Well........ American Idol added a songwriting facet to their competition this year. Rules were simple.... pay ten bucks for each original song you upload to their site. They would have their A&R guys judge the tunes, pick 20, re-record them and post them on their site for America to vote on. The top song gets performed by the winner on the finale show and recorded on their debut album. The writer would give AI an exclusive publishing deal for that one song and would receive 75% of the "at source" royalties. That's a SWEEEEEET deal for those of you who haven't studied songwriting or publishing. It even inspired me to kick out a couple of new tunes, "A Song For You" and "I Gotta Sing".

Well...... there were over 25,000 entries. This made it impossible to listen to all the songs. I'm not sure how they thinned the herd but the bottom line is that they chose 20 finalists that sound pretty much like all the bad tunes they picked for Fantasia and Ruben's near carreer ending first albums. Really should have been able to see that one coming a mile away. The good part is that it got my creative juices flowing and proved to me that, with a little inspiration, I can still knock out a decent tune on short notice. Now all I have to do is find that inspiration in other sources....... like being alive.

Just thought I'd jot down a few things while I was thinkin. It helps me to write things down. If I have to take the time to write it then I'm more likely to (A) take the time to really think about it and (B) remember it. A lot of people seem to just think out loud. They forget to engage their brains before they open their mouths. I do that sometimes too but writing seems to be a good antidote.  The only drawback is that it gets in the way of my speaking. Once you get used to carefully considering every word, your speech pattern will slow down so much that a lot of people will just get annoyed waiting for you to complete your thought. You can read this about 100 times faster than I can write it so don't get too impatient. If someone talks slowly and deliberately it's probably because they are taking the time to really think about what they are saying which, hopefully, will give a little extra weight to their words. And God knows that we can do without a few million more "like"s, "uuuhh"s and "ya know"s.

So there's my first blog. Anyone know what blog stands for? Is it just a new made up word or does it have some technical significance? Guess I'll find out soon enough.