Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Programmed To Receive
By Jacob Clifton | Season 6 | Episode 5 | Aired on 01.30.2007
From one great cat with bad ideas to another: meet Sholandric Stallworth (25, LA), who's got a tiger on his shirt and another one in his tank, if you know what I mean, and I think you do, but in case you do not: I speak of romance! But not as much as Sholandric, who's the urban king of spooky creepy romance talk, dancing to music only he can hear, having creepy teeth and opinions about love songs, to wit: "People sing love songs, but not really romantically. Not like Julio Iglesias." His eyes glaze over about Julio, then he stares blankly. He talks really slow, like a dumb person, which is in fact why, explaining to us how it's going to go: "I believe Paula, Randy, and Simon will say, 'Hey, you deserve a golden ticket, go to Hollywood.'" I do not believe that's how it's going to go down. He's got that George Huff thing also where 25 looks like 45 on him, but there's nothing so beautiful as what happens once he walks into that room, because he starts singing "If Ever You're In My Arms Again," a song I love so much I don't even know where the irony starts and stops, and he SCREAMS it, like it's WARTIME, and it's awesome. Randy and Paula pretend to sway to the beautiful sound of his singing, and he hops keys twice just on the chorus, and Paula grimaces at the crew, and finally he's done. "Hideous," says Simon, and Paula giggles. Randy's like, "Wow, dawg. About twelve keys?" Olivia Newton-John tells him the pitch is "not on," and laughs as Randy begs to know what's gone wrong with American Idol now.
It's 11 AM in LA and there are three short bad auditions: a girl from San Marino screaming, a girl wearing a costume that makes her look like she's fucking a cow, and a guy in a banana suit singing a song about peanut butter and jelly time. These are people who think they're pulling off a savvy joke or something, but are in fact actual years behind the actual curve, so the only joke is them. Try harder or stay home, losers.
Speaking of, here comes Marianna Riccio (20, West Hills CA), and I will tell you right now that I can't remember the last time I disliked somebody so viscerally even though they were just on the TV. Her slutty mom, who's no better than her daughter, explains that Marianna has been singing since -- sorry -- "she came out of my womb, she was wailing...it was like, Mmmmmm." Oh, it hasn't even begun to get stupid, either. There's a lot more to get through. Marianna explains that her mom was "one of Dean Martin's Gold Diggers," and that she considers herself her mother's protégé, and she plans to "do [her] family proud for the next thirty years or so," starting right this second. She is ready, she claims, to rock out. In this case, "rock out" is apparently a colloquial term for "sing like I'm having a stroke, while making the goblin movements of a drunken belly-dancer."