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No. Sorry.

American Idol Brutalizes the Beatles Again

Simon himself it was a little weird last night compared to last week and said it may have been a mistake for American Idol to go back to the Beatles well one more time, and he was right. A horribly uneven set of songs from the 11 remaining contestants. Well, the songs were good, they were Beatle songs (George Harrison songs were included in last night's show), but the performances were...wow...yeah...a couple recaps:

Someone needed to tell Amanda that Back in the USSR was a parody/tribute of a Beach Boys song and filtering it through her Jack Daniels state of mind really took it in an odd, and somewhat incorrect direction. Please don't ever do that again...

Kristy Lee Cook tried to make up for her brutal and unwarranted attack on 8 Days a Week with a slower tempo You've Got to Hide Your Love Away and nearly put the audience into a coma.

David had a rather triumphant return to form with The Long and Winding Road, and song that deserves a simple arrangement (more on that later), but can take a little heavy handedness like it got last night.

Poor, poor Brooke got it all wrong with Here Comes the Sun and was terribly awkward, which is a pity since she did nail Let It Be last week.

Everything else...just sorta faded into the background as forgettable noise that sounded like at one time were songs from the Beatles, which is a pity of course. Now here's the thing about the Beatles that nobody seemed to realize, at least consciously: the arrangements on late period Beatles songs were (to me) set up to not really tolerate much fiddling around with their arrangements (as is the tradition sometimes on American Idol), again Phil Spector on the whole Let It Be album notwithstanding. Very simple, catchy, direct and most of all - good melodies and arrangements. Play with it too much and it all goes pear-shaped. The earlier songs, which I am surprised more contestants didn't go for (songs from The White Album seemed to stand out for me last night really...), can stand to have their arrangements tampered with, but in the case of those songs (by that I mean songs on albums up to A Hard Day's Night or thereabout) they're harmony songs that were sung by a combination of mainly John and Paul.

So either way, the American Idol contestants were screwed, really. Brooke really did nail it last week as I think she rather instinctively knew that Let It Be is the performer, the piano and a very minor accompaniment in the background (again, the Phil Spector produced version notwithstanding). That way the inherent beauty and elegance in the song stands on its own for the listener.

It's also rather fortunate that last night nobody tried to do a version of Something, else there would have been rioting. Really. Do not touch that song - ever. Especially on something like American Idol. A slight twist of the dial takes it from classic to schmaltz in an instant.

American Idol Brutalizes the Beatles

Actually, it wasn't all that bad, and specifically they were working off the Lennon/McCartney songs, so nobody was going to be singing While My Guitar Gently Weeps last night. There were actually some breakout moments like Chikezie singing She's a Woman and Brooke having her little teary-eyed moment after singing Let it Be. I'll even give some props to the Nickleback-inspired arrangement to Eleanor Rigby that David Cooke performed.

Now let's talk about the not so good... Like the blindingly karaoke version of I Saw Her Standing There from David Hernandez. That almost made me feel bad for him it was so bad and phony and staged. But that was nothing compared to Oregon's own Kristy Lee Cook and what she did to 8 Days a Week. Horrible, brutal, unrelentingly dark and unholy things were done to this song which was then abandoned in a dark alley to either die cold and alone, or claw its way back to the light and hope for a passing stranger to take pity on it and give it the care it needed. What happened was that the changed the arrangement to country. Not just "country" but "Country!" with the capital-C and the ! at the end. In fact, they added (hick) after that just to underscore it all for you in case you missed any subtlety they had to offer. Yes, it was a "Country! (hick)" performance complete with fiddles and hayseed attitude.

It's not like the Beatles themselves were adverse to doing country so to speak. Offhand I recall them covering a Buck Owens song on the Help! album. But there is such a thing as good taste, and this arrangement was having none of that and wore it on it's sleeve with a sick sense of pride. For that, I wept and remembered why I am now longer allowed to have buckets of rocks next to me when I'm watching American Idol.

Happy Birthday, DNA and some sad news...

Two short notes today:

Not DNA as in DNA, but Douglas Noel Adams, my favorite author and writer of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Happy Birthday you cool frood - wherever you are.

Our second note, far sadder is the passing of Dave Stevens, artist and creator of The Rocketeer from Leukemia yesterday.

That is all...

The coolest thing ever to a 9 year old...

I was checking out Comicbookresources.com today and found this...



This is the coolest thing ever and something I really wanted to see when I was 9 years old. I'm guessing Alex Ross feels the same way. The George Reeves Superman of the 1950s, the Adam West Batman of the 1960s, Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman in the 1970s (with the season 1 1940s costume) and Jackson Bostwick as Captain Marvel in the 1970s.

Now let's see a whole story with the group of them together...I can work! I know it!

If you're like me...

