"Question!" teases Seacrest, opening Tuesday's
show and wearing a snappy hip-banker suit with a
skinny tie, a look that really elongates him and that
I approve of wholeheartedly. "Gwen Stefani fans here
with us tonight? [Do you] like Gwen Stefani?"
The audience goes
ape-shit--including one blond lady who looks like a
grown-up Six from Blossom--not realizing that
Seacrest is about to psych! them with the
information that G.S. isn't actually going to appear in
person tonight at all. But boy, do they EVER like Gwen
Stefani. If she hit the stage right now, someone would
no doubt (Get it? I said "no doubt") climb
onto the stage and attempt to swallow her whole,
keeping her a tiny hostage in their O.C.-ska-loving
stomach. When you'd put your ear to that lucky
celebrity-cannibalizing person's torso, you'd hear
"Spiderwebs" 24/7.
Now, I'll be the
first person to be annoyed by the glad-handing presence
of a dude like Peter Noone on this show, and I've often
wondered what it would be like to have a non-oldster
come along to coach the kids, to have an actual pop
star from today show up and work with the contestants. But
what possessed Gwen Stefani to come on this show besides her
management begging her to do something to move
her new CD? I think we're all about to find out that
the true answer to that question resides in the fine
print of a contract somewhere. But whatever, my friend
Aaron, who works at Los Angeles's biggest record store,
Amoeba, says that since last week they've sold out of
Lulu completely. So that shit works.
Seacrest explains
tonight's theme, and it's a complicated, arbitrary one:
No Doubt songs and songs from the artists and bands who
inspired Gwen. In other words, Gwen songs and songs by
people Gwen's heard of. Then Seacrest introduces the
judges but doesn't bother giving out their names. You
know them by now. I just wish they'd close up on the black
ruffly puffy-sleeved blouse made of hammered licorice
Paula's got on. But instead we get a Gwen Montage.
Gwen in a knit cap, Gwen with No Doubt on a
checkerboard background, Gwen in a red dress, Gwen inside a
giant heart, Gwen jumping with that old mid-'90s
hair-- you remember, the thing with the
curled-under bangs--Gwen wearing a T-shirt that reads
"Anaheim," Gwen with a bindi. Seacrest
says, "Gwen's infectious energy, platinum hair,
and toned tummy have made her an icon."
I love the idea
of a tummy being iconic. I should capitalize on that
myself. My tummy is somewhat different from Gwen's, as mine
has been honed to a Santa Claus-like-roundness
by regular play dates with cupcakes and beer, but it's
no less adorable, and I want to be celebrated for it.
My player-hating doctor is encouraging me to lose about 30
pounds, something about preventing heart disease and
diabetes, but what does he know? This is my signature
gut and it's going to make me famous. And meanwhile,
Gwen makes her entrance into the rehearsal space wearing a
sweater. It's a really cute sweater too, with trompe l'oeil
straps and buckles woven into it, but it's completely
swaddling her toned tummy, one I was promised just
moments ago. What gives? Stop cheating us all, Gwen
Stefani!
Gwen refuses to
cheat us on dispensing wisdom, though. She talks about
how having a great big voice isn't so important when you're
looking to apply for the position of pop star. And she
should know. Not that she's a bad singer or anything.
Her voice is just fine, but if anyone knows about
presentation-uber-alles, it's this woman. Why just sing when
you can create a perpetual-motion, hip-hop Cirque du
Soleil of dancing dollies, sword-swallowers,
unicyclists, cholas, and skate-rats to surround you at
all times, a distracting entourage that Nelly Furtado would
give her left lung for?
Gwen
faux-empathizes about how nerve-racked all the kids must be,
and I'm nervous just listening to her talk. She has a
sort of lockjaw thing going on, like someone's sewn
her teeth shut, and I think I'd like it, I'd consider
it an endearing bit of humanity, if I hadn't ever seen her
before. She continues with, "I feel very, kind of,
like, excited for them. I can't wait to see who's
gonna win." As she says this she appears to be
struggling to not betray that she's completely bullshitting
straight into the camera, doing her best to trick all those
people out there who know a lot about the facial tics
of liars. Then she finishes up with, "It's kind
of excite--I'm really kind of--I've invested in
it now. I'm really [slight but mind-bendingly
insincere pause] into it."
