My next to the last post about American Idol! (I guess next week I'll have to start making posts about my feelings.)

Tonight was the final singing competition between Jordin Sparks and Blake Lewis. I have just one thing to say about tonight's show....Go Jordin! She definitely deserves to win the whole thing. Her singing ability is SO much better than Blake's, even if he does "outperform" her. And to top it all off, Simon said Jordin wiped the floor with Blake vocally! Wow!!!

The song that was selected for the winner to be their first single, was intended for a woman. You can tell in the lyrics, and the notes, everything about it screams female. Blake struggled with it, but gave it the "old college try."

Tomorrow night, all 12 contestants will be there performing together, not sure if they're doing the big extravaganza like last year with 12 different stars for them to sing with. Will be interesting to have, as Kerry put it, 2 hours of nothing but Jordin. LMAO

And the shocker of the week for me............

MELINDA DOOLITTLE IS GOING HOME. Jordin Sparks and Blake Lewis are in the finale! I'll buy anything you get produced and in the stores, Melinda!

I just thought of something...what will I blog about once Idol is finished? LOL

Last night was the performance for the final three, Jordin, Melinda, and Blake. Jordin went first, starting the show off with Simon's song choice, Wishing On A Star by Rose Royce. Her second song, as picked by the producers (not Clive Davis?) was She Works Hard For The Money by Donna Summer. For her final performance of the night, Jordin chose her own song, I Who Have Nothing by Dusty Springfield (previously sung in the top 24). I think all three of her performances were quite good. I believe during the second song it appeared she struggled a little with the footwork on stage. She was trying to move back to the middle of the stage for the ending, so it was a sort of side/back step, and it looked jerky, like she wasn't sure how many steps to make, or how far she needed to move. But if that's the worst I can say about her performances, then she has an excellent chance of becoming the next American Idol.

Blake was second, starting out with Paula's song choice of Roxanne by The Police. The producers (still not Clive Davis) chose This Love by Maroon 5 for his second song. Finally, Blake himself chose When I Get You Alone by Robin Thicke. How many people have even HEARD of Robin Thicke, let alone heard the song? I happen to have the cd, although I haven't listened to it yet, so I can't compare Blake's version to Robin's. Maybe that was a good thing, so viewers didn't have the original stuck in their heads to repeat...the original was better, the original was better. Can anyone sing Roxanne and NOT be compared to The Police? I personally believe Blake's best performance was This Love by Maroon 5. His voice was perfect for that type song, since he doesn't have the range that other singers have. Unfortunately, I don't think any of his performances were good enough to get him into the finale.

Finally, Melinda closed out the show. Her first song, picked by Randy Johnson...I mean Jackson, was I Believe In You And Me by Whitney Houston. Ok, whatever happened to the judges telling them to never EVER pick a Whitney song, or a Celine song, or a Chaka Khan song, etc? Randy goes against his OWN advice and picks an obscure Whitney Houston song? Was he trying to sabotage Melinda? Or was it merely a test to see how she would handle a more difficult song? It's definitely not a classic Whitney song that everyone thinks of, but a good song nonetheless, and Melinda knocked it out of the park. Her second song was Nutbush City Limits by Tina Tuner, as chosen by the producers (again no Clive Davis). THAT'S the style of music I think Melinda could do and sell a million albums. I LOVED it! She rocked, with some soul, giving Tina a run for her money, and if she wasn't a lock before, she just sealed her place in the finale. Even though Melinda didn't NEED a third song to convince her fans of her ability, she still sang her own choice of song, I'm A W.O.M.A.N. by Peggy Lee. This is a song she had previously sung in the top 24 round, and if you didn't hear it before, this performance was just as good.

Final two will be Jordin and Melinda, and like three years ago, it will be a catfight to see who wins. Personally, I'll be happy if either of them wins, I like them both. Each will do well in the music industry. I've heard others say Jordin should win because she's more marketable than Melinda, and Melinda could end up like Taylor Hicks from last year...putting out a cd that really didn't connect with the buyers. Melinda may be older and "less marketable" but she has a fan base, and she has a singing style that can do many diffferent genres. That may be just what she needs, if she wants to sell cd's.

I just sent the weekly Yahoo TV Idol Report Card to Kerry, and we were forgetting about Clive Owen week! Next week isn't the finale! Clive Owen is with them, he picks a song, the judges pick a song, and the contestants each pick a song. So we have three songs by each next week! It should be VERY interesting to see what song Clive Owens picks for Blake, lol.

Tonight is the results show for American Idol, presenting the music of Barry Gibb. This was the first week the performers got to sing two songs, and it was interesting to hear their choices.

