More American Idol Gripes and Predictions

Last night's show, April 13, really made it sink in why Idol is starting to bore me. When Adam Lambert was on the show, when David Cook was on the show, you were anxious to see what they would do. They were kings of taking a song, any genre, male, female vocals, whatever, reworking it and making it their own. There was a tension, a surprise factor.

This season it seems like everybody is simply playing to their strengths and aiming for whatever they hope their future demographic will be.

I've felt it for the past couple of shows but it's seriously time for Paul McDonald to go. He's so out of his element in this competition that it's getting hard to watch. Don't get me wrong. McDonald's Nashville-based band, Grand Magnolias, is pretty much right up my alley. In fact, I have one of their songs lying around here somewhere on a Paste Magazine CD sampler. They're even working with a guy I used to know very well, Ken Coomer, former Uncle Tupelo and Wilco drummer and now producer. I played shows in Nashville with his former band, Clockhammer, and we lived in the same building.

So I want to like Paul McDonald. Hell, he's even an Alabama boy like me. But his voice is very much suited for a certain type of music and a certain type of song. Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll" is not one of those songs and it was painful to watch him strut through the five note vocal range on that one. Yet the judges loved it. I guess he's getting the outsider vote. Maybe he's getting the vote of the girls who like his smile or the older folks who like him for doing Johnny Cash last week. Whatever the case, Idol is not the proper vehicle for his talents. We've come a long way from where he was playing to his strengths on earlier shows and now he's trying to evolve into an arena rocking superstar. It's embarrassing that he's still around and Pia Toscano isn't. Add in that he led off the show and he's in tonight's bottom three.

Lauren Alaina went straight for her target audience of tweener and teen girls with Miley Cyrus' "The Climb" and nailed it of course. It's so insane that this girl is only sixteen. Only thing I don't like about Lauren is her mother who looks like the pageant moms you see on shows like Toddlers and Tiaras. The big, two-toned hair and god awful french manicure nails and whitened teeth. She looks like an adult version of the little girls at the glitz pageants. But Lauren is so funny with her aw shucks mannerisms. It was hilarious to watch her act so surprised when Jimmy Iovine told her she had a better voice than Miley Cyrus. Obviously Lauren doesn't yet understand what happens in a studio to make singers like Miley and Taylor Swift sound like they do. It was tasteless of Jimmy Iovine to suggest that Lauren should be concerned with stealing votes from former Pia supporters. That shouldn't have been put on air. But Lauren is safe.

The one contestant who is really pissing me off is Scotty McCreery. If you didn't already know, this kid is going to be around forever. He's already a legitimate country mega-star. He'll be the male equivalent of Carrie Underwood, make millions, sell millions, etc. He will be huge. My problem with Scotty is that it's just boring watching what he does on Idol.

He could easily be doing some of those David Cook/Adam Lambert knock it out of the park performances like taking a song like "Sound of Silence" from The Graduate and making it into a country song. But he's just doing country karaoke. Even on Elton John week, he took the one, totally obscure Elton John country song he could find to do. Where he could have done an awesome country version of something like "Levon" or "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" he just played it safe. When it sounded like he was going to do the theme from Midnight Cowboy last night I actually got excited and then he backed out of it to do another easy country cover. Good for him, bad for the show.

Stefano Langone did another gooey soul song. I know this kid can sing but he's boring as hell. He's better suited to be one of five in a boy band but there aren't any boy bands out there any more. He needs to try to find a more contemporary voice or his career is over before it starts. He'll be in your bottom three.

Casey Abrams is legit. He's the one sure bet for surprises this season and he delivered in spades Wednesday night. Taking the Nat King Cole song "Nature Boy" and doing an Esparanza Spalding thing with it. Except for his little grimace/growl/sneer thing he seems to do every song, it was a show-stopper. The night's theme was songs from movies and I guess Casey was going with the David Bowie version from Moulin Rouge. At any rate, it was the first moment of the evening where I got that feeling that Idol is worth watching. I also totally dug the way Casey was dressed. He was kind of working this Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate meets Andy Kaufman look that was just cool as hell. Kudos to Casey for keeping it interesting.

