I haven't talked about TV in forever. I still watch it. Last night was the end of an era. I've talked about LOST quite a few times on here.
It was at the very top of my list. I started watching it at the beginning: September 22, 2004. I was 23 years old. We weren't married. I lived in Fort Worth. We got married. We lived in Texarkana. We live in Arkansas. I got Jon to start watching around season 4. Now we watched it together.
This was October 2006 for the season 3 premiere. I watched it at Sarah's house because Jon wasn't watching yet. That shirt doesn't fit anymore. Jake wore it back in February.
Bye, LOST! What a great six years.
The other show...
I pick Lee. Jake likes Crystal. They were both my favorites from the beginning. At least the best two made it to the end!
I hope y'all saw this skit/commercial on SNL last week. It absolutely describes my mom perfectly. There are TV shows that she's been watching for YEARS that she can't name a single person's real or character name. She'll be 2/3 of the way through the season of a reality show (Survivor/Big Brother/etc.) and only be able to tell me one or two names, but usually just gives a vague description. ("I don't look at the names when they come on the screen!") Then she'll tell me about a movie that she and my dad watched: "We watched a movie tonight." "Oh yeah, what was it?" "I don't remember what it was called, but it had that guy that was on that other movie about the..." Almost every time. She'll remember the name of the movie OR the name of one of the actors. Rarely both. I was so glad we were together when this skit came on. Apparently lots of moms have this problem. I'm glad she's not alone. She was laughing along with it.
I told her that if they made a sequel to this, it would include word-for-word the conversation that I had with her this past Saturday night. She was describing the end of the CSI: New York season finale and was describing who was in the scene. She doesn't know anyone's real name or character name so this is how they were listed... "Captain Dan" (Gary Sinise) "Karinkidink" (Melina Kanakaredes) "Hill - Obama's Guy" (Hill Harper - I'm proud of her for knowing part of his name.) "Kelly Clarkson" (Anna Belknap - Someone who "looks like Kelly Clarkson") "And that weird lab guy/girl" (I don't know which person that is because I don't watch it.)
And that's who's on the show. Love you mom! You're cute! And not alone!
A local boy named Kris Allen has made it to the top three contestants on a popular television program called "American Idol". As a reward for making it to this stage of the competition, he is allowed to go visit his hometown and be honored for a day. I went to this such event. I was off of work that day so Jake and I went with my friend Sarah and her 5 year old niece. We decided that, since so many people here are fans of this Kris Allen kid and would want to show up to this event, we would park on the opposite side of the river of where he was performing and walk across the pedestrian bridge directly to his location. Well, after a not-long-but-not-short walk to said bridge and after starting to cross it, we were told it was closed and we would have to take the next bridge down the river. Hmph. So after a not-long-but-very-long walk to the next bridge, across the bridge, back down to the pedestrian bridge's location, and Sarah's plastic flip-flop wearing niece proclaiming "I think this is the end of my life," we finally made it to the concert location.
On the side of the river we started on, we saw his ride. Not bad.
On the way across the bridge, we saw this "person" lying in the middle of this grassy area, hopefully still alive. It was about 112% humidity that day. Sarah's niece said "Today is not a good day for a nap."
The Chamber of Commerce is voting for Kris.
A lot of people showed up.
Jake loved it!
And me.
He sang three songs. And by "songs" I mean "minute and a half version of songs like they sing on the show."
After the show we went inside a nearby venue to eat. Jake liked the lights.
After our two mile walk to get from our car to the show, we decided to shell out the dollar and ride the trolley back over the river. Here you see Jake's first trolley ride and Sarah giving a T for trolley.
