noun
1. Insufficient mental development.
Possible spoilers: American Idol
Umm ... W T F? Marc points out quite aptly that this could certainly be because you have to vote for people, not against people, which allows apathy to set in. This is almost where the judges can backfire ... after the judge's comments last night, you can be sure every Joshua fan voted, while the others didn't feel as worried.
Whatever the reason, you're fired, America. I need say no more ... the judges nailed it.
At least we didn't have to hear crap-boy (now truly the Nikki of this season ... things have gone almost identical to last season at right about this point) sing again tonight. We just had to spend their whole performances wondering how these performances were judged worse than Joshua. I totally don't understand.
Never underestimate the idiocy of a large group of people and their ability to do stupid things.
Then again, maybe my ears are screwed up.
--Nick
Edit: Added spoiler warning.
adjective
1. Of or relating to the sense of hearing or the organs of hearing.
2. Perceived by or spoken into the ear: an auricular confession.
3. Shaped like an ear or an earlobe; having earlike parts or extensions.
4. Of or relating to an auricle of the heart: auricular fibrillation.
Erik N., Marc, and I decided that we were sufficently intrigued by AAC now that Apple's going full-bore with it that we'd like to see how it compares to MP3 and WMA.
In the most informal and almost certainly flawed experiment in the history of time, we ripped the first movement of Prokofiev's 7th in 64kbps and 128kbps in AAC, MP3, and WMA, as well as an uncompressed AIFF.
WMA we weren't able to compare against the others since we didn't have a single machine that could play them all (so it wasn't blind to us when it was a WMA file).
Our results for the other five samples, though, are ... interesting. Marc managed to rank AIFF in last place, while Erik N. and I decided that 64kbps AAC was better than 128kbps AAC, and that both were worse than a 64kbps MP3 and worse still than a 128kbps MP3.
Huh, you say?
Yeah, us too. And honestly, Erik N. and I have a fairly extensive background in music and sound (not sure where Marc falls on the scale, but he's no dummy). Of course, our listening environment was flawed, our methodology was flawed ... just about everything was flawed. But still, WTF?
--Nick
noun
1. An almost horizontal entrance to a mine.
So I said last week that I had something to say about this.
Kind of surprising this is an NBC show rather than another in the Fox series of screwed-up-dating-shows. Seems to have good potential to be amusing, and I'll certainly be watching, but I'm not yet entirely convinced it'll be great. That skepticism has grown out of watching the last few screwed up Fox shows.
I do feel bad for the poor guy that ends up on the show ... as far as I can tell, they're explicitly setting up a nice guy to get screwed. One thing to keep an eye on (and the thought that got me to write this in the first place) - is it possible for them to keep the surprise up? I tend to believe that you can kind of tell when a person is a golddigger ... it just shows through in their behavior and personality ... will he really not notice?
--Nick
adjective
1. Unrestrained or excessive in emotional expression; gushy.
2. Profuse; overflowing.
Possible spoilers: American Idol
Holy crap, Erik B. beat me to an Americn Idol recap! Glad to see he's using finally utilizing his three hour time advantage. :) And wow, he's got all kinds of comments already, too ... man, I feel so inadequate.
Anyway, because I again watched the show before pulling out my laptop and don't feel like taking the time to go through it again (given many other things going on), I'll leave the specifics to Erik B. and I'll just note what I can remember and general things that struck me, rather than specific song-level critiques.
I was wondering how they were going to fill so much time to get to an hour now that they were down to only five singers. It was quite a pleasant surprise to find out that they're down to enough people to do two songs each rather than fill the hour full of random crap.
Had some major flip-flopping going on when they announced the guest judge. When they announced his (quite amazing) record sales numbers, I figured this was going to be a major big shot. Then they announced Neil Sedaka and I just thought, "Huh? Who?" Then they started naming some of his songs and I realized he's another one of those artists whose songs I know and like, I've just never known who the hell he is.
Ultimately, didn't matter that much who he was ... at least, as a judge. He was just another flowery sugary judge. I have to give him a little credit for being willing to not be quite as over-the-top with his praise
Tonight seemed to be the night of the horrible fashion emergencies. Ruben's first giant-metallic-marshmallow suit was horrible (and any redeeming value of the lack of the ubiquitous 205 was totally lost when his brother came up and "represented"), as was Trenyce's "I fell in the tie-dye machine and it tore so much of my clothes off that my top was falling off and I can't sit on a stool on a family show" dress. Not to mention Kimberley L.'s atrocious outfit. Just being one of the two women left doesn't suddenly make you attractive, no matter how much frilly cleavage you try and show and no matter how much Paula tells you that you're sexy. Clay wasn't immune, either ... his clothes weren't too bad, but the lighting on his second number was pretty horrible and made his hair look like a giant puffball. Joshua ... well, he escaped the fashion emergency, he just had a vocal one. But we'll get to that.
What I remember:
- Ruben: He was good as usual, though I felt in the first song he had a few rhythm problems that he was covering up through his vocal riffs and he was having a little trouble with the upper ranges of the song. I don't think he grew as much as the others, sticking with his thing, but he's always been a good performer. One thing that is starting to bother me more is the thing that Simon hinted at - he doesn't look to be enjoying himself ... the happy face he puts on while singing seems like a big charade as soon as the song ends and he reverts to having this pissed look on his face.
- Trenyce: Great for her ... I felt like she stepped up and delivered more of herself into the performance. She's always had a pretty strong voice, she just needed to have more energy in her performance and she did that. She has some seriously irksome elements to her stage performance, though ... saying, "Come on y'all" multiple times in a song is just kinda lame ... let the crowd get into it themselves. And she's still got the chintziness going on. But certainly a stronger performance than we've previously seen from her.
- Joshua: I don't need to say anything other than the fact that he shouldn't be here anymore. Simon's right in pointing this out and his snittiness, while witty and amusing, isn't helping matters at all. Simon's later comment about how Clay takes constructive criticism much better and like an adult than the others and actually learns and grows from it hits home most to me from Joshua ... I feel he hasn't done this. Either way, he's just not a good enough singer to be here anymore. Not necessarily even just the singing style (which has always irked me), but really he's just not that good.
- Kimberley L.: Marc makde a good observation tonight ... she's a lot more tolerable if you don't actually watch the screen. TVs need a vido equivalent of mute for cases like this. She isn't pleasant to watch for whatever reason especially when she wears a horrible outfit like her first one), possibly due to the fact that she seems to try and play up an attractiveness that she just doesn't have, but her voice is great. This week was more impressive to me ... she finally sang a non-Celine song and thus rid herself of that comparison.
- Clay: Wow. Wow wow wow. Fantastic. He really mixed it up this week, both from previous weeks and from song to song. I actually felt he had a few rare pitch problems this week, which we usually don't hear from him, and he was sharp just a touch a few times in that first song. But, that was such a great song choice for him and as soon as they announced the song, I knew it would fit him perfectly. The song in general is awesome and it fits his voice well. Not quite perfect, but certainly outstanding. He's definitely my favorite now, even if he's probably an underdog to Ruben.
Overall, this was the first week in a while where I was impressed. As a group, they definitely raised their game this week, and the performances as a whole were better than they've been in a while. There were some notable exceptions, of course ... Ruben, who I think is just consistently good and Joshua who is just consistently bad ... but overall, I enjoyed the performances much more tonight than I have in a while.
Best of the week: Clay, definitely ... Ruben, Kimberley L. and Trenyce were all right there in 2nd place together, with perhaps a small edge going to Ruben. He didn't grow this week the way the others did, but he was already up there to start with.
Worst of the week: Joshua and ... well, second worst doesn't matter.
