I have to be
completely honest with you...The Journey (as a
website) almost ended.
Any other time
there would be no entries, no pictures, no videos -
I would just take some time away from it all and
be with my family during this incredibly difficult
time. However, as I said in the last entry -
everything has kind of morphed together and we're now
all involved. That look of disappointment on my Uncle
David's face above me is so much more than Adam losing
a contest. We are all so tired, so mentally drained
and the one moment we all looked forward to poured
salt on the wound. I don't want to document this. I am
so far behind with uploading everything that I almost
threw my hands up. I have written the majority of
the entries, but The Journey is so much more than a
blog and when things like CBS come up, it takes an
incredible amount of work to keep it going.
My grandmother is
fighting so hard. We're on our 9th day at hospice and
the past 2 have been "She'll pass at any moment" days.
Somehow with everything pointing to her passing
yesterday (extremities starting to cool, breathing
fading) she is now warm again and breathing strong. We
are all completely beside ourselves. I seem to do
40-hour-straight shifts and then I just have to
step back and refuel for a bit. We took my grandfather
to a Crew game one evening to try and help his spirits
- it's just the hardest situation. Our family is so
big that there's just no way everyone can stay there
yet we all want to. Literally the last thing
I want to do is selfishly focus on CBS right now
(I have yet to upload any of the entries this month)
as I said before it's now part of the entire
family's consciousness. All day Monday and Tuesday:
"Did you get the computers going!? We voted all
night!!" Whew.
So
yeah, the announcement. "How is that
possible?" as I said right afterwards
in the
video,
sums it up nicely. How did they get more
than us? My estimation was close to 10
million votes and at the very least 6.5
Million. I called the producer and
asked if she could tell me the total vote
count and she said all she had were
percentages - 49%, 34% and 16%
(Trevor).
I hate to say it
but... I don't think the voting was completely
unlimited. I believe (like it is with Big Brother
on CBS) that it's 1 per 24 hours per IP address and
the producer simply doesn't know which way or another.
Because there's no way that at the very least
Trevor got 3 million votes. No way. My feeling now is
that Ditchwater got the lionshare from their mailing
list alone and I probably garnered the majority
of the "generic" votes because I certainly
couldn't have gotten that close to Ditchwater with my
personal pull. Alas, we have no idea because I don't
know the vote count.
The producer was,
again, extremely cool. She said they had a meeting
about me today and everyone was kinda bummed. Her boss
in particular was rootin' for me. It's nice of course,
but it begs the question of: "What did you guys think
would happen?" If you pick acts that are truly
in their living room just trying to get a break, and
put them up against a band that has a record label
(even a small one) and a following in the tens of
thousands, of course the "living room
live" acts will lose. The only way Ditchwater
doesn't win it all is if they put another signed band,
or maybe touring comedian up against them. Just not
sure that was what they had in mind when this thing
started. And hell - why would they allow the band to
lip-sync to their CD?!?! "Living Room LIVE!" ???! The
portrayal of the competition is now markedly different
than it's original intention. Sound familiar?
Heh...
The real
unfortunate thing is that this just wasn't enough to
build on. As I mentioned before - this was only
HUGE if I was on the show. A 10 second clip on TV
isn't going to take the world by storm, but with a
full live peroformance and interview - the
opportunities abound. As well, after 7 years you can't
really look on the bright side and say: "Hey at
least you were on TV!" You don't say that when you've
devoted your entire life to "making it". Seeing my
cartoon on MSNBC was fun, but it was the
interview that was booked the next day that was big.
Had they used me in a quick promo of AGT it would've
been nifty - but you can't truly be happy with
it. You have to keep focusing on a real break, and put
this all behind you...
...or do you? My
band member, Dewey, pulled me aside this morning. He
played me this song: "Saying When" - it was beautiful.
I told him about this competition he should
submit it to...
