Thursday, May 27, 2010

How Crystal Bowersox lost American Idol

My husband is surprised by the outcome of American Idol last night. I am not. Let's break is down in an analysis of their final performances so that we might understand where things went wrong.

Tuesday they each sang three songs, two bad and one good. Each of their first two songs were awful and then they saved the best song for last so at first appearance it looks pretty even. But when we look closer we find the fatal flaw in Cristal Bowersox's plan. While Lee's first two songs were downright boring, Crystal actually accrues negative points with the song Black Velvet.

Her failure with this song is two fold, including errors in both wardrobe and song choice. We're talking about an attractive woman here, with curves, and she comes out in this figure forming black dress that hugs every curve right down to her thighs where it explodes into ruffles that chop her off just below the knees. And as if that isn't enough the ruffles are higher in the front than in the back where they curve down below her behind. So as the camera pans behind her all I could think was "Butt Frame!" In this dress even the thinnest of waifs would look hippy. I don't know who designed that dress, but whoever it was didn't understand a woman's tukus AT ALL!.

And then we get to the song. There's no doubt about it, Crystal Bowersox has a fantastic voice. But why does she have to sing a song that is designed to be career stopping. This one hit wonder from the '80's is one of the most over-wailed songs on the planet, and most of the wailers aren't that good at it. I can't hear the song without being reminded of the countless times it's been murdered, in American Idol auditions and karaoke alike. This song even stopped the career of the original singer, Alannah Myles, who unbeknownst to most actually sings other stuff, and I bet you've never heard any of it before. She recently came out with another album called... Wait for it... That's right, "Black Velvet," you can't make an entire career out of one song.

So maybe Lee won the cute guy vote, or maybe the Crystal fans just got complacent, but I think Crystal could have been much, MUCH better and hopefully her first album will be more current.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Coke and Korea

So let's be honest. The most annoying occurrence of my day was whatever idiot left a coke in the freezer at work overnight so it exploded all over the York Peppermint Patties. Yes, I keep Yorks in the freezer. That's the way they should be eaten. But they're very hard to get to when they're frozen to the bottom of the freezer by a sticky brown mess. And while inhibition of my snacking habits is obviously the greatest annoyance of my day, let's face it. I've pretty much covered that topic in less than a paragraph and that makes for a really lame blog posting so in an effort to be more globally interesting let's move on to something of more... um... global interest.

Korea. No not the war that was way back in the 50's though I did love watching MASH reruns with my college roommates, especially Alan Alda, but I digress. I mentioned Korea to one of my friends today and he said, "What are you, some old fart? Talk about something freakin' relevant!" or something along those lines. And while I would like to thank him for his wonderful support, I would also like to point out that Korea is new and relevant and stuff is happening there, and I learned new things about Korea just yesterday.

For instance, just yesterday North Korea announced they were cutting all ties with South Korea and no longer considered them their Korean brothers. Okay, lets get this straight. For the last sixty years you've been acting... brotherly? With the barbed wire and the guys with the guns? I don't know how your parents raised you, but mine sure didn't raise me to treat my brother like that!

So anyway, yesterday I was reading about the whole North Korea getting mad at South Korea because South Korea actually believed the international committee that studied the... No wait. This is not going in the right order. Okay, this may be a little stream of conscious, but we're going to have to go in the order I read it.

North Korea is cutting off contact with the south because South Korea set up loud speakers along the border blaring whatever kind of pro-South Korea messages they wanted to blare. They blared these messages because this international committee found that a ship that was sunk a couple of months ago was sunk by a torpedo from a North Korean submarine. And where did South Korea get the idea of setting up these speakers blaring propaganda? Why from the North Koreans of course.

In the 1950's North Korea built the "village" of Kijŏng-dong in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. They set up loud speakers in this "village" that blared pro-North Korean messages loud enough to be heard in South Korea. They blared these messages up to 20 hours a day until 2004 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kijong-dong, and you can believe everything you read on the Wiki). That's right, noise pollution intentionally generated for YEARS. Now whats worse about this village? It is ostensibly a nice little farming village with an unusually prosperous educational system, hospital, and an exceptionally high number if electrically wired buildings for a small rural town in North Korea. There's only one problem here. There are no farmers. There's no glass in the windows of the buildings, and there are no interior rooms. In fact this whole town was built just to show the prosperity of the north and to entice South Koreans to defect to the north. Um, yeah, I see that happening.

