spugbrap’s blog

This is kinda rough, because I just took notes while watching. I haven’t blogged in a while, and these are kind of fun to write. I do have like 8 other entries partially done, though (and none of them are pop culture related!), and my toblog.txt file is getting huge. So hopefully I’ll get things rolling again soon.

Ramiele Malubay:
had trouble keeping up with the song from Heart.
Simon said he didn’t think it was as bad as Randy said
Lacey: that was awful.

Jason Castro:
sang in almost a whisper through his sting song, while playing his acoustic guitar.
he makes the goofiest faces while he’s singing, but did a really good job
today was his birthday
Randy: don’t know if it did anything for you for me vocally, but it was nice
Paula: you’re staying true to who you are
Lacey about Paula: why is she all glammed up tonight?
Simon: you’ve had 2 bad weeks, it’s time you start taking this a little more seriously. […] too laid back, too much in your own world.
Lacey loved the performance.

Sayesha Mercado:
born January 2, 1987
makes an annoying (but very baby cry
said she’s still a kid, likes to be goofy
song: “if I were your woman”
did a great job!
Randy: this is a good moment for you for me, this is the best I’ve ever heard you sing
Paula: this is the moment everyone will remember where Sayesha flipped it and became the dark horse that’s going to sail on through.
Lacey: what is with her [Paula’s] ugly gloves?
Simon: I don’t think the end part of the song was as good as Randy thought. I think there’s a limit on your vocal and I think that song stretched it.
Lacey: she did good.

Chikezie:
Born September 11, 1985.
started humming/trying to sing at age 3, according to his mom
Nigerian cultural music always playing in the house. very focused on faith and education.
uh-oh, started a little rough
I always want to like his performances, though. He’s got a charming smiling face and good attitude.
He had a bit of trouble switching from high notes into falsetto and back. I liked the very end when he went really low, though.
it’s interesting you’re following Sayesha with that other oldie but goody but she made it Randy: younger feeling, this wasn’t hip and cool .. kinda boring for me dawg.
Paula: I disagree, Randy, you are grown up, blah blah.
Simon: I think you sang it well, having said that I thought the performance was very cheesy, blah blah.
Lacey: he might be in danger today, and I like him.

Brooke White:
remembers getting her grandmother’s piano. her fingers just knew what to play. she could hear something and play it by ear.
Song: The Police: Every Breath You Take
stuttered on the first line, restarted.
played piano while she sang.
kinda boring for me.
I think she sang it well for the most part, though, and played piano well.
oh good drums came in finally. it needed drums sooner.
went a bit flat about 3/4 of the way through. monotone. every time there was repeating chanting “every .. you ..”, it got a bit boring.
Randy: just ok for me, it’s alright.
Paula: I enjoyed this performance so much more than last weeks. this is the great thing, we’ve always wanted contestants who are unique.
Lacey: are you seeing her gloves? they’re hideous!
Simon: if you just stayed you on the piano, it would have sounded much more cool, the minute the band came in it made it more old fashioned. as Randy said the first half, when you started, it was fantastic. but better than last week.
Lacey: [went into a whole rant on how she’s sick of Brooke’s pure and innocent persona. The music industry’s gonna chew her up.]

Michael Johns:
Born October 20, 1978 (Libra), in Australia..
Michael always competitive, got to smile, his mom said.
thought he was going to be a tennis player, till music found him.
Lacey: so distracted by Paula’s gloves.
played queen we will rock you/we are the champions
nice lights and sounds. guitar player awesome as always.
I think he did well.
Lacey: eh.. he’s good at singing queen though.
crowd wouldn’t stop cheering
Lacey: so distracted by Paula’s gloves, I hate them, I just want to jump through the screen and rip them off of her. I can’t help it!
Paula: if anyone said you haven’t found your right song, we can all shut our mouths on this one, this is your moment your shining moment, I’m so proud of you.
Simon: this is the first time with you I saw star potential tonight you just got it right, you looked like a front person, confident, performed well. For me it’s the only memorable performance of the night tonight

