Maybe it's my father's sudden death but I have become sentimental. I am still steamed that Crystal Bowersox did not win American Idol the season she was on.
Obviously I am dating myself with the AI reference. But she was really really good and she was robbed. She deserved to win and I think most people expected she would.
The backstory was all for her. A girl who grew up with nothing in a left behind small town in the upper Midwest. A town that was really in the past, that had no place for stars. A young lady who could blast the heart right out of your chest. Chris Borrelli of the Chicago Tribune -- who is one of the best there is in the dying newspaper business -- took a trip down there and captured her town in a phrase, as they try to teach you in J-school. The price on the long closed gas station in town was frozen at 31 cents a gallon. That's the kind of town Crystal grew up in.
Somehow she had enough spirit, spunk, and talent to emerge from that morass. And she was a winner on the air, the kind of person you instantly fall in love with even if you have some cynicism circling in your veins. She was the real deal. She was really expected by everyone to win. The normally flinty Simon Cowell loved her to death. The other judges loved her. I still don't understand how it happened.
Here are some links. Someone tell me I'm wrong. There was something really squirrelly about that deal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSEyOa-cmkohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBbEEg9mJzYhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFr7ONasrN8She knew what she was doing.
