Once upon a time, a bottle of Hard Candy Trailer Trash nail polish came to life and assumed an androgynous humanoid form, and then it walked among us and fed upon the flesh of the living. At least that's what I think this intro segment is trying to tell me. The title flashes across the American Idol logo to inform us that we are "Halfway Home." Meaning that it's time to put gas in the car, go to the bathroom, and try not to fall asleep at the wheel. If you fail in your endeavor to get home, of course, Fox will find you and beat the crap out of you, which will be no more hostile than what they did by making you watch Married By America. Wait, they didn't make you watch that? Hmm, I guess it was just me. Bastards.
Seacrest sproings onto the stage wearing black pants and a shirt that...well, let's see. The black half of his shirt is black. That's the easy part. The front of his shirt is red, and it has what I guess is a print of something that has a white block on each pec. (Or on the area where each pec would be, I should say.) And then there's some yellow writing, like a "1067," maybe, on his left breast. There's also a white "7" on the front. I should know what's going on with his shirt, I guess, but I'm just not hip to the young people anymore. To me, it sort of looks like this shirt has already been used as a rag as part of someone's mother's home improvement project. In the audience are signs, including, "WARREN HIGH, We're On TV!" (and going to detention), "Roo [205] Ben" (don't mind the fact that even Ruben thinks that's played), "In Josh We Trust" (all others pay cash), "Everybody Wants Clay" (as a hood ornament), and my personal favorite, "Simon, You Read My Mind." Heh. Seacrest The Muppet-Boy tells the audience they look wonderful, but he calls them "y'all." In order not to throw chaos into the lives of those who hail from Massachusetts or Detroit, he explains to anyone who's confused that they say "y'all" in Atlanta, where he's from. You certainly do learn something new every day, because I never heard of "y'all" before. I was sure he was talking about some kind of down-home southern vegetable, because you know how those people down there love their down-home vegetables. Yep. Gather 'round, everybody, because Grandma's makin' her famous Poached Y'all.
Muppet-Boy thanks us for tuning in, and tells anyone who is only watching because they were hoping to see Boston Public that they should watch anyway, because "what's the worst that could happen?" This is the cue, of course, for one of Muppet-Boy's patented extremely unfunny jokes that you know he's going to spin out endlessly like an entire sweater reduced to a single very long thread, and this time the joke is about Randy Jackson hula dancing naked. Oh-ho-ho, that Muppet-Boy is a funny one. I have to say that I find it entertaining that he so clearly thinks he's a hipster hottie when he's so obviously the Catskills' bitch. Not satisfied with the pain he has already wrought, Muppet-Boy makes some additional remarks along these lines, and then finally he gets to the point by informing us that it doesn't matter whether you want to see Randy naked or not, because the judges aren't even in the house this evening. The crowd whoops, recognizing the fact that the judges ruin everything, as you know, by pointing out when people perform badly. And where's the fun in that on a talent competition? Incredibly touched by the audience's great appreciation of the big fat nothing he just did, Muppet-Boy takes several deep bows. Wow, I don't know if I can take him for an entire hour. Shack must go through a lot of...well, whatever it is he uses to get through recapping Muppet-Boy and moderating the Clay thread.
Muppet-Boy tells us that tonight, they're interrupting the competition to give the contestants a chance to perform without judgment or pressure, because these crazy kids certainly shouldn't have to put up with the pressure of being judged when all they want is a career in which millions of Americans will be so obsessed with them that they'll demand to know what brand of toilet paper they use to clean out their ears. (Or, in Clay's case, what brand of soup ladle.) He says that the contestants will get a chance to "let it all hang out." I'll let you enjoy the rest of the episode and decide whether repeating a song you've already sung and answering a few prearranged questions constitutes "letting it all hang out." He blathers about how the contestants have worked so hard to get to the final six from the original 70,000 auditioners. God, do we have to watch audition tape again? Who cares about these people now that we know nothing happened to any of them? In recounting this footage, Muppet-Boy actually says, "Yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah." Wow, now he's even boring the crap out of himself. He tells us that Randy said "dawg" and "dude" a lot, Paula was nice, and Simon was an asshole. An asshole, that is, who was right about almost everything. Believe it or not, this segment includes a still photograph of nuns playing pool. No, I'm not explaining it. I had to watch the thing -- you should, too. Down with free riders.
