Tag Archives: American Idol

Live From New Orleans

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Well, it’s ‘LIVE’ right now any way. I’m in New Orleans at my parent’s home. I stopped by World of Wings and brought home some honey bar-b-q wings to share with my mother. We will go to the hospital to visit my stepdad tomorrow.  Ok, here’s the latest scoop on both of them.

Harold is not going to have lung surgery after all. He is just not well enough to go through the operation. They took a needle biopsy today of a spot and some fluid around his lung. We will not know much from those until later. He is in the hospital still (since Monday). Maybe he’ll get to come home soon because it appears they are doing nothing much for him medically at this point.

My mother will have surgery Friday to have a port placed in which her chemotherapy will be administered. I’m not sure when that starts, but I presume it will be soon.

I do appreciate the prayers and ask you to continue to pray. The last scan revealed that the spot on my dad’s lung had actually shrunk some … we hope this is a trend … and we want to ask God to clear it up.

Now as for the less serious stuff … American Idol. Amanda was sent home tonight. I think Amanda did not market herself very well. There is a place for a Bonnie Tyler type rough voiced vixen … but I think if Amanda had not tried to present herself as such a heavy metal biker chick she would have fared better. I would have liked to have heard her tackle a Stevie Nicks rocker or a Pat Benatar hit … but on these later shows she didn’t have much choice. Anyway, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with heavy metal biker chicks, but I do think if you are attempting to appeal to a certain group, it ought to be a very large one that votes. And that’s why my TOP THREE PICKS are David Archuleta, David Cook, and Michael Johns. David Cook has to do something different. His fuzz guitar / growly hair in the face act has had enough exposure. Can he do anything else? I hope so, for his sake. Michael needs to pick out songs the FANS like, not necessarily his favorite songs. He’s from another country, but he’s counting on American fans to vote for him. He’s got talent like crazy but he needs to sing with the fans in mind … and not pick sentimental favorites. That was a mistake this week, in my opinion. David A can do no wrong – except to forget his words. I think he learned his lesson and was spared … he has a rich voice, a great smile, and a natural warmth. David A is your American Idol for 2008 unless he finds some way to blow it. The girls? Well … I like Brooke … but she nearly blew up her career this week. I think Carly could possibly make the top 3 if one of those three guys blows it …but I wouldn’t count on it. That’s my idle Idol chatter for the night.

It’s late and been a long day … so I’m outta here. Thanks for those who twittered last night (or tried!) … and the live cam thing was fun, maybe we’ll do that again too. Since I am the ‘Blog King’, I feel I must expand my territory. By the way, I do “Twitter” throughout the day when online … you can see my latest three twitters on this page (top right), on my facebook page, but the best way is to sign up for Twitter and follow me … and I’ll follow you as well.

Now Dr. Clif wants me to try Firefox … Chris Pirillo in his latest post encourages use of Safari … does anyone else use a web browser other than IE?

TWITTERING THROUGH AMERICAN IDOL TONIGHT!

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ALERT!  – John live on cam watching AI … now THAT is amazing!  There is a chatbox for saying howdy!

I’ll be Twittering through American Idol tonight.

TWITTER is a free and easy to use micro-blogging platform that allows users to blog one or two sentences at a time. You have followers – those who are reading your posts. And you can follow others. And it all shows up on the same page.

So if you want to join in the fun tonight, just sign up for Twitter (pain-free). You can find other people you know who twitter by clicking on INVITE MORE … a function that searches your Yahoo, Hotmail. AOL, MSN, or Gmail addressbooks for those who may already be using Twitter. If I am in your addressbook, then my name will show up. You can click on me and select FOLLOW. Then my Twitter posts will appear on your twitter page. Now if I’m not in your addressbook, I think you can search for me and find me … let me know if you can’t find me and I’ll find you and add you.

I know that might sound complex, but the beauty of Twitter is it’s absolute simplicity. If Dr. Clif Mims sees this and can add some better information, I invite that. If you have questions, post them!

Twitter is one of those things you should just accept. Do not ask ‘Why?’ … there is no why. We Twitter because we can. Twitter’s self proclaimed mission is expressed in one question: What are you doing?

Thanks for reading!

JD

Catching Up

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Greetings, Friends. This has been a record setting week on this blog in terms of how many people stopped by to take a look. This is mainly because WordPress featured my car posts on their front page a couple of times. If you’re a new reader, we’re glad you are here!

