The very excellent, very long night begins with a shouty, flirty duet rendition of "I Saw Her Standing There" that manages not to be completely cheesy, but does have some pitch issues (courtesy Jordin) in addition to its medium cheesiness (Blake). Then, Ryan's "good friend" GWEN STEFANI, looking pants in a weird Astro Boy bubble tutu dress and singing the rambling "4 In The Morning" -- one of the better songs from the new album -- with her eyes crossed. No Akon to be seen. Then: KELLY CLARKSON! Singing "Never Again"! Looking gorgeous! In fine voice! Warning Blake through a complicated system of blinks and hand signals to get the fuck out of there before it's too late! And the goddamn Golden Idols: X-Centric the Furry and Orgasm Girl lose the Crazy Motherfucking Irritant award to Big Bird Margaret. Then all Top Six boys do a Smokey Robinson medley with SMOKEY ROBINSON. What that means is: you trade Brandon Davis and Chris R for Sanjaya and Sligh and it's a fair deal, but then they throw Smokey Robinson at you, which queers the deal because he's a great musician but a lot to deal with, visually.
BARRY B and the aging DOUG E. FRESH join Blake onstage for some intensely awesome old-school freestyling that probably killed half the audience (Ryan's like, "Remember Justin and Kelly?"); Blake reveals that he has like fifteen powers of awesome beatboxing we didn't even know about, and it's powerful. Then more stupid Golden Idols that don't matter. I'm so glad I'm not Moses or I'd have to choke a bitch. Then the girls sing their medley with GLADYS KNIGHT! Who looks THIRTY! Then TONY BENNETT, the Bush Baby, and other things that got fast-forwarded. BEBE and CENE WINANS sing a lovely trio with Doolittle, who used to be their backup. That's the coolest thing, isn't it? They also look really great. I knew there would be special guests, but I didn't know they would all look fabulous. Such as CARRIE UNDERWOOD, in a cute dress over pants, who sings a fiddlicious country-tinged "I'll Stand By You" that isn't merely serviceable but actually way better than the original. Damn well done, Underwood. Clive Davis enters to "So Smooth," which is hilarious, and he rambles about Idols past, which: bleep-bloop, and Carrie gives an awesome speech about her wild success. A huge contingent of awesome bald African kids sing a very cool, very energetic African kid song. Sanjaya is compared to both Einstein and Abraham Lincoln, then performs "You Really Got Me" with Joe Perry in a wind tunnel; it's even more amazing than you can imagine.
GREEN DAY sings boring-ass "Working Class Hero" on behalf of Darfur, okay, in almost absolute darkness so that you might not recognize their whoredom, but you can't disguise Billie Joe's teeth with mere darkness, so the jig is up. TAYLOR HICKS shows up, still looking hot until he starts with that bullshit, and then I don't know, it's not really that bad. His toile paisley jacket is really amazing and his dancing is minorly gay when it's not spastic…it's Taylor, what can you do. Stand way back and let him go and hope he doesn't bite his tongue off. Jordin sings "You're All I Need To Get By" (Marvin Gaye) with ROOOOBEN, who's dressed like the entire cast of Idlewild. Jordin's wearing Badgley Mischka the whole time and it turns out the girl's got legs, which we didn't know. BETTE EFFIN' MIDLER sings "The Wind Beneath My Friggin' Wings" in a leather skirt and is one Parliament and a late night out from turning into Marianne Faithfull once and for all; it's cheesy and very very American Idol and unending. Randy and Paula, at this point, start making out down in the audience, while Bette Midler sings poorly and interjects God into every other line of the song, for some reason.
Kelly looks great despite her ill-advised top, rocking the hell out on "Sergeant Pepper's" with a gaunt man playing a golden guitar; Taylor's hotness seems to be sticking on his number, "A Day In The Life," although he does color it all up with Taylor by the end; the third part of this weird little homage to the show itself is Carrie singing "She's Leaving Home," pronouncing "handkerchief" to rhyme with "Commander In Chief" because of the rhyme scheme, awesome; Ruben sings a pretty awesome arrangement of "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" with the Top Twelve as backup. Is this going to end? No. the Top Twelve, Sligh first up, sings "A Little Help From My Friendth." The "friends" in this instance being Lakisha's breasts, and Syndrome's weird little faces; Blake is dressed like the Sergeant himself.
Then Jordin, obviously, cries and wins and cries and sings that awful song, and cries, and we're done. I'm mostly going to miss Simon for the rest of the year. We're free! Damn it! Congratulations to Jordin, and to the show for having a finale that, even without Prince, managed to be awesome.
Ryan's wearing his usual black suit and tie and looking like one million pre-tax dollars. Blake and Jordin make bored, goofy faces as Ryan wonders aloud who will take the title, the "beatboxer from Seattle," or the "sweetheart from Arizona"? The world is watching, he says ominously: "This is American Idol." There are awkward daps for the band leader and a complete disinterest in the crowd as he hits the stage. It's all very cinematic; I highly recommend HD. Oops, spoke too soon: Teri Hatcher. Why do they insist on bringing her here all the time? It makes me nervous. Even scarier is Ryan's declaration that this season has already comprised forty-nine hours of television. Forty-nine hours! If they McDowell'd you in a room and clipped your eyeballs open for forty-nine hours with this crap, how bored would you be? Dead. Dead amount of bored.
