American Idol - the Business of Making Stars

So, American Idol is live now, and last night the guys squared off. For the most part, they all did a great job. As you know, only 6 of the 13 guys will move forward with the results show airing Thursday night on Fox. I have already picked my six favorites, but it won't be up to me. Colton Dixon (top left) is the best by far, in my opinion. I do believe Phillip Phillips should be up here too.You never know how it will end up when America votes.

   Colton Dixon   Chase Likens
                                                
  Reed Grant   Creighton Fraker
  
 Deandre Brackensick  Joshua Ledet


The weaker performers last night were: Eben Frankewitz, Heejun Han, Aaron Marcellus, Jeremy Rosado, Jermaine Jones and Adam Brock. It is possible Adam Brock could make it in, but I'm afraid it would come at the loss of Creighton Fraker, who sang very well. Don't know how this year of voters will be - talent or does the cute factor play a role? We shall see Thursday.

Tonight (Feb 29), the girls will face off and their top 6 will be announced on Thursday as well.

Trouble at the Airport

Written Oct 30, 2010
Yesterday, my eighty something year old grandmother and aunt left Milwaukee to come visit my family here in NC. After, they checked their luggage in and were proceeding through security, TSA pulled them both to a secondary checkpoint away from the other passengers and pulled out one of their suitcases and laid it on a counter. It was at this point, other armed agents and men in suits gathered around. One of the agents then asked in a challenging manner, who the owner was of the suitcase on the counter. My grandmother stated that it was hers. They asked if she had packed the suitcase herself and she answered that she had. They then asked if she had stored any weapons in the suitcase. My grandmother stunned, answered, "Well NO, I haven't." My aunt then chimed in, "What is it? Is it scissors?" (She once had scissors taken away from her on another flight.) The TSA agent said, "No, Its a GUN!" My grandmother and aunt were dumbfounded. Mind you, this was yesterday, moments after the U.S. intercepted those two UAE airplanes that contained explosives bound for Minnesota. Tensions were already heightened. TSA agents showed them the scanned image of the suitcase. It was true, there was a small pistol there. One of the agents said it was probably a Dillinger. My grandmother and aunt were still in shock, and this incident was now causing quite a commotion. They still had no answers.

The agents opened the suitcase and began to carefully remove clothing items. When they got to the compartment where the gun was, they opened it up and slowly pulled the gun out. When my grandmother saw the gun, her hands went to her mouth. She NOW remembered the gun and how it got there. It was a TOY gun and her grandchild (my cousin) had been playing with it about three years ago while my grandmother was packing an overnight bag. My cousin slipped the gun in her bag so "Grandma could take gun" with her. My grandmother had simply forgotten about it. This commotion lasted 45 minutes and when they were finally released, one of they agents said, "OK Annie Oakley, don't you cause any more trouble today!" Needless to say, they didn't get the toy gun back.

                                                             Grandmother & Sister

Thank You, Barbra Streisand

I say I write, but I'm not published and I haven't written much. Some writers are able to pull ideas and stories from mid air. Me, I write when I am inspired. Deep emotions inspire me to write. Writing conveys what it is I am feeling. It is the job of the writer to place the reader in the middle of a story.  Silent and invisible, the reader becomes a shadow of every character. A good writer takes you there, plugs you in and turns you on. I never went to college. Matter of fact. I never applied myself in high school English or Literature. Moreover, I failed my junior year literature class and had to take Literature I and II my senior year to graduate. Incidentally, it was that same year that I was first inspired to write something that I felt strongly about.

My senior Literature II class, instructed by Mrs. Stephenson, was an especially difficult class. It was evident and no secret to myself or my fellow classmates that there was no love lost between Mrs. Stephenson and myself. She had her eye on me constantly, even when she wasn't looking. It all seemed wierd and supernatural. Classmates would often come up to me after class or at lunch and say things like, "What is it with you and Mrs Stephenson?" or "Chris, she's going to fail you", or "Why is she out to get you?" She never gave me an inch. We would often have arguments over one thing or another and many times I came close to being kicked out of class. I believe I was on one occasion. My graduation depended primarily on a theme paper I was to write. It was to be 60 % of my final grade. It could be on anything I chose and had to be so many words long.

My choice of subjects came quickly. The movie Yentl was released during that time and it stirred within me a great deal of emotion; the music, Barbara, the story line of a woman's place in a religion that made them silent followers. Yentl's thirst to learn; coupled with the secondary plot of her secret love; a love that could not be because her character was portraying a man, and for a man to love another man was a mortal sin, as it was for a woman to be studying the Kabbalah. Oy vey, what's a woman/man to do? I poured my soul into that paper. I wrote and rewrote, changed points and fine-tuned it until I hardly had any fingernails left. I was a nervous wreck for two reasons. I was writing a paper on something that I thought would out me; and secondly, my graduation depended on this paper.

It took her until the week of graduation before she revealed the grades. She handed the papers back one by one, calling out the owners names and announcing the grade and subject of each. I tried to chew on my fingernails, but they were already gone. I waited in growing turmoil and  started to think that maybe my paper was so bad, that she was just waiting until after class to let me down. "And finally," she huffed... and then her words seemed very strange and very distant. I wasn't sure if it was English she was speaking. It seemed liked everything was happening in slow motion, I felt my face go flush and there came a deafening ringing in my ears. I thought I would black out! Surely I have failed and Mrs. Stephenson is savoring this moment to strip me naked in front of my peers one last time. I started to feel as if I were shrinking. The paper flew through the air and landed on my desk. "Chris Johnson, 92 B+; and Chris, you did an outstanding job, why couldn't you have done work like this all year. You can quit biting your fingernails, you're going to graduate!" Suddenly, the weight of the world fell from my shoulders and classmates were slapping me on the back. I felt my face go from deathly white, to red with embarrassment. I was certain it would crack from the degree of change.

Mrs. Stephenson and I quickly developed a quiet respect for one another. All I knew was that I was a senior and I was going to graduate in three days. At that days end, as I lay in bed waiting for sleep to overtake my thoughts, I kept replaying those moments in Mrs. Stephenson's class over and over. I started to wonder who her muse would be the following year. Whoever it was, I hated it for him! I was just glad it was over for me.

My theme paper on Yentl was my first real writing. Thank you Barbra Streisand for inspiring me.