Idol Bets

What a bland show last night.  You’d think with such a long list of great material, we’d get to hear some interesting songs and performances.  Instead, Syesha and David Archuleta managed to pick the most boring and predictable songs available to them

Jason Castro proved to be the most entertaining performer based on his antics, terrible rendition of I Shot The Sheriff and forgotten words on Mr. Tambourine man.  He also delivered the line of the night when Simon said “I don’t know what you were thinking” and Castro quipped “I was thinking Bob Marley!”  DialIdol has Castro placed solely at the bottom with no other contestants statistically close to being voted off tonight.  Castro can get back to his world of bongs, pizza rolls, and the Planet Earth Blu-Ray set.

I’m starting to wonder how much Syesha is going to cannibalize Archuleta’s supporters.  The two are both pretty decent singers but completely lack any sort of taste.  They’ll make great records if they can find a producers and songwriters that can craft them into something likable but they’ll never be able to add anything original on their own.  Taste is something that doesn’t get too much appreciation on Idol and I’m not saying that Cook is anything special in that category but he’s significantly better than either of the other two.  However, he’s also has a good voice, has proved to be versatile and has carved out a niche on the show.  That alone is going to get him a pretty loyal fanbase and a lot of support from casual voters as well.  Archuleta and Syesha are only going to get votes from people who are looking for formulaic singing standards.  I don’t know if Syesha can get enough support next week to overthrow Archuleta but it wouldn’t surprise me that much.

Cook shares aren’t worth selling yet unless you’re looking to book a profit.  He should go up a bit next week still.

Final 2 strategy is probably going to be to a combination of selling Cook shares and hedging with Archuleta shares if he’s still around.  We’ll see where the two stand and go on from there.

With 8 Cook shares, the SimPicks portfolio is pretty strong given the initial investment and the fact that I came into this blog late into the season.  We’d be looking a 4 digit returns had I started in the 24 idol weeks when I initially picked Cook as someone who could go deep.