The American Idolater

Welcome back everyone! Time for a new season! I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I guess we have to wait and see.

But for starters, was I the only one who felt like most of the bad singers last night were completely fake, and were just trying to get onto television?

Alexis Cohen — The fakest of the fake. This was the funnily accessorized girl who thought she was Grace Slick. Why do I think she’s faking it? Let’s go through the list:

1. Dress and makeup. While I know people dress like that just for fun, it certainly adds a point to the “trying to get onto television” category.
2. Living situation. She says that she shares a studio apartment with her mother, and she sleeps on the couch. You buy that at first, and then later realize that it’s friggin Allentown Pennsylvania. It’s not like they’re living in Manhattan, they’re practically in the middle of nowhere, where rents are cheap. A quick scan of Craigslist says that 2 bedroom apartments are around $700 a month. They can afford all that glitter for her face (not to mention veterinary school) but can’t spend $700 a month on housing? Even crazier, a quick check of real estate listings says that you can buy a townhouse in Allentown for only $25,000. Even if you step up to a single family home (4 bedrooms at that), you’re still only paying $50,000. That’s a downpayment on a cheap condo in other parts of the country. A 30-year mortgage on that $50,000 house is probably only $250 or less a month. And they expect us to believe that they couldn’t swing that?
3. Bon Jovi. Ok, 95% of the country knows that Billy Joel wrote Allentown. If you actually live in Allentown, that percentage has to go up to 99.9%. If you know anything about music and you live in Allentown, it’s impossible that you don’t know that. So her “somebody wrote a song about Allentown, I think it was Bon Jovi” just sounded like a play-dumb statement to get herself on TV.
4. Freak out. That was so obviously a) rehearsed, and b) unrelated to what actually happened with the judges. The judges weren’t really mean (the Willem Dafoe comment was made after she left, after all), and she seemed happy with what they said, but the second she gets out the door her expression immediately changes and she launches into her pre-planned speech about how mean Simon was. Too bad she couldn’t improvise and have her rant be at all related to what actually happened in front of the judges — so much for her “actressing” career. Of course, it didn’t matter, because they still devoted a large fraction of the show to her (rather than other people who actually made it through to Hollywood and might need our votes.)

Kristy Lee Cook — Sure, she’s pretty enough to make me keep watching (although you just know she’ll screw things up by being annoyingly country or sluttying up her look too far into unattractive land.) But she’s still fake. Have you seen her web site? Especially the bio? Her family paid to fly out a music executive just to listen to her sing; does that sound like someone who has to sell a horse to fly across the country for American Idol? But she didn’t; she grew up in Oregon, but has since moved to Dallas to pursue her singing career. After all, why would she have paid for a cross-country flight from Oregon to Philly in the first place when there were so many auditions much closer to home? Although there are Dallas auditions as well, so none of it makes any sense. But the selling a horse thing definitely sounds like a lie. Not to mention that her bio prominently states that she was already signed with Arista, so definitely not some undiscovered singer that needs AI to get a break.

Tour Guide Guy — Dresses in a funny-looking suit, comes up with a hilarious way of singing every song, and looked like he was trying hard not to laugh when the judges were cracking up. Plus he was dead set on getting to the second song he had worked out that way. Funny, but my guess is intentionally bad for 15 minutes of fame purposes.

Simon Cowell — Where did Simon go? Who was this guy sugar-coating everything? FAKE.

Gap-Toothed Egyptian — I don’t buy it for a second. He likes girls “from their hair all the way down to” — reaches down towards his feet — “nipples.” Right. That wasn’t a Borat-inspired attempt to get on television. And “sexy face” wasn’t a rip off of Borat’s “sexy time.” Fake.

Fake Sob Story — Temptress was a sob story? Her mom is horribly, morbidly obese and she’s on the same track. How is that deserving of sympathy, group hugs, and a sob story? Stop freaking eating so much and get some exercise. Ok, maybe you can feel sorry that her mother named her daughter “Temptress,” but that’s changeable. At least she wasn’t one of Angela Martin’s sisters, named Latrina and Somatta. Yikes.

So, there are my brief rants about fakeness. The whole editing of the show fakeness is something for another day. Right, sure, these people are really showing up at a stadium and then all appearing before these hard-working judges. Fake. Anyway, done with fakeness for now. More later, you can be sure.

And what was up with Brooke White, Miss Never Seen an R-Rated Movie? Seriously? You’re basing your cultural life on something a random group of out-of-touch control freaks (the MPAA) decides? Where do foreign films that weren’t submitted to the MPAA fit in? Do you have a chart at home listing worldwide ratings systems and the R-rated equivalents in other countries? Do you boycott DVDs if they only come out with an unrated edition that includes 30 extra boring seconds over the PG-13 version? That’s such a confusing policy to have. On the plus side, Brooke looks prettier on her Myspace page than she did on the show, so maybe she’ll clean up nicely enough to root for her.

Angela Martin was ok, but her weird vocal tics were already getting annoying in the little bit we heard. If she doesn’t get control over that, Vote For the Worst will be all over her.

On the plus side, Paul Marturano, the comedian/musician who played the role of Crazy Stalker Guy, was very funny. Too bad Simon overreacted and didn’t let him finish, I wanted to hear the whole thing. I guess next time you need to sing it without the crazy staring and approaching the table. Get a Wiggles-esque smile going to put Simon at ease while you rhyme about Peter Falk.

Milo Turk, who played the role of balding “No Sex” guy, and promotes himself as a cross between William Hung and “Weird Al” Yankovic, wasn’t quite as funny as Paul, but still good. He probably scored a nice bump in the sales of his CD. I don’t know if Paul got his name out on the show enough to get the same bump, but we can only hope that it worked out for him as well. Milo’s already been on the Jimmy Kimmel show, so maybe he should be in the “fakes” section as well, what with trying to convince people he’s just a social worker who wandered into the auditions, and got past all the initial levels of screening with his devout stance on abstinence?