Tuesday
The Good, But Boring: Mecca Madison (18, Las Vegas NV) has some teeth and a likeable voice, but mostly teeth. Ryan Hart is not good, but not boring, and I think he's awesome. Purple hair, awful voice, scary skreeeeagh voice and a bad attitude. Simon's immediately taken and quite creepy with Heather Ward (28, Salisbury MD), who wows the judges completely in her cowboy hat and crocheted dress and counterintuitive redneck singing. Taylor "The Silver Foxx" Hicks (29, Birmingham) is awesome, if a little post-stroke DeNiro around the face when he gets going.
The Bad, But Boring: Alexia "Dylon" Lincheta (23, Bakersfield, CA) is horrible and everybody hates him and his fake-ass Rasta vibe, even Paula, who's usually easier to fool. The Pearson Twins seem sweet and I like them but they'll kill you with sleepiness. Haggai Yedidya is too cool a person to be a Weird Audition, even though he's meanly played that way, so he goes here. Hyper-American shirt, Hyper-American song, Pan-Euro Hottie looks, Latka-squared accent. Rebecca Brewer is screamy and awful but seems nice enough.
The Boring & Unpleasant: The psychic chick from last year accompanies her sister and tries to take over the whole audition, and it sucks. Jason Andino reveals his incredibly irritating alter ego, gondola-steering Mario Bro "Pepi," not to mention a less than special voice. Lame Mr. Grey-Brown Sweater can't sing, has 75 animals, is a largish-type person, and believes in himself to a gross degree. David Stripy Shirt Guy is low-functioning and the judges laugh right in his face, and it is gross.
Montages Of Boring: Bad people wiggling around and singing badly with some dumb joke about how they're going to Musical Jail or something. Then "I Will Survive," then: Hair. For real. Shots of people with one thing in common: they have hair on their heads. Or even just heads on their necks. Also, people from past auditions that you probably don't remember. The "stabbing motion" guy from last year now has a mullet. There's Sarah Sue Kelly and Bobby Effing Barfoot, and somebody's going down once I figure out who to blame for instantly knowing their names.
Tomorrow...But Boring?: Austin makes me oh so fricking proud.
Wednesday The Good: Funeral director Jason Horn (28, Longview TX) shows all the sparkling personality you might think, then sings pretty well, if tricksy and mannered. Music major Ricky Hayes (21, Bedford TX) sings awesome and seems to be nice. William Makar (16, Houston -- okay, "The Woodlands" -- TX) takes his living-embodiment-of-Seth-Cohen vibe and shoves it straight into your heart. All in all, there were 12 through. At least two of them were sickening.*
The Bad: One annoying dude can do the splits and almost dance, but not sing. A sweet and lovely girl from Pfugerville has nine of the 10 things you need, but the missing thing is a voice that doesn't make you want to jump out a window. A girl whose plane nearly crashed on the way here sings really terribly, comes back, and sings really terribly. It is sad. A woman who looks like a corpse with braces schleps from Los Angeles to freak you right out with her giant Paula drawings. A Randy doppelganger has a cowboy hat, a mohawk, and a voice that probably only appeals to six people in the world, one of whom is me. This girl in horrible pink pants and poorly thought-out forehead-braids goes all kinds of Maury when things don't go her way.
* The Awful: Technically beautiful Ashley Jackson (20, Dallas) tries on clothes as her job, seems to be a ho, and looks like if Liz Phair had a horse's baby, but gets through even though she sings like ass. Cocky, sleazy, grody Ronnie "R.J." Norman (21, Tyler TX) is hot as hell, sings beautifully...and might be the worst human being I've ever come across in all my years. He makes Constantine look like...I don't even know. Something not horrific that I can't think of right now. Too angry.
Week: Boston, and then the first Hollywood episode, with your friend and mine, Joe R.
Tuesday
Las Vegas has a rich tradition and history of hookers, skanks, singing, and crazy people. Alexia "Dylon" Lincheta (23, Bakersfield CA) might well be all three. He's a total wanna-Rasta with the wig and the knit cap and the whole nine, and he's totally fake, fake hair, fake accent, just a blinding stupid mess of fakeness like Casey on Laguna Beach, only as a Rastafarian. Paula says he's entertaining, but quickly takes it back, Randy gets pretty hardcore about the stupid accent, and then Simon makes him take his wig off and put it back on. Normally, de-wigging is supposed to be exciting. Here, not so much. Simon calls him stupid and he leaves, complaining that he shouldn't have tried the gimmick. I don't mind gimmicks necessarily, but there's a line you need to draw for yourself. I believe in only appearing on TV if you can honestly say that you won't look like a total fool for seven generations afterward. There's a dude showing the validity of that axiom up , who's "dressed like a joke" per Joe R. Which is funny in lots of ways, because he meant "joker," like an actual playing-card joker, and there's a nice symmetry between that and the "dressed like a foot" thing from last year, which I've promised Miss Alli I would never call a typo again. ["There are no typos. There are only inspired acts of genius. Stop looking at me like that." -- Joe R] So there you are, he's dressed as a joke, and Simon dismisses him -- awesomely -- before he even opens his stupid mouth.
