Because I Can… the random thoughts of Marc Scott

Michael Buble – Song For You

Kara DioGuardi & Katrina “Bikini Girl” Dar

Getting ready to live blog the American Idol finale.  I just got back from a grass fire, so I’m hoping I’m done for the night, or, at least until Idol is over.  Although, I must say, I think driving a fire truck with lights and sirens might be a little more fun than watching Adam Lambert.  Anywho, the pizza is cooking, the Dr Pepper is chilling, and the show starts in less than 10 minutes.

Pizza update: I think I just burnt the prints off two fingers on my left hand.  I may be good with fire, but the stove is an entirely different animal.  This will make typing very interesting tonight!

I called it last week, and I’m still waiting for it.  The Norman Gentle / Tatiana Del Toro duet.  One night, one stage, one epic performance.  Idol better bring it!

Ryan Seacrest… lips planted firmly on the judges butts.  Let the sap and cheese begin.  The judges montages are actually pretty funny though.  Kara seems annoying when they play her back like that.  I still have a crush on her though.

If Simon got one of those shirts with a tie imprint on it, then he would still be able to wear a t-shirt and look dressed up. #idol

Good to see the microphones are working!  Well done Idol.  Well done.  It’s not like this is the finale or anything!

OK, so the Top 13 are doing So What by Pink.  I don’t know Pink, but I think I can safely say that she is currently vomiting at what they are doing to her song.  If she was in the crowd, I bet she’d rush the stage and whoop all their butts.

Burnt fingers update… they hurt!

David Cook is on stage now.  He really is a great singer.  I’m a little surprised he hasn’t found a higher level of success.  It’ll come for him.  Performances like the one he just did can only help him.  That was awesome!  Gotta be hard for him to be on stage after losing his brother.  It’s cool that they are selling the performance to raise some money for cancer.  Say what you want about Idol, but they do a lot of good with the funds they raise.

Time for the Golden Idol Awards.  This is usually pretty entertaining.

Outstanding Male: As soon as they announced Norman Gentle as a nominee you had to know he was going to win!  He drove me nuts.  Absolutely nuts.  But that was because he was taking a spot that could have went to a real singer.  However, he is pretty funny!  It’s a stirring rendition of You’re Gonna Love Me.

Lil Rounds gets to take the stage with Queen Latifah.  If Lil would have sang like this throughout the season, she might have actually went a lot farther.  No offense to Queen Latifah, who I think is great… but what the crap is she wearing?  Dang!  There should be a law.

I’m Yours by Jason Mraz is such a great song.  That was a much better performance than So What.  I miss Alexis Grace.  I still say she got robbed!

Kris is singing with Keith Urban.  This is a great fit.  Is it just me, or does Kris look a lot more confident tonight?  Like he actually believes he belongs here, and he could win this thing!  He should look confident.  He is an incredible singer.

Megan Corkrey… I didn’t miss her at all.  Not even a little.  But there she is, singing with Fergie and Jasmine, Alexis, Allison and Lil.  Glamorous and Big Girls Don’t Cry.  That was only a little painful.  Oh, and was that really Fergie?  I didn’t even hardly recognize her.  And, of course, where there is Fergie there must be the Black Eyed Peas. I’d like to go on record as saying that Boom Boom Pow, in my non-expert opinion… is a horrible song.  It’s a drum beat.  That’s it.  No melody.  A 5 year old kid could play that with his mom’s pots and a wooden spoon.

Favorite quote of the night so far… ”I don’t know what else to do other than give you the finger!”

Outstanding Attitude goes to Katrina Darrell, aka, Bikini Girl.  Look who has had some work done!  Too bad it didn’t improve her voice. OH DANG! Kara is singing!  Have I ever mentioned I have a HUGE crush on her and seeing her sing just made the crush even bigger!!!  Kara DioGuardi will always be my American Idol.

Burnt fingers update: The skin is falling off them now.  It’s kind of gross!

And we’re back.  Kara is hot.  Oh wait… got sidetracked.

Allison is singing with Cyndi Lauper.  I wonder how Cyndi feels about the fact that a 17 year old is singing her own song better than her?  Allison is amazing.  That girl has ridiculous talent for a 17 year old.  All in all, not a bad performance.  I’m still reeling from Kara singing Vision Of Love though.

I am still upset that Danny didn’t make it to the final.  He’s going to do alright though.  Actually, he may do better by not winning the competition.  To back up that statement, I give you Daughtry as a prime example.  I am such a big Lionel Riche / Commodores fan.  Danny and Lionel is a great pairing.

