This Is The Way You Do It, Pia

Mercedes and Santana sing "River Deep, Mountain High" on "Glee"

Tween Music Round-Up

Tween queen Miley Cyrus waded into controversy once again this week when she slammed budding singer, Rebecca Black. 13 year-old Black rocketed to fame after her Youtube song and video, "Friday", made her an overnight star. And now Cyrus, whose brain is only slightly larger than a walnut, or Michele Bachmann's, commented, "It should be harder to be an artist. You shouldn't just be able to put a song on YouTube and go out on tour." Wow. Really, Miley?


Should we state the obvious? Yes, we should. We're guessing that you, Miley, believe the more appropriate path to stardom is to be born to a famous, successful singer/actor father who opens the doors to the entertainment business for you, and then have the full force and weight of the Disney empire behind you as they pimp you out to be their next child star. Yes, you're right, having your career handed to you on a silver platter is preferable to making a video and posting it on Youtube. Oh, Miley, Miley, Miley. Obnoxious comments are not your strong suit. Concentrate on what you're good at, dancing on poles and chasing boys in Hollywood donned in trailer park-inspired daisy duke shorts and halter tops. Jesus!






And speaking of really bad singers, "American Idol" ejected two contestants this week. The truly awful Naima finally bit the dust, (we have no idea how she made it this far), and sadly, one of our favorites, Thia, also bought the farm. Thia probably had one of the purest singing voices on the show, but her lackluster personality did her no favors when it came to winning the votes of the American public.



All this discussion of bad teen singers would leave one to believe that the current state of pop music is in desperate trouble. But then, just when we're ready to give up all hope, Mercedes, over on the Fox hit show, "Glee", saves the day. If you didn't love her version of "Hell To The No", you need help. Check it out below.

"Hell To The No" by Amber Riley

How fun was this? Mercedes, (Amber Riley), sings "Hell To The No" on "Glee" and single-handedly saves pop music.

Adding More Hardware to the Cheerios' Trophy Case

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The Emmy nominations were announced today, and as we predicted months ago, Jane Lynch, as Sue Sylvester on "Glee", was nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a comedy.

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We'll write something later on all the nominations, the good, the bad and the ugly of the increasingly silly Emmy Awards, but for now, let's just say that they can go ahead and inscribe Jane's name on that winged angel, she's going to win. To be up against Lynch in this category in this year, "Now that's hard!"

Anton Chigurh Stalks the Glee Kids

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Javier Bardem, who won every acting award known to man, including the Oscar, for his role as Anton Chigurh in "No Country for Old Men", is reportedly going to play a guest spot on "Glee". Bardem worked with Ryan Murphy, the executive producer of "Glee", this summer on "Eat Pray Love", the Julia Roberts film which Murphy co-wrote. According to EW.com, Bardem watched the entire first season of "Glee" in one sitting, fell in love with the show, and pitched the idea to Murphy to be a Spanish hard rocker on the t.v. musical.
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Bardem is only one of many Hollywood heavy-hitters who have either already been asked to be on the show or who are desperately pining to be asked. Katie Holmes is reportedly cast for a role, and many others, including Katy Perry, have been very public about their anxious desire to guest star. Perry even encouraged "someone to start a Facebook campaign for her". Oh, the irony. A show about unpopular outsiders has become so popular that every A-Lister in entertainment wants to join their club.

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Some advice for the "Glee" producers: instead of focusing so hard on bringing in top-natch acting talent, your time might be better spent bringing in some top-notch script doctors to get those messy storylines and sometimes incomprehensible scripts in shape. And as for the Glee kids, if Bardem comes in one morning with his hair combed to the side and carrying a long metal "wind instrument", we'd run for the hills.

Guys We Love

In the current issue of GQ Magazine, after we finished ogling Oguchi Onyewu, (see post below), on the very next pages were a fashion editorial featuring a model at whom we kept staring and thinking, "Where have we seen this guy before?" And then we realized the model is Mark Salling, the actor who plays "Puck" on the mega-popular Fox t.v. show, "Glee". We were wondering when someone would notice that this guy is really good looking.
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Mark doesn't get a lot of lines on "Glee", but the ones he gets are killer. In one episode, when asked what Madonna represented to them, the club members wrote, "singer", "inspiration", "legend", etc., while Puck wrote "MILF Hall of Fame". In last week's episode, each club member was asked to write down his/her life goal. Some wrote "singer", "teacher", "help solve global warming", and Puck wrote "threesome". So funny. We love this guy.