Final twelve flashbacks, et cetera. One by one, contestants were booted from the show and returned to their lives of quiet desperation. Vanessa went back to coloring hair, Charles went back to singing to the bananas, Julia went back to snotting at pretty girls, Corey went back for a court date, Rickey went back to singing to the ducks, and Kimberly went back to burning everything in her closet. Well, one can hope. Muppet-Boy wants us to keep voting, but tonight, he wants us to just enjoy. Except when Carmen is singing. At that point, we should all yell really loudly to drown her out. Just a little suggestion from me to you.
Speaking of Carmen, she's the first contestant to be featured in this little clip-show/Olympic-athlete-profile hour. We see how she yodeled in the hallway outside her first audition, and was then whisked off to "Hollywood," presumably so she could commune with all those Californian goats. Once she was there, though, cooler heads prevailed and she was cut. But then Simon went off his medication and she was put through in the wild card round, and thus did our collective suffering begin. She read Shakespeare for school, she wore weird red pants, and she turned eighteen. And thus did our collective suffering continue. She comes out to greet Muppet-Boy in a black shirt with a pink flowery sparkle-design on the chest and...pale pink cropped pants? Is that what that is? Goodness. Her hair is also longer, so apparently she's become one of those Cult Of Hair Extensions people. Muppet-Boy sits her down and says to her that it's been "an emotional roller-coaster, literally." And by "literally," he of course means "figuratively." He goes on to ask her about how hard it is to put up with Simon's criticisms week after week and continue sucking just as hard no matter what. Or that's what he would have said if he had consulted with me in writing his questions. She says that "it's, like, psychological, like." She acknowledges that it's hard to go home when you don't think you've done your best, but she says that "you always have -- or you hope you'll have -- another week." Of course, she always has another week, because as has been established by parties more qualified to commune with dark powers than I, she is in league with the forces of evil and is therefore guaranteed survival for some time to come, right? Right?
And now, Muppet-Boy invites the wrath of the many people running around with Clay Aiken lunchboxes by reading Carmen a fan letter from Fairview Park, Ohio asking what's up with her and Clay, because they seem to flirt a lot. Carmen says, "Woo!", not realizing that of all the things you cannot do without looking like a complete nitwit, yelling "woo!" at spicy gossip about yourself is near the top of the list. It makes you sound like the drunk girl at a bar who's just been told she's being cut off and it's time for her to go home, because in case she's already forgotten, she just flashed her panties at a cop. "Woo!", she will say. See? At any rate, Muppet-Boy asks Carmen if the thing with her and Clay is a romance. "I think I'll just let America just think what they want to think," she says, going for "cagey" and winding up stalled at "dim." I really don't even want to think about the competing vibrations that would occur in a room where Clay and Carmen were speaking passionately to each other. They both warble so much that every nearby piece of glass would splinter into a million pieces. The fan letter that Muppet-Boy reads to her says, "I really want to be a singer, Carmen, just like you." Yeah. You'll need some funny-looking shirts and a bad case of scrapy to make that crazy dream come true, whoever you are. Muppet-Boy asks Carmen about the pressure she's under, and Carmen characterizes it as "extremely tough." Especially with all the sucking, of course. She also tells us that it's important to "believe in yourself." Especially when you really, really suck. Muppet-Boy asks Goat-Girl what "favorite song" of hers she's going to sing for us tonight, and she informs us that she will be performing "You Can't Hurry Love." Because Phil Collins didn't inflict enough gaping wounds on it the first time it was covered.
