And Canada’s Dorothy is …

… Danielle Wade.

I actually managed to get the final order right, with Danielle winning it, Stephanie being the runner-up, and AJ finishing third.

While I still think that Danielle had the weakest voice, I think that when she sang on her own instead of with the other girls you didn’t notice, and also that she had a stronger vocal performance this week. I hadn’t seen her performance of “Hey, Big Spender!” that was voted her best performance (she did that one, I presume, before I started watching) but she did it well and again highlighted how she acts performances. And she also had some very good lines in the discussions around her performance and coron … er, ruby-slippering?

Daryn: So, if you become Dorothy, how would you react?
Danielle: [something like a nervous and giddy twitter]
Daryn: Well said.
Danielle: Thank you.

And also, when she had won:

Danielle: This is the first time I’ve ever auditioned for anything. I hope all of them go as well!

All that needs to be said about Stephanie, I think, is that the song chosen as her best performance was “Hello, Buenos Aires” … a performance that resulted in her being in the bottom two that week. It was absolutely a breakout performance, but somehow Canada didn’t warm to it … although they saved her the next week.

Now, while trying to find something to watch I’ve tuned in to “Next Top Model” for the past few weeks, and there’s one thing that I noticed about last night and the whole competition when compared to it: AJ and Stephanie, watching Danielle sing after winning, seemed genuinely happy for her. Sure, they could be acting … but these are the two that I thought weren’t that great as actresses, so it seems unlikely. And for the most part, it seemed like all of the competitors on “Over the Rainbow” were happy and sad for each other, without all of the sniping and backbiting that you see on “Next Top Model”. They never seemed to suggest that someone else should go home. Watching the performances, they generally seemed sad as opposed to happy when someone went home. There seemed to be less, at least, of a sorting out of who their competition was and arguing over that. Good performances were applauded, and they were appropriately respectful when people were at risk or going home. They seemed to, well, like each other, which is clearly not what happens on “Next Top Model”.

I could say that it’s cultural, and that’s likely part of it. But the real reason for this, I think, is that while almost all of the girls were convinced that they could be Dorothy — except for poor Colleen, due to the judges commenting that they weren’t sure that she could — none of them thought that they ought to be Dorothy. Even Danielle, the front-runner, was reminded that she couldn’t let up and due to her inexperience had to feel that the others might well have an inside track. That feeling of being capable but not necessarily deserving it, I think, led to them all thinking that if they didn’t make it, one of the others really did deserve it, which led to less direct competition and more of a “I have to do my best, and we’ll see if it’s good enough” attitude than a “I’m the best, and so I can only be cheated out of my victory” attitude. It was nice to see, and much more entertaining that what we see on “Next Top Model”, because I can actually like the girls and want one, or more, of them to win.

Of course, now that “Over the Rainbow” is over I’ll be able to avoid watching “Next Top Model”, which is a good thing.

Anyway, congratulations Danielle and you deserved it … about as much as the other two did [grin].

Over the Rainbow Performance Nov 4 …

So, I just finished watching the final performance episode of “Over the Rainbow”, and thought I’d get my comments down now because I’ll be out for a good chunk of the day tomorrow.

AJ was up first, singing “Memory” from Cats, a song that I’d heard a little of before. She was definitely trying for a more subdued performance than she normally gives, but unfortunately she looked a little stiff early on. However, when it came time for her to pull out the dramatic gestures, she really delivered, as usual.

Danielle was next, singing I think “Never Say Goodbye” from Sunset Boulevard, which I hadn’t really heard before. As usual, she just nailed it in terms of acting and voice work. For all of the episodes I’ve watched, Danielle has consistently just done what had to be done.

Finally, Stephanie sang, a song from a production that hadn’t been done much if at all in North America called “The Woman in White”, and the song was I think “I Believe in My Heart”. It was a really good song for her and demonstrated that she has an absolutely lovely voice and the looks to go along with it … but she still didn’t move much. AJ and Danielle incorporated a lot more movement into their songs, even though their songs were of a similar tone to hers.

The performances were book-ended by round-robinish group songs featuring songs from “The Wizard of Oz”, and to me a few things became clear:

Danielle has the weakest voice of the three … but she also acts far better with her voice than the other two.

Stephanie has the strongest voice of the three. It really is effortless.

AJ fits a bit into the middle. She’s not as strong an actress as Danielle in all facets, but she’s better than Stephanie is. She also doesn’t have as strong a voice as Stephanie, but it’s stronger than Danielle’s.