Melinda chose "I Love You Inside And Out" and "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart." What else can be said except that once again she showed her professionalism. I couldn't find fault with either performance. She should make it into the finals easily.

Blake chose "I Should Be Dancing" and "This Is Where I Come In." Both songs were performed with some beatboxing. I preferred his second performance; The first one was sort of weird with this staccato reverb that didn't wow me at all. He is certainly in danger of being eliminated.

LaKisha chose "Stayin' Alive" and "Run To You." I was surprised she selected Stayin' Alive, since the song is performed in male falsetto. Singing in the lower key, I feel she did a pretty darn good job with the song. Her performance on the second song wasn't as good, in my opinion. There were moments at the end where she was either trying too hard, or just plain overpowering the lyrics unnecessarily. LaKisha is also in danger of being eliminated.

Jordin chose "To Love Somebody" and "A Woman In Love." Some have said, at 17, Jordin is too young to sing A Woman In Love. In some respects yes, but I believe she pulled it off. I'm no expert, but I didn't hear her pitch problems. She isn't as much of a longshot to win it all as some might think. She should be safely into the finals.

I'm assuming Barry will sing tonight, along with another surprise artist. In one hour, we will know who will be in the finale next week.


Update at 9:10pm EDT: Pink is the surprise performer tonight!

Almost the end of Idol for this season! The remaining four contestants sang two songs each tonight. It's too late now for me to post a review, so I hope to do that tomorrow night, perhaps during the hour long drag it out forever results show. Barry Gibb was the mentor this week, so it was definitely interesting!

Until tomorrow!

Idol Gives Back Part 2

Wow, what a show!! There's no way I can properly put into words the emotions I felt tonight as I watched all the clips of Ryan, Simon, Paula and Randy visiting poor neighborhoods here in the U.S. and the abject poverty in Africa. You hear about it, and you see images, but until you see them putting a woman in a truck to get her to a hospital for medical treatment, only to have her die 2 days later...or the mother trying to get her son to a treatment facility for malaria, only to have him die in her arms on the way there.

Just during the 2 hour show, over 30 million dollars was raised by people calling in or donating through the website, www.americanidol.com.

As for the Idol contestants...all were safe tonight. With the show trying to raise money to help so many people, they didn't want to vote anyone off. So the votes from last night will be combined with next week's votes, and the bottom TWO will leave next week. Will be interesting to see what next week's theme is...


4/26 12:00pm UPDATE: I read this morning that Jon Bon Jovi will be on next week's show, so the theme is mostly likely Rock. I almost hate to say this, but can you imagine what Sanjaya would have done to his hair for THIS theme?

Idol Gives Back

Tonight's theme was inspiring or uplifting songs. Chris Richardson was up first, singing Change the World, originally done by Eric Clapton. Not my favorite performance by him. He had to do his little head shake thingy, and with his "pop" sound, I wasn't too impressed. It wasn't his worst performance to date, but I think he will be inthe bottom three. Not sure what style he has going on either. A dress shirt with a tie sorta loose, shirt is untucked, a jacket over it all, cargo style pants and sneakers. Is that what passes for pop stars these days? You'd think he would use a little more style considering the serious subject of this week's shows.

Next was Melinda Dolittle singing Faith Hill's There Will Come A Day. All I can say about Melinda is AWESOME. Her version was just as good as Faith's, and that's saying a lot, because Faith is one singer that is usually up there with Celine, Whitney, Chaka, etc as a "do not sing their songs cause you can't compare." I can't wait for this song to be available to download! Loved the poster in the audience that said Melinda Dolittle does MORE, lmao.

Blake Lewis performed John Lennon's hit Imagine. This was not as good as I "imagined" it would be. It's not vocally challenging, in my opinion, and I think Blake could have done more with it. But then, when they try to do "more" with a song, to make it their own, I usually don't like it. He hit all the notes he needed to hit, didn't forget the lyrics, but it just didn't WOW me. Blake might be in trouble this week.

Next up is LaKisha Jones singing Fantasia's version of I Believe. I always preferred Diana Degarmo's version better, but let's see how LaKisha does. Well, no "yeah yeah's" like Fantasia put in, lol. Not too hot on her performance tonight. She's hitting the notes, and she's belting it, but there's something about her singing that has me not liking her so much the last couple weeks. I don't know if it's because she's oversinging songs, or just her song selection is sitting well with me. She was in the bottom three last week, and I think she'll be there again this week.

