rj_anderson | More Wacky CI Fun!

Now that Kalan's won, bet you thought I was finished talking about Canadian Idol, didn't you? Ha ha! Not a chance. I need at least a couple more weeks. Right now I'm still going through withdrawal, and desperately browsing about for anything I haven't seen yet. Some recent discoveries:

There are some wonderful bloopers in the Top Ten "Under Pressure" medley performed at the Finale. You can find the video of said medley (listed as "First Group Number Sept 16/04") at the top of the page here. Amusingly, they are all Kalan-related:

One: Kalan sticks his microphone in his back pocket during "Jailhouse Rock" to dance with Manoah, and ends up dropping it on the stage. Bam! Oops. He has to bend over to pick it up again before he can join the rest of the group.

Two: Jacob slaps Kalan on the butt just as Kalan starts to sing Squeeze's "Tempted". You can actually hear the smack, it's that hard. I'm amazed that Kalan a) kept a straight face and b) didn't miss a note, but I guess he must be used to Jacob by now.

Three: Kalan slips and nearly wipes out at the front of the stage when he's hurrying into position at the end of "Johnny Be Good". Jacob gives him this look, as if to say, "You klutz!" and Kalan just gets a sheepish grin on his face.

Then there's the anime-style CI fanart. I'm used to seeing this for fiction fandoms, but I have to admit that X-Chan's creations took me by surprise. Check out the Chibi Top Seven (among other things, there's something about Jason Greeley in chibi form that amuses me no end). And then there's a more standard anime-style portrait of the Top Six, plus this one of Kalan, which is a little twee but quite beautifully rendered. If you check out X-Chan's Canadian Idol page you can see a lot of photos from her visits to the show, including some of the Top Ten's comments on her Chibi Kalan poster (Elena's and Shane's in particular are quite funny).

Idol show connoisseurs -- including a considerable number of Americans and other foreign viewers -- seem to agree that CI2 was the best Idol show ever, in terms of the sheer talent displayed by the Top Ten and the freshness their performances brought to a tired formula. Even some die-hard Clay Aiken fans have confessed that they think CI2 was better than AI2 by a long shot. I couldn't get through more than one or two episodes of AI3 this year and I really doubt I'm going to be watching AI4. I don't even know about CI3, because I think this season's going to be really hard to top. But I would recommend CI2 to just about anybody who likes music and enjoys live performances.

Soon I hope to do a post listing the top ten best performances of the season, with links to the audio and video of same for those interested (

sabrinanymph, I'll convert you yet!). But in the meantime

netninny has written up some handy summaries of this year's competition, meant to bring those who missed the show up to speed:

Canadian Idol 2 for Non-Canucks: An Introduction
Canadian Idol 2 for Non-Canucks II: The Breakout Stars
Canadian Idol 2 for Non-Canucks III: The Controversy
and soon to come, Canadian Idol 2 for Non-Canucks IV: ...And the Rest.

Not only are these summaries well-written and entertaining, they contain some of the more amusing quotes from Shoebox and Joe Dwarf's infamous snarky recaps, so well-beloved on the forums at TWoP. Bit of a strong language warning, but otherwise recommended.