Tuesday

This year’s auditions kick off in Washington, DC, which means lots of crazy people and lots of boring people, lots of the utterly talented, and lots of the utterly crazy and untalented, and nothing in the middle. This makes things easier for Mark McGrath, our guest judge tonight, who…yeah, he’s just exactly like I always thought he was.

The Good: Sean, a boringly charming youth pastor of 27, who’s very smiley and very willing, as everyone seems to be tonight, to sing “Isn’t She Lovely,” is let through on the well-meaning white guy front. Anwar, a music teacher of 25 from Newark (Holla!), is well-dressed and sings purely and without a lot of bullshit, which is very refreshing for the judges. Regina, 28, is going to Hollywood, which thankfully prevents her death. Marlea, a 21 year old proud single mother, who is proudly from Syracuse NY, proudly sings a Bonnie Raitt song nobody has ever heard, and the judges proudly let her through to Hollywood, which is celebrated by her 3,000 proud gay friends in the proud foyer.

Some boring girl with giant eyeballs gets through because she has British parents or something, and her name is Sarah. A crazy girl in a pink fedora screams at traffic and runs off down the street freaking out after being invited to Hollywood. The unholy baby of Scott Stapp and Michael Hutchence perpetrates some fake shit about leaving his band high and dry to be on American Idol and his name is Constantine and I think they want him to win. I do not. This utterly hot breakdancer named Travis overcomes everyone with his hotness, and sings “Isn’t She Lovely” but gets through anyway. John of Hackensack gets into the competition and I like him but I worry it’s only by virtue of the fact that his family is hella connected and will break your legs if you displease them. Ian Holmes II does a creepy note-perfect rendition of the Mariah Carey cover of “I’ll Be There” but gets through anyway, because it was nice enough until he got all scary and falsetto.

The Bad: A big girl in desperate need of, um, “support” boobs herself through “YMCA” and the judges reject her once they shake the hypnotic spell of her breasts, each of which is larger than your head. A very wonderful and nice boy forgets the words to Josh Groban’s “You Lift Me Up,” like that’s a bad thing, but in such a brutally embarrassing and unending way that even the judges almost start crying. Derek Braxton is the very picture of a hissing, spitting gay stereotype and nearly loses it completely, and nobody questions his claim to being Toni Braxton’s cousin, because it would just be too sad to catch him out. Another fella, in fake blue contacts and many, many shades of purple, sings a song from Annie and holds the last note about ten minutes too long and generally makes everyone ashamed for watching. Good Will Bojangles, a janitor who dances a bomb, can’t really sing all that well. The most boring girl in the entire universe slaps her own ass while wearing a shawl (sexy!) to the “tune” of Madonna’s classic, “Hanky Panky.” Franchon Crews, an adorable middle-weight boxer from Virginia Beach, is rejected for being too untrained, although the judges think she’s got a great voice and hope to see her next year.

The Ugly: Two boring DC intern types first bore you and then freak you out in different ways, one by telling the judges God has sent here there and then crawling around on her hands and knees and then bursting into tears, and the other by taking her rejection pretty well, then whirling around and delivering a bizarre diatribe about how one day she is going to make a CD while hurling obscenities at the judges. Why do the crazies always go for Simon? He’s totally the coolest one. This girl whose job is catching mosquitoes and testing them for West Nile virus sings like something way worse than West Nile virus is inside her, like maybe I know where Tsathoggua went.

The Unethical: A big scary functionally-retarded girl gives us fashion advice even though she is covered in scratches and bruises and cuts and cigarette burns and ugly jewelry. One crackhead from DC sings “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” in a variety of horrifying voices, and the judges can’t even laugh because it’s so low to even deal with him on the TV, and Paula does her usual “I like your shoes, though” thing with trying to say something nice, but all she can come up with is, “I’m glad you’re sober now.” Ouch.

Then there's Mary Guilbeaux née Roach. I don’t even want to talk about it right now.

Wednesday night: More of the same! But only half as much!

Wednesday

Tonight we visit St. Louis. And what do you know? Crazy and self-deluded people abound. In years past, the auditions sucked me in each year when I’d promised myself I would not watch American Idol, because they were funny and a little mean. But this year, not so much with the “not mean.”

The Good: Daniel (26, Washington MO), is average-to-good-looking and completely forgettable. I’m pretty sure he gets through because you see him yelling later. Osbourne (22, St. Louis) is apparently the son of a famous baseball player and gets through. A’ayesha (16, St. Louis), whose relationship to her gender is best characterized as “estranged,” gets put through due to Paula being weirdly obsessed with her. Carrie (21, Checotah OK) is boring and adorable and lives on a farm and likes Martina McBride, with whose oeuvre I am not familiar, and is going to be in the final 4, I think. Other Hollywood-bound auditioners include: an unnamed but very tan skinny guy, a cute girl with a “Rachel” and a black scoop-neck sweater, some highlighted metro dude, yet another pretty girl in a fedora, and some guy that looks like a janitor. There’s a total of 32 through from St. Louis, but we don’t see a whole lot of them, because these auditions are about the pain, not about the successes, really.

The Bad: Some horrible blonde triplets who kind of destroy their team from the inside. Johnny (18, St. Louis), who sings through his nose and is creepy. This small-town tanorexic local theatre type named Joseph (25, Oakville MO) who ironically sings “My Girl” and brought his own fan club. Katrina (25, St. Louis) admits that she has eaten human flesh and that “we taste like bacon.”

The Ugly: Maurice (25, Evanston IL) does nothing of note except have a petit mal seizure. That weird overly-tanned pink polka-dot halter-top girl from the commercials sings “Somewhere Over The Rainbow.” Justin (18, St. Louis) sings “Proud Mary” and is so gay that all of St. Louis becomes gay suddenly. And fabulously! And this whole other Maurice (28, St. Louis), is like the weirdest 40-year-old IRS worker you’ve ever seen. So we learn that in St. Louis a lot of the people, um, have ears that stick out. There’s not a whole lot of “bad” or “crazy,” per se, the watchword for St. Louis is actually just more like “loser.” There’s not a hell of a lot else to say about it. Oh, wait. There’s a mime. Did you know “le mime” is actually Francais for “the loser?”

The Unethical: This Mary Kay LeTourneau lady and her teenage lover-slash-music student show up and he’s all about them going to Hollywood together and it’s weird and gross and creepy. But then she gets in and he doesn’t, which is like the worst possible outcome for both of them, because nobody gets what they want.

And then, in tonight’s Mary Roach Guilbeaux spot, there are Adam and Dirk (21 and 24, both from IL). Oh, Adam. Well, Dirk first, briefly: He idolizes David Hasselhoff and chooses a song from the Baywatch soundtrack, of which thing I did not know until tonight. I love Dirk, but I don’t, like, love love him.

But Adam Pratt? I truly, madly, deeply love. I love him like a crazy person in the desert who desperately needs water and hallucinates a Deja Blue vending machine. I love him like Taco Bell, like Chik-Fil-A on a Sunday. I love him like that weird Spelling Bee girl that coughed a lot. I love him like Buffy. That’s all, it’s that simple, and I don’t want to talk about it further. I don’t want to sully it. He’s a boy, and he’s my friend, and that’s enough for me.

Next week: New Orleans, Louisiana. There’s going to be a goth guy with some scary Satan facial hair, and this guy who’s a tool, and…you know? It’s American Idol auditions. Do I really have to? Some fat people, some retards, some Cajuns, a crackhead or two, and some people too talented to show us just yet because schadenfreud = ratings.