Oh, hell. Danny Noriega. I am too sick and tired for Danny Noriega. Plus I already said everything I will ever have to say about Danny Noriega, one year and two weeks ago today, and it's a lot of complicated stuff that has no place in a weecap, but trust me when I say I would rather have eighteen Sanjayas stinking up the joint than foist Danny Noriega on another generation of Americans, because he's like the Girls Door: he makes us all look bad, and he got sold out before he even knew the difference, and now he's a slow-motion car accident that is paying for everybody else's shit. What you don't know about him is that he was in a punk band. I'm sure. He sings "Superstar" in exactly the same hyper-affected, Amanda LePore fake-sentimental divalicious way he does everything, and his voice sounds as awesome as it always does, and I suppose in his way he is as consistent as the rest of them. I just want to sit him down for about half an hour and talk about the choices that we make for ourselves, versus the choices that we allow others to make for us. It might be surprising. Randy calls it a snoozer and hates his slow vibrato, but respects his chops enough to talk technical instead of just giving those vague statements he often gives. Paula praises his talent, and asks him to let go and just do it -- and awesomely, praises his choice of the Carpenters version rather than the R&B ones. Simon tells him it was much better this week, and tells him he looks "terrific on camera." Once Ryan gets onstage, Simon begs Danny to quit with the neck-swinging bullshit. It's nice, because the praise has by this point sunk in enough to make Danny act basically like a human being; he calms down for a full five seconds before spazzing out again, twitching and flicking his hair and pursing his lips and making those awful sex-kitten teen MySpace faces in all directions and doing all the shit he always does.
David Hernandez was in gymnastics as a child. He thinks that this will be surprising for us, which is sort of adorably naïve, and then goes on at length about it. Onstage, he's rocking the whole hoodie/blazer look like it's 2005 and singing "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" with that shimmery, sinister Shaft accompaniment that is awesome. It's a very theatrical and rehearsed performance, and David's voice is even stronger this week. Which is sad because between all the little spoken word moments -- and the fact that this song is not, so much, a song -- he never really goes anywhere interesting. At the end he does a whole shouty, pretty, ornamental finish thing, which causes Paula of course to spontaneously combust, but the first two-thirds were just not that interesting, and the pacing was weird. I can see that he was trying to connect the dots and gradually build the song, but A) he didn't, and B) his voice is so pure and strong that it kind of defeats the purpose. The judges totally love it and how safe and well-meant it was. Simon loved it the most so far, and purely vocally I don't disagree: "I like the fact that when you are given some criticism, rather than sulking you treat it as a challenge." Simon tells him that he's actually happy to have been wrong about David in the beginning, which is always nice for them to hear.
Paula explains to Ryan that the reason the music of the 1970s is so good is because of all the good songs that came out in the 1970s. Like, she actually explains that to him, in a very serious tone.
Jason Yeager. One thing that America doesn't know about him is that he plays a lot of instruments, and...allegedly, something we also don't know is that he got a fourteen-year-old girl pregnant when he was eighteen years old. I'm not saying it's true and I have no idea, of course, but he is a little Dateline around the mushmouth area of his face. I can see it. He's wriggly and weird right out the gate, like a snake with a human head, singing one of my favorites, "Long Train Running." He looks pretty nice if you can ignore the fake-ass smarmy smile and the back-and-forth, unending wriggling. "Without love, where would you be now?" Um, entering high school without the burden of motherhood, I suppose. It's boring and inoffensive, and his shirt is well-tailored, and he ends on a weird rain-dance kind of pose at the end with his head down and arms held out. Randy calls it "pitchy" and karaoke. Paula is befuddled not only by his performance but by his persona and his song choice: the song does not have a lot of notes in it, but he's one of those really good singers that deserves great "singer songs." Simon calls the song, particularly the "drunk" ending, "ghastly," and explains that he's a "quite good singer who can't perform." Ryan and Jason discuss how much he sucks, and Simon actually manages to piss Jason off by begging them to start playing the Oscars music and shut him up. Ha! But see, here's the deal with Jason: he was the opposite tonight of how he was last week, as requested, but in the same way that a black bunny is the opposite of a white bunny -- still a soft fuzzy little bunny. Or sex offender, or whatever.
