T.V. Round-Up

Watching last night's "American Idol", we couldn't help but think, again, that the show is on its last legs. The judges are awful in their sugary-sweet, pathological need to make the contestants feel good, even when the singers don't deserve it. And among the contestants there's no one lighting our pilot light, either. Stefano's butchering of notes would make Sweeney Todd proud, Jacob seems to be auditioning more for "RuPaul's Drag Race" than as American's next great pop singer, and we can't decide if Pia is trying to be a pop singer or the next talent winner in the Miss America Contest. Pia tried to show her soulful side by belting Ike & Tina Turner's "River Deep, Mountain High", but she sounded like the Miss Virginia, who in the most recent Miss America Pageant, tried to "get down", as only a white girl in a beauty pageant can do, by singing The Temptations' "Papa Was a Rolling Stone". Miss Virginia was laughable, then, and so was Pia last night. But hey, according to the "judges", Pia was amazing! Right. You just know that Ike Turner is threatening to come back from the dead just so he pop a cap in Pia's ass.

(pia toscano - where is a good case of laryngitis when you need it?)

(the poor, simple-minded matt)

"Survivor" has had it monumental screw-ups in the past. James got voted out with two, (count'em, two!) immunity idols in his pocket, and didn't think to use one to save himself, and Jonny Fairplay's entire tribe believed him when he said his grandmother had died, (which wasn't true), only to have Fairplay come back later and use it against them. But in last night's episode of "Survivor", we might have just witnessed one of the biggest missteps of all time. Matt finally won his way back into the game after winning six straight challenges on Redemption Island, only to be promptly voted right back out again. Oh, Matt, Matt, Matt, ye of the golden locks and the Sarah Palin-like pea-sized brain. Boston Rob hated your ass in the first week of the game, and what in god's name made you think he was going to change his mind about you? Jesus, you'd think some of these contestants had never watched the show before. But it's okay, Matt can win his way back into the game once again, later on, and we're hoping he will, just to see if he'll continue to embarrass himself on national t.v. with yet another classic, boneheaded move.


(at left: barbara eden today;
at right: barbara eden on "I Dream of Jeannie")

Over on "The Joy Behar Show", Barbara Eden, of "I Dream of Jeannie" fame, was on to plug her new memoir, "Jeannie Out Of The Bottle". She told one really interesting story of meeting Sen. John F. Kennedy one day in the 1950's at Idlewild Airport, (which would, of course, later be renamed JFK Airport). She didn't know who the young Senator was, but enjoyed chatting with him, and just before she left to board her plane, he slipped a note in her pocket. When she read the note later, it was simply signed, "JFK" followed by his phone number. Joy asked Eden if she ever called the number, but according to Eden, she didn't. Wow, JFK must have had more extramarital sex than a Republican Congressman at a hooker's convention on "dollar whore night". Or Newt Gingrich.