| Season 8 | Episode 3
Lesbians of consequence telling you which words you are allowed to use at your leisure and which ones are their property; concept mullets; boys in skinny jeans with vague opinions and of slightly dreamy countenance; wildly over-privileged prep-school cases vigorously pretending they don't hate poor people; and the kind of unearned and conspicuous moral superiority you haven't seen since you first learned about Canadians: yep. This is San Francisco, all right.
The city by the bay, the place you left your heart. Wiggidy-wack streets to drive your Prius down, deeply earnest teenage politicians, and the half-caf nonfat freedom to express everything, from your own sense of entitlement to the politics of the curious paraphilic sectioning-off of your own sexual cues (thanks, Your Parents!) and which have taken the reins for themselves until you can only get off by, like, having your hair pulled by a German girl dressed as a Dodgers pitcher while ever-so-slowly smothering under a pile of limited-edition Beanie Babies, and how fucking dare I find that weird. San Francisco: At Least It's Not Portland.
A creepy ginger kid beatboxes for himself while strumming his guitar. He looks like the kind of guy down the street that would pull out porn for no reason while you were over there just innocently playing video games, and make you look at it. Ryan wonders, and this is adorable, whether -- in a city that produced Katharine McPhee and William Hung -- we can possibly make that magic happen a third time. I don't think he means to insult either of them, and yet he's managed to do both. A pair of serious retards get married in line for auditions. Yeah. Ryan goes into the audition room to chat with the judges, looking freshy-fresh because it's San Francisco, and Randy and Simon call him a homo, and then this obnoxious fucking girl shows up with a bag of bullshit so capacious you could seriously live inside it if you really had to.
Tatiana Nicole Del Toro (23, San Juan, Puerto Rico) is wearing a mermaid dress from the Donna Martin Graduates collection, and here's what she's been up to lately: she's a "full-time" singer, a weirdly nonspecific "musician," a songwriter, a writer (regular), a weirdly specific "assistant director," a model, a "film actor." She's sort of pretty, but deranged on the inside where your brains are, has some kind of Invisalign issue happening, and the fakest dumbest laugh you've ever heard. "I live for what I do," she says, which I guess means she lives a shitload. She went to a psychic -- one of the world's most powerful psychics, Tati informs us, but leaves out that her friend is also one of the world's most powerful gaffers, a gifted baritone, and a certified Cisco Routing & Switching Field Specialist -- who told her that she was going to make it into the Top Twelve. She lied. I can already tell that she lied. Or I mean, I guess... She's not psychic. Occam's Razor would suggest that they are both true, actually. "I just love her because I love her!" Tatiana screams, and Ryan backs away from her, super-irritated. He just hates her because he hates her!
| Season 8 | Episode 3
Because she is a fucking asshole, she would like you to know that she wants to be the American Idol "probably more than anybody has ever wanted anything," which is just the number one sign that you should walk away from the person, if they mythologize themselves like that so easily. Or... Is she really as powerful as she would have us believe? "If I have to out sing everyone one by one -- on the planet -- to get a record deal, I will," which is amazing, but even more amazing is her follow-up: "And I... have." Impressive, not to mention humbling, but it's even more so if you replace "out sing" with "fellate," because that's clearly how it's actually going to go down, if it ever does, which it won't, because this is exactly the kind of girl whose bleached bones are discovered in the desert after three weeks of nobody caring.
More gross self-absorption, fake laughing, and then she presents the judges with a "gift," which is her press kit: DVD, CD, flyers for her concerts, etc. Kara's like, "That's sort of amazing how right away you've alienated everybody in the universe, you clueless twat," but she does it with a smile. Simon rolls his eyes and asks if she isn't aware of the fact that they're auditioning in her hometown this year, so it was double stupid of her to come to SF, and she's like, "No, it wasn't." Well, great. Some of the postcards and one-sheets in the presskit "gift" are of Tati in her bloomers, looking like a whore. Kara and Simon are like, "These are sort of naughty," disapprovingly, and she flashes them a huge smile: "THANK YOU!"
