David Archuleta’s dad loses ‘American Idol’ backstage pass - Yahoo! News

Despite a warning, Jeff Archuleta insisted on altering “Stand by Me,” one of two songs his son sang on the show Tuesday. By adding a verse from Sean Kingston’s “Beautiful Girls,” the father incurred additional costs for “American Idol,” the person said.

Shows me how well I know the song that I didn’t notice that at all. . .

24 hours later, I’ve yet to receive an offer to buy me out.

I’m sure it’s only a matter of time, though.  It was a bit unfair of me to spring this on corporate America on a Friday.  I’m sure there’s a corporate office staying up late this weekend trying to raise the funds.  They’re probably working on a bond issue or something.  Two million bucks isn’t always “ready cash,” unless your Apple.

If you’re Apple, I’ll lower the price to $1.9 million, if you throw in a couple of iMacs.

Let’s wait this out till Monday.  Something’s going to come.  How can it not?  This is almost literally too good a deal to pass up!

ESPN - One tape turned over by Walsh shows Patriots also stole offensive signals - NFL

From Day 1 of the Spygate saga in September, the controversy over New England’s illicit videotaping practices has centered on the Patriots’ efforts to steal their opponents’ defensive signals. But the tapes delivered via FedEx to NFL headquarters in New York on Thursday morning also include evidence of an effort by New England to steal offensive signals, which would broaden the extent of the team’s surveillance operation.

I’ve never been prouder to be a fan of the NY Giants. The Patriots, as it turns out, is a ring of cheaters.

I can be bought.

And it can be profitable to the both of us.

I’ll set the price at $1,000,000.

That’s not much these days.  That price won’t buy you many 30 second spots in prime time television.  Heck, depending on the show you’re buying ad time on, you might not get more than a minute.

I’m offering you something better:

My blog.  It’s for sale.  I’ll change the name to “[Your Company’s Name Here] Presents Various and Sundry.”  Heck, I’ll buy that as a domain name.  I’ll make you the exclusive advertiser on a blog that updates at least five days a week.

You’ll get better than a million dollars’ worth of press coverage on the deal.  What better story for the tech press to fawn over for a week or two than your company buying up a no name meaningless blog.  It’s an amazing publicity stunt that makes no sense.  It’s PERFECT internet fodder.

This blog doesn’t have a big readership.  It’s definitely under a thousand readers.  It’s probably closer to 500.  It makes so little sense for you to sponsor it that it’ll command great attention.  We can do a joint press release that’ll light up the blogosphere.  I can get on one of those crazy Revision3 video podcasts.  I’d happily be a guest on Net@Nite. TechCrunch would be all over this.  I’m available to do press with all the cable news stations.  I can blog the experience, to boot.  It’s material for me; it’s tons of publicity for you.  I’ll wear a baseball cap and a t-shirt with your company’s name on it when doing all of these shows.

I can even talk to the point that this deal will mark the end of the second web boom.

I am a friggin’ sell out.  Just go ahead and buy me now.  My e-mail address is linked to my name at the top of the right column.

Sadly, someone already beat me to Buymyblog.com.

But I won’t let that stop me.  Others sell pixels for a dollar a shot.  Others promise to do outlandish things.  Some sell space for tattoos on their body, but I’m not going that far. I’m skipping all the work part.  I’m just going to do my thing and take your money, sponsor!
You need something more personal?  I’m going to be a Dad this fall.  I can be a stay-at-home Dad with your million dollars.

Wait, I forgot about the taxes.  Better make it two million bucks, just to be safe.

GoldenPalace, are you reading this? Call me.  I like to play poker, too. . .

Barring all that, I’ll take a Drobo for lesser terms.

Twitter Starts Blacklisting Spammers

You know you’ve made it as a communications medium when you start attracting spammers. On Twitter, the problem is getting bad enough that the service is starting to blacklist people who spam other members. There is already an unofficial site called The Twitter Blacklist that lists 329 known spammers on the service. . .

