Okay, one last post about Jason Castro forgetting the words to "Mr Tambourine Man":

He missed less than a line.

But it was "In the jingle-jangle morning"! Who forgets that line, and remembers all the rest of the incredibly but typically wordy lyrics? (I mean. Dylan packs a lot of words into his songs. And the kid only forgot the five best-known ones. Hee!)

Considering how much blithering cheese the contestants are allowed to get away with (or, really, rewarded for) I always find it amusing that the one unforgivable sin on Idol seems to be forgetting the words. Yes, I know--you should be able to memorize one song a week if you're a real performer. And yes, the fact that actual real performers learn their songs a little less cold-bloodedly means nothing. Gloryhound, for God's sake, seems to be able to nail a new song in an afternoon and there are five of them learning parts. Just learning the lyrics should be a snap.

I suspect the attendant bullshit that fills these kids' time can interfere with rehearsal time--I mean, those awful Ford commercials would take a while.

But I also find it awfully hard to get all up in arms about a singer fluffing a lyric every now and then. Bryan Adams once choked on the national anthem. Yes, "O Canada." At a hockey game. Something distracted him, he lost his place, and he tee-totally blew it. And you can't tell me Bryan Adams doesn't know the words to "O Canada."

Adam from Gloryhound--well, I probably shouldn't say this, but I always think he must have been the kind of small child who never got away with anything, because when he forgets a lyric he always confesses--"Shit! Sorry!"--and then regroups. Probably just as well he's not on Idol, actually, but let's just say Jason Castro is not the only Bob Dylan fan to ever muff a Bob Dylan lyric.

My favourite "I forgot the lyrics" moment involved Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor, the lead singers of Blue Rodeo, in a television interview. The interviewer wanted to play a little game called "Name the song," so she read out isolated lines from various Blue Rodeo tunes and Greg and Jim were supposed to name the song the line came from.

And Cuddy could not do it.

Now, Cuddy could name every one of Keelor's lyrics, but he didn't get a single one of his own until the interviewer threw him one from his just-released solo record. He got that one, barely, but the ones he had been singing for years almost didn't register. And yes, once in a while he fluffs a line in a show. Who cares? (Keelor knew all his own lyrics as well as his partner's. And yet he always appears to be the more addled of the two.)

During the tour for The River, Bruce Springsteen got into the habit of letting the audience sing the first verse of "Hungry Heart." That tradition began one night early in the tour when the song started and Bruce dried up totally--just lost all the words, and the audience filled in. I don't know if that's how Greg Keelor got into the habit of letting the audience sing the first verse of "Hasn't Hit Me Yet," but I would not be surprised.

So, while Idol contestants do a lot of things that cause me to cringe, forgetting lyrics hardly registers. It might be unprofessional, but it happens to the pros, and it often has nothing to do with whether they know the song.

The song list was the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll.

Hmm. Given that list, what song would you have chosen?

I am mightily tempted by "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"...

I ran out to the barn last night for just long enough to run a brush over Mitzi and have a chat with her. (And this morning I found a message on my work phone from Lease Girl asking if she could go out and ride. I messaged her my home phone number. Damn!)

Anyway, I got home about halfway through the results show of American Idol. I don't follow that show closely anymore--I used to like the Hollywood rounds but those episodes are really truncated now, and I have an increasingly lower tolerance for the karaoke elements of the show. However, as with a lot of reality shows, I like to watch a few early episodes to get the cast figured out, so then I can drop in at any time of the season and more or less know what's going on.

(I did see part of the performance episode on Tuesday, but... it was pretty lame, and I quit. David Cook singing "Baba O'Riley" sounded hopeful and started well, but he had less time than I thought he would and he ended up completely neglecting the dynamic that is the coolest thing about the song.) (I mean, fuck singing "teenage wasteland" over and over. Come on.)

