Joanne Borgella has so very much hair and seems like a down girl. She talks in her prepackage about how it's so weird how people expect her, as a plus-size black model, to sing soul, even though that's what she sings. Then we get to see my girl Cardin get eliminated in the Chair to her one more time. Then Joanne sings one of my favorite songs from childhood, "I Say a Little Prayer." Her voice is of a certain quality, but something's happening between her mouth and her ears where she's singing a note but it's not the note she thinks she's saying. Her tone is for shit, and it's joyless and sad, and nothing special at all. My gosh, what a terrible little thing has happened! Joanne! Stop being sick! You are singing much more poorly than you need to be singing right now!
Randy calls it "a little weird," but likes the power notes she was saving up for the end; Paula loves her confidence but wonders where she stashed it, and didn't love the performance. Simon, of course, didn't like it at all, because she didn't bring it at all, and it was obvious that she wasn't present for it, and it was nothing special. Joanne, in addition to being sick, is now suffering a broken heart, but she knows he's right too, which is kind of the saddest part. Her adorable parents are like, "...And that's how Simon gets poisoned tonight." Joanne labors over bantering with Ryan, obviously dying to get off her feet, but she's so charming and smart that it's worth listening to her speak, even when she's only half there. Paula tries to make it all about her, somehow, and flops around like the Scarecrow before Ryan gets us back on track and gives the numbers.
Now it's...that same pretty blonde girl again. Dude, earlier today we watched Nightmare On Elm Street IV: The Dream Master, which as you know is the most ass-kicking awesome movie in the world, and also contains my favorite song of all time, "Anything, Anything" by Dramarama. But so there's a part just like this in the movie, where Alice gets caught in a loop and keeps doing the same thing over and over, so that she is prevented from saving her bodybuilding friend Waitress Debbie from being turned into a cockroach by Freddy Krueger. So I guess I have Alice to thank for putting me on the alert as far as how sometimes this happens, because clearly "Alaina Whitaker" is code for "Freddy Krueger is pulling some shit on you," and I am not falling for it.
So while I'm off to save the bodybuilders of my acquaintance before they become cockroaches, let's listen to this "Alaina Whitaker" sing "More Today Than Yesterday," which I love, because I love all things Chicago. Roxie Hart, Deep-Dish Pizza, Punky Brewster, Amy Grant Collaborators and Feminist Artists Of The 1970's are my top five all-time Jeopardy! categories, is how much I love Chicago. Who, Paula tells us, are not...the people of this song. It's a band called Spiral Staircase. I did not know that; good on you, Abdul. Can you tell I don't want to deal with Amanda Overmyer yet? Let me make some more lists, and tell you more about some movie I saw this one time.
Amy Davis sang "Blue Bayou" at her audition, and I liked her. She's a trade show model and grad student, two awesome things; Hollywood Week she did a tepid slow version of "Me & Bobby McGee," which is kind of a dick move, but I don't know. ["I have a couple questions about that: 1) Isn't the song already pretty slow, until the end there? 2) How was the Amy-ized version we saw any slower than the original in the second place? I know Janis seems like low-hanging fruit but she's so much harder to do well than she seems, and I wish they'd stop trying. ...Okay, those weren't really 'questions' so much as 'complaining.'" -- Sars] She looks like Summer Glau a little bit, in the face, which could go one of two ways, always. In this case, it's a positive thing. Less positive? Her shit-tastic version of "Where the Boys Are," which I refuse to even sit through. Bleep-bloop over the quavering nervous voice, the crossed eyes, the wavering tuneless wailing and whining...I've never heard shit like that on this show before. It's like she's a theremin and there's somebody just off-camera having a seizure.
Randy tries to be nice and say she was emulating a country star like Patsy Cline, "scooping" into the notes, but leaves out the part that maybe she just couldn't locate them at all. Paula says she is pretty. Simon says she is pretty, but absolutely the worst thing in the universe, although tellingly he describes her fate as a "struggle" this week and not the milkshake-drinking she deserves. Ryan doesn't even have time for this, girl -- he just steps discreetly over the roadkill and introduces the one.
Whom I do actually recognize, because she's the blonde girl that I actually like. Brooke White, the girl that's never seen an R-rated movie, such as Nightmare On Elm Street IV: The Dream Master. That poor, poor girl. I loved her in her interview, I loved her in Hollywood, I love her playing the piano, I love her crazy hair, I love her giant crazy Muppet-Janice mouth, I love nannies, I love her whole thing. She's adorable and smart and funny. Also funny: her totally intense guitar-accompanied "Happy Together," the fact that the bronchitis/flu doesn't seem to have affected her pitch at all, and -- most hilariously -- the fact that she makes the song interesting. I like the song, don't get me wrong, it's one of the few overplayed songs of this type that I honestly love, but it doesn't sound very different usually. I might actually listen to this on purpose. Are they doing the studio versions yet? When does that start? The golden light of a thousand suns illuminates her from behind and she kind of sparkles from all over herself like a magical happy creature. Or Steve Carell.
