Oh, man, did
Sanjaya get the bowl cut? That's what it looks like from the
quick flash of the contestants we see before the opening
credits of Tuesday night's show. See, Kentucky Fried
Chicken (I've never been able to deal with shortening
it to the more hip-hop, breakdancing–Colonel
Sanders “KFC”) has offered My Papaya a chance
to be their Famous Bowls spokesgeek on the condition
that he gets a bowl haircut. You can Google that if
you think I'm lying. Because I'm not. Anyway, I hope he
takes the money and runs with it. Hair grows back. The
worst that happens is he looks like Moe Howard for a
week or so and fattens up his college fund a little.
“This is
A-MER-ican Idol!”
Elevator.
Animated dude
with breasts holding microphone.
Cathy Dennis
song.
The cast of
Drive seated in that doomed-Fox-series front
row of marketing.
The cast of
Wedding Bells working at Pinkberry.
Seacrest welcomes
us to “the show you control,” the
first comedy line of the evening. Then he says, “Two
words for you: Jennifer [slightpause] Lopez,” and this makes the crowd
scream. Even one of the Monkees is here applauding, Micky
Dolenz specifically, wearing a black “I'm still
youthful!” hat even though he's like my Mom's
age. I think it's only right and natural that one of the
Monkees is here, seeing as how their fame was predicated on
being constructed as musicians on national television
too. They got a sitcom and hit records and all the
screaming girls and none of the respect because, now
as well as then, people somehow believe it when pop stars
bitch about how their beyond-reason level of
fame and wealth was earned through blistered feet and purity
of vision and a moral steel core, like they'd trudged
up a mountain made out of shards of broken glass while
those other leapfroggers who simply landed the
magic audition or gave someone a blow job or won a
contest didn't play by the rules and are now ruining the
integrity of…the musicindustry. So anyway, back to the Monkees. Then
they went and made that awesome movie Head and
broke up. Which makes me wonder what Micky Dolenz has
done for a living for the past 30-whatever years, you
know? Does he own a chain of Sizzlers?
Seacrest launches
into the voice-over for a Jennifer Lopez montage:
“Jennifer Lopez is an unstoppable force with talents
that cover all aspects of the entertainment
industry,” which is, I guess, I don't know,
sort of accurate. She does sing and dance and act and make
those awful outfits they sell in…where? Like
Mervyn's? And she has some sprays or lotions or
something too, right? Like her own brand of toothpaste, I
think. I forget. What I like best about this little
“isn't she great” monologue is how
Seacrest says the word “Latina.” Because when
crackers with aspirations to being continental say
words like that they always overemphasize the way
they're pronouncing it, as though they were actual
Spanish-speakers. So he says,
“Eh-lah-TEEN-ah,” and a nation of Puerto
Ricans, Mexicans, Central Americans, Dominicans, and even my
Spaniard-from-Spain-descended husband/partner/whatever
laughs in unison.
As I write this,
my friend Tom Ford—no, not that one, this is the one
I know who isn't famous or a fashion
designer—is trying to nap on my couch, so I'm
annoying him with the way I'm stopping and starting and
rewinding the TiVo in order to catch the little
details that'll make this recap sing, and he just
mumbled, “I…fuckin'…hate
her.”
I don't hate the
Lo. This montage reminded me of all the things about her
there are to enjoy. There's J.L. spazzing out in a manic
dance move, there's J.L. pretending to be Jennifer
Beals's Flashdance body double, there's J.L.'s
used-to-be-bigger-before-she-had-whatever-she-had-did-it-did-to-it
ass, there's J.L. punching you in the face while
singing “Waiting for Tonight,” there's
J.L. imploring the DJ to play that song, there's J.L.
being in a movie that isn't Gigli, there's J.L.
as “Eh-lah-TEEN-ah” icon Selena, there's J.L.
exploding a car as a metaphor for her fiery
“Eh-lah-TEEN-ah” passion, there's J.L. washing
her hair, and then, finally, there's J.L. topping the
Latin Charts, her latest achievement, which, though it
might not be number1 on the top 200 albums, is
still a much a bigger deal than being able to say,
“Hey, everyone, I just washed my hair all by myself
without the help of my live-in stylist!”
Seacrest
continues embarrassing himself by calling the kids the top
“ocho” in yet another attempt at
dialect realness, and he explains that Jennifer Lopez
will be their mentor for “Latin Week,” where I
guarantee you the focus will be squarely on Gloria Estefan
and Santana. In my fantasies Sanjaya comes out and
covers an Os Mutantes song and Melinda tackles Tom Ze.
But it's not going to happen. We're not even going to
get a cover of Celia Cruz or Caetano Veloso. But someone's
going to sing “Conga,” I can feel it.
Anyway, will Lopez be aloof and and useless like Peter
Noone? Will she be tentatively helpful like Diana
Ross? Will she bowl them over with her happy energy and
willingness to howl out any and every song with them
like Lulu? Will she demand one of them to go out and
get her some hand cream like when Puffy's protégé
shot that guy in that club that one time and they all
got hauled down the police station and she had one of
the cops run off to Rite-Aid?
J.L. speaks her
gentle-lady mind about the wonder that is this season's
batch of contestants. How diverse and lovely, how amazing
they are, how proud she is of them. The top
ocho are all seated on the floor, looking up at
J.L., seated on a stool; they're in awe, mouths slightly
open, like she might drop some worms in from her motherly
beak. It's sweet. And I can't figure out what I'm
witnessing here.
