God help me. I’m not proud of it. But I cannot stop watching "American Idol". I’ve tried so hard to quit. Every year I promise myself that this will be the year I don’t put myself through that misery, and it never sticks. I cannot help but tune in every week to see the cornucopia of bullshit to be perpetrated by these singing monkeys.
I remember being in high school when the show started (hello, dirt? Yes, hi, I’m older than you.) and totally dismissing it. That’s when it would have been totally age appropriate to get into it. But now, as a 26 year old woman? There is no excuse for this type of addiction. I can’t pinpoint when it started, but it is so, so shameful.
The real rub of it is that I don’t even like it. I hate it. All I do when I watch it is complain. So rarely do they put out somebody I could actually be a fan of. I fast forward through half of if, and then my addiction takes hold to make me rewind and watch anyway. It’s practically emotionally damaging. “American Idol” is like an abusive boyfriend to me. I get completely irate whenever they have “themed” weeks geared towards my favorite artists – I have mentally wept all through every Beatles, Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash or Frank Sinatra episode. It’s one thing to do a bad karaoke version of a great song, but these assholes pump out caterwauling death rattles where a once great song stood.
Every now and then, very very rarely, Idol takes pity on me and graces me with a great performance that I can use to rationalize 6 more years of obsessive watching. Adam Lambert’s version of “Mad World,” David Cook’s “Hello” – things like that. Singular events of vocal mastery that are so few and far between they should be viewed as total anomalies. The best I can hope for is a totally desperate train wreck who takes the Baton of Crazy from seasons past and just freaking sprints with it week to week to keep my interest. For example, this season’s Jacob Lusk or Casey Abrams. Naima has displayed impressively monumental crazy every week, but it’s the jerky kind, not the fun kind. The annoying, how-dare-you-who-do-you-think-you-are-trying-this-junk type. Jacob, on the other hand, is fantastic. His desperation shines through every week. He always looks to be on the verge of the most intense crying jag known to man, and I can’t tell if he wants to be Luther Vandross or Whitney Houston more. Although, he didn’t have the decency to wail through “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” on last night’s Elton John episode, which would have been so up his sad little theatrical background, and so, so dramatic. With Casey, my little Yukon Cornelius look alike, I vacillate between being completely enamored with his weird, quirky behavior, and being completely terrified by him.
The show is even worse this season. They’ve taken Simon Cowell away, the only real voice of reason. The only one I could count on to call a fool out on his vocal fuckery week to week. God, I so wish I could hear his comments on some of these contestants this year. I close my eyes and I can just hear his thundering condemnation of Naima’s dancing and fake reggae accent, and Scotty McCreery’s utter inability to stand up straight, hold a microphone like a normal human being, and stop making weird sex faces that are totally inappropriate for a 17 year old on TV. I need somebody to make Haley stop with her stupid angry chihuahua growls. The only ones I truly enjoy from a talent and performance based standard are Paul McDonald (and that’s largely due to the fact that he looks like Charlie Day from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) and James Durbin. But even they make it difficult on me. If Old McDonald wears that damn bedazzled white jacket again I’m voting him off the island, and Durbin just makes me nervous. I would like Pia, she’s a wonderful singer, but she has to be one of the most sinfully boring people to ever be on TV, second only to James Lipton.
I had so hoped that by making Steven Tyler a judge Idol would at least entertain me more, but alas, no. Every now and then he busts out with some incomprehensible crazypants talk, but mostly he just sits around in his lady blouses trying to be prettier than Jennifer Lopez, and, like me, hating his life for being sucked into this utter, despicable nonsense.
Sarcasmo
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