Did anyone else notice this Creepy Weird Guy in the audience at American Idol tonight? He was just sitting there motionless, not smiling and not clapping. They showed him more than once and it was weird enough for me to think that maybe he's some kind of marketing for a new show or movie? It was just too weird. And for those of you dying to know who my Idol favorites are this year, since I have a complete lack of posts about the topic, they are as follows. My favorites are Allison, Adam, and Kris. I like Danny, but I'm just kind of over the hype about his greatness. Scott and Anoop are my least favorites and I don't really care for Matt either. I liked Lil a lot at the beginning and actually proclaimed her the winner, but she's just not doing that great, which is sad. So that's my opinion, for what it's worth, which I'm guessing is really not much. Go Allison, Adam and Kris!
I've been planning this post for a while, and could have actually posted it back in February, I think, when it actually happened. It was on the list of things I needed to post about all at one time, but never did. So here it is now.
My brother and I both got one of these books from my mom back in my senior year of high school... 1999. (Although he somehow managed to nearly destroy his, mine is still in surprisingly good condition having been moved to 6 different living locations since then.) We were both excited to keep up with the state quarters. 2008 seemed so far away and I thought it would take forever to fill this book. It was and it did.
6ack in January, I had only one space left to fill in the book, as the Hawaii quarter came out at the end of 2008. I couldn't find it anywhere. I somehow got in the conversation about it with the boys and one day C found the long searched for Hawaii quarter on the playground at school and gave it to me when he got in the car that afternoon.
Today I remembered I had never put it in there as it was still sitting in my purse. I pulled it out tonight and shoved it into its designated hole in the book.
So beautiful and also a little sad. I've been committed to this book for 10 years now and it's finally full. It looks good.
On that same note and yet completely unrelated, don't even get me started on the sadness I'm feeling for the end of ER. I've been watching that show since EIGHTH GRADE! Fourteen years now! I grew pretty exhausted of it a few years ago, but it's really gotten pretty good again for the past couple of years. I teared up a little bit last week as they showed the preview for the finale this Thursday. It should be good and more tears are to be expected. Back when ER had its 300th episode in 2007, I wrote a horrible Ode To ER. You can see it here if you want. I'm warning you. It's pretty bad. Thanks for treating me well, ER. I don't know what I'll do next Thursday when you're not there! Yes I do. I'll probably watch something else I TiVo'd earlier in the night. But I'll still miss you.
American Idol starts again tomorrow! Woo! I promise not to go overboard with the AI talk this year like I did last year. I'll wait until Top 24 time to really talk about who I like. That whole writing-down-everyone-who-comes-on-screen business last year wore me out. Although it did get me a lot of blog visitors. Unfortunately there are still three weeks aka 6 episodes aka WAY too many hours of audition episodes, but there will be two weeks of Hollywood Week, which leads up to the announcement of the Top 24, which is great. We'll also see what everyone thinks of this new chick judge. It could be nice to have a sober female judge on the show. For anyone who has joined me since last year, or for those of you who need a refresher, I will point you to my Top Ten Pieces of Advice For Auditioners of American Idol that I posted last year. It pretty much all still holds true. Enjoy the first few weeks!
I'm alive! For the past about 6 weeks I've been feeling pretty sick every night and not really feeling up to sitting at the computer. I've been gradually feeling better, but then the Olympics happened. If you don't remember, I heart the Olympics! Every night for the past two weeks, I've come home from work and then watched 4-5 hours of the Olympics (depending on how late it went). Needless to say, I've been very tired for two weeks. I've enjoyed the swimming, diving, and gymnastics the most. I am upset to say that, with only 24 hours left of the Olympics, that I haven't seen two my of favorite and most incomprehensible events: the long jump and the high jump. Both of those completely blow my mind. How do you propel your body that height and/or distance? Unbelievable. I hope it will show up sometime in the next two hours tonight or sometime tomorrow afternoon. It just amazes me. At Christmas 2004, my mom (who buys me the Peanuts Hallmark ornaments every year) got me these adorable ornaments:
I obviously haven't had a reason to put them out. (I don't put very many non-Christmas ornaments on my tree... especially Olympics ones.) I was very excited to be able to use them as decorations during this time. I pulled them out of my Christmas box when packing it all up in January and put them in my desk to put out this August. They are on top of (and hanging from) our TV stand. Thanks mom! Speaking of Olympics, I've been doing Olympics stuff with D this past two weeks. (Remember, I'm homeschooling him for Kindergarten... more on that later in the week.) On this page he colored the rings (his first experience with colored pencils) and was supposed to draw his favorite Olympic event. He LOVES the diving and has been watching it a lot. He did this completely adorable and awesome drawing:
Way to go, D!
