'American Idol 6' - Ten Men Sing to Stay

After last week's lackluster performances, I faced a bit of trepidation about watching tonight's show. Do any of these guys have what it takes to be in the top two? (I personally think we'll see a female winner this season, so the best a guy can do is runner-up.)

I feel overall that the men redeemed themselves a bit tonight, but my "wow" factor wasn't as strong for those I enjoyed as it was for either Melinda Doolittle or Lakisha Jones last week.

"This show is dedicated to the one I love." Yep, it was a dedication show, all a bit touching, but none more surprising than seeing Chris Sligh with his wife. They look incongruous, but it's love.

Here's the song lowdown for the guys:

Phil Stacey was up first. I know that folks think he has such a great voice, but he just doesn't do it for me. He sang "Missing You" by Brooks and Dunn. I ain't missing him. I'm just not getting him at all. Randy and Paula liked the performance, Simon said he wasn't jumping out of his chair. Neither was I. I predict he'll make it through, but I'll take no part in that!

Jared Cotter said he was channeling Marvin Gaye. He looked good. He did a fine Marvin Gaye impersonation. I want to like this guy. I think he can indeed sing, but I feel he's too cocky or something in front of cameras. Yes, he has to have confidence, but he's trying to be too sexy for his shirt. Randy loved it, Paula thinks he's good-looking. Simon thought it looked like a cabaret performance on the Love Boat. Bingo, Simon. I think Jared's chances of being in the top six men grew more slim.

A.J. Tabaldo sang "Feelin' Good" as sung by Sophie B. Hawkins. I think he did great, but he's not my choice for the win. I like the song and I enjoyed his performance, but I'm just not seeing "star" for A.J. Paula and Randy thought he did well. Simon said, "That was nearly very good. You did something right. You did something different. And, you were strangely comfortable with it."

If Jared was channeling Marvin, perhaps Sanjaya Malakar was channeling a hybrid between Sinatra and Michael Jackson. I like the look of his fedora and slacks, but not necessarily on him. He sang an Irving Berlin song, "Stepping Out With My Baby." I thought it was a pleasant performance. Not earth-shattering, merely pleasant. Randy thought it was weird. Paula said on pitch and that he was an "old soul." Simon reamed him... again. He said it was like when parents dressed their small children up, was very weak, and a little weird. This is the second week that Simon kept at him. He must either want sympathy votes for him or to get him booted. I say he should leave in view of the other performances tonight, but I bet he'll stay.

Chris Sligh sang "Trouble" by Ray LaMontagne. Oh, and he sang it well. I so enjoy his voice! The judges liked him, I hope the voters do, too.

Nick Pedro sang "Fever" - a song I'm so much more used to women singing. He sang it well enough, but I have no real fever for him. The judges on the whole liked him. I liked the drummer who kept getting the good photo opportunities. I don't think he's all that long for the competition, but I could be wrong. I liked Nick's nod to Napolean Dynamite with a quick "Vote for Pedro."

Then came Blake Lewis. Although my heart is for Chris Sligh, this guy is very entertaining. He performed (didn't just sing) Jamiroquai's "Virtual Insanity." He threw in a tad of scratch and scat, he performed. Excellent job! Paula and Randy had their virtual insanity moment giving him praise while Simon wasn't as excited. He'll go a long way, I know he will.

Brandon Rogers sang another song best known for a female vocalist. He sang "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper. He did it well enough, I guess. It just didn't excite me, not at all. The judges, for the most part, thought along the same lines. I think he might be buying his ticket home although I also think he's very talented.

Not to be outdone by a human beatbox, Chris Richardson, turned up the heat performance-wise with "Geek in the Pink" by Jason Mraz. Wow. He can perform. I still think he's a Justin Timberlake doppelganger, but what can I say? Randy said he's in it to win. Simon declared it the best of the night.

Then, the surprise of the night, Sundance Head returned with a rocking-bluesy version of "Mustang Sally." No, he didn't quite do the Wilson Pickett version, nor the Rascals version. He did the Sundance Head version and made me remember why I liked him in the audition. The judges were thrilled to have him back. Hopefully it will redeem himself from his horrible performance last week and get him back on track.

All in all, I think we'll lose Brandon this week. We should lose Sanjaya, but I don't think we will. Who will be the other one?

'The Black Donnellys'

If you missed the premiere of The Black Donnellys, you can watch it online at the official NBC website or tune in Thursday at 10 PM.

Pictured here is Jonathan Tucker who plays Tommy Donelly in the show. Since so many folks might have missed the premiere, I won't give away the kicker ending, but I guarantee it's a kicker.