So let me get this straight. In a country that is industrially depressed and the difference is visible at night (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Korean_peninsula_at_night.jpg) here is a government that is willing to waste resources building a shell of a village, wiring it, putting up loud speakers, but they're not going to actually let people live there. Believe what you will about Democracy vs. Communism, but I hate waste.

If you're going to build a town to impress your neighbors, at least make it a working town, let people live there. If it's such a nice town that it's supposed to show how advanced you are, don't you think the folks one town over with their telephoto lenses are going to notice that there are no people in your town, that they can see through your buildings out the other side, that in a town of 200 farmers you're going to see people out and about working not just a skeleton crew that comes out and sweeps the streets. You're missing shops, and animals, and families with children.

And think about it, if you really care one whit about your citizens are you going to build a bunch of crap to show off in turn robbing your people of the good those same resources could have been put to use building roads and schools and bringing power to people who could actually use it? Of course not! A good government, especially a good communist government (if you believe such a thing exists) is going to work to improve efficiency, eliminate waste, and bring resources to the people who need them. North Korea in it's desire to show progressiveness, displays the exact opposite. And they're putting their idiocy on display exactly where it is most easily observed by the south, in the DMZ.

My resources are random articles I've read on MSN and the Wikipedia, so you should probably take everything I say with a grain of salt, cause my facts could be off. Still it seem to me it would be really hard to be people ruled by such idiots.

Oh, and if that was your Coke in the freezer it better be cleaned up before I get back to work tomorrow. If it's not, well, I'll probably end up cleaning it up anyway. But you better watch out, cause I'll be bitchy about it.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Hit and Run

Those of you who read the ORIGINAL Complaint of the Month know something about how I feel about foul language. To summarize, I think that people cuss because they are ignorant and don't know how to use the English language. That's not to say I NEVER use curse words, but it's very rare, and when I do use them it's a conscious choice. Suffice it to say that using curse words in excess is not the way to get on my good side.

This was really brought home to me Friday as I was headed back to work after lunch. I was stopped at a stop light in my nearly ten year old Honda Accord and this woman (I won't call her lady) in a white SUV barely tapped me in the rear bumper. That's a long light, and it had turned red just in front of me so I had plenty of time, and got out to take a quick look, just to see if there was any damage. I made it maybe a step and a half out of the care and she started yelling that she didn't hit my F'ing car, and to get back in my F'ing car and F this and F that. I tried to calm here, by saying I was just checking, and she continued screaming. I have never had anyone scream at me like that in my life.

She was so close to my car that I couldn't tell if there was damage and so I said I'd just let the police handle it and got back in my car. I pulled out my cell phone and tried to dial but my hands were shaking so badly that I mis-dialed 911. When the light changed I didn't move and and she decided to go around me backing up and tapped me 2-3 more times in the process because there wasn't room for her to back up. Instead she leaned on the horn until other cars (there were two lanes plus turn lanes) cleared out on either side and she had room to back up. So, as she drove around me, I had the cell phone in my hand dialing the police, and I snapped a couple of pictures with my cell in the hopes that something would come out clearly.

So I went on to work, and met the police in the parking lot at work. There was white paint on my bumper, it really didn't do any damage but to the paint, plastic bumpers and all. And the picture? It couldn't have been better; it had her license plate front and center clear as day.

What gets me is this. If she'd been nice and gotten out to look with me and said, "Hmm that doesn't look like much but here's my number in case you find something," I would have let it go. But if you have a foul mouth and curse me up one side and down the other I will prosecute yo' back side!

Why you so Whiny?

Those of you who knew me when I lived in Baltimore are familiar with the newsletter that started out "The Complaint of the Month" and became "The Complaint of... Whenever." For those of you NOT familiar with my "Complaints" they were a forum through which I could express my satisfaction, or more often dissatisfaction, with life, the universe and everything.

That being said, a blog is not a place to post monthly, heck if I do that y'all will wander off and never return. Don't worry, with age comes a whole new level of corochityness. I may not post daily, but I'm sure I'll post plenty often enough. So I guess I better get on with it.