Wasn't planning on posting, but had to...

LeBron James is simply unbelievable.

I quit watching the NBA after Jordan left, and LeBron's brought me back into it ... but even in rooting the Cavaliers to victory, I wasn't expecting THIS. I am in awe of what I just watched, and so glad I watched the game.

48 points.

29 of the last 30 points.

25 points in a row.

Across the 4th quarter and two brutal overtimes.

Playing great defense the entire time.

Easily the best player in the NBA right now. And here's the kicker...

HE'S ONLY 22 YEARS OLD.

After that last post, I of course had to go to YouTube to see if I could pull up the old trailer for the 80's animated movie...obviously, it was there. SICK.

I didn't realize the movie was released in 1986. So I was 6 years old at the time.

The movie absolutely blew my mind. It took the characters I loved and put them through an actually extremely complex story that involved the death of Optimus Prime, the reinvention of Megatron into Galvatron, and the introduction of Unicron.

As a 6-year-old, watching scenes like this and getting introduced to the concepts of revenge and murder, as well as being introduced to the brand-new concept of indiscriminate, reasonless destruction (with Unicron) was pretty scary.

And can you imagine a 6-year-old watching THIS?? I remember this oh so clearly. I would have to imagine this was the most dramatic moment in a movie from my entire childhood, and I'm sure several readers of this would agree.

The creativity in the movie, from the wide-ranging use of the entire Transformers universe (even the Dinobots were in this thing) to the awesome soundtrack (bet you didn't realize Weird Al had a song in this movie...I completely forgot both about that as well as when his song was used in the film) really opened my eyes up to a new world of storytelling.

Also for anyone else who's really appreciating this post, check out Stan Bush's horrifying 80's music video for the Transformers theme, as well as Weird Al's typically genius Dare To Be Stupid video...he was just as lyrically brilliant 20 years ago as he is today with that Ridin' parody. "Put down the chainsaw, and listen to me..." LOL

I'll cut off my fanboyesque gushing over the 80's movie to reiterate:

THIS NEW MOVIE BETTER NOT SUCK.

I haven't seen a movie in a theater since seeing The Departed back in Beaufort many months ago.

Prior to that movie, I hadn't seen a movie in forever.

But there's a movie coming this summer that will change that.

You know what it is.

TRANSFORMERS.

I saw the trailer for this thing and I think I probably fell over in disbelief. This is going to be INCREDIBLE.

For anyone my age who was in the 5-10 range when the life-changing animated Transformers movie hit the theaters (remember that 80's rock theme song???), or anyone in a wide range both older and younger than me that watched the cartoon series on a regular basis, this movie is highly anticipated.

Note to Michael Bay, the director of this movie that will draw me out of my humble abode and back into the theater for possibly the last time in 2007:

YOU BETTER GET THIS RIGHT.

I'm somewhat of a latecomer to eBay and buying stuff online, as I really only started paying attention to eBay and using it last year. (Which my wife would probably say is a good thing...)

As anyone who uses eBay knows, sometimes you run across items that just sort of leave you there speechless. Sometimes it's a "good" speechless, sometimes it's bad.

Today, I ran across one of those GOOD ones.

Dinner with Tennessee Titans Coach Jeff Fisher at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse on July 24

As I write this, no one has bid on this yet, but I would anticipate the auction to reach between $2,500 and $3,000. So, for four people to attend, divide the potential total by 4 and you've got roughly between $600 and $750 per person to attend dinner and the fundraising event. (The event by itself costs $300, for reference.)

Jeff Fisher is, without a doubt, my favorite football coach at any level and one of my favorite sports figures in any pro sport. I think he represents the city of Nashville with class and dignity, I think he's a brilliant tactician on the football field, I think he does a superb job with player development and in handling the day-to-day operations of the Titans, and his discipline with the media throughout his coaching career is almost too good to be true. He never says the wrong thing, he never ends up posterized in a news headline for saying something brash - he has been a great leader for the Titans for years.

My Seattle Mariners, in stark contrast, are led by a guy named Mike Hargrove who does none of these things well. He mismanages the roster, abuses relievers, constructs inefficient, bizarre lineups and ends up costing Seattle probably 2-3 games over the course of a 162-game season. So the coaches of my favorite teams definitely aren't sacred, by any stretch.

