Ninety-seven million votes last year, and it all came down to David Cook, who is from Kansas City which is not in Kansas and never was. When you look at it that way it just seems like a lot of sound and fury, no? One day last year, David Cook was humble some more, and now all those same people are here screaming and having terrible skin. There's a lot of Simon love, and a lot of annoying people talking about it, and a bunch of people that love Ryan too. That's really all it comes down to, I think. Well, and now Kara.
You know what I don't get is how every audition episode we have to watch them get out of their judge cars and go, "Here we are in Kansas City," like... Of the many ways in which this show is unbelievable bullshit I never would expect them to hold up like a current newspaper to prove where they are. Wherever they are -- especially Paula -- is kind of the same place no matter where they go.
Pretty blonde deluded Chelsea Marquardt (19, Parsons, KS) sells us her entire imaginary bio, and it's minorly disgusting. "You see me, and you see this little girl, and you don't think that this powerful voice is going to come out of me, and then I'll start singing a song and there's just, like, so much emotion and power, and people are like, 'Whoa.'" It's like if she says it enough times somebody's going to say it back to her. Then she sings that song from when the girl kills herself in Rules Of Attraction, and just like in that movie there's blood everywhere by the time she's done, and Shannyn Sossamon has to come and drag her dead body out of there, tits flopping, before alerting an RA.
It's totally amazing, and yes to how we're now "all like 'whoa'," and her crazy eyes are so crazy, and she doesn't care about the laughing of Randy, just keeps corkscrewing horrible reedy wavery notes into the ceiling like pencils in detention acoustic tile. Simon says something about dropping cats off a building, Paula meanly asks for another song, Randy tells her it's like a four-alarm emergency of sirens, basically in order to one-up Simon, and Kara and Paula are like, "Now you're just being dicks." Paula tells Chelsea to do something I don't understand, which is to take something positive out of something something, and then Randy and Simon are dandruff haters that she needs to wash right out of her crazy with the positive thing from Step 1.
Simon's like, "What possible thing could she take from this experience that would be at all positive, beyond getting to meet Ryan Seacrest and Kara D?" Paula says, "Anything that Kara and I said, beyond how we made fun of her for most of the audition and then laughed when you were mean and then pretended we disapproved." Once again biting into the tootsie-roll center of this BS after a single lick, Kara goes: "Try this. You're a pretty girl, but you are not a good singer." What if Kara D were the only judge? This show would be five seconds long and it would just be Kara going, "I see what the problem is here, and how we're going to fix it." And then they would fix it. The end.
Paula apologizes for them all being mean to her, and even Simon is a little ashamed when he realizes just how little Chelsea is comprehending what has happened today. Chelsea relates the "cat falling off a roof" thing to Ryan and says she might cry, but it's in that Rachel Zoe way where "Chelsea Falling Apart" looks exactly like "Some Dumb Girl Just Standing There," so he gives her a great big hug, because what's a girl to do.
up is the, as Joe R would say, fabulously equine Ashley Anderson (20, Clarksburg, NJ), who will be singing the Leona Lewis song "Footprints In The Sand," which Simon co-wrote, because he can do anything. The great thing about Leona Lewis is all the weird violent sounds she makes, like when she tells you she has been cut open and is bleeding love, or what have you, it really kind of sounds like she's actually working around some serious bodily harm. I hope this song has that sound of slowly bleeding love everywhere. Or I guess the sound of footsteps. Or like the ocean.
What it has is the sound of pissing Simon off because she sings "footsteps in the sand," and Simon decides to take this personally, as a little joke to fuck with her. She turns it back on him, singing the right lyrics sweetly with a smile, and her tarantula mascara batting away, and then unleashes insane Idol-voice on them, and everybody goes quiet. She almost screws up the lyrics again at the end, corrects herself winningly, and basically grabs all of them by the ass and crams them in a bag made for four. Unanimous yeses, with the obvious Simon going, "That is the best song we've heard so far," and she's really just quite charming for now. (Audition-specific song: that song about how the girl is not going to write you a love song, because she is busy.) Ryan asks if she was dicking with them by picking that song, and she's like, "Whatev, it worked." Then he hugs her really hard too, because she's adorable. up: Some horrors.
Don't laugh, but is this an ad or part of the show? I mean, I realize what I'm saying when I say that, but this part I can't tell. It involves David Cook being famous backwards like they're taking it away from him, and dapping some douche possemates, and then ... David Cook has an eyeliner problem. He lies down on his hotel bed in reverse and remembers when he didn't look like a drag queen specializing in Dave Navarro, and was totally hot. Then he goes back forward again -- what the fuck is this, dude -- and does the concert that we just reversed out of, and I guess this all means that you should care about American Idol, because America and dreams and eyeliner. Or you should watch the Fox network? Is there Coca-Cola somewhere and I missed it? That was weird. I miss David Cook when he was a fella.
