...I'll save this year's bizarre rant for the end, actually, so here we go: Seven of these little angels left, Ryan looking smoldering with a white pocket square and a spiffy haircut, Steampunk Siobhan and Bartertown Crystal looking like Burning Man, and the twisty-turny trilogy of terror known as Idol Gives Back, "Inspirational Songs" for the theme, and the always-welcome fuckin' Alicia Keys. We got some aggressively white people in the audience I maybe am supposed to recognize, Ellen looking like an angel from Heaven, Simon in a flirty sweater and Kara dressed like a person.
Let's kick things off talking about Alicia Keys and how all her songs go like this and then do that thing sixty more times. Ryan spins a wild little Jacob recap about how meaningful and special and inspiring she is, and then Alicia gifts us with her insight that "music is so amusing, the way it goes along with how people feel," and Ryan tells us about Alicia curing AIDS in Africa, and Crystal whores herself out to ask how happy Alicia is to be involved in IGB. Oh, girl. She's gonna eat this up, though, right? Crystal loves this crap.
IGB is Alicia's favorite show because of how it "really relates to how I am and who I am as a person." Why, we should really just call it Alicia Gives Back, since it essentially describes her: Both how, and who, she is. As a person. Alicia says, and this is telling, that the kids are lucky because they too can be "a part of something that's even bigger than just them. And that's a great thing to be a part of." Even bigger than Alicia Keys? I'm in.
Well, no, I take it back, because honestly I cannot disagree with the statement: IGB is precisely how, and who, Alicia Keys is as a person. And not to be hypocritical, because I too mainly love things not for their intrinsic value, but for how they relate to me, and to the way I comport myself. "That IGB looks so good on you!" people are always saying, and I say, "It's for the kids. As people."
Casey's singing "Don't Stop," and Alicia would like him to connect with it because it's such a played-out song. That's his deal, right? That people pay attention to him no matter how clapped the song is? The band is wild right at the top, and he plays the guitar and screams that song. Man, Fleetwood Mac is so great. Wait, that's what Alicia wants me not to do. Man, Casey is so great. But seriously, I see what she means -- I already knew what she meant, but it's very true here -- like, it's hard to actually hear the words because you've heard the song so much it's like Vonlenska going in your ear.
Jackson agrees, because how obvious was that choice for his style and voice? Ellen loved the guitar playing, and suddenly has decided that, since people are going home every week, he needs to be not just good but great. Kara's disappointed because he went from "Jealous Guy" back to boring jam band stuff. Simon found the song less than Thematically Inspiring -- because he flies back and forth so much he can't be expected to pay attention to our electoral process and has no idea where the song intersects with politics -- but also less than actually inspiring, because he sang it just like the original, and with "zero emotion." So I guess maybe I shouldn't have listened to Alicia Keys, because that was my original feeling. Ryan kids around with Casey about how he didn't think it was lazy, and the guitar he's playing is important in some way but I can't figure out what they're saying, and we're done. Keep it hopping, Seacrest.
up: Lee, singing "The Boxer." That's going to be pretty good, but I wish they had switched. Lee would have done something weird with "Don't Stop" and Casey I think would have done something pretty amazing with this song. But no, stay in your box. First, though, commercials. If it's true that your life flashes before your eyes when you die, it's going to end up around 30% Temper Trap, 30% Phoenix, and 40% that song with the whistling and the Old Folks, by the time we die. I don't know that commercials are aware yet of other songs.
Poorly acted eco-mercial from Kara and Jackson -- Guys. Even when you recycle you're still being wasteful. You're not helping, you're just hurting marginally less. -- and then Alicia tells us once again that "The Boxer" is an amazing song, especially once Lee tells her the words. She tells him that he is the boxer of the song, and that he needs to make people believe him. Like what she said about Casey, but even less necessary.
