CleverDonkey.com …Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel

Dear American Idol Producers,

American Idol...Reborn?

Sigh.  Another season has ended, albeit with a surprise ending (Kris Allen defeating Adam Lambert), but the finale wasn’t watched in my household.  Again.  We didn’t watch last year, either.  And although we watched most of the episodes this season, we still watched many fewer than last season.

Over the years there have been several consistent issues we have with the show which continue to drain our enthusiasm.  If you care to know them, here they are:

Issue #1: Obvious no-talents singing before the judges during tryouts
I can see you all huddled in your planning meetings, hoping to strike some more William Hung-like ratings gold by putting through idiots, freaks, sad losers, and people whose singing talent is measured in the negative range.  However, that schtick is old and played out and should be retired.  As the judges are so fond of saying, and what keeps me watching, is that this is a singing competition.  Having your screeners put through some croaking clown to sing before the judges is a ludicrous and transparent ploy, please stop it.

Issue #2: The endless, manufactured backstories
During tryouts, you pick supposedly interesting/appealing contestants and provide us with behind-the-scenes looks at their lives, toils, challenges, and troubles.  However, at this early stage these are anonymous singers, so the program would be much more interesting and lively, in our opinion, if you would simply stage the singing competition.  Now, when you get to Hollywood and start paring down the contestants to an identifiable bunch, we might like to learn a *little* something about them…but just a little.  The endless biographing and attempts to manufacture pathos and drama are irksome.

Issue #3: Kara DioGuardi
Who?  Why?  The best way to describe her is to paraphrase Shakespeare thusly:  “Kara is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets her hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.  Her’s is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”  Kara did not have one moment that we saw this season that wasn’t useless, irritating, or both, or somewhere in between.  And don’t get us started on her “song”, which is addressed further down in this article.

Issue #4: Country week
Do you have to kowtow to that demographic?  Have you even stopped to consider how many viewers it drives away (like us) compared to how many it attracts for that one, single episode?  Country music is not what American Idol is about, period, so don’t try to put a pig behind the lipstick – it insults the fans of both kinds of music.

Issue #5: Golden Idol awards
Really?  Just shorten the damn show by 15 minutes.  Please?  Even 15 minutes of dead air would be preferable.

Issue #6: An even number of judges
This puts too much power in the hands of Lord Cowell.  Have three judges…or five judges…but not four.  Having Simon deciding ties also renders the new “Judge’s Save” useless, and makes it “Simon’s Save”.

Issue #7: Lip-synching
This is a singing competition.  If the guests can’t sing live, or the group can’t learn to sing together live, then skip it.  It taints the rest of the program to see such obvious lip-synching by the guests and during the group songs.  It would be like having a slam-dunk competition in basketball, and inviting revered, retired players to perform, but then having to lower the backboard and/or provide them with a springboard in order to actually dunk.  It’s demeaning to the performers and insulting to the viewers, so please stop it.

Issue #8: The horrible finale song
This is the worst issue of all.  When each new season starts, we already start dreading having to sit through the inevitably atrocious, amateurish, pathetic, soulless, empty, fawning, shallow, superficial song that is written for the last show.  There hasn’t been a single one that wasn’t a horrific affront to all things musical.  And it is the absolute wrong note to strike at the end of American Idol.  Over the course of the season, contestants improve.  The bar gets raised each show.  The songs and themes get better and better.  Tension builds.  Over the last two or three weeks each contestant has proven their worthiness, and each is a valid potential star.  They swing for the fences, and we all get swept along with them, big voices and big talents tackling big songs, the skill and expertise are awe-inspiring, the artistry is soul-enriching.  Until…like the giant, wet fart of an incontinent walrus….bbrrrppfppfppptttthhhh…that lame-ass final song.  *That’s* what we’ve been building up to?  A crappy and trite slice of pabulum not even fit for the discount bin?  Please, in the name of all humanity, please stop torturing us with this horrific ending.  Please.

I see today that the finale had all-time low ratings, and I can’t say that I’m surprised.  Listen, Idol Producers, your show is still solid.  You don’t need to do more non-singing-related bullshit, you need to do less.  Strip it down to a singing competition.  If you want to add something to it, make it about the singing and performing.  How about a jury night in Hollywood?  Bring in nine additional musical noteworthies/legends, make Simon the foreman, and have the jury decide on the final 24, or something like that? 