For me, acting is the key, and so if I was given the choice I’d probably choose Danielle. The only argument against that is that it might be easier to teach acting than to give Danielle a stronger voice, at which point Stephanie is the better choice. So, my final ranking is:

1) Danielle.
2) Stephanie.
3) AJ.

Now, with it being a popular vote, the most talented person may not be the winner, and I agree with the judges that basically any one of them could perform the role well. So I shall watch with interest who Canada decides is the best Dorothy.

What the Judges Criticized Colleen For …

Well, now that Colleen has been eliminated, and since I’ve seen some comments about Danielle’s latest performance claiming that she was out of tune (and I think I read that about Cassandra once in similar circumstances), I thought I might make an attempt to explain what the judges were criticizing Colleen constantly for in simpler terms. Because I’m pretty sure I know what they were talking about but they put it in technical terms.

It all comes down to something that I’ve been talking about a lot, which is acting. There’s a difference between singing and acting through song. When you do musical theatre, obviously your primary purpose is to act through song, and not to sing. If you’re giving a concert, the opposite is true; you want to sing, and don’t really have to act. Colleen, for the most part, sang in her performances. She sang very, very well, but the comments about her being too perfect and having to be able to let it slide a bit were basically comments that she tried so hard to hit every note right and sing every word clearly and with absolute perfect projection, to make it a memorable vocal performance. But when you’re acting, that sort of perfection isn’t always what you want. That sort of perfection is stale and devoid of emotion and passion, and without that it’s hard to make people feel like they’re actually watching the story. You have to express, for example, that you are feeling what you should feel in that situation, and sometimes that means sacrificing vocal perfection for emotion.

The best analogy for this might be just regular acting. You can, in regular acting (especially on stage) learn how to do perfect projection and enunciation, and how to keep nerves and quavers from your voice. All good actors learn most of these things. However, these are just a means to an end, which is of making it so that people understand what you’re saying and believe it, and so get into the story that you’re presenting. But if your character is supposed to be someone who is shy and mumbles, a good actor will deliberately mumble. If it’s a case where they’re supposed to be nervous, they will deliberately stutter and speak nervously. If they’re supposed to be half-crying, they’ll half-cry. The very best actors can incorporate all of these things that make their speech less clear artfully into their performances while still having what they’re saying be perfectly and completely understandable. Except when it’s not supposed to be, of course. Thus, you end up with a less perfect performance, but one that captures the emotion of the situation better.

The same thing applies to the songs in musical theatre. The catch in Danielle’s voice when she was singing was artfully done to express the emotion. For the most part, when it was complained that they were “out of tune” I will say that I didn’t notice, but it likely was artfully being out of tune, sacrificing the perfect tone and clarity of the music in order to better express the emotion of their songs. And what Colleen didn’t do was that, was sacrifice the singing for the sake of the emotion. And if you’re going to star in musical theatre, you really do have to do that. If you can pull off the emotions properly, most of the audience won’t notice if you slip a little in the singing because they will be so wrapped up in the moment, if those slips don’t enhance it themselves. The same thing applied to Stephanie’s missing of a line in her song. Not knowing the song, I didn’t notice … but if she’d acted like she’d slipped, I would have. But when all you offer is the song, then if you miss, I’ll notice because that’s all I’m paying attention to. The more you give me to think about, the more you can get away with … and likely the more I’ll enjoy it.

This is why I’d like to see Colleen go more the Charlotte Church route than the musical theatre route; her natural attributes are simply perfect for listening to her on CD or watching her in concert, and they work against her when she tries to act.

Over the Rainbow Results Oct 29

Well, I was, again, 1 for 2 in choosing who would be in the bottom two, and correctly predicted that Colleen would be going home. Because the judges weren’t going to let the opportunity to send Colleen home pass them by when given the chance.

But AJ being in the bottom two was very surprising to me. Last week, I was 1 for 2 in predicting who would go home by following the algorithm that the person in the bottom two last week would be in it again. This week, I ran the same algorithm, but Stephanie didn’t end up in the bottom two. I can only think of three reasons why that might be the case, and all of them have implications for the final showdown where Canada will choose Dorothy:

1) She picked up a significantly larger number of votes from Cassandra’s fans than the other girls.

2) Her dedicated fans are lazy, and needed the prod of her almost going home to actually vote for her en mass.

3) There is a significant number of voters who vote based on the performances and not on their overall favourite. To put it in election terms, there is a significant “swing vote”.