Haley Reinhart is just sexy. Awesome voice and sexy as can be, she took on Blondie's "Call Me". I don't know why somebody felt she had to have a guitar player on stage with her pulling off a bunch of out of place rock riffs but it didn't work. This could have been one of those awesome moments where she took this song and redid it with just piano or just acoustic guitar and she could have really given it some dynamic vocally. Instead it just seemed like bachelorette party karaoke. The judges ripped her for it but I couldn't help thinking that the same critique they gave her was perfectly suited for Paul McDonald's performance as well. Idol's producers really need to take some steps to get these kids outside the box to keep the show more interesting.

It's amazing to me with the mentors and Interscope producers doing the arranging on the songs this season that we can still end up with stuff that sounds like a kid singing into a hairbrush to a song on the radio. Haley's got pipes to spare and sizzle for days. Her outfit was jaw-dropping hot and she has amazing stage presence and the end result last night was a snooze. Coulda, woulda, shoulda, but she'll be in the bottom three due to lazy mentoring so shame on those guys.

I apparently got a lot of hits on my blog for my last post about Jacob Lusk being gay. I've seen posts out there about him being married and having three kids so he can't be. Just a reminder that there are plenty of gay and married men out there. Just look up the term "beard" on urbandictionary.com and that will explain it. Gay guys do not burst into flame if they have sex with a woman. Just sayin'.

All that aside, and it really doesn't matter to me, Jacob ripped another one doing "Bridge Over Troubled Water", one of the greatest songs ever. He made it soar and did the whole Jacob thing with it. I still think he's too gay and black to win this thing but he's got the world in front of him when he's voted off. The only problem I noticed with Jacob last night is that he apparently doesn't have the ability to control the tempo of his vibrato. That's easily fixed with training and he can do everything else vocally; I just don't think he's aware of it. He only has one speed, a too fast one, on his and it felt odd in the slow and gentle opening of this song. I think he's safe but not for long.

The show closed out with James Durbin doing the god awful Sammy Hagar song "Heavy Metal" from the movie of the same name. Loved the movie and it was iconic but the song was a weak link in the movie and a horrible choice for Idol. Yeah, I get it, carrying the metal banner and Zakk Wylde and all that. Again, here was a chance to do something transcendent. Well, for example, what Guns 'n Roses did with the theme from the Bond movie Live and Let Die. Of all the movies out there and I'm not sure if the choices were limited to movies from FOX or not but the opportunity was there for Durbin to take a non-metal song, make it metal, and blow our socks off. Instead, we got a rote version of a crappy song done well. Remember back to David Cook doing "Eleanor Rigby" or "Billy Jean" and you know what I mean.

Granted, on this one, Jimmy Iovine wisely tried to talk him out of the Hagar choice. I mean, seriously, what about a metal version of "Don't You Forget About Me" from The Breakfast Club? My God! There were so many opportunities to do something great with this opportunity. James Durbin will still be safe but last night's performance was utterly forgettable.

So, I've got your bottom three as Paul McDonald, Stefano Langone, and Haley Reinhart with Stefano going home. I would have picked Haley and it should be Paul but Jennifer Lopez put out the calling all girls to vote for Haley thing and Paul's still got the teeth and the dance so .... Adieu, Stefano. Now sashay away. Sorry, RuPaul reference there.

Lastly, Steven Tyler is just boring the ever-loving crap out of me. "You're just beautiful", "that was just great", "you're just amazing", etc. There is nothing at all insightful or helpful coming out of that man's mouth. It's like he's hanging out, watching a show, and keeps forgetting that he's on there to give the show some industry cred. People actually want something useful from him and he's just consistently phoning it in, show after show. I desperately miss Simon Cowell.

The Resurgence of Ayn Rand and Tax Lies Redux

Thanks to the Tea Party loonies and a lot of gullible sheep out there, Ayn Rand has really come back into vogue in the last few years. Her book, The Fountainhead, was made into a movie starring Gary Cooper back in 1949 but her other opus, Atlas Shrugged, has long been considered too long and complicated to make into a movie.

Until now that is. The long awaited project is being released in two parts with part one scheduled to open in theaters April 15.

For those unfamiliar with Rand's writings, I highly encourage you to check them out at least to know what informs the beliefs of the far right fringe out there. The writing is bloated, the characters are black and white, two dimensional tools which the author uses to prove her mythology.

In short, the world of Ayn Rand is one in which there are "prime movers", those who make humanity move forward, and their antagonists who are people shot through with schadenfreude; what would be called in contemporary culture "player haters".