And, I might add, The Twitter Backlist is powered by Perl. Go, Twitter!

Honestly, I fast-forwarded through most of it tonight.  Bo Bice sang.  So did Maroon V.  The remaining contestants did another in a series of increasingly awkward group singalongs.

Then Jason went home and nobody mourned.  Even Jason was happy, telling Ryan that he’s relieved because he didn’t want to sing three songs next week.

And an argument can be made that the three best singers are in the top three this season.  IDOL works again.

• @Coverville - Billy Joel Cover Story? It’s about damned time! Whoo-hoo! I’ll quibble about “cheesy” later. . .

• Finally crossed the 200 subscriber mark with the VariousandSundry.com RSS feed. Whee! I’m officially small potatoes now. (The next day, the number dropped and hasn’t been back to 200 since.  ::sigh::)

• I haven’t used Friendster in years. Suddenly, I’m getting comments through there. The spammers are a little late to this party. 

• Glamourpuss #1 features neither an aardvark nor a vanaheim. Discuss.

• Saw ad for movie “Son of Rainbow.” Can we now please STOP using those jittery hand-lettered-looking fonts in EVERY movie promo? Jeez. (Was that supposed to be “Son of Rambow?”  I do not know.)

• “500 Internal Server Error.” There, I beat you to it, @Twitter!

• This is the icky time of year landscapers throw manure over all the dirt areas, and the smell makes walking outside nauseating for days. (Still stinks, four days later.)

• What I learned from Hell’s Kitchen: All chefs smoke.

• Saw IRON MAN. Loved IRON MAN. Bring on IRON MAN 2: ARMOR WARS stat!

• Wait, I thought Hell’s Kitchen teased a possible romance in their teaser. It never happened on the show. What’s going on?

• Microsoft quits its Yahoo takeover bid. WOW or “Nice negotiating plot, MS?”

• Microsoft’s strategy will work - YAHOO stock will nosedive Monday morning, and MS will renew their offer at a lower price. Legal? I dunno. 

• Re: Iron Man: Leslie Bibb. I’m a happily married man and all, but wow. She ain’t hard to look at. I want to see her spinoff movie.

• Dear guy behind the deli counter: When I say “one third of a pound,” that’s not equal to .6 lbs. Nor is .5 == .25. Idiots.

• Dear woman in front of me at the checkout counter: Please take your shopping cart with you. Don’t leave it sitting there in front of me.

Four contestants.  Two songs.  ONE American Idol.I should write reality TV show scripts.

Ryan leaks out a bit of interesting info, right at the top of the show: Only one of the remaining contestants has never been a #1 vote getter.  I’m guessing Syesha, sadly.  She’s doomed to be the Kimberley Locke of Season Seven.

What’s up with that wig they stuck on Paula’s head tonight?  Weird.

It’s a bit of a reach to think that one of the Idols might one day land in the RnR HOF.

Thankfully, the judges will critique the contestants after each song.  Is this due to the time saved by only needing to do eight songs this week?  Or are we trying to save Paula any more embarrassment after last week’s debacle?  You make the call.

David Cook - “Hungry Like the Wolf” -  The “doo doo doo doo” moments seem forced.  Maybe he should have left those to the background singers.  His voice sounds fine, but the song has lost all of the rhythm and the melody that make it great.  It’s just David Cook doing his thing over the song.  He even looks bored as he sings the song.  He’s not getting into the song.  He seems distant from it.  I’m not a fan.

Syesha Mercado - “Proud Mary” - Seems like a natural fit.  She’s doing choreography with it, which means the judges will scream “Broadway” again.  She’s being “Elvised” — the camera is avoiding her hips when she’s rolling them.

Yeah, the song did her no favors in the “Broadway” department.  But she’s very comfortable on the stage.  The vocal is lost to the manic choreography. I don’t know if I’d follow Simon calling it “bad” and “shrieky,” but I don’t think it showed her at her best.