Anyway, I turned the results show on just as Maroon 5 was finishing their performance and then Bo Bice played his new single. I still watched the show regularly when he was on, and I liked him pretty well then but haven't given him much thought since. Since Bo was the first "rocker dude" to do much of anything on the show I guess I have blamed him a little for the annoying Nickelback retreads who have started appearing lately. I mean, when the judges on American Idol start proclaiming "That's rock'n'roll, baby!" it's a bit like the old Shaun Cassidy single, by which I mean, it's nothing of the sort. Rock'n'roll, according to Idol (and most other musical reality shows including Rock Star) is an extremely limited thing. Rock'n'roll as an actual living thing is... not.

So, I was a little pissed off at Bo on general principles. But at this point I was on the floor doing my physio exercises and I didn't feel like flailing around for the clicker.

And colour me astonished! I had sort of forgotten that, although Bo was the guy who made it okay for all the Chad Whatsisface (honestly, why can I never remember the last name of Nickelback's lead singer?) wannabes to try out for Idol, Bo himself wanted to be the third Allman Brother or something. In fact, it's possible the reason his career hasn't really taken off is, the damned fool plays music he likes instead of trying to sound like everyone else on the radio right now. He's far from original, but the song he played last night put him firmly in the throwback-seventies-rock camp, which places him in the company of a bunch of artists I like very much. It's downright weird to hear an Idol alumnus who doesn't seem to be trying to sound like whatever is popular right this minute. He sounded... like a real guy playing a real song. And then he was charming and gracious in his interview with Seacrest.

I have never bought an album by any Idol alumnus so far, not on principle but because I have never been sufficiently interested. I might... I might be sufficiently interested in this one.

And then we had the eliminations, and I really thought the girl was done for, because the dreadlocked little Texan dude seemed to have such a fan base. I haven't determined whether he's particularly talented but he can sing all right, he's charming, and he's kind of distractingly pretty.

However, when Seacrest was interviewing the two potential boots, I started to really hope the little guy was going home, because he seemed so ready to do so. I've seen some good-sport boots in the course of watching this show, but this kid's whole attitude was redolent of "this has been a lot of fun, but now I'm in really deep water and I don't want to do this any more. Please." He wasn't a bit snippy or passive-aggressive or anything, he was apologetic about his poor performances the night before, he just sounded like he knew he was in the wrong place and he wanted to get out before he couldn't remember the fun parts.

Actually, he sounded like he had figured out that winning this show would be, for him, a fate worse than death, and he was happy and relieved to be out of it.

I can't imagine why I would want to listen to this kid sing anywhere except at a campfire, but I did end up liking him. He would make a dandy character in a story. And you never know, maybe someday he will...

I haven't really sought out much music by Canada's indie darling, but I admit, it was enjoyable to watch her win all those Junos last night in her hometown, and it was cute that she was sitting with her adorable parents.

Also, this article describes her biggest professional thrill ever and I kind of love her for it. Anyone who is excited at getting to be on Sesame Street is fine with me.

I know I said I was all through with the Tudors, but as my last post makes clear, I seem to have lied. I'll finish The Sunne In Splendour and then it's ho for the Ives book on Anne Boleyn, which appears to be the biography of Henry VIII's second queen.

Over the weekend, however, I had two vampire novels by Barbara Hambly out of the public library. Over the past few weeks I have done considerable giggling and a little ranting about this one inept vampire novel, and in passing I commented that I really don't do vampires in the first place. Hambly's books, especially Those Who Hunt the Night (classed as young adult in my public library) were recommended to me as excellent examples of the genre. Subgenre. Whatever. I also signed out Traveling With the Dead (containing absolutely no references to Jerry Garcia) which is about the same characters (James Asher, Oxford don and former spy, his intellectual wife Lydia, and Don Simon Ysidro, 350-year-old vampire who "danced with both of Henry VIII's remarkable daughters"--a nice turn of phrase for sure.) The books take place in 1907-08.

( And my verdict is... )

So. Apparently I'm not into vampires, and apparently I know why.

Good. Now I don't have any scruples about dropping the subject and moving on to other things that interest me more. Whew!

If he'd heard this version, that Manhattan pub owner never woulda banned it...

