Good old Ryan wears a shirt and tie even when he's on the radio. I thought the point of radio was that you didn't have to do shit. If you don't feel like wearing pants, you don't have to. But I bet good old Ryan does. And not even joke pants with like ducklings on them, actual pants. I think I would kill myself if I had to wear pants at my job, but I know I wasn't born this way. Totally over pants, I mean. Once pants were a fact of life. Pants must be one of those points you can't unpass. Even in Los Angeles.
Look! Avril Lavigne! Singing the song about how wearing preppy clothes is tantamount to treachery and pronouncing the word "pose" that strange way. Oh, Avril, you bright spring breeze of a little badger. I love her so intensely. She just wants to flip the bird at people who makes things complicated, and sk8board around the mall past cops and their authority doughnuts, and bring a carefree flagrance to the people, and put on all the eyeshadow that there is in this world. Also bracelets. Who doesn't love these things? h8rbois, preppy-clothes poseurs, mall cops which aren't even really cops, the greedy Once-ler from The Lorax. That sort of person.
She spits. She's a spitter. xpector8rboi. On anyone else I would find that to be the most disgusting thing, the saddest tragedy, and it's known that I secretly count the amount of times people spit in movies and TV and stuff, like for my imaginary book of grievances (for e.g., I can tell you that in Jennifer's Body, they spit three times: Once in hair, once in a face, once it's a bloody tooth, but this all happens in the first ten minutes and then the spitting stops at that point), but I find that when Avril spits, I just want to chuckle and rock her to sleep. Rock on, rockstar! You bad-ass little pint-sized mammajamma, your mum is going to be mortified! Fuck authority! Sk8boards! Eyeliner! Bracelets!
And you know, actually she probably stopped spitting at people at some point. What is she, like fifty now? That's a damn cold night/ Trying to figure out this life, right there. She's wearing a pirate-themed hoodie with little horns on the hood. Probably something she designed herself. That's worse than spitting on people. By like a thousand.
I am so offended that we have to talk about this show. I just want to talk about Avril Lavigne. If I keep talking about Avril Lavigne I'll never have to talk about horrible Katy Perry the American chav and that's a journey that starts with...Oh, balls. Neil Goldstein (19, Redlands, CA). What a fucking way to start things. No wonder my DVR rejected this shit out of hand and I'm writing this recap at 7 AM when all good people have been in bed for at least a couple hours.
This regrettable fellow has hair like a giant douche wave, and looks like the visiting jerk cousin of life. "I've got an IQ of 168. That makes me a pretty smart guy," he queasily smarms. Please. First of all, anything under 175 don't bring it to the table. It's not pertinent. And second of all, if you think that your IQ is a thing that any people at any time need to know, you can just go ahead and knock 50 points off for cluelessness. Double that if you're wearing a vest you embroidered yourself.
He talks about how he's a total geek and does geeky things like reading books while wearing a vest, and basically tries to string together a marketable personality for himself. Which is a fool's errand, because Guy Whose Face Everybody On Earth Wants To Punch is already a lot of baggage. He is a flesh-crawler. He does a bunch of shitty stuff and says a bunch of shitty stuff and basically every bully thing I've got is causing my hands to curl into fists and I can barely type right now. I know he's just 19 and the possibility exists that something terrible will happen to him and make him better, but right now I just want to sk8board all over his dick.
As does Simon. Neil's singing a Meatloaf song, I don't know if I actually needed to mention that or if you just assumed, and he's doing it nervously and shittily and bringing all kinds of unlovely energy into Avril's life so that she has to scrunch her nose up like somebody just asked her to eat mushrooms on ice cream, and eventually giggles. Avril just says what we're all thinking. That's her thing. She says what we're afraid to say. Like right now she's all, "What the fuck, Neil."
And the whole time his face is getting shinier and shinier and his hair is getting puffier and puffier and longer and dorkily. And then he gets all in Simon's face about how he's not leaving until he gets his Golden Ticket and spouting some kind of Ayn Rand/The Secret bullshit. Outside, his American Gothic parents are like, "Yeah, he's ten miles of bullshit. I do not envy those judges right now. Not one bit." Neil says something weird to Simon I don't even care about, with a finger gun in the face, and nobody even knows what the fuck he's talking about, and then Other Doors himself into the bargain. Avril: "Awkward!" Word, girl.
