David Cook = 42

Pawnotes?  Never mind.

1)First, we have to talk about the hat.

I will preface this by saying a) I lived in Michigan for a while.   So while I am not personally a big fan of hats, and am bemused by the cultural prostration in front of Aretha Franklin’s, I accept their utility in the winter months. And b) I get that there were probably not too many opportunities for washing hair while jaunting around from base to base.  The most important thing, clearly, is the fact that he went to entertain the soldiers, so I was not expecting GQ ensembles.

None of this explains why we can no longer see Cook’s eyebrows.

To sum up:  Tuque.  Ur wearin it wrong.

2) Many of us were pleasantly surprised by the massive amounts of promotion that occurred during the first week of American Idol, and even more pleasantly surprised by the surge in sales for both the album and the single.  But even the video for Light On got a nice boost in iTunes sales, and has passed 2.3 million views on Youtube.  One could certainly attribute that to the rest of the promotion, and his continued VH1 spins.

But I not-so-secretly think that the big push came from many students returning to school, who really responded to the hidden message of the video: Mah brainz, let me show you them. You don’t have to put out for assholes.*

3) In a remarkably clever move, Cook’s management has decided to distract us from his inability to alter the space-time continuum by answering another question.^

We can haz platinum certification?

Yes, we can haz.

* Or nice guys, either. But still. Resonance!
^ I am aware that there were other factors involved than just physics. And my hope is that there will be some shifting later in the year so everyone has their brief history, and time.

Cook managed a relatively quiet period of rest, but after hustling to Vegas, where he may have played a song (it was hard to tell among all the diagrams of Robbie Kinevel’s Patented Ways to Die[tm]), he’s clearly back to the grindstone, providing new radio interviews.  And of course, said interviews provided a few crumbs of information (official confirmation of a new! puppy!, nostalgic references to queuing! ducklings!), but included some information we’d either already heard or really didn’t need to.

With that in mind, I humbly suggest, Mr. Cook, that you get your manager to seed more questions.  Some of your fans have already come up with some thoughtful, insightful ones about your songwriting process, your stage performances, and your past educational/career decisions and their influence on you now.  You could certainly answer those.

Or, you could answer mine, which will be of no value to anyone, except me, since I will likely laugh.

1. Do you get some sort of Ambassador discount for your QuikTrip boosterism?  Have you asked for one?
2. If you were feeling ambivalent about cursing during your Orlando performance of Man in the Box, why didn’t you sing “pit?”  (For the record, I want to hear you sing “shit” every.single.time.  [Maybe even in songs for which that isn't an original lyric.]  But you do have options.)
3. If David Fincher finally lost his mind and mounted Fight Club as a Broadway musical, would you audition?
4. How often, in high school and college, did friends/acquaintances/fraternity brothers suggest that you “cowboy up, Cook?”  How often did you punch them in the arm for doing so?
5. Would you ever consider getting this for Dublin for use while on tour?

Welcome back to the grind, kid.   Getting tour dates at some point would be swell.

Well, after a couple of weeks that would turn live-and-let-live libertarians into distressed English housematrons announcing “SOME CONSIDERATION FOR OTHERS IS NECESSARY IN COMMUNITY LIFE,” and after Cook himself ran around like a dirty dancing cursing back-masking backslidden Mouseketeer, we’ve reached a pause in the action.

Of course, there was some pleasing news. And it came at just the right time.

So a few of us decided we’d mark the occasion a bit. This was delivered to him in Atlanta.

correspondance after the jump

Sure, our collective horn of plenty has been pretty full, what with a massive CD release party, the best digital sales for a major label debut artist ever and a release that will likely hit gold before the year is out, a #1 video debut, and his first platinum single (which has also entered some elite airplay categories). Oh yeah, and he keeps popping up on our teevees. So there have been plenty of fireworks, both figurative and literal.

But, in the midst of all that goodness, a few minor points of interest may have slipped by. So.

• In an interview with WPLJ, Cook suggested he is reasonably talented in the kitchen but admitted that he has never “closed the deal” with an egg sandwich. (You won’t actually hear that mentioned in the clips on the site, but I heard it during the stream and frankly, I couldn’t make that shit up.) Perhaps he would have had better luck with eggs benedict, but undoubtedly the hollandaise would make him vom.
• During the CD release party on November 18, people witnessed the first documented case of Neal Tiemann making hearthands. During the Ellen appearance that aired on December 1, people witnessed hopefully the only documented case of Neal Tiemann wearing an Elizabethan injury collar. (The performance was quite tasty, though.)
• In case you were wondering, no, David Cook is still not over getting those anchored undergarments. Heh.
• But apparently he is over making funny faces as a defense mechanism. Awww. And he doesn’t have the masses of bling to hide behind anymore, either (although your humble chronicler thinks this is a delightful development). Maybe that sword will be more useful than anyone anticipated.

