American Idolicy

Note: Initial post from last year. Not timely.

Okay, so in my continuing team coverage of this season of crap TV, I just got done watching a life-affirming hour of American Idol. Among the spectacularly bad entrants was one guy who ended up weeping to himself in the lobby. Weeping to himself and to some eight million viewers at home, anyway. These were more or less his exact words: "I blew it."

Allow me to tell you what's wrong with this statement. This guy uttered those words moments after telling the judges that he had "a unique talent" that qualified him to be the next American Idol. When asked to demonstrate, he pulled up his shirt and did some kind of weird sucking thing with his stomach that seemed to cause his entire midsection to collapse around his spine, leaving only a freakish band of flesh connecting his pelvis to his ribcage.

Having done this, and having subsequently pronounced himself a talent on par with past winner and runner-up Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken, Weird Stomach Thing Guy then proceeded to sort of speak some, but certainly not all, of the lyrics to "Sweet Home Alabama." He forgot most of them. He slurred the ones he didn't forget. Pitch did not, at any time, enter the musical picture.

The judges unanimously declared him wholly unfit for AI duty, and stopped just short of ejecting him by way of one of those giant human cannonball cannons, which led to his tearful admission in the lobby: "I blew it."

Let's examine that again, shall we? Here's the thing that gets me: That he used this particular phrase suggests to me that he had a snowball's chance in hell of passing this audition, that he, under the right circumstances, could in fact have nailed this audition, perhaps even singing actual notes in the process. This is of course wholly untrue. W.S.T.G. will never, ever, ever, not even with the aid of modern science's finest vocal coaches and electronic studio engineering, do anything close to singing. For god's sake, the guy could barely talk.

Article Author: Brian Byrne

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