Thursday morning there was a preacher’s meeting at University Church of Christ in Monroe. I was happy to attend and meet some of the ministers in the area. I did get to meet a few that I did not already know. The speaker was Dan Williams. I’ve wanted to meet Dan for a long time. He has a GREAT e-mail list for preachers. He spoke on developing leaders and it was a wonderful presentation. He brought along a few of his fellow staff ministers … including Kent Jobe, who used to be a youth minister in Mobile several years ago.  James Guy, minster at University, did a great job hosting the meeting. One of the ministers in attendance is the brother of one of our members at Forsythe, and it was great to meet him as well. After the meeting, the preachers all went out to eat, naturally. I, however, had other plans!

I was packed and ready to go to my Mississippi Coast home. I hit the interstate and headed East toward Jackson. When I got nearly to Clinton the traffic came to a standstill. I sat there for about 35 minutes. A trucker told me that there was a wreck up ahead and it was going to take a while to get it out of the way. In the meantime, there were children playing in the medium, people walking their pets…it was like a park! Well, I was within sight of a cut-across and I followed suit with others who decided to drive along the median and head back West on I-20.

So I called my friend Cecil May 3rd and he graciously got on his computer (oh for GPS!) to help me map my way to the coast in an alternate route. I headed down Hwy 27 to Crystal Springs and further to Georgetown, then east to Magee and finally got on Hwy 49 and started South.  In the end I learned how to cram a 5 hour trip into 8 hours.

Still, it’s good to be home and see my family. It will be a quick trip, but it will be worth it to me!

The house repairs are to be finished either today or tomorrow. Praise God!

And now I know you have been awaiting my thoughts on American Idol and Lost this week. (Isn’t that why you read this blog? Or is it to laugh at my Charlie Brown life?)

American Idol. I enjoyed watching American Idol at friends Jason and Christina Barnard’s home this week. They make me so comfortable when I am there. This was a difficult week for many of the contestants, singing out of the McCartney/Lennon songbook. It appears that they got such a swell of e-mails about this that they are doing it again this week. Trouble is that most of those songs were written before the contestants were born. My heart went out to David Archuleta, my pick to win AI, who could not remember the words to his song. That is almost an unforgivable sin on AI and can get you booted out in the early rounds. As all fans know, though, he is safe and on his way to trying to learn another Beatles song for this week. Amanda Overmyer is an interesting singer that the judges love … but I think she comes across as an angry biker chick who would like to put a crowbar to your head. If she could lighten up, get rid of the heavy metal hand signals and obligatory tongue sticking out stuff … I think she might have a better chance. Of the contestants currently in the race I think I would most likely buy a Brooke White CD. Carly Smithson is incredibly talented … and Michael Johns is a frontrunner and bound to be top-three competitor. Chikeze is coming around and could surge to the top if he keeps bringing performances like he did this week. As for David Hernandez, I liked him fine, but he was an obvious choice to be dismissed at this point in the competition. Although it wasn’t mentioned on AI, all internet hounds know by now that David has had a career as a stripper. Even Tony Kornheiser on Pardon the Interuption (ESPN) referred to him as “David the Stripper” this week. However you may judge him for his choices, his performances on AI were not equal to his peers. And now Kristy Lee and Jason … you are in for the fight of your lives. It’s do or die time for you two.

LOST. I’m going to shock my readers who know how much I love LOST. Two weeks ago my contractor came in to see us halfway through  that night’s episode. I never went on the internet to finish watching it. I could not see last week’s episode, though for the life of me I can’t remember what I was doing. So I was not motivated to watch this week’s episode without catching up. However, Maggy wanted to watch it so I watched some of it. I wanted to confess that I’m behind before I make the following statement. I think LOST has lost it’s way. I’m still a fan  and I’m still going to watch. Maybe they’ll pull a rabbit out of a hat soon … but the predominant theme of being LOST, surviving on the island, facing mysterious circumstances has changed. The theme now seems to be to present as much conflicting information as possible about the future and let us try to sort out the details. I, for one, am not that interested in the future … the show is about their life on the Island. When they are rescued, the show is over. I know there is much more and I’m over simplifying. There are still people on the island, and the Oceanic 6 are lying about that.  But to me the tension of the survival / island / mystery is nearly gone. One of the saddest decisions Hollywood ever made was to make a movie in which Gilligan and fellow islanders were rescued. Why can’t the writers of LOST understand this? And are we getting a second-rate story because of the writer’s strike? I don’t know. Rabid LOST fans will revel in trying to figure out the details before they are revealed (if they ever are). As for me, as the story shifts and the characters change … I’m wondering why I’m watching. What do you think?

Have you seen what Darin Ham did to me? You need to let him know what you think, loyal readers! lol

Well that’s enough chatter for the day. I hope you have a great weekend!

JD

Hasn’t everyone wanted one of these at some time in their life?