Now that I'm feeling better, I have quite a few things to post about. I will hopefully be doing a baby update on Monday. (I work 1:30-9:15 tomorrow, so not tomorrow.) I'm already almost through with the torture known as the first trimester! Thanks for anyone who's still around. I promise I'll do better from now on!
If you've been watching ABC at all over the past few months, you have seen flashes right before the shows come back from commercials for one of the best shows ever canceled. Back in the winter/spring of 2001, The Mole premiered on ABC. I watched it in my dorm room. My roommate may have watched with me. I don't remember. The second season started in the fall of 2001, but for some reason was only on for a few weeks. They finally finished the season in the summer of 2002 and I watched it with my three roommates in our apartment. It was great! The next two seasons fell into the unfortunate format of "Celebrity Edition" and weren't as good but were still fun. Great news, though! After six years, the original Mole is back on ABC starting tomorrow night! You have to watch it! If you love The Amazing Race, you'll love The Mole. They're nothing alike, but are equally awesome and are the two best reality shows on TV. The premise is this: Twelve people will be competing in several challenges during each episode. They are working to earn money that will go into the final prize amount for the winner. Some challenges will be group tasks and some will be individual. They will earn money for completing the task or for however many people complete the task. HOWEVER, one of the twelve people is The Mole and is sabotaging the tasks to keep them from earning the prize money. They won't be able to sabotage every task because they'd get caught, but they have to try to do as much as possible. At the end of each episode all twelve contestants will take a quiz about who they think The Mole is. It will ask questions such as "Which team was the Mole on in the whatever challenge?" or "Who was The Mole sitting next to at dinner?" and so on. The person who gets the fewest questions right is kicked off. (Or in the case of a tie, whoever took longer to finish the quiz.) You really really really should watch. It's a great show. I don't want it to be canceled again. I'd love it if it would come back for several or lots of seasons. Watch it! Tomorrow night (Monday) on ABC at 10/9c. Do it!
Yes! Such a wonderful surprise! I didn't think it could happen, but it did! David Cook won American Idol Season Seven! I have loved this guy pretty much the whole season. I'm so proud of him! The other best moment of the night:
Carly and Michael were a-mazing together. They should just get married and make beautiful little babies with incredible singing talent. They could be the next von Trapps. Anyway, they should have easily made it to top three, if not final two, with Carly, of course, winning. Cleary the producers agreed about Michael based on how much screen time and how many solos he had. I didn't complain. I can't wait to see what they, as well as David Cook, come out with. I'll be buying. Until then, I'm off to iTunes, which I finally got working on my computer again, to buy some more of this year's singles from those three artists. I'll be back next January for Season 8 of American Idol!
And on a completely unrelated note, do any of you girls in Little Rock watch Grey's Anatomy and want to invite me over to watch the finale with you tomorrow night? Thanks and thanks.
