Wilkes-barre, Pa. September 8

I have to say, i'm surprised no one is talking about this show...it's only 8 days away!
The other topic on it seems to have vanished...so i'm starting up a new one.

*hears crickets chirping*

Is anyone going to this show? Going early to try and meet them???

Hellllllo out there....

Anyhow, my friend and i have center floor seats...not exactly sure how close we will be considering the stage set up...I would LOVE to know if any rows will be taken out to make room for the mini-stage. The fact that we don't know, is driving my friend (and myself) nuts.

Interview: LA Times

So...i stumbled on this today. Not sure if it's been posted already, i looked and didn't see it, so forgive me if it has been. Also, i'm having trouble finding the actual link to the original article, so i'll include the link to where it was posted on LJ.

*******

"I just wanna make a record that's gonna make the hair on the back of your neck stand up," exclaimed newly crowned "American Idol," David Cook, during a conference call with the media this morning. When asked when he would recover from the exhaustion and excitement of it all, Cook replied, "Hopefully never."

Throughout the competition, Cook's mentality has been "hope for the best, expect the worst." After all, following Tuesday's performance, the general sentiment was that Cook's rival, David Archuleta, had won the night. Believe it or not, Cook agreed. "I definitely thought if you were basing it off of Tuesday, [Archuleta] deserved to win. He came out and did three amazing songs," recalled Cook.

After his big win, Cook stopped by the "Idol" after-party with none other than his family. Throughout the call, Cook's family was at the front of his mind. Cook even mentioned the possibility of a collaboration with his musician brother. "I've left the option open, and I'm kinda leaving it up to him," Cook explained, adding that he hopes that his brother will come hang out with him on tour, if only for "a short stint."

After all, Cook's brother was the one who persuaded him to attend the "Idol" audition in the first place. "He has been my No. 1 supporter from Day One," emphasized David Cook, "and has routinely told me how proud he is of me." When asked what he had given his brother in return, Cook replied, "Inadvertently, I'm responsible for getting him into video games." Hmmm, sounds like one of the Cooks is getting the short end of the stick here.

As for his new star status, Cook remains in awe. "I can't believe the level of support that has come out of me doing this crazy TV show," he marveled.

The level of support in the "Idol" community was clear on Tuesday night, when 12 million more votes were cast for Cook than for Archuleta. "I attribute the finale vote … to my fans just being awesome," Cook stated simply. Still, Cook doesn't want the public to read too much into that number. "I think that number is actually really misleading," he mused, in yet another shout-out to formidable opponent Archuleta. "I was just honored to share the stage with him."

When the conversation moved back to Cook's time as a struggling musician, Cook recalled, "I wasn’t ready to give up on music, and I didn’t think music was ready to give up on me." Now an international star, Cook is grateful for his starving-artist days. "You get pretty humble playing shows to five people," he said with a chuckle.

As for the idea that he would have been better off not winning "Idol" (in terms of credibility as a rock musician), Cook admitted that the idea had crossed his mind, but he said he didn't give it much attention. It would have been "a slap in the face" to the competition and fans, he explained. "As far as having more success by not being a winner, I think that is something that will get played out in the next few years," he concluded.

If Cook looks like a different man today than the one we met months ago, it's not just the gleam in his eye. "I've lost probably 10, 15 pounds on this season," he revealed. And Cook's physique isn't the only thing that changed. He's become more open as a performer, thanks to vocal coach Debra Byrd, who helped him break down the "wall" he was putting up. Hence Cook's late-season success -– and his late-season proclivity for tears, especially at the finale. "The crying after I'd won was like an exhale," he recalled. "I felt like that whole time I was holding my breath."

Full article

Dial Idol: What they say about tonight's predictions

Ok, this was just posted a couple of minutes ago on the main page of DI.

Let's be clear - DialIdol is definitively predicting that David Cook will win American Idol. No ifs, ands or buts about it. No crazy margin of error claims or anything. The DialIdol scores are significantly different enough to wash all that out the window.

This comes as a bit of a surprise to me given that David Archuleta "knocked out" David Cook during the performance show so before you decide to skip the results show tonight you might want to consider that I myself will be watching with the usual uncertain anticipation that has become habit for me!

DialIdol.com got slammed pretty hard last night by lots of fans trying to see DialIdol's predictions. Page load time was in the neighborhood of 1-2 minutes from 9pm - 1am. Sorry about this. Sometimes it seems that it is easier to predict who will win American Idol than it is to predict how much traffic DialIdol will get.

Can't Stop

Just a humble offering in the form off my first David Cook tribute/fanvid.

It was my first time using Sony Vegas, and i would never hope to compare it to some of the other awesome videos that have been popping up...but I like it.

Can't Stop

Much thanks go out to Steph for all the help she gave me with Vegas

Dial Idol & Zabasearch Prediction Accuracy

Take note of the highly questionable way that Zabasearch figures out it's predictions each week.


Predicting the Trends of American Idol
By JOHN METCALFE
Published: May 5, 2008

TiVo has made watching commercials unnecessary. Is it now trying to make watching reality shows a thing of the past, too?

Last month, TiVo said it would predict the loser on “American Idol” by using its own product, StopWatch, which monitors the fast-forwarding and rewinding patterns of 20,000 anonymous subscribers to gauge viewers’ preferences.

The announcement signified yet another attempt to flout efforts by “American Idol” to keep its voting results secret. Predictive Web sites already exist, like DialIdol, which calculates the frequency of busy signals on the show’s phone lines, and ZabaSearch, which tracks how often contestants’ names are entered into search engines.

“American Idol” executives say they are not perturbed by these projection tools, which they view as positive reflections of the show’s popularity, even though ratings are down 8 percent compared with the same time last year, according to Fox.

“There are very strict rules we need to abide by to make sure it is a competition, and the fairness of the competition is respected at all times,” said Cécile Frot-Coutaz, an executive producer for the show. Even when outside predictions are accurate, she said, the show “is as much about the journey as it is about the endpoint.”

Fortunately for “American Idol,” the forecasts are often wrong. TiVo predicted on April 10, for example, that Syesha Mercado would be the next contestant eliminated; but Michael Johns was voted off, and Ms. Mercado is still going strong.

“I got to tell you, Murphy’s Law strikes again,” said Todd Juenger, a vice president at TiVo, adding that StopWatch had made four accurate predictions before making the incorrect one — the only one made public — and has continued to make accurate predictions, including forecasting the demise of Brooke White last Wednesday.

But TiVo is late to the prediction party. DialIdol said that it had accurately predicted the winner of every “American Idol” season it had covered, but it gave only a range of possible losers.

Last week, for instance, Ms. White was one of three contestants whom DialIdol said were in a statistical dead heat for being voted off. (Jason Castro and David Archuleta were the others.)

“I think we’ve had one incorrect prediction this year,” said James Hellriegel Jr., the creator of DialIdol, who said he built his automatic-dialing software program so he could vote while doing his laundry. “I’m not trying to undermine the ‘Idol’ system,” he said. “I like to think I complement it.”

Mr. Juenger said that TiVo had loftier ambitions for StopWatch. “We are already in conversation with political organizations to think about how they might use this type of data to monitor debates or even things like the evening news,” he said.

Dave Della Terza, who runs the Web site Vote for the Worst, which aims to steer votes to certain singers, suggested why a TiVo prognosis failed.

“Just because they’re watching them doesn’t mean they’re voting for them,” he said. “There are people who would never vote for the bad performances, but will watch them over and over and laugh at them.”

Article Here