America should dump: I can't even say that Joshua finally stopped being able to keep up with the others ... he's been outclassed for some time now, but he's now so far out of his depth that it's sad. In what is probably one of the most serendipitous lines in Reality TV history, the line in his portion of the recap said it all: "Then if it don't work out, then you can tell me good bye!" Well, on behalf of America, let me say that it isn't working out ... good bye!
Oh yes ... two points for Erik N. for helping me remember the title of this entry ... I was mentally blocked on the word effluvial.
--Nick
Edit: Now that I read over Erik B.'s comments, I remember more of the thoughts I had discussing with Marc while watching the show. It's very odd ... thinking about specific performances and bits, I do remember being a little bit more negative about some of the performances than I noted above (Kimberley L.'s first song is a notable example). Somehow, though, looking back on it in aggregate, though, I still felt good about the episode as a whole ... much better than Erik B. seemed to feel about it.
Edit: Sha Sha points out that "tie-die" should be "tie-dye".
noun
1. Linguistics. A predictable phonetic variant of a phoneme. For example, the aspirated t of top, the unaspirated t of stop, and the tt (pronounced d) of batter are allophones of the English phoneme t.
You know how you can always tell when guys are talking to their significant others, particularly on the phone? Something about their voice and mannerisms just warp ... usually not even subtly. Within a word, you just know - they get meeker, higher pitched, and even a little baby-talky. Even if you didn't know somebody had a significant other, you can just tell that they do (or that they're talking to somebody that they wish was their SO) as soon as you hear them on the phone.
Why is that? The fact that it seems like everybody does it (and I'm sure I was guilty of this when I was last dating, too) suggests that maybe there's something instinctual at work here. Kind of like how parents always change their voices when they talk to their infants.
Incidentally, this particular mannerism of people often provides a good metric for me to figure out how grumpy I am from day to day ... I vary pretty wildly in how annoying I find it.
Please note that this isn't directed to any particular individual ... by some odd coincidence, I've been noting this a lot from tons of different people lately.
--Nick
Edit: Erik B. says that this phenomenon extends beyond significant others ... I agree, but I still think it's most pronounced with significant others. Another easy one to tell is the gender of the person on the other side of the phone.
noun, adapted from necrophilia and coitus
1. Sexual union between a male and a female involving insertion of the penis into the vagina in which one party is deceased.
Possible Spoilers: CSI: Miami
Erik N. would like people to know, as a public service, that it's legal to screw a dead girl in Maryland.
Aren't you glad I'm back? :)
--Nick
Edit: Just so that you don't all think Erik N. is a sick and twisted individual, there is a reasonable context for this. Erik N., Marc, and I were watching CSI: Miami and debating whether or not necrophilia is an actual crime that they could put somebody away on and we went searching ... while we've not found data about Florida, we did find out that it's OK in Maryland. Since it seems also to be legal in Texas (though we're not entirely sure), I think Erik N.'s just found a kinship with a fellow necrophiliac state.
Edit: Now that we're spending way too much time on this subject, Marc points out that we here in Washington are more normal (I presume the need to exonerate his home state is why he was so avidly hunting out data on the subject), while Erik N. (who I now feel compelled to point out is not a necrophiliac, as far as I can tell) is more sure than we were before that Texas is good with it. I guess with everyone dead from electric chairs and the like, you gotta get your jollies somehow ...
Edit: And now, Marc's got the lodown on Florida. Apparently Horatio was within his rights to arrest the guy. Apparently it was more fruitful to search on genital parts than on necrophilia in the legal code. I'm glad that all of Marc's efforts came to fruition. Good job, man.
Edit: In the interests of fair disclosure (and because my roommates are a pain in the ass), I should mention that I made up the word that titles this post. Added its derivation above.
noun, plural, from gooney
1. An albatross, especially the black-footed albatross. Also called gooney bird.
Possible Spoilers: Survivor
Since I need to get up early tomorrow and I'll be out of town for the weekend, I unfortunately don't have time for a full Survivor recap tonight. I'll just limit my observations to the fact that I was pretty surprised by how things turned out with Alex getting dumped, though several others in my group correctly called it. I'm not complaining, as I didn't like him much, but they still missed out on voting out my most hated castaway. Basically, I hate Rob, Jenna, and Heidi, while I'd be fine with any of the other three winning at this point. Heidi, Jenna, and the now defunct Alex reminded me so much of the bitchy, stuck-up "cool kids" in high school, and the two girls are totally the "cute girls" clique. And Rob ... well ... he's just lame in uncountable ways. And ... damn it, so hard to stop myself from commenting on these things but I really just don't have time.
For those of you who need a little recapping, Robin has some thoughts up, and Erik B. has quite a fine recap of his own.
I'm also, as I mentioned, gone all weekend playing in The Game down at Stanford. In particular, this go-around of The Game at Stanford is The Goonies Game, put on by some friends of mine, and while I don't expect it to be on the ridiculous scale of my last Game experience up here, I do have high hopes.
Unfortunately, this means another weekend of no posts. I'll be back on Monday.
--Nick
Edit: Amending definition slightly, adding multiple categories.
Edit: Oh yes ... I have something to say about this ... but I'll save it for next week when I have more time.
Edit: Adding links to other people's recaps, for the recap starved.
Edit: Added link to Erik B.
verb, intransitive
1. To diverge at a wide angle; spread apart.
Possible Spoilers: American Idol
Bah! Everything was going exactly how it was supposed to until the very end. Damn all you anti-eye-candy-country-fanatic bastards!
The bottom three were right (Trenyce, Joshua, and Carmen), as were the bottom two (Joshua and Carmen), but Joshua really deserved to go based on last night's performance rather than Carmen. In the grand scheme of things, he's probably better than her right now, but he was way worse last night and I do think that she might have more potential. Not to mention the whole, "neither of them will win, so don't vote out the cute girl," thing.
I don't know how I felt about Diane Warren's new song, but it was hard to get a read from these six singing ... didn't strike me as fantastic right off the bat, though. I imagine that if it was a world-class song, it'd be on somebody's album rather than on the results show, though.
And, Kimberley L. must have had the most relaxing elimination round ever. Once Ryan started talking to Ruben and the ordering was pretty clear, she knew that either her or Joshua was safe. And ... really ... Joshua? She had to be laughing to herself for the rest of the announcements! Once Carmen was announced in the bottom three, in fact, the rest was pretty darned obvious ... but Kimberley L. certainly had an easy go of it. Be nice if they'd start mixing things up and not always go with the last two having one safe person and one in the bottom three ...
And just like that, the cute girls who aren't great singers are gone, bringing us out of the "performers with good stage presence but questionable singing" era and squarely in the realm of purely how well they sing, saving me from the "it's a wash anyway" excuse for who should be voted out next. Hopefully the singing quality improves to compensate for this shift...
--Nick
noun
1. A pathological condition resulting from a disease.
2. A secondary consequence or result.
Three disparate (and quite different) bits of news that I found worth noting today ...
Woo ... about freakin' time that they finally announced the GameCube version of Mario Kart. It looks gorgeous ... I'm just hoping that they haven't ruined one of the best multiplayer games ever. The different weapons for different people thing concerns me, since it seems to me like the delicate balance that made Mario Kart 64 so great just becomes that much tougher to maintain as you add more weapons and more options.
I'm sure that everyone's read the story of the miracle dog by now. I'm as glad as the next person that Dosha's going to be fine and make a full recovery (!!), but there is one puzzling thing that the news sources haven't mentioned yet. The policeman was clearly trying to put the dog out of its misery, and so you'd presume that he'd want to make sure that she died as quickly and surely as possible. How confident are you now in this particular policeman's ability to handle a gun?
