Look at his eyes when Boyle hits those first notes: it's the pose of a man who knows he's hearing the Real Thing, and also realises that he's going to have to pay for, so it's best if he doesn't give everything away to the contestant.

Iirc, he did the same thing when Fantasia first sang on _AI_. (Still the only ep of that one I've seen in toto.)

Most of the time, he's acting as if it's his money on the line; in those few cases, he's in the adult version of "Which one is Pink?".

From the other side: You feel like you've become a lightbulb, or something close to it, because that lighting up is so strong a feeling.

"Of course I remember you!" I said. "I think I can still recite your Intro to Geometry lecture. It was one of the best hours I ever spent in a classroom."

And we both lit up!

A couple of examples:

"Dynamics, the Geometry of Behavior" by Abraham and Shaw, that showed, mostly in beautiful graphics, how dynamics and geometry are related, and set the stage for the development of the theory of nonlinear dynamic systems, chaos theory, singularity theory, etc. It also was at the beginning of the movement that made graphics once again a legitimate tool for teaching and explaining mathematics.

"Fractals: Form, Chance, and Dimension" by Benoit Mandelbrot, and its successor, "The Fractal Geometry of Nature".

"Personal Dynamic Media" by Alan Kay and Adelle Goldberg. This paper described in 1977, work over the previous 7 years in which the notion of personal computers and their future uses was first well-articulated, the notebook computer was invented, the graphic user interface was first invented, object-oriented programming was invented, and the use of computers as personal instruments for artistic and musical creation was developed.

Actually thats not likely - typically the contestants all have contractual obligations to the producers of the show (and he's probably one of them).

I think its the pose of a man who knows that he's going to look like a complete tool when the show airs for his condescending attitude in the initial interview.

His entire schtick is to be brutally honest with the many talentless people who appear on his shows. Typically he gets away with it by being both entertaining and, you know, correct. Here he got caught making the mistake of anticipating failure based on the woman's age and appearance and ended up with egg on his face. Which is part of what makes watching that clip so pleasurable.

Its a little bit like watching the video of Colbert skewering the National Press Club a couple of years ago - it wasn't just that he was so funny, it was knowing that he was doing it at the expense of his audience, and that they weren't enjoying it at all.

And I love Susan Boyle's little happydance.

Lee #9: I doubt that Simon Crowell has ever worried about being considered a tool. He kept a good poker face except when he looked at Piers. Later on in the performance he looked like a kid in a candy store.

I think he really wants people who have talent to succeed. Charles Beaumont told a tale of screenwriting being like climbing a giant mountain of cowflop to pluck a perfect rose at the summit, only to find one has lost one's sense of smell. Cowell, despite his cynical shell, has not lost his sense of smell.

I've had the same experience, reading slush. You get in a rut of "Oh god, how is this one going to disappoint me?" And when you make it to the bottom of page three on one, you start leaning forward, rooting for the writer, but also being terrified that it's going to fall apart on you if you trust it.

Anybody else have any more nitpicks?

Grrrr.

To give an older example from fantasy, I picked up a copy of Silverlock at my local library sale. I've only gotten to the first few pages of the text, but the edition (Ace 1982) starts with raves from: Jim Baen, Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, and Jerry Pournelle, all of whom describe much the same reaction -- from themselves, and their friends. It's frightening to think how many introductions the current edition must have accumulated.... :-)

(Yes, she's got a wonderful crystalline tone and excellent breath control that seems to come naturally, the second of which is the harder to find. And forgive me for being curmudgeonly, but it's very clear she learned the song by listening religiously to the West End cast recording - she had all the little phrasing details from the West End record that make me prefer the Broadway.)

(And what's wrong with a lovefest?)

I heard a music promoter say in an NPR interview that in the pop music field, if you have a new band to promote, you will be asked only 2 questions: "How old are they?" and "What do they look like?" Not, notice, "Can they carry a tune?" or even "Do they have stage presence?"

