So what I heard was that Lauren Alaina was arrested on La Cienega Boulevard trying to steal a car. That's what I heard. All hopped up on Pixie Stix and butter, just wailing on a young mother of three. The Last Ford Focus Picture Show.
Upside: Haley advances to the Final.
Downside: Zero downside.
But they did something to her, some Clockwork Orange kind of thing, and even though Haley was prepped -- ready to sing, okay, "House of the Rising Sun," "I Who Have Nothing" and "Bennie and the Jets," the three best things of this whole year besides learning how Casey Abrams exists -- then I guess it all went to hell.
Haley: "I blame the Judges, basically. Some more."
Seacrest: "We have to blame somebody, because otherwise this is one cold motherfucker of a universe."
AS PER USUAL
Scott looks nervous; Lauren looks stupid and happy. Nothing on Earth could remind me how much I actually like Scott McCreary than putting him to Lauren Alaina. Nothing could ever do that job.
Scott: "What, me worry?"
Seacrest: "So like... What's with the car stealing?"
Lauren, still uppity: "I'm here, I'm ready to sing, and I'm fine. Don't worry about it."
Random Doctor Guy: Explains the actual deal, which is that Lauren oversang in rehearsals because she's an idiot and has no idea what she's doing, but they've juiced her with stem cells and bourbon so it's okay, but this still won't be fun in any way.
MTV's Own Jim Cantiello: "Or they're just replacing her with her mother since nobody will know the difference."
Seacrest: "Carrie Underwood will choose Lauren's song, and George Strait will choose Scott's song, at some point. That sounds about right. Hey, you know what? Why don't we just have Carrie Underwood and George Strait come onstage and sing whatever they feel like singing, kick the middlemen in their middlenuts, and then this thing won't be quite such a trudge into nightmare."
j/k! NOT EVEN HALEY COULD DO THAT
Scott sings "Gone" with all the energy one would expect of a ringer that doesn't give a shit about any of this. It's laid back. I know you can't tell because of how he's always so smug and slutty all the time, but even for Scotty it's pretty laid back. I hope he's having fun. God bless. I mean, I'm trying to locate my ire for Scott and I simply can't find it. Behind the jug-ears? No, they're adorable. The eyebrow-fucking nastiness? He doesn't even know he's doing that anymore. It's just... Scott, you guys. The Pre-Anointed Am.Idol.X. Simba, left to feed on a bloated cultural corpse. Anglerfish doing-it.
I feel like it's already June right now, and we don't know who he even is anymore. #scottythebody no longer trending. #americanidol no longer a valid form of entertainment for anybody but swamp people. A ghost entertainment, for the entertainment of ghosts. Twit-twit. Jug-jug. (Ears.) Time keeps on slippin' slippin' slippin' into an irrelevance that has simultaneously everything and nothing to do with Steven Tyler.
Claire Fisher: "You can't take a picture of this."
IT'S ALREADY "GONE"
For years probably you've been reading this, or at least watching the show, and you know within seconds if the person you're talking to is going to give you the shibboleth that says you're both in the club of still watching this crap. But this season the whole thing turned inside out, and all the things the haters said turned true. If you'd never ever watched this show -- if you pompously, I-Don't-Even-Own-A-TVishly, arrogantly -- and were asked to describe this show, guess what: That's what we're watching now. It stopped being imaginary. The image of this show and the actuality of this show have now crossed the streams.
Reality Show Law says that all shows eventually turn ghetto and become irrelevant. We've come close, don't you know how close we've come, over the years. But never like this. I don't have the proper mechanisms inside myself to think about this show in any real way. In photography there's this concept of generation loss, a copy of a copy of a copy that just turns into noise. Add to that a mad scramble to stay on top, and it just... Well, look at this recap. Look what happens.