Make sure that the entire focus of the show is on the quality of the singers and of the songs.  Go back to the original three judges: Simon Cowell, Paul Abdul, and Randy Jackson.  If you end up having to make changes, please pick people who will be interesting and relevant, unlike Kara, who is neither.  And keep Ryan Seacrest, he continues to be an affable and unflappable host, the circus master who always seems to strike the correct note.

You have a great product, but it’s like you’ve taken a classic Rolls-Royce and tricked it out with fiberglass effects, tinted windows, neon running lights, and subwoofer in the trunk.  Strip away the cheap bling and flashy trash, and be what you are – a pure and classic singing competition.

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Astronomical Coincidence

The Sun is 400 times larger than the Moon, but it is also 400 times further away.  What this means is that, when viewed from the Earth, the Moon is *exactly* the correct size to perfectly obscure the Sun when they are aligned during a total eclipse.  As you can see in the picture to the right, the Moon covers the sun perfectly, leaving only the corona visible around the edges.

I have a compulsion, for lack of a better term, to understand things.  How they work.  Why they happen.  What they mean.  It took a few years for Marie to get used to me going into EngineerBoy-mode when she did something I didn’t understand, and so would begin quizzing her about it.  For example, if she drove a different route to a familiar destination I would ask her why she chose that route.  In the beginning, she interepreted it as me questioning her route choice – in the sense of doubting that it was the most correct/efficient route.

But what I was doing was actually paying her the compliment of knowing that she wouldn’t just absent-mindedly pick some unexpected route, and that there must be a logical reason for it, and I wanted to know her reasoning.  In retrospect it’s easy to see why it was annoying, because I did a poor job of couching the questions in any sort of way other than, “Why did you turn left there?  Aren’t we going to Place X?  We usually go *that* way, why would you choose to go *this* way??”.  That sounds like skepticism and doubt, and what it really is is the quest for information and knowledge, and the answer of “I just felt like taking a different route today” makes perfect sense, I just hungered to know “why?”.

Eventually she realized that I do that about anything and everything that I don’t understand.  If we pass by an interesting door and I can’t figure out how the hinges work, I’ll stop and assess it (within reason, given other pressing matters).  It’s not that I think the door is “wrong”, it’s that I don’t understand it, but it obviously works, and I want to *get* it.  I know that me understanding how a particular door works doesn’t really do anything other than satisfy my curiosity, and as long as it works that should be good enough for a random door.

And it’s not every door that I have to figure out, just those that seem to me to not fit what i already know about doors.  I’m the same way with people – when they behave in ways that I don’t understand, I have to try and figure them out.  For the most part it’s not about agreeing or disagreeing with the way a person behaves, it’s about being able to understand a person’s motivations to act in a way that doesn’t make sense to me, when it obviously makes sense to them, because they’re doing it.

So a lot of my curiousity comes from the fact that I freely acknowledge that I don’t know everything.  In fact, given the totality of human knowledge, and the unfathomable scope of all possible knowledge, I really don’t know anything much at all.

But if I can observe something, and understand all of its facets, and it still doesn’t make sense, that bothers me.  A lot.  And it doesn’t happen much – not that I am somehow able to figure everything out, it’s more that I’m usually able to see the line that separates things that I personally can’t explain and things which cannot be explained, period.

One of the things-which-cannot-be-explained-period is the relative visual size of the Sun and Moon.  There are two possible explanations for their perfect ratios.

1) Coincidence

or

2) Design

Both of those explanations leave me skeptical, frustrated, and continuing to search for answers.  As for it being a coincidence, the odds of all the factors occuring randomly are so astronomically high that I can’t blithely accept that as the answer.  If the Moon were slightly farther away from the Earth, or slightly closer, it wouldn’t happen.  If the Moon were slightly larger or smaller than it is, it wouldn’t happen.  If the orbit of the Moon didn’t have it line up perfectly with the Sun regularly, it wouldn’t happen.  If the Sun were slightly larger or smaller, it wouldn’t happen.  If the Earth’s orbit it kept is slightly closer to or further from the Sun, it wouldn’t happen.

But *all* of those things happen.  The odds of it being a coincidence are staggering.

But if it’s not a coincidence, that leaves purposeful design.  Well, whose design?  God(s)?  Aliens?  Ancestors?  Some combination of those?  I mean, it’s hard to argue with evidence – there’s the Moon, there’s the Sun, and a couple of times a year, there’s the demonstration during an eclipse.  We can all see it, we can all understand it from the purely physical aspect.  There’s nothing to interpret, because it happens, an event that all humanity can observe and which cannot be denied.  It’s not a fake, it’s not a stunt, it’s not a legend, it’s not a myth, it’s not Photoshopped.  It’s just there for all of us to see.