AWESOME! SHE
HATES BEING HERE!
LaKisha's up
first. What advice did Gwen give? It's good. So good.
"After LaKisha's performance I'm actually
finding myself sweaty. Like, it was like, really, she
really blew me away."
As LaKiki
finishes her rehearsal, Gwen hugs her and smiles straight
into the camera. She must have watched Lulu really go
for it last week and then thought, Well, fuck all
that helping-them-sing shit and giving them actual
pointers by demonstrating how it's done. Diana
Ross took the easy road. So am I.
LaK comes out in
a hot red-and-black boob-presentation garment. Gwen's
just happy she didn't ask for a LAMB outfit "because,
like, uh...you know, we don't, like, MAKE those
sizes!" The outfit and her sleek straight wig
combined are pretty much all you need to fall in love with
her. And the DMV nails are bigger, whiter, and more
squared-off than ever. Now all she has to do is beat
the shit out of Donna Summer's "Last Dance,"
which I'm confident she'll do because even in the
opening slow bit she says "Cuz when I'm bad I'm
so so ba-a-ad" and pronounces that first "bad"
like it's "bade." She's here to make this song
her bitch. It's also her "last
chance...for
rom-MAINCE...to-o-oni-i-i-high-high-hight."
In the middle of
the song she waves her hand toward the camera, almost
begging it to come closer so she can give it a left hook,
stands at the edge of the stage like maybe you should
be a little scared, like don't make her come down
there and say again that you'd BETTER FUCKIN' DANCE
WITH HER RIGHT NOW OR SHIT'S GONNA GET UGLY. And as she
finishes it off, confident she's beaten it all to a
pulp, she whips her head around to show off how silky
and flowy that fake hair is. I'm in super-love with
her right now. She looks like she might launch right into
the 18-minute version of the "MacArthur Park
Suite."
The judges are
happy. Randy is pleased she's chosen an "up-tempo
joint." Paula praises her too. And we finally
get a good look at Paula's hair tonight, and it's a
masterpiece of confusion, moving in so many directions
at once that it's like someone's conducting it and giving it
contradictory directions. Simon says LaKisha's 30 years
younger this week. Which still makes her 20 years
older if you do the math from his last week's comment
about how she was 50 years older after singing
"Diamonds Are Forever," dig? Cut to her old
work friends holding a sign that reads
"Provident Bank Is Banking on LaKisha to Win!"
Translation: "We seethe with envy that, even if
she loses, she's never coming back to make us feel
less miserable about remaining trapped here."
Seacrest asks
Chris Sligh one of those viewer questions. "What do
you do in your downtime?" asks Someone From
Somewhere. Sligh delivers one of his usual
not-exactly-hilarious-but-still-cleverer-than-anyone-else-on-the-show
answers: knitting, crocheting, playing bongos in his boxers,
he tells Seacrest, whose job it is now to reflexively
recoil at the thought of--UGH--a
MAN--in UNDERWEAR! Because that shtick never gets old.
Gwen has zero
advice for Chris Sligh. She wants him to stay on tempo.
"Where's the drummer?" she asks, all jokey,
effectively insulting the piano player who's already
fed up with her ass. Thanks, Gwen, you make Diana Ross
look as effusive as Lulu now.
Sligh's hair is
sad tonight. Back when he started this show his curls
were big and sassy. Now they look damp and depressed. It's
like they sense his mood. He's grown progressively
more polite and safe as the season has progressed, and
his hair can tell that he's feeling constrained. You
just know someone gave him a stern talking-to after his
shout-out to Dave from VoteForTheWorst.com last week, so now
he's subdued and so is his hair. It's like a Jheri
curl on the mopiest member of Kool and the Gang.
