American Idol

Allow me to give my two cents in on tonight's epic two-hour American Idol bonanza. The remaining 12 contestants had to sing all Diana Ross songs and, as usual, Randy bitched about some of the vocal performances as "pitchy" (honestly, what the fuck does this word mean -- even Blogger's spellcheck can't make heads or tails with it), Paula made some reference to a metaphysical or metaphorical or just plain crack-influenced-cal "heart" shining through, and Simon was menopausal. I tend to agree with Simon's critical judgments about 90% of the time or about as much as I disagree with Randy's or Paula's (well, that is, when she's not in the throes of consistent incoherence). But Simon's assessment of Jack Osbourne's, oh my mistake, Chris Sligh's rendition of "Endless Love" was absolutely wrong. I thought that fatso didn't make a mistake when he went with the new wave-ish arrangement because, honestly dude, this is fucking "Endless Love" we're talking about here.

As the judges will not let you forget, the contest this year is pretty much between Lakisha Jones and Melinda Doolittle. My friend Ogster hates the fact that the three judges unnecessarily and consistently make bugaw to these two. But I will argue that, as today's show shows, Jones and Doolittle take command of the stage and have complete domination of their vocal stylings. Compare them against Brandon Rogers' and Haley Scarnato's timid performances tonight --most especially when they committed the mortal sin of forgetting the goddamn lyrics. Just one more thing about Melinda Doolittle. For the longest time now, I've been racking my brain trying to remember who she looks like. My friend VJ finally put me out of my misery by providing the answer: Melinda Doolittle looks like Carding of The Reycards. Yeah, I know. I'm still kicking myself sore for not coming up with that chestnut.

If you read through some of the fan forums, last week's show caused quite an uproar because Sundance Head got cut out of being included in the top twelve. This by itself should not be surprising because this guy is quite unattractive. However, couple Head's ejection with the fact that Sanjaya Malakar is still in the contest got quite a few panties in a bunch. This is because Malakar is simply this season's (or maybe all of the season's) least vocally talented contestant. I mean this guy has never received any encouraging word about his performances from the judges -- or at least from Simon -- the only judge whose opinion actually matter. Don't you notice that Malakar seems to forget how critical the judges were with his singing when the three say that at least his hair looked great that night? His smile looks so happy, you know, so gay. The word is that the only reason why this sissy boy is still in AI is because of his race. That is, Indians living in the States are propping up this mediocre singer's chances every week. Is this wrong? I'm not sure myself. I wonder how I would feel if it was a lackluster Filipino singer lucking out on largess brought upon by race. Oh, I know. I think that would be absolutely not wrong.

Another WTF moment was when the judges thrashed Stephanie Edward's superb performance and pimped Jordin Sparks' horrendous rendition of the lamest song selection of the night, "If We Hold On Together." I thought "Endless of Love" would be the lamest but Sligh managed to make the save with the cool arrangement. Jesus. Are you kidding me? If We Hold On Together? And have no creativity at all and perform this with the basic arrangement? And to lump Sparks in the same league as Lakisha and Carding? I am absolutely indignant. However, I am consoled by the fact that tonight's injustice involving Sparks will correct itself tomorrow night. That is, I'm fearlessly forecasting that Malakar finally gets the boot that he so richly deserves. Although, I'm thinking the sting of defeat will only be momentary. Seacrest will put things into perspective for him by saying that he may have lost in American Idol but the hair, Sanjaya, it's all about the hair. And then we'll see for the final time, I hope, that gay smile shining through.

The Oscars

A billion people have once again watched Hollywood's annual Bacchanalia of who are you wearing?, gratuitous grandstanding, and reversals of fortunes -- and that's just Ryan Seacrest on the job at the red carpet. The expected winners of the three biggest categories that are Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Actress, did, um, win expectedly. I checked the message boards in the forums where the minutiae of the Academy Awards is discussed and got the impression that everyone was fairly accepting of the victors but with the notable exception of the winner for Best Foreign Language Film -- writer and director Florian Maria Georg Christian Graf Henckel von Donnersmarck's (I bet this guy would get a crapload of trouble getting an NBI Clearance because his name is so, you know, common) German entry The Lives of Others. It beat what was the evening's expected winner Spain's Pan's Labyrinth. Honestly, I don't want to know though if I want to sit through a movie about life in the former East Germany to make an educated judgment if this is better than a film about a child trying to deal with real-life horrors by escaping to a fantasy world using Franco's fascist regime as a backdrop.

For the Best Picture race, I thought that this was pretty much narrowed down to two nominees -- Babel and The Departed. Why? Simply because I haven't seen the other contenders in the field and can't comment on them. As good as The Departed was, I couldn't shake the idea that this was a remake of Infernal Affairs which I thought was quite disappointing because it was just so full of itself. Also, the fact that everyone kept pointing out to me that The Departed was a remake of Infernal Affairs just annoyed the living fuck out of me. I think I liked Babel more because I kept thinking about it long after the experience of watching was over. I have replayed this film in my mind over and over again to try to find out what the deaf-mute girl wrote on the note she gave to the cop. But, no dice. I still haven't got the foggiest idea. (I also checked some of the message boards on Babel and discovered that there is much speculation on what she wrote on the note as the number of days that Babel's Rinko Kikuchi hasn't shaved her vulva)

As far as Oscar fashions are concerned, I don't have the queer eye wherewithall to quibble on why Kerstin Dunst's fashion ensemble flopped horribly while everyone thought that Cate Blanchett was a goddess walking among mortals. I was flabbergasted though when I tuned in to E!'s red carpet coverage and saw that one of the gay guys doing color commentary actually had one of those onscreen etch-a-sketch-style pens to visually highlight any specific comments he'd make. If a gown was set too unflaterringly low at the top, he'd actually take his pen and trace the offending V-cut like those sports commentators would for a Superbowl play. This was so fucking nuts! I swear, these gay guys can be so anal when it comes to all this fashion bullshit (pun intended).

So, what great questions have been raised in this year's Academy Awards? That Scorcese is not as good as Alfred Hitchcock or Stanley Kubrick because he's finally won an Oscar while these two legendary and, um, dead directors will never will? That Beyonce is really good in acting because she made it appear that she was actually happy for Jennifer Hudson winning Best Supporting Actress? That Forest Whitaker can't make a decent acceptance speech to save his life? No, I think it's this -- Is Nicole Kidman actually on Botox?