Simon's loving "Kansas," where he is... not. A girl with a whole lot of face comes in and explains how it is that her name is Casey Carlson (20, Minneapolis, "bubble tea maker"): "I'm Casey Carlson! Casey Carlson, in KC!" What a droll coincidence, although as an icebreaker it would work better if there weren't one million different ways to spell both names, which means I'm jumping through more hoops than you think I am when you say that. Randy, because he still has no idea where they are, just goes like, "Yeah... Totally." I love watching him cover like that. She says she's going to sing "A Thousand Miles" by Vanessa Carlton. I like to imagine that Kara D pushes a Bic pen deep into the flesh of her thigh below the table where nobody can see it when anybody does that. Not hard enough to do damage, just enough to hurt a little bit. Like as a reminder. Casey-in-KC's voice is no great shakes, but she has that weird fashion sense of a bubble tea girl, and her hair has a supernatural amount of bounce and volume, and her face is the kind of face that's going to look way too young for way too long. She seems neat, and pretty-dorky; all four of them love her even though her voice is not going to make it. (Song: obvious, although it reminds us that Vanessa Carlton's vocal tics are five times more annoying than anybody on this show could ever muster. Except for that time Jewel came.)
Also annoying: Kansas City, apparently. Check out all the horrible things they do for the camera, like ululate and play the accordion, two of the most annoying things they do in Missouri from what I've heard. Also check out Brian Hettler (20, KCMO) who is... Yeah, I'll allow it. I'm in the mood to overshare, as we'll see. Basically, Brian here is every guy I dated from about 1996 to 2005, plus or minus a few telling details. Minus the jacked-up teeth but not the dead, half-retarded look in the eyes; minus the Cowell amounts of stretch in that black tank top but not the chubby beardy thing he's got going on; minus the impromptu dancing, minus the Aretha, but not minus the intensity of his earnestness. And how goes the Aretha? WEIRD. I don't know if I can explain how weird, but I'm pretty sure you'll have seen it by the time you read this.
Brian's singing is sort of like yelling, sort of like actual Aretha, very weirdly pronounced, sort of adorable if it happened at a party but not here, and altogether amazingly off-base. Paula asks him to sing some Michael MacDonald, and Simon tells him never to sing again, so he sings Josh Groban, and it's really just kind of offensive. "Honestly, Brian. I'm surprised." Not me. None of that was surprising; I've been there, I've reached out to stop it and pulled back like my fingers were getting burnt because you can't live their lives for them. I have the scars. Also, his friends are weird looking like magical helpers from a fairy tale where a dwarf has like one giant ear that picks up XM Radio, and there's a guy with just one leg who can hop a whole mile, and a rabbit with a magical comb that turns into a Honda Civic when you need it the most. Brian can't be bothered to discuss his audition, and then he informs the camera that he won't be fucking crying for us. Which makes him pretty awesome in the final analysis, if only because it's inspiring to see dignity come literally out of nowhere.
Speaking of dignity, here's a montage of people crying and screaming their stupid faces off which isn't even this interesting except for this one girl who screams like she just found out she was the father.
Later: I think somebody died or something? And now he's on American Idol? This is fascinating. He looks like a young Robert Downey Jr. and talks like a young Anthony Michael Hall, and maybe he's in danger or... This is such a mystery! Maybe he had a tracheotomy. I don't think he's blind, but whatever it is, it's going to blow our minds. Ryan's voice is very quiet and Idol Gives Back as he softly intones, "He's not blind, but he died or something. It's all happening after the break."
But first, David Cook's parents. Not sure why that makes me so angry. Ryan's like so what do you think of the auditions? "They seem nice." Then they go home and do some crossword puzzles, but the real magic here is an explanation of Kara D. Because if you've been reading, you remember I was somewhat taken with Blake... I'm blanking on it. That blonde kid with the beatboxing. And I was all about how they were finally going to start arranging their own songs, and then Sligh managed to shit all over that. But then the year, half of them were Blakes, and then maybe there was a year I'm not remembering but maybe it was that same year, where Jason and Brooke and some other people I can't remember totally went balls-out rewriting the songs until they didn't make a whole lot of sense but were instead a whole little world of awesome all on their own. I was pretty happy about that. And now they've added a songwriter to the judges' table. And we'll see if I'm right, but I'm pretty sure somebody at Idol realized that listening to songs you haven't heard a billion times before is maybe a little more exciting than the alternative. So Ryan sneaks in a little thing about how David Cook did it the best of everybody so far, which is true, and that's I think why we have Kara D now, which hopefully means it's going to be sooo awesome about a hundred weeks from now.
Less awesome: the sweaty, spotty and intense James, who enjoys lady-screaming as a hobby (and is called out as a "singing Ryan" by Simon, of course); a total child molester named Billy who sings the Mulan song; squirrely future character-actor Chris who gets cut off in five seconds; faux Burberry-wearing insane homeless guy Deandre who sings "Amazing Grace"...
