American Idol 11: No Sleep to Portland

Tonight, American Idol goes to Portland, OR for the first-time EVER. Yup. Portland, Oregon. Home to hikers, bikers, dragon-chasers, vegan hoopers, people who wear fake birds on their attire. I mean, you say Portland, you think American Idol, right? Let’s bust out the Florence + The Machine and the…

Sara Barielles, I mean Tripster The Hipster Brittany Zika, but she LOVES Sara Barialles. (How the hell do I spell that?) Brittany is a nanny/SOCIAL MEDIA TECH. Wow. Never heard that one before. Is she a ninja? A guru? A rockstar? Tripster Hipster sings a Brandi Carisle song and truth be told, she has one of the more interesting voices I’ve heard all season. She is even a bit reminiscent of Season 9′s Megan Joy — who totally became a wearer of bird things! Zoinks!

Then Brittany Zika’s mom may have done the splits. But it might not be her mom and maybe just editing. In any case, a stout middle-aged woman proudly and ably did the splits.

Since we’re in Portland, there will likely be many would-be comedians with ironic Tumblrs angling for air time.  Maybe this is one of them. This guy is sick. Like, he’s been sick since Tuesday. He also “sells cable TV on the street.” Ben Purdom is 18 and sort of looks like a non-deformed gay Rocky Dennis. It’s almost too obvious when he says he will be singing Lady Gaga’s Born This Way. And he does in some gargling falsetto. And then he does Nicki Minaj’s Superbass and the judges think its better but still terrible. It might be terrible, but so are Randy Jackson’s Dalmatian glasses. Seacrest muses what his voice would have sounded like had he not been sick — then his audition is sped up Chipmunk-style and well, you know how it goes. On American Idol, the fat ones, the gay ones, and the foreign ones who can’t really sing are “fair game.”

Jermaine Jones is 6’8″ and has an adorable mother. Jermaine is rather nervous and his beard needs a trim, but I’m a sucker for sweet black men with adorable moms on this show. And I don’t even care much for the music of Luther Vandross.

On Day 2, Jennifer Lopez can’t find her black tights. Maybe her backup dancer is wearing them. Young male backup dancers : aging pop divas :: 90s supermodels : aging rock stars. Just throwing that out there. The first contestant we meet already looks to be ripe for some TopIdol hating…

Blond. (check)

Blond young mother. (Check)

Entire entourage wearing I HEART BRITNEE shirts. Check.

Obnoxious-erroneous spelling of an already white trash name. CHECK.

Seriously, am I gonna have to do a pie chart on how many girls named some variation of BRITTANY go to Hollywood? Britnee Kellog comes in and announces all teary-eyed she is 27, has two sons, and their father played basketball so she let him pursue his dreams but then he started sleeping with other women. She then sings the woman-been-done-wrong anthem You’re No Good and her voice is kind of fun and husky and so she sort of redeems herself, but her sob story schtick was a bit over-the-top for just walking into a room and meeting 3 household-name people whom you’ve never met and then those damn t-shirted people come in. Yikes. Get this one out of here.

Sam Gershman is probably a dance teacher because she has everyone doing the Electric Slide or Zumba in the holding tank. She is frighteningly perky and energetic. She has big breasts. Randy thinks her last name is Gershwin but then no one laughs when she says funny, her dad is named Ira — punctuated by cricket sound effects, of course. They could have chuckled, right? Sooooo…you pretty much know she’s gonna suck on some level even if you didn’t see her doing some sort of dramatic reading in a before-the-break preview.

Ms. Gershman doesn’t really suck. She’s just VERY musical theater. Steven thinks she would make a good Easter Bunny (huh) and she reminds him she is Jewish, but he says that’s no big deal. They tell her no and for about 2 seconds, I’m almost appreciative of JLo being somewhat nice in her dismissal.

