American Idol season finale

It's been a week of season finales and I've been watching American Idol faithfully for the past three seasons, and have been a big fan of Blake Lewis from the start. Of course I love Carrie Underwood as she's an Okie, like me, and a country music artist too. This year, I am fine that Jordin Sparks won and think she did really well, (although was hoping for Blake) but am confident that most of the contestants will have a promising future regardless. I especially enjoyed this season's big finale show and was excited and surprised to see my cousin, the lead singer of Green Day, performing. Billie Joe sang a beautiful John Lennon ballad and I was thrilled to see him appear on American Idol. It's awesome to have such a successful and talented cousin and I'm very proud of him. Way to go, Billie Joe! (Not that he ever looks at my blog.)Billie Joe has been generous with us and provided Kelly and me with the best seats in the house for years at his concerts and the last time they were in San Antonio (a year and a half ago on our 19th anniversary) we thought Lindsey was old enough to go to her first Green Day concert with us. We have watched Billie, Mike, and Tre, and their former drummer, John, from back in the time when we lived in Colorado and the band came driving through town in their van--when they were all still minors--playing in venues not much bigger than a high school gym. I remember them silk screening t-shirts in our garage as their only source of income, and they camped out before hitting the road and heading off to their next gig and next mosh pit to play before. They continued to get bigger and more popular and appeared on television late night shows, and then the day I saw my cousin's face on the cover of The Rolling Stone, it finally hit me how far he'd come. His dad, Uncle Andy, would have been proud! I know all the rest of us are.

I would like to see Green Day record some more mellow songs like the Beatles song they performed on American Idol because it really shows off Billie's vocal range, and my husband wouldn't have to edit out all the f-words from tracks like American Idiot, for us to listen to with the kids. I also wish Billie wasn't too busy because I never get to see him at family events any more and that's pretty sad. Fame has a way of making people become somewhat reclusive, unfortunately. I wish him well and love him...and also his brothers and sisters (Anna, Hollie, and Marci, David and Alan) and their mom (Aunt Ollie, my mom's sister) all whom I got to see in February, which was a lot of fun.

Now my one complaint about American Idol's season finale, other than having to see that disgusting, obese yellow chicken lady again, wobbling up onto the stage and smashing Ryan Seacrest, is that our DVR recorded only 2 hours and 3 minutes of the show, which was not enough, and we didn't actually see the final results to show who won! We had to look up on the Internet to see if Blake or Jordin won, but didn't get to see the actual ending. It was frustrating that the show went over by so much time. We even had the DVR set up for three extra minutes in case it went over, but that was obviously not long enough.