Something in the Way He Jiggles. AI Re-cap 5/2

Reports of my premature demise have been greatly exaggerated.

As some of you may have heard in the past week, I have a stalker. He’s a freak that goes by the name of Locutus and for some reason, he hates me. Well, let’s not beat around the bush, I know why he hates me; I’m gay and I’m smarter than he is. This re-cap column, in addition to being published on my blog, goes out to several other Idol sites, some of whom copy and paste, others I send it to, myself. One of those sites is the AI Newsgroup on Usenet. In addition to posting re-caps there, I also post comments and responses to other threads in the group. For the past few weeks, ever since the whole Mandisa controversy, this so-called “Locutus” has been posting any number of anti-gay slurs about me, getting nastier and cruder as they go on. Now, that I can handle and it rolls off my back. I’m a big boy and it’s not the first time someone has attempted to shout me down because of who I am.

However, this past Friday, he decided to take it up a notch. I received an e-mail from this person stating he had done a search of some kind on me and found out my home address, telephone number and other private pieces of information about me that no one would want publicly floating around on the internet. No, I wasn’t arrested or anything, these are everyday pieces of information we all have, but should not be trumpeted to the world. Locutus just wanted to “clear them” with me to make sure they were correct before he posted them in public for all to see. I chose not to respond.

Today rolled around and I received another e-mail from him, saying that he must have the correct information and since he hadn’t heard from me, he was going to post it at the end of the day unless I never posted on Usenet again. Well, a quick phone call to my attorney and some help by a couple of people who know way more about tracking people via e-mail than I do led us to a path where we could find out who he is. I sent him an e-mail explaining to him that he had no permission to post such information about me and that if he did, he’d be subject to criminal and civil liability. All of this wasted a lot of time, and for what? So I wouldn’t post my opinion of American Idol like everyone else across the country has been doing? Because I’m gay and not ashamed of it, the way this creep thinks we all should be? I don’t respond well to threats and giving in to this ass would make me feel as though I can’t reveal that part of myself in future situations and I never want to feel that way. I never want anyone to feel that way about who they are.

So is it worth it? Is it worth the risk just to have my say and not be pushed around. Well, since we tracked him, the playing field has been leveled somewhat, but I won’t be able to really tell until I’ve watched tonight’s performance.

Seacrest is in the back of the house, standing next to a toothless little moppet who I’m praying he doesn’t turn into another sidekick for the evening. Ryan doesn’t work well with animals, small children, Paula Abdul or improvisation. Anthony Federov is in the audience looking as cute as can be. I just want to poke my finger in his trach-hole and see if he clutches his tummy and goes “hee-hee!” like the Pillsbury doughboy.

Ryan says the soap opera continues tonight. Funny, I thought it was a singing competition. He introduces the judges and there is no banter because we have 10 songs and only one hour. Not even a moment to snark on Paula’s Venus on the half-shell by way of seven cocktails hair-don’t. The contestants are each singing two songs. The first is from the year they were born and the second is any song from any of the Top 10 charts. Gosh, were these themes done maybe…just last year? Let’s think of some new themes, folks.

Elliott is up first and he was born in 1978. He tells us he had a bad habit of chewing on his nails when he was a baby that has only gotten worse since he’s been on the show. I want to make an obvious teeth joke here, but it’s Elliott and the guy is so talented and so damn cool and hasn’t made one major misstep in this whole competition as of yet, which is something you can’t say for any of the other Idols, so even though it’s in my nature, I have to take a pass. No harsh words for E other than if I don’t like his singing. Elliott will be performing “On Broadway,” by George Benson. Yeah, the one Scott Savol did last year in the same week and he was voted off. Harbinger, anyone?

Elliott comes down from the bridge that links LAX to the stages of Idol. He’s trying to catch a connecting flight to Brugge, but thought he’d stop off and sing us a little song first. The song starts out a little underwhelming, then Elliott does a sweet little mini-scat and after that it’s like he’s singing another song. His confidence is up and he’s not singing in a key that’s not right for him like he did the first part of the song. It was good, but not my favorite Elliott performance by far. But he looks good tonight and he’s sweet and he even waved to Ace who’s in the audience with a big ol’ fake smile plastered on his face while his agent fields offers from Rosie’s Cruise Lines.

Randy and Paula pretty much say what I did, but Simon, having thrown Elliott one bone per every seven weeks, is back to his old pisshead, anti-pimp self and says Elliott is lucky he has another song. So we’re at the point where Simon can expand his repertoire of tired old catch phrases. I’m surprised Federov didn’t get up and yell it along with him, since that was said to A-Fed many a time last season. I’ve been trying to call for E and only managed to get through once. The recordings have now changed and you get to hear the voice of the Idol you vote for. I’m tempted to call Katharine’s line just to see if she’s offering a free nipple peek with every vote. Uhh, did Ryan just call Elliott, Yamin the Machine???