It's lovely, and builds in an inventive way, and his voice sounds pretty good but not as good as it can, and his lovely eyes are very puppydog, and he doesn't even start that Adam Duritz bitter batter bullshit until after the first "ladida" part. This is the worst goddamn idea for an episode. They all sound like you can't really hear them. They all sound like Tom Hanks should be bringing a dead bird back to life right in front of you.
Jackson, having finally gotten the memo, praises him as an artist. Ellen remarks, and I think I agree, that he really does seem to get better almost every time. Kara says this was his Moment, and that he just bested Casey on the "feeling it" front and should keep picking things he cares about. Simon phrases the majority of his critique as an incredibly mean-spirited joke at Casey's expense, and says the song sounded really current. Up : Tim and Aaron do... Goo Goo Dolls and R. Kelly. Hmm.
First of all obviously Aaron believes he can fly, that's not even a discussion.
But if it were, I would choose for Aaron to sing Goo Goo Dolls -- because that's what he is, a little goo-goo doll, with goo-goo eyes and puffy hair, a little goo-goo angel -- and for Tim to sing R. Kelly. Specifically, "Feelin' On Your Booty," which is a song I still very much admire: "Booty! Boo-oo-oo-oo-tay! Feeeeeelin' on your booty, yes I ammmm" is my favorite lyric of all time. But it doesn't stop there!
That breakdown lyric is followed by my second-favorite all-time lyric, which is when the DJ is making him feel thugged out. Sometimes everything makes me feel thugged out, like, all day. "This is my song, for real no doubt/ This Diet Coke's makin' me feel thugged out," or, "Chloë Sevigny's making me feel thugged out," or, "Paul Krugman talkin' bank fraud is cold thugged out," and so on. (This one, you do it alone or to a pet, because it wears on humans real fast. As it turns out.)
But not only that, you also get the opportunity with this song to "put your hands up" a record four times, if in fact it's that one day a year that A) It's your birthday, B) You wanna get drunk, C) You got some cash and D) You also have your own job. If you fulfill all those requirements on the day you hear that song, you get to feel on any booty in the entire world. That's the rule.
But since I'm sticking with my original brain flash of the obvious, I'm drawing a blank on what Tim might sing, because I can only think of like two Goo Goo Dolls songs. I used to have these dark premonitions that I would one day have to be intimate with Johnny Rzeznik and his awful scarecrow face? So I tried not to pay attention during the '90s. There's the one about Nicolas Cage as an angel, there's the one called "Iris" or that's the same one, there's the one called "Name," there's the one that always makes me laugh with the "you bleed just to know you're alive," because who would even say that -- and that could be the same song as one of the others also. But nothing too... Inspiring. I mean, the song about how he doesn't want the world to see him because they might not understand has a sort of -- in addition to maybe being all of those songs I just named, or some of them -- a sort of inspiring sound to it, but it's not actually inspiring. If I ever become President I will have that song playing at my party, once I figure out what song it is. "I just waaaant you to knoooow who I ammmmm!"
Oh, "Better Days." A song I have never heard of, but you know what? I bet it sounds exactly like all their other songs. Just a shot in the dark there. And yes. And good thing Tim is finally dressing for his body! It was terrible to see him covering all that real estate up with less than a skin-tight Henley. Just kidding, he always dresses like this. It's why he's hear, and God love him. So yes, this song is just what you thought, but also funny because only if you were six feet of sexy American cheese like Tim would you think the song was an inspiring song, because clearly it's about fucking -- "tonight's the night the world begins again" -- but I guess it could also be about, like, a landmark legal decision.
Also, Tim's breathy JoBro thing is getting worse. Sometimes Tim sounds like Metro Station faking an orgasm so they don't hurt your feelings. Done, and the Judgery soundly beats him... This is dumb anyway. Not like they matter? But nobody's going home tomorrow. This is Season Fifty of this show. Everybody's fine. The judges sort of blah-blah negatively, and then Simon gets him with a roundhouse to the teeth about how he finally had started to believe in Tim, and maybe that was a mistake. Then Ryan puts one elbow on the lunch table and props his chin on his wee little fist and says, "You're always so cool, Tim. You're just cool as a cucumber, Tim. Tim? You rock." Verbatim, bitches. And then he traces little circles on the table with his perfect manicure and tries to figure out how many stairsteps equals one Hershey's Kiss without letting it show on his face.
