AI 8 5-20-09 The Best Season Finale Ever

Only one can win the title. This is the finale and THIS IS AMERICAN IDOL!

I watched the finale via tape when returning home around 10:30 p.m. after seeing a very beautiful one-woman show with Storm Large last night. “Crazy Enough” is spectacular being both funny, touching and emotionally poignant. Storm bares her heart and soul including high points and her demons. The music and songs are brilliant. I plopped down $15.00 for the CD. If you live in the Portland area, you definitely have to see it. The show is now playing to the end of June. Rush and get tickets. A shameless plug for a show and I am not even getting kickbacks. Forgive me I digress.

There were just under 100,000,000 votes cast Tuesday night but who will win the title.

I normally am not a fan of the video montages but I will make an exception in relationship to the poking of fun at the judges. The only one, which was truly hilarious, was Randy Jackson. The whole “for me, for you” had me rolling in the aisles.

Our Top 13 all decked out in white are up first singing “So What”. I just do not get the all white outfits it looks stupid and Michael Sarver especially should never wear all white again!

Our Season 7 bartender David Cook performed what had to be one of the most emotionally haunting songs of the evening. “Permanent” was beautiful. My tears were flowing. David was wearing a black band around his arm in memory of his brother who died of brain cancer and David’s raw emotion over the death came through loud and clear. The performance is now on iTunes and all proceeds goes to the fight against cancer. I am ordering you all to download the song and quick!

My hopes the producers tweaking of the season would see the elimination of the Golden Idol Awards were crushed to the ground when Ryan gave out the first award of the evening for outstanding male. The winner was Nick Mitchell aka Norman Gentle. How surprising, Nick is in the audience, NOT! Nick is surprised because he didn’t realize he was up for any awards and doesn’t know what to say or do but wait it is all a set up, he strips and we find his Norman Gentle personality coming through for yet another time singing “And I am Telling you I am not going”. PLEASE, give it a rest. This is not funny anymore and has not been funny since his audition.

Lil Rounds and Queen Latifah are up with “Cue the Rain”. I am not a fan of hip-hop but this duet was good. Lil had great energy and was having fun. If she had this, much energy during the competition, she might have given Allison a run for being the last woman standing.

Anoop and Alexis are next with “I’m Yours” and out comes Jason Mraz and the rest of the top 13 sans Adam and Kris. Great music.

Cue the next video montage, which was Kris’s journey to this stage. Simon was correct; the man who auditioned in Louisville is not the same Kris who performed on Tuesday night. Kris is singing, “Kiss a Girl” with Keith Urban. This was a beautiful rendition. Kris and Keith performed well together with dueling guitars. I chuckled to myself because during dinner, my friend Melanie and I were talking about Kris and I had mentioned he would do great with the current country rock/pop market and lo and behold, here Kris is singing just such a genre. I am a genius when it comes to American Idol marketing.

The women of the top 13 are styling to “Glamorous” and oh, my god there is Megan out short shorting Haley Scarnato in hot pink. The women sounded good. Oh my, here is Fergie. Fergie was looking hot last night and those killer shoes were to die for. Fergie gives us a little “Big Girls Don’t Cry”, suddenly we have the “Black Eye Peas” performing their latest hit “Boom Boom Pow”, and there was a bleep in the middle of the performance. This performance ended with some shameless self-promoting of their new album.

It appears we have another Golden Idol award to present, this time for Best Attitude. The winner is Bikini Girl and folks let us just say her body is even hotter and she was carrying some extra luggage overhead, yes, Bikini Girl had a boob job. I have to admit her physician did a phenomenal job and she definitely has attitude to strut her stuff in front of this many people. Bikini Girl is going to sing “Vision of Love” and surprise, surprise the backdrop is raised and there is Kara singing the same song and much better than Bikini Girl. This was one of my favorite moments of the night. At the end of the song, Kara pulls open her dress and she is wearing a black bikini it was hilarious. There was a bet she would not be able to do it so money is going to her favorite charity (which is not identified by the way).

