She has been my female pick to win the competition since Hollywood week. Her acoustic, singer-songwriter style has lended itself to some very consistently strong performances so far. Is the competition indeed hers to lose? Her back story of being a struggling mom, slash, wannabe singer has seen her get some support from the voting public. Her humble demeanor and quiet confidence only serve to reinforce her popularity. Yes, American Idol is a popularity contest as much as it is a singing competition. At times popularity seems to take a driver’s seat over talent, as seen in Lilly Scott’s early exit from the competition. That was probably a landmark in America’s cultural decline. Perhaps that was too strong. In the end, America is looking for someone they want to hear on the radio and see in various TV appearances. Scott’s music preferences may just have been too far away from the average mainstream tastes.

The Guys

While the tiers of talent and appeal of the remaining male contestants in this season’s American Idol appear to be close, no one looks like he can pose a serious threat to Crystal. Big Mike, Andrew Garcia, and Lee Dewyze are all capable of improving down the stretch, but they will have to make tremendous strides if they want to be categorized in the same league as the “Bowersox Powerhouse”. For now, it seems that a female is due to claim the much coveted title.

The Closest Threat

Unlike the men, the gap in talent among the remaining female contestants is a wide chasm. The drop off in talent after Bowersox and Siobhan Magnus is undeniable. None of the other lady contestants are anywhere close to being in the hunt. That leaves us with Siobhan. She is probably the most diametrically opposed in terms of style to Crystal. Her quirky and eclectic style may not appeal to everyone and is probably her biggest Waterloo as far as gaining a mainstream following is concerned. An Adam Lambert Effect can be used to describe her recent popularity. This is a double-edged sword that can both carve out a potential win for her, or just as easily take off her head as America may eventually decide to drag her off to the chopping block. Nonetheless, Siobhan is a true dark horse to win this competition, and should be watched closely for huge leaps of improvement.

Strengths:

• Versatile – Her wide range allows her to be able to fit in the various themes Idol has over the coming weeks.
• Power – She is clearly the more powerful singer, compared to Bowersox. That in itself is enough to have its own niche appeal.
• Personality – Her quirkiness is both a plus and a minus on her score card. Some people will like it some people won’t.
• Youth – Unlike Crystal, whose style is well defined and probably already carved in stone, Magnus still has room to define herself, and perhaps find her own niche that will appeal to enough Americans to land her the win.

Weaknesses:

• Look – She is who she is and she is clearly proud to be true to herself. Her eclectic appearance and styling may end up being a turn off for some voters.
• Consistency – She needs to come up with a string of solid performances in order to unseat Bowersox from her perceived leading status.
• Adam-Lambertness – Her trademark has been her ability to belt out those high and powerful notes, almost at screaming levels. It’s easy to see how she can be compared to last season’s runner up. America may still not be ready to have a non-mainstreamer take the title of their favorite talent show.

Crystal is in the clear lead, but the game isn’t over until it’s over…

Image via BuddyTV.com

American Idol’s “Hollywood Week” was largely unimpressive, in my opinion. There were very few performances that stood out in my memory. Most of the featured “good” performances were lukewarm at best. One performance in particular though, cemented one contestant as my male-pick to win the competition this year.

Andrew Garcia and his acoustic rendition of Paula Abdul’s song “Straight Up” just blew me away.

Did it hit David-Cook-levels of amazing? Not quite yet. Was it at least in the same neighbourhood of quality that shows promise for Andrew to win the competition? I would probably have to say, YES!

Kara appeared to like it as well. Well that was at least my interpretation of her grooving to Andrew’s impressive acoustic version of the song.

I enjoy following American Idol with my wife. It’s our weekly ritual of following something we both appreciate and enjoy. We’ve turned it into a game of sorts; picking our favourites as early as Hollywood Week. We’re each allowed one male and one female pick. This season, it looks like Andrew is going to be my male pick to win it.

I am trying to make the most out of this season, as this will likely be the last one that I will be following the show. With Simon Cowell announcing that he will be leaving, my first reaction was “Oh crap! It just won’t be the same.” As far as I am concerned American Idol is NOT all about watching some wannabe singer-hopefuls who want to make it big. The judges play a big role in making it a successful talent-search show.

Sadly, I fear that this will be a case of CSI. And by CSI, I mean Las Vegas, as I do not recognize its so-called spin-offs. I lost interest when they killed off Warrick Brown and Gil Grissom leaving shortly after. William Petersen’s character GAVE the show character, and somehow I feel that Simon Cowell helps bring character to American Idol. While Idol’s situation (Simon leaving) is not exactly the same, there will be definitely a lot lost as far as judge-criticism is concerned. His direct and honest approach will be missed, at least by me.

