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Tuesday
Ryan's out in the audience, saying hello to us, wearing that confusing tie with the diamond squares down the middle again, and all scrubbly still. A credits sequence later, he comes out of the FANT ASIA stage and...everybody screams. Even though he was just out there. Marilu Henner, looking like the Emperor of Ice Cream and refusing to let her kids have any dairy, is screaming. Why? Ryan reminds us about how Bucky left, and that's very sad, and if you don't vote, you can't "boo," and he looks down at the judges and laughs angrily to himself, because the judges have been chatting like a drunken, bored Sunday afternoon in the garden the entire time he's been talking. "Pass me that sangria," says one, and the other says, "We're running out of cigarettes." Ryan shakes them from their summery reverie and introduces them to us, and they nod sleepily, Paula in so much Fellini-esque makeup she looks like the brilliant Pamela Gordon in the late evening of her life. Ryan says something about how Simon's underdressed but everybody is going to class it up -- Simon asks Paula to clarify, just to show how drunk they all are -- even though Simon's wearing what he always wears and the kids are all going to end up looking like they're in Bugsy crossed with Godspell, as performed by Second City.
Ryan talks a blue streak about Rod Stewart's "tight pants," which he pronounces like "pianist," and we learn how Rod Stewart went from obnoxious "rock" songs like ZZ Top straight to obnoxious standards, like fucking everybody else. Is there a single pop star that doesn't eventually relocate to a mental Vegas hotel? And more importantly: what about the "broken arrow/bottle of rain" and "Forever Young" era? Back when Mike + The Mechanics and their ilk could make you feel better about being a mid-thirties white man than even watching The Big Chill sixteen times in a row? The best era not including "Maggie May"? He seemed like a nice man back then, and Rachel Hunter was so, so pretty. Now she's a dancing bag o' bones, and Rod Stewart looks like Jonathan Crane, MD, and he's been singing everybody else's songs as long as my youngest brother's been alive. He explains to us how there was blues, and then jazz, and then standards came from that, and also swing, and thence the apocalypse. He dances like you think maybe the Gentlemen would, but he looks okay in the right lighting. Every picture tells a different story about how old he is ["Don't it? �Sorry." --Joe R]!
If you can't remember what Rachel Hunter used to look like, I'd like you to meet Rod's new fianc�e Penny. Yep. And their newborn, Alistair. Everybody keeps referring to the baby as Rod's, and nobody looks directly at Penny, which is understandable because how awkward, but also gives things a certain Suri TomKitten feel. As Rod and his chattel enter the room, the whole group is singing that annoying song about how "you're in my heart/you're in my beer" or whatever, that song that repeats over and over, faster and faster until you feel like the mulberry bush around which Rod chases his fianc�e. Kat loves the baby and Elliott loves the baby and they're both so showy and sensitive about everything, and nobody will look at Penny still, but it's not a cute baby. I know what a cute baby looks like, and...oh, what a cute baby! Never mind. ["I thought the baby was adorable." -- Sars] We see Rod pantsing around with the Idols -- saluting Paris, shoving Kellie's face into his knee, dancing with some bald gay black man, falling on the floor like a drunk and staring up Kat's dress -- and he tells how he "could never do what these kids do at their age," because at their age he was fucking old ladies who wanted to take care of him but he was like, "No, I'm going to be a pool shark." Everybody plays with the baby to the point where jealous Daddy bitches about being outshone, and I don't think they use the word "bastard" in Europe because nobody gets married there anymore because gay marriage ruined that particular sacrament forever -- In your face! -- but I still think it's funny to call Rod Stewart's baby a bastard.