Rock Star - Sept 6 Sid

Brooke proved her dedication and professionalism this week by taking time out from her Victoria’s Secret photo shoot to honor her Rock Star commitment. I wish Mrs. F’er would order something from Vic to get us back on the mailing list. The publication so great that Canada honors it with Victoria Day every May 24th.

So, in each preceding week, we’ve been shown a tedious recap of the week’s activities in the mansion. Bacchus shows up this week, bringing with him a group shower scene, some steamy, fetish-ridden hot tub action, and a heaping serving of asscake, and CBS decides to run another Levi’s commercial. I’m getting Ty and Jesse Jackson to help me organize a boycott. I’m an Old Navy man, myself (the retail store, not the military branch).

Off we go…..

JD – Come As You Are: Afraid of being compared to Kurt Cobain, JD opted to go with the Tori Amos version of the Nirvana tune. It had to potential to suck as bad as her cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit, but as long as I didn’t have to watch him dry hump the keyboard I’d say he pulled it off. I liked when the band finally cranked it up and let loose, but then it seemed to end far too quickly. I went back and timed it – 20 seconds. Kind of like the first time I, uh, you know… bungee jumped. I was pogo dancing along at home, but barely reached my target heart rate. I’ll never be able to maintain my rock star physique with that cardio routine unless by rock star you mean John Popper.

Pretty Vegas: JD started out his original with some rap about searching for something, people. Maybe his car keys or something, people. You know, people, it reminded me of the Kevin Cronin rap at the beginning of Ridin’ the Storm Out from an REO Speedwagon album that once graced my turntable. After he found the car keys and the song got started, I thought it was a highly commendable effort. Good beat, easy to dance to, great stage presence. Ten bucks says Moist Rub says something about not liking his voice.

Then Brooke told us that money from the Rock Star downloads is going toward the hurricane relief effort to shame those of us downloading the tracks from unauthorized sources.

Suzie – I Can’t Make You Love Me: This was a great performance… if I was an American Idol fan. The nose ring and B52 hairdo didn’t seem appropriate for the material she performed this week. Like a cloth napkin in your happy meal. Suzie’s performances are like that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry was dating that girl that only looked good in the right light. Some weeks I want to cash out my retirement account and hire Suzie as my own personal chanteuse. Then other weeks, like this one, I want to buy her a beer for being a really good karaoke singer.

Soul Life: Somebody needs to get Suzie a message inside the mansion and let her know that her man Ty is losing favor with the masses and she needs to abandon that ship stat. Furthermore, I just got bored silly listening to this. It even failed to excite the overenthusiastic MiG. I swear I saw him knitting a new codpiece for next week’s show while waiting for her to finish. I bet anyone in a major city could name me a local band that could offer up an original that would put this snoozer to shame. For Dallas, I nominate Maylee Thomas – check out Soul Shine from her Rhythm of the Blues disc.

MiG – Hard to Handle: I miss Brandon. I know I wanted him to go because he was a little light on the talent side, but he was definitely more interesting than MiG. I think MiG spends his rehearsal time doing push ups and making the house band spread Nair on his chest.

Home In Me: Picture Shirley Feeney sitting at a keyboard doing an imitation of Richard Marx while trying out for Rock Star: Journey.

Jordis – We Are The Champions: Damn, she’s lost ground more quickly than Howard Dean in the last Democratic primary. Early in the competition, I applauded her for looking so natural and comfortable up there. She still has a cool voice, but something got inside her head and now she’s fighting every pitch instead of letting the game come to her. Even the best major leaguers can get in a slump. The body language even killed me tonight – how can you sing a song like WATC with your thumb just hanging there on your belt? Not much I liked about this performance.

Try Not – She should have just titled it “Please Send Me Home Now Before I Jeopardize My Future”. That being said, I liked this song a lot in a New Bohemian kind of way. It was Unga friendly and had a good groove to it, but it didn’t appear that the crowd knew how to react to it. Have you ever gone to a local show on a Sunday or Monday night and there’s like 12 people in the club and five of them are girls right up front against the stage rocking out while the other seven are just milling about smartly in the background? The five up front are obviously girlfriends of the band. That’s how Marty looked during the song.

Marty – Everlong: This is a tough song to do and it seems even more challenging to do acoustically without all that noise to hide behind. I thought the first verse sounded off, but he recovered nicely. Probably just editing, but during the song it looked like Jon wanted to leave to hit the head and grab a beer during this one so he wouldn’t miss the end. I was right there with him. A decent performance, but not my favorite.

Trees – This song was like a shot of that 100 proof cinnamon schnapp’s called Hot Damn. It’s like a Goldschlager without the novelty of the gold flakes. I confess that I downloaded this tune the day before and listened to it several times over the next 24 hours. And it still blew me away seeing it tonight. Great tune and awesome performance. I won’t diminish it with any attempts at being clever. Dave pretty much stole my summary when he said he could hear it on the radio today.

Obviously, Marty stands far above the others on his original composition, tonight’s performance, and the momentum he’s built upon since day one. I feel bad for wanting to smother the poor boy with a pillow a couple weeks ago. He’s proven me wrong by showing that he can incorporate their direction without losing himself in the process and making it work. You know what I find even more admirable than his performances, is that it’s becoming somewhat apparent that Marty came into this thing with a well thought out plan to win this thing on his own terms and not having to announce it to the world or rub other contestants faces in it. It’s just like an episode of the Brady Bunch with the lesson to take away at the end, except without having to watch 30 minutes of a Brady Bunch episode. No matter who you want to win, I hope you are paying attention to that aspect. You don’t need to be a fuckstick in this world to succeed.

Like it or not, I think the only one that has the potential to compete at this level is JD. MiG has proven himself the safe choice for an INXS tribute band. I have to agree with Dave again that Suzie has the best voice, but she’s still missing the almond extract to pull off fronting this band. Unfortunately, it should be obvious that we will have to say goodbye to Saint Jordis this week.

The early results revealed top vote getters as follows: Marty, Suzie, JD, MiG, Jordis.

But that really doesn’t matter much this week, does it?