Getting back to the eBay auction - that's clearly a large sum of money for one night out. But it got me thinking: is there anyone else on the face of the Earth, alive right now, that I'd pay that kind of money to eat with? (That I don't see on a regular basis?)

Yes. Off the top of my head, in order of hastily-calculated relative priority:

1) Jeff Fisher
2) Patrick Stewart
3) Bill Gates
4) Steve Jobs
5) Bono
6) Donald Trump
7) LeBron James
8) Vince Young (who also has a dinner opportunity in Nashville in July on eBay)
9) Jack Welch
10) Harrison Ford

If I could snap my fingers and have any musical act in front of me, here in this room to perform an intimate set of their songs of my choice for as long as I wanted, my first choice would be U2. Easily. Strongest rock band in my lifetime.

There's a tie for second, though, which is why I felt compelled to post. Prince and Imogen Heap are two of the most unbelievably creative individuals in the music world right now. They create entire worlds with 3 minutes of composition. I would happily do any number of horrific things if it meant I could sit one-on-one with either of these musicians and watch them perform for a couple of hours.

Prince begins a fairly long residency out in a smallish venue in Los Angeles this summer, playing each Friday night for six or seven weeks in a row. He's starting these shows at 11:30 PM local time, playing a couple hours in front of 250 or so people, and then turning the venue into his own eating establishment by opening it up to his own private chef until 4 in the morning. I am definitely watching to see if prices for that aren't too ridiculous to attend. That would be a once in a lifetime event.

Imogen Heap, on the other hand, is one of the most innovative female artists out there, period. I *highly* encourage anyone reading this to head over to her MySpace page (www.myspace.com/imogenheap) and give the live version of "Just For Now" a listen. That's just her sitting there with a computer, and it is a killer performance. Then listen to "Come Here Boy," a song I actually forgot completely about that she wrote for her first solo album, and is a total masterpiece.

We're lucky to have musicians like both of these people who are tied for #2 in my own personal wish list. Sometimes you have to just sit back and recognize incredible, awe-inspiring talent.

This is my 150th blog post...still waiting on Blogger (or Google now) to come and pull the plug...

Headed to Birmingham within the hour to meet with Dave, John, and Steven on the iTest and talk over what will be happening over the rest of the year. On Monday, Steven and I will meet with the Protective Life Foundation regarding our funding proposal to them, and then I'll scramble back to Nashville to see the 24 finale.

June marks the beginning of the new fiscal year for the iTest and an obvious time to take inventory of how far we've come this year. The iTest website, the rapid acceptance of the Tournament of Champions, the successful deal with the Southern Company to sponsor the 2007 iTest...all of these things have been instrumental in us taking a big next step over the past year.

The next 12 months will involve continued capital inflow and the launch of "the next big thing," the iTest CS. Our annual computer science competition will diversify our organization (moving us beyond just mathematics) and will allow us to have some interplay between our math events and our new computer science event.

We'll also be evaluating how best to implement a new revenue stream in matching up students with willing employers for internships and jobs. We've got the right brand positioning to find students with both great academic qualifications and actual social skills and match them with employers looking to win the global war for talent. This will be a critical new piece of the cashflow that will turn us into a full-fledged, sustainable business.

Figuring out who does what for the iTest over the next 12 months starts tonight at this meeting. Time to hit the road.

RIP Josh Hancock, St. Louis Cardinals RP

Vestavia Hills High School, 1996: 9-0, 0.92 ERA
Auburn University, 1997: Member of College World Series team
Drafted by Red Sox in 1998, with his debut on September 10, 2002
Signed as minor league free agent with St. Louis Cardinals on February 21, 2006

I remember very clearly being a freshman at Vestavia and going to see this incredible pitcher we had on our baseball team. Our baseball teams were in the middle of a run during the entire decade of the 1990's of winning state championship after state championship in baseball, and Josh Hancock was an integral part of that for multiple years. Between 1991 and 2000, over a 10-year stretch, Vestavia only failed to win the state championship one single time, winning it 9 of those years and 7 years in a row at one point.

Over a three-year career spanning from 1994 to 1996, Josh Hancock went a combined 28-1, earning enough wins to put him among the all-time Alabama leaders in career wins according to the Alabama High School Athletic Association.

Tragically, just as Hancock was seemingly finding his way in the major leagues with the Cardinals, this accident happens. RIP.