FREDDY KRUEGER! YOU HAVE NO POWER OVER ME!
Kady Malloy is 18, hails from Houston, and works in a recording studio. I think I liked her, but I also think that this is a dark magical spell and she already sang like five songs tonight. Is she the one that can sing like Britney? Oh, there she goes. I'm getting tired of Kady Malloy -- as though that is her name -- who sings...YES! "Groovy Kind Of Love!" Fabulous! Is she doing it justice? I think she's making out with it, which is one way to go with it. Is she impersonating Celine Dion? Is she this year's Scott Savol Secret Squirrel and we'll never know what her real voice sounds like? Or is this her real voice? If so, I think she should let a different personality take over every week, because this is kind of sleepy-making, which makes the honking missed notes even more noticeable.
The crowd seems to really like her, Randy squeaks and squeals at her for a bit before complaining that it stayed boring the whole time, and she lost concentration. Too true, Jackson. Paula thinks she looks pretty, but wonders who on earth she is. Simon calls it Night Of The Living Dead, which is another awesome movie Brooke will never, ever see. He tells Kady that her personality disappeared when she started singing, which is exactly what happened. The best part of her whole onstage performance comes in right this second, as she aims daggers of such exquisite icy heat out of her eyeballs and into his eyeballs and basically makes me feel like somebody's getting the shit kicked out of them when they least expect it. And just out of frame, she's wearing a glove with knives coming out of it, and she pretty much tells the judges that they're assholes and just don't get it. How Chikezie Noriega of you, sweetie. She even rolls her eyes when Ryan tries to bullshit her, and then just wanders offstage. I think she came like thisclose to kicking him in the shin just because she's pissed. How unattractive.
Asia'h Epperson's dad is still dead.
As is her rendition of "Piece Of My Heart." She swings her neck around more than Danny Noriega, seems not to comprehend a single word of the lyrics, or how to pronounce them, and she seems to be wearing a napkin ring as a people ring. Randy tells her it was great, which it wasn't, and that he was impressed, which he wasn't, and Paula says she had really good moments, which she didn't, and Simon says it was his favorite of the night, which may or may not be true, I have no idea, Ryan thinks he means it and totally brightens up and flirts with him for the rest of the segment, so it served a purpose I guess, but as a song I hated it. I felt screamed at, begged at, pleaded with, and yanked on. And not in the slightly irritating way of all Janis Joplin singing, either, but in the deeply irritating way of Asia'h Epperson.
Whose dead father is totally, utterly, irrevocably deceased.
Ramiele Malubay is not only adorable but will be singing "You Don't Have To Say You Love Me," which I believe was originally written and performed by Nadia Turner, if I'm reading these notes correctly. So it's nice to think about Nadia and what she's up to, and how if you put her on the stage to Ramiele they would look hilarious, and if you put her on the stage to Webelos Godspell, the hope is that they would make out, a little bit. (Hey, you know who's missing? Black Pink, what was her name? Vecepia? V-Speezica? Pescatorio Von Stackenbottom? I had high hopes for her, wherever she is now.)
I'm pleased as punch to relate that she totally rocks it, and furthermore does this with an exact recreation of Christian's untenably idiotic hairstyle, which she also totally rocks. I've felt warmly toward this girl from the beginning, but I am really impressed by her tonight -- very professional and practiced and confident and deliberate in what she does. I realize there's a whole novelty thing with the "little girl"/"big voice" Clay Aiken bullshit they're going to say every five seconds from here on out, but they do know how amazing she is, and the lights and music all line up like trained poodles for her. Neat. Randy and Paula are so into it that they don't even make sense when they talk about it, but it's clear the whole studio adored the performance, and cheers every word. Simon calls her the most consistent person from Hollywood, and congratulates her on being the best singer of the night.
Ramiele and Ryan get cute about her hair and makeup, and Ryan compliments her shoes as first "great," then Anderson Cooper Alerts down to mauve with a "nice," and Ramiele just rolls her eyes that he's still trying that shit, all, "Oh, Ryan." It's adorable. And I mean...when you're this weird and unrelenting about the gay thing, it becomes the thing about which you are being totally gay. Which, yes, sidesteps the question and erases it from our minds, sure. But it does so at the cost of our interest in whether you're gay -- which we never really cared about anyway -- and refocuses it instead on the way in which your sexuality is otherwise altered. Which is, forgive me, I think not really the effect you wish to create. I mean, which is worse, really? "I think that you are maybe gay"? Or, "So you're not gay? Then what in hell is wrong with you?"? I mean, I don't care either way, you know I think he's great, but I just don't get that mindset at all. I'm seeing a lotta hustle, lotta energy out there -- but not a whole lot of the kind of result you started out trying to obtain. Which offends me, because inefficiency of any kind offends me, but especially those kind of fucked-up trips you pull on yourself, that nobody but you actually cares about. Unproductive.