This performance is no exception to the general rule that what I hate about the way American Idol covers older songs is that the cheesy, over-smooth, pleatherette arrangements are even more inappropriate when you reach into places like the Motown vault. The perky, perfect hum of the bass line at the beginning of this massacre could not be more out of place. That's really supposed to be a heavy, driving thump, not something that sounds like the soundtrack of a pinball machine. And then, of course, she starts to sing. Carmen is one of those ten-percent singers -- in other words, she's always on the right note, plus or minus ten percent. She's not consistently sharp, and she's not consistently flat, but she's also almost never quite in tune. Very disconcerting. Typical of ten-percent singers, she thinks you won't notice it if she puts in enough slipping and sliding on the notes. She's wrong. Interestingly, the yodel in her voice doesn't really bother me -- some singers are like that, and when it works, they can get away with calling it a feature rather than a bug. The fluttery, bleating vibrato, however, needs to be euthanized, and she needs to stop scrunching up her face at random intervals. I would also point out that she will not be getting the PETA endorsement, because an innocent camel gave its toe to make her pants. Oh, and look at that poor audience, standing up and clapping like hypnotized cult recruits. Finally, I cannot say enough about how much I hate the way they force-end the song. I realize you have to do something to put a little cap on the truncated version and everything, but the way they set up the break and then go directly to a tuneless yell of "can't hur-ry love!" is just...well, unacceptable. I'd rather they ended it with a cannon firing. Muppet-Boy congratulates her, and talks again about how much more fun it is to perform in front of a captive audience with no one to point out that you weren't on pitch for most of the song.
Muppet-Boy sends us to commercials, promising to tell us later which of the contestants has a snoring problem. I would make a little joke here about who in fact has a snoring problem during this particular boring clipfest, but I think that would be a little obvious.
Let's talk about Josh, the singing Marine! Remember when we met him, and he saluted, and then he yelled "Whuuuuuh!"? Remember when he and Simon did push-ups? Remember the big-ass cowboy hat? Remember when he could sing? Hmm…yeah, me neither. But now he's coming out to talk to Muppet-Boy on the stage. Blue jeans, white t-shirt, and floppy flannel-y shirt. Wow, thanks for getting out of bed, there, Captain Clean-Cut. Don't strain yourself getting dressed. Muppet-Boy asks the audience if they like Josh, and we cut to somebody holding up a sign that shows a rebus-puzzle-style "[eye] [heart] JOSH" on it. But the eye is all droopy, like it's about seventy-five percent dead. Heh. Muppet-Boy and Josh trash-talk Simon for a while, because that's certainly a new and exciting form of humor for the show. Josh's inoffensive blather about how Simon is "honest" and "true to himself" and so there are no hard feelings reminds me of Bull Durham, when Kevin Costner teaches Tim Robbins how to answer press questions without actually saying anything. Once they're through this little interval, Muppet-Boy runs out into the audience to take a question, which I'm sure was not set up in advance at all, because this is totally spontaneous. Like, really. Danielle, who is to be graced with the privilege of asking her question, unfortunately gives away the non-spontaneity when she stands up before Muppet-Boy invites her to. And what is Danielle's very thrilling question? "What are your plans when American Idol is over?" Josh says he will go back to the Marine Corps and stay with his family and work on his music career. Apparently, he will be cloning himself by way of some kind of The Sorcerer's Apprentice arrangement in which he plays the part of the broom. Sit down, Danielle. You wasted your question. Ridiculing the many chicks who "want a piece of Josh" -- which is certainly many more chicks than "want a piece of" him -- Muppet-Boy goes on to the girl. Her name is Alicia. Her question to him is what luxury he will miss when the show is over. Josh says he will miss sleeping in, and hearing people cheer for him. I have to say, Josh is officially the most boring question-answerer ever. It's surprising to find myself anxious for him to hurry up and sing. Unsurprisingly, he informs Muppet-Boy that he will be singing "Amazed."
Wow, he really has some trouble finding that first note. Fortunately, his phony twang is there to see him through. Doesn't he feel dopey doing that accent? If I were doing that (and I have about as much of an authentic twang as Josh), I would constantly feel like I wasn't singing country so much as doing somebody singing country. I mean, I could call myself Fifi Boudoir and hang out in downtown Minneapolis singing "La Vie En Rose" for spare change, but it's not going to make me Edith Piaf, you know? Josh also really does not have full ownership of those higher notes. Not even close. He can lease them for brief periods, but you can sense that they will be repossessed at any time. And I hate that last "you" at the end of the song. It's got about fourteen different vowel sounds in it. Ew.