And then there's serious charmer Von Smith (22, Greenwood, MO), who "attempts things that most guys don't attempt to sing" and is unafraid to be himself. Which is easy when you're darling. Not so darling is his choice of song, "Over The Rainbow," which he sings very very loudly and sort of prettily but more like he's going to take Normandy with just the power of his singing blowing your hair back as he comes up over the sandbar. Simon smiles like maybe he will kill him, or maybe he loves him. I love him, but that's because I'm shallow. Who was that little Kevin guy that looked like he just got born? What if he grew up and was sort of hot? That would be interesting. Also, though, and mostly maybe because, I fast-forwarded past the screaming shouting mess that was his song. Good control, good technique, attention-getting screamology... I say yes. I mean, what if he used those powers for good? It would be awesome.
What's intriguing is that they know how confusing this moment just was, so they let you twist over the commercial break, which is rare in the auditions. But it's like on the one hand, he obviously can't be trusted, and on the other hand, he sort of pulled this shit off. So we all sit around I guess debating whether or not it was fucked up enough to be awesome, or just fucked up, and then after the commercial -- yeah, that one guy is still dying or whatever, and finds whatever it is incredibly painful to talk about, but he's going to anyway, on camera, which is just so brave -- Simon's like, "I bet your family loves it when you pull that shit." Which is so true. All four of them love his instrument and Kara loves that he can do insane shit like that because he actually has the ability to do it. I just wish he wouldn't do it, and use his power to take flight and lead the newest generation of gifted students at the Xavier Academy in Westchester, like people who can make that amount of noise used to do.
What's even less interesting but even better-looking than Jason Castro? Jason Castro's girly little brother Michael (20, Rockwall, TX), who has a majority of the brain cells Jason left at a Phish concert remaining, but not all of them. He also has pink hair, some rad guns, and a complete inability to form a sentence, so obviously I am smitten with this mess. He looks like what you wish Metro Station looked like. But even still, you gotta think about how your life is going when even Ryan Seacrest finds you difficult to talk to, because this is a person who as his job has to be able to talk to Spencer Pratt without being driven to make a pencil disappear like three times a day. Michael and Jason get into some weird bitch fight about how they're both bitches, and then in the judges' room Paula is like, "I'm going to take your pants off with my teeth; this is perfectly normal." He tells us he never sang a note until three weeks ago, and then sings a Gavin DeGraw song, and it's pretty awesome.
It's less Jason and more into the soul-yelling place of Bo or Taylor -- weirdly, because he looks like one of those LA guys who knows he looks like a total girl, and is just fine with that -- and you can tell he's not that well-trained, but he sounds pretty good. Even when you're not looking. This family, man. Simon calls it "good ... ish," and wonders if a Castro is ever going to take this shit seriously, which is actually pretty insightful. Kara weirdly notes Michael's "I have a secret" vibe, which is pretty awesomely weird but not as perfectly awesome as his response: "Maybe I do. Maybe I don't even know it." What? That's so Castro, I love it. Four big yeses, of course, and a whole lot of appreciation for how cocky he is. Outside he's like, "Yay or whatever." Jason's soul slowly begins to die inside him, which is the greatest part. Later, I think a Katrina victim joins the mysteriously dying man -- still working an "I have a secret" vibe of his own -- in the ranks of the Not Even Blind Or Anything.
...More? Vaughn English (19, Prairie Village, KS) should have stayed home. Bright orange pants, bright yellow jacket, no talent to speak of, a frankly creepy way of doing things, and a banana he sings into. Not worth talking about, although it's somewhat comforting to know with absolute certainty that he got the shit beat out of him a couple times a week for most of his life. Especially in two hours when we've confirmed that no matter how effed-up things get on camera, you will probably find him mugging somewhere in the background, like a douche-chill version of Waldo.
Big old married welder bald/goatee dad Matt Breitzke (27, Bixby, OK) looks like a certain kind of porn. It usually takes place near automobile repair and detailing equipment, and the boots stay on. Matt will be singing "Ain't No Sunshine," and he will be doing it well enough to get to Hollywood, but that razor burn tells me he's not getting much further than that, which is too bad because his voice is lovely, with a distinctive tone and a lot of power. Randy says no, Kara likes him and notes his natural talent, Paula agrees with Kara and loves his control and vibrato, and Simon lets him twist for a bit before sending him through. I hope we get to know his wife and child really well this season, don't you? Actually, there they are now, and they're adorable, so never mind. I'm rooting for you, Matt.
Tragically be-fedora'd Jasmine Joseph (17, Norfolk, NE) is jumpy and weird, and acts like a Saturday Night Live sketch, but sort of in a flesh-crawlingly cute way. At some point she realizes she's being a total spazz and just goes, "Eeeghhhh" in order to show you that she knows she's being a total spazz. Which is second best to acting normal, but still. She does a lot of pushing her hat -- covered in skulls of course -- down over her eyes and pulling it up to free her stupid Muppet-colored hair, and I mean, she actually tries to get us to believe that "people" call her "Jazz," and that these so-called "people" are not Jasmine "Jazz" Joseph (17, Norfolk, NE). Then she takes all of this Hot Topic energy and desperate need for immediate exfoliation and puts it into a creepy mumbly drama-club "Over The Rainbow," and makes about fifteen different faces, none of which make sense. They stretch it out way, way too long, and finally she takes her fucking hat and leaves those bitches far behind without so much as a how-do-you-do, which is sort of awesome.