Finally, the World Health Organization has essentially placed Toronto under quarantine, and Toronto's pretty pissed off about it. Of course, this was wonderful news to me, seeing as how I just got back from Toronto.
Interestingly enough, I've got a cough now. Thing is, I always have a bit of a cough ... having asthma, it kind of comes with the territory. Still, it makes you wonder a bit, since that is one of the warning signs. While I'm not really worried, I wonder if I should be. If there's even a one in ten-thousand chance that I actually have SARS, it might be worth making sure that I don't. I wouldn't want to be the one responsible for spreading SARS around the U.S. So, is it my civic responsibility to get checked out, even though the chances are probably considerably less than that? Or should I rest assured in my asthma and not worry about it?
I'm rather fond of the word for this post, incidentally ... looking at it, you'd assume that it's more relevant to the Mario Kart bit than the SARS bit, wouldn't you? Crazy language, English ...
--Nick
Edit: Oops, forgot the link to the main story about Mario Kart. Added above.
Edit: Grammar fix ... I presume you're not the policeman that shot the dog.
Edit: Adding categories.
noun
1. A group or series of six.
Possible Spoilers: American Idol
Diane Warren was the featured songwriter tonight on American Idol, and fortunately they had her on as the guest judge as well rather than do the split thing they did last week.
I stupidly watched the episode before without my laptop and it's late enough that I don't feel like going over it all again, so I'm going from memory with this.
Kimberley L.: I'm just not seeing what the judges saw here. She did fine ... her voice was good and she's way better now than in the beginning. She also does look much better than before, as Simon mentioned. But, she's certainly not cute and she's not as great as the make her up to be. Tonight, there were a few minor vocal mishaps, plus the general feeling that the performance wasn't up to the original again. I was discussing this with Marc ... I think the fact that I'm such a big Celine Dion fan taints my ability to see Kimberley L. objectively, because to me she keeps picking Celine's songs and just not doing them justice ... she flat out just isn't as good. I'd like to hear her one week not do a song that she can't live up to so I can evaluate her more objectively. As it stood, it was fine, but it wasn't the phenomenon that the judges made her out to be. And it bugged me that she had to sing the song in such a lower key than the original ... pick one that fits your range without messing with it!
Clay: Technically good as always, and I enjoyed the performance, but I felt that he was lacking a bit in the power today compared to before. I couldn't tell if this was due to the accompaniment, the song, or if it was just him being off for the night. Certainly a bit of a nitpick, though, he still sung well. Simon's comment might be right on, though ... I do see him as a Broadway capable singer and he quite possibly might be better at that than as a pop recording artist. Hard for me to say ... I think he probably can step up to either, though if you told me in 5 years that he was Broadway only, I'd believe it. I happen to like strong pure singers and to like Broadway musicals, though, so to me, this isn't a condemnation at all ... this might be why I like his voice more than some other people do ... I just really like the style.
Side note: Holy stupid commercial bit. HORRIBLE.
Trenyce: I totally agree with Simon here and he nailed it on the head in a way that I hadn't been able to verbalize before. She's a good singer, but that's all ... I can't identify her style or anything other than to say that she's a good singer. If she did put a little more out there, she might do better, as he says. She did do fairly well tonight, though ... I thought she was much better and more accurate than Randy made her out to be. Still a bit chintzy, though, and her smile is starting to look excessively fake to me. All in all, though, pretty good.
Joshua: Ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh. Randy called it with the pitch problems. Simon called it with his switching up his style again ... I totally don't mind it, since I don't like the country style, but he did break his word (which I think he probably just shouldn't have made in the first place). His performance tonight was just bad, though ... the song wasn't great, he's blinking like a madman, he was off key, and just didn't sound good. The big marquee note of his ("you") highlights how poor this performance was compared to some of his past. Usually I just don't care for his style ... tonight, his singing was lackluster as well. I wonder if he's stopped trying so hard now that he won't have to go into active fighting in Iraq ... as if the motivation to stay on the show has disappeared. :P (Yes, horribly insensitive, but kinda funny to think about).
Carmen: Wow, how brutal was Randy here? He's about ready for her to be gone, it seems. All of the judges are partly right here. This was quite good for her and perhaps a personal best, but she's just not good enough to hack it and definitely shouldn't win (what's with Ryan asking her if she could win? That's a really dumb and unfair question to ask someone on stage). She's quickly turning into the Nikki of this season ... living past her time for some odd reason and clearly outmatched. This week, though, she's not the worst, so she's to be commended for that. She touted the range of the song as a big deal, but I'd say that all she did was show that she actually can't handle that range. The high notes were too much for her and it felt like she had to scream most of them rather than sing them. Her bleating was in full force as well. Marc and I were talking about this after the fact ... she seems like she might have some potential, but she needs some serious practice and lessons and she's just not ready yet.
Ruben: I was a little afraid when I heard the song choice because it's hard to take a song made famous by a group of singers singing in harmony and sing it as a solo. Something will always sound like it's missing because the extra vocal tracks and harmonies are missing. Thus, my initial worry was that things would sound a bit hollow for him. The way he solved this was to cop out of doing the chorus and sing solo riffs rather than the actual melody/challenging part. That bit was kind of disappointing for me. Other than that, though, it was good ... he's a good singer and performer and he ditched the 205 shirt, which doesn't hurt. And, he did prove that he can mix it up a bit ... in the same way that Clay did last week ... using a different style song and stretching out the vocal style a bit, but fundamentally still using his own distinctive style. I can't help strike the feeling, though, that his voice is asking for more air than his body can provide ... he looks like he's working hard to sustain his voice. Hmm ... reading back on this, this comes off as very negative, more than I want it to. He was still very good, just a couple of nits to pick.
So, there you have it. Diane Warren's a great songwriter and I have a lot of respect for her in that capacity. As a judge, though, she was unfortunately just as bubbly and excessively positive as the rest of the guest judges have been. At the end of the show, I really wanted to see her enter a bout of Tourette Syndrome and just shout out a string of obscenities to make up for all the negative things she should have said, but didn't. But I guess I can't fault her too much ... she was no worse than the other judges and really they don't have them on to be brutal to the contestants.
Best of the week: Surprise, surprise, Clay and Ruben.
Worst of the week: Surprise, surprise, Joshua and Carmen. Interesting thing here, for the first week I don't have a few other people that were right close to making this list. The gap in talent levels isn't between the top two and the rest, it's now between the bottom two and the rest, with Trenyce and Kimberley L. ranking much closer to Clay and Ruben than to Joshua and Carmen.
America should dump: This week, I don't need to make any excuses ... Joshua definitely deserves to be dumped based on his performance tonight.
--Nick
Edit: Fixed a typo.
Edit: Here are Erik B.'s thoughts.
noun, plural
1. An assortment or a medley; a conglomeration.
Ordinarily, etiquette would dictate that I separate my thoughts out into individual posts to make reading/searching/aggregation easier. But, since it's been several days and I have a good number of thoughts that are bouncing around in my head, this entry gets to be the unfortunate recipient of some serious brain-spew. Apologies in advance, and I'll try and not do this too often.
I'm apparently a little bit behind the times on this one, since it made the Internet rounds last week, but this is still well worth mentioning. This is just about the coolest TV commercial ever. I can't think of one better off the top of my head, in concept, execution, coolness, or any other metric. There's a bit of confusion as to whether the whole thing was done in a single cut or in two simply due to lack of space ... both sources, though (both of which are worth reading, though the former is more detailed), indicate that it took over 600 takes to get it right and they didn't do any kind of cheating. And either way, it is both mind-blowingly cool and mind-boggling amazing ... even for people who aren't huge fans of Rube Goldberg contraptions.