Sligh tries on
The Police's "Every Little Thing She Does Is
Magic." It's all coming through his nose, he's
off-key, and he seems nervous, like maybe he knows his
old Bob Jones buddies are having conniptions right now
because the song is about "magic" and he's
singing about being "turned on" by some
lady--perhaps not even his wife--and her Jezebel-ish occult
practices. My friend Sean, seated across the living room, is
convinced that Sligh is an "ex-gay." His evidence?
That a few weeks ago he sang a song about being
"saved by a woman." I don't believe this is
enough evidence for a diagnosis. On the other hand, he
does love a coded gesture. The judges annihilate
him, and that's a just response, I think, since he
annihilated the song. Paula rambles on about staying
"in the pocket" and how his vocal was an
"eyesore." Also an "Earache My
Eye." And don't forget, kids, that the audience
won't know if you forget the lyrics. So far this season,
Paula's been, relatively speaking, more lucid than in
the past, so there hasn't been much wacky Paula
recapping to do on my part. The "eyesore"
comment makes me deliriously happy. I've missed you,
weird-sentence-constructing lady, like the deserts
miss the rain. Simon really lets him have it and calls
the performance "a mess." But then, that's
just because I think he's mad at Sligh already. And
being British, he also hates Jesus. Sligh admits that
he was off and then says, "My bad."
Gina the Red gets
all weepy at meeting Gwen, who in turn can only respond
with "Aww" while cocking her head like a
puppy. Then we get a full shot of Gwen standing at the
piano. Her midsection is obscured by the instrument,
but that's not what's important here. What's important is
her fantastically crazy, Balenciaga-ish,
super-sky-high white heels, the kind that you have to
look twice at to realize that whoever made them decided
that shoes should be truly fucking weird at all times. Then
you have to wonder how long a person can truly stand
on things like that without harming themselves. Give
G.S. this: She dresses 15-minutes-into-the-future
almost all the time. Compared to Gina, whose Hot Topic
getups and pierced tongue are sort of cutely
15-minutes-ago-on-every-other-MySpace-page, Gwen invented
fire.
And now that I'm
done harshing on her outfits and tongue (the latter I'm
sure pleases her boyfriend), I will reiterate that I truly
like Gina because she wants it so badly and she seems
like the person who's going to take it hardest when
she's finally eliminated.
Anyway, Gina's
very controlled and sweet rendition of the Pretenders'
"I'll Stand by You" makes up for her
terrifically hideous choice of dress and
black-and-white-gothic-crucifix-go-go-boots. I recently saw
Bobby Trendy out at an event here in Los Angeles and
he was dressed like a gay pirate/dominatrix. And I bet
even he would reject these boots. The judges ignore
the dress and hideous boots, save for Randy, who actually
likes them, which is pretty typical for Randy if you
consider how he used to dress when he toured with
Journey. Go to Google Images and I bet you'll find the
evidence. Simon gives the fragile young woman a bit of a
freak-out when he begins, "It wasn't one of your best
performances... [followed by a pause for dramatic
emphasis that 19 Entertainment should really consider
trying to copyright, because DANG, someone is always
pulling this shit on this show]... It was your best
performance." She begins to well up. Simon
trots out an Englishman-ism, "chalk and
cheese," which is their version of saying
"apples and oranges," as a way to describe her
past performances and the one she just delivered. I
have to agree. I fuckin' HATE this song and she did it
up nice anyway.
Time for
commercials, but before that happens, they give us a teaser
of Sanjaya's wacky hair. It appears to be a mohawk of
some sort, and I guess we'll see exactly what type of
mohawk it is after the break. They make sure to cut
back to Seacrest and zoom in on him while he raises his
eyebrows and makes a "Can you believe this
shit?" face. They should have included a big
BOI-OI-OI-OI-OING! noise too, so we'd all be sure we got
the message--that message being that the show no
longer wants to be associated with Sanjaya, that the
official position is, "What are you gonna do?
We wash our hands of this kid. We didn't pick him,"
when, in fact, they did pick him just for the
ample opportunity it would give them to turn him into
the butt of a joke. Now, of course, everyone is
getting antsy that he might keep sticking around. And
to that I say, "HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW."
