The kids all talk about what they wanted to grow up to be as kids, so like five minutes ago, and this is this: Paul wanted to be a comedian, so good work there; Karen wanted to be Selena. Durbin wanted to be a graphing calculator, Taylor Hicks wanted to be a seismograph, Jennifer Lopez wanted to be a subway conductor, Ryan Seacrest wanted to be a thundercloud. Steven Tyler wanted to be relevant.
They sing "Born To Be Wild," you know that is a song I love, and then they swing over into singing "Born This Way," and it's a mashup which is very Red Bull in nature, like that time all of Glee got hooked on pills. Or that time Stefano sang a song.
Is there a phrase more hateful than "Lee DeWyze and the Black Eyed Peas"? In the English language is there a less cellar-door phrase than that? Because that is what is happening. I'm so distraught I can't even get excited about the Fox Ford Focus Music Video. Just pulverized by this latest thing.
Ryan says some big number about some big thing, whatever got downloaded one time or how many people don't really care or something, everybody cheers, Ryan always says big numbers, and then we "get to know" the contestants some more. I feel like they are doing more of that this year than ever before, and I really wish they would not. These kids are just not that interesting.
I mean, doesn't it sound horrific to have to talk about anything with, say, Lee and Crystal last year? Davids Archuleta or Cook? Oh my God, Bo Bice? Not because they're bad people, or unintelligent people, or less than completely charming: It's because they are musicians, and -- just as Steven Tyler -- musicians live on a different part of the tennis court than people who are interesting to talk to. Lambert, Kelly Clarkson -- Blake Lewis possibly, but not really -- these are people who are people, in addition to being this show's version of people, but it's not really required.
It's like, you know how much I love giant trucks and when I grew up I wanted to be a green-and-purple Constructicon and just move dirt from place to place all day long. That sounded like a good time to me. And I still love dinosaurs, because they remind me of construction vehicles and my dirt-moving fantasies, but I wouldn't go to a dinosaur or a backhoe to talk about fashion, because that is not what they are for. I would prefer to speak to Grace Coddington over a backhoe.
So the kids are talking about how they can do tricks or something, there's not really a topic beyond "Here's some things you didn't know about Me": Locking Them Doors isn't just an interest of Scotty's but a passion of Scotty's; Karen is a Tuvan throat-singer and shaman and can change her shape; Thia Megia and Pia know each other from being in an all-girl assassins guild back in the eighties; Lauren Alaina runs a whorehouse outside of Reno; James Durbin once fought a computer and won, through willpower; Jacob Lusk keeps a family of mannequins in his basement and dresses them up in themed outfits; Stefano is a dealer of drugs, psychedelic drugs mainly; Casey Abrams is, you may not have known this, just the best thing of all time; Paul McDonald has diseases they've only ever seen before in rats and sheep; Naima, surprise, speaks six different African languages and does this in the same focused, insane, patronizing way that she does everything.
Ryan dims the lights, and they start playing also an Irish jig because St. Patrick's Day is innocent drinking fun and not a racist celebration of genocide, and the lights all go green and Ryan is like, "This is not what I told everybody to do. I will have your ass." So then they do the thing, and he brings Jacob Lusk up, and this happens w/r/t to the song "Alone":
Ryan: "Randy, what is the key to overcoming pitch problems?"
Jacob: "Um, sing good? What do you even mean? The thing about singing is that: Notes. Musical notes. Singing them. I can already tell you that this question is going to throw Randy off totally."
Randy: "Clearly, you have to know what the note is, in order to be able to sing it."
Jacob: "Yeah, see? Exactly. This is a nonsensical Mad Hatter Tea Party conversation about nothing. Please do go on."
Randy: "You have to be able to hear it in your head before you can pinpoint where it is."
Ryan: (Finally realizes this question was Viet Nam and none of us are getting out of here alive.)
Randy: "And it's usually the pitchy is if it's underneath the actual tone or above the actual tone, flat and sharp, so that's what happens."
(Everybody looks as desperate as they feel right now.)
Jennifer: "Everybody was sick and the monitors were throwed. I don't know if we talked and talked about that, but that's what was going on. Please just make Randy stop talking."
Jacob is safe. Lauren Alaina and Casey stand there, knowing they are also safe, and we proceed through this macabre charade where worrying about Casey is something that we should be doing. Lauren stomps on over to the couch, and then it's just the whole world acting nuts about Casey for a while, because he is wonderful. We remember how he sang "the goop that great stuff is made from," and Steven Tyler gives Ryan some shit, whatever, I would like the world a little bit more if Steven Tyler and Ryan Seacrest each just pretended the other didn't exist, like in a classy way where we never had to watch them talk. Then Casey is safe, so everybody is safe.
Haley babbles some absolute nonsense and honestly, it should be an object lesson to the Judges to stop overloading her brain with nonsense, because any time they talk to her it's just a logical pandemonium and now, you see the result: Haley throwing words against the wall like spaghetti, seeing what sticks, forever.
