JESUS CHRIST!

The husband/partner/whatever is always thinking of me. Last week, while driving through McDonald’s to get a bag of diarrhea-to-go, he also brought me home a Happy Meal. Well, actually he ate the Happy Meal. But he brought me the toy. It’s a little plastic American Idol action figure, about four inches high, in the shape of a country-singing guy. The little guy has a blue face and huge black cowboy hat. In fact, his head is the same size as the rest of his body. And when you flick a little switch on the back of his head some wafer-thin electronic music in the style of Flatt and Scruggs comes scrinching its way out of the hat. And that’s it. That’s what happens. According to the bag he came in, his name is Country Clay and you can collect him and the others -- Rockin’ Riley, Punky Pete, Hippie Harmony, and Lil’ Hip Hop. With the exception of blue Clay and green Harmony, the others are white. I thanked my husband/partner/whatever and told him to stop eating at McDonald’s or he would die young.

So the show starts. And here are famous people in the audience. There’s David Duchovny (new X-Files movie to promote) and Allison Janney (just here for kicks?) and some not-famous child. I’m always annoyed when I see nobodies in the crowd. And this kid isn’t even pulling his weight. He should be bawling or holding a sign that reads, “I CRAP BIGGER THAN ARCHULETA!” But nothing. He offers nothing. He should be ejected from the building for crowding the shot. Then the camera cuts to some apparently famous woman I’ve never seen before. I should be ejected from this recap for not knowing her.

Seacrest introduces the kids and the judges (Paula must have a new hairstylist because it just looks consistently good now) and also tells everyone that it’s Earth Day and that American Idol is doing its part for the environment by employing something called “green power” at the finale. I think that’s a made-up thing, but I have no way to call him on it right there onstage, especially since I’m sort of not there and just on my couch eating some chocolate ice cream with Girl Scout cookie Thin Mints crumbled over the top. But with my full mouth I say, “Liar!” quite forcefully, getting ice cream on my T-shirt that I won’t notice until about an hour later after it’s all hard and stuck to me.

Tonight’s theme is the music of Sir (Or is it Lord? Fuggit. I don’t care.) Andrew Lloyd Webber. Don’t know who he is? OK, imagine it like this: drama queen ballads + London’s West End in a nonstop masturbation contest with Broadway + Sarah Brightman + WTF + people on roller skates + nuclear war. With the exception of the very rad Jesus Christ Superstar, he is responsible for some of the most mind-boggling product that musical theater has to offer. And so now, in spite of “that sounded too ‘Broadway’” being a fallback criticism for the judges when a contestant teeters too close to the brink of the Aiken Abyss, the kids are going to sing BROADWAY!

Now, I know lots of you gays like Broadway and are all into it and stuff. Hell, even my heterosexual brother called me last week and was like, “Have you seen Wicked? It’s fantastic!”

“Did you have sex with a guy afterwards?” I asked. “Because that’s what Wicked does to people. It’s like that conveyor belt that George Jetson used to get on in the morning that would shower and dress him. He’d go in one way and come out quite another. And now that you’ve seen Wicked, I hate to inform you of this, but you are 100% a fag.”

“No, you’re the fag,” he retorted. So clever with the comebacks, the straights.

“No, you are,” I said, zinging it right back to him. My family engages in this kind of Algonquin shit all day. Anyway, I’m not into show tunes, or musicals really. I’ve seen exactly six of them in my whole life: Cats (I liked the part with the tire); Les Miserables (I liked the part where they all shout triumphantly to that march-y kind of song at the end): Dreamgirls (I liked the part where you could see that Jennifer Holiday had lost all the weight and you could make out the fat pads under her dress. I also liked the part where ladies in the audience stood up and yelled at her while she sang “And I Am Telling You.” They were all, “YOU SING THAT!” like she was about to pole-vault over the audience with her lungs); Hairspray (I liked the part about not being able to stop the beat); Company with Debbie -- sorry, Deborah -- Gibson (I liked the part where she was doing solo bits and I was like, “Wow, it’s Debbie Gibson!”) and Rent (I liked the part when it was over).

Time for singing:

Syesha meets the composer (ALW from here on, by the way. I hate typing long names) and announces that she will be singing “One Rock and Roll Too Many,” (Wikipedia says it’s from Starlight Express, and it’s all done on roller skates or something with people dressed like characters in Tron). “Interesting choice,” says ALW.

“Yes, it is,” says Syesha. So confident. So tiresome. Such good hair. She’s excited because she gets to act, kind of like in that commercial she did back in Florida. I always get the feeling that Syesha wants to use Idol to break into musical theater anyway, so this ought to be a good night for her.