And we're back
from commercials. My favorite one of the moment is the one
from Visa with the young white chick in gray who breaks a
heel. Then she's rescued by an African-American woman
singing "Downtown" and escorted to a
salon where they That Girl her, then a dress
shop where she's outfitted in pink and given a million pairs
of shoes and then carried through the streets by male
models. This is the perfect life that Visa will give
you if you'll only indulge yourself. Because you know
what? Your dreams of luxury HAVE TO COME TRUE. THEY
MUST. You deserve lots of new shoes and hot clothes and an
amazing haircut, and after you get them people will
dance around you and sing in unison and you'll skip
merrily into the future, your credit rating blown,
collections people calling you at all hours, receiving
offers of new cards in the mail every single day, your
limit raised in spite of it all. Then when you try
file for bankruptcy you'll be denied, thanks to the
new, more stringent laws. I recommend a book called Maxed
Out about how the credit card companies are
seriously out to get you and will fuck your life over by any
means necessary. It's also been made into a new
documentary in case reading anything but frivolous
American Idol recaps isn't your bag.
Did I say we were
back from commercials? Yes, we are. And it's time for
Sanjaya. Gwen can't fake-grin enough when she's near him.
She's visibly recoiling from being associated with
this kid. And I assume that this must have been the
last straw for this beleaguered boy. He's decided to
rub Gwen's face in it by singing "Bathwater,"
a No Doubt song. Her retaliation is to say, "I
feel for him. I think it's gonna be really difficult
for him. It's a hard song. But he chose it. So good luck for
him." She giggles at the end of her statement. It's a
punctuating laugh that says, "I have several
Grammy awards and I'm still pissed that Kelly Clarkson
beat me for my next batch of them and now I'm going to take
it out on this show and especially this kid."
Enter Sanjaya and
a mohawk constructed of seven vertical ponytails. My
partner/husband/whatever just called him "Foghorn
Lame-horn." But to me it just looks like he's a
character in Apocalypto. In any case, I hope, I
pray, that this is Mr. Malakar's turning point and that the
hair is a fuck-you gesture. He jumps into the song and
wiggles his head around to make the hair bounce and
flutter. He emphasizes the weird lyrics about having a
"pregnant mind" and loving "to wash in
your old bathwater" and quickly recovers from
forgetting the words. He seems freer now than even
last week when he butchered that Kinks song. He has to know
what people are saying about him, has to have seen
Andy Samberg impersonate him on Saturday Night Live, has to know about the racist conspiracy
theories surrounding Indian customer service phone
banks somehow conspiring to vote for him. I like to think
that he's daring us to not vote, to kick him off so he
can get a little peace. If that's what he's doing,
then Tonight He Becomes a Man. I'm kind of surprised
and disappointed that he didn't engineer some guerrilla
Harajuku girls to dance behind him, frankly. When he
finishes, Randy claims to be
"speechless" and then scolds S.M. a bit for
not being a better singer. "Come on,
man..." he pleads. God, Randy is so annoying.
Paula mimics Randy on this one. Simon speaks the truth:
"I don't think it matters anymore what we
say." This gets a big grin from S.M. Seacrest
grills him on the hair. "At what point were you
inspired?" he asks. S.M., of course, seems to
only be able to respond to inquiries in a typical,
borderline-petulant-teen tone of exasperation, and says,
"I just wanted to have a mohawk because I
thought it'd be fun!" But what he's really
thinking is, I'm 17! Stop fucking asking me so many
fucking questions! Fuck!
"Thank you
for the entertainment," concludes Seacrest, who seems
to want nothing more than for John Travolta and Nancy
Allen to pour some pig's blood all over this kid's
head mid-song next week.
Haley's up next,
singing one of Gwen's favorite songs, Cyndi Lauper's
"True Colors." And Gwen tells you what she
thinks of Haley with her eyes, which dart back and
forth, as if she's trying to focus on not lunging for
Haley's throat. Then Gwen tells you what she thinks of Haley
with her mouth. "She started doing this other
kind of melody which I think is so unnecessary for the
song."