Memo to that one guy with the bad hair: "Eleanor Rigby" is not a Creed song.

This is the second time they've cancelled my favourite show out from under me, leaving at least one character in a hell of a fix.

And the horse you rode in on, CBC!

Okay, now here is a situation in which someone might have had grounds for a lawsuit: over the weekend I caught an episode of P. Diddy's MTV show Making the Band 4. Which, okay, there is no band, it's a vocal group. And P. Diddy is a twit, but I saw a couple of episodes last season and most of the kids involved seemed like nice youngsters so I got interested in their fates. I found the show by accident but I seem to be watching it on purpose.

This season seems to involve the boys' vocal group from last season making a record at the same time as the girls from the previous season (Danity Kane? Apparently their debut went platinum? And they seem like nice kids too?) as well as Donnie, the dancing-challenged but likable white boy who didn't make the vocal group last season but was given a solo contract.

That's really all the background anyone needs. The music is bad and Puffy is painful, but the kids are sweet. And apparently CTV is a few episodes behind MTV in broadcasting the show. This is important. So on Saturday when I noticed I was up much too late and decided to see what was happening, I found that... well, the boys' group apparently didn't have a name yet when they did their first gig and everything. I missed the episode where they explained that the boys' group didn't have a name yet, so all I saw was that the three acts were being referred to as Donnie Whateverhislastnameis, Danity Kane, and...

...I can hardly type this...

...The Band.

Yes.

The Band.

And when I stopped gaping, and then laughing, all I could think to ask was, "Which of them gets to be Levon?"

Now that would be a lawsuit, and the reason that would be a lawsuit, Wyrd Sisters, is because that would be a case of an actual real musical group trying to co-opt the name of another actual real musical group--which in this case people have actually heard of.

Heh.

Luckily for my brain, it was in fact a misguided placeholder and they have a name of their own now. But. Heh.

Okay, one of the things I forgot until I looked up the clips yesterday is this: the Olivier version irritated me on first viewing because it's at least based on Colley Cibber's adaptation. Remember that post where I complained about people who compare their writing to Shakespeare's? How about people who add stuff to Shakespeare with the aim of improving on him???

It doesn't work, to put it mildly.

I mean, watch both soliloqies: the second one, with Ron Cook, is terse and tense and gives you the setup and the character. And the Olivier one just goes on and on, sagging under its own weight of words and destroying the dramatic tension. Who thought that was a good idea? And how did the Cibber version of this play hang around for so many years after the rest of his adaptations were rightfully forgotten??

Although I appreciate the Wikipedia description of his talents: he "had great popular success in comical fop parts, while as a tragic actor he was persistent but much ridiculed."

Sounds like the Ed Wood of his era, really.

And now, thanks to green_knight, as well as to a fortuitous YouTube foray, I have two more Ricardian videos for you. Starring Peter Sellers!

( And here they are! )

I just noticed a thread on a message board about a TV game show called Moment Of Truth. I think it's new this season. I have been meaning to mention that, when the previews started, I took in the questions being asked and thought, "How could you possibly expect someone to answer a question like that on television? It would be so demeaning."

Then I thought, "Yes, but the contestants put themselves into that situation on purpose, so it's not like they deserve my pity."

And then I thought, "No, the one I would feel sorry for would be me, watching such a spectacle."

And then I realized, "But if I did, I would not deserve my pity either."

So I avoid the show assiduously, and feel a certain gratitude that it seems I have standards after all. I mean, they are low, and flexible, but apparently they're there.

I remarked last week that Dexter, the TV show based on Darkly Dreaming Dexter and its sequel, about the serial killer who works for the cops, is on CTV. I watched the premiere but wasn't sure I'd stick with the show. The premise is interesting (serial killer uses his Awesum!SerialKillerSkillz! to rid the world of people who are... pretty much just like him.) I squicked out pretty badly over the books because, while in fiction I can sometimes subscribe to the notion that a particular bad guy just flat "needed killin'," I can never seem to get behind the idea that anyone needed torturin' to death. I'm afraid I always end up siding with whoever is doing the screaming.