I sort of love her, actually. If you're going to go crazy, go large! Accessorize and package that shit, you know? Really brand it, just color it all up with Tatiana. "Here's a picture I drew -- it is of me, as the cast of Sesame Street -- and then these are my candids from when I stalked Spalding Gray and eventually went to jail, and here's a picture of me bending over in terrycloth hotpants and licking a big black lollipop. There's a little bit of nipple there, if you look close. I also have this in 8x10." So she sings an Aretha song and sounds really lovely, actually, but Simon yells at her, and she breaks into "I'm Your Baby Tonight," and fucks that right up. Simon tries to explain how fucking deeply wrong and weird and spookily off-base she is, and she does a weird pose with her hands on her chest like she's in an REM video or ... no, like it's the Pieta and she's both Mary and the Little Lord Jesus simultaneously. I mean, if Jesus just wanted it a little more.
| Season 8 | Episode 3
Simon tells her to keep doing the weird St. Sebastian pose because it's weird and silly and funny, and she is a cute girl with her frogmouth closed and no noises coming out of it, but instead she bursts into song one more time, and he loses interest in fucking with her altogether. But she's not done fucking with them, because she will never be done fucking with them, because "they" are subset of "us," and "us" is really what she's fucking with. Even if she doesn't know that. Paula puts her through because of course Paula sees no problem with any of this because this behavior is Paula On A Good Day. The most tragic thing about all of this is that -- even though she makes you want to take little bite-sized pieces out of your thigh with a melon baller the entire time -- she's the only interesting thing that happens this whole hour.
Kara questions this, even though her voice is not bad. Randy just sort of totally hates her, but puts her through because drama = ratings. Kara also likes her "vibe," and Simon puts her through without giving an opinion. Outside, her adorable parents just do the best they can as she tells Ryan seriously how hard it's going to be because she's so much better than everybody else. Everybody is sort of mindblown by her, and then in her little blue box interview she laughs hysterically and fakely for a million years like she has some kind of mental disorder where her short-term memory is one second long and she's covered in rats, like a dress made of rats that she keeps forgetting she's wearing, and just... It's not that I'm spending too much time on this ass. She seriously is half this episode. I'll tell you right now that only twelve people get through, out of like a billion, and we barely see half of those. One of them I never did figure out who it was. And one of them is this dildo right here.
Maybe the judges are so used to seeing these talented self-promotion machines because of how they live in LA, and they no longer understand how fucking terrifying that girl is. That's how a Mickey Avalon happens, or a Tara Reid: these people like Tatiana who want some indefinable thing so badly that they will do terrible self-harm and -degradation in order to get closer to that thing, like that Bret Ellis book with the vampires and shit. You know who I'm talking about, and only you can know where you fall on that spectrum, but I cannot handle Tatiana. The filthiest thing you've ever personally done and felt weird about later, Tati did that earlier today, and would like to sell you a professionally edited video tape of herself doing it.
| Season 8 | Episode 3
More. Hotties blowing kisses, more pimps, weird hats, chicken suits. Surprise porn guy -- Nick Reed (17, Antelope CA) -- on reflection looks more like Tilda Swinton in her most challenging role ever as the kid down the street who keeps making you look at porn. His mouth noises are pretty awesome, though, like not even trying to sound oldschool or like words or anything. He sounds like a robot with a sense of humor, telling a robot joke to another robot who doesn't get it. The second robot is played by Randy Jackson, who stares vacantly at him the entire time, because he can't believe it, because it's unbelievable. He's amazing. I would like to be in a band with him, but not at his house!
Jiayi Yu (16, San Mateo) is the exact same thing, if you trade out "Ellen Page" for "Tilda Swinton" and "sudden porn guy" for "intensely awkward Asian girl in ill-fitting clothes." Her voice is sort of awesome, like she's running at the same wall as Antony Johnston but from the other side; Simon hates on her singing and her outfit, but I think she has a future. She brightens up and vamooses. Adorable.