Logged into my MySpace page earlier tonight, and for some reason I feel compelled to post about what this experience was like.

I suppose I was expecting to quickly ascertain that there has been hardly any activity on anyone's accounts, not much new information, and quickly be able to log off and move on to another part of my internet rounds. After all, this is certainly the case for me - I haven't been to the site in months.

This will probably come as no surprise, but I hardly even recognized my "friends" list (which includes many actual friends, in addition to clubs, politicians, bands I've never heard, and who knows what else since I just summarily accept most friend requests without question). Pictures of the people I actually do know have changed, most people had logged in within the past 48 hours, lots of new blog posts, layouts of pages have changed, etc.

For whatever reason, this really blindsided me. People my age actually customize their MySpace? And keep it updated on a regular basis? People of all different types, backgrounds, careers?

Yes.

How strange!

Not too strange to the mainstream media, which has been on top of this for some time now, and certainly not too strange to the entire generation of core social networking users that makes up MySpace's user base. But certainly strange to me, at least for today.

Someday, actually probably much sooner than I would imagine, they'll be teaching case studies in business schools around the world about MySpace.com...that site used by the 40-year-old administrative assistant, 32-year-old corporate hot shot, the 55-year-old musician/poet, the 22-year-old meth addict, the 19-year-old college freshman, and the 26-year-old blogger :)

You know that favorite hangout you had back in high school? Now imagine that EVERYONE YOU'VE EVER MET WAS THERE.

ALL THE TIME.

EVERY DAY.

And that's what MySpace represents - communication, 24/7/365.

We already live in a world where people don't dare to be different. The mob mentality will grow to new heights in a world of 24/7 interconnectivity. Nothing will be hidden anymore - everything will be transparent and right there, out in the open, caught on cameraphone or recorded by webcam.

As new generations raised on this level of interconnectivity rise up to take positions out in the labor force and in other positions of influence over time, the results will be felt.

Leaders who understand the MySpace era and command the mob will reap rewards of unprecedented power and resources. Medical research will move five times faster than it ever has before, creating new cures. Politicians will be cleaner than ever before, since the cost of a mistake is tremendous and there are no more secrets. Business will seize upon crowdsourced information to polish products and services to a shiny perfection, creating new dimensions for competition we haven't thought of yet and raising the importance of human capital and marketing more than ever. Social causes will continue to escalate in importance, as messages of despair and need travel around the world as fast as you can blink, and efforts to address them get organized almost as fast. Organizations like The iTest will do things never thought possible. The world will move faster than ever before, largely for the better.

But, for now, as I sit and read the poetry of a high school classmate, contemplate the politics of another classmate living overseas, and share the happiness in the new baby of a co-worker and new relationship of an old friend - all thanks to MySpace - it's worth a moment to sit and also think about the bigger picture.

Thanks Mike and Jeff (college friends and former roommates with me ) for the insightful comments to the VT blog.

Satya (member of the Vestavia class of 1999; frequently abused by my fantasy baseball team) has started a blog about medical issues and whatever else he feels like discussing, which can be viewed here.

These three blogs aren't even close to all the blogs I read on any sort of regular basis. But isn't it funny how good blogs are at making us feel like we're listening to someone, almost in person? Blogs are a critical part of the way I learn all sorts of new things, which is a pretty incredible statement if you think about it.

For those people who actually attempt to better understand the world around them, blogs are an unbelievable tool. I can actually read what you think, but at MY pace and as many times as I need to understand your point of view. In real life, if you were saying all that stuff, I'd probably just tune you out. And then where would we be?

I don't think we have a good grasp on just how far communication gets advanced when blogs are part of the equation. It is certainly leaps and bounds beyond where it would've been otherwise.


Now, for an unrelated note: one of my all-time favorite songs, "Dream in Color" by Black Lab, is a song you should definitely download. I remember clearly the first time I heard it - I got the album for Christmas in 2005 after being excited to find out Black Lab had a new album out, and heard the song in my car when I was driving to work one day. I stayed in the car once I got to work to play it through again and have been listening to it frequently since that day.

In case its not clear up front, I listen to a ton of different music. All sorts of stuff. When a song stays with me like this after the first couple of months, I know its something I'll be listening to probably the rest of my life simply because it resonates with me so much.

