Neil Dimond

Haylie is smiling in this picture because she just found out that this week is Neil Diamond week on American Idol.
Tom LOVES Neil Diamond. He owns all of his albums, and even goes to his concerts. A few years ago he went to see Neil with his family, in the process he acquired a Neil Diamond T-shirt. It's the ugliest gray T-shirt on the planet, and yet he gets really upset if I wear it and get food on it.

A few years ago when Tom and I had just begun dating and I thought his adoration of Neil was appealing, he talked me into doing a Neil Diamond medley for our singles ward talent show. It was Tom, myself, and his sister, Shanna who was also a Neil Diamond fan. We got together one afternoon to decide on the songs. There were so many they felt necessary to include that all together the compilation was about 15 minutes. The plan was for Shanna and I to be the back up singers while Tom did the actual Neil Diamond singing. Just to be sure that no one lacked on stage time Tom and I sang a Barbara Striestand/Neil Diamond Duet "You Don't Bring Me Flowers Anymore", and Shanna had a solo to "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother". Tom and Shanna went to the thrift store for our costumes. They came back with a pink, sequined, black shimmering shirt for Tom, a gold 80's dress and matching gold pumps for me, and a sexy black, beaded frock for Shanna. We looked awesome, as you can imagine. Now the great thing about this performance is that we didn't do any lip syncing...no, not at all. We did all the singing ourselves. Tom was worried that the singles wouldn't realize that he was the one doing the actual singing so he made Shanna announce that what they were about to hear was indeed our actual voices. This is where it gets rally embarrassing...the stereo system wasn't loud enough to get the music into the cultural hall, so instead of having back up music it ended up being an acapella
Neil Diamond performance...for 15 whole minutes. It was so embarrassing. We have it all on tape. Every time we watch it we literally cringe as it is awful. I can't imagine what the audience was actually thinking as we draped the American Flag over Tom's shoulders during the finale song "Coming to America". Although the applause at the end was huge I'm not sure if it was for us and our immense talent or because it was finally over.

It goes without saying the we are elated at this upcoming American Idol. I wonder what they'll sing. I think Brooke would do well to sing "Forever in Blue Jeans" and Cook could sing "Girl, You'll be a Woman Soon", and annoying David Archuletta could sing "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother", because it has such an amazing message.