Jim Ranger (27, Bakersfield, CA) is a worship pastor with I think about one hundred kids, and we get to see them, and he calls them "awesome" for us, and then puts on another vest and sings for the judges his original song "Drive" that may or may not be about Jesus taking the wheel and things of that nature. Simon likes his voice, Avril thinks that his entire life is stupid because he has kids and a congregation and like what was he thinking trying to be a rockstar with all that stupid baggage of his so-called life, and Avril votes no on him and her hoodie's devil horns wag joyfully as Kara gives him a shaky no also for reasons of church, like Avril wanted. Then he gets the ticket and rolls around in his giant pile of children and cries and is boring some more. Simon thanks Avril for having devil horns on her hoodie, because Simon knows what awesome is.
That's when, Ryan says, everything went to hell. Screaming annoying Jayson Wilson (19, Seattle) has a giant creepy Carly Simon mouth that could swallow a football whole, and doesn't mean it at all. Some guy does some kind of William Hung bullshit. These fuckers aren't even trying. Come on. A hot dude that can't sing and has a bunch of '50s junk in his hair bores everybody with his leather jacket and whatever, and whatever.
Chinless sandwich-maker middle manager-looking dude Damien Lefavor (26, Seattle) talks like a nerdier James Cameron about his martial arts and complete lack of shame. I mean, I would hit that, but I don't want to see it on TV. Randy says he's funny, which of course means that he is not funny. How he sings is also not funny, it's just rampantly uncomfortable to watch. It was better when he was explaining what pacifism is while playing the dojo flute. Then he almost starts crying and Aspergering out and Simon's like, "Just go, please," and he Other Doors himself, and gets weird and repetitive and scary and horrible some more. These people are fucking freaking me out. I think that whole Silicon Valley thing has been true for a while now.
Much talk and footage of obnoxious children leading into the obnoxious child of the worst goddamn person I have ever seen in my life. Mary Powers (28, Burbank) is like... Take the misplaced self-enthusiasm of a Jackie Tohn plus righteous single motherhood, toss in the whiskey-garble and sickening fashion of Amanda Overmyer, tie something retarded around that head of hers like she's in an elven tribe of dickheads, set your makeup gun to raccoon whore, add about a billion necklaces and one more goddamn vest, if you got a chain wallet toss that shit in there, and then when she says she's singing Pat Benatar pretend she's just blown your mind. Because that is her aim.
She stares them in the eyes and dramatically pauses and waits for them to burst into tears. Avril is like, "I want to be something like this girl when I grow up." Simon makes fun of her clichéd horror but likes her voice, which is fair. Avril likes the character and tone of her voice because it is punk rock. She actually says that. And fucking Mary is like, "thanks" and totally distracted and ignores her because hating Avril Lavigne is most of her personality. Avril, used to this, wishes she'd never called the bitch "punk rock." Me too. Then the horrible daughter comes in and pretends to give a shit about Simon. Mary Powers is the fakest fucking asshole I have ever seen in my life. I can't imagine a single conversation with her that wouldn't make me jump out of a moving car.
There's some weird long montage about people that we think look like Adam Lambert, except none of the people actually has anything to do with Adam Lambert so I'm not sure. Motherfucking Daniel Franco shows up randomly to say that he is the love child of Susan Boyle and Adam Lambert, which I don't know why you would tell people that because that means you are an abomination, but this is fucking Daniel Franco we're talking about, so "abomination" is like, the nicest thing somebody's said to him today. He is wearing a vest. Christ, I hate LA.
When I think about being Daniel Franco it gives me a migraine. What must that be like? Exhausting. Just petrifyingly boring and exhausting, because once you go Franco, there's no turning back. You can't turn it off suddenly and start acting like a person. This is a Kaufman situation here. (Or a Situation situation, possibly.) If I had to be Daniel Franco for more than a couple of minutes I would just retire to the couch and eat ice cream and watch Gilmore Girls in my socks with the unreasonable hope that a mistake had been made and soon some sort of team of experts would show up and be like, "Sorry, our bad, you're not actually Daniel Franco. You can rest now."
But then I also think that we have no idea what Daniel Franco is, because underneath the slippery disunity of his many weird personalities is a thing nobody has ever seen. I basically adore him and I wonder what it smells like on the fresh and flowing fields of his home planet, but I also think I would punch his lights out after forty-five to fifty minutes of being in a room with him. He has that effect. Then I would apologize, because he also has that effect. Then I would sign a decree into law that Daniel Franco gets to try out for every television show, even like Newhart, at least once. That boy needs love. And a stiff backhand. And then more love.
Then without warning come the lush details of AJ Mendoza's (20, Upland, CA) weird face, which is different from every angle, which usually are my favorite faces, the ones that are always surprising you from different angles, but in this case what's even more surprising than his fucked-up looking face is the horrible sound coming out of him. While "Cult Of Personality" by Living Colour is a vivid and intriguing choice, what is less acceptable is the way that he sings it, which is so affected that words are rendered unrecognizable. It's like he's got Tori Amos lodged in his colon.
