FilteringCraig

Alright, so everyone’s precious little helmeted friend Kellie is gone from the show. Now we are going to see how America votes with Katharine McPhee pulling almost all of the “hot chick” vote the rest of the way on the show. You can talk about Paris being a “hot chick” if you want, but she is too young and I am not the kind of person to count down the days until anyone’s 18th birthday like so many did for the Olsen twins.

Back to the point. I think it will be quite interesting to see where Katharine sits in the voting from here on out, regardless of her performances singing. She has decided to make this experiment interesting with her outfits apparently, because this week she was showing enough cleavage and leg to make any young boy feel funny in the pants. Other generations have had Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman, or Ginger and Mary Ann on “Gilligan’s Island” to introduce them to sexuality at a young age, and I am sure quite a few adolescent boys had their eyes popping out of their heads watching Katharine on Tuesday with that dress that acted like a sports bra up top and showed off her underwear under the skirt.

(I am sure there were a lot of dads watching the show all googly-eyed as well.)

As I reported here some time ago, Opie and Anthony and XM Satellite Radio have been in talks with CBS’ radio division to bring the duo (and third crew member Jim Norton) back to terrestrial radio. Now, as of April 21 2006, it looks like the rumors were true and the deal is basically final.

The new Opie and Anthony Show appears to be an unprecedented arrangement. The current show runs from 7 AM to 11 AM on XM channel 202. In the future, the show will be three hours on commercial radio, with an additional two hours that can only be heard on XM. For satellite subscribers, the new show will be five total uncensored hours. Opie and Anthony will reportedly be permitted to talk about XM on traditional radio over the span of their two year contract.

The deal hasn’t officially been announced yet, and already the detractors are coming out of the woodwork.

Rick Aristotle Munarriz says at The Motley Fool:

XM needs to focus on building a better moat, and that means more exclusive content. It had no choice but to share Oprah Winfrey with the larger television audience, but Opie & Anthony are a different case entirely. Sharing the risks devalues the product when something so much more than a free sample at a mall food court is being dispensed. Why lend a hand to a competitor slowly sinking in quicksand? If it isn’t a fair trade, don’t you dare sign on that dotted line, XM.

I am looking at this deal as something completely different. I think XM is tipping their hand as to what their greater business strategy is going to be. While satellite radio is a cool thing because of the technology, it might also be the company’s greatest weakness. Satellite radio is harder to use than regular radio. The signals and equipment have improved over time, but it isn’t yet where it needs to be. We all know this. The satellite radio subscribers are still the early adopters at this point. People with satellite radio are people in remote parts of the country with little radio choice, or hardcore radio fans who want to pay for commercial free and uncensored entertainment. Your casual radio listeners and the iPod generation aren’t going to rush to sign up at this point. This really puts a cap on the number of potential subscribers in the early portions of this business cycle.

Also, with technology the way it is these days, who is to say that Satellite is going to be the dominant technology over time? There are tons of competitors that are just an innovation away from entering the market with at least the possibility of creating a much more effective broadcasting standard. How about the next few iterations of WiFi Internet? How about the cell phone companies? Verizon already has VCast up and running delivering video to phones. Who is to say they couldn’t eventually enter with a more effective audio delivery technology than satellites can offer?

With threats like these looming, it appears that XM is at least open to those possibilities. With this deal, they might be letting the world know that while satellite radio is their business, they have the ability to create content, make deals and become a great partner to syndicate their talent. Testing the waters of further diversification doesn’t really seem like a bad idea to me and it isn’t exactly out of character for XM as they have also made deals with AOL and DirecTV who broadcast XM music channels on their respective services.

Obviously, the remainder of this story is yet to be written. Opie and Anthony have to resurrect the radio business that David Lee Roth has presumably crashed over the last few months at CBS and seven affiliates in relatively major markets. They need to do so while staying out of trouble, of course. But more importantly, for XM, they have to continue to create an added value for all the XM subscribers who have fallen in love with their uncensored show. With the current arrangement of three terrestrial hours and then an additional two uncensored hours on XM afterwards, it appears that they are already prepared to deal with this duality.

Oh and another thing.