An early trailer of American Wedding (American Pie 3) leaked to the net recently, adding to the other stuff that's starting to trickle out that you can find at the latter link ... the premise of the movie seems pretty sound, reading about it, and I have decent hopes that it won't suck. Which will be good, since the American Pie series is one of my favorite comedy movie series. Here's hoping they didn't screw it up.
I just finished reading Word Freak, a fantastic book in which Steven Fatsis originally set out to chronicle the culture of high-end tournament Scrabble players. Somewhere along the line, though, he ended up falling into that culture and became obsessed with the game and getting good at it. It's one of those rare books, though, that sucks the reader into the world along the way rather than just showing you that world for you to gawk at. He writes about the game and his experiences so well that he actually transcends simply telling a good story about Scrabble culture and makes you yourself want to be part of it. While I've always had a passing interest in Scrabble, I've never been that into the game, nor am I any good at it. Reading this book, though, I wanted to love the game, and I wanted to have the skills that he developed over time, even though I know I don't have the patience for it. To me, that's good reading.
Brief aside in the book vignette ... these kind of books are always a little bit depressing to me. Any book that exposes an activity at its highest level serves as a bit of a reminder as to how most people never get to that level. Furthermore, that's true not only for the activity in question (in this case, Scrabble), but for all activities. Part of the appeal of the book is to get a sense of just how masterful the players are at the highest level, and at the same time I'm forced to realize that I don't think there's an activity out there where I'll ever reach that level of skill. To dedicate yourself so fully to something to master it is something that I envy, while at the same time I'm too lazy to actually try doing it. Kind of a sobering realization.
Anyway ... the book I read before this was The Gatekeepers, by Jacques Steinberg. Another fantastic book about the admissions process at a selective college and how things really work. At first blush, they don't seem like very similar books, but in my head there's a similarity in their style and why I enjoy them that I can't shake. They're both in-depth looks at subjects which I find fascinating ... not done up with any fake stories or anything like that, but revealing the intricacies behind interesting topics that you might not have other ways to really know about or to experience.
After finishing Word Freak, I really wanted to jump into another book like these two, and it's here that I'm looking for a little help. If anyone has any suggestions for this type of book, please let me know. Erik N. suggested that I go to Amazon and look through their lists of other books that buyers of these books liked and their recommendations. Good intentions on his part, but it turns out that Amazon's recommendation technology isn't quite there yet. Because I liked Word Freak, it assumes that I like Scrabble and suggests all kinds of other Scrabble books about strategy and words. Because I enjoyed The Gatekeepers, they think that I'm looking for advice on how to get into college. Both of these are reasonable assumptions for most people who are reading these books, but it turns out that they have nothing to do with why I like the books. I'd really love it if I could type the two in and the system could figure out that it's not because of Scrabble or college admissions in particular that I like the books, but instead it's the style and types of books. Perhaps in a few years. Hopefully one of you out there can do better.
So, as I wrote before, I spent the weekend in Toronto at a friend's wedding. My friend is a Sikh, so it was a Sikh ceremony, which was different than all the weddings (read: the one other wedding) that I've seen before. It was a very lovely ceremony and while I didn't understand a good deal of what was happening besides what my friend had explained to me, it was still pretty neat just to witness.
I can't hope to describe the whole thing, so I'll stick with a couple of random observations.
Indian weddings operate on an entirely different scale from American weddings (or at least, American weddings as I envision them). I was told that this was a small-scale wedding ... which, as it turns out, meant that there were "only" 500 people. 500 people! I don't think I could name 500 people that I know if you held a gun to my head.
During the ceremony, all 500 of those people sit on the floor. The holy scriptures are kept at the front of the temple hall and it is disrespectful to point the soles of your feet at the scriptures, so you have to sit cross-legged or in some other way that keeps the soles of your feet pointed away from the front of the room. I didn't think this sounded too bad in advance, since I used to be able to sit cross-legged for hours, but it turns out that this is actually really, really hard to do without some serious leg pain. At least, it was for me ... I was one of the handful of outsiders there who weren't even Indian, let alone Sikh, so I think perhaps most everyone else was more used to this than me. This comes off as sounding worse than I mean it to ... this is not meant to be negative at all, except perhaps with respect to my muscular control and discipline.
On the bright side, I learned to eat Indian food this weekend. I'd never really cared for it before, mostly based on a single episode a long time ago where I didn't care for the flavor or the slight gritty texture of some of the sauces. Since then, though, I'd never really given the cuisine a fair shake until this weekend, where I decided that as part of the wedding, I'd eat the food. Good thing I did, too ... it was quite good and I think I'm finally over the hump (psychological or otherwise) that was preventing me from enjoying it before.
All in all, a fabulous time, leg cramps notwithstanding. :)
Getting back from Toronto, a friend that I traveled with remembered the whole SARS thing, and in particular, the fact that it's a big deal in Toronto right now. Now, I know little about it and I'm speaking from a fairly ignorant position, but I have a hard time getting as concerned about it as many people seem to be. The way it's been blown up in the media, you'd think it was the next coming of the Bubonic Plague and it just doesn't seem like it's been nearly that bad so far. Maybe, as Erik N. points out, the amount of attention being paid to it is what's preventing it from getting that bad. Whether it warrants the attention or not, though, I'm just having a hard time really worrying about it. I did decide, though, to print out a copy of the CDC warning card intended for people who've visited Toronto and post it on my office door. Whether or not this is a sign of bad taste and insensitivity or just a lame sense of humor, I find it kind of amusing.
About the most I can get worked up about it is the fact that calling something "Severe" and "Acute" seems rather ridiculously redundant. Erik N. (always trying to put interject some perspective into my rants, the bastard) figures that there's some medical difference between the two, and I can believe that, but it still seems kinda dumb.
Hmm. That rant was a lot more interesting before Erik N. came along and sucked all the wind out of it.
I missed the extra episode of American Idol tonight. :( The downside of dependence on a PVR and its guide are that you miss things that never make it onto the guide. Anyone want to fill me in on what I missed? Anything earth-shattering?
I did, however, catch Mr. Personality. Or rather, I'm catching it right now. And ... well ... eh. Not mind-bendingly bad enough to stop watching right now like Married by America, but certainly nothing special. I think that Fox has learned the wrong lesson from Joe Millionaire and they're totally beating this genre into the ground. They're not even making a secret of the similarity of these shows ... they're always on at 9:00 on Mondays, they all have very similar styles, they even use the same music! Basically, they've turned all these various shows into a single series ... the screwed-up find-a-mate series ... and I'm not sure that that series hasn't jumped the shark yet. Oh ... and astrology? Monica Lewinsky? Ugh and blech.
Phew! Hopefully that makes up for the lack of posts for the last few days. Erin, this good enough for you? ;)
--Nick
Edit: Fixed a line break problem.
Edit: Adding categories.
adjective
1. Apprehensively divided or withdrawn in attention; distracted.
I'm heading out of town for a friend's wedding (way too many of those happening these days ... apparently I've hit that age where all my friends now get married) and won't be online for the weekend.
Consider this my away message.
--Nick
verb, transitive
1. To bring together; meld or fuse.
2. To combine (two variant texts, for example) into one whole.
You want to know how much I'm not going to talk about tonight's clips/recap episode of Survivor? I'm going to not talk about it so much that this post doesn't even deserve a spoiler warning.
So just not going to bother.
--Nick
Edit: Man, I can't even write three sentences without a typo these days. :(
verb, transitive
1. To eat greedily; devour.
Holy crap!
Sha Sha (a friend of mine from college) gets my early vote for cool photos of the year.
If they're not real and she's putting me on with Photoshopped pictures, then I will smite her mightily. :P
--Nick
noun
1. One who hates women.
Possible Spoilers: American Idol
Brief observations:
- The group song was just eh. There were some moments of greatness, surrounded by lots of moments of eh. Not as bad as some of their performances have been, though.