Jason Castro - “I Shot the Sheriff” - Oh, my. The dreadlocks are let loose!  The kid has done this show for how many weeks now?  He still hasn’t figured out how not to blow air into the mic.  UGH.  At least he seems comfortable on the stage.  He’s alive during the song for the first time in a month. Sadly, it’s a piss poor performance. Wait, that’s it?  The song seemed about 20 seconds long.  Strange.  And karaoke.  Crash and burn.

Oh, Randy beat Simon to the karaoke comment.

Paula is right — he’s never performed more to the audience.  But it doesn’t matter.  It’s crap.

I’m getting tired and cranky.

David Archuleta - “Stand By Me” - Of course he’s doing this song.  It fits perfectly into his wheel house.  (I can’t believe it took me this long to get to that cliched phrase tonight.)  He did it well.  Maybe the bar has been set so low this week, but I really liked it. Best song of the night so far, though he have his usual bit of breathiness in the second half.

And I swear I wrote the preceding paragraph before Simon said it nearly word for word.  Wow.

For the second half of the show, I promise to be much more succinct.

David Cook - “Baba O’Riley” -  I really liked it, though it nailed the problem with the night: this show’s format doesn’t give the contestants enough room to work a song. Give the song another minute to breathe and I think he could REALLY recreate the song into something new.  This was just the trailer for Cook’s cinematic recreation of The Who.  Good job.

Syesha Mercado - “A Change Is Gonna Come” - (I was really hoping she’d sing Dusty Springfield’s “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me” a la Nadia Turner.)  Give her a mic and let her pure voice come out. Beautiful, though again the need to shorten the song up to a minute and a half means she needs to go from power to slightness to power.

Randy hated it.  Paula stands to applaud. Syesha cries. Simon agrees with Paula and says Randy got it completely wrong. Syesha brings up the Civil Right aspect of the song twice.  Boy, they’re bringing out all the tricks to save her tonight, aren’t they?  GOOD.  Or is it just that they want to get rid of Castro so badly that they’ll praise everyone else to the hilt?  Don’t they realize that reverse logic works better on Idol voters?  Uh oh.

“Randy, thanks for the buzz kill…  Randy, we’re running out of time.  Hell’s Kitchen’s gonna start. - Ryan

Jason Castro - “Mr. Tambourine Man” - I hear William Shatner already.  Crap, then he goes and forgets the lyrics. Why doesn’t he just crucify himself on the Simon Cross now?  Why bother with the show, really?  Welcome to Jason’s Very Very Bad Night.

I think this might be the first ever Double Idol Crash and Burn!

Let’s cancel the vote and just kick him off the show now.  Why doesn’t he just go home and save us all the trouble?

Didn’t Josh Gracin blow a lyric in Season Two in the round of four, too?  No, that was the round of five?  He recovered, had a good week in the Round of 4, and went straight home.

David Archuleta - “Love Me Tender” - Another good song choice.  He didn’t know the song in advance. Uh oh. He’s visibly fighting to keep his eyes open, but he’s remembering the lyrics.

Whoa.  Stop the presses.  I thought he was brilliant on that.  He was subtle enough and subdued enough to eliminate all of his annoying traits.  He was in control of that song and made it work.

Clearly, Castro was the worst of the night and deserves to go home.  Archuleta won, with Cook in second and Syesha in a close third.  But does it matter?  Will America vote on talent?  Will Cook pull a Daughtry tomorrow night?  Will Syesha’s crying get her enough sympathy votes to trump the avalanche of pity votes that “I Forgot The Lyrics” Jason will be getting?

I think Jason will go home tonight.  Syesha goes home next week.  The finale is between the two Davids.  Cook wins it all.  I have to believe that, or my head will explode.

