Teddy Pendergrass dead at 59; 'Pants on the Ground' an instant hit; Haiti in ruins

Your day according to Google: Today, it's all about the music, as one performer is remembered and another discovered, thanks yet again to American Idol.

First to the sad news that Teddy Pendergrass, the wheel-chair bound crooner who brought us "If You Don't Know Me By Now," "Love T.K.O." and other hits died at home in Philadelphia at age 59. Long before Michael Jackson, Pendergrass was the first black male singer to have five consecutive multi-platinum albums. Pendergrass was left paralyzed from the waist down after a car crash in 1982, and recently underwent difficult colon cancer surgery eight months ago.

But as one star fades, another rises, with Georgia's own General Larry Platt lighting up the search engines today after his performance of his original song "Pants on the Ground" on American Idol last night. The 62-year-old veteran, who is reminiscent of Jamie Foxx's character in The Soloist, is too old to compete in the talent show, but is destined for viral infamy with a song who's lyrics lament today's youthful XXL-and-beltless gangsta fashion statements.

"Pants on the ground

Pants on the ground

Lookin like a fool

With your pants on the ground."

The judges loved it and Simon Cowell correctly predicted, "I have a horrible feeling that song could be a hit." It's already available as a ringtone and there's a Facebook campaign underway to get General Platt a recording contract. If William Hung could do it, so could Platt.

Of course there is no avoiding the unfolding tragedy in Haiti this morning, and Google Trends is filled with references to the earthquake that leveled the small and impoverished island nation. Across the country, volunteer nurses and doctors are scrambling to catch flights neighboring Dominican Republic in the hope of offering aid. There are no reliable numbers yet on the death toll, just harrowing estimates that reach well into the thousands. As a measure of how technology transforms our ability to understand such disasters, images of the quake's aftermath were available on Google Earth as quickly as yesterday, thanks to a partnership with GeoEye that allowed near real-time images of the destruction to be viewed on any laptop in the world.