Jordin gets some cheers from Foxworthy and a very unhappy Jerry Springer. All night long, you don't see one without the other; it's telling. America, see what happens when you stop paying attention? The cheers are louder for Blake, but it's a West Coast audience so that doesn't mean anything. Ryan gives propers to "the people who discovered them in the first place," the judges. Randy's wearing a strange, ugly jacket that makes him look like the leader of a small African nation in some terrible '70s movie. Paula's hair is smaller, her nose is adorable, and she's looking fine. Time enough for the ugly crying. Simon's wearing: a black jacket, shirt open to here, a proud expanse of rich white flesh, a smarmy stare, and a sexy wink at Ryan. Those two. How weird is it when the slashers win and the people give in? Remember that one Dawson's Creek where the whole teaser was Dawson and Pacey declaring their horndog teenage love for each other? Shivery.
Dude, Randy thinks it's gonna be a hot one night. I'm going to open this bag of M&Ms right now and line up all the green ones, and every time Randy says something relevant, I'm going to eat one. Better than gastric bypass, boy. Randy yells at Ryan to call it right now and Ryan explains that if he does that, it will mean big trouble, because we need to sit through fifty-one hours of this crap before that happens -- and then we won't get to see it, because FOX is run by incontinent old men that still don't get time-shifting. Paula says something or another is "excellent" and Ryan's like, "Simon, you already look bored." You and me both, baby doll. Simon says it's because he's listening to Ryan; Ryan has his usual grace about it all, bonding with Paula over how awesome finales are, and how conversely unawesome Simon can be. Blake is cute all over.
Ryan's favorite thing in the whole world is apparel, so he tells us all about Jordin and Blake's outfits, and how they got to go somewhere and buy clothes, and then he does a back flip about clothes. Blake's wearing Ashton Michael: the dresser for the pimpmercials, a friend of Blake's, and -- in the spirit of full discretion and weird synchronicity -- my friend on MySpace, after a Filter shoot of Regina Spektor that rocked my socks. Jordin's wearing Badgley Mischka, about whom I know only: that they met at Parsons, and that their fall line so outstrips their disappointingly diaphanous spring collection that it almost makes me wish they'd switched up or mixed up designers and given Blake a shot at those awesome military lines, and Jordin some of that edgier Ashton Michael retro shit.
I can't believe Gilmore Girls didn't hook up Michel and Taylor in the finale. I was so counting on that shit. So Blake and Jordin are going to be singing "I Saw Her Standing There" because the fix is in, and girlfriend is just seventeen. DID YOU KNOW? Ryan smiles hugely and then the Top Two come hurtling out onstage, grinning like demons. Jordin goes into a very sock-it-to-me kind of mod flail; Blake's rocking a blue suit and ruffled shirt from the future. Jordin's a little pageant-y/annoying, Blake's being a little sexy/annoying, but I imagine there are nerves at play here, so whatever. The finale is usually very black-and-white in terms of having to pick one or the other, but I guess Kat/Taylor was like the apotheosis of that or whatever, or maybe it's just me, but I think of them as two versions of the same basic thing, and weirdly, that makes this more fun. Nobody's on the edge of hysteria wondering who's going to win: they both already won, and not in that fake Paula way. They both outsmarted the show, and that means we outsmarted the show, so we're winners too. Jordin's wearing a dress over pants, like I needed to tell you that. She sounds less amazing than usual, but they both sound good. Soon enough, they head out into the audience, hearts going boom, and one hopes that the physical complexity of this act will distract them from their goofy fucking faces for a second. One is not disappointed. They end up on the inevitable catwalk and get real awesome, real fast. It's very flirtatious and fun -- how gross would it be if Kat and Taylor did this? Or, like, anybody. Bo and Carrie? Yuck. Lord. Well, Clay and Ruben came like thisclose. There's a cute little twirl and kiss at the end. I like that. It's good to go there. After the Aryan repression that was a Carrie and A-Fed duet, it's nice to just go there for once.
Out in the audience there's a TV-presenter kind of lady who has had plastic surgery. Perhaps she is famous. One of the youngsters onstage is the American Idol, Ryan reminds us once more, and then kicks it to Gwen Stefani, who's supposedly in the middle of her tour, but who knows. What's most important here is how she's wearing a diaper. Imagine a tubular pouf skirt the diameter of Björk's swan dress, only hot pink and excessively bunchy. Love Angel Diaper Lady. She informs us that "4 In The Morning" is her favorite song on the new album, as well it should be for reasons previously discussed, and then launches into it. One thing this show will remind you about is how long songs can actually be. We get too much latitude with the skip button these days! My ADD iPod ass cannot handle how long songs actually are! Especially repetitive ones like this: after the second chorus it's like you're tied to a damn chair. She waves goodbye after finally finishing her lovely song, Ryan thanks her, there is cheering, and up : Your Top Twelve...With A Few Surprises. Yikes.