Then there's Dean-Anthony Bradford (27, Pasadena), who's such a fucking... I don't even want to do this. He needs to fucking calm down. He's crazy looking, he looks maybe like Edward James Olmos's bastard son we don't talk about, and if he is, Eddie needs to fucking tell him some things about life. He's wearing a big stupid British looking plaid jacket from the ugliness of the '70s and talks like a fucking Sheen brother and has shtick about how sad his life is, which is the apex of sad. Then he sings, and it's stupid. Just painful to watch, and he keeps pulling these intensely fucked-up faces both while singing and at rest. He's like something Kristin Wiig invented when she was stoned, all tics and scary smiles and desperate needy hunger. He's precisely the reason I believe so firmly in bullying, because ... sometimes you shouldn't be yourself.
Sometimes "yourself" is just not good enough. Sometimes you're not doing yourself, or anybody else, any favors until you rein it the fuck in, because sometimes, what you think is "yourself" is actually just a faulty and unpleasant stop on the road to true happiness. We were raised to believe that life is the Special Olympics and everybody deserves a medal, and that's a nice thing to lie to your kids about. But. Along comes a douche like this, and you realize it's only true if your kids don't totally suck. And I hope that they don't, but if they do, you're going to give them the wrong idea, and then they're going to keep doing this shit, and you will have only yourself to blame. A 27-year-old person should not be unemployed, or acting this way in public, and at some point you have to stop blaming the parents, but it is still true that he's been this way his whole life, and that's both depressing and enraging. Then he offers to show them his pubic thatch and starts undressing, and Randy and Simon get uncomfortable, and he's done. Having learned nothing.
| Season 8 | Episode 3
Then there's smarmy dumb cutie Jesus Valenzuela (29, North Highlands, CA), who believes that this shitty show is "family entertainment," which is exactly why America is in such a pickle. He brought about thirty-seven people with him -- all of whom are carrying signs with his name on them -- and then has the balls to claim he's just auditioning because his fucking kids love the show so much. Gross. All the cuteness that he had going for him at first just leaks out more and more with every second that goes by. Plus, he sings not that great. Which is why all the fucking misdirection with the eighty family members and the lies about why he's there and the constant references to his kids, like they are property, because that's what we are, that's what we all are, and anybody who sees the world that way just isn't going to be that talented.
Simon tells Jesus he's not going to win, and Kara and Paula vote him through, and he sells his kids out like eleven times about how this is all about them, and then fucking brings his obnoxious stupid kids into the audition room, and all the judges act like assholes of course, and it goes on and on forever, and he sings again, and Paula acts drunk, and Kara acts like the kids are cute even though they aren't that cute, and whatever, the emotion music and Randy votes him through. And he cheers for himself, and ignores the kids altogether, and is smarmy and yucky some more. Jesus, Jesus. He even does the fake-sad thing when he comes out, so that the fucking throng his insecurity demanded he schlep along with him will scream even louder for him, and even drags his stupid kids into the stupid blue box. I hope he inspires a bunch more of this bullshit for season!
Every time they show the crowd outside, everybody is totally hot and ripped and gorgeous and their hair is shiny and their parts are pert, and then they cut to the auditioner and it's some fucking troll every time. Am I getting shallower as I get older? That won't end well.
