After listening to the commentary from Peter Noone and Lulu, I'm wondering if they really got the concept. Seems like Peter's advice to everybody was "Don't mess too much with the original, it was fine like it was."

• Haley does "Tell Him" and everybody loves it. She gets poor Simon all hot and bothered by not wearing a bra under her little glittery shimmery top and shaking it right in front of him. Personally I didn't love it, I thought she was concentrating more on getting from one side of the stage to the other and not singing all that great.
• Chris R does "Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying", a cool Gerry and the Pacemakers song, and gets the first of many Peter Noone "The original is good enough don't mess with it" comments. But the judges love it and go right to the "You made it modern" comments. I still think the kid is too generic for me and won't last. Although I liked the honesty is his comment when he said "I keep wanting to just run it all over the place and have to control myself not to do that."
• Stephanie does Dusty Springfield's "You Don't Have To Say You Love Me" which is a cool song, but she's very boring lately and all the judges point out that she's lost her edge. Maybe because she reads the papers and all she ever hears about are Melinda and Lakisha?
• Blake hits a major home run with a great modern remix of Time Of The Season, complete with beatbox. Everybody, including Simon, loved it. Well, everyone except for Peter Noone who said that the first row should watch out for "all the spitting."
• Lakisha goes with Shirley Bassey "Diamonds Are Forever", which I would have thought a great choice for that big voice of hers, but the judges didn't love it. Maybe she should have gone with Lulu's advice and done You're My World? I don't think I know that song.
• Phil does Tobacco Road, and leaves me pretty cold. Just not interested, really. Simon tells him he has no "grit".
• Jordin does "I Who Have Nothing", more Shirley Bassey apparently, which I've never heard of but Lulu loves. Sounded good to me. Randy gives a big compliment with the prediction "One of the best I think we'll see tonight" and we're not half done yet.
• Interview with Peter Noone, and he even confirms that his biggest advice is "Stick with the melody."
• Sanjaya, dear Sanjaya, love of the Internet. Tries to decide between "You've Really Got Me" (is it You or You've?) or "I'm Into Something Good", a Herman's Hermits classic. Noone steers him away from that one and tells him to stick with "You've Really Got Me" which I can just tell is going to be brutal with the judges but I bet his fans still like. At least he attempts to rock it out. Actually Randy likes it ("I'm in shock, best performance to date, the new Sanjaya"). Simon points to a crying little girl and says "I think her face says it all." A little weird. She didn't stop crying through the whole show, but apparently it was because she was happy.
• Man, I don't care about the fan questions.
• Gina is doing Paint It Black which is about as rock as it gets. Starts out weak, and her outfit is ugly. The drums in this song are awesome, by the way. I don't like her version, it's too high. Simon calls it torture.
• Chris Sligh is actually going to do Henry VIII? Is that a joke? Oh, wait, it is a joke. He's doing She's Not There. Much better, I like that song. That's the kind of British Invasion stuff that's my favorite. I don't love his version, although I think his voice is good. Just not the kind of match I was hoping for. Once again he argues with Simon, which I hate.
• Melinda closes the show with "As Long As He Needs Me", another one I've never heard of. I'm disappointed that nobody did To Sir With Love. Judges love it, but what else would you expect? It's Melinda, the chosen one.

So who's it going to be this week? Well Sanjaya is always a possible choice, although the judges seemed to get a kick out of him this week. Phil got a lousy review, as did Gina. I think it could be Phil.

More American Idol stories…

Technorati: American Idol

Ok, I've managed to watch the whole thing, here's my thoughts on the pairs.

Ian & Cheryl – I appreciate that Cheryl's the two-time champion now, and I enjoyed her last season, but if they make her the star of this season I think I'm going to get a little sick of her.  Ian is a good partner and they're probably destined to go far.  But at this point I'd be much more interested in seeing Edyta, Ashley (who is not here this season), and that little Russian redheaded one whose name I forget who is also not here.

Paulina & Alec – Paulina gets the typical "super model grace" points with the long arm extensions.  She may do the best of the women.

Billy Ray & Karina – God that was painful to watch.  Will he be the first to go?  It would be fitting, since I think that Karina turned everybody off last season with her personality.  It's pretty much accepted on the net that Karina and Mario were the better dancers but nobody liked her.

Leeza & Tony – Leeza's too stiff right now, she has to lighten up.  Lisa Rinna ended up doing very well coming from the same general perspective.

Joey & Kym – Former N'Sync member does well for himself.  Kym is becoming one of my favorite of the dancers, too.  I liked her with Jerry Springer last season.

Laila & Maksim – God, I'm sure Laila Ali is a nice person, but she comes across like a beast.  The big deep voice, the massive upper body?  I don't see how anybody will be able to warm up to her.  It's like they invited Chyna from the WWE…only when Chyna talks she actually sounds female.