The thing that kept me going with this show was the honest belief that it carried, in some way, the zeitgeist. A show that regularly outperforms the Superbowl, obviously that is some kind of Athenian democracy shit in some way. I still believe that it was. Carrie and Bo didn't bother me because we were (well, "were") at war, and it was time to feel some gritty America dirt beneath our feet: It said something about America that was kind of gross, but also pretty okay. Adam/Kris/Gokey was a fertile tumult indeed. A semiotic maelstrom, about sex and masculinity and the way we relate to one another and young people and old people and all that Mercutio shit that I love. I mean, think about David/David: That was about the nicest thing America ever did to itself.
But the thing about this season is, I don't know that this show has much to say about America anymore. I don't blame even the show, because God knows they tried. Loewenstern and Naima and Haley and Casey Casey Casey... We started out with something like 65% Siobhans. It's not the show that fucked it up. (It's possible that Steven Tyler fucked it up or is at least partially to blame, but not really. Ditto the early and still grotesque loss of Colton Dixon and Caleb Hawley, from which I still show no sign of recovering.)
I just don't know where we -- the All of Us, the ones that managed to make it work together, the ones that held hands across America and made this decent to experience, the America that chooses the Idol -- I don't know where We, collectively, went instead.
Glee makes absolutely no sense on any level, so that's out. Shit is not yet that bleak. For a second I thought we were engaging nationally with the Real Housewives, but I think that star's about burnt out. I would like to think that we went to The Good Wife, I would think highly of us if that were the case.
My fear is that we went to Twitter. I don't know how you come back from that one.
Or maybe we just went: Everywhere.
Or maybe it's symptomatic of my post-X generation that I'm still looking for a narrative at all.
Or maybe it's every generation that eventually figures that one out, maybe that's why Hawkeye was so pissed all the time; maybe this is the feeling Boomers feel, when they find themselves unable to stop talking about JFK. Or hell, maybe that's why Hemingway fought bulls, or TS Eliot happened, or everything went downhill after This Side Of Paradise. That Viktor Frankl thing, the Will to Meaning.
What I'm saying is that there are certain ways, not necessarily important ways or lasting ways, but very powerful ways in which Ryan Seacrest, I don't know how to go on without. Shit used to mean shit, and now it doesn't mean shit, and maybe it hasn't for awhile. Ryan Seacrest is essentially indistinguishable from John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr., I guess, is what I'm trying to say.
Naw, obviously that is not what I am saying. That would be nuts. But you have to understand that once something becomes reliable -- even a Wonderwall, even a human lean-to -- it's only seconds from dying. That's how God keeps you on your toes, when he's not talking to Scott or murdering people for Lauren Alaina or making Naima act all weird.
But uh, I'm guessing by January 2012 -- or the end of this recap -- we'll have made our peace with that too. I believe in Us more than I believe in We, and this story's no longer about either.
SO LET'S KEEP DANCING (TILL THE WORLD ENDS AND/OR BREAK OUT THE BOOZE & HAVE A BALL)
Lauren's pick from this season is a song I am absolutely positive I have never heard before in my life. Was this the week I was drunk? "Flat On The Floor." Nope, not ringing a bell.... Oh, right. It's that song that sounds exactly like every other song. It's fun! If you don't look at the screen and just listen to the song, she's basically not really there anyway so you can dig the fun song.
If you were worried about her voice being blown out and all of her performances being useless, I have some news for you.
Lauren Is: Fake, fake, fake. I have run out of words for Lauren. Simpering, for sure. Wielding her body ineffectively. Not that I ever talk about the songs or the singing or anything really going on onscreen, but this time that's literally going to have to be true. She made weird faces but there wasn't really any singing.
My cunning plan was just to blabber about America instead of hitting bleep-bloop every time, see how long it took you to notice, since I can't do the latter every time I get bored, because this recap then would be just a page of those, which isn't really a rock-star maneuver. Kind of an ALL WORK AND NO PLAY deal, which is not how I generally roll. But I'll be damned if I can figure out another way to make it through the four unnecessary songs, because there's nothing to talk about. What, I'll tell the country music joke again.
It's a Hallmark Card, all thoughtless and careless and free of authentic emotion, but you open it up bam: Somebody's gettin' raped.
I wish I didn't smoke, so that I could take up smoking tonight, smoking with cigarettes, and just smoke with cigarettes all through the night, and steal a car like Lauren Alaina, and drive it all the way into the sun.
