American Idol–MilwaukTHISWAY

Wow, it is already Audition #3—can you believe it?  Only 750 more hours of this and we’ll crown the next star to sell 127 albums.  This time we are in Milwaukee, Wisconsin—a city I’ve never visited and about which I only know the stereotypical things.  Luckily, a woman in the crowd summarizes it for me:  accents, cheese and beer.  Mental note:   Must visit Milwaukee.  I’m sure there are tons of other things associated with the city, but that is all I really need.  Moving on!  The day starts out with Steven (STd) trying to get Randy to try crack.

C’mon—you’ll look cool and have more friends

Paula would have at least offered pills.  Then we get to see the normal Armageddon-like opening and the pictures of former idols.

A myriad of Who’s um, Who?

Just when you thought you could tame your pounding heart from the excitement and anticipation, we find out this is Danny Gokey’s hometown!  (Sorry, I mean Church Lady).

You can just act like this crowd is here to listen to you sing…that’s cool with us.  Only, don’t sing.

The judging takes place at the Milwaukee Art Museum which looks pretty cool in a Sydney Opera House kind of way.  The judges get settled in and here we go.  First up is a kid from Garner, NC who actually calls himself Scotti.  And no, the age limit didn’t get lowered to 8—he’s actually 16.  Steven T likes him enough to cuss and get bleeped, proving he might be great fun during a live show (fingers crossed) and the camera crew of 20 break into giggles.  Scotti has a super low country voice, a sadly sober karaoke dance and enough small town charm to get him through.  Then he tries to push the door open instead of pull.  Yay, stereotypes!  First Yellow ticket.  Then we get to see this:  Unless she’s the same chick who touched Brad Pitt a few years ago, this girl does NOT get paid enough.

You said look for a Cool Ranch Dorito or a used lap band,right?

Then they show a montage of news reports about Idol coming to town and how excited the city is.  In my hometown, this would have been buried under 4 stories of murders, robberies and police chases.  Good for you, Wisconsin.  Now we get an annoying (and too long) scene with some fat kid named Joe who channels Jackie Gleason because that is so current and always hilarious.  Ryan spends way too much time talking to Joe about how Joe wants to get into broadcasting and has a great voice for it.  Hey, did that homeless guy ever wander back into rehab?  Because he kind of needs to kick this kid’s ass a bit.  You’re not relevant until your homeless and toothless, Joe!  Get with it.  We finally get to the audition and what a shocker, he is awful.  I love how J-LO always looks right into the camera to play the crowd at home, like it is the show “J-LO and Her Minions”.

Won’t you be…oh, won’t you be…my toady?

So they tell Joe to stick with his dreams of being on the radio and he actually has a pretty good shot at it, since he tells them he rarely listens to Seabiscuit.   Next up we see some girl with skunk hair driving her entire family to the audition.  Her name is Emma Henry from Littleton, Colorado and it was about a 16 hour ride or something like that.  Does no one in her family have a job?  She is 15, driving on a permit and that is important to remember as she enters the room with the judges and STd immediately checks out her legs.  And…yuck.  I like STd a lot, but he is perched dangerously on Chris Hansen territory sometimes.

Help yourself to some homemade cookies.

Emma sings True Colors and butchers it, but since I know nothing about music, I must be wrong as J-LO believes she has a special tone, STd thinks she has character, but Randy doesn’t think she’s ready.  He’s no Simon, for sure as she begs her way into three yeses.  Her family is outside the door crying, fearful of the twitchy crying permitted teen driving them precariously back 1000 miles and praying for their car to be towed.  But alas, she has the golden ticket of pity.  Set to expire End of Day, Day 1—Hollywood.

Now we get to see clips of weirdos who can’t sing and I refuse to pay any more attention.  If you ignore the psycho Kansas church that protests at military funerals, they will go away.  If you ignore the guy singing Lady Gaga or the freak who wanted to drink out of Randy’s cup, then they will not exist any more.  Buh-bye.

We now have a Rastafarian girl named Naima.  She is decked out with locks and flowers and a shaky sob story.  She works for Summerfest which is the biggest music festival in the country.  Only she doesn’t perform there, she cleans toilets and general maintenance.  She tells us she works a 9-5 job for Summerfest.  Um, does the word “Summer” mean something else in Milwaukee?  If I work for an “Oktoberfest”, I don’t expect to be humping it out in say, June, do I?  Naima-locks confuses me.  She’s an emotional wreck doing her audition but cranks out “All You Know” by Don Hathaway and does really well.  She has two little girls and she has to provide for them.