If 1) is true, then picking up Colleen’s fans will be a critical factor in determining who wins. If 2) is true, Stephanie needs them to show up again if she wants to win, and AJ will not win the competition (Stephanie’s breaking of the “bottom two” algorithm was a specific case and not general). If 3) is true, then each girl will have to nail it to win it all, which would make for the most interesting finish.

On the sing-off itself, both AJ and Colleen improved, but didn’t quite solve their problems. AJ runs the risk of being the musical theatre equivalent of a ham, because her gestures and facial expressions are so forceful that they become obvious, even when she might want to be more subtle. Colleen, however, still has a problem expressing what the song is trying to convey, although she sings beautifully.

Out of the final three, then, the main issues they have are:

1) Danielle … well, she doesn’t have any serious problems. Maybe her age will make it hard for her to play a young role.

2) Stephanie needs to sing to the audience in the slow, dramatic songs, and not the rafters. It gives an angelic, hopeful look to her, but that’s not always appropriate.

3) AJ needs to demonstrate subtlety.

That being said, they’re all wonderful singers and all of them can act, so it will be interesting to see who finally wins.

Over the Rainbow Performance Oct 28.

My comments on last night’s Over the Rainbow performance episode:

First up was Stephanie. And she had a tremendous performance, akin to her “Hello, Buenos Aries” performance but even better. She did “Cabaret”, and really stepped up to the plate, putting in a well-acted and performed performance. The key here is that she lost her “little girl” type of style, that shyness that the judges talked about, and did something that was completely unlike her, and did it well. While this wasn’t as deep an acting performance as some other songs would have been, it stood out for being in a style that you didn’t normally see from her, which was well-done.

Next up was Colleen, who did “Somewhere”. And her acting problems hit again, where she simply couldn’t convey the emotion that would draw you into the narrative of the song and make it seem like you were watching a story as opposed to just listening to someone song. She’s an excellent singer and has a great voice, and can do performances well, but she hasn’t proven that she can act yet, and every time she tries she seems to stumble on it. I think that instead of musical theatre I’d like to see her do something more like Charlottle Church did; start by singing where her performance skills and elegance can carry the day and then maybe move on from there to other things. If she put out a CD of various classical and folk songs, I’d almost certainly buy it, which I can’t say is the case for all the other Dorothys.

Next came AJ, doing “All that Jazz”. She’s also a strong performer. She’s really just fun to watch and she slips facial expressions and little moves in to highlight it. I could watch her for hours, honestly. And yet … the performance left me a little cold, a bit “Meh”. Technically, her performance was at least as strong as Stephanie’s, and yet I liked Stephanie’s a lot better. I think it’s because Stephanie gave us something new for her, while for AJ it was just that same old bold and brassy performance that she always does. And it wasn’t that strong an acting piece either, leaving doubts that she can act given what I thought was a weak and at times inappropriate — for the song — performance last week. Which is where I think the judges’ comments about her being too — forceful, shall we say? — come into play. She tends to go for dramatic gestures, both vocally and in her mannerisms, and while sometimes that’s really good there are times when you need to be subtle, and just do the small things. I’m not sure she can just do that, and that’s what you need to keep me interested when I’m not there to watch you perform, but am instead there to watch a story that you’re supposed to be taking me through.

Finally, we had Danielle, doing “I Dreamed a Dream”. And in terms of her performance … she nailed it, as usual. It was the best acting performance I’ve seen from her and from any of the Dorothys. Her voice and mannerisms all worked together to produce the actual feeling and draw me into the moment, feeling that I was part of the narrative and the story and getting a view into the personal life of this woman who had all of her hopes and dreams dashed. Even the little sprint away, and then stop and return added to it, even though it’s a pretty standard move in theatre and acting … but it’s important to do those little standard things. They’re classics for a reason.

So, my ranking of the performances, based only on my own personal views:

1) Danielle
2) Stephanie
3) AJ
4) Colleen

My prediction for the bottom two remains Colleen and Stephanie. And if Colleen ends up in the bottom two, she will not be in the final three, so then my final three prediction is Danielle, Stephanie and AJ.

A few final notes on this performance:

1) While I think Danielle is the best actress who has put in the best acting performances, one thing that became clear last night is that she’s the least physically attractive of the final four. She’s pretty enough and easy enough to look at, but she doesn’t have Colleen’s ethereal and elegant looks (that she made the most of last night, leaving me thinking “Wow”) or AJ’s effervescent and sensual looks (again, that were prominently on display last night) or Stephanie’s cuteness that she can parlay into a more attractive look when she needs it. But musical theatre is not about your looks, at least not completely. Danielle seems to me to be the best not because she’s the best looking — because she isn’t — but because she carries the narrative with her. All you need is to be attractive enough that people can watch you, and then the rest is in how you act … which is something that, I think, Hollywood and television has lost somewhere along the way.