Remember Bobbi Mae Psychic from last year? She foresaw the number ten and thought it meant she'd be in the final ten, but later realized it meant she'd see the number ten somewhere at some point? She's got a little sister, whom she has apparently supported in coming on the show. Psychics are a bunch of bullshit, but even real psychics must think this lady sucks -- 90\% of seeming insightful is about understanding reality, and the reality is that their entire family cannot sing and is not good at performing or being outside the home. She has stupid red hair, the sister, and is mostly overlooked so that the judges can be totally mean to sucky Bobbi Mae some more. Erica is the sister's name, and she is generically bad, and the judges laugh openly at her. Simon asks them as a family to not come back, and tells Erica that she is better than her sister, but sucks anyway. up is Mecca Madison (18, Las Vegas NV), the belly dancer with the spit curl, who I find pretty annoying but Joe R. and seemingly most of America loves. She is dressed, as he describes her, "kinda Mary Kate-lite, with the baggy layers," but I just think she looks like an idiot. Like one of those girls trying to single-handedly bring back "flapper" as a concept and imagines herself doing the watusi on a biplane wing with a cocktail in her hand. Betty Page and her ilk contributed a lot to this country, I guess, but also contributed "time as a color," "bangs as a way of life," and the continuing disintegration of history as a field of study. Not that this girl has anything to do with Betty Page, it's just that I've noticed the overwhelming retro feeling these days amounts to, basically, liking "before," and I think it's boring, because the future is always, always better than the past, and the second that's not true, it's time to shutter the whole store for good. She sings "Hey Big Spender" quite well, actually, and Simon and Randy agree that her voice is better for recording than in person. I think I know what they mean by that sometimes, and I think this is one of those times. Twenty-three skidoo! Don't let the Hollywood hit you in the fringe and six feet of bead necklaces on the way out, you kid!
Paula gets the GERD, Simon gets bored, Ryan Hart starts stomping around while "singing," then finally stops. "Catchy," says Simon, and Ryan Hart grins adorably at him, talking nonsense about how he was trying to "stand out," trying "something new." Simon's fairly cool: "I'm bored. Go do it outside," which is exactly what the kid wanted him to say, and then Ryan wins my love forever: "Pssht. I'm bored with you! Fine! Later! Too hardcore for you, man." I'm glad I'm ten years too old to have gone to school with this kid, or we would have died in a hail of ATF gunfire way back just trying to prove how hardcore we actually were. Still, Simon is affectionately appalled: "Absolutely, you're really frightening." I think I'm at the perfect age to love both of them equally in this moment. After Ryan leaves, Randy and Simon pretend to do the Cookie Monster singing, and it's cute, and Ryan curses very, very quickly for awhile in the Cookie Monster voice, stands vibrating and staring at the camera in the silence of the truly caffeinated, and then wheels around and runs off. I don't know about you, but I'm done. This is all I ever wanted from this stupid show. I believe that children are our future, and I hope they turn out like him. Nothing compares 2 Ryan Hart. Well, that hooker last week came close.
Back to realistic competition. Meet Heather Ward (28, Salisbury MD), who's pretty and black and thus captures Simon's heart before she even opens her mouth. She's the counselor for the inmates at a jail, makes recommendations to the parole board, that whole deal, but really she wants to leave the job and sing professionally. She's wearing a long crocheted shirt with fringe and a black cowboy hat. Simon asks her if she's "very strict" and she admits that she does "have handcuffs," which causes Simon to spiral dangerously into Paula territory. Randy jumps that train: "Cowell, don't even... You've been handcuffed before." And Simon says as creepily as he can, "I'm normally the one that does the handcuffing." Instead of taking off screaming like you would, Heather sings "Redneck Woman," by that Gretchen Wilson person I believe. What a stupid, awful song. She sings it beautifully. Just marvelously. Simon's amazed, Paula wiggles around weirdly, and Randy loves how she's black but singing pop country, because it's such a novel concept. A gimmick, in other words, but one that the judges agree is great. Simon says she "stands out" and Paula wriggles: she loves the song and the performance, but thinks the melody is too "easy," and takes a pass. Simon puts her through with Randy, who calls out, "Keep it simple, girl! Keep it simple!" There's an unspoken corollary that somebody should tell her, which is: "...unless Paula's involved, then do a bunch of silly runs and shit!"