Randy wants to bareknuckle fight him, Simon rolls his eyes because he and Avril have formed an unbeatable team of wonder, Avril's fucking loving every second of this because it's so horrific, and the kid is just wonderful once he's done singing and you forget how offensive his singing was, and they cut him loose. Avril goes, "Absolutely not, are you kidding me?" The kid is surprised that they hated him, and his face goes hot-ugly-hot-ugly over and over and then he goes away again. I would have him in my Avril Army no question.
One of my favorite things of Avril is her army of teenage boys that never gets older and they go everywhere and take part in all of her total mayhem. They're like droogs except they never talk and they smell like cotton candy. My favorite is the blonde one that sings backup, I like to pretend that all the songs are about their secret love even or especially the sad ones, but really I like all of the boys the same, because they are like the flight attendants of life: They never get older, they never have to shave, and they make you feel like maybe there are no real consequences to anything.
up: Fucking Katy Perry and her entire Ryder truck of bullshit that she carries everywhere. No, you know what? We're not doing Katy. Unless she does something particularly awesome, we're going to pretend that Avril is still with us. Which is a bet that I will win, because I have cleverly stacked the deck through syntax, because Katy Perry has done one awesome thing in her entire life: That cover of "Electric Feel" that said, "Turns out I can sing like an angel and sound like a human being, which makes my decision to become a cardboard anal probe all the more disconcerting." And then she went right back to being the bona fide worst.
Katy says something awful and pointless. Meanwhile Avril's like, "I kissed a fucking bichon friese and I liked it! And then I spit on it!"Katy talks shit about the judges arriving on a helicopter in her disgusting upspeak and Avril's like, "I didn't obey traffic laws on my way to the studio when I was there. Right on red, motherfucker! That's how you do it when you're punk rock!" Avril needs a dollar sign somewhere up in her name to show how wonderful she is. Avril £avigne. What kind of money do they have in Canada? Do they even have money, or is it just like a crude barter system/otter-pelt economy? Avril's like, "I don't need money! I am too punk rock for that! Your payment is I don't fuck up your car! l8rboi!"
Austin Fullmer (19, Glendale, CA) is kind of dumb, kind of a stripper, thinks that sex faces are appropriate faces to make when not having sex, and likes to dance around in some kind of way. I don't know what to do about Austin. He knows what he's doing, but in this Dolores Haze way where But does he really? Is this just Nurture's way of accounting for the things Nature gave him and he's really a sociopath? Is he Bikini Kill: The Boy Version? Because now I feel like there's a whole level I wasn't getting with her until just this second. But also, to be honest, wouldn't you once in a while like to be Jordan Catalano and just be so hot that you don't even have to learn to read? So hot that illiteracy is an option?
I mean, it's not really my thing, his thing. And if A Single Man taught us anything it's that bucktoothed hungry blonde boys are always really just an elaborate form of suicide. Especially existentialist ones. Plus, crazy goes with hot one hundred percent of the time, and he's got his Death In Venice ducks in a row and probably this is how he made it to 19 years of age without turning into JT Leroy, who isn't even real. Also unreal: The magic that Austin unleashes on the Judgery. He sings Cheap Trick in this insane accent and does all kinds of Jagger moves and strange things are happening at all times, and suddenly he stops being boring twink hot and starts being like really interesting instead. Or maybe mentally ill, I'm not sure. Austin Fullmer is a book with many chapters.
None of which Simon wants to read, even the For Dummies version. I will miss Austin, Simon diagnoses him with crazy, and then Austin cries explains to his ugly friend that Simon was threatened by his masculine sexuality. Awesome. So awesome.
Crying people, people getting turned down, chubby people and skinny people, bad hair and worse hair, ugly clothes and cute, one girl says it's worse than getting dumped by a boy, CRYING SANJAYA GIRL is there and she is STILL CRYING, which is like Daniel Franco: Revolutions, but in a whole other great way.
Andrew Garcia (23, Moreno Valley, CA) is a guy with a neck tattoo, and you know what I say, which is that a guy with a neck tattoo is the kind of guy who should not be making major choices for himself. But he seems to be doing better now, and his dad cries about something, probably how proud he is of his son, and the tinkle-winkle piano is like You will be touched and moved and whatever. It's one of those stories that's probably so fucked up they can't really tell you the scary story but just sort of wave toward the shadow of the story and go ooooooo and hope that you get the subtext. No idea if there are details I missed. I zoned, bro. I'm sure babies are involved, and maybe street violence. Generally neck tattoos imply the rest. Then he sings a pleasant song with a pleasant voice and the camera slowly pans past all the judges creaming themselves unconscious and being amazed by his very existence, and it's all quite subtle.
