Wanda Sykes does a few minutes about Simon's nipples but then goes into the total weirdness of making the exiting Idol watch their video package of doom and sing their dumb last song. "Remember when you were happy and still had dreams?" It's actually pretty funny. "Come out here and remind America why they didn't vote for you! Let 'em know they're right!" Jackson loves it, Wanda's pretty impressed with herself too, but it's so delightful. She says that they POV'd Mike Lynche so he wouldn't destroy Ryan live onstage ("Seacrest out. Seacrest out!"). The only legitimate thing that has so far happened.
Siobhan, Mike and Tim hit the Seal, finally. Everybody is in a great mood after Wanda, especially Tim who thought she was the funniest thing, and Mike who appreciated the shout-out. Mike is just lost, Siobhan has become nearly unlikable, and Tim has stopped growing. Ellen shoots him a mad sad look when Ryan says his name. Then Siobhan is safe! So it's down to Tim and Mike, which I expected, but without Siobhan getting Huffed. Ryan reminds Mike that the POV person doesn't stick around so long usually, but that in his case he will. He's safe, and Tim completes the B3: Tim, Casey and Aaron. The three who deserve to be there.
David Cook comes out, blowing everybody's minds except the contestants past and present, and tells us about Ethiopia. His head has not gotten its shit together, and he is no better at speaking than he was before. On location in Misspelled Addis Ababa, though, he's much more believable. Women have it real bad in Ethiopia, which he describes as "harsh" and "heavy." He points out the pimps and slave traders that hang out in the bus trip, and then gets in a bus real quick and heads to a school where things are getting slightly better.
A gorgeous woman actually sidestepped hell somehow and is learning to read and write, which is exciting and scary, and then David sings a song and does a dance with the children, one of whom really got to him. She's pretty remarkable. I just can't shake the feeling that the point of all this, always, is "You think it's bad but far-away bad, until you actually come here. So take a vacation to Ethiopia, and then you'll care. But since you can't, here's a celebrity you believe, feeling the feelings you'd probably feel."
Which is as good as it can possibly get. It's creepily ironic that it takes the most privileged of us to explain the least privileged to us, but it's the best possible way. They can hop on a plane and get there and take care of it for us, and bring it back. You can't force people to care, that's literally impossible, but you can take the biggest show on TV and cram it full of the biggest stars you can get, and turn it into a game. And this year, success, because there's no Ben Stiller and -- not that she would, but I think we can agree it would be a dealbreaker -- our old friend Gwyneth.
Annie Lennox chills with a little orphan girl who's got the full-blown AIDS, and who seems to be pretty bad-ass all things considered, and then sings a song for us. She was supposed to be in Pasadena, but it's Pasadena. Also, the volcano has her in London. So the drugs our contributions sent the kid in question have dramatically improved her. She looks so incredibly healthy, now that Annie's gone back to visit, that it's one of the most effective things in the whole piece. A stick-figure baby is pretty bad, but a stick-figure baby brought back to life and as beautiful as any child you've ever seen? Thanks to just medicine and basic kindness?
Mary J, Randy Jackson and Travis Barker -- plus people named Orianthi (hot Australian Ursula Andress type that can shred) and Steve Vai (a Zappa person, I think?) -- perform a rendition of "Stairway To Heaven" that's about as good as anything I've ever heard on this show. Dang, Mary J. Blige can frigging sing. I'm sure everybody else onstage was doing great, but I don't know how to do their things, I just know what pretty sounds like, and she sounds pretty. I always thought the Dolly Parton version was the best we could do, but this is right up there. And in terms of smart song choices, it's at least as inspired as "Praying For Time" and way more subtle, because it's sort of an Annual Rant all its own. A lot of Zep's lyrics are ridiculous, but this is one that is ridiculous in exactly the same way that I am ridiculous, so I just love it.
There's a sign on the wall, but she wants to be sure,Because you know sometimes words have two meanings
In a tree by the brook, there's a songbird who sings:
"Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven"
And it's whispered that soon, if we all call the tune
Then the Piper will lead us to reason...