I’m withholding final judgement about whether or not Idol is worth following next season. I will see who they have to offer to fill in Simon’s shoes. Everyone will have their own opinions as to how big an impact Simon really has on their Idol-watching experience. The will probably survive as it has already established itself with a solid fan base, but I am sure that their ratings next season will be reflective of what he really meant to the show.

The first thing I do in the morning is open my laptop and check my GMAIL. I opened it this morning and discovered that I now have Google Buzz. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was at first. This video explains the bulk of what it is and what it does.

Like any other responsible, non-spamming, email user I decided to look into it a little bit deeper and googled “Google Buzz” to see what’s up.

I was quickly surprised to see this a link to a post with this controversial title: WARNING: Google Has A Huge Privacy Flaw.

Relax. It’s not as scary as it initially makes itself out to be. After finding the link, I did what any caring and responsible friend would do, and buzzed the link to my initial SIX followers. I commented that they’d better keep their wives’ and their mistresses’ email addresses on different mail accounts.

My friend and boss, Nels, quickly zipped this reply after reading the link:

“Or if you just to your Google Profile (where all this TERRIFYING PUBLIC INFORMATION is) you can just uncheck “Display the list of people I’m following and people following me”

I suppose they have to post a headline like that, though, to get more readers. Probably wouldn’t attract much attention if it was like “Hey, if you don’t want all your Buzz friends to be public, just uncheck this box”

And then, I replied: “Controversial-ness sell hits.” Yes, folks. It happens. Sometimes post titles are way more controversial than what they actually represent.

To get some more insight into the move the internet giant decided to make, here is what Jeff Jarvis, author of “What would Google do?” has to say:

In the end, Google is just trying to get its fingers into the social media market. It uses its widely used GMAIL as the launching pad.

What does this mean for us bloggers? Well it’s just ANOTHER medium for us to use to reach out to our readership. A vehicle to get us those much craved for hits.

Buzz is still young, a toddler if you will. Well at least relative to the “big boys”, Twitter and Facebook. We’ll have to wait and see how it’s received by the world’s general cyber-population. Like everything, it will be and is currently getting mixed reviews; as expected. It’s not like it’s Avatar: The Movie.

For now, I suppose this post will be fed into my Facebook, tweeted on my Twitter, and buzz-shared on GBuzz.

I wasn’t sure if Ellen Degeneres would fit well as a member of American Idol’s judging panel. I knew from watching her TV show, Ellen, that she does have an eye for talent and that she was big Idol fan.

I knew that watching Idol would not be the same without Paula Abdul to be there to sugar coat her negative feedback criticism to contestants. That was an assumed given, coming into this season of America’s most popular talent-search show.

After seeing Ellen in action in her first episode on Idol’s “Hollywood Week”, I must say I enjoyed how she fit in. I actually appreciated how her excellent comedic timing came into play and how the addition of that dimension to the show comes a fresh change. She’s an entertainer and so it should be expected that the judging end of the show should improve in that aspect. I’m sure that’s why the Idol big wigs added her to the show and not just to add masculine man-vibe to compensate their popular host.

You can only take so much squabbling between Simon Cowell and Paula every season. Right? At some point, it was just getting old and at times I felt it was taking away from the focus people should have directed at the contestants.

Ellen adds entertainment without any inter-judge antagonism. Well at least that’s how it seems to be going so far.

It’s just her first episode and I know we will have to give her more time to see her full impact on the show. This is, after all, just about my first impressions. Besides, the show is about the contestants. Isn’t it, Simon?

Adding Ellen Degeneres as an American Idol judge… so far, so good. At least now there’s someone interesting in the judging panel to watch other than Simon. Keep it up, Ellen!

Seriously, welcome to my personal blog. I wanted a place where I could just write about anything and everything that interests me, which by the clutter you see, is a plethora of various categories and topics. These basically represent pretty much everything I enjoy talking about in the flesh-world. I felt it would just be a great experience to reach out to and interact with the other denizens of this vast cyberspace and blogosphere.

Why a general/personal blog vs. a niche-specific one?

Since I am an aspiring writer and pro blogger, I wanted something that I could direct people to in order for them to get a quick fix of my opinions, style, wit, and hopefully rare typographical errors. It’s both my online writing portfolio and “idea/topic hatchery” for other blogs or sites that I may want launch in the future.

I think of this as my writing gym, where I can just go and work-out my creative and literary muscles. If I only knew where they’re located… this would be a lot easier.

In order to improve my craft as a writer, I have to keep on writing as much as I can. I find it convenient to just blog/blab about anything that comes to mind, here. It’s home. Mi casa su casa. Enjoy your visit.