One interesting thing is that UK pop culture seems to be in general less ageist than US - witness all those popular Britcoms about middle-aged and old folks, and the fact that American Idol has an age limit of 29 while the Brit version doesn't (Boyle wouldn't have been eligible for American Idol).

But America's Got Talent is the American version of Britain's Got Talent, and it doesn't have an age limit, either.

One of its recent contestants was a 70-year-old Frank Sinatra impersonator.

AGT and BGT are amateur talent competitions. Idol is a competition to become a pop-music idol. Completely different games.

(He says, having never actually viewed an entire episode of any of them).

Of course this happens pretty often on these shows, but I think you're implying that somehow the producers are manufacturing these people and the reaction to them.

I think that would actually be a lot more work than what the producers are actually doing, which is setting up an environment where these people come out of the woodwork on their own. That's the whole point of the setup of the show. Just like the producers of Survivor putting people in situations where they're bound to develop intense bonds and rivalries, the producers of these shows intentionally cast as wide a net as possible so as to get both a lot of dreck and a number of surprising and interesting people.

Both are essential pieces of the show, and it's much easier to just go and find these people than to try and manufacture them. Complaining that the producers go looking for interesting and surprising performers is a bit like complaining that the Survivor contestants are so competitive, or that our hosts are wrong to only publish the best works from the slush pile, rather than a more representative sample. It's built into the premise.

It seems that American Idol had an upper age limit of 26 until its fourth season, when it was raised to its current figure (which I believe is 28, not 29).

And it appears (at least based on somewhat sketchy, quickly-Googled evidence) that it inherited that initial lower limit from its progenitor, Freemantle Media's original Idol-format show - the British Pop Idol.

But then, in my opinion, the slam forces the poet to cater to the short attention span by providing an immediate hook, and that's just one style of poetry. So being a competitive slam poet can force a person to cheapen the work for the sake of the audience on some occasions.

I'm not implying the producers are manufacturing the people. I am implying they're manufacturing the reaction.

This is not the slushpile. This is a heavily filtered slushpile. There have been numerous agents of the producers (in the UK they're called "researchers" for some reason) interviewing and auditioning would-be contestants.

I don't believe that the professionals on the show -- Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan -- are unaware of what the researchers have discovered. Their surprise, I would be willing to bet, is an act. Their role on the show is, at least in part, to model reaction for us, within the characters they've set up over the run of the show.

I'm of two minds about that concept; yeah, it reduces the number of takes required, but it seems to me some of the authenticity is lost.

See the story of the recording of Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" for an example of multiple takes. Wikipedia uses Greil Marcus's account as a source, so I'll accept it as accurate.

All I could think was what a waste it has been that her voice has never been heard--that we have had to listen to the screechings of [insert your love-to-hate pop-tart diva here] instead for twenty-plus years. I reflect back on my years in the theater (high school, college, community theater), when we had actors who were absolutely amazing BUT were also (horrors) "fat," "homely," "old," and other deathwords of casting (even when "fat" meant size fourteen, and "old" meant thirty), and therefore our directors always cast someone who had less talent as "the ingenue" or "the leading man" so that the audience could project its attractiveness-love on that person. The supporting actors often were the ones you remembered at the end of the play, and the ones you imitated, and the ones you said you loved, and the ones everyone quoted . . . those "ugly" ones who almost didn't get put onstage AT ALL because "they're not the body types we need on the stage." But so long as our society dictates that the only PRETTY woman is a skinny, large-breasted (and that's often a contradiction--where do I lose weight FIRST?? So to be BOTH is unusual, or the result of artifice), dewily young skeeter*, then this is going to happen . . . we're going to miss out on amazing talents. I'm very happy that this one has been caught in time!

* [Same kind of mess applies to men. But they do get more of a pass on being "fat" and "old," you must admit. A little bit.]

But I do mourn for the twenty years that we could have been listening to her alongside Streisand, Garland, Midler, and the other great voices.