Onstage Haley is
wearing a relatively demure black dress. That surprises
me, as I expected her to be completely nude after her
triumphant boobie show from last week's episode. As
usual, and completely expected, is her ability to suck
all the air from a song, turn it into a flat,
sodium-free, soup cracker and make you long for the
interpretive stylings of Hilary Duff and Jessica
Simpson. Randy, in the nicest way possible, tells her
she was boring. Paula looks distraught. Haley's
pals--oh, wait, one of them is the one that
looks like Six!--go ape-shit, screaming, "WE
LOVE YOU, HALEY!" and generally disrupting
everything. Thank you, Trashy Girlfriends! Simon tells
her she was forgettable and that she has to do better.
He's right. But I don't think she's capable.
I know I've been
calling Phil Stacey "Nosferatu" during this
competition, but my assembled friends here in the
living room are with me when I assert that it looks
like a prankster makeup artist got hold of him and did
him up like the Xerxes character from 300. Other
offerings: "Emma Thompson in the final moments
of Wit" and "Nicolas Cage's
younger sister." Gwen has nothing to offer
Nos--who'll be singing "Every Breath You
Take," one of the most overexposed pop songs of the
past 25 years--except for her already-standard advice
of "Stick to the melody." When he's done
with her she says he was "really, really good"
and then cocks her mouth to the side, like,
"Are we done yet? How many are left for me to
see? Can I just go?"
Nos starts the
song. Oh, this song. So tired. So drained of whatever it
was that people originally found enticing about it. And I
know I've been crapping on the outfits a lot this
week, but it's like someone decided to prank these
kids with some of the fugliest getups ever. Nos is wearing a
ridiculous knit cap on his shiny head, the aforementioned
caked-on makeup and overly shaped-and-plucked brows, a
stupid silk-screened hoodie underjacket that features
grommets and cords and long black loops of telephone
wire hanging from the bottom. Oh, and freakish,
metal-studded elbow patches. Because you gotta keep it
classy. Meanwhile, back to the song. It's so awful,
the kind of thing dumb people have sung at their
weddings because they don't realize it's about stalking,
they just think it's "their song." And
this guy is the male Haley. Not an ounce of anything
interesting coming out of his mouth. Ever. Paula tells him,
"There's so much personality and color to your
voice," a balls-out falsehood of an opinion
that could be fueled only by a massive amount of
cocaine sitting inside what must be the secret compartment
of the giant white flower-shaped ring she's got on her
left hand. Paula says she's never done drugs, of
course.
Melinda, along
with LaKisha, is the only one so far who's gotten a
halfway decent response from Gwen. Maybe you can be a
backup singer for me someday, she's thinking.
And like Lakisha, Melinda goes for a Donna Summer
song, "Heaven Knows." I like it. Not as much
as I like LaK's "Last Dance." But then
"Last Dance" is a better song to start with.
And ho-o-o-wee, speaking of awful outfits, the
Pucci-esque thing she's got on is chopping her in
about four different places. Honey, I love you. Please
get one of your Gayles on the case. Or maybe get rid of that
Gayle if she's the one doing this to you. It reeks of
sabotage.
Blake has dreamed
of being Gwen for years now, so getting to sing
for her is his fondest wish come true. He plans to do
the 311 version of the Cure's "Lovesong." That
way he gets to stink it up the way he likes best, by
layering it with reggae. Gwen warns him against
beatboxing, but she's subtle about it, not coming right out
like a decent mentor would and saying, "LOOK,
KID, BEATBOXING IS OVER. OVER, DO YOU HEAR ME?"
But either way she manages to make him not do it. And
it's a subdued performance--even his hair is lying
down, half asleep, not about to get into a competition
with Robert Smith. And it's not like it's a hard song
to sing anyway. It's got about four notes in it. He's in a
gentle reggae world, floating on the love of Rosie O'Donnell
and Elizabeth Hasslebeck, who both showed up on The
View this week wearing "Blaker Girl"
T-shirts. Sigh...