...and you may be, more than you'd care to admit...you probably just, like me, unsubscribed to the Make Magazine video podcast. No more Bre Pettis for one, and secondly, this week's project was a phenomenal waste of effort to the point of hurting the brain. Chopping up a book to stick in the guts of a Palm III and portable keyboard? Why? Don't offend me with a project like that.

For followers of Bre, he does have the I Make Things podcast going.

Time for some reader mail...

It's been a while since the last post, but I'm sorry to say that it's been a very hectic time as usual with work, and a general feeling of crabbiness due to a very broken down mattress and box spring draining whatever energy I may have had. However, a new mattress and box spring now awaits me every night, and my back thanks me for it.

So today I was planning on writing up the Creature Features entry, but I got some mail asking me a question that I thought I'd answer here. Tony S in Sydney, Australia writes:

"...and lastly, noticed how big a Green Lantern fan you are, how did you feel and react to actually being included in one where Neil Gaiman and Mike Allred are the storytellers ?"

Well, thanks for writing and excellent question, Tony. Hey kids! Go grab your copy of Green Lantern/Superman: Legend of the Green Flame. I'll wait. Got it? Keen. Turn to page four. Look at the top panel. Who is that there sitting behind Clark Kent? Oh, that's me in that Daily Planet polo shirt, and that really is a Green Lantern ring on my hand there as drawn by my friend, Mike. Which makes me, as Mike said at the time, the unofficial, unmentioned emergency backup Green Lantern for this story in case Hal Jordan was incapacitated or unable to fulfill his obligations as Green Lantern in anyway.

This would probably come to quite a surprise to Neil Gaiman I am sure if he were to find out...

So the story of how it all came about: In the Wikipedia link above you can get a little background on the story of how the comic came about if you want. Where I come into the story as this little tiny footnote of a footnote is that, yup - I like my Green Lanterns all right, and Mike got a chance to draw one of the opening segments of the story with Hal Jordan and Clark Kent at the Daily Planet offices. So he called me up and asked if I wanted to appear in the book and to get some reference pictures of my desk at work and all that.

Who wouldn't jump at a chance like that?

So soon thereafter, we were snapping some pictures of my work setup at the time and all that for the aforementioned reference. Now, it turns out, that at Symantec at the time, I wasn't the ONLY Green Lantern fan on site...

My friend, Harry was working with me in the same group and was also a really big GL fan as well, and already the owner of the comic shop we went to and a couple other guys who worked and hung out there were also going to be in the panel. If we didn't get Harry in there, he'd be really hurt, and I didn't want that. So after we got my shots done, we clued Harry into what was going on, and of course, he was pretty eager to get in on the action as well. The guy looking straight towards the reader in the panel? That's Harry, and like me, being in a Green Lantern comic was a pretty big moment. When the actual book came out that week we were all excited and showed it off to family and other friends of ours. A Green Lantern title, starring Hal Jordan as Green Lantern, written by Neil Gaiman? How can you go wrong? We were all a pretty proud group of fanboys that week.

So here's where it gets kinda difficult.

As some, or maybe most of you may know, the process of putting together a comic book involves at the start the pencil artist, then the inker after the writer turns in the script. After the penciled pages are inked, they are then scanned in for coloring and lettering. Once the scans are complete, the original art is returned. If the penciler and inker are two different people, the art is split up between the two. Mike was the penciler, Terry Austin was the inker. So the art would be divided between the two of them when DC Comics were finished with scanning the art. That meant that Mike may or may not necessarily get the page with all of us on it back.

Well, fortunately, he did...so problem #1 solved. I think Mike even asked to make sure that he even got that page. We did get photocopies of the page of penciled art before the book was published so we could see how we all turned out (great of course...), but Harry really, really, really wanted the original artwork himself.

Problem #2... Mike gave me the page for Christmas that year...and I really didn't have the heart to tell Harry because, again, he'd be crushed. Especially since he started wondering out loud about getting the page well before Mike gave it to me. So, I would usually dance around the issue whenever it came up, which wasn't often, really...but when it did...and I didn't want to hold it over Harry's head that I had a one of a kind item that he'd never be able to have himself.

Unfortunately, Harry passed on a couple years ago, and I never had the chance to break it to him that I had the art, because I wasn't able to find a way to tell him in a way that wouldn't make him feel bad in some way about it. Because I knew if I just told him, he'd be a little upset, and probably get a little more upset because he'd know that it wasn't for sale. But I guess in his own way he knows now.

So, how does it feel to appear in a book written by Neil Gaiman? Pretty damn awesome if you ask me. Both then at the time and now. I also feel pretty honored that Mike included all of us in the book, and I'm forever in his debt on that. But to be on the printed page drawn by a good friend and being included in a group of other friends? It feels even better because it does capture that moment in time right there with all of us all of a sudden working alongside Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and Perry White for a panel or two with visitor to the Daily Planet, Hal Jordan. To the inner 8 year old heart and mind, you can't top that ever.

Hope that answers the question, Tony. Thanks for writing!