Maybe there’s a Winterfest thingie hiring?

We get some scenes from the holding room where people are dancing and acting out, bored out of their minds because there is no open bar.  They start revolting against the Idol crew, which really should have happened seasons ago.

I’ll show you a sob story!  **NBC does not support the opinions and/or actions of random purple shirt people**

More idiots trying to get on TV, who won’t make it on my recap.  Then we get Jerome Bell who sings at Bar Mitzvahs and weddings.  He’s handsome and excellent—three yeses.  Wow—was that actual talent?  Bring on the youngsters… This chick is 15 years old from California and sings Adele’s “Chasing Papers” and the judges wet themselves with excitement over her performance and her name, which is Thia Megia.  She won’t last a day.

Great name!  How do you feel about soft porn in a few years?

We get a too long clip of some yahoo who does Civil War reenactments for a hobby.  I’ve never been to one, known anyone who does that or felt the need to find out what they’re like.  That war is long over.  Is there really a question on the outcome?  If you want to reenact something, do the scene from Rocky III when Adriane yells at Rocky.  That is reenactment gold.  Of course, he sings horribly but is staring at the judges with Hannibal Lector eyes, so STd tells him “Outstanding”.  LOL—I love STd.  He is scared of the toy soldier.  Thankfully, he doesn’t move on.

Don’t hurt me—I’m from Illinois—neutral, baby!

I don’t know where STd is from originally.  He’s just trying to save his own life—can you blame the guy?  We skip over another kook looking for air time onto 22 year old Molly.  Molly is pretty, from Seattle and she graduated from Harvard and is now a White House intern.  She has a valley girl kind of whisky voice combination going on and I want to punch her for two reasons:  she is an over-achiever, which makes me feel guilty about not even taking care of my fingernails and also, she is an over-achiever.  She does tell a great story about how Randy really did punch her in the face in the holding room.

One for the under-achievers!  My middle dirty fingernail is flipping you off.

J-Lo busts out laughing and that cracks me up.  She sings “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” and does pretty well.  Randy, thinking she is awesome and trying to avoid an assault charge, asks her what she’s been doing this whole time.  Randy?  Harvard and the White House.  Over-achieving and getting randomly punched.  Pay attention.  And finally, it is Day two!

Day two begins with Ryebread talking to some dork about why Wisconsin is the best.  Dork says clean toilets at Summerfest (thanks, Naima!) and Danny Gokey.  I can think of two better reasons.

Sclemeel, schlemazl, hasenpfeffer incorporated

Poor STd did not get the text to wear his initials on his sweater.  Up first today is Haley, who is 18 years old, from Chicago and a cute blond, so STd immediately starts the flirt machine.  She tells the judges she auditioned once before, but didn’t get to go through.

Daddy, how do they get those judges in the bottle without it breaking?

She sings “Oh, Darling!” and does a great job.  As if he remembered her from the first time around, Randy tells her she’s gotten so much better.  HA!  She gets three yeses and a yellow ticket.  I realize this was filmed in early October, but I can’t tell if it is hot or cold there.  Some people are wearing coats and some are wearing tank tops.  Why is Milwaukee so confusing???  Next up is the whitest black guy I’ve ever heard.  Tiwan Strong sings “Twisting the Night Away” and gets three yeses.  His celebration outside the audition room is short lived and hilarious because one of his fans (sister/girlfriend/friend?) gets a charley horse and ruins the moment.

Usually that leg needs to be amputated to get serious air time.  Try high-fiving Randy.

Cheesehead Steve is a CPA and has no friends.  I’m not sure what those two things have in common.  I think there is a good chance he could be a crooked lottery official and have no friends.  By pointing out his career choice is social suicide, he has completely eliminated his chances at drunk, angry CPA white wine sex at the next convention at the airport Marriot.  His audition starts awkwardly but he sings well and STd even says he was disturbingly great.  He gets all yeses and excitedly picks up Ryan like a drunken prom date and in doing so, makes me want to be his friend.

BFF!  Let’s talk about our angry non-sex lives!