...Don't be alarmed now,
It's just a spring clean for the May Queen
Your head is humming and it won't go
In case you don't know: The Piper's calling you to join him
There's a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
Perfect. It's like making out in a library with The Wind In The Willows crossed with the best imagery from Tolkien. Which is all of their songs, but still. Anyway, I guess then some more things happened, but this show is dumb and I'm... Wait, who got kicked off? Dammit. Okay... Wait, I missed a whole fucking half-hour? This piece of shit show. This is not going to take long, because I honestly don't care anymore.
So Simon went to Arizona, where the Children's Health Fund is doing what we have been manipulated into saying we absolutely must not, cannot, and will never do, which is save the lives of our neighbors and their children. At this point in the broadcast, we have raised $15M. I would say at least six of those are due to Annie's child, about whom I simply cannot stop thinking, and who is the take home for me this week and why I donated again this year -- you don't want to know much, ask my friends at the Hoya de Cadenas Estate how much, because their affordable yet delicious 2004 Reserva Tempranillo was the main factor here to be honest, and between this and Donors Choose, it looks like drunk donating is the new thing, now that drunk Etsy and drunk Amazon and drunk eBay have become passé -- and I think I know why she is the reason.
Fear can get you to do a lot of things, coming from an authority especially, but hope takes you further. Looking at little dead coffins makes me want to drink. But a little fat baby that used to be a skeleton? That makes me want to shovel money into your pocket. Hope -- and we forget this constantly -- is stronger than fear. And way stronger than pity, which is absolutely worthless.
Elton John sings "Your Song," which is a song I still love but not really a song that applies to this situation. Well, I guess if the Marilyn Monroe song was turned randomly into being about Diana then a song about furtive homosexual desire and shame could be about... Getting tested for HIV the virus that causes AIDS, and using condoms, and whatever other gay things Elton gets to gay about as the Irrelevant Gay Mayor of Irrelevant Gay Town.
Not that the things are irrelevant, just that he is. Right around the time he started saying he was in on the Eminem joke, and you could tell that he really wanted to be in on it? Like Randy Jackson laughing "along with" his bullies? But in fact he was not really in on the joke, which is why he was not in on the joke. And it was his last shot, I think, at being part of anything at all. And so it just makes it seem like a particularly icky buffet, like somebody said, "Oh, and AIDS. AIDS is very big in Africa and other shitty places like Detroit" and somebody else was like, "But who will be the face of AIDS on IGB? Sounds iffy," and somebody was like, "Who's a gay person we know of?" And they'd never heard of Lady GaGa, which is a rant about people who collect queers that we'll save for another time, but so anyway they called Elton John and he was sitting at home all alone petting his cat on a throne or something and they were like, "Have you got anything going on?"
Right up there with the Stones and Beatles, huh? Whatever. That's to tackle another time, when I am not yawning and rubbing my eyes like I just got woken up in the cabbage patch where I lay my head. Because I'm still stuck on Annie's AIDS kid. That image, of first total devastation and then perfect health. Like, imagine there's no poverty is one thing, it's the only reason (RED) isn't totally overbalanced by the star-studded stupidness of it all, that it asks big questions like that. And yes, malaria is well on its way out in our lifetime, because somebody got the bright idea to market those nets to us as being cheaper than a CD-R, which is basically free. Basically, you can save a person's life for free. And then immediately forget it again.
But imagine if AIDS were manageable, for everybody? This is what it looks like. To me, that's way more moving and hardcore, because of how... The Biggest Loser is the best thing I can think of (ignore the ironic American obesity connotations here), because it's the same thing: If you see the change, you know the change can happen. And then making the change happen because actually quite simple a task. That's what we're missing: A compelling and believable image of the finer world. We don't know what to ask for because we don't know what it looks like yet.
But all that is, is a failure of imagination, and that is not enough. That's a Band-Aid, on something that's fully curable in your lifetime. Just now I took a smoke break and for the first time since moving to Austin I heard a songbird do the car alarm thing, somewhere out in the night. What that means to me, and what I'm telling you, is that a failure of imagination is just not good enough. I promise you that we can do better.
Read our Q&A with Andrew Garcia and Katie Stevens.
Watch Crystal Bowersox break down during her performance.
Is Simon deliberately sabotaging Idol?
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