Oh man remember last May when Adam Lambert wasn't even gay yet? And remember how Bikini Kill was so gross, and Kris was sooo cute? And remember how there was KISS? (Remember -- on a separate note -- Amanda Overmyer? Jesus.) And then remember how Paula Abdul wandered off in her prom dress and was devoured by wolves and everybody thought that American Idol was over? And remember how of course it wasn't? And remember what it felt like before you knew Simon was leaving us? And now it might be over in actuality?
The guest judges filling Paula's [prescriptions] shoes before they bring it home to Ellen -- I doubt she'll be in Hollywood Round, right? -- are as follows. They're sort of an Apocalypse Horseman scenario, to be honest. Check this shit out: On the evil side, you've got Shania Twain, who writes bleep-bloop instead of songs; Joe Jonas, whom I bet you five dollars is the ugly one; what's left of Posh Spice, which we'll experience tonight; and Katy Perry, who is revolting in ways Gwen Stefani has not even explored yet.
On the side of righteousness we have Mary J., who remains a complete mystery to me; Avril Lavigne, who is of course my spirit animal; Kristin Chenoweth, the patron saint of drama fags everywhere including you and me; and... Notorious NPH. Who just... What is one to say about Neil Patrick Harris? I hope I think of something that's not a sound effect before his hot narrow ass rolls around this way. And then after all that, we'll bring it home to Ellen D. All of which makes me nervous because as you know, No Homo : Jacob :: Racism : Sarah Silverman, and that is ... the biggest bunch of homo I've ever seen in one place. Adam really did change everything.
Oh, before we start, can a British homie help me out with this? Because my understanding is that Pop Star, which is what they called American Idol over there, was the like biggest hit ever... Until Simon left to start X Factor, and then that was the biggest hit ever. So like, Simon's now leaving American Idol to start X Factor over here, so doesn't that mean the cycle is beginning again and our version of X Factor will be the new big hit? Either that, or he's going to track down his fellow mutants in the guise of being a mutant hunter, and then Ryan will leave too because he's always been the Shatterstar to Simon's Julio Esteban Richter, and then I will be left all alone in the wreckage of no Ryan and no Simon and all this fucking singing.
They show a clip of Ellen telling her TV family that she's going to be on the show, and their freakout interacts with her freakout into a big freakout... But not yet. First, other things will happen: A drug-addicted girl trapped in her own life, an autistic kid getting whored out for sympathy votes, a welder, a guy with a Carrot Top, a horrible vintage girl, and dumbass triplets. And Ryan! Look, it's Ryan!
So there's a dumb thing where he blows on a flower in his palm and it falls limply to the ground instead of I guess lofting into the air like everything is magical, and then he talks about how he spent the last two years "gragitating" to music, and finally he walks in talking about how he loves both the Eagles and Chris Brown, the latter because of "how he touches kids all around this world," which I'm going to give a pass because: When was this filmed exactly. Posh and Kara don't act like there's anything wrong with that statement, so who knows. Then he touches "Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word" exactly like Chris Brown would.
...Yeah, too far. Anyway, it's all through the nose, he sounds ridiculous and gross, he's a whole mess of trouble. But his hair is so luxurious! (That's literally what my notes say.) The Judgery are embarrassed for him as he sings in more and more voices, all of which are tragic. Simon says there are twenty Dereks in there, and every one of them is horrible. Then Derek tells us how he actually did everything right, including hitting "really loud notes," and that he's pretty sure he's "amazing" and could have "touched America in a totally different way." Then he takes off his shirt to go mourn and walk the earth.
Sad girl with cheeks and a yellow jacket. Sad cute girl named Melissa. Sad cute boy with a red bracelet and a crying mom. Sad adorable girl crying. Lots of people crying: A weird girl, a big forehead girl, and then one lonely girl standing in the rain with no umbrella. Even from ten feet away you can tell she's fucking annoying, with faded pink stripes in her hair and some kind of weird cosplay outfit she's pretending is clothing, and then up close you can actually see just how horrible she is as she describes herself as an otaku, which... Explains all of it. Every single thing.
Mere Doyle (24, Walpole, MA) toils in retail while embroiled in dreams of Japanese animation and making her own kimonos and dorkwear. She flounces around looking like a complete dick until Ryan calls her a "fashionista," and then she explains to us that ideally, she would like to be a pop star in Japan. Which, again, tells you where this poor girl's at, which is: Everything on the entire checklist, she's in. She has thrown herself into that shit abyss with her eyes open. Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her isn't just a Holly Hunter movie.
Mere's been to hundreds of auditions, you see, and always throws herself into it as though her life depended on it -- because in a very real way, apparently, it does. Ryan finally sends her obnoxious ass in to bother the judges, and she screams Janis at them for a million years and they tell her how awful she is, and she tells him not to talk that shit to her -- "with all due respect," one of the Five Phrases that will get you slapped in this house -- and it goes on forever and ever. She's got vocal coaches lying to her, she's got family members lying to her, the whole thing. She's really not getting it, like to the point where it's painful to watch her getting beat down by the cognitive dissonance of her objective shittiness v. her high opinion of herself, and then she goes out screaming into the street about how they are fuckers and she is a special unique talented individual.