BUT RESPONSIBILITY IS THE HALLMARK OF ARISTOCRACY & SMOKING IS ALWAYS A BAD IDEA
George Strait has chosen a song for Scott that involves crushing on a girl in the third grade. Kind of a process story. It involves monkey bars. Possibly pedophilia, I'm not really paying attention.
...Oh, I see. The song is about whether or not a woman will check Yes or No. How romantic. Nothing turns me on more than a guy pretending to be in the third grade and approaching me without the foundation of his convictions. This is why we dated all those sexless hipsters, before realizing that getting infantilized is a dirty, dirty business with no exit strategy and kickball was invented for stoned, boring, free spirits, and I want those hours back. I don't remember once doing the thing with the Paper Thing and it ever coming out:
You will live in a One-Person Apartment, have Zero Children at 33 and a passing acquaintance with The Concept Of A 401(k), settle for Ben Gibbard, and drink Domestic Beers until you fight about chillwave just 2 'feel' 'something.'
This is what happens when you try to relate to something unrelatable. You are looking directly at the reason Nashville Star was invented. I didn't want to share yet more of my Bridget Jones romantic life with you, after that whole Marry/Fuck/Kill thing last week with the Muppets and the stars of M*A*S*H I decided enough was enough, move on. Which kinda sucks only because the one about the Incredibly Nineties Guy I'm dating right now is hilarious and I don't think I've told it to you*. But this, now, Scotty's talking about this and that, will we check "Yes," and the fix is in already so it's a meaningless appeal, and I just went... Elsewhere. Oppositestown of what's going on here. From Memphis to Silver Lake. Is this a valid form of protest? I don't guess so; more like a Yellow Wallpaper form of protest. Let's move on, or at least try.
But seriously there was so much goddamn kickball, you guys.
I CHECK: VEHEMENTLY NO
Lauren's Idol, Carrie Underwood -- take a big ol' bite of that concept, really smell the bouquet and swirl that around -- has chosen... Some same song. Pretty dress, chunk-emphasizing cowboy boots of course, and a direct violation of the "take one thing off" school of accessorizing. Her voice sounds better, mostly, and the slower pace makes it a little easier to listen to. "Maybe It Was Memphis," I guess, is the point of the song. And who the hell am I to disagree? Maybe it was. Maybe it was Memphis after all.
The furthest east I've ever been -- up until week, which btw, I'll be celebrating the end of the TV season in The Concrete Jungle Where Dreams Are Made Of, following Blake Lively around incognito in a giant Imogen Heap Carmen Sandiego hat and pinning giant flowers to myself, which is how I understand NYC to be properly done -- is Memphis. This is literally as close as I can get to this song without just spiraling out into randomness and talking about how Jonathan Groff has gotten puffy in a way that makes me nervous. So, Memphis.
1999. Drove all night, with my best friend and my best frenemy, and spent the entire trip -- maybe it was because of Memphis, probably not -- writing passive-aggressive notes back and forth with the latter on an antique portable typewriter in the backseat:
A_____: jacob all you care about is seeing the world's biggest ball of twine & that is a metaphor
Jacob: ur so goth lol
GOOD THING I'M NO LONGER INSUFFERABLE
Seacrest: "I'm so bored. I'm going to miss Oprah."
Jacob: "I love you so, so much. I am pre-missing you. You are like one hundred Oprahs. Not in terms of power or magicalness necessarily, or because you talk about anything that matters, but in terms of your impact on my specific life. I mean this as a compliment."
Jackson: "First round Lauren."
Lopez: "I am checked right out of this mess."
Tyler: "I choose Lauren because Scotty won't have sex with me under any circumstances, but I'm gross enough to hope she might."
FIRST ROUND TO THE FEMALE MINOR
Taio Cruz: Coca-Cola paid me to sing/ A pretend song about Coca-Cola/ So let's do this shit/ With some references to Coca-Cola.
Iovine: "Yep. I'm still here, okay."