Nerd Dalton Powell (18, Manteca Park CA) does a Rubik's Cube and has braces and mumbles and shuffles and has less charisma than many serial killers, and then sings some song. I don't know what it is, because I can't hear it, because I'm neither a dog nor one of God's many creatures who navigate through life using sonar. It's like if you had a flea circus and then to the flea circus there was a flea cabaret and inside that cabaret there was a flea chanteuse, and that's Dalton singing. Kara asks him if he's ever sung, and he's like, "Not in front of people," and they're like, "Yeah, that explains why it's so tragic and painful to listen to." They ask if he's maybe there because he loves the show, rather than having just auditioned accidentally, like on the way to occupational therapy or something, and he admits to being a Simon fan. AWESOME. Simon loves this, and the audition ends without incident, of course. Except for the Incident of the Broken Dorky Heart.
| Season 8 | Episode 3
Then, some bad singing in a shiny shirt and flirting with Paula, with Kara tiredly gesturing to Paula as though to say, "I won't put up with this shit, but she's high." There are a few hilarious moments of Kara going, "Give it to her, show her your passion. Give Paula your love," and then Randy's lack of reading-the-room abilities goes, "She wants a baby." Then -- as even Paula's like, "Classy" -- he giggles dorkily to himself like he's a naughty boy, because he doesn't get why he is gross, because what else is new.
Back in the summer of 1967, Ryan was negative twenty years old or so. Assholes gathered in the Haight to do nothing of consequence and clap each other on the backs about it, as they continue to do even today. But this is not the Summer of Love. This is the summer audition for a terrible show and Kara v. Simon, outperforming Randy and Paula all over the place in terms of their ability to have a fucking conversation.
"Who wants a shot of Akilah?" Ryan asks, and introduces us to a young lady who is cramming for Organic Chemistry or some shit instead of actually just singing. She says "trachea" tray-she-ah and "larynx" many different ways. She talks about singing acapellaly. She has a good voice and no grasp of the English language, and a seriously misdirected sense that knowing these things is going to help her sing. Ryan is weirded out by her giant boobs and painted-on jeans, because they're weird as hell, and then she confuses Randy with Simon, and acts totally fucking weird like Mary McDonnell on Grey's Anatomy, and then Simon tells her she has a naughty face. They marvel over her useless and poorly pronounced body part knowledge. At one point she talks about singing from your rectums, and while you might think she misspoke...
Akilah Askew-Gholston (26, Oakland) is a total weirdo and aspiring songwriter who sings pretty well, but doesn't look salable and doesn't seem to understand much of anything. Simon: "Akilah, the song -- not you -- is horrible." Then she sings "Natural Woman" in a jittery shaky weird voice, and fucks it up, and yells at them for awhile, and then Paula shrieks and jumps around and is grossed out by her talking about her genitals and strange diagrams and mysterious body parts.
Simon tells her they're done, and she's not done, and Kara is almost crying, and then Akilah goes buckwild. "Simon is one of the best producers in Hollywood, Kara you're one of the best singers, Paula had a very hit song out in the early '80s when I was a child, and Randy -- excuse me -- was one of the best producers in Hollywood." Randy fully goes "Real talking!" Awesome. Get her the eff out of here. Paula tries to drag her away, and she's talking faster and faster and faster and freaks everybody the hell out, and then she sings some more. She's got a bee in her bonnet! Paula drags Akilah and the bee away, and Kara's like, "Simon, sometimes you are hardcore and sometimes you dick the mentally ill around for way too long." She's a black chick with a giant ass: mentally ill or not, Simon's going to flirt with her until the giant hook comes, or the trapdoor opens, or they release the hounds. Then she explains in the blue box that she is going to talk and talk until she is fucking ready to stop, because she is the one with the power, and she will keep talking forever, because Akilah is in charge. Even though it was sort of awesome watching Paula freak when she called her an old bitch, I so very wish that Akilah was in charge of Akilah.
| Season 8 | Episode 3
Golden Gate Bridge, Golden Tickets to Hollywood. I see what you did there, Seacrest. The dirty but Groban-esque John Twiford (27, Sherman Oaks) sings "Overjoyed" passably; Allison Iraheta (16, LA) sings a not-so-great "Natural Woman" with dumb pink hair; pretty and talented Raquel Houghton (28, LA) accidentally lets us in on her natural woman secrets when the son of the preacher man turns out to be a "she." All three of them go through to Hollywood.