Back to Blaker Girls being scary in the balcony wearing baby-doll dresses, and Ryan spills the round of beans: it's been five years since the guest took the title (the crowd counts on their fingers, then shits themselves) and in the meantime she's won two Grammies, seven Number Ones, and sold either $14M or 14M albums, I don't recall. "Singing her new single -- she's a little ticked in this song -- 'Never Again'...Kelly Clarkson!" Okay, now, I love Kelly Clarkson. She's one of the new things in the world that makes me proud to be here. Plus, the video for this song is full boss. When you write your Orestes album, you'd best deliver in the video, and she did. But then, her videos have always rocked: Joseph Kahn's "Walk Away" followed in the low-concept footsteps of Alex De Rakoff's for "Since U Been Gone," capitalizing on the driving beats and sing-along fun of those tunes, but it was the rage and sadness of the virtually unwatchable "Because Of You," and most of all the mesmerizing "Behind These Hazel Eyes," that really killed me: in the latter, she plays the Prince that saves her own jilted Bride, riding up on a white horse and pulling her from the mud. Love it. So his new video with her is for "Never Again," and -- like Carrie's for "Before He Cheats" -- manages to transmute romantic anger into something elemental and really magical. Bringing down buildings and blowing up cars with a single heartfelt "No." It's just brilliant, I can't say enough about it. What little girls need to see is videos like this: beautiful young women, their footsteps cracking pavement, destroying worlds with their rage.
Anyway, the video is rad, as is the performance. She's got that fauxhawk Olivia Wilde thing I hate so much from 2005, but looks great...ish? Mostly great. The boots come up to an unfortunate place on the thigh, with that skirt, but whatever: she's Kelly. She already won that one; witness her bizarre Mama Cass muumuu on IGB night. She always seems to mean these songs, especially the pissed-off ones. I never thought that would be the thing we had in common. The red and orange lights make it all very hellish and scary and pop, and the crowd claps along, awesomely. Take a second to think about how many different setups and bands and shit have to get on and off that stage, and all the lights and music levels and everything. We make fun of the production, and Lord knows they fail us regularly, but that's still amazing. Notice how I'm not bleep-bloop-ing. I want to play tambourine for Kelly Clarkson. That's all I want. It's a humble goal but that doesn't mean it's not important. The scary breakdown part of the song is even scarier, with the blue and green lights and the awesome beats coming and coming. Man, this song is good. A lovely woman I'm told is Jennifer Hudson sits in the audience wearing cute glasses and clapping. I would do anything to avoid writing the paragraph. There are days when I'm feeling very Avril and like "WHO WEARS THE PANTS? I WEAR THE PANTS!" and just wanting to flip off the paparazzi more than anything. But sometimes, you feel a little more grown-up but not terribly much grown-up, and that's where Kelly comes in. Turn your anger into something you can dance to.
Anyway, "for their fierce originality and determination," Ryan presents the motherfucking Golden Idols, and I can't tell if Ryan's not feeling it either. Sometimes he seems disgusted, other times he just seems hyper. I don't know. So the first GI is "Best Presentation": for those who "truly performed." The inevitable panthromorphic X-Centric, unhealed moth girl Isadora Furman sounding like a cello that has forgotten its safe word, and the most regrettable nutjob of them all, Big Bird Margaret Fowler. Curb Your Enthusiasm music plays as David Alan Grier wonders if this minstrel show bullshit is really happening. It is, David Alan Grier. Every week on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from January to May sweeps. Big Bird wins and comes hustling up onstage with a crazy matted blonde wig and Sesame Street music and she kisses Ryan and then starts humping and Michael Chiklis throws up in his hand and Ryan almost follows suit. Onstage, she talks gibberish, Ryan talks gibberish, he answers her phone for her -- which she pulls out of her bra -- all pissy and over-rehearsed, and she acts crazy some more and yells all crazy and fucked-up and horrible. She notifies us that she's going to read a poem -- "because you know I'm a poem! Right, Simon?!" -- and then recites some more mentally ill bullshit. "AI is a whip / That surely can make one bliss / For all it's worth / It has its pace / For Leticia, Melinda, Jordin, and me too / We'll take the hearts of those that want to exist / Yeah." See? Mentally ill bullshit. I don't have time for it. Ryan gathers up her shit and gets her offstage and then threatens Simon that they've given her his number: "You two kids have fun!" Ryan shouts. That was awful. It gets worse later.
The Top Six boys, starting with Sanjaya, sounding like that, singing Smokey Robinson. They're all wearing gleaming white suits. Chris R looking piggish and being all Timberfake stupid, then Sligh with Kenny G hair and lame amateur emotional showboating moments. Phil doing the same, of course, times one billion. He's still fucking heinous to look at and sings falsetto and comes this close to just fucking dying already. He looks like trenchfoot. Brandon is awesome some more, Blake gets no solo; Smokey comes out looking nasty and scary but sounding fucking amazing, exciting Blake Lewis. Smokey does his own medley and the boys all scurry around and try not to fuck up. He sounds exactly the same as he always did, which is impressive and sounds great, but like...firstly, he's wearing those gross fake contacts, and secondly, he's reading the words off a teleprompter, so I guess he's old now. They get through a cool, modern retro arrangement of "Tears Of A Clown" in which all the boys attempt to have moves. In order: Sligh thucks, Sanjaya tries really hard, Phil tries way too hard, Blake finally sings for two seconds; the boy choreography is like Blake Lewis (well, Jamiroquai) meets the Four Tops. Chris R can't hack it, and Sanjaya is doing it way too enthusiastically: right back where we started from. Smokey, please pop out those gross fake contacts. You're better than this. He used to scare me so much when I was little. I used to have these awful dreams about Smokey Robinson coming at me.
