Green Room - Week 9 - Day 7

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

It's "D Day". OK. Technically it's Tuesday.

But around here that has started meaning that it's the end of the poll for the Main Competition http://community.livejournal.com/therealljidol/414212.html and the start of another for the people who are assembling, looking for another shot to get into it http://community.livejournal.com/therealljidol/414642.html

But the "D" should stand for "Dangerous"!

Or "Dreaded"

or "Dairy products".

Any number of things really.

Those of us who had the day off Monday are going back to the grind today. Making the doughnuts and shoveling the snow, escorting the man with the donkey through the valley to gather all the coffee beans, so that the skeptics in the trailer can have the walls fall away and realize that they have been kidnapped and are now somewhere unexpected, at the mercy of Dominos!

The rest of you may never have actually left your regular routine, or gotten back to it, and are now sitting on a mountain of gold coins you collected from going down every sewer pipe you came across.

But however you are spending your Tuesday, I hope that it's fun.

Or at least you survive it.

Unless I am marked as your beneficiary. In which case, do whatever you think you need to do! :)

Week 9 - Results

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

I've got some mixed news.

I'm not even going to pretend that some of it is good and some bad. It's mixed at best.

On one hand, 3 of the 4 tribes this round featured sacrifices. That's what happens when someone makes the decision to drop out during an active poll. It means that they are the only one leaving us from that tribe.

The sacrifices were:

From Tribe 2: wyrdfishes
From Tribe 3: stormkitty
and From Tribe 4: rattsu

Three very talented writers and all around good folks. Which just goes to show, you never can be sure when that real life priorities bug is going to strike.

That leaves one more tribe, where everyone ended up sticking in it until the end. Unfortunately, that also means that the contestant with the lowest votes will be saying goodbye.

In this particular case, that means we are saying goodbye to anastoff

Thank you so much to all of you for coming out and playing this season. There *are* still "back in the game" tokens out there among the special powers remaining in play. So, perhaps you might be able to get one, or, you never know what opportunities might arise!

I hope to see you all around the Green Room, and hopefully in the Home Game!

Topic - Week 10

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

There are times when the topics seem hopelessly vague.

Other times they seem overly specific.

The funny thing is, there are always people willing to disagree on what a "hard topic" is.

This time? I don't know. It's as specific as you can get, with enough leeway to make it your own.

What it is?

Icarus

The deadline to link your entries back to this thread is Sat Jan 22nd at 4pm EST

Have fun, and keep an eye on those wings! :)

Vote - Second Chance Idol - Week 2

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

A few words from clauderainsrm:

Another week and another shot for the readers out there to check out these writers and get to know them better.

Another shot for the writers to have the chance to get "back" into the main competition!

Unfortunately, there were some folks who didn't make it to the starting line in time this week. Since there are no byes, that means we are saying goodbye to them right off the bat.

Goodbye to appletreegirl, libra_dragon, ralyon, teenagewitch and tommyelf.

This week, the three entries with the highest vote totals will give the contestant the opportunity to be sent straight into the mouth of the dragon that is Season 7 of Idol!

The three lowest? Those folks will be eliminated from Second Chance Idol.

So make sure that you read the entries, comment, and make sure that you support your favorites!

The poll closes Saturday Jan 22nd at 3pm.

Good luck to you all!

( Click here to Vote! )

Work Room - Week 10

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

When I said to myself, "Self, there should be a Work Room this season", one of the items on my "wish list" for making it work was that I wanted it to be a place where people could interact and specifically discuss their entries and writing in general.

What was working for them, what they saw as working for someone else. What might not be going as well and could be tweaked.

Something that people have said for awhile now is "If only there was a Tim Gunn figure". Someone who you could ask for advice, and who would give it. As with Project Runway, you might not always be eye to eye with what they say, but you can take it and process it down to something you can use.

There are a lot of problems that I have with the having one voice approach to work room discussion, and so I have been hoping that people would step up and be the "Tim Gunn" for their peers. Motivating each other.

In the background though, since last season, I have been working toward a feature of the Work Room that I thought fit enough of the mode people said they wanted, with enough of an Idol touch to it. :)

It's been called various things (in my head and in conversations) but since the introduction of our first guest refers to it by the early term of "Mentor", let's go with that. :)

How does it work? I don't know. I know how it works in theory, but a lot depends on what happens over the course of the first few.

Because a mentor will appear every few weeks, and you can discuss your issues here (and your colleagues can pipe up with their opinions) or just link and let them know you want them to take a look at something. I imagine each mentor will have a slightly different style.

For now though, it's time to introduce the first one.

He was one of the contestants in Season 1. So he was here when this whole thing started. His introduction rather downplays his "outside Idol" qualifications if you ask me. He has been a Gatekeeper in the past, so some of you may already know him.

Let's welcome the first in the series of Idol mentors mezzominty!

***

When Gary first asked me to be an LJ Idol mentor I thought, “but I’m evil; why would he entrust me with the fragile confidence of a bunch of thin-skinned artistic types?” Then I remembered that Gary is *also* evil, and I became giddy with the prospect of inflicting trauma and cruelty.

Lucky for all of you this only lasted a few seconds because my next thought was, “Oh crap, wait a minute, I’ve been in their shoes!” And thus I was awash in sympathy for you lost, wretched souls, having to face torture and torment week after week at the hands of Gary. “I must help them,” I concluded. “I must be a mentor!”

Um, so that’s that. My name is mezzominty. I’ve competed in a couple of these and had responses to entries that ranged from spectacularly positive, warming me to the cockles of something or other, to once being chased by villagers with torches and pitchforks due to a rather unfortunate poem in which I rhymed “dewdrop” with “glue sop” (it didn’t even make sense in context).

Anyway, generally speaking I like entries that surprise me in some way whether in style or content. Funny is always welcome, but I like serious stuff too so long as it doesn’t tip over into melodrama. I’ll read over fiction, comics, poetry, pretty much whatever you throw at me and I’ll do my best to either offer something constructive or admit to being out of my element. When I share my opinion, I share it gently, unless it’s about your mother (can you believe I just went there? What a cheesy joke).

Finally, if you want to see my stuff, you can visit my livejournal, or better yet, you can go buy your own copy of Idol Musings. You could also briefly see my stuff on McSweeneys until it had to be removed due to, um, potential litigation from a chemical giant that rhymes with PooDawnt that I sort of made fun of in the piece (my brand of humor isn’t always appreciated), but hey, at least I was published there for all of 2 days before having to go into hiding these past 9 years.

***

That's him. So feel free to get the ball rolling, or talk amongst yourselves (always a good thing) about what you are seeing in entries, and the snags you are hitting.