lazypadawan | OT: MTFBWY, Susan Boyle

The Britain's Got Talent finale airs tomorrow, which brings it down to the wire for internet singing sensation Susan Boyle. Unfortunately there are reports that the pressure is getting to Boyle, which is understandable. Here's a homely woman with a remarkable voice but has lived a humble, obscure existence with her kitties until her astonishing first performance went viral. Overnight she became an international superstar. Her semi-final performance of "Memory" was great but I could tell at first she sounded nervous. A professional would have a hard time going from 0 to 70 on the fame scale, but it has to be extremely difficult for a regular person who never sought the spotlight until now and likely never expected the response that she got. Then begins the pressure to prove you're the real deal, not a flash in the pan, and for someone like Boyle, whose life has had many obstacles, all of that psychological crap to prove you're good enough gets magnified a thousand-fold. She's probably in mortal fear of what the backlash is going to be like, especially if she doesn't win.

So, I wish her lots of luck. While we're on the topic of people having freakouts on television, wtf is up with the whole Jon + Kate Make 8 thing? I've only caught bits and pieces of the show in the past, but all of the tabloid drama about their marriage going into the dumper drew record ratings for the show on Memorial Day (no, I didn't watch the train wreck). You don't have to be Dr. Phil to figure out that the show, not the stress of eight kids, nuked their marriage. It started out as a show that was more like a documentary, showing the work it takes to corral a family of 10. But the product placements started appearing, Kate went Hollywood, while Jon decided he'd like to relive his bar-hopping days in front of the paparazzi. If it was just Jon 'n Kate, you can just shrug it off as a couple of narcissistic adults who decided famewhoring was way more important than saving their marriage. But there are eight kids involved, none of which asked for any of this nonsense. They're going to be the ones to suffer the damage in the end. If they had better parents, they would've pulled the plug on the show and get to work saving their family. But why do that now? After all, they're going to need the money to pay for divorce lawyers and therapists for all eight of those kids.

Update: Just heard that Boyle came in 2nd and the winners were a dance crew called "Diversity." Was this the dance crew that did a SW thing last week?

Oh well, maybe Boyle and Adam Lambert can go on tour together.