No sooner has the last starred-and-striped "Josh" sign been hoisted than Muppet-Boy tells us it's time for us to turn our attention to Kimberley Locke. Remember her curly hair, and how it didn't look like everyone else's hair on this show? Remember how they endeavored to beat her individuality out of her like dust out of a prairie homestead carpet? Remember how she told Simon he sucked? Remember how those pants were really not flattering? Remember how Gladys Knight and Smokey Robinson thought she was a good singer, even though she didn't have a tiny ass? How is that possible? Whatever. Remember the newsboy cap? Well...try to forget that. Muppet-Boy brings her out. She's all with the straight hair, as usual, and she's wearing dark jeans, a white shirt, and a light beige jacket. Muppet-Boy asks her to talk about the evolution of her "style," meaning, "Man, you're not nearly as ugly as you used to be. Tell me about that." It's a question she's clearly been prepared -- if not over-prepared -- to answer. She immediately launches into an entire graduate thesis on how she's not going to change herself for anyone, and she strongly hints that she's not going to be wearing any ho-clothes, thank you very much. I don't really understand how she got such a bad rap in some quarters, except by advancing instead of Clay way back at the final thirty-two -- I dig her. She says that she's setting her course based on her recollection of Gladys Knight calling her "classy," and if you read between the lines, she's basically saying she'd hate for Gladys to have to take it back because the wicked American Idol stylists make her look trampy. Muppet-Boy shows her some shots of her incarnations, with glasses and curly hair. She points out that she likes having her hair straight, but it does take two hours, which a regular working girl really wouldn't have to spare for that process. I will admit that in the second shot, where she has the perfectly round giant frizzy 'do -- which she refers to as "the hair to heaven," hee -- she looks pretty silly. Wow, did she wear that get-up this year? How did I not remember that? At any rate, she and Muppet-Boy agree that her current look is their favorite.
Kimberley is singing "I Can't Make You Love Me." It is while listening to her sing this particular number that I realize she's my favorite. She has a nice delivery -- good and smoky, without sounding like she's working her ass off at growling every five seconds, which is what happens to boring women when they try to sound like bad-asses (Shania, I am looking at you). She's just self-possessed in a way that makes it seem a lot less like a beauty pageant. I would also point out that part of what gives this performance such elegance is that there are several held notes on which she does not do anything. She does not touch them with vibrato until the end, she does not vary the vowel sound, she does not make faces, and she does not waggle in any other annoying way. It's nice to see a girl who's not afraid to put the sparkly crap away and sing the damn song. I loved this performance. Gorgeous.
Unfortunately, she then banters with Muppet-Boy about how she wanted to sing it to him on the couch. Ew. Shut up, and don't flirt with him.
It's time for a commercial break. And time for all of us to renew our vow that we will not watch Mr. Personality. When Fox tries to make you think its new dating show will be light and funny, do not believe them. Believe me; I have suffered the consequences of failing to heed this advice.
Muppet-Boy welcomes us back to the show, where he tries to convince us that this extra episode is a treat, rather than filler. It's not filler at all! No sirree! It's all substance. He tries several similes to make this point, and none of them are particularly effective. It might be his shirt, which does not exactly inspire confidence in his linguistic prowess. Finally, he shuts up and tells us it's time to see Ruben. Remember Ruben's yellow hat? Remember how Gladys told him he was the "velvet teddy bear"? Remember all those 205 jerseys? Remember how he and his brother almost killed Muppet-Boy by crushing him like an out-of-control piece of industrial machinery, but tragically pulled back at the last second? Ah, memories. Some little girl named Jennie has the pleasure of saying Ruben's name to bring him on stage. I was sure she was going to try to emulate Muppet-Boy's "Ruuuuuuben!" call, but apparently she's not in a mood to try to act like a fame-whore gel monkey today. She looks like she's about seven, so she's got plenty of time for that in the future.