But if we are assessing the “design” explanation, then the phenomenon is clearly a message. It has meaning.  It says something.  But what?

If we start with just the facts, the message is obviously directed at inhabitants of Earth, because it is only from the perspective of the surface of the Earth that it can be seen.  But what is the message?  The actual obscuring of the sun by the moon doesn’t seem to convey much in and of itself.  What seems to be the important part is the exact fit during a total eclipse.

The closest explanation that I can conjure up is similar to a plot point from the film “2001: A Space Odyssey”.  In the film, there is a rectangular black monolith that is not a random object, it was obviously created by something intelligent.  The monolith is buried on the far side of the moon, such that man will not discover it until he has made enough technological advancement to actually go to the dark side of the moon and find it.

And once men uncover the monolith, it responds by beaming a signal elsewhere in the solar system, indicating that man had sort of stumbled across a tripwire that indicated that we had advanced enough to travel to the moon.  One element of the Moon/Sun eclipse phenomena could be that humans couldn’t understand until such time as we grasped the nature of the stars and planets, and even further, until we realized that the chances that the perfect fit is a random coincidence is nearly 0%.

So, okay, we did it.  We’ve figured out the stars and planets, at least at a basic conceptual level.  We understand the effects of gravity and the nature of orbital mechanics.  We’ve been to the Moon and back.  We’ve even sent man-made objects out of our solar system and into deep space.

But…now what?  The Moon perfectly obscures the Sun during a total eclipse, it’s improbable that it’s pure coincidence, we *get* it.  But, now what?  What does it mean that we understand it?  What should it be telling us?  What should we be learning from that?

There are some whose philosophy will allow them to attribute this phenomenon to a higher power, and thus endeth the inquiry.  However, to me, no matter who set it up or why, there has to be more to it than a simple display of god-like powers – that would seem so…conceited of him/her/it/them.

My take is that the purpose of this astronomical alignment is for us to understand two things:

Thing Number One
The first thing that this is trying to tell us that we are not alone.  There is someone or something else out there, and they are far more advanced than we are.  They were able to set the size and shapes of planets to the precise ratios such that, once our puny-but-ravenous human brains advanced enough to understand it, we would *get* it.

Thing Number Two
The second thing that this is trying to tell us is that, compared to the vastness of available knowledge, we know nothing.  Right now, humans know enough to see the phenomenon, to understand the mechanics of it, and to begin to question the meaning of it, but that’s it.  So, in this sense, it’s like a trail of breadcrumbs, designed to lead us to the desired destination (both physically and intellectually).  It’s saying, come on, take a few more steps, make a few more theoretical leaps, come out of our shell of earthboundedness and step into the wider universe.

In closing, I freely state that all of the above is pure conjecture and deduction and has a high probability of being completely wrong in every facet.  However, it represents my best interpretation of the undeniable facts.  The fact that there isn’t more discussion of and amazement about this phenomenon serves to both frighten and confuse me.  There are many who say, show me proof of a higher power and/or of other intelligent life in the universe.  Well, there it is.  There are many who say, I already knew about the higher power, I know that he/she/it is omnipotent, and so the phenomenon is nothing more than confirmation of what I already knew and no further introspection is needed.  Uh, really?

I will also freely state that there is a very small, but non-zero, chance that this phenomenon is purely a coincidence.

But I doubt it.

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Boldly Going Again

We saw the new Star Trek movie today (opening night), and it was fantastic.  To give some context, I’m an old geezer and religiously watched the original Star Trek series during its initial run, and many more times in syndication.  I’ve seen the Star Trek movies that included the original cast.  I never really got into any of the subsequent Trek series, films, fanfic, spin-offs, books, conventions, etc, so I’m not a slavish Trek nerd, but I’m an old guard, indigenous Trek fan.

And coming from that perspective, my take is that J.J. Abrams did a great job of refreshing and updating the original Star Trek series with this prequel, and he was both faithful to the original and also daring enough to make changes in what felt to be a near-perfect proportion.  The new cast, playing younger versions of the original characters, do a pitch-perfect job of capturing the essence of their characters without seeming like they are doing imitations. 

The Original Star Trek (TOST) has been around for so long that I was skeptical that it could be refreshed in any meaningful way.  However, this new episode should jump-start a whole new incarnation of the franchise.  I can tell you that I’m excitedly awaiting the next film in this series, after having seen this version once a few hours ago. 