Tasha Layton (26, Granada Hills CA) is a pastor by night, personal assistant by day. That is awesome! That is my fucking dream job. That's better than Macy's giftwrapper even. She has a little bit of an accent but it's cute, and she sings a Joss Stone song, or a song Joss Stone sang I guess, and looks very put together and pretty. If I tell you she's singing a Joss Stone song, you know the kind of voice we're talking about and generally what her flavor is, and the only question is whether she's good at it. I'm not the person to ask, because I find that whole thing annoying, but the judges like it, so I guess it's good. She snaps along with herself, which is rather dramatic. Simon tells everybody that she is going to be a fan favorite, and that he's going to make her do an "O Happy Day" medley, and Tasha gets through. I love her. I am in on that.
Katy Perry looks exactly like Chrissy Seaver shitting herself. Just for a second. Avril's like, "I don't even get that joke! You're too fucking old! Get younger! I said younger, motherfucker! Leonardo DiCaprio is a gross old man!"
Hey speaking of gross, remember the lotion in the basket? Okay, and remember that Mapplethorpe picture of Patti Smith where she looks like a guy -- even more than usual -- and that guy happens to be a chronic masturbator? Good. Now put those two things together in your mind and get ready for the total creepiness of Jason Greene (21, LA). He looks like a supervillain whose main power is being a gross dude and a terrible woman at the same time. It's like one of those optical illusions where is it a bunny or an old lady or a Spanish dancer, or a vase or whatever, but instead it's which way you're going to be raped and murdered: Lady, or man-lady?
In fact, he's is so perfectly awful, in an episode full of seriously creepy creepsters, that it's almost amazing. Like he took a look in the mirror and was like, "I have a pedophile thing happening and I can't seem to escape it. Therefore, we are going to hit turbonium on that and I am going to be the most pedophile guy in the universe." Which, I respect that in a way. But that's a very NYC thing to do, like pretending mustaches and pot bellies are a choice you made. In LA, that's just you being gross.
The doom piano is like, "Get ready to feel gross about some things," and he walks in and threatens to sing "I Touch Myself" for them while smarming around like a drag queen who doesn't know she's in her civvies. His long creepy hair, his terrible skin, his balls-out grossness, they are all happening at once in your face. And now he's going to be singing about masturbating, like you didn't already have that insight into his inner monologue. He sings it slow and he points his fingers, and the ladies hide behind the fellas, and Kara and Randy sing the song to each other which makes me want to fucking puke, and then the guy invites Simon to fuck him -- by implication, not by explicitly asking him -- and he rolls around on the floor and crawls around on his knees like a pussycat and then he really just absolutely... Offers to suck Simon Cowell off.
I don't... That's what happened. Usually that's a metaphor, like, "Was very flattering" or "Tried to sway the judges." But nope, not this time. This time, the creepiest kid in the universe thought crawling around like an alley cat on the floor and offering to give Simon a blow job was, you know, the right choice to make. On TV. He's like, "You've got me on my knees!" And Simon goes, "I knew you'd get there eventually." Which is the most awesome thing Simon has ever done, in a lifetime of doing awesome things. Jason poses and writhes and wriggles and acts totally yucky and Simon eventually gets bored, and then it's over. Katy Perry is like, "You know how I'm utterly disgusting? You're more so. Like, you have to get up pretty early in the morning to gross me out."
Which, those are powerful words. What's worse than the worst? Until today we didn't have a word for it. So then he insults Katy's top and goes to the fag place and everybody laughs and applauds this courageous and original choice, and he's finally gone. Then he does a pirouette and goes outside and gives Ryan Seacrest his number, doubling down on his original grossness by macking on both Ryan and Simon. Both of whom are actually, really, honestly uncomfortable. Which, I'm not personally invested or territorial about the Simon and Ryan parts of this bullshit when I say: Way to help out, guy. Thanks for pushing my gay wedding back a couple more years.
Is this how black people feel about Flavor Flav?
Kara and Katy disagree about cute boy after cute boy while some shitty Katy Perry song plays, and they pull out their songwriting dicks and measure them and it's awful, and Katy gets bitchier and bitchier with Kara, and Kara for her part started that journey long ago -- and is about six thousand times smarter than Katy -- so she's just sort of lapping her, and finally Katy just pisses her off and Kara sings about how she kissed a dolphin and she liked it and Katy offers to throw her soda in Kara's face, and the boys' boners are slowly lifting up the table, because straight men are just horrible. They are just fucking everything up.