David Weed says he’s a fast food employee. He is balding, and wears glasses and argyle. He sings Rush’s Tom Sawyer. I sort of adore him just for that, because there have been times where I smoke weed and sing Tom Sawyer, mainly so I can garble something that I think is the chorus followed by do-da-do-da-do-da-doo-dooo-dooo. I’ve done this ever since I was a senior in high school and this guy we’ll call Steven B. asked me if I wanted to skip class and do “resin bong hits” and then pulled a big red Graffix out of the back seat as we pulled away from the school parking lot while Rush played. Hey, don’t judge. This was after my college applications had all been filed, mmm-kay? Anyway, Randy Jackson basically tells David Weed he sounds nothing like Geddy Lee. David wants to be a standup comedian but I don’t think anyone finds him funny. Don’t you guys get it? THAT WAS HIS ACT.

WHATEVS. I’m a fan of David Weed.

Romeo Daihn was born in Liberia and spent part of his life in a refugee camp before coming to the U.S. in 2001. We already know Romeo is good because we go off-site and get back story. Romeo is Daihn is absolutely adorable and sings Bob Marley’s Is This Love. I don’t know how much farther he could get other than Hollywood Week because his voice is very distinct. But Romeo’s smile makes me smile — as does HIS tiny entourage of one girl two giants!

Naomi Gillies must be the designated I’m-ga-ga-for-Steven-Tyler girl because she wants to sing one of his songs. Pause. Okay. It’s not the Armageddon one. Naomi is a student from BOSTON! And she kind of looks like a white-white-girl Rashida Jones. Also very cool. Some notes were maybe a bit off and while she’s nothing you’ve never heard before, there’s something quite skilled and likeable about this one. Unanimous yes.

PARADE OF BAD PEOPLE

No go for the Candy Raver Purple Rainbow Unicorn Princess…or the one who looks like he just got a fresh bit of forehead acne out of nervousness which may have been because he just finished a big debate meet before auditioning…sad Filipino girl…some cartwheeling girl in gold leggings…

I strongly suspect a few of the aforementioned actually WERE good — just not what “the judges were looking for.” Lots of tears. And camera blocking. Sads.

Manchild Ben Harrison is sort of like a Human Whipit. (Perhaps Demi Moore can inhale him from a big manchild-sized balloon?) Ben laments he gets hired as a frontman but often gets fired because he’s too baby-faced and inexperienced. He then belts out Queen’s Somebody To Love. Not quite Freddie Mercury. BUT AT LEAST HIS FAMILY AND HIM ARE GOING TO GET PIZZA. (The would-be comedian is strong in this one…)

RYAN: When we return, one more audition that will leave the judges stunned…

GIRL: When he woke up…he didn’t know who I was.

JLO: Wow.

Oh here we go. Bright side? It’s ALMOST OVER.

For Jessica Phillips this is more than a single dream, it’s a step towards a miracle. You know what’s weird? When I hear Jessica’s story, I feel much more sympathy for her than I ever did um, a couple of those previous male contestants with dead or comatose wives/girlfriends. Perhaps its because when Jessica talks about D’Angelo, she just sounds…a bit more sincere. D’Angelo randomly had a stroke in April 2010. He’s had to learn how to talk again and he can talk, albeit slow. But he’s present, ya know? And this was footage they shot AT HOME. Jessica didn’t wheel the guy in with a feeding tube.

Singing Faith Evans, Jessica has a completely competent contemporary female R&B voice, with an ability for quickness which lends itself to maybe…something more. Maybe she’s just not a one-note “diva” — although if she actually did make it past Hollywood Week, you know exactly how she would be pigeonholed.

Some other people made it, apparently a bunch of people that were never shown. I swear one girl was wearing a wedding dress (a mini-wedding dress but STILL) and another one looked just like that Robert Pattinson kid. Oh. And I actually almost got misty eyed when Jessica and D’Angelo hugged outside the audition room once she got her golden ticket. IDOL YOU MANIPULATIVE BASTARD.

Ok. So who else can’t wait until Hollywood Week — aka THE BEST WEEK OF THE ENTIRE AMERICAN IDOL SEASON? Also: If you feel like commenting, I encourage you to do so. I just installed Disqus (working with it on another project and wanted to test-drive it here, especially because you can use a variety of accounts with it) so let me know what you think.

One more thing: Since it is February 1, the first day of Black History Month, I really wanted to call this post PORTLANDIA CALRISSIAN. But I did not. Yet I still typed it.