Aaron will be singing... (He walks up to the closet/ He goes up to the closet/ Now he's at the closet/ Damn, he's opening the closet... Closet...) Nope. CALLED IT.
Alicia's like, "I hope he cries." But not in the way that we're hoping he will. His voice is sort of raspy instead of being furry, tonight. I don't know if that distinction makes sense to anybody but me, but usually he sings like David Archuleta talks, and tonight he's singing like... Oh, it's gone. Back to Star Search. Where does this child get off.
I think I've run out of things to say about him, I'm scraping here: He pounds one little foot over and over like A-Fed, and then wide-stance wiggles like A-Fed, and then throws one little arm around like J. Hud. And his little arm cuff holding the mic, and his pissed-looking family out there going, "Now everybody knows he's gay." Oh, and his hair is puffier than that of The Original McSteamy himself, Greg Evigan, back on My Two Dads when he had that beard. That's all I got. No idea why he's here, wish he was my little brother so I could connect some dots for him, can't see him going anywhere but Overall Dissatisfactionville on this one-way desert highway we call life. From Mozambique to those Memphis nights.
The judges too, they're like, "That was a stretch in one way, but not in another." Ellen says back in the '70s she too believed she could fly. Aaron laughs like he knows what the fuck she's talking about, or has heard of the '70s. Kara says eventually it stopped sucking and became like flying in an airplane. (That was actually less lame than what she said, which included lots of sound effects and pretending that she was a plane.) Simon says that Aaron is to be cherished, both for himself and for choosing such a tough song... But in the real world, he would have snapped his radio in two ten seconds in.
Aaron's entire little face crumples, and Simon rushes to say that no, no, he meant that Aaron is so wonderful that it retroactively made the song good and the end was good. Simon Cowell backtracking and eating shit, as I live and breathe. Ryan must be giving Aaron Simon-training lessons because I have never seen Simon this smitten with this kind of candy-coated boychild contestant before.
Aaron admits to Ryan that he first sang that song at a preschool graduation, because was he even born yet when we were in college, and Ryan calls attention to the A. Kelly/R. Kelly resemblance. Yeah, let's tread in those waters, shall we? I kind of hate that he wrote this one song so he gets a forever pass, whereas if he had never believed he could "fly," we would all remember better that he also believed he could "pee on children and film it."
Simon pushes his chair in for Ryan, because they like to make good choices together and never go to bed mad and show each other in little ways so it doesn't die, and we talk about IGB some more. There is a truly gorgeous moment where they're trading lines on the teleprompter and it's so perfectly them that they actually high-five:
Ryan: "All proceeds benefit..."
Simon: "Idol."
Ryan: "...Gives Back!"
Ryan's so tickled by that, what it means about them separately and together, that he's all too happy to kick it to the ladies, and lean his head back against Simon's brawny forearms, crossed on the back of the chair. Sigh. That's what I want the rest of my life to look like: That precisely.
Siobhan's very grateful for Alicia's advice and how much she loves her voice, and you can tell just from the package that her "When You Believe" is going to be something special. Or at least try. If anybody could make this song cool, or at least try, it's Siobhan. Especially dressed like a garden fairy working in a circus in an Angela Carter novel, riding a swing high above the bigtop crowd, kicking those beribboned roman-sandal calves. Performance-wise, she's back to where she's been the past few weeks, and rescues the nasal flat notes with a couple of gorgeous things at the end, but it's still a bit "Inspiring Songs" for me, all told. I feel like we went to summer camp together and promised to keep in touch and now years later neither of us can remember who finally let it slide.
