My Night as Kara DioGuardi

Like so many inexplicable phenomenas, American Idol continues to chug along season after season, winner after winner with seemingly no end in sight in spite of its almost quiant of touchness with reality where within the context of a show somebody beatboxing can be construed as "edgy" and loud=good and where no personal tragedy is left unexploited by the producers and increasing diminishing returns when it comes to its supposed talents.

I could say that I've become disillusioned with the show that actually got me to get up and vote for Kelly Clarkson season one when it was down to her, Tamyra Gray, Justin Guarini and Nikki McKibbin and now can barely get me to care anybody aside from the poor people who have to wrangle Paula Abdul back to her seat during commercial breaks; but to say that I'm disillusioned would be instilling way more of a give-a-crap about the whole proceeding than I could ever possibly muster.

And while American Idol has quickly become a monster feeding onto itself, it has spawned an interesting off-shoot, namely the American Idol Karaokes. Across the country dime store divas and belters off from work come shuffling into local watering holes with the faint hope of impressing the locals and usually a panel of judges with songs they've been singing since somebody first told them they in fact could carry a tune.

Recently, I got the supposed honor of being a guest judge at just such an event and I have to say it was a bit more panic-inducing than I had expected. Being bitchy and snide on a blog or yelling critiques at the television screen from your futon is a lot different than telling somebody to their face in front of a crowd of people that they were a "little pitchy, dawg" to borrow from Randy Jackson's mind-blowingly limited vernacular.

There we were, a panel of four in a small bar, sitting just a few feet from a half-moon stage with glittery streamers behind the contestants. I listened intently to each vocalist but I couldn't help thinking about what the hell I was going to say when the microphone inevitably got passed to me. The other judges had already been doing this gig for a few weeks and had fallen into an easy grouping of one being bitchy, one being nice and one being the referee. As the guest judge, not unlike fourth judge Kara DioGuardi, my job was pretty simple since I was, in the long haul, totally meaningless.

The first critique came by and I was kind and to the point. The vocalist had sung Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen and covered by seemingly every artist known to man. The next performer was a young hippy man who sang an Elton John tune. I still found myself searching for the proper words each time the mic landed in front of my face and I found myself for a split second the center of attention.

Now the third performer came to the stage and performed Somewhere Over the Rainbow, in the most painfully slow rendition I had ever heard. There was much discussion after her performance that she had been sick and a lot of other blah blah crybaby cakes about the matter.

This time, when the microphone came to me, I at least had something to say on the matter other than, "That was good. I think":

"I just think you could've sung that song with a little more passion," I sighed. "I mean, realistically, isn't the song about Dorothy wanting to get the fuck out of Kansas?"

The remark got a small smattering of chuckles from the booze-soaked crowd and I felt less of a total failure as a guest judge.

The evening wore on and Somewhere Over the Rainbow girl ended up being eliminated from the competition. And unlike the real American Idol, there is no tour for karaoke rejects.

Say . . . That's not such a bad idea though. I smell a new reality show idea.

Alright, Still: Away With The Newsie

Saturday night and it's kind of a hipster clusterfuck downtown as some emo/punk/electro/disco/ska/clogging band is having its EP launch party and all their Facebook friends are out and our Gretchen "Leggings" Otto is in the thick of the crowd of emaciated guys with their smudged guyliner and Robert Smith aspirations. She's sipping a vodka cranberry in one hand and puffing a clove cigarette in other, and she runs into this guy she used to know, a guy we'll call "Tyler Troubadour."

She knew him a few years back when she was a sophomore and he was this guy who used to be THAT guy with the guitar case covered in political stickers even though he never voted, and who busted out a medley of John Mayer/Gavin DeGraw/insert name of other generic singer-songwriter tunes at keg parties much to people's chagrins, and who always penned songs about girls he couldn't get, girls who were always so beautiful with hazel eyes and did crazy things like run around in the rain. Gretchen, for her part, always gave him a friendly wave when she saw him on campus and didn't yell at him to shut up at keg parties even when they always turned the radio down during a song she loved, and she always kept her questions about if all these girls are out being crazy in the rain, why weren't the streets just littered with coughing young women in the grips of pneumonia, to herself.

And they keep running into each other because the pool table he's positioned at is near the women's toilets and Gretchen's friend, let's call her Hannah Headband shall we, broke the seal two bars ago and probably has a bladder infection but she's waiting to see the doctor until after the weekend so the anti-biotics don't get in the way of her drinking. So she's always scurrying off to the bathroom and Gretchen is always with her and he's there drinking lager and futzing around with that plaid newsboy cap.

It was on one of these many trips to and from the bathroom, one of the times Gretchen decided to just stand out in front of the bathrooms and hold onto Hannah's faux Gucci purse and her Cosmopolitan, that she remembered how she used to really think Tyler Troubadour was cute and amazing and how secretly she wished he'd write a song about her, a song about girl who was pretty but with green eyes not hazel eyes and who stayed inside out of the rain.