Paula, former
Laker Girl and present Blaker Girl herself, enthuses,
"I loved what you did! I love the
Cures!" Oh, all right, she didn't call them the
Cures. But you know she probably would if not coached
properly beforehand. She thinks he's "hip and
cool and contemporary." I mean, yes, he is if
you live in the suburbs and think 311 is hip and cool and
contemporary. Simon compares him to Daughtry, another safely
"hip" person (and also a total copier of
other bands) and calls him "the front-running
guy." In my house that's known as "damning
with faint praise." Some girl in the audience
has a sign that says, "Blake, will you marry
me?" I'm guessing the answer to that one is no.
Jordin is going
to sing "Hey Baby." This genuinely shocks
Gwen, who knows better than anyone that it's barely a
song at all. It's like singing "Another One
Bites the Dust." It's just some stuff that happens to
be in the vicinity of some music. It's three notes
away from being rap. She could have just as well have
said, "I've decided to sing Fleetwood Mac's
'Tusk.'" Gwen, for her part, is happy to get the
royalty check. Jordin seems to be having fun singing
the song, even if she also seems a little out of
breath. But whatever. She's the poster girl for
CuteOverload.com. If her outfit were made of kitties
and cotton candy, she couldn't be more adorable.
Chris Not Sligh
is going to get smacked by Gwen for inflicting his
"vocal Olympics thing" on her own
"Don't Speak" song. She bites her lip as he
sings. And can I just say here that I have fully enjoyed
watching Gwen Stefani contort herself into the closet
approximation of good manners she could muster this
week. When celebrities unwisely dive into uncomfortable
situations in the name of self-promotion and then start to
squirm and bite their lips, that's when I fall
in love with them. The judges are mixed on Chris Not
Sligh's actual performance. Randy is more or less on
board. Paula calls him "goo-oo-ood" in way
that actually sounds more like "I want to lick
your chest" and Simon's "not crazy about
the vocal," warning him to pay more attention to, you
know, the singing.
Now on to
Elimination Night, a task they could accomplish in two
seconds that is, instead, stretched out to 30. That's
why I feel no guilt when I just skim through it like
I'm about to do for you right now...
1. Seacrest wears
a Sanjaya pony-hawk wig. Then he throws it at Simon.
2. Last night's
show is instant-replayed.
3. The next Ford
commercial, a cover of "I Fought The Law,"
featuring Chris Not Sligh dressed as the Man With No
Name and everyone else in various cowboy getups,
chasing him with Mustangs. If I were the rest of those
guys, I'd be resentful of Not Sligh being showcased as an
Old West stud and getting all the screen time. And it
would have been funnier if it had been Sanjaya. But
that's Ford for you.
4. Idol Challenge
Question for Dummies: Who was known as the Velvet Teddy
Bear? Hint: Pick "B" for Ruben Studdard.
5. Idol Gives
Back got itself hooked up with Exxon/Mobil, and I feel warm
all over.
6. Gwen Stefani
sings some song with Akon, a typical gimmicky Gwen
novelty song, featuring some guys in suits with a trumpet
and a trombone, her now-familiar Japanese dancer
girls, a squadron of dancing guys, and a repeat of
last night's crazy white shoes, paired with black tights,
sparkly black outfit, white shirt and necktie. Luckiest
Motherfucker on Planet Earth Award goes to the
mind-bogglingly talentless Akon, who does NOTHING
onstage but say, "Whooo-hoooo!" and
"Yeah-Hoooo!" I'm waiting for the seal
that balances a beach ball on its nose to be lowered from
the rafters. When it's done Seacrest reminds Gwen that
the results of the voting are going to happen next. At
this moment she fans herself with her hand and
actually pushes the sides of her mouth up into a smile.
7. Paula's
dressed exactly like Gwen. Did they call each other and
decide it was matchy-matchy day? And is Blake upset
they left him out of the phone tree?
8. Bottom 3 =
Phil, Stacy, Sligh. Sligh goes home and says to Phil,
"You owe me 50 bucks." You gotta like a
guy who votes against himself and wins, you know?