Siobhan's friends in the audience are an international anarchist gang of homosexuals and tantric assassins and cyberwitches. Jackson hates it, Ellen I don't even know it went by so fast, Kara called it sorta Broadway and says that she seems like more of a good hang than a musician. Simon agrees with Randy that it was a dumb choice, that it was old-fashioned, that her body covered in leaves and butterflies is too weird, and that too much happened too fast. Once again she makes that bitchy face I like to pretend I'm not noticing, and says something obnoxious about how she'll sing Mariah if she wants to -- cue mooing from the audience -- and that she loves being here -- moo -- and then sort of babbles for awhile as Simon starts to realize that Siobhan can sort of... Go fuck herself, actually.
I really, really hate agreeing with him on this one, but I'm going to hold off as long as I can before I admit that Siobhan can go fuck herself. I feel like she has me cornered on this one and I'm out of ammo. So commercials, and then Big Mike is apparently still here. I don't think this commercial is in this block, but I like that commercial where the grownups and the kids both are hating the Spelling Bee, like suicidally hating it, and the punchline is that everybody's so smart that Spelling Bees will become eternal in this country and never end, so shouldn't we give everybody the internet for free? Like, everybody could be genius superheroes. Oh! Somebody should have sung "Heroes." That would be so tight.
Alicia Keys, you make me drink. I don't think I've gotten crunk more than twice this season, and you remember when that happened and I was like "Never again" but what can I say? Alicia Keys makes me feel thugged out.
Big Mike wants us all to step up and be heroes. Ryan agrees as well. What song is it? It's called "Hero," which is out of his comfort zone. Who sings this song? Alicia says that this is a surprise, but what is it? Is it Three Doors Down? It has the same chord progression as the chorus of "Kiss From A Rose," but I think it's one of those white trash bands DAUGHTRY loved so damn much. Maybe Nickleback. (Or is it Nickelback? I'm not checking. Please, like they can even spell.) Maybe this song is from a Spiderman movie? Or maybe I'm remembering the video for that Evanescence song. That whole year is kind of a blur, to be honest. I'm going with my first guess: This is a Nickelback song about Spiderman. Mike Lynch, you phony.
The performance itself is soaring and inventive, but Mike seems more bullshitty and fake than usual. Maybe he's just tired. Randy says this was dangerous because "band songs" aren't always about vocals (um, unless you're David Cook or the occasional DAUGHTRY), but that it worked. Middling well. Ellen says nothing, again. Kara says it was boring, essentially. Simon says this song was pretty but that this is a song about Spiderman. YES! And that it felt artificial, also. So Simon and I are good. Ryan is offended that Simon wasn't touched as much as he was by the message that... We can all be Spiderman.
It's like they read the Annual Rant before this show even came on, that's so weird. Jennifer Hudson has lost a lot of weight. She says it's Weight Watchers but I think it's from hanging out with the cast of the The Expendables. (By which I mean, "The Sex & The City girls have finally become indeterminable from Mickey Rourke, Jason Statham, Jet Li, and Sylvester Stallone, who is himself becoming indeterminable in turn from Mickey Rourke. Have you seen his fucking face?") Carrie bought her that ugly purse filled with speed and thinspiring pictures and the weight has just been flying off ever since.
Crystal's singing "People Get Ready," explaining to Alicia that this comes out of her gratitude for where she's at right now. Which is funny, considering how my man Seacrest had to take her out into the parking lot and give her a stern yet loving talk about how if she pusses out now she'll never be able to buy her mom a house, and she decided to stay in the competition. I'm glad "gratitude" is what she's feeling, no matter how unctuous, because at least it's not "too legit for this dorkfest to even be here." Which works in theory, but once you've been on the show that's not coming off you, ever, so you might as well play through.
The first third is a capella, on a darkened stage. Guess what, it's perfect. A chamber orchestra appears, she hits actually one squeaky off note in her entire life, the backups are uncharacteristically subdued, and we find out what her hands do when she's not playing an instrument, which is the usual diva stuff, and it's finishing up, and then -- WOW -- right at the end, I think what happens at the end of this song, is that Crystal Bowersox wins this show. Right at the end there.