John & Edyta – Cliff from Cheers, as a last minute replacement, turns out to fill the "charismatic old guy" role nicely.  I actually quite like him, and his whole philosophy.  "I worry about meteors hitting the Earth, I don't worry about this," he tells his partner.  I don't know if they'll ride the vote as long as Springer did, but he won't be the one that goes the first week.

Shandy & Brian – Does anybody know this girl?  She seems very nervous and rushed in her dancing.  Coupled with a first time professional partner that the audience won't know yet, her days might be pretty short.

Clyde & Elena – For a big tall guy, Clyde does better than expected with the judges.  Whether he's more Evander Holyfield or Emmitt Smith remains to be seen, but I'm betting on the former.

Heather & Jonathan – Heather's going to get all the press and attention for the fake leg.  I have to admit, though, that they're handling it well.  I laughed out loud when they said "Of course we'll treat her just like everybody else," because I turned to Kerry and said "Except they're going to tell her to point her toes and she can't."  Sure enough Heather herself beat me to it, telling the judges, "Just don't tell me to point my toes.  If you can point them I'll pay you." 

Apolo & Julianne – Apolo's not as good a dancer as I expected him to be.  Maybe it's nerves, maybe it's age (he's young, right?)  Maybe it's the whole training for the Olympics thing.  Who knows.

Overall it's not a great set of stars.  Last season we had Joey Lawrence and Mario Lopez, both of whom were early favorites.  If I have to guess, the picks right now would be Ian Ziering and Joey Fatone, but that's not saying too much.  They're like the doughy versions of the first two.

Did you write a review on TripAdvisor? lol

This is exactly how they are teaching math (in second grade) these days. As far as the division idea goes, my daughter calls it parsing. Take a handful of.. (I like Mancala stones) and then divide it up between the members of the family, lets say 4. Your result is the number everyone gets and the leftovers.

For addition, they are learning tricks like 5 + 5 = 10, add 1 to one side and subtract one from the other and you get the same result, 6 + 4 = 10, 7 + 3 = 10, etc.

I have more "tales from second grade" if you are interested, you know where to find me.

And dont forget to go out with your kids and inhale some fresh air and sun along with all the math facts! 🙂

CNN reports that this missing boy scout has been found alive.  Sometimes the stories turn out good.

Ok, I'm going to start to fall behind here for a little bit since they sprung the premiere on me early, so my apologies ahead of time. Since we haven't finished the show yet at my house I'll save the review of the actual dancers until tonight. But here's thoughts on the premiere itself:

• It's funny how they're hyping "they only had 4 weeks to train instead of 6!" like it's a big thing, and then they say "But the first week there'll be no eliminations." In other words, "We just wanted to get on tv earlier." A week of dancing without eliminations? So, basically, the show is just a 2 hour introduction to the cast? Ummm…
• I'm surprised that the producers haven't yet realized that the professional dancers are becoming stars in their own right at this point. What the heck was up with that mess of an opening number? Kerry and I were frantically looking for the dancers we recognized from past years. I'm disappointed that I didn't see Ashley, the little cute one who got stuck with Master P. I liked her. Why in the world couldn't they have worked in introductions to the dancers at that point? Even when the stars themselves came out, there was a graphic showing the dancer's name, without so much as a "from last season" or anything. They're still using the same introductions for the dancers that they've used since the beginning. Boring. If a dancer's been on the show before (besides Cheryl, we all know Cheryl's going to be the camera darling this time around), show some clips of their dancing.
• And speaking of that chaotic opening number, just how bad is the camera work going to be this year? That was painful to watch. I haven't seen all the pairs dancing yet, but when Joey Fatone was dancing we saw a cameraman or something run across the screen. That's just great.
• Heather Mills would rather be known as "charity campaigner" and "first dancer with an artificial limb" than "Paul McCartney's ex-wife"? This is supposed to be dancing with the *stars*, right? I wonder if anybody will dance to any Beatles covers.
• Oh my god how bad did Billy Ray Cyrus look? I wonder if he'll be the first one gone this time around? That would be karma — his partner is Karina, who pretty much lost the championship last year on her personality alone. Serves her right getting her hair pulled out of her head. Ouch. 🙂
• Did anybody else feel a little weird with the champ from season one out there dancing? I'd almost forgotten about the lost season. You know, the one where it was fixed, before they realized that they might have a hit on their hands.
• Here's some totally trivial trivia. One of the pairs danced to "Ballroom Blitz." In the movie Wayne's World, this song was performed by … Tia Carrere, former Dancing With The Stars competitor. I said it was trivial.

As of this writing I saw Ian, Billy Ray, Leeza, Paulina and Joey dance. Ian was the best, Billy Ray the worst. Leeza was surprisingly stiff, she's not doing her Lisa Rinna spot justice if she's going to dance like that.

Like I said, I'll write more once I see the whole show.
I'm thinking about trying to track the music this year, but that might be pushing my luck.

Im looking for a name of a song too the one Apollo danced to his partner was wearing the little red dress. lets hear it for the boys or something like that Can anyone help?????