You know the drill by now, right?  Catch them all right here.  Or see a lot of them now, with more tomorrow:

• @leolaporte - A video podcast has been stopped by an antiques fair?!? Where’s my time travel machine? I don’t know where I’ve landed.

• Have I mentioned how much I impressed myself with this photo?

• New O.A.R. album due out on July 15th. Yay!

• Did anyone remember that there’s a comic convention in Pittsburgh this weekend? Anyone not in a Michigan jail, that is. . .   (Dateline: NBC covers the Michael George conviction this Friday!)

• Briefly considered going to the movies today, but there’s a distinct lack of interesting movies in the theaters right now. ::sigh::

• Tonight I realized why I watch Big Brother every year: self-loathing mixed with masochism.

• Today’s favorite bumper sticker: “I’ve never seen an American flag burned at a gun show.” 

• Posted two more reviews to CBR Reviews. Now, I get to iron. Ah, being domestic can be such a chore.

• Captain America by Ed Brubaker Omnibus, Vol. 1 is only $45 at Amazon today. Oooohhhhh

• Miley Cyrus, meet Melissa Joan Hart. Bring your own photographer.

• Not winning the lottery last night guarantees two more days on the job. Crap. (Still haven’t won.  Crap Squared.)

• Favorite game show du jour: Duel. Surprisingly good, very fast paced.

• What’s the best way to break out of a Verizon contract without paying beaucoup dollars? Any ideas? Just theoretically speaking, of course.

• Trying to think of something Twitty to say. “Twitty” = “Witty” and “Twitter” 

This is the highlight, a new puzzle game of sorts from Steven Spielberg.  The press on this so far has been generally positive.  Anyone out there taking a chance on it today?

Barenaked Ladies’ children’s album is out in stores today:

It’s a very girly week we have here:

• P.S. I Love You

Gerard Butler plays a dead guy telling his still-living wife, Hilary Swank, to live life well without him.  Or something like that.  Sounds too weepy for me.  I don’t remember it at all, but it made over $140 million, worldwide.  Wow.

• I’m Not There

Wow, a Bob Dylan movie?  That’s so not exciting to me at all.

• Over Her Dead Body

Eva Langoria in a romantic comedy, playing a ghost hovering over her boyfriend or husband or something.  It didn’t take in ten million dollars, domestically.  Ouch. Yet I have this feeling that it might do well as a rental.

• Speed Racer: The Next Generation

Wasn’t a big fan as a kid. Not terribly excited for the new movie today.  It’s lost on me.  But for those who want to see the latest remake of the series, here you have it.

• Crossing Jordan: Season 1

I’m slightly surprised it took this long for this one to hit DVD. . .

Next week: Two telemovies of The Incredible Hulk hit store shelves, as we begin to ramp up for that movie.  SNL: Season 3.  And probably more.

Blu-ray: The Future Has Been Delayed - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

Hot on the heels of last week’s report from ABI Research noting that many consumers may not see the picture quality difference between Blu-ray and standard DVDs comes the latest Blu-ray sales figures from NPD Group. And they’re not pretty.According to NPD, sales of Blu-ray standalone players plummeted 40 percent from January to February, then rose a scant 2 percent from February to March. The general consensus was that once Toshiba dropped its support for the HD DVD format early this year, sales would increase.

Maybe the Blu-Ray people need to speed up a cheaper Blu-Ray player.  People are used to buying sub-$100 DVD players.  They don’t want to spend 3x that for a new format.  That’s my guess.

Moviehole.net - 24 heads to Africa!

The original plan for “24 : Day 7” was for Jack Bauer to head to Africa for a couple of episodes. That didn’t work out. When the season was delayed due to the writer’s strike – it only just started resuming filming – the show’s producers decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do a two-hour “24” telemovie, something that would hold viewers over until the long-delayed “Day 7” arrives in January.

EP Manny Coto says a two-hour “prequel” TV movie is expected to air this fall, which will bring Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer to Africa and “lead directly into the events of Season Seven.”