If only we didn't have the problem that "they need to be attractive MOST OF ALL," this wouldn't be happening. Or if we had wider standards for "nice looking" (which some of us do!)

I think the comparison to finding a great manuscript is nice, but there's more to writing a great book than there is to singing someone else's great song well, IMHO. When you're singing Jerome Kern or Cole Porter, using an arrangement and orchestra that is well proven, all you have to do is have the great voice, the breath control, the wonderful phrasing (which, as noted above, you might be getting somewhat from recordings you've heard). Now, that's tough! Yes! But when you sit down to write a book, that level of talent/craft (if you will) is not enough. You also have to have thought of an idea that will capture the imagination and that hasn't been done better before too many times. (You have to have written the song. You are making up your own phrasing. You have to play all the instruments yourself. Ouch, the metaphor yelps as it stretches.) I've often been told that I "have what we can't teach," that my writing "is eloquent" or that it "flows and holds the attention," and so forth. A kind editor at Dorchester told me that he laughed out loud and re-read several of my sentences in the opening of a novel because they were so funny. *But* none of that has given me a published novel, because there was always a "but. . . " attached to the effect that they didn't love the book enough, that it didn't do A but did B, that it wasn't quiiiite right, or something like that. (Usually no one can put a finger on exactly what the turnoff was, and perhaps they don't know. It's ineffable. It's like the reason you either love Rod Stewart or can't stand him--it can't be articulated.)

So I believe it's even tougher to write a book that happens to strum the strings of a person who has the authority to buy your book than it is to get up on stage and charm an audience with a wonderful performance of someone else's great song (as rare as THAT is). Other than that, I like your comparison. *grin*

*preparing to be slapped*

But why fake it when you can have the real thing?

Seriously, which do you think would get more interesting, dramatic reaction footage:

A) Three judges who aren't actors being coached on who the next contestant will be and exactly what reaction they should give to them. (With only one take to get it right, this is in front of an audience, after all.)

B) Three judges forced to sit through hours of every apologetic, reedy-voiced housewife who sings in the church choir and thinks that qualifies her for the big time. And then, just when they're ready to storm out of the building declaring that, in fact, Britain's Got No Talent, None Whatsoever, Thank You Very Much, you slip in a frumpy housewife who looks like all the rest but also happens to have a fine voice and some stage presence, and all of a sudden they're wowed.

So, I'm sure there's a lot of stage-managing before the fact and editing after the fact in order to push a certain narrative. And I'm sure there's some thought put into priming the judges to react with a big wow to certain acts (putting the acts they think the judges will like after a string of mediocre acts, etc.) But that doesn't mean that anyone on stage is acting disingenuously. And just because the producers are pushing hard on the narrative of "Unexpected person wows the pros with a hidden talent" doesn't mean that's not also what was actually happening in that moment.

This is not the slushpile. This is a heavily filtered slushpile.

Sure, but filtered for what? One assumes that the producers of the show are aware of Simon Cowell's trademark talent: inspiring shadenfreude as he mercilessly dissects the artistic efforts of pretentious people. So, presumably, they send up a lot of pretentious people, as well as those who appear to be pretentious but in fact secretly aren't.

I know a long list of performers who were "not pretty enough": Ella Fitzgerald, k. d. lang, Cass Elliot, Florence Ballard, Judy Garland, Janis Joplin, Barbra Streisand, Judith Durham, Gretchen Wilson, and Kate Beckinsale (okay, she's an actress, but still). Since all of them I'm familiar with are or were strikingly talented, I have to assume that there are a lot more we don't know about, many of whom never had professional careers.

Betty Boop was initially criticized for not being pretty enough.

Madonna Louise Ciccone sings passably well, though she's nothing to write home about.