Phil Stacey is going back to his roots again tonight, singing The Change by Garth Brooks. He has a really good tone to his voice that suits him for country music. However, I have a hard time getting past that big bald head and his ears, lmao. As far as the song goes, it was one of his better performances. I'm not sure if it was good enough to get him the votes to stay out of the bottom three or not. Maybe he should have gone on Nashville Star?

Jordin Sparks closes out the show singing You'll Never Walk Alone. This song has been recorded by several artists, was written by Rogers & Hammerstein for the musical Carousel. I can honestly say I didn't really listen to it. I heard it, but I didn't listen. I don't even know what the judges said. All three judges loved it, so I'm sure Jordin is safe. And based on her vocal ability, I'm sure it was every bit as good as the judges thought, and it will be one of the songs I download.

Tomorrow night is the superstar performances for Idol Gives Back. Should be a great night with a lot of entertainment.

I just finished watching Idol, and I must say...the women did a HELL of a lot better than the men last night. I can't remember more than one or two of the men that impressed me, but tonight...I counted FIVE or SIX women who all kicked some ass before taking names. Gotta support the hometown girl, Gina Glocksen. But she probably was the poorest performer of the ones I liked. Jordin, Lakisha, Melinda, Sabrina and Stephanie all brought the house down. The other women were all very forgettable. Of the men from last night, I liked the two Chris's and Blake. Will be interesting to see what the results are tomorrow night.

My bathroom is almost done. The tile was grouted today, so that's done. I figured out I did NOT get a new toilet. The idiots put my old toilet back down, so now I have to clean it! Grrrrrrrr. And the bottom shelf thingy under the cabinet below my sink still hasn't been replaced. I called the leasing office this evening when I got home, and left them a message about it. Guess they were all busy doing other things, and couldn't answer the phone. I asked them to call me about replacing it, maybe I'll get a call tomorrow. Oh, and I have new vertical blinds in my living room too. We have a sales meeting tomorrow, lunch is provided. Fortunately, it's for the salesmen, so us inside people only have to be there for about 30 minutes, lol. And it's so friggin' HOT at work, I'm considering wearing a tank top and shorts to work. This afternoon I was so hot, I thought I was going to pass out.

Well, guess I'll go read some more...

I'm getting a new bathroom!

Well sort of. I'm getting a new toilet and a new tile floor. Monday afternoon I received a call on my cell phone from my leasing office, alerting me that maintenance had been to my apartment because of water leaking from my toilet down to the bathroom below me. They said it would be installed today. I came home from work, and it's still in progress. I now have NO toilet in the bathroom, lmao, and the tile is down, but still needs to be grouted. This isn't the cheap stick-on square tiles that I had before. These are NICE ceramic tiles!! I'll take a picture of it once it's all done. It's a dark brown, but very nice looking. MUCH better than what I had before.

I also bought my very first mp3 player tonight. Best Buy had 2GB Sansa Scandisk c250's on sale for $69.99. I think I got the last one at the store by me. So I bring it home, plop down in front of the computer and start checking it out. I was determined that I would get the battery cover off, but couldn't. After 15 minutes of struggling with it, cussing a blue streak, and threatening to return it, I put my shoes on and went BACK to Best Buy to see if they could figure out how to get the battery cover off. The gal there told me the lithium battery inside it is very good, and will last for about a year. Also, each time I hook it up via the USB plug to my computer, it charges the battery, so I probably shouldn't ever need to worry about replacing it. At least not for quite a while.

Then I tried to put music on it. I couldn't get MusicMatch to recognize it! I put the cd in my computer that came with the player, read through some instructions, rebooted the computer and VOILA, it worked. I put a bunch of songs on the player, listened to part of one to make sure it worked. I didn't get as many on as I wanted, but still over 100. Most of my music on my computer is at 128 kbps, larger sized files that limit the number of songs that can be loaded on it. Maybe this weekend I'll work on converting some of my music down to 96 kbps.

I've done just fine without an mp3 player, I'm either at work or in my car or at home, and at any of those places I have access to either an online radio station or my computer or a radio. Why get an mp3 player? Well! My building at work is working to put in a fitness center, free to all tenants! Once that's open, I can go down there after work and get a workout, and I wanted an mp3 player to listen to while I do that. The fitness center was supposed to open this month, but due to the cold weather, it delayed some of the plumbing work, so now it won't be done until next month. But I wanted to pick up the mp3 player while it was on sale. I've been watching for a sale for a few weeks, didn't want to miss this one. Now I'm almost all set. I might need to look into getting an exercise outfit or two. Maybe next pay period, lol.