Holy crap… just about had a nervous breakdown. I sat on the remote, changed the channel and couldn’t get it back again. I missed part of the Danny / Lionel duet.  I got to see most of All Night Long, which is one of my favorite Lionel Richie songs.

Adam has been absent in hour one… that means I’m going to have to suffer through him for all of hour 2 doesn’t it?

Who in the world dresses Glambert?  What in the world is he wearing?  If that outfit suddenly lights up I’m going to fall off my chair in laughter!

So of course, Glambert is rocking it with KISS.  I’m curious though… why didn’t he paint his face to fit right in? I wonder if Adam has enough chest hair to fit in with KISS?  Maybe that’s why his outfit isn’t as revealing!

I am not a big Adam Lambert fan, but I will give credit where credit is due.  On that performance, Adam showed what he is capable of.  That was pretty stellar!  Well done Glambert.  I’ll give you that one.

Burnt finger update: My fingernails are now peeling.  I didn’t even know that was possible!

Carlos Santana takes the stage now and Matt Giraud is singing with him.  I am a Matty fan!  Matt, Carlos, Smooth… heck yeah!  Now that is a great combination!  Too bad they had to bring in Jorge! :p  So all the Idols are now singing Smooth.  That’s a bummer.  I would’ve preferred to hear Matty sing it solo!

I would like to say that I will NOT miss the Ford music videos… those are total cheese.

Steven Martin with Megan and Michael Sarver?  For real?  Never would have saw that one coming!  Not in a million years.  OK, is this performance supposed to be serious or comedy? I can’t tell…. especially when Megan sings!  I won’t be rushing out to buy that one.  I like Michael Sarver… Megan… umm… mom says if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all… I shall refrain.

Another group performance. These have been pretty much train wrecks tonight.  Do You Think I’m Sexy… this is hard to watch.  All the guys dressed in black shaking their butts at the crowd.  Come on now.  Is that necessary?  And of course… here comes Rod Stewart.  That’s quite the jacket he’s got on.  Is that wallpaper?

“It sounded like a cat jumping off the Empire State Building and the noise it would make before it hit the floor.”  Simon Cowell

It’s so obvious Tatiana is going to win the Outstanding Female Category.  Why even bother going through the drama?

“Simon you know you wanna hear this song a fourth time.” Tatiana Del Toro.  Yup… she is still annoying!  I guess it’s true what they say, some people can’t change!

Where was Steven Martin and his banjo? I bet he could’ve stopped Tatiana and it would have been funnier!!!

10 more minutes and I get two nights of my life back!

We Are The Champions???  No, that’s not cheese at all! Kris and Adam doing a duet to We Are The Champions… this is what I waited 2 hours for?  I’ll give it to Queen though… especially the drummer.  He was fun to watch!  Not a bad performance for both guys.  Two entirely different styles, but both extremely talented!

A new world record created with nearly 100,000,000 votes cast.  Wow.  That is pretty impressive.  Season 8 was definitely a great one with many talented singers!

The winner is… KRIS ALLEN

The good news is… I don’t have to quit my job now!  The bad news is… even when Kris sings it… No Boundaries is still total cheese.  PS: I still have a crush on Kara.

Until next season… thanks for checking the blog every week!  It’s been fun!

When I am in my truck there is one thing that happens as often as the key gets turned in the ignition… the iPod gets turned on!  When I drive music, of all styles, is my companion.  I can’t look at it, or reach out to it in the passenger seat.  But it provides melodic conversation that engages me from point A to point B.

Today though, as I prepared for my journey to work, I made a conscious decision to keep the iPod off.  Instead, my companion would be the creation around me.  In the quiet confines of my truck, as I traveled down the country back roads I often take to work, I used not my ears, but my eyes for entertainment.

In the busyness of life, in the hurried pace of society, it’s so easy for us to lose sight of all that is around us.  Our eyes lock into televisions and computer screens.  Bluetooth headsets have become a fixture as commonplace as earrings.  We have things to do, people to meet, places to go.  It seems a never ending, frantic pace.  It’s all, more often than not, in an effort to fit into our days more than our available time will allow.  In the process of that though, we miss so much.  So much of what is right before us, longing for us to notice it.

As as looked out at the creation around me, trying to soak it all in before I walked inside the 4, outside windowless walls of a radio studio, several thoughts entered my mind.

