Surprise! It's boy night. I forgot to seek out the rationale but I hope it's juicy. Let's see... Oh, dammit. Crystal's in the hospital! That really worries me, one because I love Crystal against all of my many prejudices, and two because if girlfriend doesn't pull it together in twenty-four hours then we're stuck with Lilly forever and ever. I'm going to say it's mostly the first one, but you and I both know that it's up for debate. I hope she's okay in the long run, obviously, but ASAP would be better for me personally. (Meanwhile Baby Crazy Jacob is in there going, "But I'd be happy to babysit!")
Big Mike, John Park, Casey, Carol Brady, Todrick, Jermaine in a nutty outfit, Andrew in a cool dad outfit, Aaron Kelly's still here, Tim Urban looks bigger all the time, and Lee is going to rock your shit at the end of the night. That is very thrilling. I haven't really gotten into any of the guys yet this year but Casey -- and Lee moreso -- are edging in there.
Ellen is wearing a safari outfit, Kara looks resplendent in Red Carpet red, and Simon's bellybutton says "Cheers." Randy explains to Ryan that it doesn't matter if the boys go first because it's still boys v. boys and girls v. girls. So Randy's on top of things. When asked if she, like Crystal, has avoided ever missing a show (until today), Ellen says she misses American Gladiators and Bewitched. Ironically, the two shows that made me worried I was a lesbian when I was a kid.
I was going to tell a joke about how she probably misses those dogs she gave her stylist that got taken away, but that would involve remembering the time I saw Ellen DeGeneres cry, which I'm not interested in doing because it made me feel like somebody on 'roids took Ryan Seacrest by the ankles and swung him upside my junk. Just awful. Anyway, Ellen never missed a show, even the time that she was in the hospital and did her show in bed with Ryan Seacrest. I will now be doing all my recaps from that location.
Big Mike is a theatre geek, which is his secret from the people in his bouncer life; he played football while attending Fame high school, and then overcompensated that bitch once again by addicting himself to the gym. He can benchpress four Ryan Seacrests, which makes him four times luckier than Teri Hatcher.
In order to No Homo that last, he will be singing the annoying/pointless but dramatic "It's A Man's...n World." This is a really excellent choice because it's not even a song, just a chance to show off your kick-ass vocals if you have them. Which he does. On the downside, how do you not sing this song without sounding like everybody else on earth? This last one, I surmise, Mike has not figured out yet. The song is about how men rule everything but are pointless without ladies, but there's an issue with this sweet/weird sentiment in that there are one million examples of things men do without which our culture would not exist, but mostly women (or a gal!) just need to... Like, be there. Present and accounted for. But then the song switches it up again, and the awesome ending goes, "He's lost in the wilderness/ He's lost in bitterness," which if you're going to go all Camille Paglia on that shit, it's a smart way to end up explaining yourself: That we are not simply sad without women, but that we actually lose the possibility of meaning. Mike does not sing this downer ending, and sticks with the empty romance, and for that we thank him.
Ryan is confused by all of this talk, because authenticity is like this missing dodo bird thing in his fabulous future world that they talk about but nobody's ever really seen. Then Ellen talks the fuck over Kara, pissing her off eleven times, and Ryan says he can feel something when he stands to John Park. If I were feeling anything when standing to John Park, it would probably be first awkwardness and then the delts.
Casey's flowing locks inform us that he will be singing a song that every single other boy in his particular Idol box has sung over the years, and has studied them all. He tells us that he hasn't had a TV since lightning struck his house when he was seven. God Bless. And he will be singing that hoary old Gavin DeGraw song about not wanting to be the thing that is not the thing that he was previously trying to be. Then there's some boring mystery about his secret pre-show ritual that involves a cardboard box, but he will not be telling us about that until Top 10 when he's assured of being on the tour and thus remain unaffected by revelations that he has Gwyneth Paltrow's head in there.