Chris Golightly (25, LA) was in 25 foster homes when he was a kid, and it was rough. He has blonde curly Brian Krakow hair and is very beautiful, and seems really broken inside. I'm interested to see where this is headed. He charms Ryan, sings "Stand By Me" quite smoothly and beautifully, when he's not zazzing it up in unpredictable and distracting ways. Also, the chain on his wallet goes down past his knee. I'm seeing the chinks in the armor already.
Kara tells him there is a retroactive wow in his future and a hell of a life story or some shit, it kind of goes nowhere, but then Katy gets super-bitchy with Kara some more, and Kara actually just fucking hates Katy now, which is obviously the right idea but paradoxically doesn't really do it for me. Kara has been such a fucking drag this year that it's going to take more than just catching up to the realization that Katy Perry is a travesty of a human being. Katy and Simon don't love him or his stupid story, Randy and Kara not only love him but continue to climb all over each other. Is this perhaps them trying to create a Paula/Simon chemistry so they appear to have personalities? Is this about how Ellen is better than them and makes them join forces? Whatever it is, looking at it makes me barf.
Some meaningless number of people we never saw in our lives get through to Hollywood. Where, as you know, they already were.
Also: Miley Cyrus. As your triumphant song the first time anything good ever happened to you. That shits on it, I think. And that's The Climb. I wish Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus would just do it and then maybe we could all move on from this particular gross moment in our collective sexuality. Because it doesn't seem like it's going anywhere. I feel even more this way now than I did a year ago, that going all Weetzie Bat on your own sexual trauma is not a competitive sport, but I'm also chiller about it because I realized Twilight isn't about romance, it's about how gross and crazy teenage girls are. Less Titanic, more Flowers In The Attic.
And I fully support going as crazy and gross as you can early in life, even though we don't really have the cultural vocab to talk about why that happens and how it's basically okay, because teenage girls' sexuality is the most important commodity in the entire history of humans, so people being weird about it is obviously not going to go away, because the people in control of everything are the ones in control of it. Like oil, or that stuff from Dune, only it belongs to an actual person who can actually hear and see you being creepy about it, and is getting messed up by that. So instead we don't talk about it at all, because what are you going to say? Anything you could possibly say just sounds like an invitation to a Purity Ball, which is just incest without the sex.
So you get nasty infections like Katy Perry or Miley Cyrus or Twilight popping up all the time, and everybody's coming up with new shapes to shave their pubes and acting like sex is constantly coming out in new flavors and formulations because in order to prove that you are okay with sexuality you have to demonstrate aberrant sexuality, which makes no sense at all, but Madonna re-centered sex in the '90s just like they did the SATs and we grew up thinking that's what sex was like: Weird. Not fun, not awesome, not the easiest and simplest possible activity you could imagine, but something that involves a lot of drugs, to get it up or keep it up or fade your brain out while you're doing it, strange costumes and power play and leather accoutrements and maybe installing a pulley system in your home. A... what's it called, a block and tackle.
So maybe you think Avril is a loon, or just a dumb girl, but she's not half as dumb as fucking Katy Perry, who is giving it away for free because she doesn't care either way, and they both made a tremendous amount of money off a very simple equation. The difference is that running around with a gang of sensitive dumb Abercrombie models and mispronouncing David Bowie's name and pretending you understand what punk rock is... Is very punk rock. Not to mention hilarious. Not to mention huge amounts of fun.
But inviting everyone to watch you engage in titillating homoerotic displays of homophobia -- kissing each other being "not what good girls do" -- for the express purpose of trading your own body for approval and acceptance -- and this is just the one song, I mean, all of her singles are like this -- is not fun. It is a narrative world in which men change their minds, while girls change their clothes. Sex stops being sex and starts being a costume you put on, or a job to do, you've lost the point of sex entirely. That is not awesome. It is not punk rock.
Because on the one hand, it's about you: sk8rboi wish-fulfillment boyfriend, rocking out, having fun. And on the other? No wishes to fulfill, no reason to rock out, nothing fun to do. Just waking up with glitter on your face and your panties in a wad.
Be honest: You can hope your boyfriend "don't mind it," but if he's not at least watching you do it, is it really happening at all? If some drunk whore kissed another drunk whore and there weren't any straight men watching, did it really happen? Do they even really exist at all?
Which is precisely where they want you. So don't fall for it. I love you, tonight we got NPH and the midscale Jonas, and a big cul8r to you and yours.
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