Lots and lots of horrible people: tornado survivors, a weird Oz theme, a funny T-shirt, a dumb hottie, kissing people, a gum-snapping ho, a barfing girl, that awful screaming-laughter fat chick that shows up every year, some girl with ruby slippers, and a very nice girl with a guitar who is from some Oz-related Kansas place. She lives with her thousand-year-old grandmother who informs us twice in rapid succession that she's taking her "crazy pills," which is awesome, and the girl talks about how great/funny/weird it is to scream at the old woman all the time because she's hard of hearing. It's sort of devastating because the girl is so pretty and nice, and the old woman is so fuckin' old.
Meet Jessica Furney (19, Wamego KS), who has made some serious lemonade from a life that I already want to flee having only experienced it for about five seconds. Her grandmother has a Chihuahua, do you know what I mean? There were doilies. Just these untold but very detectable horrors, parents MIA, small-town Kansas, and then you've got this pretty, curvy girl with cute glasses and shiny hair who's obviously had to be a lot older than her birth certificate would have you believe. It's not just the batty old lady at her house that reminds me of Matt Saracen, it's her whole way of doing things. I sort of already love her. She'll be singing "Cry Baby" by Janis Joplin, which could go one of two ways. Here's hoping.
And yes, it's pretty good, because she actually sings the song like herself and not like Janis, no screeching or any of that shit. Just a clear, good tone with pretty good control. Simon likes her, Randy thinks she's a total natural, Paula likes her "very much," and Kara just laughs about how much she already loves her. Outside -- to Lifehouse, which is tonally a perfect choice right this second -- her friends go insane, and Ryan's very pleased with this outcome. Later: more singing, but first a commercial. How could they let us go one minute without finding out what's happened to Endangered Downey Jr. since the last commercial? American Idol, you truly are a cruel mistress. And now, of course, whatever it is will probably make me cry for an hour and I'll feel like a total dick and have to tell you all about it, and neither of us wants that, not really.
"Push it! Push it real good!" Man, there are so many effed up things about this season, like how it's sort of funny and bitchy suddenly, but I would have to say "Push It" is wild even for this brave new Idol. We check in with Dying Guy Danny and his friend Jamar and their tiny little fauxhawks; but before we solve the ever-deepening mystery of Danny, here are two sisters who like to dance and have fun and talk over each other like Chip and Dale. They audition together, and it's amazing: the tiny one is ever so tiny and looks like all three of Salt-N-Pepa squished into a tiny place, and her gigantic sister is ever so gigantic and looks like some great big lady who should not be doing whatever she's about to do. They're fairly hilarious with each other, and with us, at one point offering their services: anything from choreography to bodyguarding, they're there. I like them, but I don't want to see their audition. Simon asks which one of them is better, and they both agree the tiny one is. The judges laugh, and wait for them to get on with it. Their song is called "Cookies" and it's dedicated to Randy, and it's adorable and funny and weird. It's a rap and there are moves and funny voices, and the chorus is like, "How could you take my cookies/ When I was sitting right there?" The song is sort of about eating food, but also driving a car, and weird and it's neat but I couldn't tell you why it's happening right now, if you see what I'm saying.
Then the fat one (Asia Morrison, 24, KCMO) calls Randy fat like a hundred times and he's offended, and then she sings really bad for a bit until Simon shuts her down and asks for the tiny cute one (India, 22), and she sings but it's not that great. Kara and Paula talk about how great they are together and how they love each other which is so wonderful, which is just like not telling them to go home. Simon says no on Asia, obviously, and then it cuts to the outside, where India has gotten through. I think it would have been more interesting if the smaller one were Asia but I guess 24 years ago there was no way to know how it was going to shake out. Simon and Kara talk about how jealous they are that India has such an awesome sister, and it's a surprisingly real moment for a second. I love my sisters exactly as much as Asia does. I love Simon almost that much, actually.
Dying Man's friend Jamar Rogers (26, Milwaukee) comes in and sings a shouty annoying "California Dreamin'" and won't stop, won't stop, with his pointy face and his bouncing around, and finally Simon shuts him up. Paula's like, "Nice but too loud and off-pitch," and Kara tells him it was TMTH, and Randy says it was affected, and Simon calls him corny, and then... They put him through, which is a good thing for this fucking Enigma of the Dying Guy who is his best friend. They embrace and freak out and cry and are totally sweet, and you just know that Hollywood week is going to have both of their asses sitting together in the final Chair. Also another clue to Danny's tragedy is revealed and it has to do with how he almost didn't audition because of his "grief." So it's something sad, I guess.