“We watch
American Idol,” she says.
“Just like
the rest of America,” she says.
Is this like in
The Phantom Menace and whatever that second
one was called where you learn that Queen Amidala had
all those decoy Padmes that looked and acted just like her?
Is Jennifer Lopez so rich now that she's had exact
duplicates manufactured? Are they the nice ones? I
mean, I've read all the gossip columns and blogs and
TheSmokingGun.com and Gawker.com and Defamer.com and
PerezHilton.com (Did you know I used to work with him at
this other gay magazine once and his real name is
Mario? I always thought he was kind of a dork back
then, but now he's famous, so that makes him amazing) and I
know all the facts about Jennifer Lopez. I know she demands
crazy things like all-white trailers at charity events
and a dozen oiled-up eunuch slaves spraying
tuberose-scented mists into the air from
diamond-encrusted atomizers and that these slaves must
travel in advance of her every step by exactly five
minutes so that the scent of pretty flowers delicately
lingers in the air but that they must be invisible and
out of the area by the time she shows up. I know about every
gruesome story from every set she ever worked on,
every party she ever attended, every human life she
suffocated with her bare hands around their innocent
throats so she could get ahead in the biz. I heard she had
Selena killed so that she could then play her on film.
I have a LOT invested in believing that all this
information is 100% true fact. I don't know how I'm
even supposed to go on with this recap if I can't see her
behaving as oddly and stiffly and uncomfortably as
Gwen Stefani. I NEED UNSUBSTANTIATED GOSSIP AND
BLATANT LIES TO BE GOSPEL. Stop fucking up my life
with your warm, charismatic behavior, Jennifer Lopez! It's
not fair to me or anyone else. But mostly me.
Anyway, let's
watch Jennifer Lopez be lovey-dovey and snuggle-bunnies
with Melinda Doolittle, who's going to sing
“Sway.” J.L. has done her homework, like
maybe she really does watch this show.
“I just saw this quality in [Melinda] that I hadn't
seen on the show before, where she kinda got like,
really like, sultry and sexy for a second.” We
see J.L. advising, laughing, and being cute. “That is
going to be my biggest challenge this week,” says
Melinda, “because I am so not sexy.”
Hmm. Hey,
girl-on-girl readers, is your lezdar going off on Melinda? I
want to hear from you on this one. Because while I tend to
think I can spot a fag a mile away, occasionally my
dyke detection system runs a little spotty. And
something about her feels lezzie-ish to me suddenly. I
don't know why. I have no proof, no rumors, no innuendo, no
nothing. Unlike all the crazy stories of evil I've
heard of J.L., which I still swear have to be true or
nothing can ever be right in my world again. But about
Melinda I have only conjecture. So someone give me your
opinion. I care.
Anyway, here
comes Melinda in a nice asymmetrical-cut black dress that
gives her plenty of neck. She's also wearing a sexy MILF
wig. She performs the song competently, and by that I
mean she puts me to sleep. But whatever. Randy
compares her to Celia Cruz. Paula, who is wearing a
funny little black jacket and, according to my friend Josh,
“poured lip gloss all over herself and rolled
her face in glitter,” goes
blah-blah-blah-you're-pretty. And Simon doesn't like it.
Simon's the one who's right. Seacrest calls her
“sexy,” and Melinda is happily taken
aback, kind of like when you poke the Pillsbury Doughboy in
the belly button.
LaKisha's next.
Seacrest has a viewer question. “What made you try
out for American Idol?” asks Someone
from Somewhere. LaK's response is the one she's said
before but clearly not loudly enough so that these
dumb question-askers could hear it, and it goes like
this, paraphrased of course: “I work in a
motherfuckin' BANK and make shit money and I'm a
single mom and I'd been getting really into that
Set It Off DVD, like keeping it way too
long from Blockbuster and memorizing key scenes almost
without even realizing I was doing it, you know?
That's when I knew I had to dump all that bullshit and
get my ass on TV.”
J.L. sweetly, so
sweetly, guides LaK through “Conga,” even
teaching her how to pronounce it correctly and letting
me know that I've been saying it wrong my whole life,
like the cracker I am. She even gives LaKisha a quick
little dance lesson and together they make their respective
booties go POP to the right. Then J.L. delivers this
really infectious and warm laugh. It's so
life-affirming I can feel my arteries clearing and my
cholesterol count going down. I'm being healed by the
laughter of Miss Jennifer Lopez, friend to humanity.
My friend Tom Ford offers a possible explanation for
this continued niceness. “Maybe Tom Cruise did
get to her and Marc Anthony and convert them to
Scientology,” he says, and I like this idea because
it would mean we have a new celebrity Scientologist to
goof on. The new “clear” J.L. would be a
treat at all times. Furthermore, it seems like Posh and
Becks aren't being so receptive to taking the
personality tests and wrapping their money-filled
hands around e-meter cans, so I'd really like it if at least
some fresh superfame were being infused into
the religion. Jenna Elfman can't do everything by herself,
and we shouldn't expect her to. It's not right.
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Dave White is the author of the squat-popping
achievement in literary nonfiction Exile in
Guyville. Find him at www.imdavewhite.com