Durbin's Message...Hear It.

I just got done watching the full episode of American Idol and have time on my hands to comment while it’s all fresh in my mind.

I’ll mention again that it is cool to watch the progress of each of the singers. The coaching they are getting each week is clearly evident in their performances.

The show started out with a nice touch as the last six contestants voted off the show came out to sing. That gave me a chance to see Pia and Thia reunited on stage. They were joined by the three other girls (Karen, Naima and Ashtyn.) Then Paul the Spaz sauntered out in some flaming red and black Liberace outfit of some sort and tried to sing. God awful, it was (his part of it, of course.)

At this point anyone can win the season but Stefano Langone just doesn't belong there. He was excruciatingly bad, although his stage presence and performance was markedly improved. I still don’t get what the judges are hearing with this guy. I get his whole look thing that the 13 year olds and the grandmothers are voting for but he can’t sing.

I can't stand the use of back-up singers on this show. It's a mistake by the producers. In Langone's case they had two real horrible blonds singing back up and cackling "I just can't stop, I just can't stop, I just can't stop," coincidentally as I just couldn't stop barfing through the entire 3 minutes of his song.

Haley Reinhart stole the show of course…LOL to my stalkers. I didn’t know the song that she sang so I couldn’t compare it in any way, but it was hot.

Actually it was Durbin’s night to steal the show. He sang a Muse song that I actually own. The song itself is an anti-establishment and uber political song, which is for another discussion and appropriate for what is going to follow here shortly, but he killed it for sure.

I still laugh when I think that Alfred E. Neumann is going to win the whole thing.

I thought Casey’s version of the Maroon 5 song sucked, but he is still the one with the most overall talent of the remaining.

If you go back in my blogs the four guys who I thought were future stars are still in this competition – Casey, Jacob, James and Alfred E.


Information about the contractual arrangements that a major league baseball franchise makes with MLB is not readily available. I did what I could to dig up some of this information when I heard about the league “taking over” the LA Dodgers.

There is some information to be found regarding the Commissioner's role in exacting penalties on teams and players but what has happened here this week is that for the first time in the leagues history the office has commandeered a team based on what they claim is in the interest of baseball.

(Yes, MLB ran two other franchises temporarily for financial reasons, but this time the league has stepped in and taken over.)

I think this is a little scary here. It sets an ominous precedent, in my opinion. The Dodgers are a company and it has just been taken over, one could say, by the government…indeed MLB is the governing body of the teams.
When we have any type of government exerting some form of ultimate control, or eminant domain,  over an entity like this, the move has suddenly superseded some rights.

The trouble with my own argument with myself is that the team obviously has something in its franchise agreement with MLB that would allow MLB to make this move.

But this is just one example of why I have a real problem with the US government backing home loans or getting any more deeply involved with mortgages than they already are.
Who is to say, that all of a sudden, in a real horrible economy, that someone like…say…me, who is down over 50% of his income in the past couple of years doesn;t become vulnerable to that same type of takeover?
What if our government is allowed to make increasingly tighter regulations and add more rules and restrictions to home loans and, in particular, the borrowers? What if we continue to allow them to take more and more of our rights, in any way, shape or form?
If we continue to allow our rights to slowly slip into the hands of one central entity like that, allowing them to make these increasingly-powerful regulatsions, whether it’s a team in MLB or an individual or a company in the country, we could potentially lose a lot more than we could ever gain signing deals and making arrangements that might have seemed ok and to our benefit when we first made them.

I could expand on this ad infinitum but I prefer to just try to make quick points and keep the overall length of this blog short because there are lots of other people that you like to check out and read and see each day.

Hmmm….could I possibly have more to say in some politically podcasted podcast? Hmmmm….could I?  Well, if it should, by some strange chance…coincidentally…become a real project, you would find it at www.marshcast.com. (It isn’t there but the 4-12 tapings of Dungeon of Manlove are.)

So…we could now be facing $6 per gallon gas this summer? It was funny, I made a brief post on my Facebook page about it today and within an hour two friends had unfriended me. BYE BYE COMMIES. Didn’t need you there anyway; if you can’t see what the hell is going on there and can’t take the heat in the political kitchen, then get out. Good riddance.

Where are these two people's pitchforks?

I’m tired of holding my tongue about how we are getting robbed by our own government and any large company that pays these thieves ways into office.

Crap…maybe I should hold off on expanding on that for another time…a more appropriate place…like, say…a podcast on marshcast.com at some point. Oh…you think I swear a lot in the Dungeon…wait until you hear my take on all of this stuff…if I should go through with that project, that is.  Oh yeah…I have stuff to say; stuff that will get me blacklisted by those with whom I disagree. I just have to get my ducks in a row and make some personal calculations.

Hmm… I thought I had other things to say. No worries, if I remember it tomorrow, I’ll just write another.

Done.