[Updated. W/ a note from the photographers! (thanks much again!)]“Imagine” by John Lennon and The Prodigy: American Idol today at 8:00am live telecast

    

 Photo/ artwork by Carol and  Mike Werner. Mp3 Downloading Music. Used here for  educational, non-commercial purposes, free service by blog-use of image provided by and from www.allposters.com

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Thanks for using our picture, Marichu.

From “Imagine” by John Lennon and The Prodigy: American Idol today at 8:00am live telecast, 2008/05/23 at 7:31 AM

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From: marichulambino

At https://marichulambino.wordpress.com/

Wow. A note from two visionary photographers. Thanks much again and warm regards. – marichu

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 (Update: The results: The more seasoned adult contestant won, a bartender part-time frontman bandplayer, and so he knew his U2 after all. A record-breaking 97.5 million text votes came in. Too bad for teeny bopper fans, maybe  adult texters outnumbered the five-year-olds, tweens and tweeners;  yehey,  there’s hope.)

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       The biggest  reality singing competition in the world  raking in from 38 million text votes to 44 million text votes in just two hours of voting every show, will probably be won today, after a gruelling six months of audition, rehearsals, contest, elimination,  by a junior high school 17-year-old  student, whose favourite song is “Imagine” by John Lennon.

     

        He has the vocal range, expressiveness, and millions of screaming teen fans, but you wonder whether the kid, whose worry of not having asked his girl yet to the prom has become a national issue for the fans,  knows of the conflict and turmoil that Lennon wrote about (the kid wiz sang “Imagine” thrice: in one elimination round, in a tearful homecoming, and in the finals.). Maybe he does, I don’t know, he looks like he still has to learn to work his shaving kit.  Andrew Lloyd Webber said “there’s a prodigy or two here in this batch” and maybe he was referring to the  most precocious.  

 

     To be fair, the equally talented, more experienced and more emotionally layered rival, with his raspy voice,  sang U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and glanced sideways left to right at  all the screaming fans;  and you wonder, too. You wonder whether he knows that around the time U2 was writing some of these songs,  civilians were being  randomly sprayed with bullets in Ireland by British troopers.

 

       Oh, it doesn’t matter,  it’s just a singing contest and about  choosing a star.

 

       It’s just that, millions and millions of teenagers worldwide watch it.

 

     The fourth most popular of them,  dreadlocks and all, (and who kept not getting eliminated until the fourth to the last night), during the Andrew Lloyd Webber night, chose the haunting song “Memory” from the Broadway musicale “Cats”. And Andrew Lloyd Webber during coaching said, “Why did you choose that song, did you know (in his British Sir- Andrew- Lloyd- Webber accent) that, that song was sung by an extremely ancient glamour puss?” and the contestant’s eyes got wide in amazement. At the separate clip, the contestant (a college student in Texas) said in a low monotone mumble “I didn’t know a cat was singing it!”

 

     During Beatles night, he chose the song “Michelle” (Lennon and McCartney), so he was given the lyrics. At the intro clip, he mumbled “I didn’t know  it was in French! i thought Michelle, ma belle was my bell.”

 

     To be fair, the third most popular contestant, when she chose the bluesy  “A Change is Gonna Come” from the provided songbook  “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame” hits,   researched the song during rehearsals, and was able to explain why she cried: “it meant a lot to me, (sobbing),  i researched it and it was about the civil rights movement.”  And that was how she won that round (dreadlock guy got eliminated, he sang, “Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, ummp ummp amp-amp em-im,” he forgot the lyrics). 

 

      So, i guess it does matter, sometimes. If you could understand,   maybe later on you could write, if you could write, at the very least you’ll never be out of a job,  maybe in one glimmer,  you could “set the world on fire”. Like Lennon and Bono, who did so dozens of times over.

 

     They remind  me of my students  (the contestants, and their comprehension).  The Supreme Court in Borjal vs. CA defined  a public figure (citing its earlier  Ayer) as “ x x x a person who, by his accomplishments, fame, mode of living,  or calling  xxx gives the public a legitimate interest in his xxx affairs xxx. He is, in other words, a celebrity. Obviously, to be included in this category are those who have achieved some degree of reputation by appearing before the public, as in the case of an actor, a professional baseball player, a pugilist, or any other entertainer. The list is, however, broader than this. It includes public officers, famous inventors and explorers, war heroes and even ordinary soldiers, infant prodigy, and no less a personage than the Great Exalted Ruler of the lodge. xxxx”

 

       So i ask the students to define some of the nouns there just to make sure they understand. “o, what’s a pugilist?” And a student slowly says, “Ma’am….a fighter?” and i say “Boxer. That’s why they’re called pugs, it doesn’t mean they’re dogs, it means pugilist”, and almost in unison they say “Aaaah, yun pala” (“Aah, that’s why”). And i ask, “o, what’s a prodigy? It says here, infant prodigy.”

 

      Nobody answers. So  i ask one student “to volunteer”, and she says “Prodigy… Ma’am, yung…” then her voice becomes soft “… yung anak na (“….a son/ daughter who)… bumalik (…came back.”)   And i get her, i really do. Prodigal! The prodigal son! Prodigy- prodigal.

 

     In one semester, i had this one: At the first week, we always take up the structure of the judiciary, so i say “in municipalities where the population is small and they are contiguous, they just have one MTC; o, what is contiguous?” Nobody answers.

 

      So i ask one student, and she says, “Ma’am… yung nagkakahawaan” (“Ma’am,  those that get infected”), then she gestures by rubbing her arms with her hands, to mean “getting infected”.   And i say, “Oh, you mean…”   I’m trying to get her, i really am,  i’m trying to fit her answer, “you mean, nagkakahawaan kasi magkalapit sila” (“you mean, they infect each other because they’re near each other”). And her classmates chorus “Ma’am hindi (Ma’am, no), contagious! Contagious daw”.  Ngek. Contiguous – contagious.

 

      And finally, in this semester’s finals,  for the case U.S. vs. Bustos where the Supreme Court also discussed the constitutional right to petition for redress of grievances, one student wrote:

        “…. and he has the right to regress of grievances.”   And i get it, i really do, a grievance should be regressed because… it should not be allowed to progress, it’s a grievance!