It's a Sad Day When You Find Yourself Alone Watching American Idol

Watching American Idol alone is like watching someone fall down in glorious fashion with their grocieries spraying in all different directions, and having nobody around to laugh with. All my roommates were out tonight, and I felt like watching this show, despite not watching the last three weeks or so. I really did try to get into it alone, but I found it difficult. So, since I had no one to share my comments with, I will now bore my 7 readers with my impressions of the 15 minutes of Idol I saw tonight. Here is what I wished I could have shared with someone an hour or two ago:

1. I need more witnesses to the fact that I consistently have the same view as Simon, before I hear him comment, even when his opinion differs from the other two judges. Does this mean I’m an amazing judge of talent or just an amazing asshole? Matching his ear would be great, but if I could approach his assholeness, I’d die a happy man.

2. If someone does a spot-on impression of Randy Jackson in the middle of the forest, and no one hears it, did it really happen, and was it really that money? Well, yes, it is that money, but not much fun to do alone. “I don’t know, dogg (even when he’s talking to a girl), it was a little pitchy.” Funny, pitchy came up on spell check. You know why? Because it’s not a flipping word! Well, neither is assholeness, which I used in the last bullet-point, but that’s just for effect. “I don’t know dude (still talking to a girl), I just wasn’t feeling it . . .” Randy, if by feeling it you meant the nausea, I was feeling it in spades this evening, and that’s what I love about the show, when you have COMPANY. The queasiness alone serves no purpose, but shared discomfort can be a riot, you know?

3. I need someone to share the beauty of Paula Abdul’s public breakdown. I don’t know what her story is, but sometimes she is high as a kite, hugging everyone, and the next minute she is super crabby and wanting to kill Simon. He is SO GOOD at pushing her buttons. He does it effortlessly. She is so sedated sometimes that you can sense Randy and Simon’s uneasiness. I used to love how she was in the business of being nice to people instead of actually providing any valuable input. Even if she had nothing nice to say about the singing she’d say, “You look beautiful.” What the hell does that have to do with anything? All of a sudden this season she’s a tough critic. She must have taken all the criticism about being overly nice to heart, so she’s suddenly become a hardass. Well, guess what Paula: I don’t think your input on singing ever held too much validity. She was a good dancer, a good choreographer, a good Laker Girl, she even provided a good cameo in the Nasty Girls video by Janet Jackson, but she was never a good singer. “I don’t know, dogg, Forever Your Girl was a little pitchy . . .”

4. Have you seen the terrible montage segments when they show the contestants out on the town together and they’re all singing? I want to meet the person that gets done watching that little slice of hell and is glad they watched it. You know what, this is the part of the show in which more than any other time one needs a partner in crime to endure the discomfort. Watching that without throwing out comments to someone is impossible. Luckily, one of those segments did not come on during the course of my watching, but if it had, I may have had to run downstairs and grab one of my neighbors to watch with me, preferably not the guy that unknowingly lent me his bicycle that I in turn rode to work . . .

The good news is my roommates came home in time to watch some Winter Olympics with me. The feud between the Black and white American speed skaters was a lot of fun, but I’d much rather have had someone to marvel in my ability to match Simon’s keen ear, to be astounded at my ability to mimic Randy, to share in the joy of watching a public breakdown, and to watch in disgust at the perfect excecution of a stomach churning, musical montage.