"My personal favorite at this point is the 29-year-old Australian Michael Johns, who sang 'Bohemian Rhapsody' this week."

I wrote on February 14, 2008 in "Althouse eats chocolate, tweaks photographs, watches 'American Idol' and fails to keep all her body parts out of the aggressive view of the fisheye lens."



I was alone on Valentine's Day, watching TV in what was my temporary home in Brooklyn that academic year. Who knows what the future will bring — which way the wind will blow?

A year later, my Valentine's Day was not spent alone with a TV and a computer screen, but with Meade, who would materialize from my strange, half-lonely relationship with the computer. Michael Johns went on to finish 8th in the singing competition, and, yesterday he died — of a blood clot in his ankle. He was only 35.

Too late, my time has come...

Dolly Parton mentors the "American Idol" crowd.

Are you watching? It's on now.

ADDED: Dolly is very sweet and incredibly likable, but don't be fooled. She's just walking through this. We see her listening to the contestant play a song once and doing nothing more than applauding and hugging afterwards. Then, in a separate clip she says a few — scripted, I think — words of gentle praise. That is, she never actually mentored the contestant. She never listened critically, never gave any real advice or worked with the singer at all. As an "AI" mentor — and I only mean as an "AI" mentor — Dolly comes nowhere near Barry Manilow. Here's what I wrote about Barry on "AI" in 2006:

I just want to say how much I like Barry Manilow. Not his music, which isn't to my taste, but him as a person. Unlike Stevie Wonder and various other guests, he did not do the show to get the kids to sing his songs, and he took his role as a music teacher seriously. He really analyzed each performance and came up with concrete help and never seemed to be at all about self-promotion. I know you could say that this nice-guy thing is just his gimmick, but if it is, it works well, and maybe more people ought to try it.

Lulu and Peter Noone followed the Manilow model last year, so it's disappointing to see Dolly Parton slough it off like this. That she's a bigger star than Manilow, Lulu, or Noone is no excuse. If she chooses to do the show to leverage her popularity, she should play the game.

AND: I'll put tonight's performances in this order: David Archuleta, Carly Smithson, Michael Johns, David Cook, Jason Castro, Kristy Lee Cook, Ramiele Malubay, Syesha Mercado. Now, I think Ramiele will be the one going home, because she sang such a nondescript song, and Syesha got to do "I Will Always Love You," which everyone knows and which gives a singer a lot of opportunity to show off — even if there is also the problem that, note for note, we will compare her performance to the famously brilliant Whitney Houston recording and think over and over again that she's falling short — way short. Syesha will get a lot of votes for singing that song, much as I hated it. But I don't even like hearing Whitney do it. I find it annoying. It's even annoying when Dolly sings it.

OOPS: I left Brooke White out of my ranking! Put her between David Cook and Jason Castro. Oh, now I'm thinking I got the whole thing wrong. Whatever....

A few words about tonight's "American Idol."

I'm not really blogging "American Idol" this year, but I just wanted to say that I actually enjoyed one of the performances this week — which almost never happens — David Cook singing "Billie Jean." He sang it the Chris Cornell way — check that out here — so it wasn't all that original, but it was quite entertaining.

I also like Jason Castro, and the song he did, "Fragile," means a lot to me. Unfortunately, idiots in the audience clapped along atrociously. The song has no pronounced rhythm and dear sweet Jason was singing it in a low key delicate way that would have been entirely appropriate but for that horrible clapping. Anyway, here's the original from Sting.

Michael Johns singing "We Are the Champions" was okay. There's no way to approach the original though, is there?

There were a bunch of others, but I'm not in the mood to write about them. Feel free to talk about them. That one girl who needs to go home was wily enough to sing that "God Bless the U.S.A." thing to win extra votes from undiscerning patriots. Ah, but I wasn't going to talk about the rest of the crowd...

"American Idol" — the boys were pretty good last night, all retro-80s.

Each did a little intro interview on what was supposedly their "most embarrassing moment." But David Hernandez had a story about a booger, and not anything about his time as a stripper in a gay bar or the way that's now splashed all over the internet. And Danny Noriega told us about a time he fell down stairs, and not about that YouTube video everyone's clicking on — the one where he hopes Santa Claus will rape your mother. (NSFW, but it does have some sly humor to it. Why do people think this one man who breaks into your house at night is okay? Santa does have a bit of a rapist M.O.)