But remember crazy Jessica Sierra who basically lived through Nightmare On Elm Street Parts One through Six, like, on her way to the auditions? Or how Mikalah Gordon had to be Mikalah Gordon every single day? Or how because of her parents Kelly Clarkson is afraid of sidewalks? It's going to be hard for Danny to live up to that level of angst.
Okay, here we go finally. He hates talking about it, it's so real, the wound is so deep, blah blah, but so four weeks ago... Oh, shit. Shit, you guys, that's actually really fucked up. His wife died, a month ago, of her congenitally dicky heart, and she fought like her whole life to not die of this, and then she did. A month ago. He cries and they show video of him proposing to her, okay and he's all, "We never got to say goodbye." So he wasn't going to try out, but he decided to do it so that people will know who his wife was through him being on TV. Which doesn't make a shitload of sense, but it sure did make me cry really bad just now. Hang on. Man, I knew they were going to fuck me on this. That totally does beat being blind. He honestly thinks he's in a position to talk about what grief is like even though it's only been a month. That's like the moment you pick up the potato and haven't actually realized it's burning you yet. I don't think putting him through will be a great idea.
Danny Gokey (28, Milwaukee) is a church music teacher, because we might as well just pull out every single stop, and he will be singing "Heard It Through The Grapevine." And the only way I'm going to get that awful sad story out of my brain is if he sucks, so I'm sure he won't... And yeah, he's awesome. I hate this goddamn show. Kara and Paula are like, "Holy shit, this is great!" and there's a shot of Simon suddenly looking up at a particularly note and smiling and the little $$ in his eyes that he gets. All four of them are like, "We are collectively in love with you." He's just incredibly proud of himself, and he's a pretty much beautiful man anyway, and Kara's all over it, and Simon is completely sweet and respectful to him, and they all just kind of mutter randomly sweet things at him for about a thousand years. Man. That was not at all painful, actually. I thought there would be more sappy bullshit but I forgot that Season Eight is not like tha... "How To Save A Life"? Are you fucking kidding me, show? They are brutal this year. That's so awesome. I have no defenses at this point, I'm like the boy in the bubble. Thank God there's only about five billion hours left. And honestly, where do we go from here?
week: A boy with no skin, who tragically fell in love with a girl made entirely of bees and Velcro.
Crazy Donna Moss singing freaky with her freaky face, a crystal meth addict who has been crying since 2003, a dirty-shoed fat chick from a trailer park located under a bridge, a goth like from The Craft, and something else boring. Then there's Anoop "Noop Dawg" Desai (21, Chapel Hill, NC), he's a Masters in Folklore who studied Barbecue Lore in undergrad. Which is implied by the "Chapel Hill" betwixt those parentheses anyway. He's wearing khaki clamdiggers and an Old Navy plaid shirt and looks like he wandered in from a killer game of hackysack, and then opens his mouth and sings "Thank You" by Boyz II Men awesomely*. Paula's overjoyed, and they all sway for him, and it's great. It's one of those where they forget to stop him until he's sort of done, and they all talk about how amazing it is to hear that coming out of his dorky ass. Long story short: yes please.
Montage: tragically rhythmless go-go Guido, scared-stiff skinny gay nerd, total freak, unfortunate dork in a cowboy hat with pirate bling, the unholy union of Ione Skye on a bad day and Margot Kidder on a worse one, a pimp, child molester guy again, yelling guy, a very pretty drug addict/clown, more KC assholes, all those people again, child molester keeps on trucking, ghetto Tiger Woods, a whole bunch of horrible teeth, a girl with lupus, that cute beard guy, a dancing fool, a bunch of people screaming, Paula bouncing on her chair, people having fun, that banana asshole again... Maybe there was more, I possibly lost consciousness.
*(And not, as I so brazenly claimed last night, "Grateful" by Kelly Clarkson, a misattribution so intense and balls-out that I hasten to point out that that song doesn't even exist. Although I must say you guys are learning: I didn't get one email about it, although Joe R did IM me kindly mid-recap to point it out. Joe, I miss you so bad sometimes I just have to go sing sad songs in my mold-infested closet until it goes away, or I start coughing up brown stuff. I miss you like a primate anthropologist whose heart transplant ended up in Minnie Driver. I love you like Joan loved Barri that time they tried to be Campus Lesbians. You're the Brittenum to my other Brittenum, the Ryan to my Simon, the Paula Abdul to my Corey Clark. You'll always be the Noah Mayer to my Ameera Ali Aziz.)
up: Cats, bondage, cheerleaders, a guy with a dream, a horribler goblinier Perez Hilton, Katrina victim lady, and an awesome crazy guy with a request that may not be honored. I swear it's like my body knows you're only supposed to watch 90 minutes of this shit a week, because yesterday also I was like, "WE ARE FUCKING DONE HERE," and there was exactly a half-hour left.