If you think Opie and Anthony and CBS radio make strange bedfellows, you are right. But at the same time, when it comes to revenues, profits and competition, these things continue to happen. This arrangement, while revolutionary, is not inimitable. I am not saying that I think Howard Stern’s show will be syndicated through Clear Channel anytime soon, but I would be surprised if there isn’t an answer to CBS’ move from one or more of their competitors depending on how the Opie and Anthony deal turns out.

Oh and another thing part 2.

Famed sports talker Jim Rome is currently weighing his future options with radio and television. While he doesn’t have to worry about the uncensored bit, wouldn’t this deal work really well for him too? He could do a three hour show to all his terrestrial markets and carry another hour or so exclusively on a satellite provider.

I really can’t tell you how it happens. Maybe I have just seen too many movies and I am out of good ones. That is doubtful, but maybe. Maybe I give different types of movies a chance when I should know better and just move along. Whatever it is, I end up watching more terrible movies than good ones.

Last night was a perfect example. For whatever reason, I had The Perfect Score in my Netflix queue. My fiancee will claim up and down that it is because Scarlett Johannson is in it but honestly Scarlett is fourth billed and not really all that much to look at in this one.

Let’s get back on track. I am not sure what I was expecting from this movie. It is a high school movie about stealing the SAT test answers. It didn’t have the kind of cast that would have me thinking it was a real classic or anything. Chris Evans is one of the main characters and while his name doesn’t sound familiar, you might remember him from “Not Another Teen Movie,” or as the human torch in the abysmal “Fantastic 4″ movie. He stinks as an actor and took the role of leading this pack of unlikely team mates to scoring the answers to the test.

This movie makes his role in “Not Another Teen Movie” even funnier. In that movie, he mocked all kinds of teen dramas like “Varsity Blues,” and “American Pie” and “The Breakfast Club” and then in “The Perfect Score” they model their entire story line after some combination of the above movies. They have different kids from different social circles working together like “The Breakfast Club.” They have the athlete complex (played by Darius Miles) where we don’t know what it is like to be covered in the newspaper, as glorious as it may seem. The prissy smart girl, the stoner, the average dude with a heart of gold and the slacker chick who is the way she is because her parents suck.

Everyone’s favorite “Swimfan,” Erika Christensen gets to play the prissy smart girl. On first glance you might think she is hot, but for whatever reason, she isn’t. She is like a combination of Julia Stiles and Kate Hudson, except not in a good way, if you can imagine. Her acting is also not very good. She gives a chill-inducing performance and caused me to be embarassed for her in multiple scenes. One scene in particular, when her goody goody character is happy to have escaped the confines of being just “the girl with the second highest GPA in the senior class” gave me the bad kind of chills. She is dancing around and celebrating and it brings to mind Reese Witherspoon’s psychotic character from “Election.” And this movie is not cut out for that kind of sarcasm and/or dark comedy. It is just sincerity done badly.

Darius Miles is worse than horrendous in this movie. In terms of NBA’ers in movies, this might be an all-time low. Shaq was like Pacino in “Blue Chips” compared to what Darius Miles did in this flick. Ray Allen is like Phillip Seymour Hoffman with his performance in “He Got Game” compared to Darius Miles in “The Perfect Score.” Shaq (again) was more believable as some kind of Robocop in “Steel” than Darius Miles was in basically playing himself as a high school kid all over again.

That leaves Bryan Greenberg, Scarlett Johansson and Leonardo Nam, who plays the stoner, to save this movie and while these three were definitely the best, they didn’t provide enough to carry this movie into safety. What we are left with is a horrible movie, with an even worse cast, that achieves pretty much zero magic and only a couple of true laughs throughout the film. Compared to other teen movies, this just doesn’t cut it. And don’t think that I am holding this movie up to an impossible standard. I am not. I don’t need “Citizen Kane” but I do need something more than this.

Regardless, I think we need a picture of Scarlett Johansson to wash away all the residual badness left over from “The Perfect Score.”

That’s much better.

I think next time I will just rent “She’s All That,” “10 Things I Hate About You,” or “Can’t Hardly Wait” rather than trying to find some other kind of teen movie that will actually be bad in all the right ways.