Ruben comes out in another of his good-news/bad-news ensembles. The good news? Yes, the 205 jerseys appear to be really gone. The bad news? Yet another cap tipped to ten o'clock. He really, really needs to just not do that. He bumps chests with Muppet-Boy, and they sit down on the couch. Muppet-Boy asks Ruben whether it's true, as he's heard, that Ruben is obsessed with getting manicures and pedicures. I think Muppet-Boy senses something over which they might be able to bond, no? Ruben says no, he just likes to take care of himself. They yap back and forth for a while about the manicures, which stopped being interesting several minutes ago, before the topic was even brought up. Muppet-Boy moves on to more serious matters, asking Ruben about his friendship with Rickey. Ruben says sadly that he's been really bummed out since Rickey died. Or got voted off, or whatever happened. Ruben stammers about how much he loves Rickey, and eventually just instructs us to all buy thirty million copies of Rickey's album when it comes out. Which is sort of sweet, as well as, you know, several kinds of unlikely. Ruben says that he and Rickey still talk every day, and passes along that Rickey says, "Whassup?" Well, whassup, Rickey! , Muppet-Boy says that he's going to give Ruben a "pop quiz." Oh, this will be entertaining. The first question, you will be shocked to hear, is what is Ruben's home area code. "That would be two-zero-fizzive," Ruben says. You know, that whole "izz" thing just cannot be over soon enough for me. That's a fad, right? They're not going to eventually put that in Webster's and tell me I have to start adopting it, are they? Muppet-Boy asks him some more stupid questions, and the answer to all of them is 205, which is so funny that you are lucky if you are not rendered temporarily incontinent. It's the little things, really.
Ruben has decided to grace us with "Superstar." The audience screams. Ruben still has a lovely voice, but I have to agree with Shack that those repetitive arm gestures where he reaches for me through my TV screen are pretty much past their collective expiration date. I am also distracted by the cloud background, which makes it feel like Ruben should be back at "A Whole New World," maybe sitting on a little carpet on the stage and rolling apples off his elbow. He does do a great job with the song, though, despite the fact that I keep wanting him to be a tiny bit better than he is. I love listening to him, but there's something that's a little bit less than fully supported about his voice, and how close he is to being really, really awesome is what makes it annoying. Anyway, when he's done, Muppet-Boy promises that we will hear Trenyce after the break.
When we return, it's time for Muppet-Boy to pimp Mr. Personality, which actually does qualify as irony. I simply cannot understand why Muppet-Boy is a famous person. Not cute, not funny, not charming, not smart, not interesting, not talented, not charismatic...it's like every once in a while, Hollywood dumps fame on some unsuspecting dude's head just to prove to the hard-working creative types that it's not a meritocracy. Which I guess makes Muppet-Boy some kind of reverse cautionary tale. Whatever.
Time for Trenyce! Remember when she was called Lashundra? Remember how she didn't advance and had her ass saved by Paula Abdul, of all people? Remember how Simon felt like a dick because Paula advanced Trenyce and Simon advanced Carmen? Ha ha ha ha...yeah, that was funny. Muppet-Boy brings Trenyce out, and she's wearing jeans and a pastel frilly top that would be kind of cute if it were working about half as hard to make me like it. She tells the very unlikely story of how she had no idea she was going to be on the wild card show until she saw her face come up on the screen while she was watching with her mom. Not likely, there, name-changer. Now Muppet-Boy wants to read her some email questions. Asked who her idol is, Trenyce first names God. And the audience goes, "Woooooo!" Like, "Go, God!" Unfortunately, no one has a sign handy made out of glitter that says, "Marry Me, God!" The big "woo!" is just not a crowd reaction I'm used to for the mention of God, but maybe I'm out of the loop. Anyway, after mentioning God, she goes directly to her idol -- Whitney Houston. There's just something about that answer that's completely wrong. You may feel that your idols are God and Whitney Houston, but you really can't say that. You at least can't say it in quite that way, with the kind of "all my idols are omnipotent or smoke crack" implications. I'm also not sure that God really wants you to call Him your "idol," but far be it from me to give theological advice to a girl smart enough to at least know not to put Whitney first. The email question is about where Trenyce sees herself in five years, and she talks about how she just wants to write. Oh, whatever. That's what everyone on TV says. I think they all think "write" means "sign autographs."