- The Ford bit was an example of how not to fill time. Stick with songwriter comments, guys.
- (If you think I'm a pig already, skip this thought) Ugh, talk about a blow against eye candy. In this department, the wrong Kimberl(e)y met her demise, leaving only one bit of eye candy left. And Carmen's certainly not going to last very long. I think that Carmen or Joshua should have been voted out before Kimberly C. based on last night's performances, but Kimberley C. wasn't going to win it all, certainly. Interesting, though, that the bottom three were the three better looking women remaining, leaving only the ... well, I can't figure out a way to put this gently, so I'll end that sentence there. And the bottom two continued this trend. What's interesting about this is that looks aren't playing as much a role as I would have figured in a competition like this ... I'm kind of proud of the public for that.
- The men are kicking the women's asses this season. Nice reversal from last season. And it doesn't look like much is going to change, as Clay and Ruben are clearly in a league above the others remaining.
--Nick
noun
1. Music. One who plays the harpsichord.
Possible Spoilers: American Idol
It's a turning point tonight on American Idol ... we're down to enough finalists now that they can go with an artist as the theme rather than a genre. I'm not entirely sure why Ryan said that they were celebrating "American Songwriters" to start with, though ... tonight was all about Billy Joel (which he eventually got to). Almost kind of unfair to Smokey Robinson, the guest judge, since it seemed he got a bit overshadowed. I wonder why they didn't just have Billy Joel do the guest judging ...
Anyway, away we go:
- Kimberly C.: She's still very cute and has a good stage presence. And she certainly pulled herself back from last week, which was rather a disaster for her. It was good ... can't complain too much. Unfortunately, it was just pretty good, not outstanding. I find her still uninspiring and I have little hope that she will be stepping up during this competition, even though I still believe that she has it within her to be better than she's showing now. One thing that kinda bugged me here ... she had to sing this song in a much lower key than the original. While this was good recognition of her own range, it's still kind of distracting if you know the original song. I don't know Billy Joel's stuff well enough to know if there was another song that might have been better in her range, but if there was, she should have gone with it.
- Ruben: Very good as usual, though he had a few minor timing problems (late to start melodies) and minor pitch problems this week, which is something I don't usually hear from him, so this might have been a slight bit of an off week for him. Poor guy also needed to clear his throat at the end of his performance and had to just deal. He did a fairly different rendition of this song from the original, but this is one of the few cases so far where I don't think that the performance suffered because of it ... his style suited the song well. Simon does call this well, though ... Ruben is like the others in that he has a single style that he sticks to. He does it well, and I don't actually have a real problem with people sticking to what they know ... but I think it's only fair that people recognize that he does the same thing all the others do.
- Kimberley L.: Her hold on the first instance of the word "mind" was horrible. Also, her hat didn't really do it for me. Other than that, pretty good. There's this interesting quality to her voice, where she has really different registers. The way she sings high notes has a very different quality from the way she sings low notes, and in a song like this with transitions between the two, I really noticed it. Overall, good. She should not be allowed to talk, though, because every time she responds to one of the judges or to Ryan with one of her little curt answers she sounds like a total idiot. In this case, it was, "Smokey Robinson said I can sing." Stick to the singing, girl.
- Carmen: That's a cool dress ... I love that color. Anyway ... still bleating, still has some pitch problems (and her voice cracked once ... bummer!). I was impressed, though, that she didn't try and over-countrify this song. I'm glad she has the recognition of when that's going to work well and when not to do it. She's still good eye candy, but at this point she's falling so far out of her depth that the water is causing her to warble in her vibrattos. Wow ... even the guest judge didn't say anything good ... that's pretty bad (considering the history of wussy guest judges they've had).
- Joshua: This is such a great song, I hope he doesn't blow it. He's a little bit sharp tonight on several notes, and when he kicks it up to the higher ranges ("And the piano sounds like a carnival") he sounds like he's stopped singing and started yelling. Can't say I care for this rendition like I do for the original. On the other hand, I'm a bit afraid to keep saying bad things here ... the look on his face is massively intense ... looks like he's trying to pass a kidney stone or something. So I'll just wrap up by saying that country notwithstanding (which he thankfully toned down this week ... again, I'm glad for the recognition of when to tone it down), not too good.
- Trenyce: Man, that is one horrible, horrible outfit ... I believe she spent the last week asking herself how she could most look like she was wearing her underwear on stage without tripping off the censors. Some pitch problems (man, I sound like a broken record tonight, but I feel like the whole group as a whole so far has just been way less precise than usual ... Trenyce was a bit sharp) and she sounded like she was yelling in bits (she actually does this a bit every week when it comes to the powerful notes - trying to mimic the raw power that some of the divas have and she's just not quite there yet ... almost, but not quite), but her voice was reasonably strong. The performance didn't excite me too much, though ... this is the first time I've heard this song and I think I just don't care much for it.
- Clay: Hey, finally something new ... a bit uptempo, as he says, though there's still a nice ballady section for him to work with. I imagine that this is a direct reaction to what the judges have been asking for the last few weeks. What can I say? The guy is good. Simon is right, though, and I think he will be a much better studio recording artist than performer ... watching him perform, there is a bit of a cheesy-theater look to him. But I'm fine with that ... he's still the best pure singer and that's huge to me. With practice on the performance, he'll be fine. And he probably could legitimately do theater/Broadway, something I can't say for the others.
The commentary that Billy Joel did for each of the songs was pretty cool ... if they stick with the single artist themes, they really should keep doing that. And if this is (and I'm sure it is) a way to fill time now that less time is used for the performances ... then good for them. I wish they'd fill time with stuff like this more often rather than some of the stupid stuff they usually use.
Best of the week: Clay, Ruben.
Worst of the week: Carmen, Joshua.
America should dump: I'm gonna go with Joshua. Carmen was worse, but neither of them is going to win, and Joshua just doesn't look as good in a dress as Carmen (yes yes, shallow bastard, pig, etc ... I know). :P
--Nick
Edit: Erik B. and I usually have pretty similar opinions about American Idol. This week, though, a little more disparate than usual. Not like we flat-out disagree or anything, but a few differences.
noun
1. Law. A grant of lands as a fee.
Got kinda screwed over by Wells Fargo today. Well, more accurately, got kinda screwed by Wells Fargo several months ago, and then they probably redeemed themselves today, making this entry much less disparaging than it might have been.
I've had an account with them since I started school, seven (Seven? holy crap, I'm getting old) years ago, and when I moved up to Washington after graduation, one of the first things I needed to do was convert my student account into a regular account. The account I chose, their "Advantage Account", provided some good benefits, with the requirement that I keep a minimum balance of $1000 in the account. If I ever dipped below this, I owe an account fee of $12. Fair enough.
Thing is, I tend to not pay as close of attention to my statements as I should, as I just download them and then check if there are any gross errors - if the differential is less than 20 bucks, I assume I just forgot to enter in one expense and don't dig into it.
Today, though, I was randomly looking through a statement and noticed that I'd been charged the $12 account fee, which seemed odd since I hadn't dipped below the minimum balance. Seemed worth investigation.
Turns out, even though I live in Washington now and switched the address on my account, it was still a California account. And a few months ago, the California version of the Advantage Accounts switched to a minimum balance of $2000, even though the Washington version stayed at $1000. Maybe they sent a notice, but I don't read my paper statements, so I can't tell whether they sent it and I missed it or if they didn't send it. Either way, I totally missed it, even having looked once at the account characteristics on the web site during the last few months because the account characteristics page on their web site differentiates by state, and I of course put in Washington when prompted for my state.
