Catch-up

I had started and stopped a couple of stories/ updates in the past weeks that either weren’t coming together like I wanted or that kept getting pushed down the priority ladder by real work. This is a quick catch-up.

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I have a website that I started when I left for Korea. As is the case with most of my projects, the webpage has been in a constant state of heavy construction with no foreseeable completion in sight. I’ve been planning a major clean up/ update/ streamline/ restyle/ overhaul of my site since I’ve been back in the US, but my computer died and I don’t have access to any of the pictures or webpage files I was working with. So… until I (hopefully!!) get a new computer this summer my webpage will have to stay in the planning phase.

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I confess I have some guilty listening pleasures and indeed some horrific musical skeletons in my closet, but I typically shy away from all things MTV and Top-40 or New Rock Radio. I will watch the first few episodes of American Idol to catch all the really bad singers have their hopes, dreams, and egos decimated on national television by the judges, but I never stick around for too long after that. This season, however, I was compelled to follow the season for the pool of talented North Carolinians making their way into the latter rounds of the competition, and of course, for Taylor Hicks. Twenty-nine, gray-haired, goofy-as-hell, and with this gritty, soulful voice he’s hardly Idol material, so every week that he stayed in the competition I was more and more excited about the show. He’s definitely talented and could very well put out an Idol-backed CD that I would buy, so I was elated when he actually won. He’s a breath of fresh air after Clay Aiken et al.

I must admit that Taylor’s first single, the one debuted on The Idol, is bad. Really bad. Typical IdolPop. I think his first CD will be more of the same, I’m sorry to say, but I think we’ll get some good stuff out of him before too long. It’ll take them a while to calibrate the HitMaker3000 song writing machine that cranks out the radio-worthy Pop singles. Or who knows? Maybe they’ll actually let him write some of his own songs.