rickshangle.com

American Idol: Season 5 Encores, Simon Fuller’s first major cash-in on Idol 5 “talent”[1], contains many truly mediocre performances and a few dull gems.

The CD contains one studio rendition of a previously performed song from each of the Top 12 Idol 5 contestants.

Let’s do this:

Ace Young - Father Figure by George “No Really… I’m Straight” Michael: Thin, not sufficiently differentiated from original. The point? Wake me up before you go-go.

Bucky Covington - Superstition (Stevie): Unlike almost all his appearances on the show, I can actually understand most of the words to this rendition, so I have to give it at least a 5/10 for that. I kind of wish he did ‘Fat Bottom Girls’ for this album, though, because to hear Bucky warble through Freddie Mercury just one more time would have been… funny!

Chris Daughtry - Wanted Dead or Alive (Bon Jovi): Like the Bon Jovi, except thinner (and, according to an Entertainment Weekly review I read, Chris sings both Jon and Richie’s parts; woo hoo!). It could be said that most of these songs suffer from the same issue: if you’re going to do a cover song, aren’t you supposed to make it your own instead of offering up a version that is the same as the original? All these covers do is showcase that the Idols are not as good a singer (or perhaps they had a less talented producer) as the original artist.

Elliott Yamin - Moody’s Mood for Love (eh, eh?): You know, I don’t know the original, but this is Elliott in his ellimentt. Looking forward to his all-scat record.

Katharine McPhee - Think (Aretha): You’re not Aretha Franklin; you’re skinny, tall, white and can’t sing nearly as well. Robotic and effortlessly good… which isn’t a good thing in this case. Took no risks. In the chorus that goes, “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!” it’s clear that she’s not pushing it at all. If she had gone for overdrive in the chorus, this may have had something.

Kellie Pickler - Walkin’ After Midnight (Patsy “Pull Up!” Cline): I don’t know the original, and I’m not a big fan of country, but to quote Dave Navarro from Rock Star: INXS, “I could hear this song on the radio right now”. She sounds as good as any other female country singer that I’ve stumbled across when scanning the dial. But regardless of her music career, I’m still very much looking forward to her inevitable appearance in Playboy and/or Penthouse.

Kevin Covais - … whatever. You’re horrible, boy. It wasn’t novelty that got you into the Final 12, it was morbid fascination. You are the anti-christ and Gollum rolled into one. I don’t mean either of those in a good way.

Lisa Ticker - Signed, Sealed, Delivered (Stevie Wonder): Dunno if it’s as good as the original, but to me this sounds like a professional recording.

Mandisa - I’m Every Woman (Whitney “Show Me The Receipts for All this Crack” Houston): Thin. Maybe the song’s “too big for her”.

Melissa McGhee - What About Love (Heart): I think I’m understanding that my minor infatuation with her breasts was shielding me from what is obvious to everyone: she really can’t (or, nominally, doesn’t) sing very well. On this recording, there are no distractions to hide the truth, so I was forced to face it.

Paris Bennett - Midnight Train to Georgia (Gladys Knight?): It’s good, but not great. It is amazing how she sounds, being seventeen or whatever. She’ll have a career. Thank you!

Taylor Hicks - Takin’ It To The Streets (Doobie Brothers): I mean, it’s fine. There’s nothing about it (other than being listed last in the track listing) that says “this guy was going to win AI 5″. It’s a capable Michael MacDonald copy, taken to the streets. Soul patrol… whoooo! Hopefully he’ll follow up with both “Yah Mo Be There” and “Shine Sweet Freedom” (both duets with Elliott Yamin) on his first album.[2]

So, in summary: This album was $9.99 from the iTunes Music Store, and I’m fairly confident I’ll never be listening to it again.

[1] Not counting the millions already made via producer’s salary, licensing, ad revenue, et et etc squeak etc.

[2] In hindsight, I realized at writing time I somehow had the album tracklist in alphabetical, not canonical, order, so Taylor really isn’t the last track. Who is? Who can say…

rds

Detailed article digging into the question: are too many Xbox 360s failing? Compares to launch history of other consoles (ex. PS2).

From IGN. Ads.

rds

Chicago Sun Times: Student faces expulsion for Web post

Either something relative to this situation is not being reported/discussed, or I’m an idiot, because I’m failing to see what this kid did and why it deserves expulsion.

Big discussion on topic at Slashdot.

I’ve not been successful in finding the full text of the kid’s original post, which I feel is essential to understanding this.

