american idol

alright, alright. so check it out, yo. this is my venting blog about the sham that is american idol. i am going to write one blog about it and that is it... nothing else for the rest of the season. so we can all agree that since we had our, oh, top ten finalists we've known that the competition is going to come down to david vs. david. i don't think anyone would argue that. so i'm not going to sit here and talk about who i think will win, except to say that judging on pure vocals alone, david a. has the edge. i also dont think that david c. needs the idol contract, i actually think he would benefit more from being on his own so that he can write and perform what he wants, as opposed to what the idol producers want. that being said... we all know that brooke white left prematurely last week, and let's be honest... she didn't deserve to go home. i'm sorry, but she didn't. while not the strongest vocally, she is one of the more talented and likeable contestants that the show has ever seen. i, along with others, have enjoyed her arrangements on songs such as "love is a battlefield", "every breath you take", and "let it be", and who could forget the way she sang "you're so vain" to simon cowell? last weeks show spelled trouble for more that just white, as both syesha and jason castro struggled through their niel diamond tunes. syesha has the same problem every week in my opinion, she has a vocal standard and she can't, or won't rise above it. last week marked her seventh appearance in the bottom three, and it's really no surprise. what performances can we remember of syesha's? um.... um.... uh.... "i will always love you"? where she imitated (yet again) whitney? yeah, that's just not memorable for me. i will say that she belongs on broadway, with her vocals and acting skills and her ability to perform live, i just don't think that she is pop star material (paging fantasia barrino... anyone know how her pop career is going? exactly). anyways, back to last week's show... i will admit it: i cheat. every week i look at an idol insider web page that is run by a person who helps count the votes every week. i know, i know. i just can't stand to watch seacrest fumble through an hour show with his stupid jokes and stupid orange face. it drives me crazy. so i've been going on this webpage every week for the past six or seven weeks and this person has always been right. every week. he doesn't say who gets voted off, or give any details about the show, he just says "so-and-so got the lowest number of texts/calls, so-and-so got the highest". so last week his website said "syesha mercado received the lowest number of texts/votes, david cook received the highest." so i wasn't worried about brooke. i hadn't originally been worried anyways since the night before when i had voted for her (for two hours... i am true blue) i got a busy signal for 20 minutes, but seeing what my "insider" reported i for sure had no reason to worry. if you all remember last weeks show, brooke went home, not syesha, thus confirming my original theories about clay and ruben. (side note: i know it seems like i have no life, but i really do.) i don't really know what to make of that... do you?

that brings me to this weeks show, which i originally wasn't even going to watch in protest, but i ended up watching for one reason or another. i have to say, i don't even know the right word to describe the show last night. unbelievable? disgusting? ridiculous? out of control? probably all of the above. most articles i have read about last nights performances are, of course, slamming jason castro for his supposed "worst pair of performances, at this stage of the competition, in the show’s seven-year history" (as quoted by msnbc) more unbelievable to me, however, was the, uh, performance given by syesha and i'm not talking about the vocal performance. i am talking about the little card she has kept up her sleeve throughout this whole competition. when kristy lee cook was on the show, she played the american card, singing all-american songs and appealing to the all-american viewer. after all, who is going to vote off a girl who just sang about how she is so proud to be an american? david a. played the same card last week when he belted out "america" and simon wasn't kidding when he said there wasn't a smarter song choice at this stage in the competition (although heaven knows david a. doesn't need the help) so, last night syesha pulled out a little trick of her own, choosing to sing "orud mary" followed by sam cooke's "a change is gonna come", a song written about the civil rights movement. (at this point i don't think i have to say which card it is that she is playing) the craziness continues when randy doesn't really feel the vocals on the second song, saying he didn't really "dig" the performance. this is what starts syesha's emotional rollercoaster and potential acting career. don't worry because randy's "harsh" comments were followed by a standing O from paula applauding her for making such a brave choice of song and coming such a long way, etc etc, blah, blah, whatever it is paula says everytime. but syesha keeps on keepin' on with the tears. (i thought brooke white left?) when asked why she is so emotional she just can't understand why randy didn't like a song that means so much to her about her history and who she is and really, who randy is as well, right? cue the tissue, which the orange emcee asks a producer for as syesha makes a brave exit off the stage (i half expected her to shout the words "this moment is so much bigger than me!" as halle berry did when she won the oscar). now, don't get me wrong, i have liked syesha from the start. i think she is talented and i think she is sweet and nice and pretty, just like paula. but this is just turning the competition into a joke when you start rallying for the sympathy vote. it's cheap, it's silly. it probably isn't even necessary except how else is she going to beat the davids? now that i am done venting about syesha, i will turn my attention over to jason castro. poor, poor, jason. the kid just wants to go home already. this kid has been one of my favorites from the start, taking old songs and making them sound amazing with the arrangements he chose on songs like "i don't wanna cry" and "somewhere over the rainbow", and i didn't eve hate it when he (almost) butchered "memory" two weeks ago. the kid is ready to go home. and how else do you do such a thing on this show? it didn't work when he sang "memory" and it didn't work last week when he butchered his two niel diamond songs, performances which, he says, he "didn't even prepare for". i think we all saw it last week in his neil diamond interview tape when he hadn't even taken the time to learn the words of his songs by the time he had to perform them fo neil himself. this just isn't the jason who was with us in the beginning. first of all, i don't think he ever expected to get this far (he underestimates the teen vote and his sparkling baby blues), and second, i don't think he was prepared for the competition to be so intense (what with practices, song choice, mentors, fellow contestants, etc.). as far as his performances last night go, yes i agree, the bob marley song was not so great. probably no one except bob marley should sing them. but what else do you do when trying to get voted off? he wants to sing bob marley, he's gonna sing bob marley, woo hoo! what does he care? (side note: what does paula say? "you look great up there, i love you, blah blah i'm paula where's my drink?" as per usual) the second song, however, i really liked. not a fan of bob dylan myself i think he did good job of singing that song. of course by this point the judges can tell he wants out (maybe it was the fact that he mouthed "DON'T VOTE!" after his numbers were given out the first time?) and so no one really has anything nice to say about his second performance either, except "i'd pack your bags", which is exactly what he wanted to hear two weeks ago. so, yes... at this point the american idol competition as a whole has become somewhat ridiculous. unlike the masses, i think that syesha made more of a mockery of the show last night with what she chose to do than jason did. but she did get a standing O from paula which, let's face it, is kind of like getting a standing O from a lunch lady (no offense to the ladies of lunch out there). it's kind of like (as joey tribiani says) a moo point, a cow's point of view. it doesn't really matter... it's moo. because who cares what a cow thinks? no one.


signed,
gabby the cow.