More ads for the band competition that I don't need to be having any of, which still doesn't have a name. I'm calling it the Flickerstick Invitational. Ryan says that one complaint nobody on earth whatsoever had was that Blake didn't get to beatbox in the final song last night. No, the problem, if you were listening mister Prince Seacrest, was that he had to sing that rubbish at all. But whatever: Ryan brings out Barry B, Blake, and the legendary Doug E. Fresh for a 2007 update of "The Show." Aw, where's Rick? Did he finally get deported? Remember grade school? Man. So: Blake's in a red jacket, a silly hat, a plaid vest, and a way untied black tie, and looks all right okay. Doug is still amazing, and very awesomely, Blake is this close to dying of ecstasy the entire time. They jam out and then Blake runs back to the stage while Doug commands the catwalk, then joins Blake. They look like they've been doing this for years. Back onstage, they beatbox at each other for a while, and it's a moment. Just the stylistic changes of the last twenty years, all lined up in front of you...I don't know, you can't talk about beatboxing on paper so I'm reduced to the usual "awesome." It's like, okay. If you knew this song before, that's +5 awesome. And then if you've heard it lately, that's another +10 awesome right now. And if you actually care, it's just incredibly sexy, what they're doing.
Ryan shrugs all, "Just like the days of Justin and Kelly!" like, that's just one of the many hints we'll be getting about the franchise tonight. It's a funny thing, this, because if it were about the "beatboxing," it would be a cul-de-sac and we'd go back to normal year, but I don't think it is, and I don't think the show thinks it is either. I think we're being treated to new music happening on TV, on this show, for the first time ever. If you're auditioning this year, try some Björk. I don't think it's as bad a choice as it has been previously. And I mean the real shit, not like "It's Oh So Quiet." You know you want to. Go crazy, disobey. You might be surprised. So anyway, Ryan calls both Blake and Doug "originals," then kicks it to the GI. Most Original Vocal: Nicholas "The High Parts...And The Low" Zitzmann, the apparently interesting or noteworthy Sandie Chavez, and Sholandric "If Ever You're In My Arms Again" Stallworth, who yells. It hurts me the most when they go after the Quiet Storm, you know? Those are my smooth jams you're crapping on, dude. The winner is -- "heh," Ryan fakes -- Sholandric, who comes onstage in a gross ponytail, and still seems to be a tad less crazy than he actually, obviously is. They talk about how his statuette doesn't have his name on it, which seems important to Crazypants for some reason, and then Randy requests that he sing "Silent Night" without benefit of mic. Those M&Ms are getting cold, Jackson. He does, it's stupid, everybody cheers their stupid asses off, it's over, goodbye, goodnight, goodnight. Ryan cuts him off and sends him away with his statue and more dignity than Big Bird got, but it's still going to get worse later. "Power, passion and a ponytail," Ryan says, to which I can only respond, "Ryan, where are my tour tickets?"
, the Top Six girls, singing a really neat arrangement of "Heard It Through The Grapevine." I gotta hand it to the people who wrote these performances, they're all really neat. I don't know if it's the totally uninteresting lack of finale suspense, or the fact that they rearranged everything and left out the impenetrable duets with the Idols -- and after the bloodbath that was Meatloaf-McPhee, who could blame them -- but it keeps moving along and being awesome, for two hours and change. So Jordin's up first, and then Gina either singing too quietly or having mic issues, and then some girl I've never seen before, with a pretty voice. Then Syndrome's vagina, screaming. LaKisha shouts her ass off and does awesome dances, and then you've got Jordin and Gina back-to-back singing adorably, and then on the other side of the stage Syndrome running her ass up and down the spine of that mysterious girl, who is not having it. And making her usual bizarre Sanjaya faces and shooting her tongue all over the place like a terrible lizard.
Then! Gladys Knight! Looking like thirty years old! Or slightly more, now that I'm watching it in HD, but that's always the problem, isn't it? Gladys's hair looks totally cute. She looks like Shaun Cassidy. Melinda is amazingly cute and totally shitting because Gladys Knight is feet from her; Gina looks actually really hot, even in her bedazzled potato-sack excuse for a dress. Gladys heads into the unavoidable "Midnight Train To Georgia," a song I will always adore, and can you imagine being onstage with Gladys Knight? Not even singing, just breathing the air that Gladys Knight is breathing? I would fall down dead with my hand at my forehead, I really would. That's so awesome. That's the thing I would remember. Melinda's like, fucking A this is awesome, like the whole time, basically begging Gladys Knight to adopt her. Or at least let her become a Pip. There's an interesting part where LaKisha and Melinda trade solos, and whoever's not singing, it's like they're the Xtina from that time that Madonna kissed Britney, then the other way around. I went just a Camille Paglia amount of insane when that happened, I don't remember if we talked about it, but it was like watching Parsifal with hot chicks, like I was convinced if you slowed it down and put on like 3-D glasses, you could see some kind of magic passing from Madonna to Britney, or, like, a miraculous mantle. Like Athena dipping Brad Pitt in the river Styx, only with magic lips. And for awhile it worked, but I think Madonna forgot to tell her how to keep it going, or to not feed it after midnight, or something. Because now she's bald and not magic anymore. I don't know where it went. Janet Jackson's all whatever, too. Either it's a vast right-wing conspiracy or there's some girl we don't know about yet, but either way we need more slutty girls right now singing. Where did they go? And don't hand me this shit about Ashanti or Rihouyhnhnm, I'm being serious.