Voice cracks, right, like Kelly when she won, but just as Crystal's singing "...thank the Lord." NEVER have I seen some shit like that. I don't know whether to barf or cry. Was it real? What is real? What just happened? That was amazing! I can't believe she broke down crying in the middle of singing "thank the Lord." I mean, what are the odds? She seems really embarrassed and feels silly, but maybe that's for selling out? Is this her Bob Roberts moment? Or maybe it's because she hit bum notes for the first time, or what? I just don't know how to process what just happened! And then DVR cuts off so we have to go to Glee to see what happens? I am going insane!
Simon says that it was inspiring, and that he's happy to see her emotion, and they all know she feels strongly about the song -- which, they've now seen her sing it at least twice, so I believe that she was being real just now, from Simon of all people -- and she tells Ryan that having her Dad there was like "thank the Lord" and she just lost it. Which, yes, I totally believe all of that because she always gets crazy about her Dad. We've seen it a million times.
The thing is I was trying to play Marry-Fuck-Kill with Fox News and I decided that I would eff Hannity, obvs, and kill O'Reilly, and marry Glenn Beck. And I sort of defied everybody to come up with a better set of choices, and they couldn't. I've always wanted to marry Glenn Beck, because I believe he would be a fantastic husband. Brilliant, manipulative, into marketing, willing to whore out for a buck. The kind of guy who will be mean to the landscapers if I don't have it in me. A team player. Just what I'm looking for, like, a slightly broken Buddy Garrity-type high school Vice Principal who thinks that cars matter. The kind of guy that wants a boat so bad he dreams about it. This is my West Texas upbringing talking: I want a man who's happy to suck barbecue sauce off his fingers even in front of the Queen of England, just to give me something to bitch about on the ride home. And everybody's all, "But he would cry! He would cry and stomp his feet and make strange meaningless graphs!" To which I say, "Let him try that shit at home."
...So I guess what I'm saying is I'm officially in love with fuckin' Crystal Bowersox. (Marry Anderson Cooper, make a soothing Merrill Bainbridge-type love to Rachel Maddow, kill Bono. And Janeanne Garofalo.) Which is great, because she just won. We got six weeks left, but come on. That was the clutchest play of all time, and I don't even think she meant to do it.
So yeah. God, remember Casey being dumb with the Fleetwood Mac song? And Lee, he did pretty good with his cover of Adam Duritz covering "The Boxer." And Tim was off in Tim Land doing his Tim business and wanting to make out with you, while Aaron was singing the song he literally backflipped out of the womb singing. Siobhan gave yet another fucked-up sounding performance, Mike is a big old fake with an untrustworthy singing face, and then Crystal -- in rehearsal -- smiled tenderly at the camera when she nailed the last line, but clenched it live.
Alicia comes out wearing yards of fabric draped stupidly and tells us about how IGB is going to be at least seventeen hours long tomorrow, and we're out, and you know what that means: Time for the Annual IGB Rant, to which I always look forward but which always feels like driving stick when you're used to driving automatic.
So I saved Kick-Ass for April twentieth. That may or may not make sense to you, but I sort of wanted to talk to you about it before IGB tomorrow because who knows what kind of a bitchy mood I'll be in tomorrow, with the hangover I'm working on due to this Alicia Keys bullshit, plus how it's a million years long, and because I am feeling very American right now. So I saw this movie, which I'd been looking forward to because the comic book had a surprising impact on me a couple years ago. I mean, some things are guaranteed to make me cry in superhero comics: Illyana Rasputin, Emma Frost, Rachel Summers. Basically anybody who didn't make it through my particular kind of childhood, I'm a wreck. But usually, beyond the Grant Morrison stuff that's supposed to, I don't get upset: Too busy wondering how they always get in so much trouble and how best it could have been averted.