You're familiar with the plot of Singin' in the Rain? Meat Loaf has on two different hit songs had one woman record the vocals, and a different woman appear in the video and live performances: Ellen Foley fronted by Karla DeVito in "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," and Lorraine Crosby fronted by Dana Patrick on "I'd Do Anything for Love (but I Won't Do That)." The most recent example of that trick I know of was seven-year-old Yang Peiyei singing from behind a screen at the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics, while the supposedly cuter Lin Miaoke lip-synched the song.

The guys in Milli Vanilli were well on their way to stardom until word got out that they hadn't sung any of their songs. They just had a great look.

As I said a few years back, never believe in a meritocracy in which no one is funny-looking.

I recommend the album I have going on in the background, Chumbawamba's The Boy Bands Have Won, not just for comment on this problem but for the great song about Charles Darwin ("Charlie") and more. These folks are doing very strong social commentary with a leftist bent, and think nothing of (e.g.) skewering Facebook with their song "Add Me." Previous albums included songs about Emma Goldman's romantic life ("When Alexander Met Emma"), the looting of Baghdad ("On eBay"), and the parallels between Unix and Molotov cocktails ("Rebel Code"). There's a lot of good music out there that isn't getting a lot of play (in saying that, I recognize that I'm preaching to the choir here).

It's a pity that by the time I worked out that my love of reading could lead to a career in publishing I was, I think, too old. The description of reading through the slushpile to find a nugget of gold sounds like a dream to me.

Sigh. I'm a wannabe editor.

*sigh* Not that this is really new. How many 1960s musicals did Rex Harrison talk his way thru in the leading role?

As I've said elsewhere, what I'd really like is to see what Susan Boyle looks like after being given access to the same kind of celebrity primping available to the likes of Simon Cow(b)ell. Does anybody think he looks like that out of makeup?

I heard an interview with Mr. Cowell that not only made me much more sympathetic to him, but also allowed me to be able to, with 100% accuracy, predict his reaction to any of the contestants at the cattle-call auditions.

Because he has exactly two criteria he judges by, in those situations:
1 -- Can This Person Sing? Which he defines as, 'basic command of the underlying skills,' like breath control and pitch and rhythm.
2 -- Can This Person Be A Grownup About Fame?

If the answer to both is not a resounding yes, he votes no. And, because he has to sift so much (painful, drama-filled) hay to find the needles, he snarks. And harsh snark helps him verify #2, as well.

Bingo. And am I the only one here who thinks she has a great face anyway?

I cut off the video when she was walking offstage, just to preserve the goosebumps I was enjoying. Her voice is better than the song. I got urged by several people to watch that for "inspiration," which is one of those things that generally put me off a bit. Not this time.

She did what yer basic pop singer stretches and heaves and eeeeemotes to do, without apparent effort. Funny: That might be why I was so surprised to see somebody say that was a "young" voice. (OK, so I'm being ageist too. I'm talking about mastery.)

marty #49: Hey, I'm 60 this year and on my third or fourth career, depending on how you count. Unfortunately it's journalism. Unfortunately my spouse is in it with me and we're watching several publications circling the drain with our finances in tow. Fortunately he has a pension so we probably won't starve. Also fortunately we aren't trying to put kids through college or anysuch with the money we have. In some ways, age frees you.

Huh. Maybe that's something else I was seeing there.

BTW, is it only me who thinks a good voice is also a kind of physical beauty? I think the expectation of other virtues of appearance and talent is part of the whole performer illusion which has taken such hold over the past century. It has become expected that the figure you see in front of you is the a great dancer, beautiful, has a great voice, and is a great poet and composer. All nonsense, of course. Such people are few and far between. Mostly there's people good at different facets of the job, and it's only technical illusions that lead us to believe that all these skills are often found together in one person.

Storm Large has something that other female performers who've had to fight uphill to be accepted also have: stage presence, and personal charisma. Bonnie Raitt, Janis Joplin, and Cass Elliot are the ones I always think of in this regard.