Syndrome emotes at the side of Jordin's head, having lost track once again of the audience with her dumb ass; Paula dances around ditto; Simon belches and sticks his hand down his pants; Justin dishes with a girlfriend down in the audience. Then, Constantine is gross and sitting to what appears to be Mitch Pileggi, devouring the camera and licking his lips and smirking and being awful and unable to look away from the camera for anything. God, he's disgusting. And now? Tony Bennett. Fabulous. Singing "For Once In My Life," slowed down to that same fucking elegiac deadly fucking indulgent Barbra Streisand swing tempo, so you can really savor every cadaverous exhalation. Ten bucks says he gives a little hipster speech in the middle; double or nothing he snaps his fucking arthritic fingers while he's doing it. I won't be around to know for sure, so we're on the honor system. Oh, wait, no we're not: just when you think it's over and it's safe to bleep-bloop out of hyperspace, his ass comes back with a whole fucking dramatic bullshit tag, just like he took LaKisha to task for doing, and it's also unending and indulgent. Just chewing the shit out of every word. Then he drops the ball on a glory note, because he's a hundred and fifty. Good one, Gramps.
But is he done? Fuck no. He drags it out for a thousand years with a huge fucking drama queen smile and then basks in that shit when it's finally done. Everybody cries and pisses their pants and cheers and cuts themselves and bleeds all over and why? Because he's old. That's why. That's the only reason. He accomplished not dying. Congratulations. Thank God he didn't talk about Iraq again. Anyway: GI. The Best Buddies Award. First up is The Bush Baby & The Fat Retard, followed by The Bush Baby & The Fat Retard: Whore Edition, a.k.a. Amanda and Antonella, and finally, Ryan and Simon. Things get very Twink Defense for a while between Ryan and Simon: unending footage of them making out all the damn time, Ryan calling Simon "a bit of a prick today," fighting over the unworthy Sligh and forever earning Ryan Joe R's indignant rage, calling each other "sweetheart" bitchily, telling each other to get out of the closet, making out some more... When does the joke start having you? When does this stop being funny and start being real? When does it really just become the machine and Ryan's joke at the expense of gay people? It's a hall of very creepy mirrors and I'm pretty sure it flipped at some point, but I can't figure out when it happened. I'm not feeling it anymore. Anyway, in the middle of this hailstorm of shit, more shit, and the original Bush Baby And Fat Retard win, and then: bleep-bloop, with a picture of a real live bush baby happening onscreen, and whatever, we part company with the show at this point. What's funnier than fat people? Congenital diseases! Including homosexuality! Monkey face for the win!
Things happen: Clive Davis is introduced as "the man with the golden ears," then enters to "So Smooth," okay, if you can believe it, and then he deigns to give us "this year's report card" as far as 19's album franchise. The State Of The T-Shirt You Can Listen To. While Clive babbles on and on unendingly about DAUGHTRY, who is apparently the hugest explosion of music, he drops condescending nuggets for Taylor and Kat, but stays on track selling DAUGHTRY for awhile before heading into a pretty ugly area having to do directly with Kelly Clarkson, who recently released a kick-ass album that Clive didn't want her to release, because she had the balls to write it herself. Keep that in mind moving forward. So he's like, literally: "That's what album sales are really all about: new hit songs!" He randomly segues over to the judges and how they've done "an unprecedented job discovering new talent" for 19, just putting it out on the table, and then waves toward mentions of Academy Award Winner Jennifer Hudson, then feints left to toast the judges, and then it gets gross. "But in turn, everyone at American Idol must toast songwriters. The people who write all Clay's songs, and wrote 'Breakaway,' and 'Since U Been Gone,'" he totally says. The people who wrote The Color Purple get a shout-out, as does Fantasia's "brand new hit song of her own," and every time he says the word "hit" or "songwriter," what he's really saying is that Kelly is a bitch who's doomed to failure. And songwriters are awesome, and you don't have to be some kind of folkie that writes all your songs, but it's just so Idol that this awful, pointed speech is directed at the head of the one person who's managed to garner actual industry success without Dread Lord's creepy hand up her like a puppet. In a moment where all their successes should be applauded, we get to stare right past Kelly and applaud DAUGHTRY, of all fucking things.
Not to take away from Carrie, who rocks but is a different kind of artist, but it's a particular kind of producer masturbation to try to reabsorb all that success and tout yourself as the be-all end-all of music, when you're famous for exactly one thing: running a television scam for the abduction and control of young musicians who should, in theory, be able to make it on their own. It's supposed to be undiscovered talent, not created by this show and the unholy dick of Clive Davis talent. This just spits on all of them, everybody that ever succeeded in connection with this show. And who's pulling the strings? The bastards that run the game to begin with. There's a reason they call A&R "assault & robbery," and we're watching it happen, live. Even Cowell knows this is bullshit, even though he only says so because it supports his position as the face of the show itself. I'm not getting huffy because of Kelly, but because of the thing that he's doing, which has nothing to do with Kelly, or even Carrie. Which is the problem.