Gimmicks past: Lady Liberty guy that came back twelve years in a row, a nun, that cow girl that kept stroking her udder, that guy who made his own clothes out of entire bolts of the same cloth. Now? Hula hooping in an alphabet shirt, Iron & Wine in a pink bunny suit -- What's with all the hot beardy guys this year? I feel pandered to -- a girl juggling sticks that should be on fire and aren't, a stupid little dog, a girl wearing a million curlers in her hair because that's such a smart look, some Clovers in the atmosphere, a total douche with cat makeup and boa feathers and a collar around its neck, Black Cowboy #243, Mr. Mefflstofflesuck some more, a ninja from Street Fighter pranking on Uncle Sam lady which is actually the best thing I've ever seen, the missing gay member of the KISS Army, a dickwad dressed as an iPod, a giant foam cowboy hat, a woman with those crazy Debra Wilson arms, more Bikini Bitch, a hot acrobat (boxers, if you're wondering), some nasty girl doing Flowers & Madame and hypnotizing her old-lady puppet, which is terrifying, some loser with sockmonkey in hand making fucking balloon animals, #243 wiggling his ass most uninvitingly, two more pimps, some asshole in a pink hat and tie, dorks making mouth sounds and pissing off a hot guy, a monkey named Sweetie, more of the first pimp, a middle-aged fat woman who has given up on dignity in this lifetime and is now wearing a bunny suit, somebody in a chicken suit who's not even trying out, that guy with the hair from last night, four awkward tween girls wearing DIVA shirts and being mortifying, Mandy Moore on a bad day blowing bubbles, and a person that can only be described as very much a Christian in appearance. Meet Andrew Lang (19, Columbia, MO, occupation "ice cream server").
Two girls come in dressed as cheerleaders and do this amazing intro for Andrew that involves cheering, singing, beatboxing, trilling, and a fat girl doing the splits. It's a cavalcade of amazing amazing shit, and then the Christian comes in. He's about seven feet tall, ginger and gawky, with a whole bunch of teeth and a bunch of gay into the mix. His face is sort of shiny like a first-day-back chemical peel, and he's the kind of gay kid we call a Strong Black Woman, for the simple reason that he has not yet figured out that this is the one thing he will never, ever be. I'm not sure what he's singing, but I know I won't stand for it. He's sort of like a skeletal, weaker-looking version of Scotty, if this helps you to visualize it. Like a sickly Christian Scotty singing "My Girl," a song that is also about tragic death by bees. ["Well, at least when they play it in that movie with the annoying Home Alone kid." -- Angel]
Simon says, "No to all three of you," and informs Andrew that it wasn't as bad as he thought it would be, and also the backup girls were no help at all. Kara and Paula liked the backups -- me too -- and then one of them babbles incomprehensibly for awhile, ticking Simon off. Finally Randy offers him another shot to actually, you know, audition, and he tries "Ain't Too Proud To Beg," which turns Randy off and actually turns his yes to a no. The cheerleaders start crying, which makes Simon incredibly uncomfortable, and Paula's like, "You're theatrical! Try musical theatre! Only certain kinds of gay at this point in our history!" Which is sort of muddying the point, which is that Andrew needs to tone it down across the board, and Kara once again sums it up: "Honey, you're not going to make it in this competition, but A+ for effort." She is like the Henry Ford of moving these ridiculous cogs through the assembly line, albeit without the unfortunate anti-Semitic overtones.
Outside, Ryan's shocked -- shocked -- that this giant pile of BS didn't make it through, and the nice thing is that Andrew's got about fifty people waiting outside, all in different cheerleader uniforms so it looks like Nationals in miniature, and they're all just as devastated as the original two cheerleaders that did such a great job in there. Ryan patronizes the crying cheerleaders for awhile, but eventually he's actually touched by their absolute, insane love for Andrew, and goes totally sincere on their asses and almost starts crying along with them.
The story comes prepackaged with "A Movie Script Ending," a song that would pretty much make me cry in the right context even if it was, like, my b-day, and the guy's a band teacher with an adorable daughter and a drum set. I can't pay attention to this while this song is playing. I don't know, Asa Barnes (28, KCMO) is charming, has a reason to be here, and sings "The Way You Make Me Feel" like he's been doing this his entire life. They love him, his upper register is sort of shitty, but he's got it. They all know it, but pretend to deliberate anyway. Simon asks why he sang that song, and why he sang it the way he sang it, and Asa's like, "I like it?" They bust up, and Simon is quite taken with him at this point. Kara and Paula agree that choosing Michael Jackson is really a bad idea most of the time, but they love him. Unanimous, and that cute little girl, and some other song that's not Death Cab and thus doesn't matter because they were right the first time. Anyway, now I have to go smoke a cigarette and find a beer, because I can already tell this thing is going to come close to killing me and I don't even really know what it's all about yet, but it looks really awful.
