Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Donkey Postits

A giant Donkey Long display made of postit notes. 6400 to be exact. 

American Idol: 4/10/2007

Just last week I was thinking: “You know, they never did a Latin Week on American Idol. They should do that as a change of pace.” And guess what happened on my birthday? Jennifer Lopez was the coach of the week (to help her poor CD sales, no doubt) and the theme was Latin music.

Of course, American Idol’s idea of Latin music (or the contestants, anyway) is Miami Sound Machine or Santana from his previous CD. Well, ok, Melinda and Sanjaya (ugh) dusted off some classic from the lounge era (Sway and Besame Mucho respectively).

It wasn’t as spicy a show as you would think. Lopez was a pretty laid back coach, kind of like Gwen Stefani. And The performances were mostly OK. In fact, this is the first week Simon dissed Melinda (and she handled it extremely well). And surprisingly enough, the guys outshone the women this week. Blake came in at #1 and Chris at #2. Phil Stacy did well, but not anything amazing. he san a Marc Anthony song, who is currently Jennifer Lopez husband (but not for long, apparently). Sanjaya actually did a decent job for once. But I would still vote him off in a heartbeat.

The women mostly seemed out of their element and were tentative. They didn’t exhibit any of that Latin fire. Melinda moved very awkwardly in her high heels (which I think is because she is not used to them, and lacks confidence in her looks). Lakisha was the same old, same old. She has this vacant look when she sings. Her first performance was apparently the exception, not the rule. Jordin did ok, but seemed out of her element a bit. Haley was doing her best to stay in the game, so she wore some shorts up to her eyeballs. It was yet another dinner theater singing act. Not bad, but it’ll probably win her work on a cruise line.

Surprisingly enough, Dial Idol puts Lakisha and Jordin at the greatest risk of being voted off this week. Haley isn’t even close to the bottom. Well, she does have some amazing legs.

Hopefully, Jordin will survive another week. As great a singer as Lakisha is, I don’t think she had a chance of winning this. But I expected her to make the top 4 or 5 at least. Looks like she won’t. We’ll see.

UPDATE: Haley Scarnato is the loser. Lakisha wasn’t even in the bottom 3. Dial Idol hasn’t been as accurate this year it was last year.

Next is country week with Martina McBride as guest coach. Since there are no country singers this year, this will be interesting. 

Newt Wimps Out

His political advisors probably warned him it would hurt his candidancy if he debated Kerry on Global Warming. I think it would have helped. But now we know what he is made of.

In a Capitol Hill debate about global warming touted by its moderator as a “smackdown” between former House speaker Newt Gingrich and Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, Gingrich praised Kerry’s recently released book about environmentalism, acknowledged that global warming is real, and offered what amounted to an unexpected apology for his party’s inaction on curtailing greenhouse gas emissions.

“I’m not going to stand up here and defend our failure to lead,” said Gingrich, who is considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and plans to release a book in the fall burnishing his environmental credentials. “There has to be a green conservatism.”

The standing-room-only debate, staged yesterday in an ornate Senate hearing room, offered an indication that even diehard conservatives like Gingrich, who stepped down as speaker in 1998, are abandoning their skepticism on global warming. As recently as two years ago, Gingrich ridiculed the notion that humans are causing the earth to warm, but yesterday he said the evidence was “sufficient.”

Pretty pathetic. Especially when the weather is doing a good job of showing global warming to be a joke.