Hi folks! If you're here, it's probably because you bookmarked this blog a while ago. We are now hosting "American Idol" talk over on PopStand, and even blogging live during the shows!
Here's the blog from the last audition show.
I'd love to have you join us! Bookmark that and I'll see you there on "Idol" nights!
-- Anne Neville
If you've enjoyed the "American Idol" blog and banter from Dave Valenzuela and Barbara Sullivan (writing as Babs), I have great news.
Dave, our library systems director, and Barb, a features reporter whose main beat is fashion, join me on a new Buffalo News blog called PopStand. Find it here.
We'll bring you morning links to hot stories, then postings on pop culture throughout the day. When Idol starts back up, the news and discussions will be over there. And psst! I have a few minutes to interview Taylor Hicks before his show tomorrow night at Seneca Niagara Casino -- look for news from that on Pop Stand on Friday!
Come on over, read, comment and join us in the fun!
--Anne Neville
If you think you can sing, you might pencil in this Saturday's auditions for the title of Buffalo Idol, which includes a guaranteed chance to audition before a producer at the "American Idol" tryouts in Philadelphia Aug. 27.
The Buffalo Idol tryouts will begin at noon Saturday in the Fashion Outlets on Military Road, Niagara Falls. The contest is open to U.S. citizens age 16 to 28 who live in the Fox 29 WUTV coverage area. Come prepared to sing 45 seconds of the song of your choice, unaccompanied. The top 15 will sing again on Sunday, same place, same time. Details here.
Antoria Gillon, 20, of Dallas, a few days short of a full nine months pregnant, waited for 16 hours (starting at 2:30 a.m.) outside Texas Stadium in Dallas to audition for next season's "American Idol."
She did get her chance -- and her golden ticket to Hollywood -- for auditioning while in labor.
"I felt something over my body while I was walking," she told USAToday from her hospital bed. "I knew right away what it was. I was singing and the judge stopped and asked if I was OK, and I said, 'I just want to finish my song.'"
The fact that Antoria says "the judge" rather than Simon, Randy or Paula, leads me to believe that this happened in front of a producer. But if this was filmed, I'm sure we'll be seeing it as next season opens.
The baby? He's adorable. And he's named Jamil Labarron Idol McCowan.
Paula Abdul was supposed to be involved with the new "Bratz" movie, to be released Aug. 3. She was originally set to work as an executive producer, play a character, and help with choreography, music and costuming.
Then, bam. Check out this clip from the regrettable reality show "Hey Paula" here. "The most hideous experience for me to go through," she slurs after learning via email that she won't be needed. (This part is so hard to understand that it's subtitled.) Cleaned up, sobered up, rested, or however you want to describe it, as she comments on her meltdown, she asks seriously, "Where is God when you need him?"
According to MTV.com, some of Abdul's near-co-stars still maintain that she dropped the project due to a scheduling conflict.
TMZ.com has posted 31 seconds of video of Sanjaya singing during the Idol tour. I'll take their word for it that he forgets the words and runs out of breath mid-performance, because the sound is pretty poor.
Chris Sligh's also on stage, accompanying Sanjaya on guitar.
"The haters made my fans stronger," Sanjaya says in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle. He also says, mysteriously, "I have a huge, loud Italian family. When you've been on TV, they're loud and Italian to you and about you. It's definitely interesting, to say the least." Adds the Chronicle writer, "Yes, he said Italian."
Speaking of the tour, is anybody going to Toronto (Aug.14) or Rochester (Aug. 23) to see it?
Clay Aiken's people weren't commenting on a spat he got into Saturday morning with female passenger on a flight into Tulsa, but he told the crowd at his concert that night that he'd been beaten up by a girl that day.
Today's Daily Dish reports the incident, which resulted in both Aiken and the unnamed air rage woman being questioned by the FBI.
The dispute, which started over Aiken putting his foot on the woman's armrest, ended when flight attendants intervened, but not before the woman gave Aiken what was described as a "minor shove."
Personally, I'd let Chris Daughtry put his foot on my armrest anytime, but I wouldn't let Clay get away with it, either.
Bravo spotlighted Paula Abdul's new reality show, "Hey, Paula" last night. I caught the second episode, where she gets a Fashion Icon award from Tim Gunn (who seems less sibilant than he does on "America's Next Top Model").
It seems the producers are making the case that poor Paula is 1) basically wacky, but in a fun, unpredictable way, not in a drunk or drugged-out way, and 2) the victim of severe insomnia, and, in the case of the slurred-words press interviews before last season started, the flu.
But I have to tell you: When she was rolling into her limo after mumbling something like, "Theresh a way to do this ..." all I could think of was Anna Nicole Smith, another petulant, outrageous woman who exposed her chaotic life in a reality series. Everything from the commentary from a composed-looking Paula that's added later to the tight-lipped long-suffering aides and the tiny, yapping dogs, this has the feeling of the Anna Nicole Show. And after the tragedy of Anna and her son, that feeling is not enjoyment, it's dread.
Did you watch "Hey Paula"? What did you think?
American Idol has announced its audition schedule -- which starts July 30, can you believe it?
The bad news for local singers is that only one city is remotely (and I do mean remotely) close -- Philadelphia, on Aug. 27. And since that's the final audition, if you don't make it there, there's no second-best place to try again.
Here's the rundown, from the American Idol web site:
Monday, July 30: San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium
Monday, Aug. 6: Dallas' Texas Stadium
Friday, Aug, 10: Omaha's Qwest Center
Tuesday, Aug. 14: Atlanta, site to be announced
Saturday, Aug. 18: Charleston's North Charleston Coliseum
Wednesday, Aug. 22: Miami's AmericanAirlines Arena
Monday, Aug. 27: Philadelphia's Wachovia Center
No Boston, no NYC, no Chicago, no Cleveland, no Las Vegas (cheap flights). Not even Seattle, the star of last year's "bad auditions" segment, and the spot where both Blake Lewis and Jordin Sparks (not to mention Sanjaya!) made it through!
The rules for San Diego are the only ones posted at this point. Wristbands will be given out starting Saturday July 28, and auditioners will not be allowed to camp out.
Nigel Lythgoe told USA Today that producers will try to snag more of the good singers from the mass auditions. "Too many slipped through the net," he said. But then: "adding that no big changes are planned." So they're going to try to do better by ... trying to do better.
Poor ticket sales have forced the cancelation of Kelly Clarkson's summer tour.
In an unusual bit of candor in a business where we'd be more likely to hear that the star had been abducted by aliens than the truth, both Clarkson's rep and someone from LiveNation explained that tickets just weren't selling like they needed.
US magazine reports that the CEO of LiveNation promoters, Michael Rapino, said in a statement, "Ticket sales have not been what we anticipated and we came to the realization that we had bit off more than we could chew."
On her own Web site, Clarkson was less candid. "The fact is that touring is just too much too soon," she says, without further explanation.
This is just the latest wrinkle in Clarkson's problems with her upcoming CD, "My December." She's battled with the suits -- both the labels and her own -- over its content, and earlier this week she fired her manager. Never a good sign.
What do you think is going on here?
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