So anyway, Clive presents Carrie with this stupid Sitting Still Like A Good Little Girl award, which takes up half the stage, and says the phrase "professional songwriters" a hundred times in any old context, just on and on and fucking on about how they're just machines, these girls, just products to be molded, who have one thing they can do well, but that still wouldn't be enough, if it weren't for him and his stupid golden ears. So because -- thanks to Clive and professional songwriters -- Carrie's sold 6M albums in the U.S. alone, Grammy and CMA and all the awards you can win, he's going to present her with another made-up award to commemorate those other awards and sales. And again: Springer and Foxworthy in the same shot. Think about it. Carrie's very gracious thanking Clive and 19 and Simon Fuller and all the other old white men who somehow managed to load her up with talent she didn't already have.
So Ryan wants to "recapture the fantastic atmosphere of Idol Gives Back," and who wouldn't, so then he cues the African Children's Choir, who come screaming out onto the stage wearing leopard-print headbands on their shaved heads. And we can talk about appropriation and all that, but you know this is going to be cool qua itself, at least. This awesome little girl sings under yellow lights and does these movements like that Top Model where Renee made sure we got it, and the other kids start dancing around and being adorable with giant smiles, and there are kids on drums, pounding away, joyful, and you know, as a thing in itself, it actually is awesome, but in a PBS kind of way where you're like, "Look! Look what's happening!" But on AI it's all still a little...disingenuous. Like there's no difference between these kids and Bette Fucking Midler. Maybe there's not, I don't know. I do know that I have a hardcore wish that they'll get kick-ass representation and become the new Blue Man Group, I really do.
Then, speaking of mixed messages, "Also Sprach Zarathustra" starts playing and we're treated to shots of everybody from Babe Ruth and Muhammad Ali to MLK and Gandhi and Lincoln, and then...then, Sanjaya Malakar pantsing around gaily. Like they knew that is what it would take, after Clive and the kids: a good strong toke off the Malakar family bong. There are shots of Simon being disgusted in many locations, more speechifying, children screaming from stock footage, that little crazy girl, the ponyhawk, Joe Perry from Aerosmith comes out under a digital banner of all the hairdon'ts, and Ryan SCREAMS his name. And there's a wind tunnel, and little Sanjaya Malakar tea-bagging you with his lack of talent once again. What he's got, it's so much better than talent. You couldn't get a "professional songwriter" to fix this; it's unfixable. I hope he gives Clive Davis a fucking lap dance and then blinds him with fairy dust. Every time you think this show is getting untenable, they will throw a Sanjaya bomb in your face; I love it. I think Sanjaya is lip-synching. The most beautiful sentence in the English language.
Of course, it's still ass-awful, but kind of grand. It's like Versace. The little crazy girl is still crying, Sanjaya works the stage, she cries and cries, Sanjaya still has this idea about what porn is actually like and his place in it, Joe Perry looks pretty gross himself, the awful singing goes on and on. I applaud all of this very hard. This is such a great finale! Kelly singing in the face of Clive a song she wrote herself! Sanjaya fucking up just everything there is to fuck up! He fully ends in classic "golden god" pose, with the wind machine still going, then humps Joe Perry's leg. It's like watching something gay and very violent being born, every time. Sanjaya's a mushroom cloud, in all the colors of the rainbow.
Now, sadly, we're getting hit in the face with "a special cut" off the Instant Karma album, which is having to do with Darfur: John Lennon's "Working Class Hero," performed by...Green Day. That's kind of surprising, I guess. "There's nothing quite so punk as NPR activism," I was saying to my granny just the other day. Right before I bashed her teeth out, sitting in the shotgun seat of my Prius. I looked up and I saw a Black Flag sticker on an Escalade, and it was being driven by Billie Joe Armstrong. To Whole Foods, and he was rocking out to that "I would walk 500 miles" song, even. So BJ seems to still think he's a bi-curious sixteen-year-old with bad teeth. He's...not wrong. The screen gets all life-affirming and shit about Darfur and whatever, somebody writes something on Coldplay's arm having to do with trees or poor people. Here are my five favorite Green Day songs and why I like them, because I can already tell this shit is going to go on and on forever.
1. "Coming Clean," because it takes a very small amount of time to explain a very particular thing that's hard to explain, which is the point of poetry. Also because once the question's on the table, you arrive at:
2. "When I Come Around," because in the summer of '95, that song and a lukewarm Bartles & Jaymes was literally all it took. ["Digging down into the fossil record of my mix tapes -- taaaaapes! -- from that era confirms this." -- Sars] I'm not proud, but I am kind of mystified, and in any case that song still has a very strong effect on me.
3. "Warning," because it's the exact same song as "Manic Monday," and that's hilarious. Try it now! Also because science has shown that the very first time you hear it, you stop dyeing your hair unnatural colors, and your heart dies.
4. "Longview," because it's like crushing up the '90s and snorting it on the couch, in your underwear. You can't read Neuromancer when you're high, that's what that song reminds me of. No amount of the Bros. Hernandez will make you anything other than a pissed-off chubby white boy. Words we would do well to remember, even today.
5. "Wake Me Up When September Ends," because it's the funniest music video in music video history. Evan Rachel Wood, let's chat, you and I.