WARNING: Spoiler ahead, don’t read any further if you don’t want to know anything about the plot.
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The film starts with a sequence that includes the birth of James T. Kirk, and I have to say that it was so well done that I got a bit misty-eyed.  As the film progresses we see early scenes of many of the main characters, prior to their meeting each other.  Eventually, fate plays a hand and puts *most* of them aboard the Enterprise, albeit not in their familiar roles/ranks, at least not initially.  However, by the end of the film, all of the key characters from TOST are present and accounted for (and in their correct roles).

In between there is a reasonably engaging story that involves time travel, the destruction of one character’s home planet, a meetup between a character’s new incarnation and their older self played by the original actor, dealing with a vengeful enemy, and unexpected love blooming.  The action and effects sequences are superbly well-done, and don’t jolt you out of your enjoyment like so many other of Hollywood’s expensive-yet-clumsy digital effects behemoths.  This film is more along the lines of Iron Man, where the effects serve only to enhance the story, never to *be* the story or distract you from the storytelling.

All of the new cast members inhabit their characters fully, and capture the essence of the original characters beautifully.  I didn’t quite buy Chris Pine as Kirk for the first few scenes, but by the end, in my mind, he *was* Kirk – and it’s hard to consider anyone but Shatner as Kirk.  But Pine does a great job with what could have been tragicomic mockery of Shatner’s Kirk.

Zachary Quinto does a great job as Spock, and his character has the most emphasis in the ensemble.  John Cho (yes, Harold from Harold and Kumar) is solid as Sulu, Karl Urban almost seems like DeForest Kelley Junior, Anton Yelchin is suitably non-fluent as Chekov, and Zoe Saldana plays Uhura complete with cat-eyelashes and enough sex appeal (and smarts) to entice a young Vulcan.

Bruce Greenwood plays Christopher Pike, who will be familiar to any TOST fan as the immobile, wheelchair bound, disfigured character from the initial episodes of Trek.  Here he is the elder statesman, dealing with (and educating) his young charges.

There are also familiar faces in various roles.  Winona Ryder plays Spock’s human mother, while Tyler Perry (yes, from Tyler Perry’s This and Tyler Perry’s That) plays a Star Fleet Admiral.  But most enjoyable of all is Simon Pegg as Montgomery Scott.  Yes, Shaun of the Dead is Scotty, and he is hilarious.

The film also manages to include a lot of the catch phrases and conceits of the original series without them seeming forced.  Spock says “Fascinating”.  Bones says “I’m a doctor, not a ____”.  Kirk slouches on one elbow in the captain’s chair, looking pensive.  Scotty has to struggle to deliver more power.  The ensign in the red shirt dies.  Bones calls Spock a green-blooded hobgoblin.  Phasers are set to stun, shields are set to full power, photon torpedoes are fired, and people are beamed all over the place.  In other words, this film *is* Star Trek, and I hope this new incarnation will live long, and prosper.

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• 10 stalks of fresh asparagus, top 4″ cut off (two 2″ sections will blend better)
• 1/2 carrot
• 1/2 ripe banana
• fresh orange juice (highly recommend Tropicana Valencia or Simply Orange — anything not from concentrate)
• splash of raw kefir
• 2-3 frozen strawberries
• Turbinado raw sugar to taste

Blend the hell out of it and drink it like a shot.

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• Fresh raw kefir
• Frozen strawberries
• Fresh strawberries (if available)
• 1-2 tbsp Naturally More peanut butter with wheat germ and flaxseed
• 1/2 ripe banana (or frozen banana chips)
• mini-handful of fresh oats (i.e., Quaker Oatmeal – not the instant kind – uncooked)
• frozen miniature chocolate chips
• Turbinado raw sugar to taste

Man this one is so good.  It’s my favorite so far

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• fresh raw kefir
• frozen strawberries
• 1/2 banana (frozen slices or fresh) – just make sure it’s RIPE
• 1-2 tbsp of peanut butter
• raw sugar to taste

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• Fresh unsweetened kefir
• 5 – 10 frozen strawberries
• 2-3 fresh strawberries (optional)
• 1 tbsp or so of peanut butter
• raw sugar (Turbinado) to taste

If you don’t like peanut butter (Engineerboy considers it food of the devil), orange juice is good in there instead.

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Marie, Marie, How Do Your Kefir Grains Grow?

For those of you who know me or even casually see my updates on Facebook, you know that I have become somewhat of a Kefir nut lately.

