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Blog - August 2006 |
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This page stores my blog entry from August 2006. The entry is from August 18.
Entertainment Center / America's Got Talent, but no taste Friday, August 18, 2006 UHF and VHF. Most people would identify one with an old "Weird Al" movie and not know what the other is at all. The arcane terminology lives on in my apartment with my "new" color TV and new amplified indoor antenna. I bought the TV at a garage sale for not too much. It's about twice the screen size of my little black-and-white TV and is stereo. I will hook up the rest of my entertainment pieces once I have the money for the cables and wires. Figuring out the correct antenna positions for optimal reception has been a challenge. My local NBC affiliate does not really come in. I can get audio, but the picture simply won't come in clearly. I have the same issue with my local public broadcasting station. All other stations come in clearly. What's odd is that I can get NBC clearly on my little black-and-white TV. Since I've heard that a part of the problem is with NBC having "too strong" a broadcast in the area, I may splurge and get a cheap VHF antenna for my color TV and just switch to that for my NBC and public broadcasting needs. My other challenges were how I would connect an antenna, VCR, audio system, and TV together. The more complex issue came in how I'd connect the antenna to the VCR. The antenna has a coaxial connector, but the VCR has separate VHF and UHF connections. Radio Shack had an old TV/Game switch that supports that kind of change in connection. At $2.98 on clearance, I couldn't lose. Once I get the other cables I need, we'll see how well everything works. ********** ********** America definitely has talent, and America constantly proves that it cannot pick talent. I watched NBC's "America's Got Talent" since it started, and I constantly left the results shows shaking my head and wondering what the hell the voters were thinking. Tonight, when they awarded the $1 million, amazingly America picked one of the worst performers on there. Before last night's show, my favorites were At Last, All That, Rapping Granny, and the Millers. Afterwards, I had to eliminate all but All That, but I would have been satisfied if either of the first three had won; I thought the Millers flubbed it. My opinion about the others: - Celtic Spring: They were ok, but I wasn't impressed. They were "Lord of the Dance" without Michael Flatley, and at least one of their performances felt entirely too choppy. Sorry, but even my Gaelic blood cannot back them up. - Quick Change: The fact that this farce of an act made it this far shows how amazingly moronic America's voters ended up. Sure, what they do is rather good, but the act was the exact same thing three times in a row. If they really had a 1.5-hour show they could do, why did they repeat the exact same thing? I found them dreadfully boring by the finals, and their performance proved that they never should have made it this far. (The magician should have advanced instead.) - Realis: I couldn't get into them. I suppose they were good, but I knew that what talent they had would go completely over 99% of America's heads. - Passing Zone: The "juggling humans" thing was not really funny, and I wasn't impressed with it. Their finals performance was pretty funny, but I felt like it lacked something. - Taylor Ware: Another bit of evidence that America doesn't know what it's seeing. But, I'll admit that my opinion is colored because I really didn't like her yodeling. At all. It was grating at best. For the ones in my top 4, I felt that At Last just didn't do enough. I'll agree that they deviated too far away from what got them there to begin with: raw, excellent a capella singing and beat-boxing. Marvin Gaye covers done to original excellence. They could have delivered, but it didn't happen. Rapping Granny was cool, but I think it lost its novelty and interest. Something lacked freshness with her finals performance. By having the older brother attempt to sing more rather than less, the Millers lost it. They could have had the older brother participate and still win, but this was not the way. That leaves Bianca Ryan. The one voted as the winner. The kid who can't sing and constantly hit sour notes during her performances. I don't think the judges saw the same performance I did, and I'm thoroughly shocked that Brandi didn't catch the sour notes. The fact that tone-deaf America voted for her saddens me. It really ruined what could have been a great display of true, unique talent. As you probably have guessed by now, I voted for All That. To me, the consistently added to their performance and took it to the next level. The elements they added merely accentuated the experience rather than detract. I guess the admiration of the art of tap dancing is lost on the current generation. |
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