Syesha Mercado tells us she's not sick, and I am glad for her, because it sucks to be sick. But what sucks more than being sick is crapping all over "Tobacco Road" having just given up your "I have the illness also!" card, which I'll remind you she just did, seconds before this crappy singing job. She throws some huge bellowing note across the end of it for like a hundred bars. Which would be so great, if it were in key. Randy's going to say the word "pitchy," I can feel it in the bones and little muscles and whatever things inside a person's ear. What else is in there? Tissue? Diamonds. Little tiny nuns, I have no idea. But they're all in agreement that this performance was pitchy, dawg. And Randy does say the "pitchy" word, but then all three of the judges talk about how great it was. Was it really? It sounded horrible to me, like the scene of an accident, with one lady just screaming off-key and croaking down into her chest on the lowest notes and then abruptly holding one note for awhile that is not quite at the pitch she thinks it is. Whatever, great, she's cute, awesome, have fun. Two hours is a long fucking time to be looking at these people.
Carly Smithson, predictably, is going to finish up the night. We get to see her ride a bike, and be a person with gross tattoos near other gross people with tattoos. Admittedly, she owns the tattoo shop, which is cool because she owns a business, but sad because it's a tattoo shop. Then she says how her record company "imploded," which isn't true, but I bet it feels like it when you have dreams and nearly achieve them, and then your dream goes away. I bet that feels like imploding, I'm not going to pick that nit.
"The Shadow Of Your Smile" is a song I don't know about. Which is funny because it won a Grammy and an Oscar one time back in the olden days. It's one of those songs that might have a tune and I just cannot locate it, so I can't speak to that aspect of her performance. I can say though that she now looks like a comic book shop in real life that likes to wield a sword on the weekends, and that when your teeth are that jacked up, you should not sing songs with orthodontic meanings or references. Because the shadow of Carly's smile is saying, "I don't sound that great! But I look busted!"
Randy and Paula line up such a fucking horrible cavalcade of lies and bullshitty ass-kissing that it just goes around my ear and into the wall, I mean it's ridiculous how perfect they tell her she was, which she wasn't, and then Simon calls her on it, and it nearly makes her cry, which makes me feel kind of bad for her. But this is the first time I've heard her sing, really, and it was crappy, and he's right that it was crappy and a little creepy, if likeable. Plus, she leans back so that Ryan won't get her disease, and then Ryan and Paula talk about Simon's "technique" with the "mic," and it goes from an innocent place to a...I won't say "prurient" because I don't know for sure what Ryan or Paula are thinking at this moment, because who the fuck knows what Paula's ever thinking, so I cannot say it's prurient, but it is weird and a little off-putting, and Carly's just about had it, and finally Ryan kicks it to the review.
Kristy Lee Cook spazzing out and looking like she needs a good exorcism between the eyes; Joanne sending herself home; some blonde girl singing; Amanda babbling and stomping stupidly around like a chubby infant in her mommy's dominatrix costume and fright wig; some cross-eyed girl singing totally horribly; Brooke White being absolutely awesome; Alexandréa freaking out your mind like a spinning wheel of crazy; some blonde girl sucking the life out of "Groovy Kind Of Love"; dead dad; Ramiele owning everybody's ass in two-inch eyelashes; Syesha searching desperately for a point while looking lovely; the horrifying Shadow of Carly's Jack O' Lantern Smile.
Tomorrow night, I don't know what's going on, but I know I'll be bummed out. I can think of three people total that I would like to leave, and there are maybe four guys and four girls that I think are completely perfect, so: based on my track record, I think that Brooke's the Leslie this year, and that's all I can think about, except for how as Ryan says goodnight, Kady (?) and Alaina (?) are standing staring over each of his shoulders, and you literally would think they were twins, the only way you can even tell is that Kady's still hauling around that huge old knife she's going to kill all of us with, which means some blonde girl is going home, but only two of the nineteen blonde girls is going home, so maybe Brooke's safe after all, but I doubt it. This show makes no bones about how much it hates you and me, as both individuals and as a nation. So based on the history, they'll probably shoot Brooke out of a cannon and then invent cloning and replace everybody with twenty Amandas and Dannys. And every week will be Martina McBride's Zoot Suit Riot week, until the end of time.