Twenty-five Golden Tickets already, and now there's something horrible about to happen to somebody nice, I can tell. Michael Nicewonder (20, Grand Island, NE) is wearing an orange plaid shirt that matches his straw-yellow bowl-cut hair and protuberant hick teeth perfectly. He's got a Perez Hilton by-way-of The Hills Have Eyes thing going on. His skin is wretched, his jaw is maculate, his skin is so pale and doughy that his eyes are like wounds. Michael talks like Cletus, and he is wearing a medal he won for Best Vocalizing in Music class. In the third grade. It is on a blue ribbon, around his neck. On the back there is a five-year-old cookie fortune, reading "A person with a determined heart frightens problems away." Also, one would imagine, small children and the weak of constitution. The words clearly mean a lot to him. Michael has a pervo mustache, and weird Sharpie writing on his T-shirt. He is very, very yucky. But Michael also has very kind, very deep brown eyes, and his fingernails are well-manicured.
Ryan inspects the medal sweetly, and asks Michael how his heart is feeling today. He feels strong, and feels that he's an undiscovered star; his mother is unsupportive, but he is going to prove her wrong. Michael is more awkward than anything you have ever seen. Michael is related to Hank Williams, and Simon doesn't want to hear about the weird Sharpie writing on his shirt, which was the gift of friends at school, so he heads on into his original composition. Michael makes your sandwiches for a living.
The very worst thing that ever happened to me in my entire life happened in the second grade. This was in Phoenix, actually. There were these two kids, a brother and sister, who went to my Mom's church, and for whatever reason they thought the world of me. The girl one had frizzy red hair, and there were always stains on her hand-me-down Strawberry Shortcake sweatshirts; the boy one got up early every morning to help his dad do chores and used to corner me on the playground and ask me things like what it was like to be smart. He was smart, obviously, and very good, and those kind of questions used to make me really uncomfortable and still do. I wish I could remember their names. She smelled like pee; her brother had the most beautiful grey eyes, and he had this amazing voice, like sandpaper, just mesmerizing when he talked, which he never did unless nobody was around. He talked out of the side of his mouth, like Ennis Delmar, and his hair was always perfectly parted. They used to bring me things: used toys, cookies their mom made. Whenever my mother would get me to go to church, which was seldom because I had my own very serious ideas, their father would always present himself to us after the service and thank my mother for raising me to be so nice to them, because they loved me so much.
I fucking hated those kids. It was way, way too much to deal with, because I was pretty sure I was not as awesome as they seemed to think I was, and busily learning more and more about all the different ways I sucked every day. Even now I'm mystified where their adoration came from, because I was tremendously unhappy and completely spastic, and they were happy and quiet and such good people. Being kind came so easily to them, as easily as manipulating, bullying, Mean Girling, ringleading came to me. I was jealous. Just thinking about it makes me want to crawl out of my skin, the whole thing, but not as much as the way it used to piss me off, like these demands were being made of me that I was never going to be able to fulfill. Like what, I'm going to actually be friends with them, and take them around to lunch tables and introduce them to people, and let them play with us at recess? Like I was going to go to their tragic house, or let them visit my tragic house and be even more disappointed than they already just naturally were? Life was already a ground war and I was fighting for every inch I had, and I couldn't understand why they wouldn't just do the same. Oh, that used to piss me off. People who won't fight still piss me off.
I don't feel even a tiny bit weird telling you about this now, because there's a point, I promise, but also because I'm pretty sure you had one or two of these too, if you think back. Everybody's always going to be on the totem pole with somebody up above them and somebody below them. I'm sure I was desperately needy to somebody just a little bit above me, wanting something they couldn't possibly give, and I'm sure I wondered why they were so cruel.
So one day heading into music class, the girl one -- I remember we had just switched to boy/girl seating around the room, those hard plastic chairs; she'd moved faster than you would have thought humanly possible to claim the seat to my left -- whispered something into the music teacher's ear, and the teacher thought about it for a second, and nodded, and told us that this little girl had a special treat for us: she'd written a song, and a dance to go with it. And she stood up there by the piano with dirt on her face and sang a song that she'd written, she announced, for me, and did a dance she'd choreographed, for me, which involved a whole lot of grunting, attempts at the splits, some jogging in place, all the while singing this breathless, reedy, whiny, bizarre song about like birds and America and friendship, and not even we second graders -- who are the absolute worst people on earth, just bastards -- could make a sound. We couldn't even breathe.
There were giggles at the beginning, those giggles you can't stop and you have to do yourself harm just to shake them loose, but even those died out pretty quickly, because it was clearly not going to be over for awhile, and the longer it went, the worse everything got, and by the end everybody in the room -- including, and I suspect especially, the teacher -- was just completely exhausted. And that little girl picked herself up off the floor, and looked at our horrified faces, and looked down at herself, and something changed in her that probably never got fixed, and she ran straight past me and out of the room and into the sun, and the teacher went to find her, and when she brought her back there were tracks in the dirt on her face from where she'd been crying. After that, those kids mostly left me alone. I was grateful.