I am uneasy with Chikezie. (HA!) I thought I detected 'tude the first time we saw him, and he totally acted up last week, but on the other hand... The thing we don't know about Chikezie Eze's name is that it is Nigerian. Not French like it looks. He then, in the end of his package, makes the same joke I made at the top of the paragraph, but not as funny. Or at least not at all spontaneously. I don't know the song he's singing, but he's singing it pretty well: "I Believe To My Soul" by Ray Charles, covered on Donny Hathaway's album Everything Is Everything, which I mention just in case it's relevant, because I believe to my soul that Lauryn Hill is still crazy. Did you ever see Iron-Jawed Angels? That was an interesting movie. Now Chikezie is done, and he did a great job, which Randy loves and the crowd loves. "This is the guy that we fell in love with, dude," he yells, and then goes on at length. Chikezie almost rolls around with pleasure, it's great. Paula points out how the refrain ("know my name") applies to Simon's inability to remember his name. Simon also loves the cleverness here, and asks him lovingly if he hated "the horror show that was [Chikezie]" last week, and Chikezie says something awesome: that the only ugly part about his performance last week was getting rude with Simon. He then adorably critiques Simon's redundant wardrobe with a giant smile on his face, earning Simon's love and respect for ever. Well played, Eze. You managed to win both me and Simon over in about five seconds.
The desperately boring and pointless David Cook is a huge..."word nerd." He loves..."crossword puzzles," and..."word searches." Yeah. He's "kind of a geek" for..."vocab." Oh, it gets worse. We then get a montage of what some subliterate intern apparently thinks is high-powered "vocab" -- the possibility that these are David's own offerings of evidence is simply too depressing to be true -- and it's a list of such blindingly rare words and phrases as "juxtapose," "vindicating," "ostentatious," "homage," "culmination," "obscurity," "permeated," "optimistically pessimistic"... Oh, shit. These really are the words he's so proud of, aren't they? That's so gross. They should not have let him do this. An adult should have stopped him at the critical juncture. He tells us that he's "enamored" with, "like, what words mean," and that this dizzying Beautiful Mind-esque romance between him and the wonder of words is, "for lack of a better term," a "break from reality." Oh, dear. I assumed anybody who looked like that and seemed as boring as he does must have something in the bag, but...I guess sometimes God doesn't give with any hands whatsoever. That's too bad. And even worse, he isn't even singing yet! David Cook gives us "All Right Now" with guitar in hand and much fewer of those weird Constantine eyeball maneuvers, but mostly this is because his eyes are closed. Probably he is thinking about more words.
The singing isn't bad, but I'm lying if I tell you I'm not totally distracted by bullshit that just happened there. What the fuck are you supposed to do with that? Knowing, as we do, that something like thirty million people are watching this and either going, "OMG I'm moving to Canada" or -- terrifyingly -- "That David Cook is one smart kid." I'm offended on behalf of America because putting him up there and pretending those are secret weird long special words is a lot like giving us all permission to be as stupid as David Cook, which means that this show is to blame, because the show didn't make David Cook stupid -- it's just making us stupider. The judges talk, but I don't know what they're saying because of the "vocab."
Simon tells David he has no charisma because he's like this big stupid unshaven toddler-looking freak that can barely read, and David Cook -- because he's stupid -- goes right to the "I don't have to win you over, Simon" place. Unearned. And Simon tells him to suck it, because he's offering him an opinion that has nothing to do with being friends with David, and everything to do with helping David, and that apparently in addition to being the most boring person in the entire universe and stupid to a level not even Kristy Lee Cook could deal with, is also unable to read a room, and kind of a dick. Neato. "Women like smart men," Paula finishes up, and like: what do you do with that? Send Ryan up onstage. Ryan asks if Simon is irritated with David, and Simon reiterates -- and I agree -- that he doesn't fucking need some snot-nosed idiot telling him how the motherfucking show works, and that David can go suck a nut. Or, as David would say, a "testicle."
Tomorrow, join Joe R. and the ladies -- I cannot wait to see what they think we don't know about them! -- and I'll see you Thursday for results.