Of course, there are many things left to come, like lighting up happy little trees, some holiday shows, and oh yeah, a tour.

But I’m still hoping that, one of these days, I’ll get a doughnut. For the record, I will totally stand outside in the cold if someone promises that there will be chocolate cake ones in any future assortment.

Sure, the album doesn’t actually come out for a few more hours (or possibly more, depending on your local retailers’ stocking policies), but with secret song snippets and streaming media and the Do the Wright Thing Gala performance, it seems like half of America has heard it already. But I have thoughts, which I reserve the right to change given a) the full studio effect of the songs, b) more time, and c) actually being able to read the lyrics. These thoughts are ridiculously long, so if you’d rather just watch DCook and DWright be each other’s crush with eyeliner, knock yourself out.

This jump is less about alienating people and more about not being a persuasion

At last night’s Glamour Women of the Year Awards:

And to top off the night, none other than the trailblazer herself, Hillary Clinton. Friend Mary Steenburgen presented the American Idol fan with a surprise, a one-on-one serenade from David Cook with “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.”

In other news, Carnegie Hall exploded.
Performance and sartorial snarking after the jump

With all due respect to Indexed:

See what the fuss is about below. It is remarkably fun to watch. But you should know that you only get the “Mah brainz, let me show you them” shot in the official video.

Besides stopping off to perform for corporate behemoths Walmart (available Nov. 15) and AOL (available Nov. 28), David Cook has decided to enter the brave new world of application extensions for singles.

The Light On lighter app will let iPhone and iPod Touch users turn their devices into virtual lighters for a buck more than the standalone single. Apparently the call for people to turn on their “light-up things” on the AI summer tour was a prelude for thousands of computer-generated flames during next year’s band tour.

Cook states: “I am really stoked about this application. I think it gives a different dynamic to the single and it is much safer than practicing pyromania. Not to mention, you won’t burn your thumb!”

Sweet that you’re thinking about the fans’ health and safety there, Cook, but given the reported dangers of mobile-phone cognitive capture, we might have been better off if you had told us to just turn off the damn phones.

Heh.

And now, on the David Cook Endorsement Watch:

• Gibson guitars. He’s playing them, of course, but also has been photographed with a very prominent guitar strap announcing the brand on several occasions.
• Patrón tequila. In a recent Blender profile, Cook apparently calmed some jitters with a few shots. The first ad in the print issue of this magazine? One guess.
• Suave haircare products. Sponsors of the aforementioned Walmart Soundcheck, and an excellent choice. After all, this band has had more people talking about its members’ hair than perhaps any other since the 80s.
• Skechers shoes. The one that started it all. He appears to actually be wearing the brand in publicity photos for that little gig known as SNL. (Which, for the record? Rocked.)

(Well, at least until February 2009.)

[...]while the stadium vibe may have felt a bit like the Beatles at Shea, surprisingly, there was no audience in sight. Rather, the overnight shoot focused on Cook, who’s by now well-versed in the art of emoting for the cameras, and was purposely light on extras and volume, due to the school’s proximity to residential areas.

That naughty band. Keeping all the neighbors up. Tsk.

Source: EW

The week in Cooknews:

• During an interview with Blender, Cook is offered a dowry of 100 camels but rejects the proposal. Perhaps if it had been 100 emus, things would have gone better; they don’t spit.
• In an interview with Rolling Stone, Cook announces his hope that the album will “make [listeners] want to … do something drastic, like jump off a building.” That would kind of cut into sales of the second album, no?
• David Cook Official releases the album cover and track titles. Everyone from fans on the site to MTV immediately deliver dissertations on the hidden (or blatant) meaning of “Bar-ba-sol” without actually hearing it.
• Fans, reacting to a brief comment in a radio interview, succesfully track down the complete band lineup. Fans of a certain age say, “Damn, Sassy would have been all over that.” And sigh.
• Mika Borum reports from the set of the music video for “Light On.” She has to be told who David Cook is. Hee.
• David Cook and the band announce they will be performing on Saturday Night Live. I don’t have anything snarky to say here, really. It’s just awesome.

Tune in for more updates as the weeks progress.