It's what everyone is talking about right now. Or at least me. Here are my thoughts about the whole American Idol Season Seven finale, voting, and such. First, that opening with the boxing business was ridiculous. Did you notice, though, that they said they were fighting for a title reserved only for the best then showed Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, and Chris Daughtry?! In case you missed it, he came in FOURTH place. That was pretty weird. I've been a fan of David Cook's since the beginning. Since my girl Carly left, I've been voting for him every week, as I did last night. I think he's just a better overall performer than David Archuleta. Now I've never said that I don't think Archie sings well, because he does. He has a great voice, but he is just SO boring! It's the same slow ballad every week. The one time he tried to sing an upbeat song (last week: My Boo) he failed miserably. David Cook rocks my socks off. He's a better interviewee. He has more personality. He's bold. He has self confidence. I can't say any of that about David "Aw, Shucks" Archuleta. Good kid. Great voice. Not great performer. David Cook SHOULD win, but I really think that David Archuleta WILL win. And here's why. I've been going back and forth about how I think voting is going to go. Based on the fact that two weeks ago, ol' Ryan told us that when there were four people left, the top three (Davids and Syesha) were only one million apart each. Jason's votes seemed to probably be split between the Davids (since Syesha went home), with (I'm guessing) more toward Cook. Now the determining factor, you would think, would be where Syesha's votes would go. I think Syesha's fans are more likely to vote for Cook, making him come out on top. Archie's fans are clearly preteens and grandmas. I thought that it would also help Cook that his demographic (probably around 18-40 year olds) is so large and have been watching American Idol for a while. Something big hit me last night, though. As I was calling in to vote, I was getting a busy signal quite a bit. Somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of my calls were going through, so much of my time was spent with votes that don't count. However, based on what I know about teengers, the 12-17 year old voters all have unlimited texting on their phones. That means every one of their votes counts, because there's no busy signal on texts. I think that fact alone may push Archuleta to win. Hopefully not, but that's what I'm thinking. It really may be better for Cook not to win though, because then he won't be forced to sing the horrible stuff Idol makes their winners sing for the first year. He will be allowed to sing whatever he wants, and make him more likely to be successful (see: Daughtry). Either way, I think he'll have the most mainstream success of this year's contestants. Hopefully Carly too. Who do you pick?
I finally got around to watching Thursday's ER season finale tonight. I have enjoyed this show for fourteen years now. Although I am kind of tired of it, I still enjoy watching it. I had heard that something major happened at the end of the episode and I was anticipating seeing it. You, as my local provider of NBC television, have been consistent with good service to me in my 10 months of living here in Little Rock. However, I was not happy tonight when, in the last 30 seconds of Thursday's ER, this happened:
I wonder if the person in your control room just wasn't paying attention and thought that "Abby walking down the street" was the end of the episode, rather than the typical "Ending Credits." Next time, maybe you should have your director prescreen the episode preceding the news to make sure that they know when the episode is actually over. Also, I would like your director to please send me the last 30 seconds of the show so I can know what caused that ambulance to explode. Thank you, Ashley
For as long as reality shows have been around, I've compared contestants' looks to other people. This season on Survivor, it seems the contestants look like cartoon characters.
Erik looks like Shaggy.
Natalie looks like (is) The Grinch.
The finale is this Sunday, so who do you like? (I LOVE Amanda... now that James, who was my favorite before, is now gone.)
Tonight was kind of a weird surreal night of reality tv. A bunch of strange things seemed to go on. I watched American Idol top 5 performance show, then Dancing With the Stars top 6 results show. Here are my observations:
American Idol: 1. I miss Carly. 2. How drunk was Paula tonight? Thinking Jason had sung two songs after just one? This is how she looked at that particular moment. And here is the story and video of the blessed event on the Entertainment Weekly website.(I happened to be watching tv with my camera tonight.)
3. Ah, Jason. So mellow. I like his eyes a lot. He's not the best on the show, but I still like him. Something I hate however is that group of creeps who insist on swaying their arms back and forth during every song, no matter how fast or slow. A-like-so:
I frequently want to chop their arms off. Especially when they are between me and the performer. They don't have any rhythm. They're annoying. They're distracting. That group should be eliminated completely. I even saw an interview somewhere with Simon saying he hates the mosh pit too. Hopefully they won't be back next year. 4. Now that my precious Carly is gone, I love David Cook the most. He should win. His voice is so great. 5. I was nervous both times Brooke got up there after last week's debacle. Luckily, she did alright. That first song was ridiculous though. I agree with whoever said that it just makes me think of the horribleness that is Shrek. I think it was these guys. (If you have time, you should watch their videos. So funny!) 6. David Archuleta makes me want to throw up. I'm sick of him. He's good. Whatever. I'm tired of his boringness. 7. Syesha just keeps getting better. I loved her at the beginning, then she started to not do as well, but she's back! 8. My final three would be David Cook, Jason, and Syesha. Goodness knows that will never happen though. Unfortunately, I, along with the rest of the universe, am predicting an all-David top two. 9. My rankings. Your problem: (Carly), David Cook, (Michael), Jason/Syesha, David A., Brooke It makes me really sad to put Brooke there, but I think it's her time to go. She's done well, but she just looks like she's going to pass out the whole time she's singing. 10. The whole don't-comment-after-songs and cram-ten-songs-into-an-hour business made for a very awkward episode. 11. Why does it have to run several minutes over time every single week?