Scotty: Turns both the grody sex faces and the fake country-singer voice up to eleven, while his video journey takes place behind him.
Sample lyrics: I don't have too much experience/ But I know true love is real.
ibid, much repeated: I love you this big.
YOU'RE KILLIN' ME, SMALLS
Jackson: "You know how I perseverate on the ages of all contestants to the exclusion of relevant facts?"
ibid.: "You may be in it to win it."
Lopez: "I like how you get out from under the onus of singing songs nobody cares about or has ever heard before by singing country songs, which are the same song all the time. Very slick."
Tyler: "Nobody gives a good goddamn what I have to say."
Not even Ryan can keep a straight face when he talks about how, at this juncture, immense pressure continues to mount.
*(Fine. I call him up I go, "What are you doing?" he says, "I'm listening to the Melvins and then I'm going to watch a Kurt Cobain documentary" so I say, "Get over here right now" and he goes, "Given that you're writing a book about explaining millennial post-Klosterman media to Generation X, are you or are you not dating me for material," and I'm all "Of course not! That would be crazy.")
THE ACTUAL LYRICS WERE "I LOVE YOU THIS BIG." THAT IS OUTSTANDING.
A reader whose tweets are locked and therefore I will not tell you who he is, maybe he's somebody really important and you'll never know, maybe it was President Obama even, but he pointed out that e.e. cummings already pretty much recapped this whole thing:
Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both
parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard
Humanity i love you because
when you're hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you're flush pride keeps
you from the pawn shops and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house
Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down
on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity
i hate you
Not usually a cummings fan but damn, girl.
I AM SO ALL ABOUT THIS WOMAN RIGHT NOW
Iovine, possibly I misunderstood this part: "Lauren reminds me of my mother."
Lauren will be singing a song about her mom. That is so beautifully fitting somehow. Of course she's singing about her mom. She'll probably give birth to her mother in the middle of the song. Or a tornado. Or give birth to a tornado to kill her mom in the middle of this song. What a worthless television show we made. An entire hour of songs that would take New Directions straight to Nationals.
Iovine, pandering: "Moms are the bedrock of American society..."
And the clinch: "...And they are all going to be moved by this song like crazy."
Even awesomer? Her mom holds her hand up in the air and sings along with the song. This song that is specifically about her, about how she is a "rock" and "grace" and "an angel," okay, and then Lauren goes down and slow-dances with her mother and sings in her face and then they hold hands. Who is crying? Nobody. Nobody involved in this shitshow even bothers to spare a moment for pretend emotional authenticity.
It is possible that Jimmy Iovine is a worse thing even than Steven Tyler. It is just a portion of possible.
After the song, all cameras on her, the mom finally cries. Lauren tries to squirt out a single tear -- the trick she tries every week and never once has pulled off -- but as per, she instead appears to be, um, turning a gas into a liquid. If you know what I mean.
Jackson: "[Oh, the ten miles of bullshit and attempts to make everybody care about what just happened; it is gross on a scale that exceeds maybe anything he's ever pulled. He literally goes hoarse trying to manufacture a group damn about this.]"
Lopez: "Maybe you just won this show! Just kidding."
Lauren: Is gross also in the way that praise from J. Lo puts her closer to weeping than singing an entire song about her teen mom when her teen mom is standing right there.
STEVEN TYLER, WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS?
Tyler, verbatim: "I liked how Jimmy said moms are the bedrock for kids right now."
(Not about the song. Also: WHAT?)
Tyler, verbatim: "And I'm just telling you, you just gave it up to your mom like that."
(Still not about the song. Or a well-formed utterance. Or English.)
Tyler, verbatim: "And as far as I'm concerned the first time I saw you I thought you were my American Idol; I think America's going to find that to be true. As well."
(Nope, still nothing to do with just happened. Also, we're aware. You are not telling us anything we didn't already know. We have cracked that code. You are all about Lauren Alaina. Got the memo. Pretty sure you're mandated by law to come to us, door to door, and inform us at this point.)
Tyler, verbatim: "You are in my eyes."
(Bwuh?)