Last night’s American Idol was the first time in a long time that I really enjoyed the bulk of the performances on the show. Who would have thought that these classic standards would treat all the prospective idols so well? As a group, I would say that the performances were classic, well thought out, and generally performed above average. Also, as a first-time watcher of the show, it will be interesting to see how the voting plays out tonight.

But first, the highlight performances. . .

First up last night was Chris Daughtry taking on “What a Wonderful World.” Chris did a nice job overall, but he did have some rough spots, specifically when he tried to be soft with his voice. Chris is definitely a belter and has some trouble when it comes to the notes and tones at lower volumes, which is why we end up with performances of songs like “What If” by Creed.

Paris did “These Foolish Things (Remind Me Of You)” and it was ok. She still seems like a young girl playing dress-up to me. She, like Chris, also has problems with the low-volume sections of songs. I think she probably has the most potential to grow out of anyone, but she really isn’t quite at the level to take on the more advanced and experienced singers left on the show. That being said, she had a decent week and seemed to be one of the more popular ones.

Taylor Hicks did “You Send Me” and he continues to surprise me with his performances week in and week out. I expected the cheesiness of it all to catch up with him, but apparently America likes its music with a bit of cheese. I guess this explains LFO’s short career. Anyway, Taylor doesn’t show any signs of tiring and America apparently likes him more than Ace and Elliott who have been sitting in the bottom week after week.

Finally on the good side, Katharine McPhee did “Someone To Watch Over Me.” While I don’t think that she was quite as good as Simon thought she was, I thought it was one of the best performances of the night. I do think that Simon will have some slightly different thoughts when he watches the performance back on tape. I really think that the judges are sometimes fooled by the live performance with the mix in the room vs. the mix that the audience sees on television.

And now for the not so good performances . . .

Elliott Yamin was close to getting himself in the other part of my article, but there was just something so cheesy and ridiculous about his performance last night. The vocals are decent, but I just don’t get it when he is singing. I don’t feel like he has any emotion or compassion. I know a lot of people say that Taylor is kind of like a Vegas lounge guy or something, but Elliott is probably even worse. Taylor sings with a lot of passion and emotion which is against the idea of the hired-gun-doing-it-for-the-money-Vegas-lounge-act type of performer. But Elliott on the other hand is so void of any kind of emotion when he is singing that he ends up coming off more robotic or something. I can’t totally grasp it, but I have the feeling that America feels the same way as he ends up in the bottom three all the time.

Ace Young stinks. His consciousness of his looks and fashion give me the douche chills every single week. He just seems so contrived all the time. Even his partial beards seem like a purposeful thing that he thinks will earn him the chick vote. This guy isn’t about the vocals at all. He is like the fourth or fifth member of the boy band. He doesn’t have the pipes to be Justin Timberlake, but he looks good enough that he will sell enough t-shirts and lunch boxes to earn his keep. He is like Danny Wood from the New Kids on the Block.

Kellie Pickler hammered through “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” and might be the only one who can save Ace from his own crappiness. She admitted to “butcher”ing this one and she wasn’t lying. She was awful.

Which brings me to the interesting question of how the voting will play out. Is it possible that this is a week where the performances won’t matter? Will America look the other way because Kellie admitted to having a bad night and kick someone else off who might be less likable? How great will it be to see Ace’s face as he is getting kicked off in a week when he thought he was safe due to the lackluster performance that Kellie put on?

I am hoping to see this happen. It would be so great to watch Ace get surprised. I can picture him standing there all wide-eyed with his mouth agape in his ego-fueled, mildly retarded Abercrombie model way.

This is what I want to see. This is what we all need to see.

Here’s to hoping.

Good morning. I would like to welcome you to the M. Night Shyamalan school of film-making, where every movie you make must twist and turn like Chubby Checker racing Nascar. You must jerk your audience around no matter how manipulative and unfair you must be to the audience. Who needs real storylines and good acting when you can just move things around on the fly with contrived complications and unrealities?