Then he sings the song exactly the way everybody else does, only through his nose and with an electric guitar, and also throwing some goat-voice Belinda Carlisle bits in there just to freak you out. He's still hot when he's singing and has added a soul patch to his actual grossness, but the whole performance is so rehearsed and... I mean, I feel like the Judgery won't say this but to me, it has the same believability issues as JP. But we can't think that, because George W. Bush and Bo Bice brainwashed us into thinking that Country is equal to automatic Authenticity. To which I can only respond, "Taylor Fucking Hicks."
Randy liked the guitar playing. Also the idea of guitars. Ellen says that would have been great if you'd never heard that song in your life, and that he's good on paper but stiff onstage. Word! She says his cute little smile is not greatly believable either, and Kara tries to interrupt her a few times -- dude, don't do this to me -- and then tells Casey that even her cougar ass wasn't convinced tonight. She calls him out for losing his voice in favor of the guitar and says he took three steps backwards tonight. I love Kara so much again, this has been really great tonight watching her be as awesome as she is in my head. And by "awesome" I guess I mean "agrees with me."
Simon laughs that Casey just didn't return her calls, but agrees with Kara that he flattened his entire self out and got fake as hell and a tryhard open-mic rockstar. (But luckily -- will he say this? -- Casey is still so awesome that it won't matter.) Then shit gets vicious.
Don't listen to them! It was so fucking good! You are so good at this! You are not the Chris Sligh! Your arrangements are brilliant! They don't know what they're talking about because they are old and stupid! Believe in yourself! Please! Instead he's like, "I'll fucking do gospel choir week, jerks." Seriously. Although... I mean, Björk would not make it on this show, so they're sort of right by being wrong. But I think in this case America is smart enough to see what he's doing and doesn't need it spoon-fed to them.
Like, what Haeley did was -level shit. The emergent structures of her chords and harmonics were really hard to grasp until they resolved, so it sounded like she was not nailing notes she was trying to hit instead of hitting exactly the weird notes that she was going for. Not perfect, pitch-wise, but way closer to what she was trying to do than I think a lot of people understood. I am not being funny right now, I really do believe this. You stuck me with the birds turning into boys turning into robots turning into car alarms, you know this kind of thing is really important to me. But I understand that in terms of the show, Haeley is basically the Sanjaya, even though I personally think she's the Blake. This is why VFTW always ends up on my same side, because we're both equally hateful but about directly opposing things.
On the other hand, Todrick is so much closer to the acceptable line than either of them and I don't understand why the judges are pulling back so hard on him. Mike too. You can't have both Mike and Todrick join Jermaine on the Boring R&B train, because Jermaine's the only one that was born to do that. But apparently Jermaine is also an Adult Baby -- in addition to being pretty obviously gay or at least DL, so I guess there's still stuff to explore there.
Jermaine certainly is charming, I'll give him that. And I love his clothes, except for his camo onesie. I do wonder, though, if "What's Going On" is something that can ever be not-boring. We'll have to wait for the Lambchop Imaginary Language part to know for sure, but I'm guessing it'll be vocally perfect. Meanwhile, he's wearing a fabulous multicolored bowtie with his as-usual en point outfit and what we call the Trans-Man Oi, or Boi-Oi. I don't know what you call it otherwise, but the FTMs co-opted that poodle-boy greaser thing like a decade back and it always works.
Randy hates the ornamentation, Ellen loves his style and onesie but asks him once again to stop "pushing." Awesomely, Jermaine goes, "If I pull back any more..." and just starts laughing like, "Come! On!" He is such a freakin' charmer, I just love him. Kara tells him he's doing too much and to connect to the song. Wrong, wrong again. Am I just so hopped up on caffeine that I think the tricks are awesome and not annoying? Would I hate this on another day? Because I so disagree about all three black guys... But then, I pretty much loved everybody besides the first three, which is when the stars and crazy would have hit my system.
Kris Allen Reports: Cars Remain Magical.