Back from the break and Princess Plea is up next and she’s really been sucking the helium today. My guess is a German Shepard got a hold of the squeak toy in her voice box and chewed on it some. Make her stop talking. Shut up shut up shut up. Especially when she announces that, since she was born in 1988, she’s singing Kiss by Prince. But Flock, you say, that song came out in 1986. Indeed it did, children, but you see Paris is doing the Tom Jones version. Does this mean she’s going to be wearing a ruffled tuxedo shirt open halfway so we can see the hair on her chest? Paris tells us her mom used to dress her in ruffled dresses and we see a shot of the Baby Black Jesus dressed like the party hat Lolly Lollapalooza from “Lidsville.”

Paris starts singing and it’s like the old days of Lisa Tucker, shaky, a bit off key, tentative and much too unsophisticated to pull it off. Paris sings that you don’t have to be experienced to turn her out. No, you just have to have a swell collection of wigs and a box of animal crackers. Seriously, I don’t want to think of any underage girl who sounds like she’s seven singing about being turned out. Paris gets to the bridge and she thinks she wants to dance, which means jiggling up and down in her red pumps, trying to dislodge that piece of fruit rollup that’s blocking her larynx.

Randy Jackson likes it, Paula sidesteps actually criticizing the performance by saying Paris can sing her butt off (and after a few bad camera angles in those jeans, she ought to try harder) but that she likes when Paris sings the old songs. Simon says it was screechy and annoying and Ryan rushes to Paris’ defense the way he didn’t for Elliott.

Chris is up next. He was born in 1979, one of my favorite years as a child. We see pictures of Chris as a kid, including one of him on his first day at mime school. That explains the often blank look on his face and absence of personality. It cracks me up that people accuse Elliott of having no charisma, yet Chris is completely devoid of any human traits. I guess screaming and a laser light show help mask your personality flaws better than just singing amazingly.

Daughtry will be singing “Renegade” by Styx. Once again, Chris comes off with no colors to his voice. Everything is shouted and I found myself drifting off to tomorrow’s schedule while watching. It wasn’t a bad vocal, except for Chris’ attempt at a high note, but it was boring. Chris is back to being pimped again this week. All judges gave him a pass. I understand how one could be fooled by that performance, but again, I’ve seen worse from Chris and I won’t complain.

Speaking of worse, we’re up to Katharine, who’s in a slinky black dress. Let’s hope this one covers her dimpled thighs a bit better than last week’s. Ryan brings up the “wardrobe malfunction” (his words, not mine) from last week, and let me tell you, this household was definitely screaming “Put it back in! Put it back in!” Another such mishap should not occur tonight as Kat is crammed into that dress so tightly, it resembles a sausage casing. Katharine says that when she came out of the delivery room (is this a euphemism or does she really not know where babies come from?) she didn’t cry at all. Apparently her father has been making up for lost time. In every baby and toddler photo, little McPhee is wearing so much lip gloss, I’m surprised she didn’t choose to sing “Private Dancer.”

But now, Kat, who was born in 1984, is delighting us with the umpteenth rendition of Phil Collins’ “Against All Odds.” Just like last week when she chose to do the umpteenth rendition of “I Have Nothing.” Her song choices are about as original as her runs. Wait, didn’t Scott Savol butcher this song about three times last season? Oh my God, is this theme really The Music of Scott Savol? Will Taylor come out and sing Dance With My Father?

Kat starts out problematically with the low notes, then points on the line “with you” and it made me laugh out loud. The bottom of her dress is so tight, I don’t know how she’s even walking in it. God, that stunk out loud in so many small spots, they’re too numerous to mention. I’ll give you my top three.

1- Fa-AA-ayh-AYH-ah-OOH-aaa-ehayhayhay-aaa (at this point Ace stands up in the audience as yells out, “For chrissakes, it’s F-ACE!!!!!)
2- The one-two yodel-gasp on the word “look” at the end.
3- The fact that she had to walk around the stage like she was smuggling a T-bone steak out of the A&P between her legs.

And the judges say- Well, Randy & Paula start out with fashion, so neither of them like it. Then Simon says it was a mess and the song got away from her, but then says it was one of her best performances. Ryan asks Katharine what the problem was and Katharine looked like she was about to say “the judges had shit in their ears, I’m always flawless,” but instead Simon interrupts to say he meant it wasn’t one of her best performances after it’s already been forgotten, making an even more awkward moment out of it. Now let’s get on to Taylor so the jaws of life can come in backstage and get Kat out of that dress.