Sadder than J.C. Gray, in some ways, is Anthony Andolino (28, Roselle Park NJ), who is under the impression that he can sing, and that he likes the ladies. There's nothing wrong with his face, but his dimensions and his obnoxious persona are non-standard and you know walking in that Simon's going to check out, because the dude is huge. Just huge, in every direction, and like there's a heart attack coming today, and it always freaks me out when that's the least notable thing about a person. His girlfriend is an animal lover, and a chubby chaser, who has introduced the concept of animal hoarding to his life ("We have 75 animals right now") and who has apparently never seen Oprah once in his entire gigantic life. There are cats, guinea pigs, dogs, all kinds of animals, in the big fake-out red herring home visit that makes you think he's getting through despite the fact that he is larger than a regulation doorframe and deluded to a scary degree. He's here due to his "hopes and dreams," but he'll be leaving due to his estrangement from the reality that he is boring, pissy, and cannot sing.
He sings "Lately" by Jodeci, and he does this awfully, just awfully, all these high, shaky notes and trying too hard and weird English on the notes. The judges laugh and act weird, and Paula admits that his voice is workable, but perhaps better for the theatre. Of the Absurd, I say. "I can do pop too," he whines, but Simon's like, "That...was pop." Randy's more troubled by the singing out of tune -- it's a "walk before you run" situation. They all pass, and he lumbers out. Paula goes dead-eyed as Simon says it's "just as well" because they "couldn't afford the food bill," because she hates the cheap-shot fat jokes, and so do I. It's just too easy, especially since this is one of the largest people I've ever seen. Outside, Anthony yells at Ryan about how he wasn't out of tune, and he doesn't care that it's their job to know about that kind of thing, that he "respect[s] their opinion," but he wasn't out of tune. A 28-year-old who has not learned the difference between "fact" and "opinion" is always violently scary to me -- like, gravity could just be an opinion, arguable, like facts that are demonstrably true are still up for debate, because they know nothing, so they assume that nobody knows anything, and they can just blunder through. It's scary and narcissistic in a very real sense, and is the reason I hate this dude. He snits off in a huff and Ryan deadpans to the camera how you never know how they're going to be when they come out that door. "...Sometimes they're humbled." It's hilarious.
There are lots more effing twins to introduce the pair of auditioneers, including some creepy sisters, people I think are the Brittenum Twins but might be somebody else's stolen identity, and then the up: the Pearson Twins, who do the usual creepy twin stuff like talk in unison and share iPod earbuds. Their dad plays "every instrument," they want to start a band, they want to be famous, they giggle incessantly, they have Care Bears on their beds at the age of 24. They love American Idol, especially Kelly, they are wearing the shortest shorts you ever saw, and somehow they manage to pull this all off. When they walk in, Randy actually exclaims, "Oh, how cute!" They are going to sing "Dreams," by the Cranberries, and Paula already looks bored. "Yeah, okay." Marnelli and Maureen Pearson (24, the Vegas) are technically good, without shocking or great voices, but they have good pitch and fun harmonies. They're like the Asian Corrs. Paula stares into space with a grimace, and Simon finally stops them, calling the whole thing "pleasant but dull." They turn them down, and Randy giggles sadly. Outside, they weep about how their dad loves them and how they'll be back.
Boring people getting rejected, Bravery Hair again, one of the Cute Western Shirt Guys gets cut and Ryan is horrified, some girl says "Fuck it" and doesn't care anymore; this very cute, very vapid guy forgets where he is or why he is here, stares blankly and scratches his nipple and smiles into the camera for a long, long time. His friend Ricky Hayes (21, Bedford TX) is a music major at A&M and talks about how performing is what he's "meant to do" and what he dreams about and talks about it to the point of annoying everyone around him. He gets scared when Randy jumps on the music major thing and tells him he has put all colleges on shout. But...it's A&M. That's not very fair. He sings "I Can't Make You Love Me," one of music's perfect songs, and he does really well. Paula is pleased, Randy is rapt and nodding, Simon chews a pen. They say it's a good mix of flavor and training, "beyond refreshing" (that's Paula), and that he has a "wonderful tone." Randy's like, "Helloooo Austin, finally." Simon says he has the "nicest-sounding voice so far, not the biggest voice but the nicest-sounding," and says that there's something "distinct about it as well." He loved it, loved it, Randy says he's "done the university system proud," and Paula and Simon give identical "absolutely one hundred percent yes" votes and Simon says, "Well done, kiddo." I like it when they do well. Why can't we see more of that? Why are we not worthy of seeing the people we're going to have to be looking at for a hundred years?
