American Idol (last one I swear)

I think this will be my last post on American Idol since it may as well just be over at this point. Who gets voted off tonight... Brooke probably deserves it, Sayesha is living on borrowed time, and Jason did some serious damage with a more boring rendition of September Morn than Neil Diamond himself (not easy to do). So does it even matter who goes? They should just skip right to the top 2. Cook and Archuleta will battle it out and Archuleta will probably win because, well, lets look at the actual "voting" audience. I'm fairly certain it's composed of teenage girls, women over forty and probably a couple weird old guys. I guess I shouldn't forget the votefortheworst.com faithful who will probably push Brooke into the top 3 (Just for the record Brooke, I don't think you're the worst... but please don't sing I'm a believer in your low register ever again). Added to the voting pool this year is of course every Mormon in Utah who is voting for David A numerous times. So, David Archuleta will win and it will be totally cute and make us all feel warm and fuzzy and be much easier to watch than David Cook winning with that smug look on his face like "of course I won". And then David Cook will sell more records despite being second place and everyone will be content. The End.

*Note to Paula: We don't mind when you're a little drunk on the show, it makes things more interesting. But when you start critiquing performances that didn't happen it gets a little awkward.

Kyler's first golf lesson

American Idol... yet again

Seriously though, how good did the two Davids do last night? Sooo good! David Cook finally won me over (anyone who can make "You'll Always Be My Baby" that good deserves it). Is anyone else wondering why Kristy Lee Cook is still around? And can we just eliminate Sayesha too this week? That would be lovely.

Bejing 2008

There's been a fair amount of controversy about Bejing being chosen to host the Olympics this year. In San Francisco yesterday, the torch came through with lots of drama in tow. The protesters (who are trying to make people aware of the human rights violations committed by the Chinese in places like Tibet) have come out in mass. On Monday, a few people breeched security and climbed the Golden Gate Bridge to hang protest banners and Tibetan flags. The actual running of the torch was yesterday. I thought it would be great to go but it was supposed to start downtown and I wasn't interested in hauling my kids down there with all the demonstrations going on. Then all of the sudden the city opted to change to a secret route in the hopes it would keep the protesters away. Once I realized it was heading towards the marina (and no one knew where it would go which meant the traffic might be bearable) I hopped in the car and drove down to the Marina Green. There were cop cars all along Marina so I figured the procession would make it there eventually, which it did... right in front of me! And then it was total insanity when a mass of people caught up to it. I can't even describe to you how many cops came out of nowhere to line the streets and body barricade the torch.

This is what it looked like just before the procession got there:

Two minutes later it looked like this:





Here's my two cents (even though no one has asked for it and Zach wishes I would shut up about it). The Olympics should always be less about politics and more about the accomplishments of the athletes, but the honor to host them shouldn't be given to a country with a recent history of extreme oppression and disregard for human rights and lives. It would obviously be unfair for to the athletes to cancel them when they had no choice when it came to the venue, so the good that comes from it is that people are being made aware of what communist China is capable of. Most of the protesters yesterday were respectful (there were only a few idiots condemning the torch bearers and they probably couldn't tell you where Tibet was if they had a map in front of them). To make a very long story short, I totally support the athletes and think the Olympics should go forward, but I'm glad people aren't forgetting that less than 20 years ago Bejing hosted another even called the massacre at Tiananmen Square where the communist government killed and imprisoned it's own people who were peacefully calling for democracy and an end to oppression.

And the winner is...

This was perhaps the best April Fools joke in recent history.