So the last line is sung by Lennon, not in that creepy time machine way like Elvis and Celine Dion, but in the normal ghoulish way. Boom! Taylor Hicks! Just like that! He starts out all hot in a cute black toile paisley jacket, singing a pretty awesome song -- "Heaven Knows"? -- which is smack in the middle of the Taylor Hicks wheelhouse, but sure as eggs is eggs and everybody pays taxes, the troubling Taylor spazzing peeks its head in, retreats, comes back in, goes away... It's like Ionesco's Rhinoceros, only instead of fascism, it's epilepsy. I see he's given up diction altogether, that's fun. Taylor pulls out that fucking smarmonica with that compromised grin he gets, and even the cameras are at a loss. The people kind of forget to clap as he wigs out and America spaces for a second; then it's over. Congratulations on once again adding nothing to art.
Speaking of doing that, and doing it well: "You're All I Need To Get By," with Jordin and ROOOOBEN. Have we even seen Blake? Oh right, the awesome beatboxing. Jordin's cuteness is so intense that she can even wear a dress the color of a baby prostitute and look wonderful. It's got an awesome little sash coming down the back and she looks like the secret friend of all My Little Ponies. Ruben looks great too, in a pinstriped suit and pink tie. The song is rollicking and droll, but it doesn't do anything we haven't seen before. It's a pretty straight rendition. When did I start demanding that music sit up and do tricks? Right around last year, but I didn't get really intense about it until Clive opened his giant stinking mouth. I don't remember Ruben singing this energetically before. Good for him. I hope he loses his virginity one day, that's what I always think with him. Ruben would make a good, like, husband and father. Why, look at those hips!
Ryan's thrilled to welcome to the stage...somebody gay, I presume. Brad Garrett sits in Paula's spot for some reason, nodding off. Then there are some questions. 1) Bette Midler: Why? 2) Wearing a rubber skirt: Why? 3) Singing "Wind Beneath My Wings": Why? 4) People waving their stupid hands back and forth: Why? 5) Whispering words at random, dramatically: Why? 6) Pretending to have wings and/or be a hula star: Why? 6) Forgetting how to use a microphone: priceless. I'm getting another drink, buddy. Jerry Springer cries and thinks about the white-trash wind beneath his wings, and this song is still happening. I am fully losing my religion. This show is soooo looooong. By the time she finishes this song, I will have become The Rose.
Later-slash-Now: a tribute to the one and only...Sergeant Pepper. WHAT? What is going on with this show? Is there some kind of anniversary or reissue happening? Actually, they've been doing Beatles all night so I shouldn't wonder. Kelly C comes out in a cute top and some huggy kind of jeans, again with the Joe Perry Phantasm, and she pony-hops around while he does his solo. She's so very magical, dude. However happy she is right now, it's not happy enough. So she's Year One, and Year Two was just here, and Year Three is on Broadway, so Kelly intros Taylor again, who comes out all emo in the darkness and sings "Day In The Life." I really like the Beatles; we've not talked about that before. I catch no small amount of hell for hating old music, but it's not all old music I hate, just certain kinds. If you do it in a tux, or it smells like Clay Aiken, I probably hate it. I will always love the Beatles. Those were guys who jumped the hell into the thing, and made everybody else catch up. Like, once a year, they did this. They made up new sounds and new ways of making music and new ways of using technology and instruments, and nobody ever saw it before. And they never had irritating phases like everybody else does, if they stay around that long. That's a big one. You have to keep moving and growing and they tried to show us and now we have this show American Idol. Taylor hands off to Carrie, in a gorgeous black dress and giant silver belt, and she launches into "She's Leaving Home," a very touching and lovely song, and then the Top Six girls come out in black and silver, singing backup. Gina is very earnest in a crazy Masters Of The Universe kind of a corset thing; Jordin's wearing yet another princess dress; LaKisha's wearing another fussy duvet cover; Stephanie (?) is in a very, very cute slip dress; Syndrome's wearing her underwear of course; and Melinda shines in a very grownup, lovely dress...and pants.
Key change into "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds," with Carrie introducing Ruben back into the mix. Didn't he sing something weird and cool like this his year? Hmm. Right, it was "Imagine." Man, he always picked the best songs. Good old Ruben. He seems very elder-statesman now, it's cool. You know, because I do think of this as a total watershed year for the show, I really wish Fantasia had come. It would be nice to have all six of them here tonight. Plus, her ass is crazy, and that's all that's missing. The boys come out, and here's what they're wearing. Blake is dressed like a black and silver Sergeant Pepper, with all the bric-a-brac. Randy's like, "I shouldn't even have tried, dawg." Chris R is wearing a black shirt and white tie like he's going to the gross klassy klub. I don't know what they call it where you live, but here it's called Spiro's and it's where you go if you're super poor and don't feel like feeling like it, so you tuck your shirt in, rent a shitty trashy SUV limo, and apply a shitload of gel and enough Drakkar to choke a moose, which in this case means the fake-breasted chick with daddy issues and low self-esteem that's been hunting you like a moose in the night for the last three weeks, during which time you macked on all of her prettier friends in descending order and got shot the hell down every time, and then once you've knocked the Antonella moose flat with your horrible cologne, things get date-rapey. Chris Sligh is looking svelte in his caftan. Sanjaya is forever and ever Sanjaya. Brandon is looking good as always in a classic suit jacket, only minorly fucked by a long silver scarf like he's officiating at Disco Church. Phuckin' Phil is rocking out in a black leather jacket that even DAUGHTRY would say was lame, with like silver foil flames on it, okay, and then turns out they've all got weird silver foil on their stuff, like a high school play set in space. This is not the best collection of wardrobe choices all night, is what I'm saying.