Trainwreck a-coming.  Vernicka Patterson bombs her audition after she loses the lyrics and can’t stand having J-Lo looking at her.  It was bad, bad, bad.  J-Lo, still patient and not sick of this gig yet, says, “You know, that’s a beautiful song.”  Vernicka replies:  “Thank you.”  LOL…They start to tell her “No” and she starts yelling at them about how it is all about skinny people on this show.  Randy hilariously starts pointing out the chubbier Idol winners pictured on the wall.  Or, just Rueben.  I was expecting him to say, “You know, you can’t tell on TV but Lee Dewyze had a serious muffin top.” And her to respond, “Who the f**k is Close My Eyes?”  She storms out and yells at the camera she doesn’t want to be on camera.  Ten seconds later she’s telling the camera how pissed she is.  LOL, TV whores, you never let me down…

I’m above this!  Now, what was I saying?

Vernicka was a perfect segue into clips of angry wannabes and some of their charming parents.  Including the mother who yelled at the camera and then yelled, “Shut up” to her crying teen.  Now we know what happens to those Toddlers and Tiaras kids when they grow up!  Next up is Obama impersonator Albert Rogers III.  He thinks he is Usher and Luther and Rueben.  Well, he is large and black so he’s 2/3 correct.  Wait, is my math right?  Who cares?  He sucks and he is gone.

Next is Scott Dangerfield looking for respect (yeah, too easy) and as soon as he comes in, STd accuses him of stealing his lipstick.  Not-Scotti tells him he was kissing some girl outside the room and Randy starts singing “Love in the Idol Line”   HA!  Not-Scotti starts singing and he is pretty damned good.  J-Lo tells him he might be one of her favorites so far and he starts muttering, “Oh my God, Jennifer Lopez” and looks like he’s about to pass out.  He gets his yellow ticket.  He’s pretty talented, pretty cute, pretty normal and seems to have a happy life, so he’ll never make it.

You are too good for this show, but thanks for being skinny!

And now some random blonde chick gets pulled out of the masses of screaming desperates and why?  She’s a Packers fan.  Um, okay?  There are like a gazillion of those and even more now, so we’re not really sure why she is spotlighted.  She runs around like an idiot in one of the holding tents and even her Dad gets interviewed about being a Packers fan.  If this were pre-game and I was holding a beer and brat, I’d be vaguely interested, but we’re in hour two of only the third American Idol audition so they can really both just suck it.  She sings really, really bad, but she is actually pretty funny with the judges which might explain why she made the cut onto the show.  She says “Go Pack Go!” and Randy responds, “Go Pack ho?” because artists don’t know football.  J-Lo understood her, which just PROVES she’s from the block.  She sings Justin Bieber with an opera voice, which is hilariously awful.

Now, Go Back HOme!

Bad porn music (as opposed to “good”?) starts when rock-n-roller girl comes in, telling us how much she luuuurves STd and her dream is to tell her she’s going to Hollywood.  I’m so glad she edited that “dream”.  No one wants to hear about sweaty leather pants, slapping up against each other with the smell of whiskey in the air.  Well, not between those two.  She goes in to audition and it is stupid and set up.  She’s nervous.  He’s staring at her like he’s got a pocket full of lint covered candy and she’s wearing pigtails and not afraid of clowns.  He goes to hug her (cop a feel?) and finally she starts singing.  She’s actually pretty damned good.  But she kind of looks like him.  Like Liv’s ugly sister?  They try to make it look like she won’t make it through, but one of the attributes of STd’s face is not “poker”, so we know she’s all good for the yellow ticket.

Spawn or Spunk?  Film at 11:00.

Just when I thought I was watching, “Normal People May or May Not Be Talented” on the “We Don’t Exploit People’s Bad Luck” Network, the sob story comes on to remind me I’m watching Idol.  Chris Modina, 26, is from Chicago.  He was engaged to be married when his future wife got into a bad accident and now has brain damage.  He and her mother are her caretakers now.  Does anyone know how this works?  Do they have PA’s going out to the masses of wannabes and line them separately by horrible backstory vs. normal/happy?  Then break it down further to talented/horrible backstory vs just horrible backstory?  How does this work???  Anyway, Chris is talented, but maybe not as good as some others we’ve seen before, so is it a good idea to send him out there and then break his heart later?  Will he improve?  I’m rooting for him because he seems like a genuinely nice guy.  He sings “Breaking Even” which is pretty heart-wrenching.  I’m all puppies and rainbows and wet-eyed and hugging bibles until they think it is a good idea to bring in his girlfriend/fiancé.  They wheel her in and the judges introduce themselves.  Then this happens:

I’m pretty sure the ADA protects against being molested, STd

So, that’s it for this week!  I think about 54 people were sent through from Milwaukee, which I don’t know if it is high or low.  So good or bad job!  Next stop is Nashville and the gorgeous sexypanda will take of us from here…