Dancing With The Stars: 1. I was forced to watch this show live this week since Big Brother is now over. I enjoy taping it and watching the whole show in about 15 minutes. Live is excruciating. 2. Samantha looked like she stepped out into 100% humidity right before the show tonight. My camera couldn't quite capture her hair's full glory. 3. Def Leppard? Probably 100 years old. Good music. Really old guys. 4. Christian is having arm surgery and is continuing on the show? He should have just quit and let him be the person out for the week, letting everyone else continue. Jon said injuries like that put football players out the rest of the season. 5. Speaking of football players, I love Jason and Edyta. I'd like for them to win. 6. The Kenny, Jerry, and Len commentary thing was a lot funnier last season, but it was still pretty good. 7. I was sad to see Shannon and Derek go. I liked her because she was trying so hard. She really wanted it. Plus they were really cute together. 8. I'm dreading this 100th Episode business next week. I think I'll definitely be recording it and watching it in the fast forward.
The show that I am most embarrassed to say that I love is Big Brother. I have watched all nine seasons and still love it as much as the first season. (Well, actually more than the first season, because that one was really boring.) I've been meaning to post something about this pretty much since the first episode of the season. The finale is tomorrow night and the person I want to mention is still on there. Adam ("Crazy Eyes") makes these strange faces basically all of the time. When he's mad. When he's happy. When he's talking with someone else in the house. When he's talking to the camera. All of the time. From the first episode, I have thought that he looks exactly like Biff on Back to the Future...
Yes? No? Definitely yes. (Took a while to get a screenshot of both where they're making the same face.) Although my favorite houseguests have gradually been voted off (Natalie, then Sharon), I have liked Ryan pretty much the whole time (except for the time he stole that money from Sheila during that one game) and hope that he wins. Who do you like?
And on a just barely related note, here's a really funny (clean) video of Tom Wilson, the guy who played Biff, doing a song about his role in Back to the Future during his stand up act:
I haven't talked about American Idol in weeks and weeks! It's about time I share my current rankings. They've stayed about the same the whole time. I know that my rankings are definitely not with a lot of yours, but let me know who you like. I'll listen and not be too judgmental.
1. Carly Smithson 2. David Cook 3. Michael Johns* 4. Brooke White* 5. Jason Castro* ^ 6. David Archuleta** 7. Syesha Mercado 8. Ramiele Malubay 9. Kristy Lee Cook
*These three routinely rotate among these three spots, but they're always really close to each other in rankings. Some weeks are better than others for each of them. This was their ranking this particular week.
