American Idol winner - wtf?

This is what I wrote that night.

American Idol winner - wtf? possibly the most depressing thing I've seen on TV in a long time. So horribly wrong. Looking forward to seeing what the judges think. I noticed Simon didn't stand up at the end along with the other judges. Trust Americans to pick the safe, bland middle of the road choice. At least Adam won't have to sing that horrible single.

Weird: Cyndi Lauper playing the dulcimer on Time After Time; Steve Martin playing the banjo; bikini girl.

Painful: Having to sit through 2 freakin' hours of crap for a few seconds of revealing the winner.

Evocative: Brian May of Queen playing with Adam Lambert, reincarnation of Freddie Mercury.

On the other hand, maybe America should be scared of  a man who will wear this outfit - (round bling thingy on his thigh certainly reminiscent of handcuffs):

American Idol finale performance show

Catching up here on all the Idol doings this week.

The highlight may have been Adam's outfits. Haha. So...picspam below. Each finalist sang 3 songs. They each picked their favorite performance of the season and repeated it. That was disappointing, as I would have preferred to hear fresh material. Adam sang Mad World, which is definitely my favorite. While his outfit completely rocked, the studio version is much better than his live performance last night. He didn't hit the notes squarely at times, or as the judges would say, at times it was "pitchy". Although none of them said so last night. But the outfit...OMG, I loved it SO MUCH.

Kris chose Ain't No Sunshine, which is a song I really liked, and it was his best performance of the night. I liked the piano on it. Very nice.

Then they performed songs chosen by the show's creator, Simon Fuller. Adam did Change is Gonna Come, a Sam Cooke song and this was his best performance of the night. Absolutely fantastic. As soon as he finished, I wanted to watch him do it again. Amazing. Plus another great outfit, a silvery suit with a turquoise tie and, I think, silver boots!

Kris's song was....can't remember and didn't write it down. It was fine, but boring. Simon said it was like a bunch of guys strumming guitars at home. LOL

The last song of the night was the first single from the season, co-written by judge Kara DioGuardi. I didn't like the song at all. Not even Adam could sell it to me. I preferred his performance of it, not surprisingly. Kris' performance of it was off on some notes.

Last pic below is Adam kissing Kris on the head. Awwww. They're pretty cute together.

Adam Lambert fever

I'm totally into Adam Lambert right now. I've never watched American Idol before. The snippets I'd seen of it showed a type of singing I don't care for. But a friend sent me a link to Adam Lambert singing "Tracks of My Tears" and I was really impressed. I decided to watch the show to check him out. Whoa! The guy is phenomenal. His glam rocker-goth guy persona is really appealing. But the main thing is his singing. I just love it. My favorite songs of his so far are Mad World, Ring of Fire, If I Can't Have You and Whole Lotta Love. Yes, I'm more than a little in love with him right now, and I'll be sad when American Idol is over. But I'm crossing my fingers that he'll win and that the world will see a lot more Adam Lambert in the future.

Fringe, American Idol

Basically, what was on Fox last night.

Fringe: What's most interesting about the last two episodes is that they were free standing. There were no references to the Pattern or Massive Dynamic, the two conspiracy nodes of the previous part of the season. There was no obvious appearance of the Observer. If he was in there, I missed him. There was no development of Peter's mysterious backstory, or anything revealed about his childhood.

American Idol: I never felt like watching this until a friend gave me a link to Adam Lambert's performance of "Tracks of My Tears" a few weeks ago. It was a very nice performance. In conjunction with his sexual ambiguity, discussed in this New York Times article this past Sunday, he's caught my interest. I inadvertently caught his performance last week because American Idol ran late, into Fringe's time slot and he performed last. Also see this NPR blog piece analyzing an ABC news report on Adam after last night's show, which described him as "coy". The NPR blog says, no, he's not coy at all, he's completely above board. (If you Google "Adam Lambert kissing", you'll see what I mean. Digging the purple hair, Adam.) He just hasn't made some big announcement. Anyway, I decided to just give in and tune in to American Idol full stop.

I didn't see the entire show. I missed a couple of the performances in the middle. Of the ones I saw, I think Adam's performance of "Born to be Wild" was far and away the best. Simon Cowell's comment was rather strange, I thought. He said he thought the performance was like something out of "Rocky Horror Picture Show" and that half the audience might not like it. I have no idea what that means. Was he trying to compare Adam to the transvestite character in that movie, Frank-N-Furter? Because he was wearing eye makeup? Umm, really not sure. Did he think the singing style was too over the top? It was kind of mysterious.



Second was Allison Irehata, which surprises me because my basic reaction was that I didn't like her performance. But I liked it better than the others. It was more lively and charismatic. The rest chose very limpid, slow songs. Although I love the song "Falling Slowly" from the movie, "One," Kris Allen bobbled his notes at the beginning and it was just not a very interesting performance. Generally I don't care for the styles of singing or music chosen, sorry to say. They generally have nice voices, but the energy just doesn't compare to Adam's or Allison's.

I know that Quentin Tarantino has been on American Idol in the past, but I have no idea why he's on it. I thought he was a movie director. Since when is he a vocal coach? I noticed that he had nothing to say to improve Adam's performance. Or they at least chose not to include anything he may have said like that.

OK, I couldn't resist.