Jeremy's World

You know how the saying goes, “It’s like a [insert vehicle here] wreck. You can’t turn away.”  Well, for me, reality TV can be this way.  The trashier the better.  And, I’m (mostly) not ashamed to admit that.  Besides network reality TV like American Idol and Survivor, there’s the entertainment found on VH1.  And one of the best there?  Rock of Love with Bret Michaels.

Obviously I’m a big fan of hair band music, and Poison is the epitome of that genre.  Since Brett Michaels is the front man there, I guess that makes him the quintessential hair metal icon (never mind he’s probably bald under that bandana).  Now that it’s some 25 years past the hair band hey day, what’s a rocker to do?  Go on TV and find “real love” with skanky girls half your age, of course.

That’s the premise of Rock of Love.  Lonely Brett needs to find a girl to be his true love because apparently he can’t do that without TV.  And since this is the third season, I guess it didn’t work out the past two times.  Poor guy.  Ok, I know, he does it because losers like me will watch, he has an album to pimp (which is pretty good), and I’m sure he gets a gazillion dollars to do it.  And the girls on the show?  The trashiest of trashy.  Every great once in a while there may be *one* who you wouldn’t be embarrassed to bring home to mom.  But for the most part, these girls make Britney Spears seem as elegant as Jackie O.

That said, last night was the big finale, and of course we watched.  It came down to a big choice between the “girl next door” and the Penthouse model.  Brett chose the Penthouse model (Taya, on top)…For the record, I would have chosen the girl next door (Mindy, on the bottom).

I’m sure your life is further enriched knowing this bit of information.

Have you ever seen the CBS show "NUMB3RS?"  It’s kind of fun – FBI agent solving murders who has a math-geek-university-professor brother.  The math guy applies all of his seemingly superhuman understanding of math, patterns, statistics, algorithms, etc. to find things that otherwise would not have been seen using "pure" police science.  Yeah, it’s often silly but can be entertaining.

I came across the reverse tonight.  Netflix is hosting a contest for people to come up with a movie recommendation system that is 10% better than the one they currently use.  I think it’s brilliant on their part to get ingenious output from people for a relatively low price ($1 million prize) in a method the article calls "crowdsourcing" (very clever).  Anyway, if you can make it through the 4 pages, it’s an interesting read on how a psychologist is applying human psychology to the problem rather than "just" mathematics and computer science…with astonishing results.  Read it from Wired Magazine.

So, I’m hanging out watching the girls sing on American Idol tonight.  The theme was songs of the 70’s.  Two of the remaining 10 chose Heart songs.  Now, these girls are talented.  Even so, Ann Wilson’s amazing dynamic range is that much more obvious when very talented young women can either do the low, throaty part or the high, belt-it-out part…but not both really, really well.

Even so, I think the girls’ side will come down to cuties Carly Smithson and Kady Malloy who, interestingly enough, are the ones who sang "Crazy on You" and "Magicman" respectively.  Brooke White (who did a really good Carly Simon "Your So Vain" but looks a lot like Juice Newton from back in the day) is my dark horse pick.

Amanda Overmyer was horrible.  Asia’h Epperson was horrible save one big note.

EDIT: Ok, after watching it again on Tivo (yes, again, STFU), I think Ramiele Malubay is right in there too even though she has a freakishly different singing voice than speaking voice.