She wanted to go over to him, between rounds, and shake his hand and blush and say that he probably doesn't even remember her but she went to his sparsely attended concert a few years back at the coffeehouse that's now a Mexican restaurant. And he'd say he remembered her and how she wore her red leggings and how she was the only person that didn't text during the performance and how she was one of two people who applauded because they liked his songs instead of just out of duty. And the game would break up and she'd sit on the edge of the pool table and mock his newsboy cap and he'd make some allusions to how it worked for Christian Bale and she'd laugh and offer him a cigarette. He'd turn it down because he's quit smoking, 120 days strong!, and she'd offer her congratulations. And he'd ask where her friend, the one with the apparently tiny bladder, was and she'd laugh and point to the bathrooms. They'd mock the people, the band, the guys wearing the same jeans as her but two sizes smaller and she'd say how emo boys are just hell for a girl's self-esteem. And Tyler would say how she was very fetching in her jeans and Gretchen would laugh at him saying fetching.

And he'd ask her if she had a boyfriend and she said she was seeing somebody and he'd frown a bit and it'd be awkward for a bit. She'd say it wasn't serious, they weren't getting married or living together or even listed in a relationship on Facebook. He'd laugh and she could tell he really wanted to kiss her and they both would sit there, desperately wanting for her Hannah Headband to come out of the bathroom, to stop either one of them for being idiots. For being two people at an EP launch who made out because he was cute in a newsboy cap and she looked fetching years ago in her red leggings.

"Who are we eye-fucking?" Gretchen heard a voice say from out of thin air.

"Nobody Hannah," she sighed.

"God, you're like so boring," Hannah said, taking her stuff back. "Some girl told me about better drink specials. Oh my god, crazy story for you. So I'm like in on stall and this couple comes into the stall and I can't tell if it's a guy and girl or two girls or two guys. Anyway they are like making out or something . . . "

Hannah's voice trails off in Gretchen's head as they turn and start walking away back up front to the bar. And she looks back and there he is on the edge of the pool and he's smiling and looking directly at her and waving with his free hand. And the further away they get, the crowds of boys with smudged eyeliner and Robert Smith aspirations start filling in until he can't be seen. Not his smile or his casual way with his friends or all of the things Gretchen had wanted to say. They all had been crowded out by the rest of world. All except for the top of his little plaid newsboy cap.

Alright, Still: Utter Sh*t

Friday night. Abram Wiese is down at the bars, as usual, but this time he's got this girl on his arm, this pretty higher ed in black leggings and a purple and white polka dot headband, chanting passionately along with Kanye West's Stronger which is, like, her, like, favorite song ever and Kanye's totally in her top 100 on MySpace. And sure she's a little a vapid, a little too The Hills for Abram, but there they are and he's smoking the cigarettes he swore he was going to quit but feeling fine about the world. The world seems a little more fine in that particular bar haze of ganja smoke and ciggies and the wafting smells of lager and fruity drinks and that kind of juvenile anticipation of that moment where things click and you're standing outside with the girl at bar close and she kisses you and all the utter shit disappears.

So Abram trudged along through the tedium for most of the evening, meeting Leggings plethora of male friends, each one more drunk, more tanned, more whitestripped than the previous one. And they would sort of drift off into conversation about school and how that bitch professor is a total dyke and how SparkNotes saved their ass again, and can you believe how hungover So-and-So was during their presentation. While Leggings and mates chattered away, Abram stood around, puffing his cigarette, scratching the back of his head. He'd want to tear off and find some of his friends, his townie friends who smoked pot in the back of the place and ripped off dumb freshmen from Cities suburbs who somehow ended up here.

Leggings, more shrewd than her choice of ensemble would suggest, would sense Abram, "Abie," wanting to pull away and would put her arm around his waist and pull him into the conversation, usually about music, about his record collections, his rapper friends, his brief stint in a Talking Heads cover band called Byrne Victims.

"I love Talking Heads," said one of Leggings' friends.

"That's cool," Abram would mutter.

"Yeah, they sound just like Modest Mouse. Have you heard of Modest Mouse? They had that song?" Leggings' friend paused and turned to one of his friends. "What's that song dude? That Modest Mouse song."

"I don't know man," the other guy stammered, just finishing his eleventh shot. "I think I'm going to hurl."

"Don't be such a faggoty fag," Leggings' friend said. "Anyway, we used to rock that song all the time during our tippy cup tourney."

"Cool," is all Abram could muster.

"Dude tell him about how you got kicked out of Subway last week," screamed Modest Mouse Lover. "He got kicked out because he went in there and like started demanding his free shot! At Subway! That's so fucking gangsta dude!"

"I'm going to go hurl, outside," said the friend, rushing out the doors.

"He's such a little bitch," Modest Mouse Lover sighed in a near parental tone of voice. "Anyway, so you and Leggings huh?"