But about the singing. I loved David Cook making that dorky Lionel Ritchie song "Hello" into something rockish. And Jason Castro sang "Hallelujah," such a great song, winningly enough. Michael Johns sounded too much like he was just horsing around with the 80s the way he did "Don't You Forget About Me." Ditto Luke Menard with "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go." Another thing about Johns was that he bleated and seemed cheesy. Menard, on the other hand, made me reminisce about how passionate and exciting George Michael was in the original Wham version, which is my favorite 80s single. (Chez Althouse, it got played a lot on a Fisher-Price record player back then.) Danny Noriega sang some damned thing that I didn't like and couldn't even recognize as a song. David Achuleta sang Another Day in Paradise" earnestly and prettily and used his after-song interview to deliver a mini-sermon about the homeless, for whom he cares. David Hernandez — I've already forgotten what he did. Has the bad press wrecked my opinion of him? Chikezie? What was that thing he sang?

ADDED: Jacob at Television Without Pity gets very heavy-handed about Danny Noriega:

[W]hat I can't fucking abide is this idea that some dumb kid is going to see Danny on the screen... and realize that this is a way to get approval, attention, and acceptance. Taking the Danny route means putting all the scary things about gay people and stuffing them into a tiny little asterisk, while magnifying all the childish, feminine, negligible things -- all the things that put you in the category of not mattering -- and expanding them so that they cover your whole personality, with just a tiny little asterisk of things that we can, as a culture, forgive. As long as we don't have to see them, think about them, or otherwise confront them in a way which isn't hilariously powerless....

Maybe Danny's the Marilyn Monroe of the show and knows that fulfilling an archetype this insanely well is actually a power play. I can see that, actually. I just don't like what it does to everybody else -- also, now that I think of it, a problem with people like Marilyn, who excel at putting on the face like that.

Okay, enough with the shoe shopping. Let's live-blog the big debate.

7:58 ET: I am so ready for this. It's do or die time for Hillary. And I'm watching the debate with a big Hillary supporter. I want to see some major action in the first 20 minutes. MSNBC is banging drums and hyping the debate (which starts in an hour). They show a picture of Jonah Goldberg and call him a "clown" who compared Obama to Hitler. I think the sensible people will switch over to "American Idol" and then return to MSNBC when this silliness is over.

9:01: "Oh, the debate."

9:04: Brian Williams plays Hillary the "I am absolutely honored" from the last debate followed by the "shame!" routine from the other day. What's with the mood swings? It's a "contested" campaign, she says and segues into a discussion of health insurance. The follow-up is about the "native garb" photo of Obama. Hillary doesn't know where it came from and doesn't condone it. Obama accepts her assertion about the "native garb" photo. Both of them derail Williams's plan and make this whole huge segment of the debate about the details of their rival health care programs. It's one filibuster after another.

9:19: Hillary seems to think that her getting the first question again is worthy of note, and she makes a clumsy reference to "Saturday Night Live," something about Barack Obama needing "another pillow." I don't like this infantalizing of Obama, and I don't her acting like people are picking on her. Tim Russert is struggling with her over NAFTA now, really trying to pin her down. Is she ready to opt out of NAFTA in 6 months? She says yes — unless it can be renegotiated on labor and environmental standards. This sounds harsh, but since Obama proceeds to agree with her entirely, it's not a point of distinction and should have no effect on anyone's decision.

9:35: Is anyone still watching? So far, it's been an annoying combination of wonky and angry.

9:48: Tim Russert seems angry too as he hypothesizes about how the Iraqis may react to a new President announcing a planned pullout.

9:53: "I think Senator Clinton showed some good humor there," Obama says after seeing the clip of Hillary being sarcastic about his speaking ("the heaven's will open," etc.). He nicely avoids the bait and gets back to talking policy (which is exactly what his strategy should be, since it's only Clinton who can benefit by shaking things up tonight). "I'm not interested in talk. I'm not interested in speeches," he says. Hillary offers that she was "having a little fun," and it's hard to have fun on the campaign trail.