Lee, what do we not know about him? A damn thing. In his teens he got sent to Alternative School and made the call to stop being horrible thanks to a mentor teacher. Ah. Hence my immediate reaction to him and my later love of him, both. This all makes sense now. I wonder if this teacher is his girlfriend? He seems to have a lot of potential. Byrd likes him, that's always a good sign. I have to say, I'm really excited about this.
Hinder... Is a band? "Lips Of Angel" is... A phrase that makes sense? We learn so much. I'm going to sit quietly the first time through because I sort of love Lee. Okay, the song is called "Lips Of An Angel," and it turns out that this song is characteristically (confirmed now that we know the secret backstory) in that general Five Doors Shinedown DAUGHTRY Nickelback location. Maybe I have heard of this band in that context after all. It's pretty. I have a whole thing about secretly not hating certain of those songs, and this is like that.
The pitch problems are not entirely eradicated, and neither the nerves, but the Judgery rewards him for choosing the total song of his life and staying in his lane. Kara blows your mind by saying, "When you open your mouth I go Is that the radio?" I love her sometimes. Simon tells him to stand like a man, stop being terrified, and make friends with the mic stand. Then he reminds us once again that Lee is the best singer of all the boys. I wish he would find a way to say that five times as often as he does. Then Ryan and Lee have a conversation about his pants that I wish they had not had.
So. Big Mike was just about as boring as he could be, which is not half as boring as the others proved they could be, so it worked out. John Park continued to be your grandma's fantasy in the body of yours. Casey lost his balls entirely and was justly slammed for it. I'm still kind of disappointed in him, to be honest. Lambchop was awesome and winsome in the genre he has invented, which come to think of it is conceptually isomorphic to his hair. Todrick and Jermaine switched issues and strengths, maddeningly, and both got chewed out for it. Look for them to get more and more boring and less and less shiny as the weeks go on. Andrew is just so fucking boring that his wonderful voice doesn't even matter anymore. Aaron Kelly is going to get eaten alive and it hurts to watch, while Tim is pulling ahead in the Kris/Chris R role. Lee put his trashiness on shout and it totally, totally paid off. He's like if you put him and Cook together, they would add up to DAUGHTRY. Which is funny, because I like both of them about one billion times more than him.
Tomorrow night, the girls, and I sincerely hope Crystal is okay because she is the greatest, and also that Haeley never, ever leaves. But Thursday, who will go? Aaron, obviously. Casey, Tim and (most obviously) Lee are safe, as is Andrew, although I wouldn't cry if we lost Andrew. Mike and John are losing their shine real fast, and I think John might be endangered. Todrick and Jermaine have still not settled on their respective Things, but I am pretty sure they're okay. I really like Jermaine, and have some modicum of artistic respect for Todrick at this point. But he's definitely leaving before Jermaine, however that works out.
So it comes down to either John or Lambchop, which is one of those America things I never get right. Either Alex is too special to survive and John will ride his Groban stylings into the beach, or we'll forget John even exists -- a strong possibility -- and finally toss the weirdo a bone. I feel like both are possible depending on who we are right now as a group. I can't say I was looking forward to Boys this week, or tonight, but that was highly enjoyable. And who would have thought three weeks ago that Alex would be the one that stuck out? That's so funny!
Tomorrow: Didi, Paige, Lacey, Katelyn, Michelle, Katie, Haeley, Siobhan, Lilly, Crystal. That's a lot of deadwood. Um, I hate Paige but she's not going anywhere, ditto Lilly. They are just the worst. Katie's weird ass is fine, and Crystal could probably get the votes without even showing up at this point. Michelle's going to suck some more, which should be fun, and Lacey might even outdo herself, which I'm excited about. Katelyn is still a complete mystery, so I'm glad we'll be getting more info on her whole deal. Didi's turning out more divisive than I thought she would, but whatev, she's fine. So I guess I'm losing either Haeley or Siobhan this week, or both. I can deal with that. But can America? ...Probably, yeah. Stay frosty!
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