Mostly Harmless

Down by 35 points going into the half, only lost by 25 points (48-23).

That was swell. Glad I was watching two other shows while that was on.

The Twins won, if you care. I don’t.

Now when the hell are these bozos gonna run the Alias premiere? They’re 20 minutes late. Do we need to have a Sports Wrap? We just watched the F’in game 30 minutes ago. Let’s move on people!

(that is not a typo)

Here’s my beef with the director of the “Before Your Love” video: he was shooting the wrong video.

The director, Antti J., seems to have been of the opinion that the video was for “A Moment Like This,” based on his description of the concept of the video. Not once, but twice, he stated that the song was about her winning American Idol — the second time was after listening to the song at least a dozen times while shooting the video.

Of course, neither song is actually about winning AI, but AMLT certainly fits that situation better than BYL. Kelly did sing the hell out of AMLT when she won, crying in all the right spots, but that is, technically, not what the song is about.

Kelly was supposed to be shooting the video for AMLT in New York on Saturday… if they used the same director would he suddenly figure out that the first video fit AMLT better than BYL? Would he have to strain his brain to come up with a new concept for the video?

I don’t know if they actually shot the video this weekend, since the last four months of constant singing and interviewing have fried Kelly’s voice to the point that she now has nodes on her vocal chords and is under doctor’s orders to not speak at all for 4-5 days — then it will be decided if she needs more vocal rest or surgery.

Surgery would put her out of commission for at least a month and runs the risk of changing/ruining her singing voice (ala Julie Andrews), so there is a great deal of concern about her health on all the message boards.

It would be very sad indeed if her career was shorter than the actual contest that won her the recording contract, and amounted to just two songs that she didn’t even get to pick.

Cumulative total sales of the other 19 singles in the top 20: 34,000.

Sales of Kelly’s single: 236,000. That’s just 48,000 copies less than the number one album last week (68,000 _more_ than the #2 album). It’s also 35 times what the number 2 single sold.

[I am aware that the singles market in the US is non-existent, but still, 236k is a lot o' CDs when you consider there are only two songs on the disc.]

The new record for the biggest single-week leap to No. 1 in the history of Billboard’s Hot 100: 52-1. Old record holder: The Beatles; new record holder: Kelly Clarkson.

Billboard article.

The songs are cookie-cutter ballads that were banged out in a few weeks so those sales are largely the result of Kelly having a boatload of fans and her ability to make anything sound good.

The mastering of the CD is a bit sub-par. Every one of her live performances sounds better than what’s on the CD, the problem is that all the live performances gain a lot of noise (relatively) from being TV broadcasts.

I don’t know what they did in the studio to suck the life out of the recordings… maybe they didn’t use Memorex tapes.
The video for one of the singles (it’s a double-A side) just premiered on TRL, so look for that to kick some ass at MTV tomorrow.

I do have an issue with the video, or rather, the director, which I shall elucidate upon in the next post.

The guy in front of me at the drive-thru today:

* parked his car 8 feet away from the ordering speaker/mic, got out of his car and stood there reading items off of a sheet of coupons. (Not mentioning that he had coupons, of course.)

* At the window he handed the whole sheet of coupons to the cashier, she tore off the relevant ones and gave the remaining coupons back. She then had to re-enter the entire order with coupons.

* The guy spent about a minute futzing with his change, oblivious to everything else, while the cashier held his first sack o’ food out the window waiting for him to take it.

* The second bag went faster but there was, again, a long delay while the cashier held out his drink.

Misc. item: the little registration sticker on his license plate (”Nov”) was upside down. I had a lot of time on my hands to notice such things…

Overall time: about five minutes for something that should have taken one minute.

I was thru there in 20 seconds, and made a point of not following that person on the road.

For those of you who didn’t watch AI, and live in a cave, the show’s over and Kelly Clarkson won, of course!

Now the ‘victory lap’ media blitz is over and the poor girl gets to sleep for a few days before prepping for the Vegas show and going on a concert tour of 28 cities in 40 days.

How will I manage without AI every Tuesday and Wednesday? I mean, sure, she’ll be singing the National Anthem tomorrow, and she’ll be on MadTV on the 14th, the Today show on the 17th, the Vegas show airs the 23rd, and she’s on Leno (again) on the 23rd, but other than that, what?

If it weren’t for all the mp3s, the shows on tape, and the fan sites, I don’t know what I’d do.

p.s. ‘nuther recap

p.p.s. some pics -n- tunes -n- videos: here

Update: Apparently the Tonight Show appearance is the 23rd, not the 30th.