Carly Smithson:
Born in 1983 (Virgo) in Dublin, Ireland.
“Definitely a classic Virgo”
got her name from the radio.. her mom heard Carly Simon on the radio on the way to hospital.
As a child, had big spiral curly hair. She always wanted to be a pop star, like Madonna and Kylie Minogue.
mom always knew she’d never have a problem being an entertainer.
Song: Total Eclipse of the Heart
Backup vocal was distracting and abrupt, felt like they kept interrupting her.
Carly went lower when I expected her to go higher, but she pulled it off and although she did it more as the song went on, it sounded more natural after the first time.
She did pretty well.
Lacey said something about her having an ugly dress..
Randy: interesting song choice, didn’t like love it. just ok for me. not the right song for you.
Paula: I don’t know how you can say that […]
Randy: don’t like the whole rock theme, didn’t like the note at the end.
Paula: so admire about you is you can probably take every song I’m not crazy about and make me a believer and make me go buy it
Simon: something didn’t quite work. so tense, almost uptight during the performance, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I was going to enjoy it. part of the song you sang it quite well, I’m with Randy on this, something didn’t quite work and you’ve just gotta lighten up a bit.
Lacey pointed out her husband has tons of tattoos including his face.. He’s a tattoo artist.
She did well really, but the ugly dress was very distracting.

David Archuleta:
Born December 28, 1990 in Miami
Lacey and I are feeling so old tonight, hearing these birth years from back when we were in middle school, almost in high school when David was born!
He missed a few dances, might miss prom.
Ryan: Who would you take to prom? Lots of people are raising their hands.
mom big into dance, had David and his older sister (his “partner in crime”) dancing all the time, embarasssing.
Lacey: he grabbed his sister’s butt! hahaha
I didn’t recognize the song. the beginning had me worried but he’s really good.
Lacey: I like him
Randy: strange song choice for me, but guess what, if you can sing you can sing whatever. David’s got mad skills. very nice.
Paula: all of us were trying to figure that out.. you can sing the phone book and we’d fall in love with you.
Simon: didn’t like the performance at all, actually reminiscent of a theme park performance. [he’s got a point] .. sing when you’ve got like animated creatures with you and everyone joins in. I don’t think that’s you at all. I’d be amazed if you chose the song yourself because it’s not you.
Lacey: I like him, cute and jailbait

Kristy Lee Cook:
Born January 18, 1984 in Seattle.
parents said she came out smiling
loud as a kid, singing all the time. when she was 2-3, parents said.
remembers certain parts about being 2. when she was sitting in her bathing suit singing a song called Kristy that her dad used to sing.
singing in the car all the time. other kids said please make her shut up. parents let her sing.
God Bless the USA:
she kept shaking her head
doing her signature stance again. Lacey said not as bad as she usually does though.
Lacey: [singing] keep me here for one more week, this is just a suck-up song, I’ve almost been kicked off 10 times in a row.
Lacey: Come on, who chooses that? that’s called just trying to suck up for votes. [agreed!]
Randy: very nice performance from you. yeeeah. yeeeah.
Paula: very good choice for you. I’ve seen better performances from you, but your voice is sounding much stronger. Watch the pitch prolems, but you’re growing.
Simon: your best performance by a mile, I think. [she cheered and jumped around] Most clever song choice I’ve heard in years, I’ve gotta tell you. brilliant writer, brilliant song, overall it was a good performance and that’s going to keep you in the competition.
Lacey: Sing about America = still be here next week.

Lacey: Oh, I forgot about my favorite one!

David Cook:
December 20, 1982 (“barely Sagittarius”)
funny baby picture.
in early pictures, “massive skull”, “Supervillain from Marvel comics or something.”
family put everything funny on him and took photos.
His mom: he got his first guitar when he was 2. he’d stand in the middle of the bed with sunglasses, strum guitar because he was a rockstar.
music was always readily available to him but never forced on him.
He did a rock spin on Michael Jackson’s Billy Jean.
Lacey: that was awesome. I like Michael Jackson remakes–his songs do really well made into rocks songs. That was friggin awesome! But they’re gonna hate it.
Randy: most original, most bold we’ve ever had. […] that joint you just did, you might be the one to win the hole lot. blazing molten hot baby!
Paula: I’m blown away, cant sit down, gotta tell you how smart you are, how brave you are, how willing to stretch the boundaries.
Lacey: [to Paula] Put your hands down, the gloves are so distracting. I just want to rip them off of her and kick her in the face for wearing them!
Simon: insane or amazing, have to tell you it was amazing.
Lacey: That was friggin awesome! That was hot.

Tonight, Lacey and I watched the American Idol Season 7 Top 20 Results Show after our Tivo had finished recording the whole thing. I took a bunch of notes while watching, including some of Lacey’s comments, then went back afterwards and put it into sentences and paragraphs. So, this isn’t quite one of my “notes” blog entries, but I do kind of switch around between talking about things in the present and past tenses. This is my first time using the term “live blogging“, but I believe I’m using it correctly.