I thought about the grass.  There is a sod farm on one of the roads I take.  A sprawling sea of the most beautiful green you’ve ever looked upon.  Wide open space, and one hundred percent nature.  Living in an apartment, I don’t have a lawn to lay down in.  I miss it.  I listen to the guys at work, and at the fire hall, complaining about cutting the grass.  It seems an unappreciated wonder.  It often takes stains on the knees of our pants to make us notice it.

Next, I looked up.  The big blue sky is as limitless as the possibilities of all we can do, hear, see, touch, smell, and experience in our lives.  My mind raced with wonder.  Where does it begin?  Where does it end?  Why do I spend so much time in my apartment, staring at a ceiling of white, when I could sit on my porch and be hypnotized by a sea of blue?  Often, it takes the sky breaking with lightning, and opening with torrential rain to get our attention and make us notice it.

With the window down and the breeze blowing in my face, I felt the warmth of the spring air wrap itself around me like a hug.  Each ripple of wind like a finger reaching out for me.  It grabbed at me like your grandma does when you haven’t seen her for a while.  Surrounded by it’s embrace, I thought about how it takes a season of bone chilling cold to make us notice it.

It felt great to shut off everything for a while.  No TV.  No Radio.  No laptop or Blackberry or microwave oven.  Technology, in that moment, was an after thought.  All that man has made was, of little significance.  For that time, brief as it was, I existed only in the quiet serenity of some of the best that God has to offer us.  And all it took, was me turning off the distractions of life to get me to notice it

Well here we go again, ready to live blog American Idol.  Looking forward to an interesting show tonight.  Adam and Kris will each perform 3 songs, including the track that would become their radio single.  Not gonna lie, I’m not exactly thrilled about the prospects of spinning and Adam Lambert song on my show.  But, I’ll wait until I hear it to make a final judgement.

So Adam kicks off the show and his parents reveal that he never stopped screaming as a baby.  It all makes sense now! So he kicks off the show with Mad World.  Umm… he looks like a vampire.  What’s that all about?  Anywho, this would be the song that was his favorite performance from the season.  I would have picked Tracks Of My Tears, but that’s only because it’s the one performance he did all season that I actually liked.  Anywho, all in all, to me, it sounded exactly like it did the first time.  Nothing special.  At least he didn’t scream though.  That’s gotta count for something.

You know what I’ll miss about Idol when it’s done for the season… Kara… I have a crush on her.  Have I ever mentioned that on this blog?

So as a child Kris was afraid to perform in front of his parents.  Now he gives his mom coupons for free performances.  How sweet.  Kris is at the piano, which I love!  Such a great call for him to play.  He nails it every time he does.  Great pick for his personal favorite from season 8.  Ain’t No Sunshine really is a perfect song for him.  Of course, he totally nails it!!!  If I’m keeping score, after the first song, I’d say that Kris takes the lead 1-0.  Flawless vocal performance, as always.  Has Kris missed a note all season?  I don’t think so.

Here’s the thing… Kris is the guy next door.  That is the type America always ends up picking on Idol.

Oh look… Simon agreed with me.  Kris takes round 1, so says Simon.  I knew there was a reason I liked him!

For round 2, Adam and Kris will sing songs picked by Idol producer Simon Fuller.

Adam is singing “Change Is Gonna Come.”  You know what, this is a great pick for him, as long as he doesn’t turn it into a metal version.  That would be very NOT cool.  Yet, even still, he still manages to fit in the screaming.  What’s with that?  It’s not singing.  I find it very grating.  I mostly can’t understand it either.  Really, I think it was painful.  Fingernails on a chalkboard come to mind.

So all the judges loved it.  I thought Paula was going to get naked on the desk or something.  Maybe we are listening to different performances?  Perhaps my cable is behind or I’ve got my surround sound hooked up wrong?  I thought that was anything but awesome!

Simon Fuller’s pick for Kris is What’s Going On.  This time around Kris busts out the guitar.  Raw, acoustic, simple, perfect.  The focus is entirely on his ability to sing the snot out of any song he chooses to sing.  He really is amazing.  The total underdog who has been underrated and underestimated from day one.

I’d say that round 2, like round 1, goes to Kris Allen.  Simon disagrees.  What does he know anyway? :p

At this point, a little over halfway through the show, I’d break it down like this.  I’d pay money to see Kris Allen in concert.  On the other hand, you couldn’t pay me money to go see Adam Lambert.  I just don’t get him.  That’s not to say he’s not talented.  I just don’t get it.