Taylor was born in 1976 and I really think I need to see documented proof of this. I swear I’m older than this guy, but I could pass for his son. We see the many changes of Taylor Hicks’ hair. One thing that remained constant was the Tupperware bowl cut. Taylor is singing “Play That Funky Music,” by Wild Cherry, which means I have to change the ring tone on my cell phone to anything else immediately, lest I be taken for one of the Soul Patrol.

Taylor is dressed in one of the ugliest shirts I have ever seen and he should never wear jeans unless each thigh is prepared to carry an apple behind the kneecap. Yee-ikes. This is all regular horrible Taylor dancing. The guy can’t move for shit and was so exhausted, he collapsed onstage at the end. That, my friends, is what’s known as a karaoke performance. The vocals weren’t as bad as last week, but they were all shouting, so how could you tell? Randy didn’t like it, Paula refrained and Simon said it was a horrible, horrible wedding performance and it’s true. Ryan comes out and asks Taylor to show him the last move where he falls on the floor because you know, Ryan’s feet don’t actually touch the floor, so it’s a place he’s unfamiliar with. Seacrest actually flops down on the ground and the team of groomers with lint rollers, blow dryers, and perfume bottles is already assembling right off-camera. Ryan gives the phone numbers while Taylor whoos and soul patrols into the camera, which keeps trying for a wide shot, but pulls up every time they get a glimpse of Taylor’s belly hanging out of his shirt.

Time for the second go-round. I’ve been voting for Elliott all this time and am sad to say I haven’t been having much trouble getting through. And he’s up first with his second song, Michael Buble’s “Home.” I don’t know this song, but I do know Buble and I find him kind of dull. But first, we get a tribute to Billboard magazine and it’s current six hundred weekly charts. This is the magazine equivalent to the Grammy Awards. All these charts so that record companies can claim their artists had a number one song or album. It’s all bullshit. The show takes the opportunity to faux pimp its past Idols successes and they show Kelly Clarkson singing “A Moment Like This” on the 1st season finale and when I hear her, all I can think is how everyone this season and last couldn’t and can’t hold a candle to her, vocally.

Ryan and Randy pimp the Season 5 Idols CD and Ryan tries out the gang signs move that Randy is always doing and looks like a complete tool. Get me to Elliott fast. Okay, the song is nice. It’s a little like “Get Here,” only not awful. Elliott sings it quietly and straight out, no Melisma McPhee is he. I liked it, but this is not the type of performance that keeps you on Idol. Unfortunately, the stupid assed Taylor Hicks crap we saw previously is the kind of performance that keeps you on Idol. Elliott gets his cues missed and starts to run back to Ryan before getting his comments from the judges. Ryan, always looking to be this generation’s Jerry Lewis, mock races him back to center stage. Randy and Paula both loved the performance, Simon says he was a little bit concerned about the performance and wouldn’t have chosen a song with the lyric “I want to go home,” in it. Hopefully, that did the trick and people will vote for Elliott, but still, I have been dialing endlessly and have been getting nary a busy signal.

Paris is next and singing Mary J. Blige’s “Be Without You.” This is not my taste in music. All these songs sound the same to me and I can never tell the singer or the song apart, though I did love Mary’s first CD “What’s the 411.” Before I talk about Paris’ singing, I need to mention the outfit. Oh lord in heaven up to Jebus the outfit. A sleeveless camouflage top, a wide red sash-belt and silver lame Capri pants that look like they’re sewn out of the material they make those reducing fat suits from. Paris sounded okay on the song until the end where she blew out some of the notes. Yelling “Come on!” to the crowd during a ballad doesn’t really make much sense, either. I hope she’s going home tomorrow. This one is like a cockroach, though. We can’t seem to kill her.
The judges all compared her to Mary J. and said she pulled it off. I wonder if the Katharine huggers from last week are going to complain because a contestant was compared favorably to the original artist instead of negatively the way McPhee’s not so hot rendition of Whitney went. Uh, did Seacrest actually say “Friends, if you’d like to vote for Paris…” Is he selling Vitameatavegamin?

Chris is singing a song called “I Dare You,” by Shinedown, which I don’t know, but since it’s from the modern rock chart, that means it’ll be screamy. What am I talking about? Even if it were from the klezmer charts it’d be screamy. We see a shot of the audience and two people have gotten up from their seats and left. If only I was that lucky. Chris is getting another big stage pimp. Red lights and all the video screens awash in flames. You know what would make this song tolerable? If a line of dancing heat misers kick lined across the stage singing “He’s Mr. Green Christmas, He’s Mr. Sun. He’s Mr. Heat Blister, He’s Mr. 101.”

