Showing posts with label American Idol. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American Idol. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 03, 2012

Celebrities today


I reckon you could tune in to the new season of American Idol in January to see more of this kind of thing but, personally, I'm just waiting for the upcoming AI drive-by to come out on DVD.

Thanks, Nicki Minaj, for all your classiness. Ahem.

Is it just me, or has anybody else utterly had it with today's Barbarians Gone Wild popular culture -- particularly what passes for a pop-music scene? All I want -- and, sadly, this is impossible -- is to be a young man in New York in the 1950s.

But I'll bet you could have guessed that.

Thursday, February 03, 2011

Beware Idol dreams. They may come true.


It's not amazing that Omaha boy Tim Halperin made it to Hollywood on American Idol -- I'm sure the audition for Westside High School's Amazing Technicolor Show Choir was a more arduous affair.

No, really. I've seen ATSC in action. It's, like, the real-life
Glee.

What will be truly amazing is if young Mr. Halperin survives Idol's relentless campaign to hammer round pegs into square prime-time holes in one artistic piece.



THE KID obviously has talent, and the kid probably could have a nice career in front of him.

But what the kid has to fear is the giant American Idolizer machine that could turn him into the next big star like that blue-eyed soul guy from a few years back who we never saw again and whose name I can't remember, who last was seen playing an Indian-casino ballroom somewhere in flyover country.

Tune in next week.



P.S.:
Oh, wait. I remembered the guy's name. Taylor Hicks.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Radio: High-fiving a blind guy


Ryan Seacrest is a fitting poster boy for his employer, Clear Channel Communications.

For Seacrest, trying to high-five a blind guy is what he really does on his American Idol gig. For Clear Channel, the biggest of broadcasting's corporate behemoths, trying to high-five a blind guy is only an apt metaphor of how they run their radio stations.


PRACTICALLY AND METAPHORICALLY, it's not going to work so well.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Clear Channel Communications Inc. plans to lay off about 7% of its U.S. staff and replace more local shows with syndicated content, moves that could affect the broader radio and outdoor-advertising businesses for years to come.

Tuesday, Clear Channel will lay off about 1,500 employees, mostly in ad sales, and implement other cuts aimed at saving close to $400 million, according to a person familiar with the situation. The company, which employs about 20,000 people in the U.S., declined to comment.


(snip)

On the radio side, the company is likely to eliminate chunks of local programming and replace it with national programming, much as it has brought Ryan Seacrest's Los Angeles-based radio show to other markets in recent months. If a local show seems successful, the company will try to syndicate it faster than it might have in the past, a person familiar with the situation said.

CAN YOU IMAGINE? Ryan Seacrest on station after station after station. It's going to be like trying to find something other than Rush Limbaugh -- or Rush wannabes -- on AM radio from 11 to 2.

Only with overresearched, underwhelming Top-40 music.

Wash, rinse, find a Ryan Seacrest for each format, repeat. God Almighty.


HAT TIP:
Your Right Hand Thief.

Friday, July 04, 2008

Lust, license and the pursuit of stuff


Happy Fourth of July!

It is on this day we celebrate the Continental Congress' adoption of the Declaration of Independence and the birth in 1776 of our independent American nation, which actually occurred on July 2 but forget that, we're on a roll.

AND WHEN Lord Cornwallis surrendered his British army to George Washington's American forces and their French allies, it was pretty much all over. The infant nation grew and prospered and, by the 1940s, had become the most powerful the world had ever known. It presided as hegemon of much of the earth, and its people -- through the dual blessings of freedom and prosperity -- dedicated themselves to the pursuit of license and excess.

Secure in our attainment of what we needed, we therefore relentlessly pursued what we wanted. And what we want is stuff. More and more stuff. And bigger places to keep all our stuff.

And governmental policies to help us accumulate that stuff.

Our money says "In God we trust" but that's only constitutional if we don't really mean it. Which we don't, thank God. (And, to be safe. we don't mean that either.)

No, this July 4, we give lip service to self-evident truths and "nature's God" and "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," but we all know what's important, don't we?

Stuff.

The pursuit of stuff is what makes us happy. Until we decide we still don't have enough stuff.

Or a big enough McMansion way out in the 'burbs to keep our stuff. Or enough gas-guzzling horseless carriages to haul our fat asses and our stuff from place to place.

Which requires us to invade hapless Middle Eastern despot states like Iraq under the pretense of self-evident truth and letting freedom ring -- and Mom, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet -- to keep is in enough oil and gas to sate our need for speed.

And stuff.

So, I can't think of a better way to celebrate the birth of our nation than by exercising the God-given right to spit in the eye of America's modern mountebanks who sell us snake oil in the name of "freedom."

And in that spirit, I give you the late, great George Carlin, who really had our number.


NOTE:
Video contains some profanity. Funny profanity, but blue nevertheless.

Saturday, February 02, 2008

The best little whorehouse in Hooterville?

If you tuned in to American Idol on Tuesday, and if you don't live here, you probably think Omaha is a big cornfield. You probably think we're all a bunch of rubes.