There's a very pretty girl with a big lantern jaw and shifty eyes who is a "fit model" -- "I make sure that all the garments fit properly...it's really fun." Wow. She makes these creepy eyes at the camera but is pretty funny: "I would like to adjust my necklace, if you don't mind." She's every engineering student I've ever met that's a girl, I don't know what she's doing trying on clothes for a living. She Randy talk about how they could be models together, and Simon calls it the "Before and After," and she laughs but then pouts: "That's mean!" Meet Ashley Jackson (20, Dallas, completely, forever and always Dallas) -- and she hits me in a weird place because my first reaction was really, really negative, but on review I think she's okay. If I met her at a party I would think she was very funny and very dorky and had too much drama, but I would like her casually. She also gets prettier the more you look at her, at the same time that it's less and less interesting. She sings, and if you subtract the nervous lack of control and the twitchy fake sexuality of it, there's a nice tone underneath, a little of the smoke in there, and I guess that's why they like her. It's trainable, but not in the fake Haggai way. When she's done, Paula notes that she can apparently "sing with her mouth closed," and admits that the audition is "not going great right now." She sings some patriotic song with her mouth closed, and this whole thing is the punchline to a joke so filthy I can't even remember it, but I do know now without a doubt that she was in a sorority, and I'm guessing it was Delta Gamma. Simon basically tells her she's too hot to be eliminated just for her iffy voice, Randy says she "deserves another shot," and she dances around yelling "Yay!" in this very fake way. It's fake because I have realized that she is not an idiot, but just does a convincing impression of one, which is also very Dallas girl of her, and something I always enjoy, because when you see the smartness glinting out through the blonde act, it's like you're in on a secret meeting. Outside, Ryan deadpans the best line of the season: "Ashley sang with her mouth closed, and Randy's jaw almost hit the table. Imagine that." So I see Ryan knows that same joke. Imagine that. God, I love Ryan Seacrest.
Then comes fucking R.J. Ryan introduces him as "truly extraordinary," because he "loves himself more than Simon." The thing about cockiness and overconfidence is that you only notice it when the seams are showing, like this kid here. Ronnie "R.J." Norman (21, Tyler TX) does a good impression of That Guy, but there's a weakness behind it -- you can always tell because the eyes go searching while he's talking, because he's going to tailor the performance to you. And as well, see, he's not that good at it. ["My initial reaction was that he has an older brother who is That Guy, so…you know, everything that goes along with that. …How boring are these audition rounds that I have sibling-order theories about these people?" -- Sars] He is, though, terribly annoying and terribly inauthentic about everything, which bums me out. He gives this long speech about how "People call me R.J., my friends call me R.J., everybody calls me R.J. because everybody's my friend," with this smug, fake smirk at this, and like, actual guys like this don't sell it like this. They don't have to. He is a fucked-up amount of gorgeous, and it has done him no favors, is what I'm saying. "People think I'm cocky, but I'm confident," he says, and it's just like the "I'm conceited" girl -- he has no idea what he's talking about. People think he's smarmy, I'm guessing, but there's no way to spin that.
He admits to having sex with old lonely women for cash, and creeps out Boring Allison from Chapel Hill with like sixteen flirts-gone-wrong in a row, but later on we'll see how she was able to get over it. He flashes this egregious smile when he enters, and the judges are quite taken, because they like nothing better than that which is on the surface. He should have something dreadful happen to him, really painful and traumatic but not life-threatening (my notes say, "I wish his plane would blow a back door seal"), and maybe that would give him some kind of reality. I mean, don't touch the face, but anything else would be fine. And so but the pisser here is that he has a beautiful, beautiful voice. He sings "Ain't No Sunshine" and it's like he produces actual sunshine. At 21 this person has already had more sex than most people will have in their lives, and I bet he's good at it, but I sure hope he is, because it's like all he's good for. He gets through easily, and Allison jumps his bones outside because she's like his only friend. He tries to talk some more too-cool into the camera, but we're onto him and not even the ham-handed editing of this show can sell this Giant Ego talk. "Okay, Randy said I was flat at the end...I know he knows what he's doing, but I've got a good ear too." Inside, Paula screams as Randy jokes that the kid was horrible.
