Silk Willow Talk

In case you haven’t noticed, American Idol Season 5 is being replayed on the Fox Reality TV Channel. It’s turning into another opportunity for me to get sucked into the show again and awaken and relive some deep-seated memories of events both on and off tube that happened earlier this year.

It’s just like when you hear an old song and you are sent back to a time when you heard it elsewhere, or when you fall ill and some kind of strange regression takes place and you feel deja vu about being sick in bed as a kid under the care of a guardian. Perhaps it’s some Pavlovian thing that happens to me but I certainly get that effect with tv shows that really pack me a punch….most notably this one.

There are already American Idol Season 6 advertisements appearing and reminding us that they’ll be back in January. Just great — I can’t wait to revisit my old haunts such as the boards, the spoiler sites and this special place: the awesome DialIdol site.

DialIdol is where all the post AI performance night activities culminate and you find out whether your voting efforts are really paying off. It’s a real-time vote tracker for the show and being the geek that I am, I find it fascinating how it works. It extrapolates voting totals using downloadable software that people use to set up and track their land line calls for specific American Idol contestants. It counts busy signals from your phone, using this as the measure for “popularity” when you call for certain contestants and through some formula calculates the contestants’ relative rankings. And recently, the site has expanded to cover more programs that involve audience voting such as So You Think You Can Dance?, correctly predicting Benji as the winner and Celebrity Duets, again correctly placing Alfonso Ribeiro on top. It now is in use during Dancing With The Stars and is there to confirm what is known all along, that Joey Lawrence and Mario Lopez are leading in votes.

It is such a great invention and am glad it’s around to keep things honest for the producers of these talent shows. Can’t wait to play this game again.

 

 
So Do You Think They Can Dance?

Dancing With The Stars was a tearful night of the Waltz interspersed with some heavy footed Paso Doble.

Why is it that when bonafide B-rated celebrities decide to make television by joining a talent contest, it never quite gets as exciting as when real average hard-working joes like you and me are given the opportunity to show off what God has given us?

Answer: these B-stars aren’t RAW. Hollywood doesn’t have the same rawness, freshness and awkwardness that you see when you simply pluck someone off the street (or audition line) and make him sing or dance. And that’s what’s missing here. That’s what was missing in Celebrity Duets and Skating with Celebrities.

Nevertheless, I fought my drowsiness with heavy yawning and Tivo’s handy fast forward. With memories of Tom Jones brought back by the dreadful Las Vegas theme song intro, I cringed through the show asking “Who ARE these people?” I vaguely remember Joey Lawrence as Joey Russo from Blossom when I was a tween in the last century. Vivica Fox is some movie actress who appears in movies I don’t watch. Guess that’s because I’m more a Tivohead than a Netflixer. I don’t do sports tv, so the football player is just yet another clumsy figure who moves like Frankenstein on the floor. The only recognizable people to me were the king of tabloid talk shows, Jerry Springer (shown weeping over his waltz with his soon-to-be married daughter — oh the irony!) and eye-candy deeply bedimpled Mario Lopez. So without those two I would be hanging out on Bravo rewatching Project Runway.

This week, they sashayed to two emotional dances:

The Sentimental and Romantic Waltz characterized by

• soft, flowing movements
• effortless rise and fall (make like a carousel)
• serene facial expressions (toss in a few tears)

The Angry Paso Doble, where role-playing is key, requires

• flamenco feet (stomp away)
• marching movements
• defined hand movements
• flavor of the Bullfight

The only attention-worthy performance was the hot Latin guy Mario channeling last year’s winner Drew Lachey; the rest of the time I was lulled into a stupor with the “If I Were A Painting…” and “You Light Up My Life” routines.

Just give me So You Think You Can Dance? instead.

Watch Dancing With The Stars on ABC, Tuesdays/Wednesdays @ 8/7c. 
 
Technorati Tags: reality tv, reality show, Dancing With The Stars, celebrities, celebrity, Mario Lopez, Hollywood, television, ABC, TV, Tivo, entertainment, Drew Lachey, dance, dancing, Jerry Springer, Emmitt Smith

This is a summary of what has happened so far at the twilight of the summer reality tv season. A requirement for me to actually write this post is to watch umpteen hundred hours of television. Despite my Tivo screaming UNCLE, I forged on.

