Democratic debate AND American Idol commentary

Yes, I was able to watch both. For once it pays to live on the left coast 🙂 The debate was 6-8pm and AI was 8-10pm. I did run the DVR for both in case I missed anything, but I was able to catch nearly everything live. Click below for more – my fingers are flying!

The debate first – it was just Edwards, Obama and Clinton this time. All seated at a large round table with Tim Russert & Brian Williams. I liked that a lot. They all seemed much more relaxed and much less argumentative. It seemed more like a discussion of issues than a back and forth debate of point/counterpoint. A few times it seemed like the back and forth even resulted in a reconciliation of ideas. Brilliant. I think it also highlighted more just how they would each handle things like a meeting with a head of state or a contentious cabinet meeting. I really hope they use this format for a GOP debate in the future. From my perspective, there was no clear winner or loser. Their personality differences which I already knew about were evident again. Hillary really is the consummate professional politician. She was polished and smooth and showed off her vast policy background on all the topics raised. I am rather tired of hearing about her ’35 years’ though. She brought that up every chance she got and it was a LOT! I know that Guliani is often criticized for saying “9/11” all the time, but I think a Clinton+35 years drinking game during a debate would get you equally as drunk as a Guliani+911! Now, Edwards can be just as grating with his “son of a millworker” stories, but there are actually times when he does not bring that up! However, Edwards is the best at connecting with real life struggles of most voters. When he brought up how 200,000 Iraq war veterans would be going to sleep last night under freeway overpasses and on park benches etc, you could feel the audience suck in their breaths in sympathy. That was an effective statement for sure. Edwards did bug me a few times by not actually answering the question posed. I had the same problem with him in Chicago where each question was just an excuse for him to launch into a campaign stump speech on the topic given. Clinton and Obama are much better about that. Obama got the most laughs. He seemed very relaxed and while not as smooth and polished as Hillary nor as prone to repetitive rhetoric as both she and Edwards, he still made his points. I can really see him getting a diverse group of opinions in one room to find some common ground. Another thing NBC did last night that I think worked well was to allow the candidates to ask each other a question. Another tactic I would love to see in a GOP debate. In summary, I think if you were an undecided Democratic voter, this debate may not have helped a lot. However, I think these are three excellent candidates. All of them well suited in their own ways to doing this job. I will be proud to support either of them in November.

Now the fun stuff 🙂 Oh was American Idol fun! It was so cool to hear the music and see the judges and Ryan again. Philadelphia auditions were up first. Heh – they say California is the land of fruits and nuts! Yeah, well we are NOT alone and shows like AI prove that 🙂 There were the usual characters in crazy outfits with extreme personalities. As Simon put it at one point “all that just to get on tv for a few seconds”. Pretty much. Credit the William Hung craze for inspiring all the freaks and geeks to come out of the woodwork and try to get some air time. Here are the ones that stuck out in my mind:

• Did you see the guy who ended up waxing his chest/stomach hair? Because it was ‘distracting’ to Paula? He basically showed up what looked like an ancient Egyptian bikini! Seriously. Of course once he was clean shaven they only allowed him to sing about 2 words!
• Creepy, creepy guy who wrote a song about being Paula’s stalker! The way he kept walking closer and closer to her as he sang? Ew! Randy was laughing and Paula just looked stunned while Simon had the decency to be disgusted and tried to cut the guy off. I really hope they had run some sort of background on that guy before they let him in to see the judges. “If she was a bathtub, I would caulk her.” Huh? Ick and Ew!
• Crazy woman with too much makeup and sparkly stuff all over her who kept on saying “take it!” Again, WTF?
• Star Wars girl. Ugh – just sad. Not even funny sad or sympathetically sad, just sad.
• Low voice guy – the first one they featured. Nice looking man with a mustard colored suit – I mean, he looked pretty sharp really. But whoa! When he sang..it wasn’t singing! It was this low pitched mumble that ended up putting Randy into such a fit of laughter than he had to turn away.
• Then there was Temptress. Yes, that was her name. A 16 year old girl. I am still rather puzzled about that whole scene. They spent a lot of time with her and her family. She was singing for her mom who is chronically ill. Then they showed the mom. This woman is huge. Now, there was no mention of why she was sick, or if the sickness came before the size, or the other way around, but it seemed to me not only that they spent a disproportionate amount of time on her story (for someone who would eventually be rejected), but that they also shot the two of them from camera angles which made them look even more enormous. I don’t know. I felt very conflicted over the whole thing. Yes, I felt sorry for them. And yes, you felt sympathy when the girls started crying after being rejected. And yes, it was nice to show the judges being nice (even Simon) and hugging her and walking her back out so that they could meet her family, but….all that just to show that the judges are NICE? Not sure about that. The family all signed up to be filmed so I guess I cannot say that show took advantgae of them but…I kinda think they did.

Now for the good singers who made an impression on me. I want to keep notes so that 10 weeks or so from now I can track back and see if any of these audition stand outs actually make it a significant way into the competition.

• A girl from Oregon who is the perfect follow up to Carrie Underwood. Fresh face, tall, not exotically beautiful, but the classic American girl look. Kick boxer, cage fighter who trains horses for a living – only 19 if I recall. Lovely voice. It had a hint of country in it, but at least it wasn’t overtly twangy (I hate country music so that would have turned me off)
• The 26 year old mom with the disabled daughter. Just a lovely woman with a great, authentic personality (no airs or affectations) who is a wedding singer. Also a great voice, though as the judges pointed out she needs to lose that wedding singer stage act and just trust her voice to carry the songs.
• A really gorgeous man with short dreadlocks who could be a GQ model right now. Yowza! On top of that he can sing! Really well too.
• The last girl they showed – I’ll call her Miss Pure. Long wavy white blond hair with a very clear and pure voice. Very sweet.

I know there were more who were good, but those are the ones that made an impression upon me so that I am looking forward to seeing more of them in the Hollywood portions.

That’s it! There is more AI tonight from Texas auditions. I am guessing lots of country (barf). Oh well.