So I will say that Michael Nicewonder's mother can go fuck herself, and leave it at that, because I have no right judging anybody in this room, because I'm not that much better at being a human being than I was in second grade. Simon asks if the original composition was about a pet, or what exactly, and Michael explains that it was supposed to be written about his mother, and Simon asks if the one about his grandmother is worth hearing. Paula gets physically ill, and Kara's skin starts to itch as he sings the second one, and Simon asks if it was really a different song. Michael says he's still working on it, and Simon says they were both a bit gloomy, and not really in the mother-son vein, but that's just because he doesn't know Michael Nicewonder's mother.
Paula and Kara are disappointed as Simon keeps at him, and tell him this is not the place for him and songwriting is not for him, and he leaves. Outside, Michael cries and recounts the way Simon spoke to him, and I mean, fuck this show. I realize that's my shit, but that's what I'm bringing to the table, and that whole thing made me feel absolutely horrible, but: I'm pretty sure Michael Nicewonder is going to be sweeter than anybody is really required to be, the time he's making your sandwich. There are a lot of things I wish I could go back and do differently, but really it comes down to wishing I'd learned this earlier: Intelligence isn't a virtue, it's a quality. It's like hair color, or height: it earns you absolutely nothing. If you think that's all you are, you are trading on a seriously devalued currency, because you're wrong. There are more important things inside people. It's up to us to find them. And this show is best when it's about that.
Dennis Brigham (19, Glen Carbon, IL) comes in having had a dream about Simon, and tries to audition for I guess not his first time, and he sings "With You" (that Chris Brown song where Archuleta called us his "little mama," remember?) and he snaps and dances around, and Simon's like, "I don't get it," so he sings another song. He's got crazy goggles and cool dreads and a totally fascinating face and cool stuff braided into his hair. He's kind of cool and very weird, and Randy messes with him for awhile before Paula just says yes to shut everybody up, Simon says no, Randy finally says yes and then his weeping family is outside and he got the final yes from Kara, so he's going through. Kara says he's funny, Simon says they were all duped. It's exciting enough that he's going to Hollywood, I guess. Maybe he'll pull it together but I doubt it.
OMG are we still not done? Are you kidding me? That bummer story about the poor kids was longer than I thought. Okay. Self-admitted "adult woman with a child voice" knows she's not going; a girl with crazy Cold Case hair sings Jessica Simpson; a blasé hottie or three; a neckerchief girl gets through, and a girl with a hat, and a moon-faced girl, and I think Heidi Montag-Pratt; and then a drugged out-looking scary girl with hair like those women at 12th and Chicon sings "Loving You," and it's not good, and who cares what her name is but her tight little body was made to wear culottes and that's something, and they take a while convincing her she's not in, and her smile slowly sides down her face into a frown, and then she goes outside and delivers a seriously ghetto speech in that blue box about how they made the wrong choice and will pay. Will pay. Her eyes get crazier and crazier and nobody wants to look into them, which is sad, because she's not going to stop until she gets the attention she's craving.
The last contestant -- Lil Rounds (23, Memphis) -- has giant breasts and three kids and a husband, and she's awesome with them, and then there was a tornado in Memphis that totally effed up their family and it's horrible now, but hopefully she can sing. She sings a Stevie Wonder song, and Simon goes immediately $$ before the end of the first line, and then Kara and Paula start dancing, and Kara gets stars in her eyes, and Randy makes that face where he's actually thinking and doing his old job in the middle of his new job. Paula loves Lil and thinks she's one of the best and should never have been told to stop following her dreams, and haters can kiss her Lil Behind. Simon loses control and pledges total love to her beautiful voice and classiness, calling her a singer's singer. Randy absolutely loves her, and she starts to wilt from all the attention to the point where Kara's like, "No seriously, you're fucking awesome and you don't even know it." There's much excitement and very loud background music, and we'll be seeing her in the Top 12, obviously, but that doesn't make it any less awesome.
Fantasia sings over the KCMO Golden Ticket montage: Some tall stud named David, Cold Case Hair, Danny with the actually sad story, Von with the hat and the loud voice, Bald Married Welder Guy, a girl whose boyfriend is on crutches, a tall redhead with a clearly insane sense of humor, Psychic Goggle Dreaming Fellow, Boots, Footstep-Prints In The Sand Girl, Ringlets, India Morrison, another young Christian-looking guy with a brown shag, a girl I can't see that might be Asia ... yep, a girl with nutty funny parents and a ponytail, Brown Shag again with an awesome posse, Danny and Jamar doing a ridiculous dance together, Crazy Pills clicking her heels together, a short artsy girl, Band Leader Guy, Paula doing a fucked up dance, Simon figuring out they're not in Kansas, and a blonde girl.
week: More of this crap. But also more Kara and Ryan, so we're good. Louisville, SLC, San Juan, "New York" (where some guy finally calls Simon out for fucking Ryan), Jacksonville where Paula and Kara finally make out and Kara starts shit with another contestant, and then... eventually, one day, if we're good ... HOLLYWOOD.