2) There’s a difference between being a good musical performer and being a good musical actor, although they are related. Colleen and AJ are great performers and I could watch them perform for hours, but I’m leery about them as actresses. On the other hand, Danielle isn’t as strong a pure performer as they are but is a far better actress. Musical theatre is primarily about acting, not performance, which is again why I put Danielle on top as the best so far. Now, this is not to say that they are unrelated. If you are acting, being a strong performer is very good because it makes it easier to get people to watch you, and so makes it easiser for you to draw them into your narrative with your acting. And if you’re performing, being able to act is very good because it can make your performance more interesting by changing things up a bit and giving a different flow or emotion. But if you are not a strong performer, then you won’t be great at doing things that are just performance (like concerts), and if you are not a strong actor you won’t be great at doing musical theatre, which focuses on acting. AJ is an excellent performer, able to bring a concert act to life. Colleen’s voice and presence also make her an excellent performer. Danielle, on the other hand, is an excellent actress. Stephanie, it seems to me, is still finding her niche. But this is why they can all have good performances and yet not quite fit what you’d be looking for in the star of a major musical theatre production.

Was She Even in This Show?

So, I sometimes read the “Over the Rainbow” blog now, especially to see who did what on Sunday night before Monday’s results show. And I also get to see the posts saying goodbye to the latest eliminated Dorothy, and so saw Cassandra’s. And what’s interesting about it is that normally in the comments you get a significant amount of them that talk about how sorry they are to see that Dorothy go home and how good a job she did. And for Cassandra … there’s one of those. Beyond that, there are people wondering how Stephanie could be in the bottom two, why Colleen isn’t, about the dresses, and about AJ’s makeover.

This carries on from the other posts as well. You usually saw a lot of support for the various Dorothys in the comments … but nary a comment for Cassandra. She tended to not get mentioned by the commenters on the blog, even if she was mentioned in the post. And for a Dorothy that I thought did stand out, this seems a bit strange.

There was one comment about Cassandra that she would be either loved or hated, in that people would either think that a Dorothy with glasses and red hair was unique, new and fresh or terrible and not really Dorothy. But then you’d think that she’d get a lot of comments that would average out to a moderate or middle-of-the-pack overall voter rating. But that polarization didn’t really seem to happen. Instead, the people seemed to react to Cassandra mostly with “Meh”; not known enough to be in the top of the ratings, but until the last couple of weeks not notably weak enough to be in the bottom two. Only when she was placed against people that people had strong feelings over did she slip into the bottom two, and ultimately it seems that even the judges, at the end of the day, reacting to her as nothing especially strong or especially weak.

For a Dorothy that people were supposed to find unique. That’s surprising.

Anyway, even if she wasn’t really noticed by anyone else, she was noticed by me, which was one of the reasons I started watching the show. So there’s that, even if it’s cold comfort.

(I promise to stop talking about Cassandra by the end of Sunday’s episode [grin]).

Over the Rainbow Results Oct 22 …

So, my favourite went home, and I was 1 for 2 in predicting who went home.

I had thought that AJ’s singing a familiar song — which will always invite comparisons to what you’ve heard before — and losing her extra votes might push her into the bottom two, but that didn’t happen. Instead, Stephanie ended up there for the second time. Now, this to me seemed to be a rare case where the Sunday performance wasn’t what would settle it, and so the sing-off was actually going to be the deciding factor, although the judges commented a lot about Stephanie exactly the same way they commented on her on Sunday, so maybe that wasn’t the case.

When the song started, I at first noticed that Stephanie had her normal “happy, hopeful” face on, which wasn’t good when the judges explicitly asked for pain. However, she pulled it off as the song went on. However, Stephanie has a tendency to sing to the rafters as opposed to the audience, which is a bit of an issue if for these songs she always does that, even when it isn’t appropriate. Cassandra, on the other hand, often seemed more angry than hurt, but had an excellent performance and really did manage to live the moment.