The unholy child of Veronica Mars and that lipless Fire Marshal character Jim Carrey used to do on In Living Color comes in looking crazy, and promises to scat at some point. God. She offers to sing Bonnie Raitt, and then dicks around for attention for awhile trying to come up with her song. Then everything becomes amazing, because Annie Murdoch (28, Novato, CA) weirdly shouts "Summertime" as though she is having a psychotic break at the top of her lungs, including a scream that scares the shit out of Paula. Simon says it was like she was incredibly drunk. Randy's like, "Obviously you love jazz," and Simon points out that being drunk often contributes to jazz performance. Kara's like, "I'll have what she's having."
"Viva La Vida" introduces us to freckly emo-haired cutie Adam Lambert (26, Hollywood), who thinks he's got a shot. He's been in the cast of Wicked for like a year and a half, and will be singing "Bohemian Rhapsody." Two facts which in combination scare me more than maybe anything. Simon falls in love immediately, because he knows you can sell this shit. Every band in what used to be the TRL bracket is just like this: gay, with hair like this. We are turning into Japan and don't even know it. So Adam sings his song just like he's been in the cast of Wicked for like a year and a half, and -- and I do not mean this in a bad way -- has been stabbed in the abdomen. More secrets than Jason Castro's little brother, this one.
Paula loves it, Kara gets pissy with Simon for no reason, Randy thinks he has a shot at the bigtime, Simon is in, and he's through. Kara and Adam talk about his "crush" that he's had on Paula since he was ten, and Adam pretty much ignores Kara completely because she's making him uncomfortable, to the point where she gives him a last-ditch wink, but whatever, go watch him on YouTube because this lady is secretly the talented Chris Crocker and maybe the weirdest fucking thing I've ever seen in my life, and I cannot WAIT to see him freak out all over America's face. He's like what would happen to Sanjaya in prison. He's like if Ziggy Stardust and Cyndi Lauper had a very magical, very gay baby with an unbelievable range and the ability to shoot glitter and cocaine and entire battalions of Pussycat Dolls out of his hoo-hah.
| Season 8 | Episode 3
Not so the guy. That slack-key "Over The Rainbow" tells you that we are supposed to like this good-looking fellow, no matter how horrible his hair is. His mom has a seizure disorder of some kind, so he's sort of had to just throw in the towel as far as his own life, dating, etc. She cries about that, specifically all the sacrifices he's making for her. It's moderately heartwarming, because she knows what a prince he is, and there are lots and lots of hugs, and damn, he's pretty. Kai Kalama (26, San Clemente, CA) is one tall drink of water, and has the good taste to sing "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes," which nobody ever does, and makes a great impression even with his stupid hair and the skull screen-printed on his shirt. Kara gets into it with Simon once again, because she loves the guy but sort of agrees that his performance abilities could be more interesting, and they put him through. So many skulls in the auditions this year, you guys. All across America. I'm going to need you to fucking cut that out, Americans. This is not Hot Topic, and you are a Pirate of neither the Caribbean nor any other body of water.
Altogether there were twelve tickets to Hollywood tonight: Kai, a pretty blonde chick who enjoys jumping up and down and hangs with a woman with an awesome white stripe in her auburn hair; the girl who sang "Son Of A Preacher Man" to a lady; a fake redhead with a pink scarf; Adam from the theatre with black emo bangs and obligatory messenger bag gone wild on his person; the annoying pink-haired girl; fucking Tatiana; a hot girl in a sweater-dress and long Diana Ross locks; that guy that whored out six fucking generations of his family; a girl in an orange hoodie under a brown hoodie over an aqua tank over a white tank over who knows what else; happy skipping Grobanite Twiford; somebody else. Tomorrow: Louisville, KY. Where there are horses, mint julep, horrible singing, and the distinction of being a town in Kentucky people have heard of. See you there.