Thursday, April 13, 2006

I Hate to Admit it...

But I watched a full hour of American Idol on Tuesday night. There is an American Idol semi-office pool this year. I'm sort of the commissioner, so I have to keep up with who is booted. This usually means checking the last few minutes of the show, or checking the message boards. For some reason I decided to watch a whole episode. That reason was Queen. Now I'm not a huge fan of Queen, but I was intrigued to see if anyone could possibly pull off one of their songs. I don't know what I was thinking because clearly none of them could. I'm slightly disappointed that Queen even involved themselves in such things. Actually I'm not. They did agree to the "musical" We Will Rock You. (sigh) The thing is none of the "singers" were bad enough to be enjoyably bad. The only highlight was watching gAce trying to tell Brian May and Roger Taylor how he wanted them to play their song. I was really hoping May would just take a guitar to his head. So here's a little recap from a first time viewer and first time caller.

The show begins! Wait! The number one show in America has this for an opening? Four seasons and you can't come up with something better? Tron looks better than this. The Barbie video game looks better than this. Bobby could make a flip book cartoon better than this.

Anyway, some guy appropriately named Bucky comes out and does Fat Bottomed Girls country style. This season's crop must be awesome if Bucky made this show. He's properly lambasted by Simon. I don't understand why people hate this Simon guy. I mean other than the two sizes too small T-shirt.

Then my whipping boy for the evening gAce comes out to sing We Will Rock You. Um...cop out. I don't even consider We Will Rock You a song. It's more of chant to a riff isn't it? Either way, gAce blows. Once again I'm glad I have tinnitus. gAce is clearly the male version of the stupid blonde stereotype. He gets by on his smile and hair. I hate him.

Next up: Lita Ford! Sweet! I can't believe they let Lita Ford on. And can I say that Lita Ford looks fantastic for her age? Why does everyone keep calling her Kellie? Anyway, Lita goes on and attempts Bohemian Rhapsody. Lita seems a little more happier and bouncier than her "Kiss Me Deadly" days. Lita sucks it and yet the judges all like it for some reason. Even they don't know why they like it. Nice try Lita. "If I close my eyes forever!"

One question: If Randy Jackson and Stewart Scott were in the same room, could you technically say there were still no African American's in the room? It's like watching a real life Don "No Soul" Simmons.

Curly takes to the stage. His Queen song for the night is Innuendo. Whaaaaat? When Queen says they've never played a song live, perhaps you should choose a different song. Curly sticks with it and does a rocking cover of a Scott Stapp cover of Queen. Which in the real world means it sucks, but in American Idol world is apparently good. Awful song choice.

Next some cute brunette is going to sing "Don't Stop Me Now." Finally, a good Queen song. This the first since Fat Bottom Girls in my opinion. I admit now that I will always picture pool cues and zombies when I hear that song. The brunette though changes her mind, and does the theme song from Highlander. She clearly didn't pick this song by herself. There is no way she even heard of this song or the movie Highlander. She must have just asked for one of their slow songs. She actually does ok for American Idol. Still I feel like she copped out. She must only be able to do slow songs.

This just in! Apparently that wasn't Lita Ford singing. It was just some girl named Kellie dressed like Lita. I apologize to Lita Ford and the Ford family.

I'm going to give this next guy a little credit. First off he does a great Queen song, and it's a bitch of a song to sing. He's passable too. He does get big points deducted for that DJ intro. You should never have admitted that…never. Unless you do a blog.

Now here comes the fan favorite. El MOL...I mean Taylor Hicks! He changes his mind too on what song to sing. He decides on Crazy Little Thing Called Love because he wants to get back to the dancing Taylor. Suhweet! Two minutes later. Suhuuuck. Somebody shoot him, or me. Are you serious? People love this guy? You know on second thought I can see why people like him. He seems nice. He's obviously just having fun. I just don't see this guy ever being an American Idol.

For the finale, straight out of prison it's Lil Kim! Apparently, I'm wrong again. Her name's Paris and she will be attempting The Show Must Go On. The song's too big for her, and I still have no idea what I actually saw. I'm sure she must do better on other songs.

Thankfully we are finished. I give my vote to the brunette and to the guy that looks like the brother of the guy who played Gollum. My one disappointment was that nobody did a song from the Flash Gordon soundtrack. That would have blown Simon's mind. They could even do some of the dialogue to the movie. Flash! Aaaaah! Somebody could have sealed this beauty pageant up if they did Flash Gordon.

Also, has nobody figured out that the judges are all animatronics? It's like the Country Bear Jamboree only with fewer words programmed in. And that's being kind. Since this is my first real viewing, has the crowd ever booed a contestant? That I'd like to see. But I assume every audience believes the contestants can do no wrong.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brad,
This is hilarious. Best critique I've seen of American Idol in a while. Clearly, as you say, none of them could really pull of Queen. And yes, it's a bit puzzling how/why Queen ever got involved in this in the first place. If you watch the news though, you'll know that AI is a juggernaut. Who wouldn't want to latch on to that?

Eric and I concluded that Tuesday's show would have been much better had someone actually chosen Radio Ga Ga. What Queen retrospective could be complete without it.

if you'd been watching all season you'd know why the judges seemed to like Lita..er, Kellie...relative to her previous performance this one was actually quite good.

I confess I like Taylor. You say, "I just don't see this guy being an American Idol." I'm pretty sure that's why I like him.

My favorites however are Katherine and Elliot. They can both sing. What a novel concept.

Kerri said...

okay bradford... i'll give it to you. last week's show pretty much sucked. but it was because none of them (minus elliot) could pull off the songs. do NOT judge the talent based on that show. last night was GENIUS. they did the standards and it blew me away.

it made me really happy to see a post on idol, even though you didn't like it.

Bradford said...

Lenhart-I would've highly enjoyed a Radio Ga Ga finale sung by everyone.

Kerri-I actually enjoyed the show somewhat. I could see myself watching it again...maybe.