Kefir, for those of you who don’t know, is a dairy-based fermented concoction that’s created by a complex microbiotic culture when the culture is immersed in fresh milk.  More on Wikipedia, more on this guy’s Kefir site.  It can refer to the grains — the little colonies that do the fermenting — or the finished product, which is a bit like yogurt but with more live “stuff” in there and a thinner consistency.  So, you can — if you have access to a reasonably upscale grocery store or a mediterranean market – get Kefir in its final form, or you can ferment/grow it yourself with live kefir grains.

I’m certainly no expert on it yet, but I am a convert.  I used to make smoothies with it when we lived in Houston (and our local Kroger carried such things) but recently here in Brenham my yoga teacher gave me my own batch of live grains and now I’m a Kefir-making goddess!!  I “harvest” it every day or every other day — it’s easy to control by storing it in the fridge for a bit to slow down the fermentation or leaving it out on the counter to speed it up.  You can also vary how much milk you give it.  And the colony grows!  So now I have enough to share (and at least four people lined up to inherit some live grains from me).

I make smoothies at least twice a day and it’s an amazing food source.  I feel better, I have a lot of energy, and it’s really satisfying… I’m not hungry after a Kefir smoothie.

If you’re a health-foodie, definitely check it out if you haven’t already.  And try to get some grains of your own!!  The fresh stuff is for sure the best.

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Carrey, del Toro, and Penn?!?

If today were April 1st I might think that this article was a joke:

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/nyuk-nyukhuh-sean-penn-joins-three-stooges-movie/?ref=movies

That’s a blog post on the New York Times site which claims that Hollywood will be making a Three Stooges movie, and the Stooges will be played by…brace yourself…get ready…Jim Carrey (getting fat to play Curly), Sean Penn (as the bozo-fringed Larry), and Benecio del Toro (as Moe, the living superego). 

Uhhhh….huh?  My confusion led me to deduce that the film would be a tortured look at the sad reality behind the farcical public personas, but then I noticed that the screenplay is being written by the Farrelly Brothers (Bobby and Peter, most famous for There’s Something About Mary and Kingpin, neither of which had much seriousness to them).

So I can’t reconcile this information – something has to be wrong and/or it will never happen.  However, if this amalgamation ever makes it to the screen, I’ll be first in line.

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Burned, Baby, Burned

We discovered Burn Notice a couple of weeks ago and really fell in love with it, and have now watched all episodes from Season 1 and Season 2.  There are very few prime-time shows that we watch with any regularity – and even those few have fallen by the wayside as we’ve been watching nothing but Burn Notice whenever we get a chance.

The main character is Michael Westen (played by Jeffrey Donovan), and when the series starts he’s a spy in the employ of the US government, but in the middle of a treacherous deal they basically cut him off and leave him out in the cold – someone put out a “burn notice” on him, meaning cut all ties, shred all records, freeze all accounts, and just let him go.

Burn notices are usually only put out on people who have either screwed up royally or who have been found to be untrustworthy.  Michael is neither and so starts a quest to find out who put out a trumped-up burn notice on him and why.  He has to take odd-jobs as a problem-solver in order to make ends meet, and he has the help of his ex-girlfriend, Fiona (played by Gabrielle Anwar), and by a buddy who is a “retired” FBI agent (played by the man, the myth, the legend – Mr. Bruce Campbell).

Michael also has to deal with his mother (played by Sharon Gless, who you may remember as Cagney from Cagney & Lacy) and his dysfunctional family relationships.  The series does a nice job of weaving Michael’s personal drama and professional challenges into cohesive stories.

The series also does a good job of not dumbing down the storylines, and not taking the easy way out when it comes to dealing with technology, weapons, combat, and spy tactics.  It’s not “realistic” or it wouldn’t be engaging television, but it’s not as insulting, dismissive, and/or lazy as some other shows of this type that we’ve seen.

The dialog is sharply written and witty, the production values are slick and high-gloss, the acting is great all-around, and Bruce Campbell is in the role he was born to play – a retired, boozy, tanned, aging lothario who still has the moves and connections, but wants to do nothing more than sit in the sun drinking mojitos (that somebody else buys).

We heard about this series when it premiered last year, but the fact that it was on the USA Network made us suspicious.  Well, we were wrong.  The series is great and we love it.  Our only problem is now we want to vacation in Miami…not necessarily the real Miami, but the version of Miami that Michael is trapped in.

And we also crave yogurt.

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