This thick black guy in a cowboy hat comes in named Kevin Mitchell (27, Longview TX), whom Simon calls "Randy on a diet" despite the fact that he A) is no smaller and in fact slightly bigger than Randy and B) bears no more than a passing resemblance to Randy Jackson. Why do they all think he looks like Randy? Is it because he's large and black? Some white producer told them to have this conversation. Kevin plays along. Randy stands to him, and the obvious lack of any similarity is highlighted for the cheap seats. He sings "I Can't Dance," a song I can't stand, but I do love it here. His voice has a scratchy, awesome quality. Simon calls him "slightly forgettable," Paula takes a pass, and Randy loves the performance but says that "vocally it just wasn't there." I think what Kevin and Heather can teach us is that in addition to wearing weird costumes, you should also try to be a black person, and sing songs that are not only not by black artists, but by the most aggressively white artists you can find. I really applaud this strategy, and the last thing tells me why: because the white producers have just demonstrated that they think all black people look the same. So if you "look like" Usher by being black, go ahead and sing something by like Prussian Blue, or Hootie and the Blowfish, and you'll blow their minds and get through.
Allison from Final Destination is back. Whatever happened to that one guy from that movie, the Chili-esque best friend? Chad Donella. He played an albino in something else, Disturbing Behavior, and I saw him in a Taco Bell commercial once. I think that Christian Bale is having his career for him. I love that guy. Anyway, she's back singing again, even worse than the original audition, and this time it's "Proud Mary." Simon looks pained, Paula looks troubled, Randy tells her it was about the same. They give her very kind votes of no. Randy hopes she had fun; she says she did. Except, I imagine, for the almost dying. Although even that she seems to think was pretty awesome, and in any case she's going to get some syphilis from R.J. in about ten minutes, so that'll be good.
Oh, William Makar. Like Paris and Lisa Tucker, he's 16. He is awesome. He is Seth Cohen incarnate. He's from the Woodlands and he would like to sing for you "Ain't Too Proud To Beg" with a huge smile and a mellow, deepish voice. Now that I have a seven-month-old in my life and my day and all of my suddenly-deadly crap, I feel much less creepy with the youngsters than I did last year, because nothing will slap you out of a "what if I'm a deviant molester and I didn't even know it" A-Fed fugue faster than changing a naked infant with their legs up in the air doing their best to simultaneously catapult into a mid-flight arabesque and pull the pad over on itself, creating a giant big shit burrito. Or -- and Anna concurs, and you might remember she went through her own A-Fed related trouble last year -- parenting hands you the difference between wanting to make out with a grownup and just wanting to eat a baby's entire face. I want to eat William Makar's entire face and I can finally accept that this does not mean I deserve to be caught on Dateline.
The door opens, and love music plays her into the room under a hazy filter. Simon looks scared. As she takes her position, there are unnecessary booming footsteps -- she's 17, and her weight is the least of her problems. She sings "Ain't No Mountain," but with a new melody that is neither internally consistent nor bearing any likeness to the renditions you might be familiar with. Paula can't look at her, just shifts her gaze around the room uncomfortably. Randy's horrified and giggling in that way he has. Her pants are at her belly-button, which is...they're so big. So pink. She trails off, and Paula notes that her audition card says she sounds "exactly like Avril Lavigne." This is so wrong, and so confusing for the judges, that they actually get angry with her. Simon: "What? I'm going to be really nice and suggest to you an entirely new career path, that doesn't involve singing or performing. Because I like you." She disagrees and stands her ground admirably. "Honestly? Absolutely frightful. The whole thing." Paula asks her whether she thought she did well, and looks at her incredibly lucidly, like, she is actually interested, fascinated, by this concept. There's a bit of sympathy there, as well, but mostly she's like, "You really did, didn't you." Paula admits that they've been wrong before, but Randy tries to get her to understand that this time, they are not wrong. She's not having it. She gets totally pissed and yells at them all the way out. There's no discussion of her, because what do you say? She sucked, she doesn't get it, she's seventeen.
She comes into the hallway and tries to slam the door, but it's pneumatic, so no dice, and again, it's like this perfect symbol of how powerless and futile and humiliating this whole thing is. I'm glad they caught so many of these moments this year, because it does lend a certain level to the experience. Inside, Simon's comparing her pants to a sack of potatoes and acts out trying to shove just one more potato in the sack. It's not funny, but it's true. Paula -- and this is subtle, they don't highlight it as usual -- gets up at his first word and stalks off with a bit of disgust. She's so at odds with this entire process -- why can't she just give in and accept that we're talking about a visual medium? There's a reason the Promise Of A New Day video was stretched to a bizarre 2:1 aspect ratio the entire time, and I realize that this gave her an eating disorder, but just because she got better doesn't mean we did.