nancy starts that opening riff it is obviously Barracuda and Ann’s voice still does the job.

I do wonder how they felt about Fergie jumping on stage with them. I know it was planned… I wonder if they liked it or if it was the cost of admission to the show? She has a big voice like Ann and did a really good job but I would have been just as happy if they’d just let Heart take it all the way through.

I’m off to iTunes to participate in the long tail once again and buy tracks instead of albums.

PS- it also makes me dread when one of the women (or worse yet, David Archuleta) tries to cover that song later in the season. Please… let me miss that episode.

Based on watching “The Real Housewives of New York City” I’ve come up with the million dollar idea. It goes a little something like this:

1. find women with tons of money
2. build a tv show about their vapid lives

The profit comes in with the following revenue streams:

1. charge them to be on the show and sell sponsorships to all the brands they name drop
2. add a surcharge every time they say “my daughter and I are mistaken for sisters all the time” and the crew doesn’t laugh
3. charge the husbands to be edited out of the show so their friends won’t mock them

Hmmm… jackpot!