This seemed asinine to me, and this is still the worst part of the whole affair ... why the hell did I still have a California account when I'd moved to Washington and changed my permanent address to be in Washington? Turns out, they can't convert accounts like that. So, today, I had to open a new account and transfer over the funds. I hope there's a damned good reason that they can't change what state your account is based in, because as it stands, it looks like sheer idiocy.
Things actually turned out for the best, though. Turns out that Microsoft has a deal with Wells Fargo now that gives us access to a special account (which better not have been available when I first moved up here without them telling me, or else they're bastards) that has basically the same features I had before, without requiring a minimum balance. Now supposedly, this comes in a package with a savings account that requires a $300 minimum balance that I really don't need, but I didn't feel like fighting them about it for now ... if it annoys me enough later, I can always dump it.
Plus, they're going to see if they can reverse my fees from the last few months. So, in the end, I end up a bit ahead from this happening, since I now have the new and improved account ...
But there was some serious annoyance there for a while.
--Nick
Edit: Fixed a typo.
Edit: Fixed another (see comments).
verb, transitive
1. To be of an earlier date than; precede in time.
2. a. To assign to a date earlier than that of the actual occurrence. b. To date as of a time before that of actual execution.
Possible Spoilers: CSI
(Not really ... this would be a spoiler of magnitude .0001 on a 10 point scale).
While I've had the first half of the first season of CSI on DVD for a while now (the first 12 episodes were released last year in Canada), I've only now finally gotten around to start watching those early episodes.
It's interesting to see how much the show and characters have progressed and changed since the beginning of the series. In particular, the thing that keeps striking me in the first several episodes is just how much of a bitch Catherine is.
Anyway ... more thoughts later. Back to the show.
--Nick
Edit: Fixing typo. Thanks, Erik!
adjective, from summation
1. The final summing-up of an argument in a court of law.
2. A summary of something that has been said or written.
3. A total amount or aggregate.
4. The process of adding something up to find a total.
I've finally given up. I'm now reading enough weblogs that it's becoming a hassle to go through them manually out of my memory. Can anyone recommend what the best RSS Aggregator is for Windows?
I'm not a free-software-fiend and I'm certainly not above paying money if the best one is a commercial product. NewzCrawler, for example, looks pretty decent ...
Heh ... this post will actually be an interesting litmus post, since my perception is that most people that read my weblog are either Mac-users or my friends who read this site but aren't reading many other weblogs. Neither of these groups is likely to have any advice.
--Nick
noun
1. Either of two movable flaps on the wings of an airplane that can be used to control the plane's rolling and banking movements.
There's a bit of a flap over at NSLog about putting the results of TV cliffhangers in the titles of weblog entries, thereby possible spoiling an episode before somebody has a choice not to click on the link.
My thoughts are mostly posted in my comment on that entry, but in writing that up, I got to thinking about my weblog here. I write a lot about TV and I certainly don't want to spoil shows for other people ... it's not my obligation to protect them, but I feel it's a courtesy.
I kind of realized while writing this, though, that my titles are usually pretty oblique to the subject of the post. Because of that, perhaps people aren't sufficiently warned before inadvertantly reading spoilers in my posts.
From now on, I'll be putting "Possible Spoilers:
--Nick
Edit: Holy horrible grammar. Fixing the horrible grammar mistakes..
noun
1. Astronomy. a. An arbitrary formation of stars perceived as a figure or design, especially one of 88 recognized groups named after characters from classical mythology and various common animals and objects. b. An area of the celestial sphere occupied by one of the 88 recognized constellations.
2. The configuration of planets at the time of one's birth, regarded by astrologers as determining one's character or fate.
3. A gathering or an assemblage, especially of prominent persons or things.
4. A set or configuration, as of related items, properties, ideas, or individuals.
About ten years ago now, back when the browser wars were at their highest levels, there was a big flap about push technologies, which basically changed the model of getting web content from going to sites to pull down the content you want to having premarked content sent to your desktop for you. Most notably, there was Netscape's Constellation in their version 4, Channels in IE 4, and a system from PointCast. Some people said this was the next big thing, and forecast that pull-based browsing was doomed.
So what actually happened? Well, some people probably haven't even heard of PointCast or Constellation at this point. And those who have, probably laugh at the predictions of browser doom that were spouted by some. Basically, it died a horrible death when it turned out that nobody wanted push technologies.
Recently, though, I've been reading a lot of stories on other people's weblogs basically putting forth the RSS ultimatum (interesting link there, by the way ... apparently the Barenaked Ladies have their own weblog now). Basically, a growing population of webloggers seem to only be willing to get their content through an RSS Aggregator, which basically allows you to subscribe to weblogs and then when you start the aggregator, all updated content will be sent to you automatically without you having to visit sites manually.
Doesn't that sound a lot like push technologies?
Why such resistance to push back then (and the resistance was pretty vehement and harsh - nobody liked it) and now the insistence that this is the only way to read weblogs? What's changed? Is this the true beginning of the age of push technologies on the web? Is this a phenomenon that only makes sense for and happens in the weblog domain for some strange reason? Or is this just a passing fad that will die out again any day now?
Either way, it's interesting to think about the parallels.
--Nick
verb, transitive
1. To deceive, win over, or induce to do something by artful coaxing and wheedling or shrewd trickery
2. To gain by cozening someone.
From the little bit I've read about him in the news, I've known that the Iraqi Information Minister has been spouting insane, out of touch with reality propaganda ...
But I didn't realize the extent of his insanity.
I assume he doesn't believe any of this, that he's just doing his job and trying to keep Iraqi morale up. Whether or not he actually believes it, though, it's certainly worth a good laugh or two.
--Nick
Edit: Thanks to Nick and Michael (I can't remember exactly which of you) for the link.
Edit: Heh ... and what if he worked for Apple (from Ars Technica).
noun, plural
1. A conspiratorial group of plotters or intriguers.
2. A secret scheme or plot.
Hmm ... close but no cigar. What I really wanted for my birthday was for Rob to get booted on Survivor, but it was unfortunately not to be. The eventual victim, though, was my second least favorite person and also affects Rob to some degree, so at least it's a nice consolation prize.
I'm getting ahead of myself, though ... let's go back to the beginning.
- I dislike Rob for his cocky manipulativeness, but I have to admit that he's at least got Matthew wrapped around his finger. Though this might be as much due to Matthew's obliviousness than it is to Rob's skill. The fact that Matthew turned around and was assuming the dominant position with Butch shows just how totally clueless he is. Butch is kind of buying into the metaphor, but to his credit, at least he knows how far down the line he is. Incidentally, whoever decided to put the spy music behind this sequence was absolutely brilliant. It worked totally perfectly.
- Have I mentioned that Godfather Wannabe (henceforth GW) is a totally cocky-assed annoying bastard?
- Are these guys really believing that Matt's going to hurt them? Seriously, I figured it was all a joke, but they're going on with it quite a bit. As freaky as Matthew looks, I don't see how anyone really thinks he's going to go psycho ... that said, he's amazingly good with weapons. About as amazingly good as the others are bad. I mean, astoundingly good. GW's crack about Matt orgasming because of the weapons was funny, but he's one to talk ...
- Heh ... yes Heidi, you have to put your mouth totally around the blow gun. Our whole watching group (and I imagine the whole nation) couldn't resist the obvious crack ... so obvious I won't even bother repeating it here.
- Who the hell says "nincompoop"? Oh yeah ... GW does.
- Though Matthew was better at weapons overall, Alex wins the round that counts and wins reward. And it's odd that he doesn't even think of doing the standard smart play of choosing the runner-up, but instead goes straight after Jenna. That's the kind of move that can make people bitter, and he'd better be a little bit careful. The look on Heidi's face was hilarious ... "Why did he pick Jenna instead of me? I'm the cute one!" And I'm sure Alex didn't mind the giant hug with Jenna ...
