St. Pete Times’ pop music critic Sean Daly and his fellow Pop Life bloggers managed to have their American Idol and eat it, too. Live-blogging each episode, this crew of AI obsessives generated a weekly snark-fest that was lots more fun than the show itself. Marissa from Kankakee, deeply in lust with “Roo” (her nickname for Aussie singer Michael Johns); Jeff reporting from Cuba (!); Sparky, Spearsy and the whole gang making up rude nicknames for David Archuleta (Muppet, Archie, Chachi, Tickle Me Davy) — all were hilarious as well as dangerously addictive, kind of like the show that inspired them. blogs.tampabay.com/popmusic
This article appears in Sep 10-16, 2008.