Caveats: I’m not in high school, but I did graduate from a public one (four years prior to the web exploding), and from what I remember it was a low grade fascist regime. Also, I don’t have a kid in high school.

Image: National Ledger.Com

[1] Odds of affirmative AI voting system malfunction are estimated at between 97-103%, by author

Hicks, Taylor; (a.k.a. Winner, The Winner, Idol 5, Teen Steam, Little Buddy, The Grey Soul Ghost, Poncharelli, Space Ghost, Cobra Commander, Little Buddah, Hoooo! McGoo, Twitchy, Little Jebus, Soul Power, The Spastic One, The Travelist, Soul Patrolist, Snoopy, Snow Patrol, Filly’s Folly, The Grey Eurasian, The Man Taylor, The Century City Goofball, His Girl Friday’s Boyfriend Taylor Hicks, Wednesday, Grey Ween, The Ageless Stranger, Tuesday, Puffy, The Great Weather Domination Machine, Long Tall Order of Johnniecake, Neko Case’s Most Recent Boyfriend, and Mid-Sized Bubba): He’s not an incredible singer, but he’s popular and consistent and fun, and that’s enough for both me and the Baby Jebus. A loss for Taylor tonight could only be attributed to yet another failure of the AI 5 voting technology. I’ll give him credit that when McP took down her own shields in song 3, he STAYED ON TARGET throughout his entire attack run. I also have to admit that I’m impressed with the work he’s done with Nine Inch Nails on the recent remix “You Get Me Closer To Whooo! Soul Patrol SOULPATROL!”

McPhever: aka CAT CANNOT CONTROL HER MCNERVOUS MCSPASMS, and this was her downfall. Also, her first single flat out sucked. And that blue sack made her rear look like a dozen bowling balls hidden in a blue potato sack. But it’s allright, as it’s over now, and I’m sure the fullness of time (or, eventually, Alzheimers) will un-burn the image from my memory.

Above and beyond that, I like her fine (especially her breasts)… although she is a robot. Because she is a robot? It’s hard to say.

McPhever’s Dad: I have three words for you tonight, and every night: BE A MAN. Trust me, doing so leads to a good feeling. You feel that feeling? Want to know what it’s called? It’s called “being a man”.

Ryan: See you in “Trapped In the Closet Part VII”. However, you are rich and famous, and that is worthy of respect.

Me: Will dial 200 times into TaylorLine9000, to log a grand total of 0.0 votes.

Simon: See you next year, Mr. Money Man!

Paula: Believe me, I knew what you meant when you said you and Taylor were twins or whatever: “I’m higher than hell, and you just exude everything.” Randy: Don’t stop believin’. Hold on to that feelin’. Jerk. So, in the final analysis, remember this: deep within the bowels of Cingular’s Atlanta datacenter/data control facility, computers will be crunching all night, counting votes and, even more importantly, running a random number generator once, twice, three times, a million times, ten million times, one hundred million times, how ever many number of million times are required until the correct answer is revealed:

She’ll be forever your girl… so flee.

HO!

See you tomorrow.

rds

Useful list defining various OS X processes. Never again find yourself stymied over the function of pmTool (which not this pmtool).

rds

Not sure how it’s going to change post-grand opening, but right now this has (sorta-)crazy animations and stuff.

I’m looking forward to an 11PM in my eventual future, when I decide I “need” some bit of Apple gear, and I have to have it before whenever-AM the next morning. Road trip / lock-down / slow zoom out of me holding item above my head triumphantly… only to discover I’m standing on top the Empire State Building!

rds

This is a step in the right direction for the masses who have been waiting to acquire their first drumming robot and have so far held off for aesthetic reasons.

I’m going to wait until it evolves to match the prowess displayed in the “Metallica Drummer” (video, sound). And I don’t mean Lars Ulrich.

The reality is, of course, that no robot will ever match “Metallica Drummer”… until robot supermen are our superiors.

video from gatech.edu.

rds

No virtual riot, really.

Let’s at least hope the legal proceedings happen entirely in-game, and that the judge is a furry

When are we going to have drug deals go wrong in these virtual worlds? And can we look forward to any inconvenient truths about them?

final three tonight - elliot, kat-power, and sam cooke ne Taylor Hicks.

Taylor kind of muddled through up until “Try a Little Tenderness”, which was right in his element. Let’s hope for his finale next week he does “Soul Man”. In Blues Brother getup. Because why not — it’s not only what we all expect, but if done without irony I think it could be pretty awesome.

