The Salem’s Lots Department of Accountability informs me that I need to come clean about some predictions I made a few weeks ago. It seems that I fearlessly predicted that Florida would NOT repeat as the NCAA Men’s basketball champions. D’oh!
On the other hand, I’m still sticking to my prediction that Michael Silence will mention Fred Thompson at least 12,500 times before next November.
These two painfully weak singers* made it through tonight on American Idol. Further proof that either democracy is overrated or that teenagers shouldn’t be allowed to vote for anything.
*The guy is Sanjaya Malakar and I guess he has interesting hair, but his voice is as colorful as a McDonald’s vanilla milk-like shake. The female is Antonella Barba. I’m thinking that the supposedly racy pics of Ms. Barba that are coursing through the throbbing internet have more to do with her vote totals than any element of her really limited vocal range. As someone once (mistakenly) said about Katherine Hepburn, ‘she runs the gamut of emotions from A to B’. No mistake here, but I guess this does prove that teenage boys watch the show. Who knows the sound of one hand clapping…
Ok..if you are going to dedicate a song to your parents, is Marvin Gaye’s ‘Lets Get it On’ really really the choice you wanna make? I don’t know anyone who even wants to THINK about their parents having sex, much less encourage such a thing.
Weirdly, at least to me, Jared Cotter, one of ten remaining American Idol males, thought otherwise. Yikes…
I didn’t see much of the show tonight because of other more important things to do, but the stuff I heard was better than last week’s abysmal outing, but that’s kinda like saying a rock in your shoe is not as bad as a gaping head wound.
The ‘beat-box’ guy did a passable version of a Jamiroquai song, but it didn’t really go anywhere. The Rogers dude sang a song which is a great pop favorite of mine, Cindy Lauper’s ‘Time after Time’, but he managed to slow it down and suck most of the tapioca out of the pudding, if you know what I mean.
I’m looking forward to hearing the real voices tomorrow night. As someone said in an earlier comment, if they took the best 12 people on the show, rather than insisting there be 6 females and 6 males, there would be 8 or 9 women singing. Sadly, justice is not lone, it’s missing.
I always thought that true conservatives eschewed the use of government to enforce so-called ‘personal virtues’. Representative Campfield, who I’m sure would be honored to be called conservative, has sponsored Nanny Bill 981 (aka House Bill 981) to help shepherd poor people into the tent of financial responsibility. If he isn’t shepherding, then he’s just trying to punish people for being poor, and that just seems too cruel, especially for a man who claims the Bible as his favorite book.
House Bill 981 in its essence says that if you collect any kind of governmental assistance such as WIC, TennCare, Food stamps, etc. that you can’t collect lottery winnings. You can buy all the lottery tickets you want, you just can’t win…
Deep in the thread of Terry Frank’s diatribe against WKRN for casting aspersions on her Iraqi uranium exclusive (I’m not talking about THAT right now, but if she had re-framed her intro, she does have the outlines of an interesting story), Campfield explains the purpose of his lottery bill:
My lottery bill will be for winnings you have to mail in for (I think the number is over $500.00 in prize money) If you cant afford food ect. and the state has to pick up the bill for you then you shouldn’t have the money to play lotto.
SEE…The Rep is chiding the poor much like a hen clucks her chicks into safety. I’m not sure the collective poor have asked for this kind of help, but The Rep is HERE, and he’s HERE to protect YOU, YOU, and YOU…(whoohooo).
At one point a couple of years ago, two of our children were full-time students in college, and the other child was a part-time student. Only one of them was matriculating at an institution that offered us the $3,000 per year from the lottery to offset tuition costs.
We’re middle-class kinda folks. I work for the state. My wife is a teacher. We’re not going to get rich in our professions, but we CHOSE those professions and we get to live with the consequence of the pay-scale of those professions. We have NO complaint about that pay. On the other hand, that three thousand bucks was a welcome relief to our financial situation.
I’ve often pondered the irony of what is supposedly mostly a lower income population subsidizing the college tuition costs of the middle class and rich citizens of Tennessee. I don’t know the breakdown, but I believe the anecdotal stories that the lottery is largely funded by the lower-income strata.
We take the money anyway. Why to we accept this regressive funding source? BECAUSE NOT ONE PERSON IN THIS STATE HAS TO PLAY THE LOTTERY. No guns, no blackmail, no force, other than advertising.
Guess what…poor people get to make stupid choices just like I do. I have rarely played any kind of lottery or ‘instant winning’ game because I know it’s a suckers bet. The ‘pick 3’ game gives me a ‘1 in a 1000’ chance to win. I’d have better odds of perusing a Campfield blog piece that doesn’t contain any spelling mistakes.
I won’t pretend to know Campfield’s real motive here. Perhaps he has a biblical inspiration to protect and succor the poor. Maybe he’s just trying to punish them for the choices that he thinks they made that led to their economic state.
I do believe that government sometimes needs to be protective of us in ways other than police and defense. Seat belts save lives and cut down on my insurance rates. I don’t want to have to smell and ingest your smoke at my place of work (on the other hand, if you go to a bar, you should be able to smoke).
But, when it comes to making personal choices about how I spend my money or you spend your money, we have the right to be stupid. Campfield, supposedly a conservative who wants to keep governmental intrusion from our lives, should know better.
The last time I wrote about AI, I touted wonder-singer Tami Gosnell and predicted she would go far. Naturally, she didn’t even make the ’round of 24′. So much for my prognostication skills. I still think she was a stand-out. In fact, if she had been able to sing with the boys last night she would have swept em’ off the stage.
If an elementary school teacher wanted to describe the word mediocrity in a way the students would never forget AND punish the class for misbehaving, the teacher will show the full two hours of AI from last night.
I don’t want to curse anyone, so I’m not going to mention names, but the guy who sang the ‘Keane’ song wasn’t too bad. It should be mentioned that every-time a Keane song is played, Coldplay should receive a royalty check. Not since George Harrison ‘borrowed’ a tune from the Chiffons when he wrote ‘My Sweet Lord’ (My sweet Lord, My sweet Lord, is it ok to steal for You…) has an artist or a group totally ripped off the sound of another group.
The show should incorporate the trap door or the shepherd’s hook employed by the talent shows at the Apollo, especially when anyone, and I mean anyone, sings a Richard Marx song. The song choice alone should bar them from ever appearing on the show again.
Other singers last night had a decent moment or two, but between the song choices of the contestants, to the totally naseled out last song of the night, we’ve gotta hope that the female contingent can kick some ass. Else, the winner of the show will immediately get the Saturday night job at the Dubuque Holiday Inn (maybe getting to sing after bussing the tables).
Salem's Lots 