So Ryan's like, "Are you single? Married? Kids?" And Andrew goes from monotone to baritone to screaming at him about how he's totally single and totally alone and we should all just deal with that. His loneliness. With which we are all about to deal. Ryan, desperate to get away from him and his horrible ways, tries to be cool but nearly loses it. Will nobody feel the magnetism of this guy with me? He stalls with Ryan for a long time, clearly just shudderingly nervous, and finally hots himself right on in there.
They are very happy to see him in there, because he is hot and they don't know about his monstrous personality yet. Simon asks for the "why are you here" soundbite and Andrew cuts hateful eyes and tells him that it is fairly obvious why he is there, although it is less obvious why he had to wait all goddamn day. Simon gets right up in there, warming to the cause, about how Andrew knows goddamn well why he asked the question, and -- after Andrew tells him it wasn't even an interesting question to begin with -- to stop being a cocksucker, and Posh's jaw drops, and finally Simon tells him to drop the jackassery or leave.
He apologizes, almost sincerely, and offers to sing "House Of The Rising Sun," and offhand asks if Simon's familiar with the song. Everybody gets super mad that he's still dicking around, and he apologizes again. I can't... He is such an enigma. I don't think he means to actually make them angry. I think he honestly thinks he's ... I have no idea what he's doing, but he's doing it on purpose which means he has a plan. An agenda. And whatever it is, the desired effect is not what he's manifesting. He takes off the glasses and sings the song -- poorly -- and they laugh at him, but honestly you can't dig out from under that asshattedness no matter what anyway. So finally Kara's like, "Andrew. Are you angry?" He says he is, from waiting all day, so she calls him an asshole -- which again, he doesn't get why -- and so she explains that, as a hopeful musician, it is beyond shitty of him for say he doesn't want to wait around all day when there are people who wait years.
Which is true, and I'm not making excuses because he's just awful, but I can see where those are two different things, inside that clueless Andrew bubble where he lives. It's possible to be grateful for the opportunity or whatever and still find the whole process painful. In fact, nobody there including the judges is actively enjoying themselves at this point. You just don't say it. I think it's a profound social problem, not that he's an active agent of evil. Kara disagrees, and informs him how offensive that was without connecting the dots for him, which just leaves him more confused about how those things are connected and what he shouldn't have said, which pisses her off more because she thinks he's being inauthentic, when what he's being is clueless. Which honestly is just as bad, and I get that, as I said: He's the worst. But the ways and means by which he arrives at being the worst are more complicated than they appear, and Kara's not helping.
Andrew asks the Judgery at large why they're being so mean to him, and they list every horrible thing he's done in the last five minutes, and Simon calls him "sulky and rude" and "very aggressive" and says he has "bad energy" (all of which is true, but more a function of his altered affect than any malice on his part) and Posh points out that he can't even sing so it doesn't matter (which is both true and awesome of her) and finally Andrew is just really confused and sad about everything and suddenly starts backtracking and eating shit about how he was trying to appear confident -- which I mean, it's blindingly clear that he's been terrified this whole time, but I'm glad he at least figured that much out to say -- but you still shouldn't get excuses for that. Rational people know what rational people do. You can trust your instincts on not acting like a douchebag, usually. It's trying to act like too many people at once that gets you into trouble. Whatever, Kara yells at him an amazing speech ending with, "...So I am now angry at you. Who I don't like. At all."
He shivers and asks why they're doing this to him, and basically begs them to walk him through it, and it's just... Toward the end I think they're willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and maybe his brain just shit the bed, but I don't know. He calls them "vicious." And yeah, we just went from one drama to another drama, both of which you stage-directed, both of which are all about you: That's the worst thing imaginable. But what's just skin-crawling about the whole thing is watching it all go down, because they are never going to get it -- and are under no compunction to do so -- and he's just conscious enough of social cues to realize how bad he fucked up, but not how to turn it around. And either way he can't sing, so it doesn't matter, and now he knows that too. I want to be there to explain things like this to him in advance. Or maybe just follow him, and track his movements in a diary. Or bake him things and leave them anonymously with little notes about how he's doing so great. I admit to you that I have not really come up with a coherent plan yet.
