The American Idolater

Paula Goodkind appeared on American Idol in either 2005 or 2006 (reports vary) for season five of the show. She was crazy enough back then with her Paula Abdul obsession that the American Idol producers spent several minutes of an episode on her, the way they often do with the craziest contestants, on the assumption that the audience likes watching that kind of stuff.

I guess Paula didn’t return the love, since she was found dead of an apparent suicide outside Paula’s house yesterday:

A woman who authorities said once tried to become a contestant on “American Idol” was found dead outside the Sherman Oaks home of “Idol” judge Paula Abdul in a case police are investigating as a possible suicide.

Authorities identified the woman as Paula Goodspeed, 30, from Thousand Oaks. (Police earlier had said her name was spelled “Goodespeed.”)

Goodspeed was found dead in a car about 6 p.m. Tuesday outside the house in the 3800 block of Beverly Ridge Drive.

“We are investigating the case as a possible suicide,” said Ed Winter, a spokesman for the coroner’s office. The cause of death will not be determined until after toxicology tests are completed, he added.

For the curious out there — which is probably you, since you’re reading this post — Goodspeed also had a Myspace blog post about her American Idol audition, which includes gems like “my style is a mix of 1980’s icons: Punky Brewster, Rainbow Brite and Cyndi Lauper.” She also has a long discussion about how she changed her audition song in the months between the huge stadium audition and the Randy/Simon/Paula audition, and that’s what doomed her. Not that she was chosen simply because she’d make for funny television. No, couldn’t happen.

Her AI clip also has her talking about drawing life-size drawings of Paula Abdul, and says that Abdul was the first thing she drew as a kid. Alarm bells! Look out!

Despite earlier appearances, Paula Abdul isn’t psychic after all, according to Ryan Seacrest. This straight from Ryan’s mouth during the results show, when he said that all of the rumors that were going around after last night’s show are false. That’s right, every single rumor is false.

The rumor I posted in the title of my post was that Paula was psychic. Therefore, Ryan is claiming that Paula Abdul is not psychic.

Other people are using Paula’s screw up as proof that the judges watch the dress rehearsal performances so they can get some notes down ahead of time. I never thought that was up for debate, I always assumed that was a well-accepted fact about the way that American Idol works. After all, earlier this season we’ve seen judges give good reviews to contestants who gave a crappy performance on the live night, but had given a much better performance on dress rehearsal night (I seem to remember that with Michael Johns.) But since some sites are posting the dress rehearsal watching thing as rumor, then Ryan is also denying that.

And if anyone is rumormongering that Paula is an alien, Ryan Seacrest is denying that as well.

Really, he’s just denying everything he possibly can. If you can write about it in a rumor-like fashion, he’s denying it.

Anyway, on to the show. Some of the worst singing of the whole season as the top 5 do a Neal Diamond medley. Oh my God, that was one of the most painful things to listen to so far. The songs are all Neal Diamond cheese with lackluster arrangements, and the vocals are just all over the place. Pitchiness like that should get them thrown out of the building without a second chance.

And then Ryan Seacrest calls Jason Castro “J-Cas.” Oh, Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick. Worst freaking nickname in the history of the planet. I threw up a little when I heard that.

Interestingly, they give us Brooke White and Syesha at the end, with the three guys all safely seated. They seem to be implying that they are in the bottom two, but never actually say that. And according to DialIdol, Syesha was the top vote-getter, and statistically could only have been in the first or second position (along with David Cook.)

So you have to wonder why they left her for the end. She didn’t get the second lowest number of votes, and they never said that she did, but they certainly implied it. The most likely explanation is that they want her to stick around, and think that’ll help boost the number of votes she gets next week.

All I’m hoping is that David Archuleta goes home soon. He’s been there about 10 weeks too long. See ya, David!