[Black Lab's first album, "Your Body Above Me," which came out sometime around my 8th or 9th grade year (1994-1995? Somewhere around there. I think.) was spectacular in its darkness and moody temperament, but the second album ("See the Sun") which "Dream In Color" is taken from is just as good. "Wash It Away" was the radio single from the first album, so some people will remember the band from their bit of radio exposure they got early on. A third album just came out recently but I haven't purchased it yet from Black Lab's website, though I will be doing that soon.]

While the lyrics of the song are fairly abstract, the song paints an unmistakable picture of romantic optimism and addresses the ambiguity between what happens in our lives and what we intended...or dreamed. The song also uses imagery of marriage and partnership to make the shared vision that the song discusses even more powerful and compelling.

The song could be dreaming of an as-yet-unfulfilled vision - a dream that hasn't yet come to pass - or the song could be reflecting on a life gone by, made complete through marriage and looking forward to meeting again in the afterlife. Or the song could be at some point inbetween.

The song just explodes musically, thanks to some brilliant instrumentation and clever engineering, which helps illustrate the unbridled optimistic tone of the piece.

In the work environment, regardless of industry or profession, you've got all sorts of people who long since forgot about dreams. Not only do most people lack any sort of vision as to what dreams might be possible to achieve, and the discipline through which they might be attained, but most people even go as far as to seem incapable of deriving any joy from their day-to-day existence at all. This isn't to say these people don't smile, laugh, make a joke, etc...but when you watch them over time, you can clearly see they are making a trade-off out of perceived necessity, and not out of passion.

The post-9/11 world (and I suppose its the post-Virginia Tech world, now, too) we live in is a world that fears any risk exposure of any kind, and craves continuity and stability. People simply can't tolerate the temporary vagueness, the momentary ambiguity, brought on by change. Therefore, people end up stuck in veritable no-man's-land, and they stay there. Sometimes for a career.

"Dream in Color" and its triumphant story is a perfect reality-check for me, helping hold me to the truth that God didn't put anyone here to be complacent, to be lazy, or to not fulfill potential by chasing passions in life. And...we weren't put here to chase those dreams alone.


"Dream In Color" - Black Lab

Kiss me once
Just once
You think it's love
Or something close

Do you recall
you say I was sleeping
but I know what I saw.

There were nights I swear we flew.
Dreaming in color, I was dreaming beside you.
Now the sky has gone to gray;
colors have blurred this picture we made.

Ask me once, or twice,
well, they ring them bells,
they're throwing rice
at you and me.
But it wasn't enough...
say, what more could I be

There were nights I swear we flew.
Dreaming in color, I was dreaming beside you.
Now the sky has gone to gray;
colors have blurred this picture we made.

So sleep all day, and watch TV all night...
pictures playing in black and white.

I close my eyes...
I close my eyes...

There were nights I swear we flew.
Dreaming in color, I was dreaming beside you.
Now the sky has gone to gray;
these colors have blurred the picture we made.

There were nights I swear we flew
Dreaming in red, I was dreaming with you
Now the sky has gone to gray
Colors have blurred this picture we made

I was dreaming in color.

There were nights I swear we flew...

The strange, sad tale of the Virginia Tech shootings became so much more bizarre now with the confirmation that the shooter deliberated over this for at least a couple of weeks and possibly longer. Sending videos of his ramblings and bewildered, angry thoughts to NBC, inbetween the shooting incidents at the dorm and the engineering building where he killed most of his victims, is just insane.

Enough has been said about this lunatic to last several lifetimes, but how do we expand the safety net to ensure that the warning signs people like this give off actually result in restorative action, and not inaction?

I think of an individual who lived on my freshman hall at Vanderbilt. Very depressed, very bizarre behavior, would threaten people and actually spent an alarming amount of time watching and re-watching "American Psycho." This guy (who some readers of this will know who I'm talking about) could've been set off while we were in school and certainly could have committed acts of random violence. It just didn't happen, for whatever reason.

This individual ended up dropping out of school later in that same freshman year, and committing suicide a couple of years later.

Is it a masculinity issue? How much is the presence of violence in our culture to blame? Is it just a random atrocity? Or are we going to have to endure another one of these episodes again in the next 2-3 years? This VT guy cited "Eric and Dylan" from the Columbine incident as his brothers-in-arms, after all...this latest incident could spark even more.