So Kara gets into that weird sexual space she goes sometimes when she can't handle things and starts talking about how he's very naughty and needs a spanking, so Simon snaps her out of that right away, which makes her tell him to shut up a bunch of times for no reason and then yell at Andrew about how he's never had a girlfriend, and finally he literally flees the scene because she's getting so scary, and I think maybe he falls in love with her a little bit. Or maybe that's how he looks before he kills you. Kara continues bitching about him after he's gone, and Ryan is like, "So you and Kara really connected," and inside she's all about how now she needs to take a shower to get his weirdness off him, and Posh hated him too, but... Best audition ever? Probably. I ♥ him.
up is lovely Katie Stevens (16, Middlebury, CT) who comes from a big Portuguese family presided over by her cute grandmother, with whom Katie is quite close. So Katie's drama is that grandma's got Alzheimer's and isn't going to be around for much longer, so she wants to have as much fun and do as many great things for her grandma's delight as she can before it's over and she doesn't remember her anymore, and it's fucking hardcore. I can't really go there. So they spend a lot of time on sweet interacting with grandma, playing the piano for her and singing and stuff, and then she cries some more, but in her audition she sings "At Last" and it's totally gorgeous. Like, to the point that Simon does that thing he does where he acts chiller than he actually feels so nobody will call him out for having the wrong favorite later. The family goes nuts outside, of course, but Ryan keeps from crying valiantly until he gets her to call grandma, and then grandma's crying on the phone and mom's over here weeping -- can't handle that at all, that's the worst bit -- and finally Ryan starts crying. Oh, Ryan. You did good.
Joshua Blaylock (28, NYC) is Biz Dev and because he's 28 this is his last shot. I guess he's tried out before. He sings "God Bless The Broken Road" in a completely uninteresting, sweet little voice. He's one of those guys you can't believe he's 28, just everything about him is soft and sweet and young, down to his voice and his crazy huge anime eyeballs. He's like the Pokémon form of David Archuleta, this kid. The Archuletrox.
Posh says he's got a "nice little voice" and Simon points out that it was fine if you were 14, but totally boring and unoriginal. They fight about it for a bit and Posh fights for him, and they all get into this sort of adorable camp-counselor thing where they get the younger less-cool kid and circle around him and make him say different things "aggressively" -- "Shut up, Simon!" becomes "Shut up, please, Simon!" -- in the most indulgently affectionate way. They're really... It's like a commercial for Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America. Only he's 28.
That literally goes on for ten minutes, them making him say adorable things and telling him how cute he is, and the whole time he's being amazing and cute and thanking them for being alive and whatever, and it's just about the best. What a day Joshua has... Well, no. Probably every day is like that for old Joshua. Probably if he were about to be mugged the muggers would suddenly stop and be like, "Oh my God, you are so fucking cute I can't stand it. Show us your unicorn."
Oh, shit. This is going the be the biggest fucking Michael Jackson wankfest of a year, isn't it. Michael Jackson week, I'm calling in Joe. I can't fucking do that shit at all.
That just occurred to me, because of the wolf boy earlier. So the ladies shake their heads in wonderment at Bosa, Simon takes a bit longer to convince because Bosa's not the hottest guy we've seen today though his voice is undeniably great, and finally says that it was sort of boring. Bosa offers to "spice it up," and Simon tells him he should have done that in the first place, which sort of sucks of him, and Posh has the balls to yell at Simon about being a jerk, so then Simon fucks with her for a long, long while, and Kara finally has to break them up by getting back to the awesomeness of Bosa, and then to be a jerk Simon gives a no, but the other three give him a yes!
Eventually, after Randy's done dicking him around because he's desperate for attention. Outside, his awesome family goes crazy all over the place, which is really fun until the weird racist Lion King music starts, and then I don't know any more. It's hospitaliano all over again. I mean, they're wearing all kinds of garb and they are all very excited, so maybe it's the secret racist inside of me that's connecting the dots and saying the show is being a jerk. But the show is so often a jerk, and I don't really think I have a racist inside me to any measurable degree, that I... Oh, hell. I guess that's okay. I just don't know anymore. I love Bosa.
Owl City plays as we remember the touching stories and all the hot people and how all of them are going to Hollywood, and then finally the last Golden Ticket goes to Leah Laurenti (22, Medford, NY), who is adorable in a Gina Gershon kind of way and wears terrible earrings. And her interesting story is that she is from a wicked religious family that is not into secular music, so maybe she is going to hell or maybe this is what God wants her to do, because if something feels so good and natural then how could it possibly be bad?
I mean, bless.
That's exactly how I made my peace with Ke$ha, back in December. Also Andrew Fenlon, back about ten pages ago. Don't ask questions, just go with it. You only have one life. Why not live it?
So Leah cries, I guess about how maybe her calling will also be her damnation, and then sings a "Blue Skies" song I don't really know, and her voice is amazing, and it goes on and on, and when she's done they're so nice to her she about dies. She's so nervous about actually hoping, it's heartbreaking. Kara is totally moved and makes a point of underscoring that she actually is that good, like, they're not being nice: When they say she's the best person in Boston, that's not hyperbole. You can see her wrap her head around that and it feels good. Leah's giant hot boyfriend is very excited for her and they hug and cry, and while the Judgery continue to talk about how amazing she is, she calls her parents and they say they're proud of her. "Of course."