The finales are upon us. Sadly, my Tivo was (and still is) packed to the gills and ended up trashing The Last Comic Standing and Hell’s Kitchen finales. Yep, they are in the delete pile, vanishing before I had a chance to peruse them, overwritten by other shows on my packed tv show scheduler. When I found this out, I felt like throwing up.

So I had to rely on third party news for some of the recaps. I’m glad I only provide opinions, as opinions never go stale.

My thoughts on the outcomes anyway:

So You Think You Can Dance: Mostly rehash with contestants all dancing previous dance numbers except for gimmicks like the transvestite judge from Turkish SYTYCD, Sierra (whoever she is), Fergie of The Black Eyed Peas (really what’s with the awful guest spots on the Simon Fuller shows?), and short solos from the finalists. Gush. Fawn. Marvel. Praise. So much love from the judges. So not like American Idol. And Benji IS IT! Told you the girls were toast. I love crying Benji. He’s so adorable. Travis was great and a perfect sport. Hats off to you, man.

Last Comic Standing: I cheated via you tube. Whatever. I’m SOOOoooo happy Josh Blue won. The top 2, Josh and Ty Barnett, were most deserving. That guy Chris Porter (3rd placer), with his overtly adult content, was way too weird for my taste. I’m too much of a prude to appreciate him. I so much prefer politically incorrect jokes about the physically challenged and the special olympics. JOSH BLUE ROCKS!!!!

Hell’s Kitchen: What can I say but the right person took it. No surprise that Heather, who stood out as a clear leader from day one, would triumph. She was the audience favorite many weeks in a row. She was predestined to win. Still I hate my Tivo for eating my finale and keeping me from savoring those last few delectable moments of Ramsay’s Hell.

America’s Got Talent: Whaaaat??! How could America pass on the Millers — the Miller kid is a harmonica playing prodigy who dare I say would give Taylor Hicks a run for his reputation? How could they snub my personal favorite (!), the truly awesome, spectacular modern day illusionist and wizard, the terrific [add more superlatives here] Nathan Burton! (I prefer him to the serious David Copperfield or the ultra glum David Blaine.) HE WUZ ROBBED!!! And what about All That, the tap dancing quintet channeling Chippendales and Riverdance? Or At Last, the Asian quartet who beatboxes and does harmonized a cappella? How could these talents actually lose? Tell me America, what is so great about YET another child singer with Aretha Franklin’s voice straight out of America’s Most Talented Kids or Star Search? And my biggest question of all: why do little singing kids leave me cold? A completely unique act could’ve won — instead, Bianca Ryan did.

All in all, it was an enjoyable summer season. Now if only my Tivo had a neck so I can wring it.

If you’re watching Rock Star Supernova, then good for you. You are undoubtedly watching the best show this summer. I find that this season’s bunch is superior to last year’s talent and better than most of who or what American Idol has churned out. Don’t get me wrong — American Idol is still the finest reality talent show there is — after all, what AI has, over and above all other shows, is its regular stable of characters who continue to entertain: from the inane judges to the quick-witted, affable host. On the other hand, what Rock Star has is actual talent, unless of course you are not a rock music fan (rock music in this case covers everything that was at one point edgy or cool throughout the years), in which case you can knock yourself out with repeated auditions of “Sugarpie Honeybunch” and “I Have Nothing” over at FOX.

I’ve also been watching “So You Think You Can Dance?”, which is produced by one of American Idol’s co-producers, Nigel Lythgoe. He claims of course that this dancing contest has been besting the ratings for the summer season. Yeah right… I can’t believe this show is actually kicking Rock Star’s butt. Sure it’s fun as well, but does America really prefer watching the tango and quickstep over some crazy ass cover of Creep or even 867-5309? Could it be because Benji Schwimmer has attracted vast legions of Claymates to the show? Just to get this straight: Benji is the swing dancer while Clay is the pop artist who emerged from American Idol Season 2 some eons ago. Apparently Benji is a Clay Aiken doppelganger. Let’s see if he triumphs over Travis. That said, the girls in the show are toast. Wonder if I’ll eat my words after this week?

As for Rock Star, there’s one contestant there who captured my attention with his vocal and piano rendition of Losing My Religion a couple of weeks ago. He comes across as a cross between George Clooney and Adam Sandler.
Except without the personality. Sigh. I wish he’d loosen up a little and engage in a little more banter with the judges and Mr. Red Hot Chili Pepper himself (Dave Navarro). Ryan, dude, smile a little will you? The girls would love it. And do us a favor, don’t get kicked off yet.