The "Glee" Continues

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There is rejoicing toight among the fans of the pop culture phenomenon that is "Glee"; the Fox Network just announced it is bringing the t.v. musical back for a third season. We'll be most interested to see which A-List guest stars win a spot on the show this fall; evidently every actor and musician in the known entertainment world has asked to be on the show. We can't wait to see who makes it.

Matthew Morrison Takes Down the Tweens

Matthew Morrison is feeling his Wheaties. He recently took out not one, but two tween stars in verbal smackdowns.

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First up was Britney Spears. After the Madonna-themed "Glee" episode was a major ratings behemoth, and after the album for said episode immediately shot to #1 on the Billboard chart, Brit Brit's manager, Adam Leber, began a campaign for his client. "Do you guys want to see a Britney Spears episode of Glee?", Leber Twittered.

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Asked about the possibility of a Britney-themed "Glee" on May 1, "Glee"'s star, Matthew Morrison, told Us Weekly, "That's a rumor her manager started. I hope our show doesn't go along that route."

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Oh, Brit, that has to hurt. But come on, Madonna has had dozens of hits, 37 top ten hits and 12 #1's. Brit Brit has had, what, one or two hits? Who knows? Maybe the most obvious reason why the cast of "Glee" might not want to feature Britney Spears' songs is because it would be incredibly hard to work a large board vocal modulator into every musical scene of the show. Now that's an "ouch".

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But Morrison wasn't finished; he mopped up the floor with the current tween rage, hair-challenged Justin Bieber. "I don't get this Bieber thing," Morrison said. "I really don't get it…I haven't even heard his music. I couldn't tell you one name of his songs—and I'm not lying about that."

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O. M. G! Right, girls?

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There are still some diehard Brit Brit fans out there, though. Not to be dismissed, about 7,700 people have now registered as fans on the recently launched "In Support of Glee Making a Britney Spears Episode" page on Facebook. But considering there are over 300 million users of Facebook, those aren't impressive numbers. Especially compared to the recent Facebook campaign which got Betty White a spot on "Saturday Night Live". White's Facebook promotion racked up 507,000 fans.

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Of course if Brit and the Bieb wanted to jab back at Matthew Morrison, they could ask him to stop doing those creepy "Ice Ice Baby" white rapper performances, complete with suburban white home-boy dance moves. Ow-ch!

Beginning, Middle and End, People!

Just like most of the rest of the country, we love the show, "Glee". But as much a breath of fresh t.v. air the show might be, it suffers at times from wildly erratic writing. It's almost as if the show's writers have no sense of characterization or narrative. One of the show's main writers has never written a show before, and the other two have thin writing resumes at best. And it shows. One minute a character is evil personified, and the next minute the character is, without warning, sweet and warm-hearted. It's disconcerting to watch; we're guessing the writers didn't do well in basic literature class in the 8th grade. And the storyline is all over the map. One week we're pulled along on the major story arc, the glee club trying to win a championship, and then, for the next two episodes, that story arc completely disappears and we're asked to get involved in a couple of one-off storylines which come out of nowhere, and then disappear by the next episode. Characters come and go on the show without warning. Watching the show for a coherent storyline is like watching a game of Wacka-Mole and trying to become emotionally invested in each Mole.
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But with that said, it really doesn't matter. The fact that this show is never going to win any awards for writing is beside the point. It's all about the music and the singing. And Sue Sylvester. And on those two points, the show is a must-see each week.
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Last night's show was a perfect example of the state of the show as a t.v. production. It was almost painful to watch the completely contrived story of Kurt and Finn's parents' romance, but the songs on the show were spectacular. Kristin Chenoweth returned for her second guest appearance, and her duet with Matthew Morrison on Burt Bacharach/Barbra Streisand's "One Less Bell to Answer/A House is Not a Home" was breathtaking. Mercedes got a rare solo, and made the most out of it with Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful", and even Kurt got a solo, who also sang "A House is Not a Home". And even though the show desperately needs good scripts, the writers do manage to come up with some unbelievably funny one-liners from time to time. Besides making Sue Sylvester one of the funniest characters on t.v., (and a role for which we'd bet the farm that Jane Lynch will win the Emmy this year), the writers have finally figured out how to give Santana and Brittany some great supporting lines. Last night, Brittany with a straight face to Santana, "I think my cat is reading my diary."
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But as good as last night's show was, the episode we are dying to see is next week's, in which Molly Shannon guest stars as a badminton coach, and none other than Olivia Newton John shows up to duet with Sue Sylvester on "Physical". Oh. My. God.