YOU PROBABLY think that to get to City Hall, you cross the Missouri River via pole boat, head east down dusty Farnam Trail and hang a right at the third silo.

Idiot.

That silo's been gone for years now. You turn right at the John Deere dealership to get to City Hall.

Likewise, if all you know about our fair cow town is what Ryan Seacrest showed you, I'll bet you think that, for a big time on a Saturday night, we're all about square dancing and Ultimate Cow Chip flingin'. That is, when the magic-lantern show's not in town.

Think again, bubbie.

The reality is, Omahans have discovered the modern way "
to be stress free, relax and enjoy themselves without everyday life worries."

CALL IT the Best Little Whorehouse in Hooterville . . . uh, Omaha. Hey, they don't call us the "Big O" for nothing, as
this story from the hardy frontier journalists of the Omaha World-Herald will prove to a woefully misinformed nation:
Makayla M. Peters, 26, who advertised her Web site on Craigslist.com as "a massage/masseuse therapy business," was booked Wednesday into the Omaha city jail on three prostitution-related misdemeanors. She was released after posting 10 percent of her $8,500 bail.

On Thursday, she posted something else: a lengthy defense on her sexually explicit Web site.

"Some of the men I have seen I've had sexual relations with, some merely dinner or a cocktail," she wrote. "Some of these men are even prominent people, some just an average guy, but all are middle to upper class middle aged men who are just looking for some time to be stress free, relax and enjoy themselves without everyday life worries."

In a phone interview early Friday, she called herself as a "call girl" who is paid by her customers for companionship and time.

Police, prosecutors and some of Peters' neighbors have a different take.

Officer Bill Dropinski, an Omaha police spokesman, said the Peters case marks the first time in several years that police have busted someone accused of running a prostitution service out of his or her home.

"This is the first kind of case that I can remember of this nature," Dropinski said. "This is definitely unusual to have a house of prostitution in this part of the city. It's something we don't see that often."

Peters was arrested on suspicion of committing three misdemeanor crimes within her home near 151st and Z Streets: prostitution, keeping a house of prostitution and operating a massage parlor without a license.

(snip)

Peters operated her business under the moniker "Valerie Omaha" and sought customers from a multistate region. Her Web site even boasted that she operated her business from the confines of a mostly secluded neighborhood outside of metro Omaha.

Her elaborate Web site included intimate details of various acts and sexual fantasies in which Peters was willing to participate with her customers, plus a breakdown of costs.

According to information Peters had on her Web site Thursday, some intimate overnight stays with Peters could cost several thousand dollars, depending on the rendezvous and type of fantasy. She also arranged transportation for her paying customers, if needed.

She included detailed information about her looks, plus home phone numbers and personal e-mail addresses for customers to contact. She also included lengthy answers to specific questions about various sex acts.

In recent weeks, the Omaha police vice squad conducted an undercover investigation into Peters' business. The investigation determined that Peters gave much more than massages or back rubs, Dropinski said.

"We believe she was offering more of a full-service-type activity, and the investigation led us to verify those complaints," Dropinski said. "Our officers acted fairly quickly. This kind of prostitution, in this part of the city, from someone's house, that's something we don't mess around with."

Some residents along Peters' street applauded Omaha police for taking action.

"I did not know her, and I did not have any idea of who she is," said Lee Epstein, who lives a block away from Peters' home. "I have lived here 20 years, and we have never had anything like this. Just get her out of here."

SIGH. There's always a moralist around. Even in hardy frontier towns in the middle of miles and miles of cornfields.

But don't let those snooty city slickers on the coasts tell you Omaha's all about corn. And don't let 'em make you think that we rubes in flyover country can't be as horny as Britney Spears at the Spanish Fly bottling plant.

Or that we can't make gratuitous Britney Spears jokes.

Just don't delay in gettin' one last "massage" before Marshal Dillon and the circuit-ridin' preacher come back around these parts.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Well we're irate here in Allentown . . . .

Man . . . they played this segment for a joke on American Idol last night, but looking back on it, all I can see is American Pathos. Metaphorical, actually, for the cockeyed dreams and desperation of a lot of American schmucks in a lot of rundown Allentowns from sea to shining sea.

The irony is that Simon Cowell actually was pretty compassionate with her . . . at least for him. Well, until the Willem Dafoe crack. That stung.

Well we're waiting here in Allentown
For the Pennsylvania we never found
For the promises our teachers gave
If we worked hard
If we behaved.

So the graduations hang on the wall
But they never really helped us at all
No they never taught us what was real
Iron and coke,
Chromium steel.

And we're waiting here in Allentown.
But they've taken all the coal from the ground
And the union people crawled awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah aaaaaaaaaaah aaaaaah.

Every child had a pretty good shot
To get at least as far as their old man got.
Something happened on the way to that place
They threw an American flag in our faaaaaaaace, oh oh oh.

Well I'm living here in Allentown
And it's hard to keep a good man down.
But I won't be getting up todaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy
aaaaaaaaaaah aaaaaaaaaaah aaaaaaaaah.


-- From "Allentown,"
Billy Joel, 1982