I can see Adam as a Broadway Star.  I cannot see Adam as a Pop Star.

Round 3 is the song that would be their radio single.

I am going to sum up Adam Lambert’s performance like this… if he wins, and I have to play that song on my radio show on Thursday… I might have to quit my job!

That was quite possibly the most painful moment of American Idol Season 8.  What I really love though is this… the judges, including Simon, absolutely refused to call it like it was.  Adam bombed that song hard and none of the judges had to stones to step up and say it because they want him to win so bad!

Now Kris gets to sing the cheese song co-written by Kara.  Cheese songs are a staple of the Idol finale.  Why do you suppose that is?  So Kris was a hundred times better than Adam was, but even he struggled a bit.  The song is such cheese than even a flawless singer like Kris has a hard time with it.  That says a lot!

I think Kara actually just made fun of her own song. HA!  Classic.

So, based on performance alone, I’d say that Kris Allen is your next American Idol.

Great way to wrap up the show tonight, with Carrie doing Home Sweet Home, which is a great song by the way!

Skillet – The Older I Get

When I was a kid, Superman was where it was at.  Spiderman, Batman, the X-Men were all of little consequence in my world.  In fact, it wasn’t until the X-Men movie came out a few years ago that I was even aware of them.  To this day, I still can’t tell you who any of them are.

I dressed up as Superman for Halloween once.  I’m quite sure there is photo evidence of this.  Should it ever find its way into my hands, it will be mysteriously lost forever.  Blue tights, red “S”, long flowing cape, and yes… my red Superman underwear with the yellow band, worn on the outside of the outfit.

Faster than a speeding bullet, big whoop.  More powerful than a locomotive, who needs it.  Ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound, look up in the sky… now that’s more like it.  Flying.  That was the dream.  When I was a kid, I wanted to fly.

I did all the typical things a kid that wants to fly would do.  I tied bath towels around my neck and jumped off the top bunk.  On the farm, I would leap from the hay mow – at a reasonable height that would not cause serious bodily harm should my attempts to defy gravity fail miserably, of course.  I may have been nuts, but I possessed a little common sense!

One time I remember attempting to fly off the bleachers at the local baseball diamond.  Embarrassing as this is to confess, for the sake of integrity I feel I must.  It was the t-ball bleachers, not even the real ones.  The high ones!  No, it was the t-ball bleachers, which likely stood about 6ft at their tallest point.  I was with a friend.  We’d run up the bleachers as quickly as we could and then leap over the back, all in an attempt to fly.  Well, my friend may have been doing it for the thrill or the boyish stupidity of it all.  I was most certainly attempting to fly.  Let me tell you, it didn’t work.  In fact, it lead to trip to the emergency room for a severely dislocated elbow.

It was nasty looking.  I remember my mom crying.  I wasn’t.  I don’t know if I was in shock or if I was still trying to figure out just what went wrong with the whole flying thing.  Since I wasn’t crying, she told me she’d cry for me.

I had to wear a cast for 6 weeks after that one.  I had a collection of casts and slings and braces and barf trays that I kept under my bed growing up.  I did a lot of things as a child that ended with trips to the ER.

Somewhere in the midst of that entire experience, I gave up on flying.  I just stopped believing.  Maybe there really were strings tied to Superman’s cape.  I lost the wonder of it all.  I lost faith.  It was a devestating realization for me.  Of course, it didn’t stop me from doing stupid things.  I didn’t jump off t-ball bleachers anymore, but I tried to jump everything in my path on a dirt bike instead.  I still longed for the sensation of defying gravity, even if only for a brief moment.  But I stopped believing I could fly.

Life as a child is so much easier.  You really do believe anything is possible.  I suppose it’s because you don’t know any better.  Maybe it’s because you haven’t had a chance to grow jaded or cynical.  Perhaps it’s because you’ve never faced rejection.  There are likely limitless explanations.  All I know is, as a child, you’re not afraid to dream.  As a child, my priorities consisted of flying, lego, Hot Wheels cars and running around in my dad’s old firefighting bunker gear.  It was all about dreams, imagination, creativity.

When you get older there isn’t much room for dreaming.  It’s not productive.  Time is money, so we say.  Work needs to be done.  Bills need to be paid.  Ends need to meet.  There is no time for fantasy.  Imagination is oftened stiffled and left to the kindergarten class.  Like I stopped believing that I could fly, somewhere along the line, I stopped believing in some of my dreams too.

