storm large and the national anthem

hey, have i mentioned that i love reality tv? especially those done by mark burnett? tonight was the 2 hour finale of the contender on espn. i enjoyed the first season of this show, and have followed the second. anyway, i knew that since it was a two hour final for 2 boxing matches, there was going to be a lot of filler. so, for the first 15 minutes, i watched part of the cbs evening news that i recorded the other night. it had stories about richard branson donating a large sum of money to fight global warming, a story about walmart actually doing something good ($4 generic prescriptions), and a piece contrasting jim wallis (red letter Christian) and tony perkins (family research council) (watch the video here). i actually taped the newscast for that piece.

so, after i was done watching the old news, i flipped over to the contender. and guess who i saw getting ready to sing the national anthem. my favorite...errrrrr...most hated contestant from rockstar:supernova...storm large. throughout that contest she had over the top antics, in my opinion poor performances, and was generally annoying. today, she took the safe route and performed the anthem in normal fashion. i thank her for this. not that i'm a big purist on the anthem, but i do prefer it to be mainly traditional. i'll give you some vocal inflection and what not, and i thought the spanish version was a noble effort, and i love hendrix's re-arrangement, but normally, i say just give it to me straight. she did, and did a fine job with it. it wasn't whitney houston good. and, i'm sure i've heard it performed better by other famous singers, but this was good. it definately didn't suck. it wasn't terrible or insulting (see rosanne barr). nor did it score on the unintentional comedy level (see carl lewis).