The American Idolater

Do these names look familiar to you? They don’t look familiar to me, but I have a hunch — call it a spoiler, if you will — that these names will look more familiar to all of us over the next few episodes:

• A. J. Tabaldo — He’ll be auditioning in Los Angeles, so we might get to see his audition on Tuesday night’s show.
• Jamie “JL” Cotter — Apparently he auditioned in NYC, but the name doesn’t ring a bell for me. If we didn’t get to see his audition, we might get to see more of him soon. Yes, ok, I give in, these are spoilers.
• Jordin Sparks — Auditioned in Seattle, but I don’t think we got to see it. Or maybe it was just forgettable.
• Lakeesha Young LaKisha Jones — Auditioned in Birmingham. 99% sure we didn’t get to see her audition. (Fixed her name now that we know what it really is.)
• Leslie Hunt — We haven’t seen her on the show yet. She’s in a Chicago band called Mark Twang.
• Paul “PK” Kim — Pretty sure we haven’t seen him audition, either. You have to wonder what kind of a shot these people will have at the voting, when their first exposure to America won’t be until the Hollywood rounds, or even the voting rounds. I guess there’s still the “best of the rest” episode on Wednesday to give them a chance to show us the auditions of some more of the top 24, but we’ll see if we get them or not.
• Stephanie Edwards — Don’t know anything about her, either. We’ll be seeing more of her soon, though.

So, there you have it, America. Some more American Idol contestant names that you’ll get to know better in the next few weeks. Maybe not a whole lot better, in case you people vote them off before they get too far, but at least a little better. And maybe one of them is the next winner of American Idol. And maybe one of them is the next 5th place finisher who you’ll completely forget about in a month. And maybe one of them will get a lot farther than they should, and you won’t be able to figure out why people keep voting for them. What’s wrong with the voters, are deranged monkeys randomly pressing phone buttons to keep this person around another week?!?

Sorry, got a little carried away. Need to save that stuff for the real voting, not this imaginary voting that’s all in my head.