If the Wright Brothers had stopped believing they could fly, it would be a long swim to get to Europe!

I’ve got so many ideas in my head.  I spend hours, days, sometimes weeks, tossing ideas around.  Many a night has passed to sleepless thought.  More often than not though, those ideas face the same fate as my childhood dream of flying like Superman.  One day I shake myself, I tell myself to be realistic, and with that one simple phrase, the dream dies.

My dreams are limited only by my desire to see them come to pass.  Maybe it’s about time I tied a towel around my neck and started jumping off some bunk beds again!

Diana Krall – Fly Me To The Moon

When we are kids we have a lot of crazy dreams.  At some point I think it’s safe to say that all boys make plans to grow up and be Firefighters, Astronauts, Professional Wrestlers and Baseball, Hockey, Basketball or Football stars.

I don’t recall personally ever wanting to be an Astronaut, although I was pretty sure I was going to be a Ghostbuster at one point.  I had it all planned out.  I was going to be Dr. Peter Venkman.  I couldn’t wait for the chance to drive Ecto-1.  That was one sweet ride!

I was terrible at sports.  All sports.  I was just awful.  I caught a pop fly with my teeth once.  I wasn’t interested in baseball too much after that.  I never had any dreams of being a
professional athelete.  I most definitely expected to grow up to be Hulk Hogan though. 

I used to pile drive my sisters stuffed animals.  Once I even pile drove my sister.  I wasn’t allowed to watch wrestling after that for a while.  Another favorite move was to deliver flying elbows off the top bunk onto my sisters stuffed animals.  I’m pretty sure I never performed that one on her! I was always laying the smack down on Big Bubba though.  He was a giant stuffed ape.

After I realized I was probably never going to be a Ghostbuster, and lack of muscles in any place other than my mouth crushed my hopes of being a WWE Champion, it was time to come up with another dream.

As a kid, I listened to Casey’s Top 40 religiously.  On Sunday mornings when I had to go to church, I’d even record it on cassette.  I was pretty sure he had the coolest job in the entire world.  As far as I knew, he worked for 4 hours a week, and all he had to do was talk a little bit and play cool music like Michael Jackson and Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer.  I couldn’t fathom how it could be better than that!

I made up my mind then, as a kid, laying in bed with my stereo sitting on a shelf directly above my head, following along as Casey “counted down the hits from coast to coast on great radio stations like Magic 102.5 in Buffalo, New York”, that I was going to be on the radio.  More than that, I was going to have my very own countdown!

Fast forward a few years.  Late 90’s.  ‘97 or ‘98 I think.  It actually happened… twice!  I had my own countdown.  I hosted the CCM Video Countdown which aired on televisions stations across North America, and I hosted the Top 20 Meltdown for Life 100dot3, a Christian radio station in Barrie.  I had done it.  I was 20 years old and I had done it.

I’ve been in broadcasting for 14 years now.  It’s been a few years since I hosted my last countdown though.  I think the last one, the YourMusicZone Top 10 – another music video countdown – ended in 2003 or 2004.  I definitely miss doing it.  People love countdowns.  It’s 2 hours of the best music, one after another.  What’s not to love?

This weekend -the long weekend - was supposed to be my weekend off.  I was looking forward to it too.  Dad and I had talked about possibly going to Huntsville for a few days.  It would’ve been nice to get away.  But before we had a chance to firm up plans, I found out that I was scheduled to work today, Sunday.

At first I was pretty upset.  I was sure I was getting the 3 day weekend since I worked Easter weekend.  I had tentative plans.  I wanted to go away.  I complained about it a lot.  I definitely had a bad attitude.  I try not to.  There is a positive side to everything if you look for it.  I just wasn’t interested in looking for it. 

I’m in the studio now.  I just finished hosting our Top 20 Countdown.  It’s live.  Nothing like the ones I used to do.  But it’s still a countdown. As I busted out my old countdown lingo, “climbing 2 notches”, “sliding back 1″, “this weeks biggest mover”, “knocking on the door to #1″ (yes, I’m a Casey Kasem countdown cliche machine) I flashed back to those days as a kid, listening to AT40 in my bedroom, dreaming about being on the radio.

In that moment, as I was teeing up this weeks brand new #1 song, my perspective changed.  I was reminded of why I got into this business in the first place.  I was reminded about how great I’ve got it.  I get paid to do what I love.  How many people can truly say that?  Suddenly, I didn’t feel so bad about working on the long weekend.