Comedy Central gets real
Comedy Central is presenting it’s first unscripted series this summer called Reality Bites Back. Ten comedians will compete by making parodies of the most infamous reality shows. Whoever makes it to the end will win $50,000 in cash and the title “Lord of All Reality.” And guess who’s hosting? Michael. Ian. Black. The former State cast member will get to explain the absurd challenges and kick someone off the show each week.
Comedian contestants include Kyle Cease, Chris Fairbanks, Jeff Garcia, Red Grant, Tiffany Haddish, Bert Kreischer, Mo Mandel, Donnell Rawlings, Amy Schumer, and Theo Von. The series will satirize shows like American Idol, Survivor, The Amazing Race, The Biggest Loser, American Gladiators, Dancing with the Stars, and So You Think You Can Dance.
“I believe Reality Bites Back will do for reality television shows what Alf did for extraterrestrial puppet shows,” quips host Michael Ian Black.
This show has great potential. Fans of reality TV and those who think the genre marks the end of the world both will find this funny. (At least, I think they will.) What do you think? The premiere is Thursday July 17th at 10:30 p.m. ET on Comedy Central. Check out comedycentral.com for more information on the show.
Kristy Lee Cook’s Idol Secret
Kristy Lee Cook's American Idol run was marked by a number of stays in the bottom three and, as it turns out, a secret engagement.
Cook's boyfriend popped the question in the sauna of her Idol apartment on March 15, days after she survived her first elimination round as a finalist.
The country-inclined singer was able to share this detail with reporters Thursday because she did not survive Idol's latest elimination round Wednesday night.
After an especially Byzantine results show, Cook, 24, was revealed to be the odd singer out, exiting in Mariah Carey week with the inaptly titled "Forever."
"I was kind of upset that I went home because I thought I was getting stronger and stronger," Cook said. "I thought ["Forever"] was my best performance so far. I thought I had at least another week in me."
Cook said her goal was to make the top five. In the end, she finished seventh.
No stranger to the bottom threeshe was there four out of the last six weeksCook "built up a stamina for it." And so when host Ryan Seacrest divided the finalists into curious groups Wednesday night, Cook wasn't fazed, even if Carly Smithson was.
Smithson, Cook said, was convinced that Cook's groupshe was sent to stand next to her nonrelation David Cookwas the safe group. "They're going to do something that's so off the wall," Cook said she advised the nonbelievers.
Cook was right. David Cook, the show's emotional favorite, was sent to safetyand to Smithson's group. Kristy Lee Cook, Brooke White and Syesha Mercado ultimately comprised the unsafe group.
Cook took the opportunity of her exit to sing her swan song right in the face of her chief critic, judge Simon Cowell.
" 'Well, you made it awkward for me,' " Cook said Cowell told her. "And I said, 'Well, now you know how you make it for all of us.' "
Of Cowell, Cook said, "He didn't really get what I have. I still don't think he does."
On a happier note Wednesday night, Cook's boyfriend, whom she identified only as Andy, reproposed on the Idol set, dropping to his kneea move he didn't do the first time out in the sauna. "He owed it to me," she said.
Cook didn't talk about her engagement earlier because of all the Idol-related madness that goes with being a finalist. "The first time we tried to keep everything on the down-low," she said.
There's no wedding date yet, although Cook guessed she might walk down the aisle in June 2009. And she more than guessed that she might invite the Idol judges, Cowell included.
"Oh, yes, of course I would," Cook said. "I definitely would."
Other tidbits:
- Conventional wisdom had it that Cook saved her endangered bacon a couple of weeks ago when performed the critic-proof "God Bless the U.S.A." But Cook denied working any angles. "It wasn't like a huge thought process," she said of the song selection. "My dad was in Vietnam. He absolutely loved that song. I've loved that song, and sang it for a long time."
- Cook's eviction means the Vote for the Worst has lost its latest champion. (Prior to Cook, the Idol-vexing site had stumped for Amanda Overmyer, Danny Noriega and Amy Davis). At last check Thursday, Vote for the Worst had not settled on its next new anti-hero.
- First Madonna, then Kristy Lee Cook. It could have been. Had Cook survived to sing on next week's Andrew Lloyd Webber recital, she said she would have performed Evita's "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina."
- No novice, Cook had a major label record deal when she was 17. But her album never came out, and Cook said she didn't regret putting herself through the Idol cattle call. "My career was a long time ago," she said. "And I needed this to get my career started again."
- Once upon a time, Cook was signed by Britney Spears' production company. If Cook's former boss was keeping tabs on her former protégé's Idol run, she didn't make it known. "I actually haven't heard from her," Cook said. "It's been a long time since I've been in contact with her."
- On Wednesday's show, Cook called Cowell "kind of a butt." Her statement was the product of due deliberation. Said Cook: "I was debating brat and butt."
Idol’s Other Cook Lands Record Deal
American Idol’s most proudly (or maybe just strategically) American finalist has landed herself a record deal.
Maybe she can celebrate with some apple pie.
The recently betrothed Kristy Lee Cook has inked a deal with 19 Recordings/Arista Nashville for a twang-heavy album debut, with her first single, “15 Minutes of Shame,” already getting an Aug. 11 release date.
The as-yet unnamed album will be recorded, as with Davids Cook and Archuleta, on the road this summer during the Idols Live! tour. While no firm release date has been announced for the album, like the Davids’, it will be due out this fall, presumably after David Cook’s.
Kirsty Lee Cook is wasting no time taking a page out of past Idols’ playbooks: Arista Nashville is also home to Carrie Underwood, and her album is being produced by Brett James, who cowrote Underwood’s megahit “Jesus Take the Wheel.”
(Hopefully Cool will fare better than Idol alums Taylor Hicks, Ruben Studdard, Katharine McPhee and Blake Lewis, all of whom have been dropped by their respective RCA-owned labels this year.)
Signing up with Arista Nashville also marks a return to Cook’s roots, as the singer was signed to the label as a countrified teen but parted ways with the company before getting the chance to record anything.
Idol Champ Says "I Do"
American Idol champ Ruben Studdard has something to sing about.
The season two winner married Surata Zuri McCants, his girlfriend of two years, in his hometown of Birmingham, Ala., on Saturday. It’s the first marriage for the Velvet Teddy Bear.
The ceremony took place at Canterbury United Methodist Church and Studdard reportedly had 20 groomsmen by his side. The newlyweds had just filed for a marriage license in Alabama on Monday.
Studdard, 29, and McCants, 30, met in October 2006 at a Wal-Mart in Atlanta where he was signing CDs. He followed her to the toy aisle and got her phone number.
Now if only he could have the same success with a record label…