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Tag: Ellen Degeneres

  • American Idol Season 9 – Who Makes The Top 8?

    This is the first week in the newest season in which I have no real idea who is going home. No one had a performance which just caused you to hold your nose so as not to smell the stench coming out of the television.

    Our brown-haired punching bag, Teflon Timothy didn’t even have his usual stink-a-roo performance, which could work against him. Why? Well, in the previous weeks, his fans were trying to save him out of desperation and fear. This week, they’re probably not as desperate.

    With a water gun to my head, I think my Mexican brother Andrew Garcia is the one who probably takes the hit. He’s nowhere near the worst singer left, but then again, neither was Paige Miles. Santa’s little helper, Aaron Kelly is now grating my nerves, but I don’t think people are ready to see him go. I think Teflon Timothy does survive one more week, but it will be much harder next week.

    Onto the elimination …

    Ryno makes creepy girl stand-up first. He pulls her toward the center of the stage.

    Crystal Bowersox is next to have her emotions played with. She joins creepy girl at the center of the stage.

    Young Katie Stevens joins them. They are the girl power group of three.

    Crystal is safe. And so are Katie and creepy girl. Well, that was a waste.

    But it does mean that it’s an all-dude bottom three. That sounded kind of lewd.

    Jason Derulo is performing. I really like his energy and think he’s more than just a one hit wonder. He was also signed by my wife, Miss Kara DioGuardi. And if I wasn’t so lazy, I’d put the umlaut over the “u” in his name. But I don’t want to do the google search to figure out the HTML. I want to watch dude perform.

    I enjoy Whatcha Say more as a song, but he performers In My Head instead. He may eventually need to lose that Freddie Jackson mustache. If I told you that he outperformed Usher (who was on this show last week), would you believe me? Well, he did.

    David Archuleta
    Last night, I was wondering who was going to try to pull off Imagine and no one did. Instead, we get David Archuleta, who performed this song during his season, to give it to us. You mean Blake Lewis was busy?

    It was probably his money performance of his season, though I’d say guest starring on iCarly was a bigger thrill for me personally. Ok, I think I just might’ve given you more information about myself than necessary.

    David Archuleta and Aaron Kelly could both be in the new Harry Potter movie and I’m not sure anyone would recognize them. Accio!

    It’s Lee’s turn to stand-up. Ryno’s going to split the rest of the guys into two groups. One group will be the safe group. One group will be the all-male bottom three. There I go again.

    Lee goes to one side and Big Mike starts another group. Casey joins Lee and Aaron joins Big Mike. Tim joins Lee and Casey. I can tell you right now that Aaron, Big Mike, and Andrew are the bottom three.

    I could make a slightly political/racial statement about the two minorities being in the bottom three, but let’s face it, we know who watches this show.

    Aaron Kelly is safe, predictably. I’ll save the speech and just say, demographics, demographics, demographics.

    If Big Mike is the the guy to go home, I think the judges save him. If Andrew goes home, I don’t think they save him.

    Rihanna performs Rock Star 101. Jeez, she’s going through singles like morning donuts at an Internet company. I think she’s singing live, but it’s not like the song is all that hard to sing. She’s wearing this tight patent leather suit that only she and Lady Gaga can pull off these days. But it’s hiding her trunk a bit and that makes me sad.

    Andrew Garcia is safe and Big Mike goes home. Wow! First shocker of the season. Let’s hope he gets saved.

    He’s singing Woman’s Work while his wife is crying. That was heartbreaking.

    Here’s video of the first time he performed the song:

    They used the save! Big Mike is back next week and if it’s anything like last year, there will be two eliminations last week.

    Seacrest out!

  • Oh Ellen Part Two

    Last week, I blogged that Ellen DeGeneres was close to a failure on her first week of live American Idol shows. But I did give her an out.

    I said:

    To be fair to Ellen DeGeneres, it’s only been two shows. But it hasn’t been a great start.

    And it wasn’t.

    But this isn’t the most successful television show for the last ten years for nothing. All it took was a change in the judge order and Ellen went from terribly unprepared and unable to riff with the judges to exactly what makes her so successful. She was funny, charming, and almost fit in perfectly.

    Last week, Ellen was in the lead judge slot though she didn’t talk first every time. But she looked like a deer in headlights. She doesn’t have the musical knowledge to say anything critical about the actual singing. So it was idiotic to have her lead in the criticism.

    This week was very different. Randy Jackson was moved into the first slot, Ellen the second, and my wife Kara DioGuardi was followed by Simon. I still don’t think it’s the best order, as I think Ellen would be perfect right before Simon. Randy and Kara could get music nerd on us, Ellen could piggy back on what they say and then tell a joke, and then Simon could hit clean up like a ‘roided out Mark McGwire.

    But it seems that they want Kara to play the old Paula Abdul cat and mouse game with Simon, which doesn’t work as well because Kara is married (to me). She won’t flirt with Simon like Paula would. But I guess it wouldn’t be believable for Simon to flirt with Ellen, though Ellen would play it up for laughs really well. I think they need to figure out how to hit on that dynamic before Simon leaves.

    I commend the producers for understanding how bad the shows were last week and in being proactive enough to switch it around. It made for such a better week of shows (even if the talent is still lacking any kind of star power whatsoever). Ellen is still BS’ing her way through the musical critiques, but that’s what comics do best anyway.

  • Oh Ellen

    Paula Abdul has to be smiling right about now. Replace the girl who was forever ours with a comedian slash daytime talk show host on the biggest show on American TV which is also about music? How dare they?

    To be fair to Ellen DeGeneres, it’s only been two shows. But it hasn’t been a great start.

    I will give her and the American Idol producers credit though. She was much better on her second show than she was on her first. She had a deer in headlights look the first time she had to give her criticism to a contestant without getting to hear what Kara, Simon, or Randy said first. And it was very awkward for those of us watching at home.

    In a sense, it’s almost poetic that she gets to try and sharpen her judging skills on these Top 24 Idol shows because some of the singers are just as bad at their audition as she is at hers.

    By night two, there were tricks used that allowed her to do a little bit better. If she had to lead the criticism, she added just a few quick thoughts, allowed everyone else to speak, and then wrapped it up, taking most of their thoughts and summing them up. It wasn’t necessary at all, but I guess it helped her reach her speaking quota.

    I’m going to pick on something that might be a little unfair, but it has thoroughly annoyed me. She doesn’t speak with any pauses. I know, I’ve seen her before, she does it all the time and it’s one of her quirky charms. But when your job is to criticize, you have to be a little more succinct and to-the-point than she is. Yes, I know, Paula rambled more than anyone else. Randy speaks in slang. But we are used to them. Those are their gimmicks.

    Here’s what she told poor Tyler Grady who looked at her like she was speaking a different language:

    Ya, I felt that what what’s great about the people that you’re so attracted to is they had so much stage presence and so much charisma and I feel like you’ve got the poses and you’re copying those poses but you’re lacking the charisma and you’re lacking that kind of excitement, you’re kinda just going through all of the motions without really being that person, so I feel like you gotta work on the singing and really not just make those poses, but get into that performance.

    The one thing that Ellen has going for her is something that Kara told one of the contestants who failed miserably with his song. Ellen’s likable. Will it be enough for her to make the top 12? Wait, she’s already going to be there. Darn it.

    Photo of Ellen shared by Wikipedia and through Creative Commons