So, it seems the biggest difference was voice. The judges liked Stephanie’s voice better than Cassandra’s. I disagreed. I liked Cassandra’s better because it seemed very, very real, which is probably the biggest advantage Cassandra had: the ability to make the songs and acting seem real. Stephanie’s voice was less real. And don’t just take my word for it; when the judges talk about her voice being “ethereal”, that translates to “other-worldly” and “less real”. Ethereal voices, in my opinion, are great for performers, for people who are singing to the audience. They aren’t as good for leads in musical theatre, because there you don’t want people thinking of it as a performance, but as part of an overarching story, and ethereal voices risk taking you out of the moment into another — enjoyable — moment, a moment of performance as opposed to plot. More real voices and presentations suck you into the story and leave you there, and for me in musical theatre the performance is supposed to just be something that enhances my enjoyment of the story, but isn’t the main focus itself.

Anyway, expect to see Stephanie in the bottom two next week as well. Sure, Cassandra would have had enough support that it could easily swing the votes, but for the most part people have decided who their second choice is, and so it may either move roughly equally to all the girls, or to the front-runners. AJ might benefit from this because she is different from the other girls in terms of looks and presentation which is also what Cassandra brought to the table, but Danielle is also likely to benefit just because of her talent level. We’re likely to see Stephanie and Colleen in the bottom two — so, sure, I’ll make that my next prediction — which is about the only chance Stephanie has to make it to the final three. The judges are not going to save her a third time against a Dorothy who has never been in the bottom two unless she’s up against one who simply can’t cut it, and we can see that the judges have some doubts about Colleen.

Anyway, it is disappointing that Cassandra has gone home, as she was the girl who made the show interesting to watch. But as the judges said, all of the girls who made the final five will have strong careers, and careers in part facilitated by their being on this show. I expect that there are a number of producers of shows that are looking to get Cassandra’s number to plunk her into the lead of their shows because of her talent and the moderate fame she got from being on the show.

My comments on the Oct 21 Over the Rainbow …

Well, since I’m watching it anyway, I might as well comment more on what’s happening on the show, starting with the performance episode that was on last night.

I think Danielle did an excellent job. Her song switched between an acting piece and a performance piece, but when she was acting … she acted. She’s clearly the one to beat, although she’s not the one I want to win.

Stephanie pretty much, as I recall, did a performance piece. She can sing. But overall, it wasn’t impressive, and seemed a bit lackluster, and I still don’t know if she can act. She also doesn’t move a lot in her performances, which is different from most of the other girls. For the most part, other than the “Hello, Buenos Aires” song from a couple of weeks back — that landed her in the bottom two, oddly enough — I always have a really hard time remembering what she actually did in her Sunday performance.

AJ did a song that I know quite well, because I have a CD of the title themes from James Bond. Her performance seemed off from that, but you have to make some allowances for personal style. However, it took me until the end of the song to figure out what the scene was aiming at — partly because the actual literal lyrics of the song didn’t match the scene choreographed — which is not a sign of good acting (that was the same problem Colleen had the week before). Also, during part of it — the line “Why’d you have to be so good?!?” — she seemed too happy when the line was aiming at a more exasperated idea, a notion that it wasn’t good for her that he was so good, but since he really was that good she simply couldn’t resist him. AJ, it seemed to me, played it as her being giddy over that. It didn’t match the song. But that was a fairly odd song choice anyway, especially with the choreography. It’s also the worst possible advice anyone can get to tone their performance down, as AJ at times seemed far too subdued.

Colleen sounded a bit too breathy in her song, and it was a performance piece, so she didn’t act at all. And I agreed with the judges on the lack of emotion in the piece.

Cassandra, as you should all know by now, is my favourite, and looking at the profiles and the performance last night, it’s clear why: she has a personality and it shines through. None of the other girls seem to do that (Danielle is more of a chameleon than showing an actual personality of her own). Which means that I think it was a mistake for Cassandra to lose the glasses, as that’s a big part of that personality. But when it comes to acting, she has the mannerisms down pat; she seems to actually move through the part and her movements seem to match it. I don’t agree with the judges on her performance; I think it covered the song off quite well.

So, overall, my ranking of the performances is:

1) Danielle
2) Cassandra
3) Stephanie
4) Colleen
5) AJ

My prediction for the bottom two:

1) AJ
2) Cassandra

Over the Rainbow …

So, I’ve picked up yet another guilty pleasure. Not this past Sunday, but the Sunday before, I was flipping channels after the football game, and came across a little show on CBC called “Over the Rainbow”, which is a show aimed at choosing the part of Dorothy for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new production of “The Wizard of Oz”. It caught my interest, and so I watched that episode, which was a re-run of the results episode from the previous week, and then later watching the Sunday performance episode. And so now I try to watch it.

