Missoula News

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

American Idol and the Fall of Western Civilization

By Bob Wire, 4-03-08

Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m hooked on American Idol. It’s like seeing that two-headed calf at the state fair. I know it’s a regular calf with a stuffed head stapled to its neck, but I’ll still plunk down two bucks just to go in and see the damn thing.

The weirder the better, and I find the early part of the Idol season the most entertaining. That’s when all the desperate-yet-unencumbered-with-talent auditioners are trotted out in front of the judges to be gently ripped to shreds. It’s like watching a public execution, but they all deserve it.

Year after year, the show keeps cranking out these manufactured pop stars who somehow seem to have an album in the can the day after they’ve won the title. Some, like Carrie Underwood, Clay Aiken and Kelly Clarkson, go on to have bona fide Successful Careers. Others, like Ruben Studdard and Taylor Hicks, don’t even make it to the second album before they’re dropped from their record labels like a crack pipe when the cops walk in.

Up until now, I’ve been a casual observer, not really interested in all the tabloid yammer about Paula Abdul’s aberrant behavior, Ryan Seacrest’s sexual peccadillos, or any of the other late-night talk show punch lines. But I happened to catch this Australian dude, Michael Johns, singing an Otis Redding song for his San Diego audition. “He’s going to win,” I told Barb.

“Did I notice his shins?” she asked. “What about his shins?”

I waited until I’d chewed and swallowed the mouthful of chicken gizzards, and I repeated my prediction that this white soul belter will go all the way. Hell, I thought he should be out there touring with Queen instead of Paul Rodgers.

Coincidentally, a couple of weeks ago Johns sang “We Will Rock You” during 80’s week, and my heart sank. What the hell, why would a guy choose this bleacher-stomping caveman shout-along to showcase his…wait a second…they truncated the song and went into the second part, “We Are the Champions.” Ohhhh. Okay. Now I get it. Wow, what a range on this guy! Good looking, too! I think I’ve got a man crush on him. Yeah, he totally nailed that performance, all was forgiven for the stadium chant, and I felt vindicated.

As someone said on last night’s show, he is a man among boys.

One of those boys, who was really more of a girl among boys, was Danny Noriega (no relation to the pineapple-faced ex-dictator), Jessica Alba’s twin brother from a different mother. His page on the American Idol website lists Fantasia as his top musical influence, which really should have gotten his ass voted off just for that. But his bitchy, whatEVER persona wore thin before you could say “Sanjaya,” and the voters showed him the gate. His last performance, “Tainted Love,” brought these comments from the judges:

Randy: “Yo, yo, yo, dawg, yo, yo, check it out, yo. Yo, dawg, it started out a little rough, but I like the way you did it in the end.”
(Translation: Get your no-talent, emo-pants-wearin’ ass off the stage. You ain’t even got enough skillz to be parking my Escalade. Dawg.)

Paula: “I love the fact that you’re true to yourself.”
(Translation: Where did I leave my keys? Did I put underwear on today? God, these spiders are driving me crazy!)

Simon: “I thought it was horrible, the whole thing.”
(Translation: I thought it was horrible, the whole thing.)

So Noriega/Alba gave them the one-handed Bullwinkle salute and scuttled back to his drama club at West Hollywood High.

Another contestant who couldn’t find the exit fast enough to suit me was Amanda Overmyer, she of the magpie-inspired dye job and the trailer-ho/biker-chick persona. Over the years, I’ve seen too many women who look and dress like her, women who could drink me under the table and then beat me to the floor. She has decent pipes, sure, but the only reason she made it into the top 16 was they still need at least one freak show this late in the game, someone to drive the internet chatter.

But don’t give up, Amanda! You need to stay sharp—you have a career waiting in the wings. I mean, Wynonna Judd’s gotta retire sometime, right?