Allison Iraheta and Cyndi Lauper perform a stripped down version of “Time after Time” which was beautiful.

Danny Gokey is singing “Hello” with Lionel Ritchie joining for two additional numbers. I love “All Night Long”. It is a great get the party started number. Danny and Lionel harmonies were great their voices are very similar.

Cue the video of Adam’s journey to the American Idol stage and there is Adam in what has to be the absolutely strangest jackets I have ever seen. There were wire cages, which looked like wings. Oh, no he stole Tina Turner’s outfit from “Mad Max beyond Thunderdome” but then Adam was singing “Beth” by Kiss and it all made sense as Kiss hit the stage in all their glory. Compared to Kiss Adam’s outfit did not seem so outlandish. Adam killed his duet with the group with both “Detroit Rock City” and “Rock’n Roll all night”. This was a wildly entertaining performance. Hell I was on my feet dancing and singing along.

Matt Giraud is singing “Black Magic Woman” with Carlos Santana joining him on stage with the entire Top 13 for a rousing edition of “Smooth”. Adam and Kris should do a version of this song their voices sounded great.

Next, is the final Ford Commercial to “I Will Remember You” and is a montage of all the other commercials. This was very touching and again Adam and Kris sound fantastic together. There is David Cook presenting each of them keys to a 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid, what a surprise? NOT!

Ryan then introduces Steve Martin who is strumming a banjo while Megan Joy and Michael Sarver are harmonizing with the song “Pretty Flowers”. I will give Megan props because she sounded good, as did Michael. I even found Megan’s dress to be quite nice. As the song, ended Ryan provided some shameless product promotion explaining Steve Martin wrote this song and it will be on his new album, which is coming out shortly. Really?

Strutting next were our top 13 males with “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” which was hilarious. It is now time for the introduction of Rod Stewart. Poor Rod he really needs to give up performing. At 64, I would hope he has saved enough cash for a comfortable life style. I am a big Rod Stewart fan and I have plenty of his albums but his voice is not what it use to be and I was worried for him. Did you see how slow he was moving? It took him forever to get down those stairs. At one point when he was slowly walking across the stage, he stumbled. Rod was performing one of my favorite songs, “Maggie May” and they needed to change the key because he simply was not able to reach those high notes. This was a train wreck of a performance.

Our next Golden Idol award is for outstanding female and how surprising the winner is Histrionic Hyena (HH for short or aka Titana). There is HH in the audience and as she runs to the stage Ryan indicates they are out of time yet HH continues to the stage, grabs the trophy, and tells Simon she will perform for the fourth time “Saving All My Love for You”. HH begins while the bodyguards are trying to catch her and drag her off stage. I did not find this amusing but poor Ruben Studdard thought it was real and his expression was priceless.

Adam and Kris start a rousing rendition of “We are the Champions” and these guys are kick ass good. Queen joins them on stage with what has to be the best performance of the evening. This was simply amazing.

We are finally ready to reveal the winner of American I, season 8, which is drum roll please, Kris Allen. Kris proved Paula right as being one of the nicest and most sincere contestants because even in victory, Kris could manage to do no more than say Adam deserved it and he would not be there without his fellow contestants. Kris was genuinely surprised and thrilled at the same time. Congratulations to Kris Allen.

It is time for Kris to sing the coronation song “No Boundaries” I was surprised because vocally there was some improvement over Tuesday night but his enunciation still sucked. I am down on my knees praying they make some big changes to the key, the arrangement and Kris can modify it to meet his style before they record it for release. It irritates me that Kara will make a truckload of cash on what has to be one of the most god-awful coronation songs ever.

This was one of the best two-hour season finales ever. This show provided some great music capping the end of one of the most exciting seasons. I laughed, cried, moaned, groaned, cheered and wallowed in the excess of it all.

It is bittersweet now that Season 8 is finished and the long wait until January 2010 for Season 9. I am looking forward to the opening of the concert tour here in Portland Oregon on July 5, 2009.

Until then I am signing off.