Sure, you could accomplish something really special with a story laden with clues like in The Usual Suspects, but why would you want to do that? That takes a lot of time and effort. This is the same kind of time and effort that you can’t fit into your schedule when you are booking powerhouse talent like Jennifer Aniston, RZA, Clive Owen and XZibit in your movie cast. By the way, is the goal in rap to have a name with as few vowels as humanly possible?

All (or most) snarkiness aside, this movie wasn’t very good. The acting was suspect. The writing was riddled with lines that could have come out of almost any movie. When Jennifer Aniston’s character is sitting on the train talking about her past, I could have finished her sentences for her. Blah blah blah, army brat. Blah blah blah, moved around a lot growing up. Blah blah blah. Seriously, who talks like this? What purpose did it serve? This movie pushed the cheese-o-meter really far with its unintentionally hilarious moments.

And if that wasn’t enough, this movie telegraphs every punch it might have in the arsenal. You can figure out pretty easily which team everyone is playing for and what has happened. And if you are even half paying attention to the obvious foreshadowing, you will realize that this movie is just about the fake ending and we are going to have a really final “no-we-mean-it-this-is-really-the-ending” type of ending to follow it all up.

Really, what would the modern day thriller be without overdoing it with some kind of double ending?

It really isn’t effective and at the end of the movie, you are left feeling ripped off because there were all these twists and turns, but you were able to see them and react to them early and often like playing through the first few levels of a video game before it really gets difficult. And that is not how we want to spend the roughly two hours it takes to invest in a movie.

Finally, I am quite disappointed that this is the offering we get from Jennifer Aniston. I thought she was on such a good track with The Good Girl. Hopefully she will return to some roles that rely on her acting ability rather than placing so much responsibility on directors and writers who are so susceptible to missing the mark no matter who the top actors are on the cast listing.

As a part of being in a band in this time and place, I am involved in a number of websites that I probably wouldn’t normally be involved with. One of these websites is Myspace. Myspace came in after friendster and took over the world by being cooler than Friendster and any of the other social networking sites. I don’t particularly like the site, but I consider it a necessary evil as a way to keep people coming out to our shows.

It is also a real potential source for abuse. Every now and then, I get some really nasty messages from super-empowered, anonymized ass clowns who feel like the Internet is there for them to become some kind of mutated Super Asshole when in normal life they probably walk around just thinking those ass-clown thoughts to themselves.

I got one of those messages yesterday.

This genius decided to send me this email.

“you guys look like fags and your music sucks”

So, how would you have responded to such a nasty email, if you were in my shoes? Now you play me. Go ahead and leave it in the comments, if you feel like it.

This is how I responded.

“Thanks for listening! - Craig - The Company Line”

I feel like such a grownup.

This week’s American Idol was better than last week, but still not totally excellent. There were some good and bad performances. Again, the mix of the sound was interesting in some spots as vocals got lost in the bombast of the house band. But this was a night of Queen music, so at least I knew going in that I was going to recognize the majority of the tunes.

One thing that might be improving are some of the contestants’ song choices. There were two great song changes by Taylor Hicks and Katharine McPhee. Taylor originally wanted to do “We Are the Champions” but ended up doing a great preacher-in-front-of-the-congregation-feeling-the-vibrations-of-God type performance where he strutted around and bounced his way through “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” with good energy and vocals.

Similarly, Katharine switched songs to “Who Wants to Live Forever” and while the performance wasn’t good, it was better than what I thought I was hearing in her taped rehearsal with Queen. After listening to “Forever,” it was the perfect venue for Katharine to show off just how good (or bad) she is. Unfortunately for her, what came out was how sharp and thin she can sound when she is really going to the top of her range.

And I am not sure if all of America heard it, but when she said something about “it’s nothing that they can’t fix in the studio,” my head wanted to explode. If we want to hear a machine sing, then what the hell do we need you for Katharine? It isn’t about how awesome you are at using ProTools that makes an artist popular. Occasionally it works for an artist like Cher on a pop song, but Katharine is going for the Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Barbra Streisand type of singer thing and trust me when I tell you that each one of them can sing without a pitch adjustment. Well maybe Whitney needs it now, but she didn’t when she sang the “Star Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl all those years ago.

As for the other performers last night. . .