10:08: Russert is raging. Hillary needs to release her tax returns! (She's too busy to do it before next Tuesday, she says, as if she'd personally get the papers together.) Obama should denounce Farrakhan! (He blusters.)

10:13: Hillary scores! When she ran for the Senate in 2000, she rejected the support of the anti-Semitic Independence Party. She "wouldn't be associated with people" like that. So far, Obama has only said that he gave a sermon denouncing anti-Semitism. Then there's some confusing byplay over whether "reject" is a stronger word than "denounce," and Obama gets away with resolving it by saying he would "reject and denounce." So her strong point got fuzzed over. He still hasn't denounced Farrakhan. She loses the moment and says "good, good." He beams. We go to commercial. Her moment is squandered. He got away with something there.

10:19: Obama is confronted with his "most liberal" ranking. I find his talking tiresome and will need to check the transcript to see if he said anything interesting.

10:33: In lieu of a closing statement, each is asked about the other, and many tedious words are blabbed. Arghhh! I hit the wall after that reject-and-denounce fiasco.

11:18: So what did you think of "American Idol"? Did David Cook deserved to be slammed for liking crossword puzzles when the other guys were about tennis and drag racing? Cook was the hardest rocker... yet somehow he's a pussy because he's — by his own admission — a "word nerd." Tonight was interesting because 2 guys who were unimpressive last week were really good: Chikezie and David Hernandez. I really liked Hernandez doing "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" — it was 70s night — what a great song. Now, I'm watching the adorable, scream-inducing David Archuleta singing "Imagine." Randy — who loves him — asks why he skipped the first verse. David does not say because it's against religion, just that he had to cut it shorter and he likes the last verse best, but I think he didn't want to disrespect religion. Now Paula says she wants to hang him from her rear view mirror, which I suppose means she thinks he's Jesus. Either that or she thinks he's air freshener. But the way she goes on to break down crying over how it was the most beautiful thing she's ever heard, I don't think it can just be that he's super-fresh. Simon says "Right now, you're the one to beat." Two guys who fell in my estimation this week were Michael Johns (why is the macho guy bleating Fleetwood Mac?) and Jason Castro (dull). And what are we to think of Luke Menard? He picked an incredibly complicated song — "Killer Queen" — and pulled it off decently (but couldn't be Mercury). Something I don't even want to think about: Robbie Carrico singing "Hot Blooded" (man, I hate that kind of song). Or Jason Yeager (what a cheeseball!). And then there's Danny Noriega. He's very sweet, and he sang a great song ("Superstar"), but he's just not good enough. (Here, listen to Karen Carpenter sing it.) He could be the Sanjaya this year, but the young girls are going crazy for the kid who's actually really good, li'l David Archuleta, so we won't be having a Sanjaya.

Althouse eats chocolate, tweaks photographs, watches "American Idol"...

... and fails to keep all her body parts out of the aggressive view of the fisheye lens.



I skipped blogging the audition phase of the show this year, maybe because it's too much trouble to keep track of everyone — especially on my dinky Brooklyn TV — but I've been watching.

I liked the way they did the Hollywood phase this week. They skipped all the reality show drama created in the past by putting people in groups and letting personality conflicts and artistic differences play havoc with the selection process. Good! I always hated group assignments at school. (But I must say that the coolest "American Idol" performance of all time came from one of the Hollywood week groups.)

This year, Hollywood was all about the on-stage audition. With one exception. We saw Josiah Leming crumple as he lost sleep and freaked out at the band. He was an extremely attractive contestant and we were invited into his lonely little world. The teenager left home and has been living in his car. I think the producers decided he was not emotionally capable of handling the pressure of the show. Speaking to one of the other very young contestants, the judges talked about how psychological readiness is taken into account. That contestant made it, and I think it was a subtle way of telling us why they rejected Josiah. They may toy with youngsters for the amusement of millions, but they draw the line at teenage nervous breakdown.

Here are the final 24 contestants. I've only mentioned one by name so far in my minimal AI blogging and that is the beautiful 16-year-old Alexandréa Lushington. My personal favorite at this point is the 29-year-old Australian Michael Johns, who sang "Bohemian Rhapsody" this week.

So, on to more "American Idol" blogging and fisheye photography! Am I descending into madness? At least I had the sense — I think it's sense! — just now to order another lens — so my lensomania won't be entirely convex.