This show focuses on the four Donnelly brothers. The "black" part of it has to do with the Black Irish. They grew up in a rather hardscrabble street life in Lower Manhattan. Tommy, the "good" brother, is a talented artist who tends to be more on the straight and narrow than his brothers. But, as events occur, he gets dragged into the life on the streets.

Mob-related, this isn't a pretty tale. I'm not even all that sure how relevant it is to what's going on today with the mob scene. To me, it's a bit more like the Irish gangs some decades ago were brought into today's world. The locale is a bit awry. The brothers own a bar which I know is on the Lower East Side of Manhattan (see other photos below), but there's an elevated subway track, too. That doesn't mesh, but it also doesn't ruin the story.

I feel this story works despite those quirks. The acting is top-rate, the writing is believable, the streets are mean. I want to get to know these characters. I also take a personal delight in looking at the scenery of some of my own stomping grounds up close and personal.


This is a photo I took from within the same bar featured as the one a Donnelly won in a bet. If you click to get the larger shot, you'll see the piano keys on the walls, the deer head (in Manhattan, for gosh sake), and various Shamrock designs on lamps and such. Ignore the people. They aren't dangerous. They're just the NYC Fotologgers group as the Parkside Lounge was our meeting place for a long time.

I like gritty New York and so much of it isn't these days. The Black Donnellys roam the very same streets I roam when my knee is up to it. True, it's good the city has improved, but I always find the sort of neighborhoods in which the show was filmed intriguing.

Because the neighborhood I'm seeing in the show is so much a part of the show, I figured I'd throw a bit more local scenery into this entry. If you click on the shot, you should be able to get the full-sized image.

The first is a photo I took standing outside the bar and looking across the street as a friend of mine locked up his bike.

The next is a photo of a man walking in front of the bar.
And, last but not least, a shot no one could ignore. Between the subway stop and the bar, there's Essex Street. But that's not quite what the sign reads if you look from a certain angle. And, there's a $350 fine for honking.

This is the 'hood of the Black Donnellys and I'll be watching the show. I've been lacking a show for the 10 PM ET time slot on Mondays as there isn't anything which has caught my interest.

That is... until now. Did you watch the show? What did you think?

'Heroes' - "Company Man" - A BulletPoint Report

I don't think we've had a bad episode of this show yet and tonight's "Company Man" surely threw fuel on that fire. Lassie who? Now, Mr. Muggles, there's a professional doggy-actor!

Here's what happened tonight, hopefully I caught all the action:

• Ted Sprague and Matt Parkman searched for clues in the Bennet's house when said Bennets returned home.
• Sprague (Radioactive Hands) is sure that Bennet actually made them (the ones with powers) the way they are and convinced Matt (Mindreading Ex-Cop) the same.
• "I'm just a paper salesman," said Bennet. Oh, but no one believes him except his wife and son. I think even Mr. Muggles knows that's not the truth.
• The show utilized black and white flashbacks to tell HRG's backstory. 15 years ago he was hired as the regional manager of Primatech Paper as a front. The "real" job was "morally grey." Supposedly they wanted to keep the people with powers safe until it became necessary to kill them.
• HRG's (Bennet's) first partner was Claude, the Invisible Man.
• Since Matt can read minds, he could read Sprague's mind as he became more irritated at HRG. He also knows that Claire regenerates. When Sprague becomes determined to shoot Mrs. Bennet, Matt shoots Claire knowing she will live.
• Claire played dead after coming to and Bennet and Matt went off to Primatech to get the files Sprague wanted. Sprague insisted he be the one to stay with Lyle (Claire's brother) and Mrs. Bennet.
• The Haitian certainly was mute in the flashback sequences, but can definitely talk now. How? Why? Did I miss something? When he was discovered by Them as a teen, he couldn't talk but drew a picture of his power akin to "pulling memories like grubworms." In the teen shots, he had the same symbol on his clothes that we've seen on tattoos and Hiro's sword.
  