Early in the episode, after Ryan was done yakking with Paula about how it must be hard to relinquish judgement duties to America, he addressed Simon’s moose antler thing. Paula and Randy claimed to not know what he was talking about, but Simon said something like, “I believe I know what you’re referring to”.

Ryan then proceeded to have 3 photos put up on the big screen (the first one looked very familiar! (ok, theirs was higher quality and didn’t have glare and a TV screen border, but it was totally the same shot! (of course, he was doing that hand thing all night, on both Tuesday and Wednesday nights, so it wouldn’t be hard to capture a photo that looked the same!))), one at a time, showing Simon’s silly hand signal thing. Ryan asked if it was some sort of code, and Simon said yes, “it’s a code.” Then Paula held onto Simon’s hand, while he kept talking to Ryan, continuing with “it’s a secret code, ryan, which i’ll explain to you.” But Paula kept holding onto his hand, so Simon ended up saying, “There is a gesture I could give you, but I won’t.” Then they moved on, without any further explanation. Hmpf!

Moving on, they went into the typical performance with all of the contestants singing together. It was positively dreadful, to be quite honest with you! :)

Ryan went through several of the guys, saying who was safe. Then he got down to Jason Yeager (Vampire Boy) and that annoying [chick] Danny Noriega (who I wish would go away, but who keeps actually singing pretty well). Bye-bye Vampire Boy…

Make him cry, then make him sing. Yay, we can always look forward to Thursdays to hear the worst songs from Tuesday and Wednesday performed again (for the last time) by the contestants who America voted off! Lacey and I really wish they’d have the BEST singers perform again, rather than the ones that America worked so hard (dialing/texting/etc) to get rid of.

Next Ryan went to the girls, and let several of them sit down, “safe.” The two left standing were Amanda “Rock & Roll Nurse” Overmyer and Alexandréa Lushington. To me, having only watched part of last night’s Top 10 Girls episode, the choice was clear. Amanda should go. I heard her performance, and wanted to like her (I kinda liked her so far this season because she was different from the rest, even though her vocals were not the best), but she just butchered that song last night. I don’t know if I heard Alexandréa or not, but since I didn’t like any of the performances that I *did* hear from the girls, I think it’s safe to assume that she sucked, too. Apparently, America agreed with that assumption, because Alexandréa’s going home.

Amanda is safe, somehow. I’m guessing it has to do with the “controversy” that’s suddenly coming into the media’s pincers; oh wait, make that *two* controversies involving Amanda Overmyer. Something about her criminal record being pretty substantial already, including a major DUI a couple years ago. The other thing is something about nude photos that are “surfacing soon” or something. I dunno. I don’t really care. This show’s supposed to be about the *singing* and *performing*, not about background checks. This show has to have at least a few “controversies” every season, apparently. I guess it pays the bills, though, for American Idol and for media companies everywhere. Whatever.

Thanks, Lacey, for fast-forwarding through both of those “loser” performances! There’s just no reason for those.

Next Ryan went through the remaining girls who hadn’t yet been told to sit down, stand up, or go home. He narrowed it down to two, as usual: Kady Malloy and Alaina Whitaker. It didn’t make any difference to me. They all sucked last night, from what I heard (and what I’ve been told by a couple people who watched it (and those people also didn’t like last weeks’ performances by the girls either)).

Lacey thought the Britney impersonator (Kady) would/should go home, but it’s Alaina instead. Oh good, she’s crying so hard and facing away from the camera, and actually whimpered “I can’t sing!” Finally, maybe we won’t have to hear a bad performance “one last time.”

Ugh, now Ryan turned her around for the closeup, and gave her a pep talk. Then he had the judges talk to her, the audience clap for her, and the rest of the performers got up on stage with her. So, she’s singing it again. Lacey was kind enough to fast forward through ALL of that crap, so I’m just going by what I saw flashing by at high speed. :)

Oh boy, another guilt-fest, Idol Gives Back is happening again. “Bigger and better than last year,” Ryan says (although, Ryan also keeps saying that this is the best group of singers the show has ever had, which couldn’t be further from the truth!).

Charity is great, and we actually did end up donating some money to them last year, after I spent a good 10+ hours researching their charitable organization, its philosophies, info on all of the charities that it gives to, etc. But it really got annoying watching the same footage of poor, hungry people in Africa who would supposedly benefit in amazing ways with my small donation. I’m still skeptical, because I’ll bet there’s quite a bit of overhead in this charity since it, but it helped us feel less guilty as they continued trying to make everyone cry in every episode.