Chris Daughtry is another one that confounds me. He had the best vocal performance of the night by far. The way he commanded his song and hit those ridiculous high notes was truly amazing. Except, who would really know on a song that isn’t really all that well known? I don’t mean to parrot Simon, but if you want to create a moment with American Idol audiences, you really need to wow them in their own backyard on a song that they can relate to. I loved the song last night and like I said, I thought it was the performance of the night, but it was tainted by the obscurity of the song choice. Chris is going to choose his way right off the show with these continual song choice mistakes.

Bucky Covington did a version of “Fat Bottomed Girls” that sounded just like it should have out of Bucky’s mouth. This guy has the least amount of talent left on the show. He has a lot of energy and he has turned into a likable character, but honestly, he can’t hang with the rest of the performers. If he had dedicated the song to Mandisa, it would have rated as one of the greatest moments in modern television history.

Kellie Pickler didn’t know what it meant when Simon said that her performance “shouldn’t have worked on paper.” She is dumb, but she did a decent job with “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Paris might have performed her way off the show last night. I thought her performance of “The Show Must Go On” lacked any kind of focus and sounded shrill at times. She is a good performer, but it couldn’t make up for how badly this song went for her last night.

Elliott Yamin not only looks 1000% better than he did at the beginning of the show, but his performances are getting better and better. “Somebody to Love” was a great song choice and he rocked it. Nothing else to say about Elliott.

Which brings us to Ace Young who did about the wimpiest version of “We Will Rock You” that I have ever heard. Your first clue should have been when Brian May told Ace that he wouldn’t do that to his own song. Oof! That has to be tough to hear.

I think Ace has finally met his maker this week. I am never really good at picking the person to go home. Last week I picked Bucky because I thought his performance was the worst. This week, I would have to say that Ace was one of the worst. At the same time, it wouldn’t surprise me if Paris went home. So, I am going to say that it is either Ace or Paris who hits the bricks this week.

You watch, with my predicting skills, Katharine is going to go home.

A lot of cool stuff went down this weekend, so I figured a wrap-up was in order.

Friday night was poker night at my friend’s house. They were preparing for a trip to Canada for a bachelor party weekend in Windsor. Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to be able to go to Canada, but I did get to hang out on Friday night to play poker. I didn’t win, but it was just nice to play again. I haven’t played poker in a while.

The reason I couldn’t go to Canada?

The Company Line played at a cool bar in Kent called Europe’s Gyros. Now, you guys probably know me well enough to know that I do not talk trash about bands that we play with. But one of the bands (that shall remain nameless) was infuriatingly bad on Saturday night. No, really. I was getting homicidal just sitting there having to endure their setlist. They were not well-rehearsed. They had no consistency in their timing. They had no sense that nobody was enjoying even a minute of their set and they performed with some kind of cockiness as if we couldn’t all hear the sonic abomination that was unfolding before our very ears and eyes. Really dudes, just do us all a favor and quit. You suck. Really badly. How on earth can a group of dudes think that they are good enough to play in front of others when they were this bad?

By the way, you are not cut out for extreme metal. Maybe you should realize it like I did and just switch to indie rock where four chords and a straight 4-count drum beat will take you for miles. Just realize your limitations.

Which brings me to my next point. The Company Line was in the middle of metal bands on Saturday night and I was kind of worried about the reception that we were going to receive from the audience. After this one band hit the stage, I was no longer worried. These guys were so sloppy and so bad that I figured any audience would appreciate us at least for how well-rehearsed we are. I am not saying we are the best band in the world, but the fact remains that when we hit the stage Todd, Kevin, Bradley and I all know what the other is going to be doing. We always write up a setlist and we practice at least once a week. I guess my philosophy is that even if you hate our style, we at least put on a professional show.

In the end we ended up getting a pretty good response and it was a good night, despite the fact that I didn’t get home until 3 am.

Then on Sunday Deezo and two other friends headed down to Jacob’s Field to watch the Tribe finish off the brooming of the Minnesota Twins. Sweep Baby Sweep! The right fielder for Sunday’s game was a relatively young guy named Jason Kubel and Deezo and I slammed him unmercifully at every possible opportunity. It just so happened that Kubel started the game with a 0.091 batting average and by the end of the day he was batting 0.083.

