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Is it wrong that I want to be famous? Is it wrong that I want to have lots of money, even if the reason for this is not to use it on me but to pour it into other people’s lives? I am tired. I’m gonna keep fighting but I definitely need to know if the direction I’m heading is the right one. I guess I will know once I get there and if it wasn’t at least I was moving. The struggles in my life make it so difficult to see myself as a conqueror some times, but I have to keep reminding myself, it could be much worse.

Well, I felt the need to vent a little, I definitely need to invest some time in others, I am coming to the realization that this fight inside of me can be because everything I’m doing at the moment has to do with me, I’m going to school, I am working, I am thinking about my future, I’m spending too much time on my own struggles but basically none of my time is being invested in the lives of others, I need to fix that.

What would you recommend to live a fuller life? A life with more meaning and satisfaction

I know, I know, some of them are more into red than fuchsia, but still, it’s a little crazy for me that through 6 different seasons that hair color has prevailed. I mean, it’s not a totally normal hair color like, black, brown or blonde. But all that red makes me wonder… Why?

• Does it have something to do with the producers decisions?
• Is there a mastermind behind all this hair dye?
• Is this a result of some frivolous plan to make everyone in the universe want to have their hair this color?
• Is this part of the marketing put in place for Coca-Cola? Red cups, red hair?

I don’t know I may be getting carried away but who knows, maybe one day one of them will break the secret code and open up to the public and spill the beans. Until that moment we will have to live knowing that as long as Idol lives there is a high chance of seeing more ladies with this unusually strong hair color. Anyway, the way I see it, Idol may not have too many years left, X-Factor will take over, in my opinion. So we may know sooner rather than later.

WHY?

Yesterday was the first elimination and I’m not entirely happy about how it turned out, I think there were people that deserved to go home more than who did, at least on the guys side. But , this is American Idol, and at the end of the day, the voters decide, unless the producers shovel someone down our throats and we fall for it.

If the judges have a wildcard round this season, which I haven’t heard about yet and haven’t seen it on the Idol calendar I wouldn’t be surprised if they bring Tyler Grady, but it’s very early to tell since not a lot of them have been eliminated yet. I like that guy, yeah I know, his chin is humongous and distracting at times, but I think he has a cool voice and I like how he performs, give him a bottle of Jack, throw him in a sewer for an hour and he can be the male Ke$ha.

At this point in the competition, with one week down, my favorites are the following.

Do you have any favorites yet? Sound off in the comments!

Oh well, another night of underwhelming performances. Pretty much no one did anything that made me root for them. I feel like nothing has changed, the hollywood performances and auditions were more memorable than what they did tonight. I will still be voting for Tyler Grady whenever I get the chance until someone else wins me over. Here are my picks.

The Best
Lee Dewyze - He is the only one that made me change my opinion about him. I think he did really well; even though his style is not my favorite.
Tyler Grady – He’s just one of my favorites, I enjoy his style and his performance.
Casey James - Very cool voice, I like him. Hoping that Kara will drop the crap about him being hot. It’s too much.
Andrew Garcia – He was good tonight but I agree with Simon, it wasn’t a risk. He’s still one of the best.

The Middle
Aaron Kelly – Good voice, no star power whatsoever.
Todrick Hall – He seems to be playing the game, he needs to control it a little because the arrangement of his song was a bit too much.
Michael Lynche – He can sing but his performance didn’t do anything for me.
Alex Lambert – As the judges say, I really like his tone too. He just needs a lil’ something.
Joe Muñoz - He was a lot better than the Puerto Rican guy from last season, I loved his song choice.
Jermaine Sellers – This guy has a big voice, I liked him. Wasn’t expecting to but I did.

The Worst
John Park –  I think he has a good voice but this was painful.
Tim Urban – The first one to be murdered by Simon. Ouch.

Overall I think the show got better in the second half, some performances were just painful. The thing here is that I don’t think many of them are terribly bad, they just had awful performances. I can see potential in most of them but they need to bring their best, theres more than 20 million people watching, they need to step it up!

Who were your favorites tonight? Who should go home?

Today was the first night we could actually watch all the girls sing, some of them were at a disadvantage, because this was the first time we were seeing them, but it helped in making it a very underwhelming night. Also, the microphones wer sounding messed up. So, here is how it should turn out this week in my opinion.

The Best:
Lilly Scott -  Like her style and her jazzy voice.
Didi Benami – I really liked her tonight, maybe it’s because I like that song. But she was good.
Siobhan Magnus – My favorite. Kickass name, powerful voice, quirky persona and a blowtorch. I like her a lot.
Crystal Bowersox – She could go all the way if she keeps it up, she’s different, loved that she played the harmonica. Her teeth apparently were whitened, that’s a plus.

The Middle:
Katelyn Epperly – She was alright but her clothes and lipstick were just a bad choice.
Paige Miles - I think this girl has a nice voice but she was the prime victim of the horrible mic.
Janelle Wheeler – Meh. Kinda flat and weak. I think there could be something there but I don’t see it yet.
Katie Stevens – The only good thing is that she brought memories of when Adam Lambert brought the house down with this song. She doesn’t sound bad, but looks old fashioned.