AND AN ADDITIONAL: YIPES!
Seacrest: "I am fucking exhausted. How about you guys?"
Audience: "Why are we even here? This seemed like a cool idea an hour ago."
Lauren: "My teen mommy is pretty!"
Seacrest, dripping with awesomeness and poison: "Moms always are, Lauren."
Who won? Well, Scotty. So the Judges all say that Lauren won, except for J. Lo.
Lopez: "I literally could not give less of a shit."
Tyler, verbatim: "Lauren, sorry honey."
(So, Scotty?)
Tyler, verbatim: "Scotty, Lauren gets it hands down."
(So, Lauren?)
Perhaps this is a parsing issue. Perhaps it could be punctuated like so:
Tyler, verbatim: "Lauren. Sorry, Honey [I mean] Scotty. Lauren gets it hands down."
Or: "Lauren, sorry. Honey! Scotty, Lauren gets it hands down."
Or: "Lauren. Sorry, 'Honey.' Scotty, Lauren gets it. Hands down!"
I miss Paula Abdul. Occasionally. I mean, at least the lights were on. Nobody was home -- maybe many people were not home -- but with Steven Tyler it's like not even the lights are on. It's not even a house, it's like... A rabbit warren. After a bunny rabbit massacre. It's like the beginning of Watership Down. The lights aren't on, all the bunnies have bled out, it's just busted pipes and a flea circus and pieces of a ripped-up diary and, like, a music box slowly winding down. And the psychic bunny to wander across it starts shivering and he's all, "I don't know what happened here exactly but I'm picking up on some Silent Hill shit and we best bounce."
IN SUMMATION
Scott: Fist-pumped his way through name-checking various automobile brands.
Lauren: Will one day get her driver's license; is hated by J. Lo.
Scott: Pretended we were America and he was our boyfriend. Wrong, and mostly wrong.
Lauren: Advanced the theory that possibly Memphis was to blame.
Scott: Loved us This Big; dreamed a similar amount of Big.
Lauren: Teen Moms.
Seacrest: "So much shit is happening tomorrow. Guessing you don't care. Too bad I signed on for another fifty years of this crap. We are not, as they say, the Bedrock for Kids Right Now anymore."
PROBABLE DUETS
Scott: An underaged crying girl in her first two-piece swimsuit
Haley: Jill Zarin's Publicist
Durbin: Journey or some shit, one of those guys
Casey: A person whose Homerian epithet includes an affliction, e.g. "Blind Gums," "Melon Sucking," "Woodenbelly"
Naima: Pulitzer-Winning Poet Maya Angelou and/or the reunited cast of A Different World
Stefano: Bruce LaBruce
Karen Rodriguez: Friendster
Ashthon: Maroon 5
Old McDonald: Somebody from Hellraiser
Pia: A Sense of Regret and/or Thia Megia and/or a Kia
Jacob Lusk: Tyler Perry as Tyler Perry's Jacob Lusk and/or More Illogical Comparisons to Luther Vandross
A Person With Downs Syndrome And No Limbs: American Idol S10 contestant Lauren Alaina and/or Chris Medina and/or Danny Gokey and/or His Dead Wife's Brother, Still Indian-Chiefing At You
BONUS COOKIE: A LIST OF SADDENING THINGS ABOUT DAVID COOK'S RETURN TO THE SHOW FOR A RANDOM REASON RIGHT NOW
1. David Cook, who honestly I love the guy, once again back on American Idol and having to pretend it's his choice/a good idea.
2. David Cook, singing the "Don't You (Forget About Me)" goodbye song, which was somehow less sad when we just heard it, DAUGHTRY style, without watching him pretend it is his choice/a good idea.
3. David Cook, returning to a glorified karaoke contest, to sing not just the cover-sounding songs that are his bread and butter but an actual cover song.
4. David Cook, singing "Don't You (Forget About Me)" at any time, even alone in his bedroom.
5. Still an attractive man. Same head size. Dressed like Old McDonald a little. We wish him only the best. When I say I hope he doesn't ever come back, I mean it with love. Not that I'll know.