Atlas Shrugged is a thousand plus page work laying out Rand's world view and the philosophy of objectivism. Basically the belief that complete and utterly unfettered free market capitalism is the highest moral good there can be and those who question the belief are something akin to the Lucifer of the Bible.

There's a story in there somewhere between long-winded monologues which serve to prove Rand's point but you can easily skip past huge chunks of reading without missing a beat. Ayn Rand had no ability to self-edit in other words. She felt as if every word and every concept in her books had to be flogged to death and this makes for a very taxing reading experience.

My personal hero, Upton Sinclair, wrote in a similar style with very 2D characters. The good guy vs. the bad. But he did it in 500 pages or less typically and was much more prolific.

At any rate, Rand's style of writing basically works like this: in the land of Lala, people hated the capitalists, the capitalists went on strike, the world fell apart, they came back and saved it. So, you see, capitalism is the only viable system out there.

So, I could write a book and say in the land of Lala, the socialists took power from the capitalists and the world was saved. See? Socialism works! I just proved it.

It really is that cut and dried in Rand's works. There is little or no actual proof offered in anything. She just makes a case that completely unregulated capitalism is the only viable way to Utopia.

Of course we have seen historically what happens when business is not regulated or is under-regulated. Rand's prime movers don't care about humanity. That's not the point. They just go about the business of making things and making money and everybody else benefits from their drive and zeal. It's the ultimate trickle down theory.

It's a shame that reality has to pop in to cloud the image. Those of us who aren't stupid know that deregulation or lack of regulation is what has led to things like slavery, forced child labor, sweat shops, weapons dealers, blood diamonds, workplace deaths, etc.

In capitalism the cream doesn't always come to the top. Frequently you get scenarios like a good product like the Flip camera coming out. A company like Cisco buys that company for $500 million and two years later kills it. Or somebody like Facebook buys out an awesome company like drop.io and shelves it so nobody can use it anymore.

Yes, capitalism can be a force for innovation but it can also be a humbling destructive force with a massive dark side.

And let's not forget that such innovations as space flight, the Internet, hell, just about anything dealing with technology, has come out of government funded initiatives. The Soviet Union, not the capitalist one, put the first satellite into orbit with technology developed by Nazi Germany.

Atomic energy was created by the U.S. government due to its desire to kill a bunch of Japanese civilians. Most of the quantum leaps society has made in past centuries have been the result of government sponsored projects by kings, emperors, presidents, tyrants, etc.

None of this is admitted in Rand's books. Government is the enemy of innovation at every turn. It's a tool used by the haters to hold back those who could truly help us out.

In other words, it's just utter nonsense. There is nothing about Rand's ideas that has been borne out in reality. But, it gives the far right something to blame for the failures they experience. When Regan's trickle down, deregulation, supply side projects produced higher unemployment and massive deficits it was because there was still too much regulation.

All you have to do is read a little history, the real stuff, not the Glenn Beck stuff, study the early 1900s and see what happens when the gloves are off for big business. You get something that looks a lot like a fiefdom from the middle ages. You get the environment Upton Sinclair addressed in his book The Jungle.

Unfortunately, the followers of the Rand cult will only be appeased when we've gone back to that environment so that they can actually see how much it doesn't work. They're typically not likely to believe history since it's all been written by the liberal media elite.

I just want to ask people out there to think while you're reading. When you just take something at face value and eliminate context, you're just making yourself into a victim. Don't be sheep. Do some research for Christ's sake!

Also, today, Obama finally brought eliminating Bush era tax cuts to an end for the wealthiest Americans and closing some tax loopholes American businesses currently enjoy to the table. You know, like GE who paid NO TAXES last year.

The Tea Party jackasses are quick to remind you that the super rich and corporations pay something like 70% of American taxes. Just to be clear, this is a lie. Not true. They're using the math of x + y = z which tells you that based on a person making a million dollars and being taxed at 25% they pay $250,000 in taxes. Of course, that's not taking anything else into account. Not mentioning tax shelters, write-offs, etc. They're not talking about what is actually paid in taxes. They're only talking about what would be paid if there was no such thing as unscrupulous accountants and a rigged tax system.

The middle class and the poor in America shoulder the tax burden. If you believe otherwise, bah bah to you. You're a sheep. Don't be a sucker.