The Worst:
Haeley Vaughn – I just don’t like her, I believe she needs to learn to control herself, especially her smile, too overpowering.
Ashley Rodriguez - Another victim of the audio, plus she is no Leona Lewis. Wanted to love her but couldn’t.
Michelle Delamor - The judges liked her, for me she wasn’t anything special. Pretty but that’s it.
Lacey Brown – She’s this season’s staple Fuschia girl. I wanted her to do great but almost fell asleep during her performance.

I think anyone in my middle or worst lists can go home and not be missed too much.

Really looking forward to the guys tomorrow, without having them performed my favorites are Tyler Grady, Andrew Garcia and Casey James, let’s see if anything changes.

Who were your favorites tonight? Who should go home?

It gets hard because my current situation is in a constant fight against that which I wish to accomplish. But, I won’t settle.

I know it will be difficult, I know there will be mountains to climb, rivers to cross and storms to weather, but at the end I know I will stand strong.

That is one of the reasons I left Puerto Rico, I love my family, my island, my friends there but my vision fit even less there than it fits here at this moment. I felt like a big fish in a small pond. I know that if someone really wants to succeed, location is secondary, we can achieve success anywhere if we are willing to work for it. But I knew as I know now that my move was necessary. Here, with what I’ve lived so far I feel closer to what I am meant to be doing.

I don’t know exactly what I will be doing in, say, 5 years. But if I haven’t achieved success by then, believe me I will still be fighting for it.  I may not know exactly what it will look like, but I’m fairly sure what it will not look like, and that I will avoid.

So, here I tell you, you have been created for something more than the ordinary, you do not have to live day by day just with the crumbs from yesterday. If we fight hard, and stand our ground in the midst of troubles, we will success, we will enjoy it and and the end of the day, we will smile and say: It was worth it.

I find myself thinking how many of the wrong things that I have done have made a negative impact in who I am today, and my current situation. I believe that small decisions that I have taken have closed doors for blessing in my life. Now that I look back, I wish I would’ve done differently. It’s hard to see what I have missed. And yeah, I know that there is still opportunities to make things better but at the moment, well, it sucks.

I am a very positive person and as long as I have another day, I am okay, I know things will turn out alright. But even thinking that and having experienced the amount of blessings I’ve been able to experience I realize how much more I could’ve enjoyed if I had said no to some things.

Many good things have escaped my hands for my messy choices.

I want to learn from that to not let even better things escape.

I don’t know if this is how life works but it is what I feel, every time I choose something bad in my personal life I feel how something in me stops, I feel like something in my life gets delayed until I get my act together. It sucks.

Anyway, thank God for his mercy and for new days with new opportunities.

Latoya London. Remember her? She was part of the trio of Divas along Jennifer Hudson and Fantasia Barrino on the third season of Idol. It doesn’t help being in the same trio with the only Idol contestant that after coming on 6th place went on to win an Academy Award, a Grammy and more than 20 additional awards.

Maybe you don’t remember this but she was never seen on Idol before the public vote performances. It was there when her awesome rendition of “All by Myself” put her in the spotlight, with even the judges giving her a standing ovation. It was one of those moments on Idol where I thought: “Wow, this girl is great”. She did well in the competition, her performances were good for the most part, her vocals flawless almost every single time. But… she lacked something, and Simon made sure to remind us almost every time she was on screen, Personality. See, she had the talent, but in shows like these it pays to show a special something, that something that will make people talk about you the next day while they are at work and go on with their daily lives. Fantasia did it that season and she ended up winning the prize. Latoya ended in 4th place behind two other girls which were good but in my opinion not as good as her. David Cook did it in his season, bringing songs that everyone knows to a whole new level. Adam Lambert did it by switching it up so much that he was barely recognizable from one week to the next and even through scandalous performances outside of Idol it is paying off, his first album “For your Entertainment” has already gone Gold, selling more than 500k copies.

Idol producers and judges are notorious for “pimping” some contestants. These are the ones that you see in almost every episode since the beginning of the season, you see them in the TV commercial spots and they usually bring a sad story to give them a little push. This can work in two ways, it can make or break. It can make you fall in love with someone’s talent or get awfully tired of them by the time they hit the Top 12.  The latter happened to me with David Archuleta two seasons ago, I got very, very tired of him. Sometimes the producers do this because these contestants show to be more marketable or because their stories will work good on TV for ratings, some times it is because of sheer talent.

This season, there are several contestants in the Top 24 who I know nothing about. I mean, they may have shown them but compared to, for example, Andrew Garcia and Casey James, they have barely received any screen time. Michelle Delamor and Paige Miles are two that at the moment are suffering the “Latoya London Syndrome”. Either their performances weren’t memorable enough to show or they were shown and well… they weren’t memorable to me. Maybe they are the best in the competition and we don’t know it yet. Maybe the producers want us to be as surprised with their performances as we were several years ago with Latoya. It brings freshness and excitement to the show if that is the reason behind it.

I guess we will have to wait and see, many say that a girl will win this season.

Who knows? We may be in for a surprise.

I leave you with Latoya London’s performace of “All by Myself” which Simon Cowell called: “A superb, outstanding performance“.

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