- Why the hell are they still worried about the strongest person? I've already pointed out why this is totally the wrong thing to focus on ...
- The fact they're playing up this whole Alex vs. Deena thing strongly suggests to me that Matthew obviously wins the immunity challenge. Zach (I believe) pointed out that this could just be a distraction in order to get us to stop thinking about Matthew, the obvious target for this episode. I still think he's going to win, though (or at least, I did when I was watching for the first time at this point).
- Watching the show, it's hard to see how it's not transparent how GW and Deena are being totally manipulative ... it'd be interesting to have a live 24-hour feed to get a better sense of this. GW says that it's settled and that Alex is in line behind Matthew ... this will become interesting later on.
- The speed-up of them walking away from the cafe was cliche, but really amusing. Especially with the little musical riff that they went with.
- How stupid are Alex and Jenna? You just won a reward, why the hell do you brag about it? You don't talk about all the coffee that you just got to drink, you downplay it! At least they redeemed themselves with the cookies, with which GW proved again how much of a total ass he is trying to take away Butch and Matthew's cookies. A cocky ass at that ... how does he have any credibility whatsoever calling people cocky?
- Holy ouch ... how the hell does that piranha bite him after being sliced apart? To add insult to injury, it looks like they even lost that fish!
- That's a really cool looking animal ... apparently it's a sloth.
- It looks like there are a lot more alliances going on behind the scenes than it looks ... we see GW doing a good portion of it, but maybe that's just what they're showing and he's not the master manipulator that he thinks he is. It'd be interesting to see a chart of all the alliances that have formed and broken over time, if such a thing could be constructed.
- Wow, that is a nasty spider (?) bite that Heidi got ... of course, leave it to HGW (Horny Godfather Wannabe) to compare it to a breast instead of to anything that a normal person would compare it to. Who's orgasming now, Mr. Turned on by an insect bite?
- How did they not figure out this was going to be a nasty eating challenge based on the second half of the poem ("the thought of going home tonight might put your palate in the mood")? Granted, the first half of the poem ("Immunity or food") was worded wrongly and made it seem like a temptation challenge, so it was confusing, but it seemed pretty obvious to me all things considered and knowing the way the show works.
- Seems kind of fitting that Jenna and Heidi are the two cut in the first round.
- Matthew was amazing at this ... ridiculous. Especially at the end with the live bug ... I'm so impressed that he didn't even have to bite, he just swallowed that huge larva whole. I'm thinking not many people could do that. Deena's reaction on that round was absolutely hilarious, but if she gets voted out, she's going to feel like a dumbass for not even having tried. She doesn't think her ass is on the line, though ... she thinks Alex is screwed.
- This is the best job they've done in a while of making the results not obvious based on watching the show. At this point, it's hard to call between Deena and Alex and you can construct an argument either way, depending on Christy and Butch. Deena's being super-cocky, though ...
- HGW thinks he's so cool because he's in both circles and hears info. from both sides ... but he's not the only one. We just saw how Jenna's on both sides, too ... more evidence that he's not as slick as he thinks.
- I'd say the person that truly least expects it is HGW himself. We can only wish. That said, Deena and Matthew seem pretty oblivious themselves, as does Alex to a lesser extent (he's not oblivious, but not too worried, it seems).
- Wow, Dave looks pissed.
- Jeff's crack at Heidi was absolutely hilarious. Well-founded, too. Look at Alex roll his eyes when she says what her assets are ... she's self-delusional.
- Matt doesn't think he was in danger? Wow, totally unaware of what's going on around him.
- Whoops ... wow, didn't you screw up, Deena? Bet you're wishing you weren't so cocky about that bug now, huh?
- Pretty lopsided vote ... other than Christy, everyone voted for Deena. This raises two interesting points ... HGW said that it was settled that Alex was going to go. Was he lying? Did he backstab her when he saw how things were going? Was he never really in an alliance wit hher? Is how not in as much control as he thinks? What was the deal there? No matter what, I'm thinking he won't get her vote if he makes the finals. And second, how far out of the loop is Christy not to have known what the group was going to do?
- Remember ... never believe Jenna's pinky swears. She lies!
Ultimately, Deena was annoyingly cocky and manipulative and I wanted her gone as well, so I'm certainly not complaining. The fact that she was in an alliance with Rob doesn't hurt. I am disturbed, however, by the four people in the alliance at this point, as I don't like the idea of Rob, Alex, Jenna, and Heidi being the final four.
At least, however, the ending was a surprise to me ... not what I would have picked happening, though Deb was pretty close in her prediction (she said Alex or Deena).
Now if they'd just dump Rob, all would be good.
--Nick
Edit: Here are Erik B.'s thoughts. His nickname for Heidi is cute ... I'll have to remember that one. Robin has a few thoughts of her own, though she tends to keep things more short and sweet.
noun
1. a. An abrupt, unintended transition in style from the exalted to the commonplace, producing a ludicrous effect. b. An anticlimax.
2. a. Insincere or grossly sentimental pathos. b. Banality; triteness.
"What are you doing?!"
That about sums up tonight on American Idol. I hereby pose that question to two groups of people, both of which are touched on by this excellent recap from Daniel Fienberg at Zap2It:
- Kelly: Man, you don't have a bigger fan than me, but what are you doing? You're ruining yourself and your own talent ... that movie looks like just a horrible mistake and you should have totally vetoed that sucker straight off the drawing board. And the songs you're working on ... it seems like you're going for the whole bad-girl thing that the new Britney, the new Christina, etc ... are going for, and it just doesn't work for you (nor does it work for them ... I liked their stuff earlier before they went all edgy). My guess is that you simply prefer the wrong genre ... hard to describe, but more the hip-hop edgy Top-40 hits type songs than the adult contemporary pop music, but you need to understand your voice and your presence and make better decisions. The genre and songs you've chosen don't show off your voice and your presence doesn't match what you're going for (witness tonight's performance). Stop going for KISS 106.1 and come back to Star 101.5 where you belong and where you excel!
- America: This is to all of you boneheads out there ... what are you doing? Are you even paying attention to performances from week to week? I told you Rickey was horrible last week when he was one of the worst, yet you didn't even put him in the bottom three? Then this week he puts out his best performance so far ... and he wasn't even in the bottom three last week and you boot him? With cumulative votes and him not being in the bottom three last week, that means he really, really got hosed this week. WTF? And Carmen went from the bottom two to not in the bottom three after a horrible performance this week? I mean, she didn't deserve to be in the bottom last week, but it's this week's performance that bails her out? What the hell are you people doing? Daniel Fienberg wonders if there's a conspiracy and while I doubt there's any cheating going on, I think there's tons of crack smoking going on.
Highlight of the night: Ryan's crack against Nashville Star (which Joshua needs to transfer over to, ASAP) was absolutely mind-blowingly hilarious. Is that not illegal somehow? Guess not. Either way, hilarious (especially since it's no secret how I feel about country music).
Anyway, very disappointed in people tonight.
--Nick
noun
1. A fellow member of a fraternity or profession; a colleague.
I made Erik B.'s pals list. That's kinda cool (less so if you realize it's only because I mail him occasionally to point out typos, but we'll just conveniently ignore that for now)! I'd return the favor (one of few weblogs I visit regularly), but I am sans friends or links, partly due to laziness and partly because I read so few weblogs that I figured that any reading mine probably reads all the ones I follow and then some. Sorry about that.
