April and I have been hooked on the NBC show "Clash of the Choirs" the past few nights. The concept of the show is that five famous singers go to their hometowns, recruit a 20-person choir, practice, then come to New York to compete over four nights to win bragging rights for their city and to benefit a hometown charity. It just so happens that one of the groups is from Cincinnati (where I grew up) and one is from Philadelphia (where I live now). It also just so happens that the charity that the Cincinnati group is competing for is the Children's Hospital Newborn Intensive Care Unit; my mom is a nurse practitioner working in the Children's Hospital NICU.
If that weren't enough motivation to watch, I actually personally know two of the choir members. One girl with the Cincinnati group was in the same church youth group as me when I was in high school. Another girl in the Philly choir goes to church with us here in Philly and was featured last night talking about her survival of cancer.
The show itself is actually quite entertaining, despite having to watch Michael Bolton (that no-talent a** clown*) and a little more country music than I'd like. It's a good show to watch with TiVO - we went through last night's two-hour episode in about 30 minutes by skipping all of the commercials, overly emotional interviews, and singers' responses to the other choirs.
It's odd to see people I know on national prime-time TV - there's something about it that makes me want to tell everybody I know how cool I must be because I know people on TV (which is probably why I'm writing this post). Attention, fame, and connection have always been very alluring to me - just having the silly ties to the show has boosted my sense of self-worth a few notches. I feel a little bit like a 12 year old girl at a Hannah Montana concert when I watch because of the unexplainable and difficult to control "star struck" feeling I get.
So the real question is who are we voting for to win (the show selects the winning choirs by audience voting, similar to American Idol)? April is sold on the Cincinnati choir after their very cool a cappella performance of "Flight of the Bumblebee" last night. I'm still on the fence between them and Philadelphia - I would be happy if either of them won. What it really comes down to for me isn't so much the singing, but the fact that I love both of those places.
* Sorry - I couldn't possibly mention Michael Bolton without some kind of Office Space reference.