( More on the cuts behind the cut, so to speak. )

Okay, so this morning I laughed my ass off at this work of "genius."

And then I started to think about it. I know, I know--stop that! And I did. Stop it, I mean.

So this is going to be a mercifully short post. It's just... the vampire thing. A while ago wldhrsjen3 commented on someone else's journal that she was totally not down with the hot, sexy vampire idea. "Vampires," she stated (or at least I paraphrase, because I can't remember where she wrote it) "are not hot! They are dead! There is no such thing as hot vampire sex, because vampires are cold and dead and clammy! Ew!!"

If I didn't already read every word she writes, that comment alone would have made me her willing slave.

But. Obviously, the inept vampire story linked to in the entry linked above is one of those hot-sexy-vampire stories. And I can't get into that at all because...

Okay. Some time ago I saw a movie called Fido, in which a little boy accepts that his pet zombie craves flesh because that is what zombies do. I liked it and appreciated the zombie-centric attitude. And I tend to sympathize with the shark in Jaws because, skewed natural history aside, sharks don't murder--they just eat.

The thing about both of the above cases is this: the creatures listed above are not noted for reasoning abilities, and they aren't traditional romantic leads. (Okay, Fido takes some weird turns.)

But the vampire in the story above? I think we're meant to find him sexy. A romantic and dangerous bad boy, tormented by his evil vampire nature and all conflicted and stuff.

His first victim? Is a little teenage girl. And after sucking her blood, he bashes her head into a tree, rips off her arms, and feeds her to a convenient pack of roaming wild dogs!

And I don't think he displays any greater restraint as the chapter progresses!

I'm thinking that acts of vile, conscious, deliberate brutality toward completely helpless and inoffensive victims revoke your sexy-bad-boy status. Big time! How in hell is the writer planning to rehabilitate this character? Or does she not see that she needs to? Or what?

I mentioned Dexter earlier--I don't dig serial killers, because I can't stop remembering what the reality is like (scummy bottom-feeders preying on the most vulnerable, I believe is my standard description.) Dexter is an interesting idea, and as libraryman just remarked, it probably works better as a TV show for some of us than as books. That way we aren't totally immersed in Dexter's voice, and maybe I'll get less squicky about it that way. It's an interesting idea even if I end up not being able to stomach it: the serial killer who understands exactly what he is and directs his unusual "talents" to ridding the world of... people just like him.

I might, at least on TV, be able to suspend my disbelief enough to enjoy Dexter's gory adventures. (Especially in the cut-for-CTV version--you can swear up a storm on Canadian network TV, and they're okay about sex, but frank violence makes them cringe. I am actually okay with that.)

But Gareth, the darkly angelic, would-be romantic ripper-off-of-little-girls'-arms?

Come on.

Whoever wrote that shit is sicker than Dexter.

Joel Plaskett kicked butt at the East Coast Music Awards.

Which were not televised. Possibly CBC didn't want to go up against the Grammies (which I ignored, but presumably other people watched) or maybe the show was too expensive to mount. But I always thought the stuffed-with-music ECMA show was the best awards show going for just that reason. And CBC's assurance that they'll give a much better feel for the weekend with a one hour special televised next month is just silly. And I have nothing against Steven Page of the Barenaked Ladies, but why again is he hosting? Barenaked at the ECMAs may indeed prove to be a fun show, but it's hard to believe they can show more in one hour, including the celebrity host stuff, than they used to in three.

It's hard to pick an icon for this post, since I am variously disappointed and pleased!

So. Tox report indicates Heath Ledger died accidentally. Which is awfully sad, but I am mostly posting to remark that, right after he died, someone on a pop-culture board I read remarked that his death was one of the more shocking celebrity demises this poster could remember. More shocking than Anna Nicole Smith's.

Which actually caused me to think, really, there wasn't anything at all shocking about Anna Nicole's death, except for its timing. It was weird that she died so soon after her son, but the fact is that poor woman was self-medicated to the eyeballs and anyone who needs to be that messed up to get through the day is an excellent candidate to make a mistake someday. Maybe because she just didn't care enough about herself to be careful.