Before the screaming gets intolerable, the song (and the singer) sound like late Gin Blossoms “’Til I Hear it From You.” It’s nice to know Chris won’t be stuck only being able to do a Live tribute band. He can sound like other faded away ‘90s rockers. Hey Daughtry, how’s your Scott Weiland? The judges give Chris a pass, though Simon says he thought Chris’ voice was ready to give way. Chris complains that he has sung the song five times today and his voice is tired. Well, a trained singer would know how to protect from that. You wanna end up sounding like Stevie Nicks, shredding her voice to shit by the time 1980 rolled around because she didn’t know how to protect it? Wait, what am I saying? Shred, baby, shred.

Katharine is up next doing the worst song of 2006, “The Horse Cart and Cherry Tree” or whatever the fuck this thing is called, by KT Tunstall, who could probably go on tour with Daniel Powter and James Blunt as the One Hit Wonder-Palooza of 2006. This is the whoo-hoo song I so despise, especially since they started using it on all the commercials for that soon to be cancelled show Pepper Dennis starring Rebecca Romijn. Rebecca suffers from what I call the Jenny McCarthy syndrome. That is- beautiful woman, usually a model or game show hostess or something involving her body and not talking, decides she’s an actress. Not only an actress, but a comedienne. The next Lucy! So these airheads take on roles that let them be silly and klutzy and messy so that you won’t notice how pretty they are and they can make fun of themselves. Only none of them have talent and they all bomb. What’s wrong with just standing there and looking pretty? Hell, if I could do it and get paid for it, I’d need no other ambition.

Back to Katharine and her cherry tree. She’s kneeling on the floor in one of the preggo shirts, probably because she’s swollen from squeezing into the earlier dress and the body just went phoooooooooo and that’s all that would fit. There are two men next to her playing what look like disconnected kitchen sinks. Apropos since McPhee is shoving everything but the kitchen sink into this performance. She’s pointing again on the word “you” and smiling her blank smile and I can’t if it’s inappropriate because I have no idea what this song is about besides Taylor Hicks’ mating call. Kat is scuffling on her knees toward the sink players, away from them. Toward them, away from them. This performance is a hot mess. Kat pops up off her knees with a self satisfied smirk and cut to a shot of papa Richard Jewell, his cheeks wet with tears. I suppose if Peisha had my balls in a vice, I’d be always crying, too. Katharine does her superior hop while the judges lavish praise on her and we learn that Cisco and Fats were playing box drums, not kitchen sinks.

Speaking of Cisco and Fats, Taylor Hicks is bringing up the rear with his song. He’s doing a bit of a cheat this week, singing “Something” by the Beatles because their #1s album is in the top 10 somewhere. This is what I mean. This album is not on the Top 200. It’s on the Top Pop Catalogue chart which is a new chart invented a few years ago to give classic artists one more place to hit #1 and no one to ever have the opportunity to chart longer than Tapestry or Dark Side of the Moon. Why? Because once Billboard decides you’ve had your time in the sun, they move you off the main chart, whether you deserve it or not. This defeats the purpose of the idols singing current hits, but since it’s Taylor and he couldn’t handle a ballad with oven mitts, what does it matter?

Oof, the beginning was rather terrible and as for the end, well, I never heard The Beatles use melisma once on any of their songs and I don’t believe Something ends with George Harrison singing do do de doodleooh hmm hmmm hmmmmmm. Maybe Ned Flanders’ version, but not George Harrison’s. Randy wasn’t thrilled and he tried to get Paula on board with no luck. Simon says he doesn’t know how Taylor managed to get a 30 year old song (36, actually) passed as a hit of today. He says that he sometimes forgets for all of Taylor’s barminess that he has a very good voice. That elicits said barminess in the guise of a double whoo!

Because we have an extra three minutes, Ryan asks the judges to vamp and say how they thought the evening went, as though their ten sets of comments hadn’t already done that. Instead of recapping the re-cap, I’ll give you my picks, broken down into three categories; first set of songs, second set and overall.

Year They Were Born

1- Elliott
2- Chris
3- Katharine
4- Taylor
5- Paris
Though none of them were smashing.

Today’s Hits

1- Elliot
2- Paris
3- Taylor
4- Chris
5- Katharine

Overall

1- Elliott
2- Chris
3- Taylor
4- Paris
5- Katharine

Who should go- Katharine, though I wouldn’t mind if Paris flew.
Who will go- I’m worried for Elliott, but I’ll say Paris.

Remember, I’ll be bringing you re-caps til the end of the season. No matter what.

Seagulls out.