Old boss, new tricks

Hello,

Random news today: Ryan Seacrest signed a new 3 year, $45 million dollar contract to host "American Idol" for 3 more years. You can tell its a slow news time when that is newsworthy. Honestly I think "American Idol" is about tapped out. The contestants seem to be less interesting each year. When three of the final four are Danny Gokey, Kris Allen and the extremely overhyped Adam Lambert- what does that say about the future of the show? The only consistently good judge is Simon Cowell, the other three judges are overpaid producer's shills. I predict that this show has two more years left before it will be cancelled. Next year will continue the decline and the following season will be the death knell for this franchise.

I would like to make a shout out to my old boss Peter Wiscombe. This last Friday he was on "Jeopardy" and won that night. He moves to the next round which will be next Monday. He's getting a week break because it's kids week this week. Wiscombe was very calm, cool and collected. He's probably the smartest guy I've ever met. (I say that even though his ego doesn't need the help.) He has a wide range of knowledge, so he's perfect for "Jeopardy". Keep on doing well Peter and I'll keep on watching. Thank goodness for the DVR so that I can watch him.

Pearl Jam's new CD was originally to be out this past Tuesday. However it was pushed back to November 20th. That's typical for many CD releases. It will be released exclusively in Target stores on that day. I'm anticipating another good collection of hard edged rock songs. Daughtry's new CD "Leave This Town" and The Dead Weather's new CD, "Horehound", did come out as scheduled yesterday. I haven't come across any review of these CD's as of yet. I don't make enough money to buy them either.

This morning at my doctor's office I finished reading Michael Jackson's "Moon Walk" and it was an okay book. It's not the most deep thinking book in the history of the world. Jackson tends to touch slightly on things that he didn't like. Jackson writes about his struggles with various record companies and his Dad driving him and his brothers to succeed. However it seems like he lightly touches on these parts of his life. The book only has 283 pages and about 50 of those pages have pictures. About the most juicy detail in this book is that he had to be talked into appearing on the Motown 25th year anniversary special. That show and his legendendary performance of "Billie Jean" catapulted him into a big star. If he hadn't performed who knows how different his career would have been.

It's still an interesting snapshot into the mind of a huge legend. Although I wish he would have written more about his creative process. For instance, when writing about the song "Thriller" he doesn't even mention Vincent Price's name. One thing did bother me a bit, everytime he mentioned his love of kids I got the heebie jeebies. I don't doubt that he loved children in a pure sense, but his impure relationships with some kids make me sick to my stomach.

I look forward to reading the updated version of Randy Taborelli's "The Magic and the Madness." That has a lot more pages and I think it will be a lot more in depth. It will be interesting to see more about Jackson's relationship with his driven father and many other facets of his life. I hope Taborelli focuses more on Micheal's creative process as well. For instance how did "Billie Jean" come to be made. I would like the story of that song and the story for "Dirty Diana" would be pretty interesting. He wrote that a lot of his songs did not come from personal experience though.

Last night I watched the last episode of Season One of "Mad Men". A very satisfying conclusion to an excellent season. Yesterday Season Two of that excellent show was released. I think the first season was a lot better than the second season. I'm getting excited about the third season starting next month. I'm hoping Don Draper won't be such an adulterer this season. There's still no word on when the first episode of season three will be.

Be strong Kevin Cogill.

Have a great day, themusicaddict