The whole thing is just disgusting and very unsettling. Who knows where it goes from here.

I like to talk in this space about the "global war for talent" - that topic that keeps human resources executives up at night, wondering how to best attract and retain top talent within a company workforce. I like to talk about this issue, and human resources in general, because (as I've noted here before) I strongly believe H.R. is the most important, most strategic business function in the modern corporation.

Almost without fail, when the topic of competing for talent comes up, someone inevitably says "well, EVERYONE is replaceable," like that has something to do with the core topic of avoiding search costs, turnover costs, etc. associated with high turnover. Which it doesn't.

But let's address that statement for a minute:

IS EVERYONE REPLACEABLE?

The politically correct answer, of course, is yes. YES, of course everyone is replaceable. YES, no business is devastated by the loss of one key person. YES, any functional team in business (or any other area of life) can pick up the pieces when someone leaves, and move on.

But is it that simple?

My favorite example here is Michael Jordan, circa 1993, and his impact on the Chicago Bulls. NOW tell me that everyone is replaceable.

The rules of the NBA dictate you can only have five players on the court at once. So, while replacing Michael Jordan on an NBA roster might require two, three, or four individuals to fill those shoes and replace that production, you can't have that many extra people on the court.

In business, this isn't so much of an issue. If one person's loss can only be replaced by adding two people to fill the void, there's only the issue of cost.

There's still a problem, though: if losing a special person requires the hiring of more than one person to fill the void, there's still a FEELING of loss - a nasty pessimism / cynicism - that exists among those left behind within the organization. If that person left, and he/she is so good and so great at what they do, what am I missing by still being here? Those feelings are unavoidable in situations of high turnover, or even low turnover but among key performers. A shadow is cast upon the rest of the group from that point forward. A-level performers should never be put in a position to choose.

So, the business takeaway here is that while everyone is technically replaceable, in reality, this should never be a question that gets asked.

Retention of top talent requires constant paranoia, constant attention, constant asking of "how can we better serve our workforce and make them more productive?" If the question of "is this person actually replaceable?" is a way of life, then the organization has already lost.

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.

Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks.

Then, the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be the miracle.


- Phillip Brooks (1835-1893), Episcopal Bishop



Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.

- Peter Drucker (1909-2005)

Even with as well as the iTest Tournament of Champions is going (Round 3 begins tomorrow, check out some of the problems at www.theitest.com), it's strange to think that between The iTest in September and the Tournament of Champions in March that those will be the only math events the iTest will hold during the year.

Now that both of these events are up and running and have some momentum behind them, we're going to be focusing exclusively on branching out and creating some compelling competitive experiences beyond math. The iTest CS, our computer science competition, will be launching in full force in Spring 2008, and we'll be moving to pilot another competition probably later that year.

Additionally, over the next month, we're going to be kicking off a full-fledged capital campaign as we need to begin raising awareness of the iTest and raising the money we're going to need to take the organization to the next level.

We are partnering with GroundSpring.org on our fundraising site (which is viewable here) and hope to have some success attracting funds from private individuals, corporations, and foundations through this channel.

Nice to see Vandy blow away George Washington yesterday 77-44. On to the next round tomorrow, and if we can beat Washington State, then its back to the Sweet 16. Nice.

The iTest Tournament of Champions begins Monday. This is going to be a huge event. Check out www.theitest.com to see the printable bracket of the top 64 math students in the nation, who will be duking it out head-to-head until one National Champion remains standing.

That person will be walking away with $2,000 cash for his or her trouble. After all, battling your way through a group of students that will inevitably contain people who will change the planet, and coming out victorious and alone at the VERY TOP, is worth something, right?

Now THAT'S what I'm talking about. This is the very type of national raising-the-bar that the iTest was created to accomplish.

I thought I had a pretty strange day.

But this is one of the most bizarre stories I've ever seen. Easily.

Note the not-so-crappy template I'm using for this blog now (thanks Google! You're the best!)Also, the domain for this blog is now http://bradleymetrock.blogspot.com ... so update your Favorites! :)

Just wrapped up the 11-day travel fiesta by attending the Harvard-MIT Math Tournament here in Boston. It's extremely cold up here but the tournament was very well attended. I had a lot of opportunities to speak with various students and teachers about the iTest and spread the word, and the iTest logo and link were in the program as well. Very good event.