As guilty pleasures go, though, at least you can get some intellectual props from liking it. After all, it is theatre; musical theatre, but theatre nonetheless.

They’re now down to the final five (and, no, Colonel Tigh is not one of them), and so as you might expect all of the girls/young women left can sing. And when I say that, I don’t mean that they’re decent singers. No, I mean they can sing; they’re extraordinary singers. So what’s left between them are other factors like acting ability and the ability to make a role come alive as opposed to making a song come alive.

Which is why it disappoints me that they don’t do a lot of actual acting in their performances, at least not yet. On this past episode, Cassandra, Colleen and maybe Stephanie did pieces that were more aimed at telling a story through music than in just singing to the audience. It’s one thing to get the audience involved when you can play to them, and quite another to get them involved when you have to interact as if they aren’t there. Danielle, for the second week in a row, did a piece that didn’t actually involve acting and yet managed to act (she did an excellent rendition of “Moon River” the week before that was amazing and seemed like a window into the situation; this week’s was less impressive but still did include acting). I’d like to see her actually do musical acting, though. But AJ and Jessie — who was the Dorothy sent home this week — did pretty much pure performance pieces, and played to the audience more.

As for the performances, I think that Cassandra nailed it in terms of musical acting. She arguably had the best performance of the night, and certainly had the best acting performance. Colleen’s acting wasn’t there, as the judges pointed out. In my case, as a musically interested lay-person, I had to look at the set and listen to the lyrics to find out what was going on in that scene, and I really shouldn’t need to do that. Stephanie’s performance was good, showed off some versatility compared to her breakout performance the week before, but seemed a bit lackluster to me. Danielle was, as I said, strong. AJ’s performance was a wow moment, but again there was no acting in it. Jessie’s was weak. And so it should be no surprise that the two girls with the least votes were: Jessie and … Cassandra?!?

This, it seems to me, is becoming a habit for this show. The week before, Stephanie had a breakout performance … and was in the bottom two, alongside Jennifer whose performance was weak. This week, Cassandra had what I felt was a breakout performance … and was in the bottom two as voted by the viewers. This shows the perils of viewer voting; the choices are often based more on a feeling of personal loyalty than on actual merit. And having the results come up like this makes the idea that the sing-off is the deciding factor strained. What you had was Jessie with a weak Sunday performance against Cassandra who had a strong one, and previously Jennifer who had a weak performance against Stephanie who had a strong one. Sure, the sing-off could overcome that impression … if, say, the one with the weaker performance has an absolutely amazing sing-off and the other singer flubs it. But, really, how likely is that to actually happen?

Now, the head judge who gets to “save” a Dorothy (somebody saaaaaave, meee!) always pitches it like the sing-off is what will matter and what does matter. But in the three results shows I’ve seen, I think it’s arguable that the person who did the worst in the sing-off was the one saved. I love Cassandra, but Jessie’s sing-off was arguably stronger, at least in my opinion. The previous week, I thought Jennifer’s interpretation of the song worked better than Stephanie’s. But the one who did at least as well if not better was sent home with comments that it was the sing-off that decided. Sorry, I don’t buy it, and trying to sell that doesn’t work when reality seems to be contradicting it.

Anyway, personally I think that Danielle has the inside track at winning it all. She really does seem really talented and doesn’t seem to ever miss a beat. But, personally, given a choice I’d rather see Cassandra win, and if not her then AJ. Part of this is that I think they have looks that match Dorothy better, and stand out a bit, especially Cassandra and her glasses. Whenever I think about the show, I always have to look back and see which song Danielle, Colleen and Stephanie actually did since physically they’re so much alike … but then their looks, to me, don’t really have the personality that Cassandra and AJ express. So, given the choice, I’d rather see them win and possibly break some stereotypes. That being said, I’m pretty sure neither of them will win, which is a bit sad. I kinda expect Cassandra to be gone soon, although AJ might make it a bit further.

Oh, and on one final note: the host, Daryn Jones, is not a very good host. He’s not funny. I try to ignore him when I can.

You were always on my mind …

So, lately I’ve been listening to the soundtrack from the video game “Silent Hill: Shattered Memories”, and the first song on the CD is a creepy, depressing version of the (I think) Willie Nelson favourite “You Were Always On My Mind”. Taking the creepy tone as well as the lyrics into account always makes me think that that would have been a perfect theme song for Silent Hill 2, as it seems to fit James Sunderland’s dilemma perfectly, as well as one of his endings. It’s too bad it wasn’t done for that game.