It's interesting that none of those women refused to let the public or the music business force them into a false presentation of their sexuality either. They were what they were, and if that wasn't what people wanted, that was just too bad. I suspect that the troubles they had with the business side of music were partly the result of that attitude.

For me, at least, physical beauty is only a small part of what makes someone attractive. Voice is certainly a large part (a good part of James Earl Jones' early success was due to that incredible voice, I know I fell in love with it). I think the old line, "it's not the meat, it's the motion" has as much to do with how a person holds and moves all of the body as it does with how they make love. And, of course, what people say, and how they say it makes a big difference.

(On another thread here, though, I totally didn't get Silverlock; to me it only felt special in the sense that, say, Pilgrim's Progress reimplemented by the author of The Eye of Argon would...)

So much ZAP sparkling, the place is holding on its promise. It is making light.

I mean, I say that as someone who's mainly a lurker here, having litlle of worth to contribute, it's almost intimidating how fast threads can grow given the overall quality of the posts, but once one has gotten past that initial impression, damn, it's so stimulating. I always leave the place with notes, links, bits of trivia to-check, thoughts going in unexpected directions... not to mention the pleasure of poetry popping up from the most unexpected source.

TexAnne@25: I'd pay lots of money to see her in a cabaret setting!

This is exactly what I thought when I saw that video. She seems tailored for the setting.

Randolph@55: BTW, is it only me who thinks a good voice is also a kind of physical beauty?

I remember, once, in the suwbway, waiting for the next train, some woman was playing bandurria and singing in the background, and the gentleman sitting next to me turned to his friend and said: "Great God I'd rape her voice if I could". To which the friend agreed merrily.

All that to say, no you're not alone.

I can't but think of voice as a kind of physical beauty nowadays.

(But serioulsy, yes, of course. You get seduced by voices.)

... "to expect that the singing voice will be like the SPEAKING voice..."

And I can remember a time when some of those pictures wouldn't have been seen outside Playboy. Sex has always been a part of the package the pop music industry sells, but these days they seem to have forgotten the music.

Note to self: "some kinds of dry/dark humor should only be attempted if proper persona background has been established beforehand, so has to make it at least understandable."

...

Add to that "and only if proper writing skills have been acquired".

Probably shouldn't even been attempted at all here I guess. Public space, not fit for that kind of display.

(I'm the kind of person for which horror and humor generally go hand in hand... my biggest laugh came from learning the facturing of bullets from the Chinese government to the families of its condemened to death. Not exactly the kind of laugh one can/should share heartily.)

Hope I didn't spoil anything. Let the post by edited out.

Back to lurking.

Hardly -- that goes back at least to Greek mythology. And I recall hearing that Mama Cass had at least as many groupies as any of the other "Mamas and Papas".

> Without wanting to turn this into an introspective love-fest, I recall that the reason I started hanging out on Making Light was that I had a higher rate of ZAP per post/comment than I was getting anywhere else.

Sigh... If I can inject a note of gloom - I wish John M. Ford were here. I didn't know him, even in a lightweight internet kind of way, but he had the highest rate of ZAP per post/comment of any creature that ever lived.

I reread his Henry V in Damon Runyan style the other day and my jaw dropped all over again.

Thank heavens I'm not the only one.

I went into that book expecting to be blown away, and instead was mildly entertained and slightly bored, and the ending was a total letdown.

Brain FAIL. I grant you that most of the others on the list are on the spectrum from "unremarkable" to "unconventionally pretty" - IOW I can more or less conceive someone describing them as "not pretty enough" - but Kate Beckinsale? Good grief.

The conceit of the book--the commonwealth of letter--fell flat, somehow. It no longer felt strange and exciting. Yes, there were good bits, such as The Ballad of Bowie Gizzardsbane, but I didn't react the same way as I once had.

And I found myself thinking about when it was written. Published 1949, in a world in which millions of young American men had done what Clarence Shandon obviously had not.