I'm not opposed to all sorts of recreational chemicals, if used recreationally, but when they're needed to blunt the world so the taker can stand it... that's different. That's a Kris Kristofferson song in the making, you know?

I'm guessing about Anna Nicole because I never paid any attention to her alive, and I've been dodging breathless Entertainment Tonight reports about her ever since she died. But she struck me as sad and messed-up to the nth degree. Her life as well as her death.

Ledger... that's sad all right, but it's nowhere near as pitiful. Which might eventually count for something.

The CBC has a new crop of shows out this season--so far my TV watching is still sporadic so I haven't watched all of them. The Border is occupying the slot formerly occupied by Intelligence, which I hope returns. I meant to watch The Border but Monday is now generally a barn night. I have no interest at all in the night time soap about hockey (I find it amusing in theory but suspect I would not enjoy it in practice) and jPod just hasn't crossed my horizon yet.

However, I was initially hopeful about Sophie, a show I think is adapted from a Quebec program in which a young woman deals with her life falling spectacularly apart. As the show begins, a hugely pregnant Sophie is abandoned by her snake of a live-in boyfriend, who moves in with her treacherous best friend--and incidentally takes along practically all the clients of their talent agency. And there is Sophie trying to pick up the pieces with a little help from her gay best friend.

( And since I seem to be all about the spoilers, here's a cut. )

All in all I'm liking these characters enough to keep on watching. It's definitely less predictable than I expected, and I like pretty well everyone enough to stick around.

I haven't posted about Little Mosque in a couple of weeks, but not because I'm not enjoying it. Last night was the Ramadan show, in which Amaar's sermon challenges the congregation to give up their worst flaws. No lying! No gossip! No losing your temper!

Yassir takes the sermon to heart and, instead of telling Amaar he'll fix his broken doorknob "later," is quite up-front about the fact he's going for a nap and has no plans to fix the doorknob at all.

Sarah agrees to try to stop gossiping, which nearly kills her.

Baber reacts to the suggestion that he improve himself be yelling, "I am not angry! I am not vain! I am a perfect Muslim!" Rayyan reacts exactly as we expected, which leads to Amaar foolishly embroiling them in a contest in which they try to out-Muslim each other, the winner being allowed to choose the new carpet for the mosque.

I know. Picture Rayyan and Baber out-Musliming each other.

Eventually, Amaar makes them work together, which goes about as well as you might expect considering they not only fight all the time but also have completely different ideas about what sort of carpet you should kneel on to pray. (Rayyan prefers a more comfortable kneeling experience than Baber does, which eventually leads to the exasperated comment that forms the header for this post.)

By the end of the episode Amaar has also learned a sharp lesson in why he might be better off not sharing his own shameful (for, um, a given value of "shameful") secrets with the husband of the biggest gossip in the mosque, and Yassir shares a shameful secret of his own (for an equal value of "shameful.) All I can say is, I hope that t-shirt shows up in the CBC Shop someday.

A couple of weeks I posted about an auditioner on American Idol who sounded like a mouth harp.

Well, here's video:



Riiiiiiiight....

After I got home from the trip to Sackville and calmed down, I watched the last part of American Idol. For those of you who watch the show, how often do they get auditions by people who apparently want to be various musical instruments when they grow up? Because in Season One or Two there was a dude who sang the bagpipe arrangement of "Amazing Grace" (I pointed that out on the TWoP board and got referenced in Shack's recap, yay!) And last night there was the dreadlocked dude who sang one line over and over in this weird vibrato ("Leave me alone"--none of the judges ran with it, as far as I could see) and I kept thinking, "this reminds me of something..."

And them I realized it was this:



Truly. And when I tried to explain it to my office mate, I got as far as "Dude sounded like a mouth harp!" and my office mate replied, "The guy with the dreads? I saw him!" So she had the same thought, which has to mean something.

Stick to Buffy for your mouth-harp needs, though. The guy on Idol was just peculiar.