I'm just not buying Ryan's excitement anymore. Right around this time every year, we both seem to get very tired. I know in like two weeks he's going to be all, "This...is American Idol," and I'll be like, "But is it, really?"
The Idols run out on stage to sing "9 To 5." Ramiele cannot muster up any amount of care -- just like the last several Tuesdays, everybody does dumb dances, Michael can't remember the words, Cook can't stop mugging for anything, Jason's empty creepy grin is all over his face, Syesha's voice is still awesome and boring, Archuleta sounds crappy and looks weird, Carly is totally gross rolling around on the judges' table, Michael makes fucking horrible faces, Paula is wearing some hideous rusty-orange bondage country shirt where the skin sticks out, and Chikezie is in the audience is how sad it is. This really is American Idol.
Last night, Jason Castro was a travellin' tranny, David Cook was annoyingly awesome, KLC dressed up in a pretty dress, Ramiele wanted the fuck out of here, Brooke bounced and jerked and spazzed out on the usually excellent song "Jolene," Syesha was boring enough and jerky enough to actually sing "I Will Always Love You," Carly wasn't that bad unless you looked at the screen, Archuleta loves poor people or whatever, Michael augmented his obnoxiousness with a literal cravat, and the judges didn't know what the eff they were talking about. Dolly thinks the kids are nice. I think Dolly's nice so I'm going to try harder to be nice.
Michael is summoned to Ryan's side, having stopped making those bullshit faces for a second. Randy said he was blazin' hot, and Simon rightly thought it was the best he's ever sounded. Michael agrees that he was awesome, because that's how he rolls. Michael is safe, except from my judgment.
On his way to the stage, David Archuleta starts crying like immediately, probably because somebody littered somewhere on Earth. He then is able to verbalize that he is crying about the following things in the following order: poor people, Dolly Parton's awesomeness, and being safe.
Carly's face comes lumbering out onstage and they talk about how severely she lacks star quality, how awful her tattoos are, how unappealing she is every day, and how her husband totally sold out the Jedi when he became Darth Sidious's apprentice and whatever, and Ryan's like, "You know how you're in the bottom three every week?" And Carly's safe and all, "I know I can be a silk purse if I just dream harder!"
Dude, I just realized I hate all of them. Their dumb little faces. My favorite ones are Brooke and Cook -- whom I hate -- and I'm getting bored with her, so like, they better work on catching me in a better mood week. I thought after Amanda left I would be so into this shit, but it's like, here's what I'm seeing on the menu today. Jason Castro could literally have a lobotomy and nobody would know. David Archuleta needs somebody to rough him up a little bit. Michael and Cook will not quit with the faces and they're heading toward Constantine levels of grossness. And then there's Ramiele and Syesha who are like a neon-colored butterfly of sleepiness wafting its way through the town, and Carly's ten miles of bullshit. My spirit is broken.
And just in case I was about to rally, let's go to those stupid effing phones, shall we? On the board, these are the questions. For Carly: "What kind of music do you love doing?" Which, what do you say? "I have no discernable personality or genre, so whatever. I 'love doing' screaming music." And then for Cook, somebody asking about the bracelet, and the way that I know it's me being in a terrible mood is that my first response was that if I have to hear this fucking story one more time, I will get cancer my own self and then David will have to get another fucking bracelet we can also discuss. Then the other questions, which are too boring and/or generic to mention, except to say: you have one shot and you choose to ask Syesha about her home life? I can't think of a more boring question.
You know who can, though, is somebody named Robert, who asks Cook what other talent he would like to have, besides singing like Candlebox I guess. He can't think of any, so he says the talent of being organized, because that's how fucking awesome he is. Fly a jet plane? Got that on lockdown. Delicious French cooking? Only while I'm doing crosswords in pen. Other sad questions include a 27-year-old overweight virgin in Utah who offers to donate $5000 to Idol Gives Back in the mistaken hopes that David Cook -- who is inside her television -- will go on a date with her and give her life meaning, and a little girl from California who needs to have Ryan and Simon explained to her one more time.
Then two total tools asking what's really on everybody's mind, which is the totally clichéd "Is there anybody Randy hasn't worked with?" and "Where do Simon's insults come from?" OMG that is so true, Randy has worked with a lot of people. Hilarious. And then something about Michael and Cook wanting to sing "Islands In The Stream" on the tour or something. I can't wait to find out more about the tour, can you? Then some sadsacking 52-year-old woman asking Simon some fucking question that doesn't even make sense about how he gives "negative" critiques but then apologizes. That's such a fucking mystery, Mary. Good one. It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that he's trying to help them by being honest -- obviously, since we're all in kindergarten, he's just being mean. Mostly I'm just offended by the fact that these questions are exactly some idiot producer's idea of "what people really want to ask," and by just rolling over for that and asking these stupid questions, the callers are asking for it, because these are questions without answers. Is there anybody Randy hasn't worked with? Yeah. Fucking Beethoven. Amadeus Mozart. The guy who invented the banjo and the slack-key guitar. And why is Simon so mean? But why is Simon so mean, though? And I'm not even trying to be grumpy because I know that there are no good questions here. I can't think of a single one. "Carly, are you kidding me?" That's not even a question. "David Archuleta, does your dad beat you?" That's just rude, and would create more of the same. "Brooke, could you get awesome again please?"
Pimpmercial singing this song about how it's tricky to rock or something. Which explains why they fail: it's so tricky! Then they play basketball for an hour and by "they" I mean just the guys, while the women stand on the sidelines and cheer for them, and they're all dressed in shitty '80s clothes, it's tricky, and it's like a Bod commercial with ugly '80s clothes. "Love that Bod!" Ryan tries to make conversation with Carly, and it goes like hell, of course. Witty repartee: cross that off the list of shit Carly can handle.
Cook smarms up to the stage and Ryan asks him about how he went to the hospital and almost died and is he dead? He is not dead, he just has high blood pressure and an oddly proportioned body and a big stupid ugly melon head. He is safe, of course, and dorks on over to the sofa where he cringes at the idea of touching Carly.
Ramiele is wearing a giant t-shirt, overalls, and giant boots. She looks like one of the New Mutants, and you can cross banter off her list too. She's the first person in the bottom three, and doesn't seem to care any more than any of us do. KLC gets a lot of cheers from the audience, and then shit gets crazy awkward as she pulls out a scrap of legal pad paper that says "Kristy's Seat," and says how she belongs in the bottom three, and Ryan's like, "I don't even know what you're talking about," and then they are boring and he's weirded out by her some more, and she's also in the bottom three. Paula says that both KLC and Ramiele are people and have faces, and in the course of like two sentences she pronounces "Ramiele" about six different ways, because she is on drugs.
Then there's a pointless tape about how Nashville exists and Bo moved there and Bucky says...I don't know what Bucky is saying but he looks like a pretty lady with a mustache, so that's cool. He talks about length about something. And oh! Phil Stacey! Is still alive! He looks totally Dying Young still though, but I can say that because I'm wearing a bracelet. Awww! Bo Bice looks exactly like Bo Bice, which is to say like swamp trash with no intestines left in his swamp thorax. Is there any sadder statement than, "I started a record label"? Bo doesn't seem to understand the irony that the album after The Real Thing is the one that's the actual real thing. And he has a kid, and I refuse to describe kids anymore, because the hatemail gets so intense. Especially given that the trashier the contestant, the less literate the hatemail becomes.