Super Falling Star

Has anyone caught the new television show The WB's Superstar USA? Muchmusic[in Canada] broadcast it tonight and it's like watching a car crash...it's so excrutiating to watch but then you can't turn away. The premise of the show is that it plays out like American Idol...hopefuls audition in front of a panel of judges[including Tone Loc and Vitamin C] in hopes of performing well enough to get to the finals. The catch is that the 12 WORST singers are being picked, unbeknownst to the contestants, to compete to be the 'Superstar'. I'll agree that some of the singers are just god-awful but isn't there an element of cruelty to string these contestants along? Apparently, the hoax will be revealed to the 'winner' of the competition on the last show. Can this show be real? Can people be so cruel as to make fun of people on national television? In the back of my mind, I'm thinking that the whole show is a setup, everyone's an actor, and the joke's being played on the television viewer. Anyone willing to make a wager? :-) And if I'm wrong, then there had better be one big $$ payoff (a la Joe Schmo[season one]) for the contestants at the end. Or else someone at The WB will deserve a beating.

Ted Leo finally has the mp3 (demos) up on his site as he promised including a take on "Me and Mia" (which I've downloaded and sounds great!)...but as I write this, trying to insert the hyperlinks, Ted's site is down. Hope it comes back up soon because there's a couple more demos that I think are available. ...note: Ted's tagged the 'artist' of the mp3 as 'The Homsars'...anyone know what that means?

I finally purchased the Franz Ferdinand CD, not only because of the fine music contained therein, but also because Sunrise Records was offering a free DVD music video sampler of different artists, which included the video for Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out". For a limited time only with the purchase of selected titles...[Although, I played the DVD at home and 1)there's no onscreen menu and, 2) there's no shuffle capability between videos. There's about 15 videos on the DVD which means that the only way to get to each video is to 'fast forward' to it which is a pain in the ass...maybe it's defective...but then it was free so why should I complain.]