Transition into "With A Little Help From My Friends," a song I don't care for, but it's brightened considerably by Sligh singing, "What would you think if I thang out of tune," followed by Gina swearing she'll "try not to sing out of key." That's comedy, folks. Over and above the clothes. And still and again, this crop is the best at harmony we've ever had, because this show has moved its industry finally from the kitchen to the cottage. Sligh is getting a criminal amount of face time here, I have to say, and working it like only a douchebag can. Syndrome chews with her mouth open, and wiggles, insensate, with her legs spread all over damnation, and horrible psychotic break faces, some more. I swear that girl needs to be put in a home. In the back, all the Alumnidols and Joe Aerosmith are like, "Whatever. Invest this money, I'm telling you this as a friend. Do not blow it."
OMG we're still not done. "It is time, America." A man who on sight is very British stands around creepily with an envelope as Ryan explains how the meaningless season total is 609M votes, and last night we set a new world record: 74M votes. How many of them were text messages that cost a dollar? How many mosquito nets did that buy? Oh, we're not doing that this week? We already cured AIDS, malaria, starvation and illiteracy? Cool! The obviously British guy is named Edward Boddington! SO FETCH! He hands over the sealed but self-evident results, but doesn't do anything remotely British.
Ryan asks the judges -- who have already checked out further than anybody has ever checked out, like, they're in Barcelona with me and Blake is how on vacation they already are -- if they have final thoughts. Randy's like, "Duh, Jordin." That's one M&M down. Paula is just proud of them both and this is a very hard process. Simon gooses her and she acts maniacal about it, then finishes up with congratulations to them both, praises Jordin for being a "star through and through," and Blake something something, and they're both winners, and I spit that M&M back out into my hand and hurl it against the wall, where it makes a tiny little green dent. Simon peels Paula's obnoxious ass off him one dimension at a time and tells them, with forked tongue, what a good night they had last night, but going on the final song -- which was the whole point of the final song, like it wasn't already obvious before that -- he must congratulate Jordin. She smiles, the fix is so in, Blake's sweater is totally awesome and digital. He whispers in her ear, and she chuckles and nods. There's something about this being so far into the season where they're allowed to touch each other and actually care instead of sitting in their isolated cages freaking out, I like that. They're so there, in fact, in their little Jordin/Blake future goodness world, that Ryan finally snaps, like, "HEY. Eyes on me." They obey. And the winner is... Bleep-bloop. And ain't that a motherfucker?
Oh, but then secretly the winner is Jordin Sparks, duh. The lights go nuts, everybody wigs out, Blake is ecstatic and actually tries to lift her Brobdingnagian self, it's adorable, you can see in her back that she knows this isn't going anywhere, but what do you do when somebody grabs you like that? Nothing. Unless it's Blake Lewis and then you don't let go unless you're stupid. He points at her like a Price Is Right girl, lit up, as she cries and shivers. Hasselhoff stands in the audience, too blitzed to cry. Ryan thanks Blake: he was always the hand doing the trick, while everybody stared at the shiny stuff and listened to the patter. Blake points and yells at his hot friends in the audience, who clean up real fuckin' nice, and Ryan formally introduces us to our new American Idol. She jumps like she's been hit by lightning, now that he's said it out loud, the not inconsiderable enormity of that, and then hunches and waves and cries some more. The thing about tall girls is that they will always feel weird about it, no matter how hot they get, you never remark on a tall girl's height, because somewhere in there is a girl that feels screwed by it, even if it is a main factor of their hotness. Blake tried to lift her, so she's going to hunch. Prince S, ill-advisedly, asks her to "explain the moment now," and this is Miss Jordin Sparks we're talking about, she's allergic to impromptu, and now she's freaking out. She thanks us for keeping her around, and for everything, and then goes to the time-tested well of screaming names at random for awhile. Everybody cries except Hasselhoff. Ryan thanks the judges and band, and tells Jordin she's allowed to be emotional. Nobody ever told her that before. He threatens to come back in January, and hands it over to her as Paula cries ugly.
Jordin sings the "This Is My Now" song with tears in her throat. It sounds really good like that, she should always sing it while crying. If anybody could, she could. Not to mention that she's better at hiding her teleprompter reading than most SNL guests, or Smokey Robinson. Her cute mom sits down there nodding and crying, and to be fair, the song sounds a lot better with the crazy guitar than it did last night. The lights match her dress; it's nice. The other Idols sit on the steps; she continues to hold on. Simon whispers to Paula; she's still keeping it together. Phil sucks; she...oh, there she goes. Can she actually get the words out? Yes she can. Think about the breath control this takes. That's amazing. If she is faking or not, that's still incredible. Then the stage explodes in golden sparks like every year, and the audience loses its collective grip, and then something cool when the credits start rolling over the tag, very classy and nice-looking. Is it possible that this always happens and we've just never seen it because FOX can't tell time to TiVo? Like how you never knew what that song at the end of The O.C. sounded like until the DVD. So everybody's crying and the credits are going, and the confetti comes flying out of everywhere and the finish is so, so awesome. She holds on until past the last note, and breaks down, and everybody gathers around her, because finally they're old enough and young enough to love each other. And that's the end of that. I'll miss you, and let's promise to meet back here year. Seacrest out.