The First of Many Hell Weeks  | American Idol | Advocate.com

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The First of Many Hell Weeks
One hundred sixty-four people walk into the garbage compactor on the Death Star. Twenty-four walk out. The rest are turned into Soylent Green. I know I just mixed my movie references. Sue me.
An Advocate.com exclusive posted February 15, 2008
The First of Many Hell Weeks

I had lunch with a friend this afternoon. She was one of the surfing lesbians on the Logo reality series Curl Girls. Maybe you didn’t watch it too. And I asked her if she was famous because of it. Did people recognize her around places? She said she always assumes that no one will know who she is because usually they don’t. But then sometimes they do. “If D-list used to be the lowest you could go, then I’m several letters down the alphabet. G-list maybe. Gay celebrity. From a Logo show.” 

AMERICAN Idol #7 FINAL 24 X395 (Fox) | Advocate.com

And so this statement: 

“I’M GOIN’ TO HOLLYWOOOOOOD!! WHOOOOOOO!!” 

…the one that opens Tuesday’s show, in which 164 of the people from the past several weeks who’ve been given the gold tickets come to Los Angeles to be whittled down to 24 semifinalists, is always the thing I dread hearing the most on American Idol. Most of them will be wood shavings after this week, swept back home to wherever it is. But some will stay and seethe as the final 24 become the final 12 become the top 10 and on and on. And they’ll try to find a shitty apartment to live in over in Koreatown or Silver Lake or Tustin. And they’ll go on auditions and hate themselves and do all sorts of fucked-up things to lose weight and they’ll network a lot and go out at night hoping to run into Brett Ratner or someone who’ll give them any break at all. Because they came here to be singers, but sooner or later they’ll write a one-man/woman show about their “crazy life in this wacky City of Angels.” And then, eventually, one of their parents will die and they’ll move back home to help take care of the remaining one and find someone there to marry. And they’ll go to work at a regular job and buy an enormous flat-screen TV and talk to their friends about how they waited on Meg Ryan this one time or went to a party with that one short guy from Entourage and how they were really sweet and down-to-earth. 

Seacrest looks sort of weirdly waxy and unwell this week. At least he looks that way in the opening bit. Ooh, but I don’t care because now there’s a montage of past winners and also-rans, each of them weeping and gnashing their teeth through Hollywood Week: Daughtry, Corey Clark, Sanjaya, Antonella Barba’s blond pal, Kiki, then Antonella Barba clutching her own throat, Gina with the red streak of hair, Sundancehead. Oh, Sundancehead, what are you doing now? Anybody know? I’m genuinely curious. 

Seacrest talks about the new Hollywood Week procedure. Everyone sings again. Some will go sailing through. But some will, of course, choke. All those fuck-ups are going to get more than one chance. But if they blow that second shot, then they’re gone. Seacrest says, “They’ll sing for their life. And it’s gonna be…a bloodbath.” 

I perk up at this. I LOVE bloodbaths. 

Even better? For the first time this year, a contestant will be allowed to play instruments if they feel guided by that still small voice in their soul that says, “You are Irene Cara and you are going to sit at the piano and warble “Out Here On My Own” and you will burn with the fire of 10 million stars.” And you can thank Blake Lewis and his laptop compositions from last year and Daughtry’s guitar-hero blah from the year before for all of this. 

So here comes the blond woman from a couple weeks ago whose story hook is that she’s been sheltered from the world in a human-size veal pen and has never seen an R-rated movie or done any other naughty thing, ever. She hides behind a keyboard and it gives her a kind of singer-songwriter sensitivity, even though her voice is nothing shocking. Well played, Miss Purity. 

Next up is a montage of people playing their chosen instruments badly. Or playing them well and singing badly. Or playing them badly and singing badly.

Next up is some chick singing that Shania Twain song where one of the lyrics is “the best thing about being a woman.” She’s wearing a too-small black tank top and a truly weird and bad skirt. It’s red plaid, it’s microscopic, it’s got a row of pleats all the way around it, it’s got a big black built-in belt. Her boots rival the ones Julia Roberts wore that time she wrangled Richard Gere to take her shopping on Rodeo Drive. She sings the song like this. “THE. BEST. THING. ABOUT. BEE. ING. A WHOO. MUHN.” 

Surely there have to be better things about being a woman than any of what I’m looking at here. 

Hey, let’s talk about commercials. Here’s one for that piece-of-shit movie where C.Z. Jones is an uptight chef whose life would be so much better with some of icky-sensualist Aaron Eckhart’s tiramisu shoved down her throat. No lie, this guy wears Crocs, yammers on about opera. The kind of “ladies’ man” who’d give anyone of any gender the douche-chills. I know all of this because I had the misfortune of having to see that movie. Anyone who gave me that fuckin’ stale cookie for Valentine’s Day would get stabbed. On the other hand I love the trancey ad where everyone’s on little people-moving tracks. But then some messy-haired “rebel” has to ruin it for everyone. Oh, it’s for Monster.com. I went there once. I didn’t see Gamera and moved on. 

Commercials are over. Some guy has decided to play drums while singing. He’s whatever the opposite is of this Gene Krupa record I have where Anita O’Day sings. Much less good than that. Of course Gene Krupa didn’t sing. He just drummed. So perhaps it’s an unfair comparison. Whatever. This guy sucks it. 

“There’s a rose in a fisted glove,” sings the melismatic man up next. We’ve been lucky in recent seasons because that sort of oversinging has kind of been on the outs. It ain’t cool, and lots of people have clued in to that. Until now. But the judges are loving him. Paula says, “A hundred trazillion percent yes!” I hope that enthusiasm includes a trazillion percent push to make the guy lose the stiff, wet spiky hair. 

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Keywords:  American Idol  Dave White 

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