I will save some of the lines that Deezo and I were using on the youngster for the comments because I really only remember one of them right now anyway. I am sure Deezo remembers more of them.

Lost is one of the few television shows that I watch anymore. In the beginning, I was all set to make fun of the series because of all the goofy mysteries. I figured it was going to be just another shlock-filled show with little substance and “that dude from Party of Five.” After the first three episodes, I was ready to admit that I had been nothing but wrong. This show isn’t the same old song and dance.

Now I was into the show watching every week. There were mysteries as the episodes started to pile up. What’s with the polar bears? What is that weird swarm cloud thing that attacked? What’s with the French lady on the other side of the island? I was totally wrapped up in all of this. I found it fascinating. Then the mysteries started piling up some more. What kind of special abilities does Walt have? Who are “the Others?” What was the deal with Ethan, played by Tom Cruise’s brother? What is the deal with the hatch? How about those numbers and the computer? And now on top of all those, we have Henry Gale, the balloon, the mysterious supply drop and Hugo’s idea that this is just all his dream.

Why couldn’t they have just thrown Hugo off the cliff to prove that it is or is not all a dream sequence for him?

I like this show. I like the characters (especially Kate.) I want to be a fan, but I can’t help but feel that I am being played with over and over and over again in the hopes of making this show last a proper number of seasons to maximize profits for all involved. I would prefer to know that this was a finite story from the get-go with a defined beginning, middle and ending. Instead, we have this open-ended mystery adventure that doesn’t have enough direction.

I don’t want to sound like an ingrate because I have enjoyed the show so much, but I feel like I have been signed up for a field trip that was going to last a week, and while we are on day five of the seven day trip, we have only gotten through about 25% of the agenda that had originally been set for the field trip. Worse yet, the driver doesn’t seem like he has any intention of heading back home. Sure, we have nice air conditioning, and comfortable seats, but at some point, these little concessions aren’t going to make the ride worth taking anymore.

So, this is a plea for the people in charge of Lost. Let’s revisit that agenda, choose an ending time and figure out how we are going to get there in an entertaining, yet economical fashion. I want to watch your show, but I don’t want to feel manipulated every week. I want to feel like we all have some destination in mind no matter where that might end up being.

Obviously it is too early to make any predictions about the baseball season. I see all the sports writers working with their predictions of how things are going to go this baseball season, but short of picking which teams are still going to be bad, that is just not possible. Trying to predict a the World Series participants, let alone the winners just doesn’t make much sense at this point.

At the same time, all you can ask of a team is to win series’ and that is exactly what the Indians did to start the season. Yesterday, they wrapped up two out of three against their division rival and reigning world champion, the Chicago White Sox after dropping the first game and their number one starter C.C. Sabathia in the rain on Monday night.

So, what other conclusions can we draw after the first series?

Aaron Boone is off to a much better start than the previous April when he was pretty much unwatchable. Through the first series he is batting .357 with 1 double, 1 homer and 4 RBI’s. I know that this doesn’t sound like much, but if you watched him day in and day out last season, you would understand. Also Boone needed this kind of start to the season, or he would be looking over his shoulder watching out for Andy Marte to be called up from Buffalo after a very strong spring in Major League camp.

Similarly, Victory Martinez is off to a better start. He also had a tough spring last year and wasn’t able to turn it around until sometime in May. He is batting .333 through the first series.

As for pitching, obviously C.C. Sabathia’s pulled abdominal muscle is frustrating, but it isn’t like we aren’t used to it. C.C. is the team’s number one starter, but only by a hair. If Jake Westbrook and Cliff Lee pitch effectively this season, along with newly acquired Paul Byrd and Jason Johnson, the Indians will be a team of number 2 and number 3 starters without a true number 1. That is just fine with me. I would rather have five solid guys than have one great one and four not-so-great pitchers.

So, this is how the season starts. The Indians take their first series in the division before heading home for the home opener against another divisional opponent, the Minnesota Twins.

Deezo and I will be there on Sunday to heckle either Michael Cuddyer or Lew Ford in right field.