Congratulations Cari!

Cari Quoyeser just proved how cool her fans are for picking a great entertainer.

Gotta brag about my personal "idol," Cari Quoyeser, who performed here in Navasota a year or so ago, and who went all the way to Las Vegas on AMERICAN IDOL. YEAH! That means she proved that she belongs among the top 60 young performers in our whole Country. This time.

Her dismissal was so random and stupidly unfair, I am sure she should have gone much farther. She was cut on a horse-hockey deal where her performance in a group presentation was the basis for sending her home, and then they proceeded to slash and cut ruthlessly on a slaughterhouse pace to send many more packing. There have to be winners and losers, and this show is about ratings, built on real heartbreak and humiliation, not finding our best and brightest.

Actually I have known Cari's outcome for some time, and was dying to announce her success but needed to let the show play itself out.. and it took forever! And Cari, be happy to move slow and sure... read the next blog below about those who got caught up in the vicious fast lane these jackals open the gates to... Success is not measured in dollars or in rising to flavor of the day, but in "a well spent life." (You can see the movie by that name, the story of Navasota's Mance Lipscomb, at Blues Alley)

Cari will be fine, she is a world class talent and has proved it on National television, as if we did not already know. Just check out any of her beautiful, well written original songs. But the televison series, a whirlwind of contradictory whims, yanking chains, indulging freaks and popping the bubbles of innocents, is something else. The judges seem to relish in encouraging the hopeless while vanquishing the proud.

I quit following it years ago when I finally realized they were all about low class entertainment, you know, like tractor pulls and cock fighting, appealing to our morbid fascination, watching these poor kids be taunted, insulted, patronized and deflated, all in a nice quiet evening around the television. It's just a sort of bizarre musical gladiators, watching those talented kid's hearts get ripped out. It's about the agony and the ecstacy, rife with irony, rather than a respectable venue edifying art and artists.

I used to get so pissed off at their totally unexplainable judgments, until I decided that it was all on purpose. It makes good television. The show's premise is meanness, disguised as artistic enrichment, exploiting youth and talent much more than it nurtures it. Bottom line, THEY shape the competition to suit their own script formulas. Artists are manipulated for our sadistic viewing pleasure. Old Simon did not care about music, but about sticking me in the eye with a sharp stick. And he was good at it.

And now I miss him, since I finally understood what he was doing, but these judges now are still trying to act like this is a serious hunt for America's next big star. If it is, they sure blew it.

I'm just not into it, dawg.

Note; BUT I am into encouraging our young, commited artists... of every description... they are getting rare. I understand there is a songwriter's contest in Schulenberg this Spring... and my daughter Raegan will be entering it, I think... Texas has had a lot of great musicians, partly because we are so independent of national trends... the rest of the country looks to either Nashville or L.A. but we have Austin, our own music center... and it is one of the most respected in the world. Let's keep that tradition going!