Trenyce will be singing "I Have Nothing," which was originally performed, as you know, by God. Or Whitney Houston. One of Trenyce's idols, anyway. (I'll be classy enough not to suggest that she rename the song, "I Have Nothing Except The Stuff My Friend And I Stole.") (Well, I guess I won't.) Trenyce, following the "we just whipped this show together at the last minute and dragged the kids in from playing kickball" theme, perches one butt cheek on a metal stool, allowing the other to dangle free because you can't really sing properly while fully seated on a stool. I like this performance, and she does better with the lower parts than she has some other weeks. She's quite talented, although she's not going to get really famous and huge until she's more consistent than she is these days. I don't get big emotional impact from hearing her sing, but she's a good-quality pop singer. She will eventually need to stop trying this hard to directly emulate Whitney Houston, though, because that's not going to do it. I do not, incidentally, recommend switching to an attempt to sing like God.
Commercials.
When we return, Muppet-Boy asks us if we can handle one more contestant. And who is it? Oh, it's Clay. Remember Clay? Remember when he first showed up with that geek hair and those big glasses and that big voice, and it seemed like he might have some kind of weird shorter Marshall Crenshaw/happier Elvis Costello thing going on? Remember when it turned out it was really more like a more visually impaired Michael Bolton? Remember when the rallying cry went from "I love him" to "I don't care, I still love him"? Remember his fluttery eyelids? Remember how those little things that looked like sparks of genuineness started to lose their charm after he did them exactly the same way forty-six times in a row? Yeah, me too. Finally, Muppet-Boy brings out Clay, who's doing his new I'm Overwhelmed By My Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! routine, all faux-humble with the "No, no, are you clapping for me?" attitude. Various Clay signs in the audience are waved with reckless and pure abandon. In case you don't love Clay enough yet, the force-feeding of his appeal continues as Muppet-Boy engages him in a lengthy conversation about how he works with special-needs kids, blah blah blah, and ultimately about how excited Clay is to use his new celebrity to help the YMCA. Yeah, right. You know, it's not the fame-whoring that bugs me so much these days; it's the fame-whoring disguised as philanthropy. I don't have anything whatsoever against wanting to be famous -- crap, being famous is probably fun. But I'm really not wild about pimping out your decency. Anyway, Clay then talks some more about how really crazy it is to get all this attention, and to hear all these people screaming and see all the signs and blah dee blah. I love the way he initially describes his fans as "frightening" (word, Li'l Bolton), and then backs off immediately once he realizes they might not like being characterized as nutballs. He just finds the whole thing so "humbling." Yawn. Kid needs a new routine, because this one is so old it's got whiskers. Kid also needs to learn to talk out of the middle of his mouth, because watching him talk out of the right-hand corner of his lips makes me feel like the room is all tilty. Muppet-Boy asks Clay where his new style came from, and Clay cocks his head, looks at Muppet-Boy, smiles, and absolutely, positively flirts his ass off. Probably not on purpose, but it's a flirt-move unmistakably. I think he flirts with everything, though, including inanimate objects, so I wouldn't take too much significance from it. Anyway, Clay tries to imply that his new style is kind of Seacrestian, but honestly, it's not. It's true that his hair is mildly spiky, but I haven't seen Muppet-Boy working the khakis and sneakers very often recently. Clay goes on and on about the stylists and so forth, and how he'd be lost trying to do his own hair, because he's just sooooo humble.
Ill-advisedly, Clay has decided to repeat "Somewhere Out There," probably the song that sent him the most firmly into a march down Broadway for many of his non-fans. It's interesting, because in about the first three notes of the song, you can get a hint of how talented he is and how nice he would sound if he didn't always layer that brassy Broadway shit over his voice, and it's really quite lovely. But before long, there's the brassy Broadway shit. As well as the silly pronunciation difficulties, which I admit wouldn't be much of a deal if they weren't paired with other silliness associated with oversinging. It's just not necessary to pronounce the word "somewhere" as "sum-way-are." Or "sing" as "seeeeeeng." And seriously. Dude. Dude. Listen to yourself and consider your relationship with the letter R. Even a sixth-grade chorus teacher will tell you not to spend your time singing the consonants. Moreover, his bleat has gotten as bad as Carmen's. Step away. From. The vibrato.