• In flashback, Bennet and his boss were at the fire scene where Baby Claire supposedly died. Later, he met up with Hiro's father (and a young child Hiro) on the DeVeaux Building roof where Hiro's father handed him young Claire to take care of until they want her back. "This is not a request. She belongs to us."
• Bennet tried thinking in Japanese so Matt couldn't read his thoughts at the house.
• Matt and Bennet know that Sprague is too volatile and could cause a nuclear explosion, so they sort of team up. Bennet wants to get a tranquilizer to shoot Sprague.
• In flashback, it looked like Bennet betrayed Claude (Invisible) to his boss saying he was "hiding one" - a powers person. The boss ordered Bennet to kill him. He drove him to a bridge where he shot him twice. It looked like a clean kill at the end, but Claude went invisible, so...
• Claire tried to rescue Lyle and her mother, but only Lyle escaped.
• Sprague realized that Parkman probably knew that Claire regenerates.
• Upon returning to the house, Bennet showed Sprague his file insisting although they abducted him three months ago, they didn't cause his affliction.
• Mr. Bennet's boss arrives, tipped off by him, shoots Sprague. Sprague totally freaked and nuked out. Everyone gets out of the house except for Bennet who tried to shoot Sprague with the tranquilizer. Claire ended up doing it because he couldn't get close enough.
• In flashbacks, it was three years ago Bennet needed glasses and told Claire she was adopted. She's the one who chose HRG - Hornrimmed Glasses.
• Bennet's boss told him it was time to kill another partner as the Haitian "stole" Claire after the scene at the house calmed down.
• Bennet followed them to the same bridge as the Claude scene and they all got out of their cars. It turns out that Bennet set it up to look like the Haitian shot him and escaped with Claire. The Haitian shot him in a non-vital abdomen area. Then HRG told him to go deep and erase any thoughts he might have.
• So Claire is now on the road with the Haitian and Bennet's memory is wiped.
  
• Both Sprague and Matt are recaptured and held at Primatech.

Wow. I don't know how efficient Primatech is, though. At about 10:30 PM ET I received an email from them saying it was urgent I read it before 9 PM. I haven't gone all through it yet, but think it probably tells a bit about the woman at Primatech who might have powers. Or, maybe it's about Mr. Muggles' powers!

Regarding 'The Black Donnellys'

I'll be writing a bit more about this show sometime tomorrow evening before American Idol starts, but this is odd... and worth mentioning...

As I was watching the show, I was thinking how much I enjoyed the Washington Square Park area scenes because I'm so familiar with the area.

But it got better. The bar scenes. Oh. My. God. I know the bar. I have plenty of photos of friends and me in and around it. It's the Parkside Lounge on East Houston on the Lower East Side. I really don't know all that many dive bars, but that's one I know fairly well. The piano keys on the walls, the windows, the pool table, the set-up, it's the Parkside!

Very weird.

The show is good. More on it tomorrow. My Heroes post will be up a bit later tonight, so stop on back.

'The Amazing Race 11: All Stars' - Ep. 2 --or- "I Think I Was a Man in a Previous Life"

First, I want to apologize for not getting this posted earlier. I ran into some unforeseen technical difficulties. But, I'm back and ready to race! Er, to write about the show, anyway.

Was the first season all that long ago? I realize that it's season 11, but the show is often on twice a year. If memory serves, the first season was in 2000, but I didn't look it up. So I could be wrong.

What's my point? Well, I look at Team Guido and they look a bit older, but they're really quite the same as they were in the first season. The ChaChas (Oswald and Danny)? They haven't aged a heck of a lot. The Frat Boys? Well, one hasn't changed much (Kevin) while the other aged about 25 years since the first season. I adored them in their first run of the race, but this season it wasn't enjoyable to watch death-warmed-over Drew. Sigh. On the other hand, the ChaChas are a hoot! I think Oswaldo is cute, too.

Onto the show...
After a recap, Drew talked about having altitude sickness. That didn't seem to happen to anyone else. As an ex-skier who's been up there where the air is thin, I'd say it might have struck him so hard because he wasn't in good shape. I'm no doctor; I don't even play one on television. But I have seen altitude sickness hitting the very thin, the very heavy, and the not healthy. He also seemed to be an accident in motion for the whole first leg.

Led by Romber (Rob and Amber), the winners of the first leg, at 7:42am, teams left the Pit Stop to head for Santiago, Chile. The last team, Kevin and Drew, left at 9:44am, making for a two-hour gap betwixt first and last. That's more than we generally see, especially this early in the race. Dave and Mary were the team to leave before the Frats and they had almost an hour on them. David and Mary lost some time helping tow a stuck-in-the-mud Charla and Mirna. The Frats also got stuck in the mud, but Kevin was a human tow for them. (See, he hasn't changed.)

Okay, I have to say it. I never want to see Rob and Amber on Survivor again. I didn't care for her on the show and he's just been on it too much. But during their run of Amazing Race 7, I thought they were a strong and good team. They don't bicker a lot, don't belittle each other, and Rob usually has a trick or two up his sleeve to get ahead of the pack. He has creative thinking and although I still could take or leave Amber, I enjoy watching Rob on The Amazing Race.