We also had our performance appraisals at work today. Overall, mine went very well! I got approximately a 3% pay increase retro-active to Jan 1. I'll take anything they will give me, to keep up with the cost of living. I also got a bonus of about $4400 (before taxes)!!!!!!! I might use part of that to buy a new bed, to replace the one I have now that's jabbing me with a spring and causing a pain in my ass, literally.

Watched Idol tonight, the men performed. Some were pretty good, some were ok. I have a couple that I'm starting to like, others that I'm not so hot on. Even though we can vote, I'm not going to until maybe the top 10 rounds. Going to go read for a bit before going to bed. It's so hot in our office at work, I'm digging out a summer outfit to wear to work tomorrow, lol.

Happy Spring!

Wonder why I'm saying that? Well...have I got an answer for you! On the news last night, the meteorologist was saying that Feb 28th is the last day of meteorological winter. March 1 is the beginning of meteorological spring. Not sure WHY that is, but it is. So, happy spring!

Tonight was kind of a boring night, didn't do a lot. After a rough day at work, I came home, ate some food, Kerry sent me one cd, I watched American Idol, then got caught up on Supernatural taped last night and my soap (Days of Our Lives) from today. The episode of Supernatural was supposedly taking place in Chicago, but I don't recall seeing any landmarks to prove it was filmed here, lol. Odds are they didn't go on location to film this episode.

Tomorrow will be pretty busy at work tomorrow, so as soon as DooL is over, I'm heading to bed.

What a night for television!

American Idol from 7pm-8:30pm, Supernatural from 8pm-9pm, and The Amazing Race from 8pm-10pm. Impossible to watch all of them at once!

First with American Idol...tonight was the top 10 girls performing. I have a couple favorites so far, and there were a couple that I think have some potential, but picked some songs that didn't impress me. It's amazing how one week the judges will say "We want to see more of you", then the next week when you do a song to show your personality, they say "You looked like you were having fun, but your song selection wasn't good." Sometimes you just can't win, lol. Tomorrow night is the guys turn, another 90 minute show, 2 of each to be eliminated on the Thursday results show.

Moving to The Amazing Race, in case Kerry hasn't seen the second half of it yet, I won't give anything away. Let's just say the team I was HOPING and WISHING would be eliminated wasn't. Some teams had some real struggles, with the language, with directions, even with just getting along with each other. I'm amazed with all the time they were in Sao Paolo, Brazil, going all over town in several taxis, most of the teams were trying to communicate in Spanish. Only a couple of the teams knew or figured out that Portuguese is the language of Brazil, not Spanish. And none of the taxi drivers or people they met corrected them. I know they didn't know where they were going ahead of time, but I would find someway to include a book (there has to be one somewhere) that lists the languages of every country, since they knew they would be going all over the world this time, not just in North America.

Lastly, Supernatural...which I haven't watched. I had to tape that, because obviously I couldn't watch that while I was watching two other shows at the same time, lol. I watch Supernatural because I think it's very fascinating, and it doesn't hurt that one of the lead characters is a real hottie!! Click for Jensen's website.

Anyway, off to bed. Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite!

Nothing rhymes with Wednesday


I couldn't think of anything funny or entertaining for this post, so that's all you get. Here's a summary of my day:

Weather: cold but sunny
Work: boring, but I'm almost done making file folders, then I can start the stacks of filing.
TV: Watched the hour of American Idol tonight, from the Mile High city, Denver, Colorado. There was this "guy" who had hair styled like a girl, wore girl clothes, and sang terribly. Of course, there was a lot of build-up to his audition. 37 people made it to Hollywood, more than the 32 from Chicago, which took 2 hours to show, as opposed to one hour for Denver. Somehow, I'm sure that's not fair, lol And because I was watching CSI: NY at 9pm, I missed Fox News at 9, who interviewed the Paris Hilton look-alike from last night, who supposedly has just had a terrible life since being told no by the judges. I was hoping their website might have something about it, but I couldn't find anything.

Tomorrow's Thursday, and the week is almost over! WoooHooo!

American Idol begins Season 5


Two hours of hilarity, stupidity, mixed in with a small amount of talent. That's how I would describe the first night of American Idol Season 5, with audtions being held right here in Chicago. I won't be voting, but I will watch, as interstingly enough, I like to see who makes it through each week, and who gets sent packing.

Brrr, it's cold out. This morning started out in the upper 30's, and the temps dropped all day. We had, supposedly, some rain turning to snow. I don't recal much rain falling, but there were some flurries this afternoon. At least I'm glad I don't live in Toronto, where there was freezing rain icing everything up this afternoon.

Looks to be another boring day at work tomorrow, so I'd best get my beauty sleep. Lord knows I need it!