You know what I kept thinking would be a nice charitable thing to do? If AT&T would take all of the text-messaging fees from one episode, and donate that money to charity, I’ll bet they’d end up donating more than all the people who respond to any one Idol Gives Back tearjerking segment. Millions of dollars. I think AT&T (or was it Cingular last year? I dunno) donated something piddly like $5 mil or something last year, while they were sitting there racking up boatloads of cash from every episode.

Ok Robbie Carrico’s gone. Lacey called it: which two guys would be standing there waiting to hear who was getting the axe. She was totally right. I thought Robbie would be sticking around, though, for “controversy”’s sake (the media seems to be all excited and shocked about the fact that he might wear a wig or something. oh no!). Lacey said he wears his do rag like a woman–apparently guys are supposed to tuck in the flap in the back. I’ll take her word on that.

Lacey’s last comment to me, before she went to bed, was “Gosh, the two worst singers in the entire competition are still there, which friggin sucks!” I’m not quite sure which two she was referring to, because there are so many bad ones to choose from!

It doesn’t matter too much, though, if David Archuleta can consistently do as well as he did on Tuesday, then none of the others stand a chance!

I’m not going to go into detail about last night’s episode. Just going to post a few observations and make fun of a couple people. :)

What was up with Simon having his hand up by his head like 1 moose antler all night? Lacey and I kept seeing it and cracking up, and both kept thinking “Nanu, nanu”. We realize that the hand sign was different, seeing Simon Cowell doing that over and over reminded us of Robin Williams’ quirky behavior on Mork and Mindy.

Next we come to the boy that Jena and Lacey have been referring to as “Vampire Boy” all season: Jason Yeager. I didn’t understand why, so Lacey tried to show me last night. She said he had very pointy canine teeth, but I kept watching and could not see what she was talking about–until she paused it at just the right time:

Don’t see the sharp, pointy fang? How about a closeup?

I was sold at this point. That tooth is a bit pointier and sharper than normal, and the one next to it (towards the back) looks a bit fang-like as well. But Lacey is good with the remote. Real good. She managed to pause it at just the right time again, a minute or so later, so we could check out the other side of his mouth:

…and another closeup, if you’re not convinced:

Okay, enough about Vampire Boy. If I remember correctly, his performance was “just aiight for me, dawg.” Most of them have been that way, so far this season, and last night was no different.

Our next victim is the boy who Lacey and Jena have nicknamed “Man Cuddy” (or something like that), after Lisa Cuddy on House, M.D. (one of our favorite TV shows). I have to agree, there is some resemblance.

I was going to link to a picture of Cuddy to prove this point, but when I looked at their pictures side-by-side I didn’t really see it. But from memory, if you’re a fan of House, you may see a younger, more masculine version of Cuddy in the following 4 pics of Jason Castro:

Lacey thinks Cuddy’s much cuter as a guy. She liked his performance last night, too. I was fine with it, but not blown away.

The kid at the end, though (David Archuleta)–the one who sang John Lennon’s Imagine–he was definitely the best of the night and maybe even the season so far. If I wasn’t confident that he’ll get a TON of votes, I would have voted for him (haven’t voted yet this season, probably won’t for a while still).

I used to occasionally watch American Gladiators when I was a kid, but I think I have a greater appreciation for it as an adult. Lacey used to watch it, as well, and we’ve both been looking forward to the new series, which premiered on NBC tonight. Here are some notes I took, while watching it. Some are my own comments, some are Lacey’s, but they are all things we discussed and both agreed with:

• Holy crap, Hulk Hogan’s still ripped at his age. Amazing!
  • I saw him in a WWE match, a few years ago (the one and only one I’ve ever actually seen live), and remember feeling a sorry for him because it seemed like his age was showing. I don’t remember how he actually did, that night, but I do remember thinking it was cool to actually see him. I hadn’t seen or heard about him for probably a decade before that night (save a few Slim Jim commercials back in the 90’s, maybe), and he was the only wrestler I saw, that night, who I remembered from when I was young.
  • Okay, I guess I should qualify that “ripped” statement, a little bit. His arms are HUGE with well-toned muscle. I said to Lacey, “Wow, I’d suspect steroids or something, but he’s been at this way too long to still maintain that kind of muscle, without having major noticeable side effects, so I don’t think drugs are involved.” She pointed out that he has kids, which apparently rules out steroid use. I don’t know much about that stuff, so I’ll take her word on that.
  • However, along with the big, muscular arms, he’s also got some pretty sizable man boobs. Check out this photo I took of a paused TV scene with him standing next to his co-host, Laila Ali. Who’s got the bigger breasts?
  • We do like Hulk Hogan as a host on this show. He’s still a bad ass after all these years, and he smiles enough that he doesn’t come off as taking himself TOO seriously. :)
• Injured contestant (Jessie): Her replacement (Venus) should have gotten to do the Power Ball event herself, instead of inheriting the other girl’s measly 2 points. Oh well.
• Injured gladiator: The firefighter should have had to do the Hang Tough event over again, since the gladiator hurt himself and didn’t put up any fight. If anyone needed a free ride through that event, it was the “Skater Dad”.
• Gladiator: Wolf: Lacey said he looks like James Hetfield (Metallica’s lead singer) on steroids. I watched for the next time they showed him, and she was right! His howl isn’t even in tune, just like James Hetfield’s “singing” [crooning] (disclaimer: OLD Metallica still KICKS ASS!)
• Gladiator: Toa: His battle cry totally reminded me of Timmy from South Park.
• Gladiator: Fury: That’s not a female gladiator, it’s a man, baby! See for yourself:

That’s it for tonight. We enjoyed watching it, although we both like Ninja Warrior better.

When searching for the name of the injured gladiator (still didn’t find it.. maybe Militia), I ran across a blog entry which, along with some of the comments on it, pretty much said everything I just said. :) Honestly, I did take these notes during the show, though, but I piddled around for a while and didn’t post it as quickly. It was kinda cool to see that other people made some of the exact same pop culture comparisons that we did. I think we might be the first to report on the man-boobs, though! hehe

Well, I lived up to the promise I made when I posted about the 7-Eleven + The Simpsons Kwik-E-Mart promotion — I visited the Kwik-E-Mart in Bladensburg, MD on 7/27/2007.

I almost didn’t get around to it, but I really wanted to go! Earlier in the month, I even tried to get my team, at work, to go as a combination weekly status meeting / team building exercise. But, I wasn’t able to get everyone on board with the plan. The main drawback was that it was over an hour away, under normal traffic conditions.

It was getting towards the end of the month, so Lacey and I drove up there with our 3 kids (Matthew, Skylar, Nikki), our friend Jena, and her son Xander. We didn’t even think about the fact that it happened to be opening day for The Simpsons Movie, until we were about half-way there. We were wondering if there would be anything special happening at the Kwik-E-Mart that day. As it turned out, there was…

When we got there, we took a bunch of pictures outside, then went in and took pictures of everything Simpsons-related that we saw. It was fun taking pictures of some of us standing next to the life-size Simpsons characters. There were lots of other people there, doing the exact same thing, too. It’s a good thing they had extra staff working during the Kwik-E-Mart promotion, because it enabled them to handle the high volume of customers pretty smoothly. We bought a few Squishees, half a dozen pink sprinkly donuts, and a bunch of hot dogs for lunch.

While we were taking pictures of everything, we ran across a man holding a large video camera, who was recording all kinds of things. We talked to him, at one point, and found out that he was recording video for Fox 5 News! He recorded us in several places, including Matthew and Xander getting their Squishees, Skylar and Nikki looking cute (I don’t remember exactly what they were doing), and me getting my 6 donuts out of the display case.

When we got home, I programmed the Tivo to record the 10 o’clock news, and the 11 o’clock news on Fox Channel 5. We actually watched the 10 o’clock news in realtime, hoping to see ourselves on TV. At around 10:55pm, they finally did a Simpsons segment, which was about 5 minutes long. We didn’t quite get the face time that I’d kinda hoped for, considering how much he actually recorded of us, but I know they had to condense their footage to fit within the 5 minute segment.

In any case, it was fun for us to see ourselves on the news on TV! I was looking into ways to get the video clip from my Tivo to my computer, but ended up finding it posted on the Fox 5 DC website. Woohoo! To watch it, yourself, see the links below.

Pictures:
Pictures from our trip to the Kwik-E-Mart

Video:

There are two ways to watch the Fox 5 News coverage of the Simpsons Movie opening/Kwik-E-Mart promo (in which we made brief appearances):

1. Download the 10MB .flv file to your computer (to view with your favorite media player application, if you’ve got the right codecs)

OR

2. View it in your web browser (from its original location, on myfoxdc.com)

If you look carefully, and especially if you pause at just the right moment, you can see all of us in this video clip. I have yet to find an easy way to extract just those frames from the .flv file, but hopefully I will get that done at some point.

Anyways, my hands getting donuts out of the display case, and my bright green shirt, can be seen at around 1:20 into the video (NOTE: if you’re watching it on the myfoxdc website, start timing *after* the horrible local advertisement).

From 1:27-1:31, you can see me, all 3 of my kids, Lacey, Jena, and Xander; we’re in the background, behind the kid who’s talking.