And poor Chikezie. You’re out too. You know why? Because your name is Chikezie. Anybody else here got only one name? Who? Remedial? You’re out too, babe. Besides, we already got a Christina Aguillera.

That leaves the white guy with dreadlocks, the Menudo refugee, and a few other people. One of whom, Carly Smithson, already has a failed recording career under her belt. This means she no longer retains her amateur status, and will be unable to compete in this summer’s Bad Idea Tattoo Olympics.

The show has made a lot of changes this year, starting with a huge, disorienting new set. We American television viewers have the attention spans of a bi-polar fruit fly, so there’s lots of video noise in the background, trailing lights, zooming/panning cameras, and general audio-visual stimulus, so that we don’t really notice that most of the contestants couldn’t carry a high school talent show.

Another new feature this season was a full week of Beatles material, butchered and twisted in myriad ways by this pack of brats who probably thought Lennon & McCartney were Simon’s representation firm. Actually, some of the performances were passable, but when you’ve grown up listening to—and being influenced by—the music of the best rock band in history, it’s just painful to hear an entire hour of their songs wrestled to the ground by earnest rookies.

The public response to that week was so positive, said Seacrest on the ensuing week’s segment, that they decided to have another whole week of Beatles songs! Oh, I’m sure Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were doing a do-se-do, saying, “Bloody hell, why didn’t we think of arranging ‘Eight Days a Week’ like the theme song from ‘Smokey and the Bandit?’ John would be so proud!”

As cringe-worthy as that spectacle was, this week brought Dolly Parton in all her spindly-legged, mammarian glory. The remaining 12 contestants were forced to sing such timeless classics as “Nine to Five” and “Jesus Is Saving Me a Parking Spot.” Of course, some chick had to sing “I Will Always Love You.” Unfortunately, that chick wasn’t Whitney Houston.

Then Dolly herself performed, wearing a headset since her enormous fun-bags will not allow her to come within two feet of a microphone stand. Facial skin pulled tighter than a bongo drum, two or three wigs’ worth of hair stacked on her head, god bless ‘er, she gave it her all. But were those her legs, or was she sitting on a chicken? Anyway, the crowd ate up her latest valentine to Jesus, and she managed to get through it without breaking a hip.

So what’s up for next week, a tribute to Peaches & Herb? (I’ve got their box set. It’s only one CD.) A Three Tenors Retrospective? Mariachi duets? Man, this thing seems to be spinning out of control. Did you see the commercial (how else would you describe it?) that featured the remaining contestants fooling around on a basketball court? What the hell was that all about? Hmm. There was also a shiny new Ford automobile on the court. Subtle as a fart omelet.

If these judges are so goddamn good, why don’t they just let the contestants sing whatever they want, and get the best performances out of them? Either that, or go the other direction and have, say, David Cook sing Blondie’s “Rapture” while wearing a gold lamé thong and riding across the stage on the back of a giant Galapagos tortoise while he’s being tasered by the cop from the Village People. Oh, how big’s your soul patch NOW, tough guy? And what does he comb his hair with, anyway? Buttered toast?

Actually, a guy like David Cook (and Michael Johns, for that matter) would be best served fronting a rock band. Which is what he does. And if he does manage to win it all, well, maybe his band can find Taylor Hicks’s phone number because Cook will be fed immediately to the Machine. He’ll go on tour with the other indentured contestants over the summer, probably release an album of ballads ‘n rockers in the fall, closely followed by a collection of Christmas ballads ‘n rockers around Thanksgiving.

Then he’ll turn up in some internet sex video with Paris/Britney/Lindsay/Chikezie, and the notoriety will eclipse his already-peaking singing career. The record label will drop him, and he’ll be forced to join the tired circuit of has-beens who barely-were, and one day he’ll find himself singing a medley of Cheap Trick songs on the rickety stage of some state fair outside of Minot, North Dakota.

But there won’t be much of a crowd watching him, because everybody will be over at the sideshow tent, checking out the two-headed calf.

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