I'd like to extend a big, sincere, manic CONGRATULATIONS that comes from the heart of my bottom to Taylor Hicks, who soundly defeated Katherine McPhee to win this year's American Idol singing and smiling competition. Taylor had to make it past some pretty tough competition, including the amazing talents of some guy, some other guy, some cheery black chick, and a bald dude. This year's final two was a pretty close match, and although I didn't watch, I understand that Taylor's victory was decisive... he defeated Katherine by singing the Supremes classic Baby Love while simultaneously delivering a roundhouse kick to Katherine's forehead. Ouch. That's gonna leave a bruise.

Wendy and I didn't watch American Idol this year. Well, anyway, I didn't watch it. Wendy snuck in an episode or two and told me, confidentially, that the bald guy was her pick since he was a good singer and also since he was "dreeeeeamy." That was fine with me. My pick was which ever one of the contestants was most likely to quickly fade away into obscurity. I think I got my wish. My bet is that this Taylor Hicks guy will be singing Barry Manilow songs during free promotions at car dealerships by this time next year.


Now, I will cop to having watched American Idol in the past. I watched it the second season, when Ruben Studdard beat this nitwit to win the big prize. That made me happy because I thought Ruben was a nice guy and a darn good singer. Then he released a couple of absolutely unlistenable, gaud-awful top 40 songs and faded away into obscurity. Whatever.

Then, the next year, an annoying rat-on-crack named Fantasia Barrino won, instead of the infinitely more talented (and more deserving) Latoya London, and Wendy and I both swore in disgust that we'd never watch the program again.

But we gave in. We watched it again the next year. And we sat through the whole season, watching in slack-jawed boredom as some generic blonde country singer named Carrie SomethingOrOther won the contest, beating out a bunch of other generic Whoevers. There was one singer, a beautiful young woman named Nadia Turner, who Wendy and I both liked a great deal. Know why? Because she could actually sing. It also didn't hurt that she has the prettiest pair of bedroom eyes since the young Susan Sarandon. But, otherwise, last season's American Idol was a complete waste of time, I mocked it here at the blog, and I vowed to never watch the damned thing again.

And I kept that vow.

So, once again, another season of American Idol has come and gone. And, once again, I don't care. The difference this year is that I'm not bitter over having wasted two hours a week watching that crap.

And good riddance.

---

By the way, I'm reviewing films at film geeks again. For the time being. This morning Wendy and I watched Incident at Loch Ness and I liked it quite a bit.

---

And before I forget, thanks to Lorna for sending me this link about the government of Canada doing what they can to help out in Darfur:

Canada will immediately increase its aid to Darfur by $40 million, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced Tuesday.

Harper said Canada will continue to provide humanitarian aid, which includes food and water, and assistance building sanitation services, to the violence-plagued region in western Sudan.

God bless ya, our neighbors to the north.

---

I feel that I should also pass on a bit of info about something that I discovered only a few minutes ago: If you go to Google Image Search and look for pictures of Veronica from the old Archie comic books, you'll be surprised to learn two things: One, for some reason, lots of people name their cats after Veronica and post pictures of said cats on the internet. Two, there are a lot of sickos out there who draw and post pornographic cartoons of Veronica and Betty.