Berlin Part Deux: your Halloween scary moments of the year are the excerpts from a recent Suede concert that I watched on MTV Germany (which I mistakenly referred to as MTV Europe during the summer. The MTV Europe Music Awards are being pimped HARD on the station, and with the impressive list of guests and performers I'm grabbing the bait, big time. A performance by Kraftwerk? What universe is this?). Brett cannot, no way, no how, hit the high notes anymore. One can't be sure what did him in, but history has shown that a combination of age and drug use usually does the trick. Suddenly, I'm kind of happy that Suede haven't toured Canada in six years. This kind of disappointment would be a lot to bear.

And after one half of one episode, I'm totally sold on "Deutschland Sucht den Superstar", which is Germany's version of "Pop Idol". The format is vastly different from what we've seen in the US and Canada. Here, the contestants are in a lounge area backstage, along with the hosts and select friends and family. They converse in this room, and then go out one by one to face the judges alone. It comes off more like a job interview than a teen idol competition. No screaming junior high girls, no audacious ensemble numbers. Whatever format you prefer, it's nice to see the idea done differently. It makes the Canadian version look that much more pathetic by simply xeroxing the American show rather than adding a few twists of their own.