--Nick
Edit: Added a link.
adjective
1. Using or marked by the use of few words; terse or concise.
#1 hits is a bit of an odd theme for an episode of American Idol, since it seems that most of the songs they choose have all reached the top of one chart or another. But nonetheless, here it is, and in honor (and because I'm tired), I'm going to do one word reviews ... or at least, as close to it as I can get given my wordiness. We'll go with single word adjectives (with explanatory text for my sanity).
- Clay: Powerful. Intelligent (song choice). Superb (Simon's right).
- Kimberley L.: Imprecise. Uneven (good points and horrible points). Outclassed (Can't match Celine, don't even try). Redeemed (in terms of appearance).
- Rickey: Surprising (great for him). Impressive. Smart (song choice).
- Kimberly C.: Classy (better dressed than usual). Cute (great on-stage presence). Unique (voice). Poor (song choice and thereby rendition). Uninspiring. Worrisome (running out of time to find herself and step up).
- Joshua: Countrified. Twangy. Decent (singer). Misplaced (Wrong show for him). Painful (the word "so").
- Carmen: Inaccurate (tonally). Pitchy. Unwise (song choice). Fun (stage presence). Unexciting. Dreadful (as Simon says). Endangered.
- Trenyce: Outstanding (voice). Suffering (by comparison to Celine again). Chintzy (stage performance and persona).
- Ruben: Smooth. Talented. Confident (knows what style he can do and sticks with it).
Well, I tried ... the one word thing was harder for me than I thought and I had to relax the restrictions twice to be able to even get to this point. Anyway, back to my usual long-windedness for some concluding thoughts. I'm surprised Simon called out Lionel Ritchie like that ... I bet the producers are pissed about that one. I usually approve of Simon's commentary, but I think it belongs on the contestants ... Lionel wasn't there to be judged. Crossed the line a bit there, IMO.
Speaking of Lionel, he lied ... he said he'd be objective and bridge the positive and negative, but he was just like all the other guest judges ... too nice to say bad things about anyone's singing ... only about song choice sometimes.
And what's with the Celine Dion songs? You put yourself up against her, you're going to look worse by comparison. She's amazingly powerful and spectacularly precise in her vocal control and unfortunately, nobody on this show can match her. They shouldn't even try, for their benefit. Both Kimberley L. and Trenyce's performances would have been better had they not invited comparisons to the originals.
Finally, the following rankings are based only on this week, not factoring in last week's carryover voting.
Best of the week: Clay, Ruben. Rickey wins most improved.
Worst of the week: Kimberly C., Carmen.
America should dump: Carmen. Much as I hate to lose another member of the eye candy club, she's just out of her league. If it were up to me, I'd say Joshua because I don't like his style, but he wasn't the worst.
--Nick
Edit: The comment about Marc disagreeing was actually about Kimberley L., who I had in the worst of the week until Carmen came along and bumped her off that list. I just forgot to remove the comment when I removed Kimberley L. That comment has now been removed.
Edit: If you didn't get to see the show, this is pretty unintelligible. Read the recap of what happened from the Jaded Journalist.
noun
1. Precedence.
In the wake of the high-profile tournament and the elation and depression of the championship game, one thing that's easy to forget is that college isn't just about sports, it's about education and learning. Presumably it's primarily about those things.
And I am therefore damned proud of this particular set of statistics. Sort by anything other than alphabetically and we're not in the middle of that list. Always good to keep your priorities straight and to maintain a sense of perspective about the whole NCAA phenomenon.
--Nick
noun
1. Sadness over the evils of the world, especially as an expression of romantic pessimism.
A good final game in the NCAA tournament, right after one good semifinal and one blowout. Here is the main recap and game log of the championship ... you all can find all of the other recaps and whatnot at ESPN yourselves. I'm not only too lazy to do it right now, but I'm also rather disheartened. This was the worst I could have possibly done in the final weekend. Marquette or Texas wins it all and I end up in 1st in my pool. Kansas over Texas or Syracuse over Marquette and I get 2nd. This was the only possible outcome that gets me 3rd place. Ugh.
That's not the biggest thing, though. The aspect that gets to me the most? I feel horrible for Roy Williams ... somehow, unless it's against us or a team/coach I hate, I always feel worse for the losing team than I feel good for the winning team. And Roy Williams is one of those cases of great coaches who just haven't won it all, and that just sucks ... I'd feel better if every great coach picked up a championship. Of course, I'm similarly happy for Boeheim to finally be out of that camp, but the negative always outweighs the positive for me, so I was bound to be depressed by tonight's game.
I do think it was worse this way, though, since Syracuse was all freshmen and would have had more chances with this squad, whereas the stars on Kansas have now graduated and won't have another chance, making the road back much t ougher for Williams.
Was interesting to see the mention of Coach Montgomery in that article ... I think he's often underappreciated as a great coach ... but then you notice that the writer is from San Francisco and that pretty much explains it. Hopefully he'll get one one of these days as well.
Final note on the tournament. I totally agree with Williams in the post-game interview, though. Yes, Bonnie Berstein had to ask about the North Carolina job as a journalist because of all the jackals that are interested, but hell, this was not the right time and it is terribly insensitive and I'm glad he called them on it. I also think he was more than justified to swear on the air when she wouldn't let the subject drop (saying that he, "doesn't give a sh** about North Carolina right now.") ... damn straight, Coach Williams. Apparently CBS doesn't use a 7 second delay on basketball. :P
Anyway, kinda depressed now.
--Nick
Edit: Couple more articles on the championship, including one on the stat of the game - Kansas' horrible free throw shooting.
noun
1. Any of various small short-tailed furry-footed rodents (as genera Lemmus and Dicrostonyx) of circumpolar distribution that are notable for the recurrent mass migrations of a European form (L. lemmus) which often continue into the sea where vast numbers are drowned.
Erik B. claims that everyone is linking to this story. Kind of pains me to just follow the crowd, but the story is just too great. The spy-story in the real world stuff is something I've seen or read about a few times now, enough to stop saying that this kind of thing doesn't happen in real life.
--Nick
adverb and adjective
1. Without charge.
I hereby applaud anyone who's won a radio contest while simultaneously ridiculing them for clearly having no life whatsoever.
Star 101.5, a local radio station, has a really popular contest that they run once in a while where they give away free computers just for being the 101st caller when they play a certain song. Usually when this is running, I'm aware of it but never actually actually hear that song since they tend to play it during the work day. This time around, though, I've actually been out and about on weekends during the right times and heard the key song several times.
Since it's free and you don't have to know anything or do anything embarassing, I figured I'd give it a shot and I've tried calling a few times. Holy crap ... what they don't tell you on the radio is that being the 101st caller isn't the hard part. The hard part is being any caller. Most of the time I get the, "Sorry, we could not connect your call right now," message in that oh-so-soothing random phone company woman voice. Once in a while, if I'm lucky, I'll get far enough to get a real live busy signal!
I've yet to get past a busy signal even once, to hear what happens when you aren't the right caller, let alone actually winning.
Probably all for the best, though ... the people winning always get super-excited and have these great stories about how this is their first computer and how it'll change their kids lives and I think I'd feel massively guilty if I won.
DJ: "Congratulations, you're the 101st caller!"
Me: "Cool."
DJ: "So is this your first computer?"
Me: "Um ... no. But this will round out an even dozen computers in my apartment."
(BTW, I've never seen a word labelled as adverb and adjective before ...)
--Nick
verb, intransitive
1. To laugh hard, loudly, or convulsively; guffaw.
LOL!
Overused cliche, but those who chat with me on IM know how very, very rarely I say that.
This is absolutely horribly, horribly wrong and I'm a bad person for thinking this is hilarious (warning - in massively poor taste, not work safe, etc...). And yet, I'd be lying if I didn't say that this had me l