I'm getting a bit tired of watching the inevitable airport scenes. Romber and the ChaChas managed to find a flight which should hit the connection to Santiago about 40 minutes before the most obvious flight. Of course, we all know that the best-laid plans of mice and Robs doesn't always make it to fruition. Due to a delay, the other teams all caught up.

Before I leave the airplane, I feel I should mention that Drew started throwing around David and Mary's bags as they put them in the first-class section and they weren't traveling first class. What's up with that? I thought it unduly harsh and it certainly turned Kentucky against the Frats. The other teams aboard seemed shocked, too. What has gone wrong with Drew, I ask? Yikes!

Once in Santiago, the teams had to drive to Codelco, a huge copper-mining company. Bingo, a Roadblock! That, of course, is a task only one member of each team can complete. This one called for attention to detail. The racers had to enter a boardroom which made me have Trump-shivers, but thankfully was different. There were alphabet letter clues all over the place and the racer had to find them, then unscramble them to spell out the clue. It was Dustin (or Kandice) who first tied in the letters with the pictures on the wall.

One such picture was labeled Chuquicamata Mine. One by one, teams got out of there, leaving Joyce and Ian getting more frustrated by the moment, not to even mention how Uchenna was twitching and Teri trembling. Surprisingly, the first thing Mary did when she entered was to memorize the pictures on the wall as she thought they held a clue. Finally Joyce got it, tipped off Ian, then ran to try to catch up with the other teams. Ian thought he must be losing his cop-touch.

The clue led the teams to the town of Calama to the location of the driest desert in the world. Rob acted out when Eric went to a newly opened counter from the end of the first line. Although Rob said he considered it a "plan to stir the pot," Amber was not too thrilled with his behavior. She thought his scene to create problems just made him look silly. Even though they had words, they weren't outright nasty to each other. For my sake, I'd prefer they stop the "babe" bit, though. It's a pet peeve of mine with couples on the show.

The teams were faced with a Detour, this one having to do with the local economy. They could go for By Hand or By Machine. In By Hand, they had to put on and tighten a zillion lug nuts on a huge piece of construction equipment. Okay, maybe not a zillion, but certainly not four! In By Machine, they had to use a front loader to scoop and dump sand. Rob, with a background in construction, eased his way through Machine It. I noticed that the By Hand task which the majority of teams chose seemed to be the most time-consuming.

Upon completing the Detour, teams then had to drive 71 miles to and through the Valley of the Moon - a very sandy terrain with a speed limit of 40 KPH. After they finished that, they had to head to the Pit Stop which was located in the Valley of Death. (Eep.) It all sounds simple enough, right? Some teams sure had problems with it.

For "all stars" who have raced this race before, you'd think they'd not freak out like Mirna did when a local let them down. She was throwing money and jumping up and down. She reminded me of one of those rubber dolls you squeeze and the eyes and ears pop out. Although Mirna and Charla had a point about Dustin and Kandice helping pay for the "tour guide," the Beauty Queens called the drama surrounding Mirna (and Charla to a lesser extent), perfectly spot on.

Drew totally screwed up, taking a wrong turn and then keeping to the 40 KPH even when the speed limit increased. He fussed and whined. Poor Kevin was all I could think. Most of the teams seemed to take that same wrong turn, but in the end the arrival order to the Pit Stop was:

1. Amber and Rob - They each won an off-road motorcycle.
2. Oswald and Danny
3. Joe and Bill
4. Eric and Danielle
5. Uchenna and Joyce
6. Dustin and Kandice
7. Teri and Ian
8. Charla and Mirna
9. David and Mary
10. Kevin and Drew -- Eliminated

I so wanted to love the Frat Boys again, but it's as if Drew's mind and body were in some other place other than in the race. That and the fact that his health seems shot in the past seven years (or so). As much as I hate to say it, I'm glad they were eliminated. I couldn't keep cheering them on when Drew obviously couldn't run the race.

Once again, the ChaChas provided fun lines for the night. "Who says gay men can't drive?" "I think I was a man in a previous life." You have to remember these are the two guys who went shopping in the middle of a leg because they just "had to shop." Yet, both stand up to the plate and try their hardest at the tasks.

Also, during this leg, hopefully David and Mary learned that this isn't a game of alliances. It never was. You help Charla and Mirna or the Beauty Queens, don't think they'll return the favor. Actually, I think the one most likely to return a favor to Kentucky at this point would be Rob. And, that's only because he knows he could blow away and leave them gasping in his dust.

They still haven't traveled much for two legs, but I enjoy seeing how the teams are interacting. How about you?