American Idol Recap: San Diego Auditions

Think about it.

Howdy, ‘Gasmii. I know the president didn’t cover this in last night’s State of the Union speech, but I am happy to be able to let you know that Congress has finally reached a bipartisan solution for dealing with the budget deficit. And that solution is whoring out renting our national landmarks and historical monuments as venues in which to film reality shows. This round of American Idol auditions was held in the iconic aircraft carrier, the USS Midway; I understand that they plan to film the next season of The Bachelor at Gettysburg.

10,000 people showed up for the San Diego auditions, proving that the emphasis on making sure that everybody has a “healthy” self-esteem and feels like the specialist little snowflake in the blizzard has gotten completely out of hand. Remember Mary Roach?

You’re welcome.

Dammit, Seacrest, leave Top Gun alone!

The first contestant of the day, Jennifer, is “feeling the need for a morale boost,” says Ryan. It’s probably a draft that she’s feeling, considering that she is wearing a bikini top and the shortest denim shorts on God’s green earth.

Guess whose votes she’s counting on getting?

She sings Jessica Simpson’s “With You,” and her voice doesn’t have a lot of oomph to it. She then gives “Hero” by Mariah Carey a shot, and the judges stare her out of the room.

Next up is Ashley Robles, a single mom who is an insurance account manager and moonlights as a DJ. Steven asks what songs she sings to her daughter, and Ashley says that her daughter likes “On the Floor,” by JLo.  That piece of gosa song has a lot to answer for, trying to pretend that “Ibiza” rhymes with “Africa.” Don’t sell your daughter short, Ashley, find better songs to sing to her. The tiny people in my house are particularly fond of “I’m Sexy and I Know It.” That doesn’t make visits from the grandparents awkward at all.

Ashley is going to sing “I Will Always Love You.” Back in the day, if you sang a Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey song and butchered it, Simon would have you quietly escorted to an undisclosed location and put you to work making deep V-neck T-shirts. She starts off a little bit shaky, but quickly gets over her nerves and her golden ticket is well deserved.

“My mom’s going to Hollywood!”

Meet Jayrah Gibson, who has no B plan if this whole American Idol thing doesn’t work out.

It made even less sense when he was talking about it.

He sings an original composition that he wrote for JLo called “Shake Your Moneymaker,” and the judges razz him about it a little bit before asking him to sing his actual audition song. He might not be able to form a coherent sentence, but he can definitely sing. The judges unanimously agree to put him through.

We see several brief clips of people moving on to the next round, including one boy who smacks his head on the ceiling of the deck below the audition room. Ouch!

Aubree Dieckmeyer is a twenty-year-old from San Clemente, CA, and she interviews that she is so glad that her mom is here to support her singing career and in becoming “America’s Next Top Model.”

I’ve been practicing my smizing and everything!

She has a really good sense of humor when the producer questions what she just said, and flubs saying “American Idol” in take after take. It’s actually pretty cute. She sings Michael Buble’s “Feelin’ Good,” and sounds more or less like the girl who always got the lead role in your highschool’s musicals.  The judges tell her that she loses a little power in the upper register, but they like the quality of her voice, and she gets a golden ticket.

Do you guys watch Ellen? Me either, but our next contestant, Ali Shields, was a guest on the show after writing a song for Ellen DeGeneres. Ellen then sent her to interview musicians on the red carpet at the American Music Awards. In a clip from the AMAs, we see Ali get her (alleged) first kiss from Usher, but she tells Ryan that her real first kiss was earlier that evening from Mike Posner. Oh, Ali. I hope you stocked up on Abreva. And Listerine.

Ali is super hyper and goofy, and I want to like her, but I just… can’t. She begins her audition by rapping and “ghetto dancing” for the judges.

Ellen taught me how to dance, too.

Turns out that when she sings a real song, she actually sings well enough to move on to Hollywood. In front of the blue interview screen, she threatens to kiss Steven Tyler… “and you’re gonna like it!” Only if she got all of the Posner off. *shudder*

Day Two. “I can’t wait to hear forty people sing the same Adele song,” Steven says. Freaking Adele, man. My fourteen-year-old and I have rewritten the lyrics to “Someone Like You.”

I had to turn up out of the blue uninvited,
Cos I heard that the restraining order had expired,
I hoped you’d see my face, and that you’d be reminded
That I watch you while you’re sleeping……

Between Adele’s songs and the Twilight books, it will be a miracle if anyone currently between the ages of twelve and seventeen ever manages to have a healthy relationship.

Frat boy Kyle Crews attends UC Berkeley, where he likes to serenade girls and play foosball. Before going in for the audition, Kyle tells Ryan that he’s thinking about Jennifer Lopez’s face, particularly her lips. What about her lips, specifically, you ask? Not that they could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch, that’s for sure. He sings Monica’s “Angel of Mine,” which he dedicates to JLo.

I hear you like ‘em young, Ms. Lopez, ma’am.

Cougar-bait has a fantastic, soulful voice. “You sound nothing like you look,” Randy back-handedly compliments him. The judges suggest that he work on his look, cos the fresh-faced farm boy thing that he’s got going on is not going to fly in Hollywood.

As contestant Joanne Childers is auditioning, the blare of a ship’s horn completely drowns her out, leading into a noise-tage of several auditions being interrupted by horns, jets, seagulls, and trains. There’s this whole bit where they use those sound effects to bleep out Steven, because this show doesn’t have enough pointless filler already.

Finally, we get to the contestant that has had the American Idol conspiracy theorists all riled up, Jim Carrey’s daughter Jane.

She seems remarkably normal and well-adjusted.

Jane doesn’t want ride her father’s coat-tails to success, and that is a valid concern, except for the fact that it isn’t 1994. She sings “Something to Talk About,” and it is oh-so-very boring. The judges tell her that she has a pretty voice, but she needs to work on volume and stage presence. Then they all vote yes. Did she only get her golden ticket because Jim Carrey is her dad? Absolutely. If he wasn’t, she would have been told to keep practicing and try again next year. In all fairness to the judges, though, I would have put her through for being Jim Carrey’s daughter too, because that man terrifies me. His starring role in Mr. Popper’s Penguins, a horrific bastardization of one of the best children’s books ever written, proves that he has no scruples. I would NOT want to get on his list.

We have no way of knowing how much of this character was acting.

Golden ticket-tage. Didn’t the audition episodes of this show used to be full of crazy tone-deaf people? Where are the crazy tone-deaf people? There are only seven minutes left in the episode, and so far we’ve only watched one actual audition that didn’t make it through to the Hollywood round.

Twenty-four year-old Jason Hamline (aka Wolf) is a tatted-up golf course mechanic with a rockabilly pompadour and a full and manly beard. He brought along the git-fiddle (guitar) that his dead father made for him, and interviews that if his dad was still alive, he would probably be “giggling like a little girl,” proud that his son had the balls to go audition for American Idol.

This here git-fiddle’s gonna git me to Hollywood.

Not terribly impressed with his rendition of “Midnight Special,” the judges ask him to sing something else. He asks if he can accompany himself on his git-fiddle, and the judges tell him to go for it.  He starts a fairly mundane “Folsum Prison Blues,” but after the first verse, his voice gets all growly and intense, and turns what was probably going to be three “No”s into three “Yes”s, becoming the fifty-third and last person to get a golden ticket in San Diego.

Tonight’s episode covers the Aspen, Colorado, auditions. The preview clips show a guy saying something about having a magic cyclops in his brain, so hopefully that will make up for the lack of the cray-crays in this episode. Thanks for reading!

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