But here, I spent all but twenty minutes crying in that movie, for reasons that I may not be able to properly express. (I don't mean like weeping but with a sort of West Wing twinkle in my eye. And anyway you know me, I'm two and a half men and one of them is a crier.) But it has generally to do with the fact that even though giant changes don't happen -- no matter how much obvious sense they make -- it's only little tiny changes that happen. Fix you, fix the world: That's fine, and that's what can actually happen. Tiny choices making tiny changes.
I mean, there's a reason we're (comparatively) rich and somebody else is (bastard amounts of) poor: Somebody richer than us decided they wanted to be more rich, not less, so those people have to stay fucked, and we're in the middle of that. That's literally the only reason: The ungodly inequality of life on this planet is what works for the people who make the rules. Some of us have food and money and things people need, but the people who went to the same colleges their parents went to, and make up the rules for these things, and make up constant new rules to get more things, they win. They have lobbyists. And maybe they deserve those things, hell, I don't know. I'm certainly not giving half my shit to somebody else just because I feel bad about what I have; but I'm also not in a position to influence legislation, much less global economies, to even it out. And if I could, I probably wouldn't, because I like my things too. Frankly, I would like to see about getting more things.
But I'm not just talking about poverty, or healthcare, I mean, lots of things are terrible that don't have anything to do with the many other tragic countries. There are tons of other bummer things, even some not based on the novel Push by Sapphire. And sometimes that -- the idea that giant changes don't ever really happen -- can be really stifling, and depressing, and you start thinking about bigger changes, still coming from a personal place. Harsh or loud or brutal things you might have to do, because the little changes are not enough, and things are really really wrong, and everybody's just standing around staring and whining even though everybody knows it: That we all deserve a better, a finer, a more wonderful world.
So I don't know what it's like at your house, but I don't smoke a lot of pot. Words are all I have, and pot makes me feel like I don't even have that. So 4/20 means something different to me, which is that... You don't harm other people. Ever. The ends are the means. But that notion -- that things are really bad and nobody will admit it -- and your anger at the way you and other people are treated can get really messy, and you get thugged out a little bit, or a lot. And maybe one day you decide to do something large, and hope for bigger change than the world can produce for you. In the hopes of forcing a finer world, maybe you turn into one bright scary thing, instead of a lot of contradictory normal things like the rest of us.
Which is a patently retarded, not to mention mentally ill, way of doing it. Killing Sharon Tate is not magically going to cause African-Americans to rise up and kill Whitey and then become your slave race. That is a dumb plan. Shooting up a whole high school is not going to make you hurt less. At all. But the feeling is there, and it's not activism and it's not martyrdom, because it's not really about you anymore: It's about the fact that we deserve something better.
I mean, it's certainly not heroism. I don't even know what that means. Maybe it's more like terrorism, I mean, terrorists need you to hear them, that's why they do what they do. They're not being heard, so they scream louder, and eventually so loud that they go crazy. But they're not wrong that there's something profoundly wrong in the world, and they think they know what it is, and they need it to stop. And it's like, there's a billion ways that could go wrong, and that's what 4/20 means to me, because there has to be at least one way for it to go right. We just haven't figured it out yet.
Anyway, that's why I cried all through Kick-Ass, and why I watched it today in particular, and why Idol Gives Back has, at least tonight, swung back around to something that is a very good idea: Because that feeling is very specific, and very frightening, and represented as intelligently in that movie (that's the entire movie) as it is dumbassedly but just as legitimately by the Teabaggers, even if they're being led around by that feeling for vile reasons.
Because that feeling -- needing the world to be better -- is real, and it's not going anywhere. And it seems to me, like, if you think about it enough you might get so mad that -- instead of just killing Sharon Tate and thinking you've done your job -- you could actually be forced to go out and do something really wonderful. That you might be reminded of something really precious that the rest of us forget. That maybe screaming isn't the only solution. That we can do better than that. That we can do better.
Watch Crystal Bowersox break down during her performance.
Is Simon deliberately sabotaging Idol?
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