The iTest website will be undergoing some renovation over the next week or two as we get ready for the iTest Tournament of Champions. I'll post here when the website has been updated.

Time to rest up, relax a little bit, and head back to Nashville tomorrow morning.

Back in Nashville just for a moment...Lori and I watched one of our favorite shows on DVD (Law and Order: Special Victims Unit) and just rested, as both of us were up since the early morning hours this morning. Tomorrow, off to Beaufort.

"Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?"

- Steve Jobs...to John Sculley, in trying to convince him to leave PepsiCo and come work at Apple. Sculley was an innovator and a strong executive talent within Pepsi, and was on the so-called "fast track" at the company before being talked into leaving by Jobs.

Sculley was the one who conceived and implemented the famous "Pepsi Challenge" marketing piece, which allowed Pepsi to gain significant inroads against Coke in the early 80's.

Jobs talked Sculley into leaving and bringing his marketing instincts over to Apple, and not too soon after, Jobs was dismissed by Apple's Board of Directors and Sculley was handed the reins of the company. While Sculley did some great things (laid the groundwork for marketing Mac personal computers and actually coined the term "personal digital assistant" (PDA) ) he was generally outwitted by Bill Gates and Apple never really fulfilled its potential.

Of course, that's where Steve Jobs re-entered the picture in 1997, and Apple's been moving onward and upward ever since.

Anyway, I just find that famous Jobs quote to be pretty interesting when thinking about my generation's very explicit desire to "give back" something to the world. Social causes are among the top considerations in both Generation X and (especially) Generation Y's decision-making, from where they go to college to where they choose to work to where they choose to spend their money.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

HUMAN RESOURCES IS THE MOST IMPORTANT BUSINESS FUNCTION OF THE MODERN CORPORATION.

And with that being the case, maybe it's time more employers started winning the global war for talent by using that appeal to a higher calling that Jobs used in the quote above.

Lori and I celebrated our own Valentine's Day yesterday, as that was the only time we could get into Melting Pot (and also, as we found out later, I'd be leaving town Wednesday anyway). We had a great time until a huge table of wound-up 16 and 17-year-olds came in and sat in close proximity to us...again, and I know I've asked this before, are we really getting this old? Where we're casting aspersions on high schoolers just being a little loud, and just being normal?

Regardless, it was nice to celebrate our fifth Valentine's Day together since initially meeting in September of '02. Time is flying.

Out here in Tucson for the moment...nice warm weather. And no laptop power cord, which I left in Nashville. That's going to end this post a little quicker than I'd like. Later.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is the last day of normalcy before an 11-day jaunt begins on Wednesday that will take me from Phoenix, to Tucson, back to Nashville for less than 24 hours, then to Beaufort, then to Boston, and back home again.

Everything is job related with the exception of flying to Boston for the Harvard-MIT annual math tournament, where the iTest will be sponsoring the event and I'll be meeting with various students and teachers throughout the weekend. This math tournament is one of the most prestigious tournaments, if not the most prestigious, on-site math competition in the United States. I'm definitely pleased that the iTest is a sponsor this year and we will likely be expanding our partnership with this event heading into next year.

None other than Matt Cybulsky sent me this clip of a true prodigy named Jennifer Lin playing some classical stuff in front of a large audience, but to really see what makes this girl stand out, you need to scroll about 2/3 of the way through the clip and see what she does to interact with the audience (and what famous audience member participates in her little stunt) ... very, very incredible. The girl is very self-aware about how she creates her art (listen to her speak somewhere around the middle of the clip) and it shows in her limitless range on the keys and ability to go from graceful, delicate tones to all-out displays of power and then back again. Hard to believe she's only 14 years old.

On another musical note, I caught some of American Idol while waiting for Lori to return from her short course tonight at Vandy and was amazed to see the show allow a 60-something man "audition" by singing a song to his late wife. It was a moment of rare dignity for a show known more for the way it destroys all dignity of various contestants during the audition process. It was jarring to see something of that worth inbetween "the female Taylor Hicks" (don't ask, or watch, for that matter) and "Sparkles" (again, a horrific experience that I would hate to pass along to anyone else who was fortunate enough to not see it).

Tomorrow, off to Birmingham. Now, off to bed.