Paul McDonald, Ryan's like, "Your illness, is it getting any better? You still smell like urine" and Paul's like, "This is probably as healthy as I'll ever be looking, this shambles of a nightmare that I am right now is the best case scenario, I'm rotting inside" and Ryan is like, "Your breath smells like the stockyards outside of Lubbock Texas" and then they are not both safe: Haley, who is one of the only acceptable singers in this group of people claiming to be singers, is of course in the Bottom Three.
But hey, disgusting Paul is safe, so that's good news. Maybe he can sing some more songs that sound like the hinge closing on the storm door of the basement where he's keeping us so he can make a dress out of our skin.
Out in the audience a Make-A-Wish kid is... Oh no, it's Mark Anthony.
Ryan with a straightish face calls Lee DeWyze a "superstar." So I guess where we're at in America is that Lee DeWyze is a superstar. He sings some kind of monotone bullshit song, in the style of Paul McDonald, and as usual looks totally unprepared and terrified by this business of being Lee DeWyze, and then shows us all his toys and tricks and tics of singers he's enjoyed in the past, and it's mediocre because that's the only real thing about Lee DeWyze, is that he's the Sarah Palin of American Idol and deserves to be rewarded for being special in zero ways.
I wish they would just get the Black Eyed Peas over with too. Just shove them up onstage with Lee DeWyze and the whole thing could be over. "Do you know why we're here?" one of them could ask, and the other ones would be like, "Nope, but I bet it has nothing to do with music, or talent," and then a jetliner or a shark could crash into the stage and devour them, and the flames, the screaming. The unbearable relief.
Scotty, Pia and Durbin. You're all kind of the same person, so why don't you come down as a group. Scotty, you're like a sexy Woody doll with just have one trick and no off button, yeah? You're safe. Pia, there's something troubling about you that we haven't yet put our finger on, and you're safe too. James Durbin, you are a tall gorgeous drink of water with a bunch of actual literal tics.
Steven Tyler, how do you feel about James Durbin? "I feel like talking about myself, plus sound effects." Surprise! Then Durbin is also safe.
Stefano and J. Lo talk about how he keeps singing to other people and not her, and then we also talk about Naima and how she keeps refusing to sing on this singing show. She gives some weird speech about the concept of music, and then Ryan puts her with Haley in the Bottom Three and sends Stefano's dirty little self back to the couch.
I can't believe there are more of them. Karen and Thia Megia, you are obviously B3 and safe respectively, but let's spend one thousand years talking about it. And by all means let's go back and revisit Tyler's whole "ethnic what-it-isness" racist moment, as many times as possible, so that the national conversation can widen to embrace talking that kind of shit. Even Steven Tyler is like, "Ryan, please don't bring that up again. I am an embarrassment."
Thia Megia: "You know, as an artist..."
(Bleep-bloop.)
So Ryan sends old Thia back to the couch, she's always so charming and precocious, and then we have to deal with the Black Eyed Peas but I make it a point never to deal with the Black Eyed Peas, so here are just some words: Lowering the bar. Amateur millionaires. Crystal meth. Fake tits. Duhamel. Not music. All the way through slutty and out the other side. Chicken heads. The negative space where your talent should be located. Noises, bleeps and bloops, people saying or yelling shit, words, sentiments, at random, over and over and over, and that's apparently a song, the recipe for a song.
Bondage pants, the most annoying dudes; the song starting and stopping at random, and it's just noises, a collection of sounds, and whatever, let's go over to this part of the stage and do a little dance and say like this one phrase a bunch of times and then make some other kind of noises and then go over here and do a backflip and have some violins and then whatever, pyrotechnics, and then make some other kind of noises and say some other random words a bunch of times. Like a dull toddler playing with a Moog, only they get paid so fucking much money, basically for being Yo Gabba Gabba for adults. For stupid pointless Muggles. Drunk-wobble Fergie flipping her fucking dress up over her head every second of every day, and that's her entire function, and her nasty ass sweat-looking funk self everywhere. I hate them so goddamn much.
Karen, Naima and Haley are the B3. That makes sense, doesn't it? I probably could have told you that would play out that way. I think it'll be MySpace that goes home, because who is she fooling. Naima is safe, so she thanks the sky or whatever, and Haley is safe, and Karen's eyes slooooowly crossssssss.
Ryan: "Now you will sing some Selena song one more time just to prolong your misery, and then go back to being a substitute teacher in the inner city, or a longshoreman, or a little girl."
The best headline I saw this morning was Woe Is Mija. I wish I had come up with that one.
She sings her song and nobody cares and it's half in Broken Slavey or Jamaican Maroon Spirit Possession Language or whatever her deal is, and they make her beg and cry and shit herself for awhile, and then Ryan balls her up like a extra-large extra-crinkly page from W magazine or a Sun Chips bag, and Ryan finds the nearest computer screen and he hurls that ball of Karen back into MySpace and I would clock it at about 98 miles per hour because Ryan, he's tiny but he's got an arm on him.
week: Please make sure Joe R knows how much I love him, and I'll see you after my birthday.