And, not taking that vital last drink from the Hippocrene, he will, like them, forever struggle with his momories. Like them, he saw so many things, awesome things, which he will forever struggle to articulate.

I was much younger when I first read it.

Also see what Niven&Pournelle did with personal portable terminals / computers in The Mote In God's Eye (published 1974).

Oh, look a three-headed monkey !

(Three privately contacted secret black-ops teams were lost trying to hack this site to correct previously quoted mistake. The sniper of the second team wants me to ask if Mr. Macdonald would be so kind as to give him back his Stitch plushie... he loves the thing to death. Please ?)

By and large, I think Rikibeth has nailed the correct response: "That was no gentleman."

Quite clearly, it wasn't. Which was why I specifically used the term "gentleman". Which was why I used a restrictive negation later on. I was horrified by that episode. Yet I find the casualness (nonchalance ?) of it so ridiculous I can't but laugh. As I said it's a very peculiar form of humour, it doesn't work here for various reasons (I may not have properly defined), and shouldn't have been attempted anyway (old friends would have understood that perfectly, people I don't know might just be hurt by reading it; that was awfullly tactless of me).

I once knew a woman who lived in a group home and worked in a sheltered workshop. Her age and IQ were both around 70, she was totally blind, had been abused throughout her life and couldn't do much for herself, including have more than the simplest conversation. She was skinny and wrinkled and generally disheveled.

She loved Patsy Cline. And every so often she'd break into "Crazy," and sound JUST LIKE Patsy Cline. She'd tip her head back, her face, with its permanently-closed eyes, would light up, and this rich, resonant, vibrant voice would pour out.

She was beautiful.

WRT the slush pile and writing, it's the lionization of books that don't quite 'do it' for me that deters me from writing fiction. Given that the works I love most seem to be more on the sidelines of what's considered great stuff, it seems kinder to the editors not to send in that which moves me.

Witty anecdotes and colorful invective of mine have inspired many a friend and acquaintance to say "You should write!"[*] But there's got to be more to it than that, I'd guess.

All those writers saying "I can't NOT write" when in fact I'm rarely inclined to type or jot what comes so trippingly to the tongue. But that's another post, no doubt.

[*] Fiction. I do write non-fiction, but as a sideline, rather than a living.

You may also enjoy the kerfuffle back in 2004 (thank you blog-memory) about the British Labour Government charging wrongfully convicted people for their years of board and lodging in gaol. It may have been inspired by the former Australian government charging refugees and detained persons for their detention, or the history of English debtor's prisons, etc.

"No,no, yes. No, no, Yes. Nonono,noNono,noNonoNo--waitaminute---yYEEEEEEEEES!"

I love quick-time harch.

I do agree that saying "You don't look your best" is mean. But saying "you can't change your look because I need you to be a symbol of Everywoman Triumphing Over Adversity" isn't particularly kind either.

(Also, this makes twice in two days that I've defended makeovers on this site, which is... well, would be really funny if you'd ever met me. Might as well link to the Stacy London interview on the Post and make it a trifecta.)

It's unusual to see spam this early in a thread. I think spammers are now scraping Twitter for URLs.

I write to inspire moments like that.

A collection of links on disabilitiesmessageboard includes this quote:

"I was slightly brain damaged at birth, and I want people like me to see that they shouldn't let a disability get in the way. I want to raise awareness — I want to turn my disability into ability."

And there's an interesting piece from Mary Schmich in the Chicago Tribune.

Sounds like she's being pretty darned sensible about not letting this whole thing get out of hand. She also was quoted elsewhere as saying that she knows who her friends are; they're the ones who were nice to her before the show.

I wish her all the best.

More seriously, if I were a spammer trying to find relatively recent threads, I'd be looking for whatever was "the big thing" a couple of weeks ago.

In other words, I blame Susan Boyle.

Well, I would certainly hope so!

If not, the pharma spam has a solution.

I liked that book.

So, is that like "a murder of crows"
or "a business of ferrets?"