Katherine seemingly just can’t sing without massive / wild vocal gymnastics and palsies. Maybe this is the way pop singing is supposed to be (I listen to a lot of rock, where lack of vocal skill usually gains the upper hand), and the judges loved her “… Rainbow …” thing. She’s clearly being groomed to lock in for the win. I thought her third dress was hot, and that’s about as far as I’ll go re compliments, because she’ll soon be the AI 5 and frankly she doesn’t need them.

Which brings me to Elliot. He didn’t do anything super-flashy tonight (and never does), but just turned in more of what I value from him - strong, consistent vocal performances.

With that said, unless Elliot has a massive locked-in constituency[1], he needs my vote tonight. As much as I don’t want to see Elliot go home tomorrow, I know the odds are much better than 51% that he will given the competition of Taylor (the Beautiful South is pulling for him, and there’s little denying that he’s entertaining when he’s not over-doing it) and McPhever (Kelly Clarkson + T-2000 offspring).

So, in order to feel like a member of an actual community of people helping EY, I need to vote tonight. Ostensibly to help him win, but mostly so I can’t over-torture myself tomorrow when he gets booted. Too bad this is about as difficult as gaining access to a black vault lockdown.
I’ve attempted to log said vote through all three of Elliot lines for the last 67 minutes solid. Over 220 times, by the count of “outgoing calls” on my blackberry. Busy. Busy. Busy… plus the occasional “nothing leading to dropped call… what did you want to do again?”

I really hope I’m getting airtime charges for all these, so I’m all the more enraged if I wind up never getting through.

This leads to a sort-of-not-really-that-interesting hypothetical question/throught experiment, which is:

> If robo-dialers are calling Elliot’s three lines non-stop for two hours, does the number of votes Elliot receives reach some sort of “maximum possible number of votes over three lines over two hours” number that is a constant, and is that number the same for all three contestants over three lines / two hours?

Farewell, Yamin. You are a true star, and I’ll buy your record from iTMS. Never let down.

rds

[1] I’ve long since given up attempting to predict what players do and do not have hardcore/diehard fans… other than noting that the South seems to produce a lot of idol-winners.

I ordered two sets of flower (mother, mother-in-law) to be delivered yesterday. Mothers Day… makes sense. FTD probably sells a lot of flowers on Mom’s Day, one (admittedly one who is totally outside the floral biz) may guess.
I received this message mid-afternoon yesterday from FTD… twice:

>Dear Valued Customer
>
>We regret to inform you that due to the holiday rush, we were unable to find a >florist in your area available to fill and deliver your order.
>We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused and we will be >issuing a full refund of all charges made to your credit card as a result of your >order
>
>In response to this issue, by clicking through the following link >http://www.ftd.com/love you will be entitled receive $15.00 off on all orders placed with >FTD.com through 05-31-2006.
>
>Once again, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience.
>
>FTD.COM.
>Customer Service

Fume.

Note to FTD: You do one thing - deliver flowers. That is really your only competence. If you can’t do that one thing, you are devoid of value.

If you take my order, and say the flowers will be delivered on Mother’s Day (which I realize is probably the 1st or 2nd biggest business day for you), deliver them. Just deliver the flowers.
If you don’t think you can deliver them, don’t take my order in the first place.

And… if you can’t deliver them when promised (i.e. do to some insurmountable problem, like nuclear war), deliver them asap after… but for God’s sake don’t…

Note to FTD #2: When you decided you couldn’t do my order(S; 2x) on time, you cancelled them and emailed me halfway through the day of target delivery to notify me. How does this make sense? Can you deliver me some of the crack whoever is in charge of this policy is injecting?
Look - if you had not delivered yesterday, but just sent me a note saying “sorry - the flowers will be delivered Monday; here’s 20% off this or your next purchase”, I’d probably be 80% less angry at this moment than I
am.

But how is “if { can’t deliver on date –> delete order completely }” the appropriate default behavior/rule? Where is the logic?

Note to FTD #3: $15 off all purchases through the end of the month, and you’re refunding my money on the two orders you didn’t deliver/cancelled! That’s big of FTD, and the discounts would perhaps be applicable were I ever using them again.
Such bulls***. I realize this probably isn’t very entertaining to read. I’m a little too enraged to form coherent sentences containing anything approximating wit. I do want to nuke FTD from orbit, though.

rds