Moreover, this is as good a time as any to get something said that I have needed to say ever since this show started: Enough with the Glory Note. Seriously. Seriously, seriously. You know the Glory Note, right? The one (usually, but not always, a high note) that the contestant hits and then tries to hold onto while the audience applauds and goes, "Wooo!" for no good reason? Yeah. I hate the Glory Note. The Glory Note is a mark of Star Search and beauty pageants. It is one thing and one thing only -- a note you can barely sing. If you can sing it comfortably, it doesn't come off like a Glory Note. The reason "sky" at the end of the bridge sounds like a Glory Note is that Clay can barely reach it. That's it. It's not that death-defying a note. Many quality tenors could pull it off in their sleep. I realize that, for the same reason that it's tempting to applaud ice skaters just because they don't fall down, it may be tempting to applaud people who manage to hit notes that are obviously barely within their ability, but if you think about it? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It's not a good note at all, in this case -- it's extremely forced and reedy, and sounds exactly like the "necktie tenor" effect one of my teachers used to bitch about. If he didn't make you fear that his voice was going to crack, there'd be nothing to clap for. In the end, it's an exceptionally nice performance in the eight bars before he starts yelling. And it's an exceptionally nice performance in the two bars after he stops yelling. But I don't know why he felt the need to return to the falsetto that sounded like crap on the final note the first time he did this song, because it sounds like crap again. Not as virulent a brand of crap as last time, but crap nevertheless.
I want to like him. I really do. But he's got to drop some of the affectations and sing. It's getting to be not enough that he's not as bad as the people who suck.
Muppet-Boy promises us a group sing after the break. Oh. Oh, good. Group sings are...always fun.
When we return, Muppet-Boy instructs us to get up off our couches and dance. Oh, I don't think so, there, Gonzo. Unfortunately, the group sing this evening is "All Night Long." Man. Wasn't that song dead even when it was popular? Didn't we all secretly know it sucked? The group sing begins with Clay, Ruben, and Josh -- who sort of look like three experimental efforts in making A Guy, with varying degrees of success -- strolling onto the stage and taking the first verse. Their voices do not blend at all. Remarkably, they manage a perfect version of what a girl I once knew used to call "the Marcia Brady shuffle," in which you "dance" by just barely moving your feet while you sway back and forth. Clay is by far doing the most exact rendition of the Marcia Brady shuffle, because he's actually lifting his feet off the floor a little and doing the little toe-touch each way. Furthermore, the way Josh is bobbing his head like a chicken is extremely disconcerting. The girls stroll onstage just in time to do the backup part of the chorus, and of course Carmen stands near Clay so that people who like to mash people's names together to refer to them as couples will have something to gnash their teeth about all week. The problem with this performance, of course, is that it's a very bad song. Deeply, deeply bad. Terrible lyrics, bad music, and basically nothing worth harmonizing. Oh, and the "jumbo jumbo" bridge is lame-o lame-o. There is also a group "woo!" and if there's one thing that can be said about "woo!", it's that you can't do it in unison as a group, because it is necessary for "woo!" to appear spontaneous, or else it's just wretched. Josh runs into the audience, as do Clay and Carmen -- together, of course -- to talk to the common people. Clay and Carmen mug for the camera during the bridge. You know, what this show needed was more footage of people making faces at the camera, because I really wasn't getting enough of that. Ruben takes a teeny solo, and that's the only time the song shows any hint of slipping the surly bonds of wretchedness to touch the face of quality. It doesn't last, obviously. It also appears that Josh has trouble grasping the dance move that they're all doing on the stage, despite the fact that said dance move consists of "foot up, foot back, foot up, foot back," and it's the same damn foot. God. My dog could learn to do that, and he's not that smart. Weirdly, on the last note, Josh is not even singing. Hey, spit out that hairball, marine!
Muppet-Boy talks over the applause at the end of the group sing to tell us they'll be back tomorrow. And if you are very, very good, something wonderful just might happen.