**Ok. The kid's good. He's just not my favorite. Or top 5 favorite.
It was pretty much the coolest thing that I've ever done. My BFF Erin and I had gone to the American Idol concert tour after Season 2 in the fall of 2003. It was our first year out of college and first year of teaching. We decided that night that it would be so fun to go to LA in the spring and try to go to a taping of American Idol. So we planned it all out and made our way there during the third week of March in 2004, during our Spring Break. We spent the whole week just going to TV show tapings (The Wayne Brady Show, On Air With Ryan Seacrest (twice), The Tonight Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, and Less Than Perfect), which, by the way, are all free. Wednesday, though, was the best day of the week. We had our tickets which told us that they did not guarantee us seats, so we got there early to get in line. We showed up around noon and didn't see a line yet and were told we could come back at 3:00 and park in the studio parking lots. We went back around 2:30 and saw that there was already a line so we parked in the neighborhood across the street and got in line. Around 4:00 the line moved inside the studio gates. (We were out on the sidewalk along the street before.) We were lined up outside the building, watching as friends and family of the contestants walked by and went in. They took in the first group of fans to fill in the available seats that weren't taken by friends and family. (It's a REALLY small studio.) Around 4:30, they pulled the next small section of the line, including us, into a small area with four rows of benches outside of the building. There were pages walking through the crowd asking who everyone was a fan of and they were clearly listening for specific names. We just shouted everyone's names. They pulled a few people in and were on the row behind us looking for the next group to take in. The lady asked how many people one girl had with her and they said "Four" and we turned around and stuck our hands out holding up two fingers and shouted "TWO! TWO!" "Great. Come with me." Yes! They led us inside and I only wish someone had a video of me walking into that room. My jaw dropped as I walked into the studio. It's just like it looks like on TV! (Except WAY smaller.) They took us to our seats and said that we were going to pretend to be friends of Camile Velasco. (Yeah. Who, right?) They did say that if her friends and family showed up, we would have to leave though. We were sitting right between Jasmine Trias' cousin and Matt Rogers' brother. We had great seats! We ended up being right behind and to the right of Randy Jackson. The show started at 5:00 and it was the first elimination night during the top 12, so we got to see all 12. It would have been better to be there Tuesday for the performance night, but we were lucky to even get tickets in the first place. (I had actually written to the website where you sign up for tickets saying we would just be in town for the week and the president of the website sent me the tickets. That wouldn't happen now with how big American Idol is these days.) It was an hour long show that went super fast. It was fun to see what goes on during the commercials. They let the audience ask questions to the contestants. We found out the Fantasia got her clothes from Goodwill... she means Bebe... and that George Huff can't frown even if he tries. The craziest part, though, was that we actually got on camera during the first segment of the show...
I'm the third person in the row past Jasmine's cousin and Erin.
Here's the screen shot. And a few things we saw at the show (from pictures on the Fox website)...
Here are the 12 that we saw.
Although we missed individual performances, we did get to see one of those horrible group numbers.
Clay Aiken performed.
And Jennifer Hudson (You know, the one who won the Oscar?) was in the bottom three. The girl on the left was the one who went home.
The craziest thing, though, was that two weeks later, when we were back at home, I was watching Fox one night and a commercial for the show came on and we were on the commercial! There had been 5 episodes since we were there and they somehow picked that clip of us clapping as the one to put on the commercial! We're right after Paula talks right at the beginning...
CRAZY!
So that was one of my favorite days ever. March 17, 2004.
We're almost to the top 12! Here are my rankings for the American Idol Season 7 Top 16. The boys change rankings each week but the girls seem to be staying pretty consistent.
Top Guys: Michael Johns, David Cook, Jason Castro, David Archuleta (Still not into that guy.)
Middle Guys: David Hernandez, Chikezie Eze
Bottom Guys: Danny Noriega, Luke Menard (noticing a trend with this guy?)
Top Girls: Carly Smithson, Brooke White, Syesha Mercado, Asia'h Epperson
Middle Girls: Ramiele Malubay, Kristy Lee Cook
Bottom Girls: Amanda Overmyer, Kady Malloy (noticing a trend with both of these?)
Unfortunately, votefortheworst.com is championing Danny Noriega and Amanda Overmyer. Looks like those two will probably be around for a while. Boo. I'm very excited about getting the guys and the girls together for the top 12 and Idol only being on twice a week, but not excited about the resurgence of the two hour episodes.
It was at the very top of my list.
This was October 2006 for the season 3 premiere.
Bye, LOST! What a great six years.
I pick Lee. Jake likes Crystal.
