This explains the Governator

Tonight's line-up on Hit Me Baby 1 More Time:

The Knack ("My Sharona," covered "Do You Wanna Be My Girl" by Jet)
Haddaway ("What Is Love," covered "Toxic" by Britney Spears)
Tommy Tutone ("867-5309," covered "All the Small Things" by blink-182)
The Motels ("Only the Lonely," covered "Don't Know Why" by Norah Jones)
Vanilla Ice ("Ice Ice Baby," covered "Survivor" by Destiny's Child)

The Knack sounded really good, and to our minds was the best of the five. Haddaway proved that he could sing dance tunes, and even did a little Boutabi head nod at the start of his song. Tommy Tutone could have gone the way of A Flock of Seagulls, but held it together and may have done better on the cover than on their original song. The Motels did an interesting rockish cover version of the Norah Jones song. Vanilla Ice is now a combination of Kevin Federline and Fred Durst, and didn't so much cover "Survivor" as us it to deliver some autobiographical material.

Care to guess who won?

A large part of the problem, to my way of thinking, is that the audience probably only remembers Vanilla Ice and Haddaway (at least if the people they showed were a representative sampling). And when told to vote for a favorite, who are they going to go for - an act they remember or one that is musically better but something their parents listened to?

The fraughtness level on this whole exercise just got bumped up a couple of notches.