"Yeah, me and Leggings," Abram said with a nod.

"She's good people. Classy girl. Strictly over the clothes on the first date."

Modest Mouse put his arm around Abram for a bit, swaying to Sweet Caroline. As he mumbled words until the chorus, Abram caught that wonderful frat-boy-esque stench of Axe Body Spray fighting with Aqua Di Gio for smell supremacy.

"Just don't fuck it up. Or I'll kill you. Or like at least teabag you."

Thinking he was way too lucid for his surroundings, Abram excused himself and went off to the bathroom with some Xanax that he swore he wasn't going to snort next to the pack of cigarettes he swore he wasn't going to smoke. But there he was, in a bathroom stall, with a debit card, crushing up some of the pills in his collection. He paused momentarily, wondering when he had become that guy who ends up snorting drugs in a bar while Cotton-Eyed Joe plays. There used to be a time that he was opposed to drugs and premarital sex and believed in God. And there, in the bathroom, he wondered if he was ever going to be punished for his misdeeds, his utter lunacy. As he did another line, he determined his comeuppance was going to come. So he might as well be numb to it.

"What's going on in here?!" bellowed a loud voice.

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how one looks at it, it was not the voice of God but the raspy voice of muscle-tee clad bouncer who promptly yanked Abram out of the stall and out to cops waiting for him.

"Crappity crap crap crap," Abram sighed to himself.

He was in the back of a cop car. Leggings, in her own special stupor, had gleefully waved to Abram as he was escorted out of the bar while she danced on top of a pool table.

"So we're going to test that stuff on your debit card," said a police officer as he got into the driver's seat. "So you might as well just confess."

Abram had been here before once, the back-of-the-cop-car foreplay where they try to scare him into admitting something and therefore be fucked when it comes to a defense. Abram, more tired than actually stand-offish, said nothing.

"You know we're going to find out what this stuff is."

"Okey dokey."

The police car circled around the block a bit. Abram rested his head on the window, looking at the blurry faces of people walking around main street. The police car eventually pulled over to the side. Abram surmised this is when he'd get bitch slap like an episode of Dragnet.

"You're free to go," the cop said begrudgingly as he opened the car door. "But don't think that this is over."

"Thanks?" Abram said to the slamming door and the exhaust fumes as the car pulled away.

It was slightly cold out. He stood in the middle of the street, staring down at the bars in one direction and the residential area in the other. After a moment of hesitation, he turned and started to walk home. Maybe he could catch the drunk bus home. Do I have my cell? Shit, no. Ugh, she's never going to talk to me ever again. He muttered all these things, stomping in the light dusting of snow. Cars occasionally came by, honking like drunk drivers do. But Abram felt safe, since he was walking in the street and not on the sidewalk.

"Abram!" shouted a voice.

It was Leggings and her crew of Modest Mouse lover and Faggoty Fag, all stumbling around in the snow.

"We've been looking for you!" she said cheerfully.

"Really?"

"Leave no drunk behind!" Modest Mouse lover laughed. "Unless it's a faggoty fag who pukes like a bitch."

"Shut up man!"

"So is it true that you were caught smoking crack in the bathrooms," Leggings said as Modest and FF scurried ahead to go make intoxicated snow angels. "That's what they said at the bar and I said bullshit."

"Thanks."

"I said Abram is strictly a methhead."

"What?"

"I'm kidding," she said, punching him in the arm. "So, like, other than, like, your almost jail trip and my friends being, well, them, did you have fun?"

"It was interesting, I'll say that."

Pause.

"You know," Leggings said, "if you wanted to like make out, I wouldn't use my rape whistle or anything."

"Stole that from the Spark Notes of Romeo and Juliet?" Abram said, leaning in and planting a kiss on her lips.

And there they were, two people on a sidewalk near drunk acquaintances playing in the snow, kissing. And that, my friends, was definitely not utter shit.

YouTube is the Drug

To the left, evidence of what happens when two bored people with little to no social lives outside of each other get a little tipsy on raspberry vodka and tonic water with a stomach base of pigs in a blanket/croissants and the faint memories of the Cher doll episode of Will and Grace. They end up ordering a Brooke Shields doll circa when her career consisted of going commando for Calvin Klein and staring awkwardly into a camera on Bob Hope specials. Ms. Shields, who is currently starring in Lipstick Jungle (another name? The Sex and the City rip-off not starring poor, poor Lucy Liu) and her more plastic-y facsimile came into my life like almost all things do of late: YouTube.



One late December afternoon, I was at my laptop and looking through YouTube at probably my umpteenth Best of Stewie clip montage when I was overcome by that strange animal we call nostalgia. And nothing quite feeds that beast quite like YouTube so it came to little to no surprise that YouTube had a plethora of videos centered around the original, high concept/low quality, secret identity, pop singer Jem and her rainbow coalition of a band The Holograms. The illogical nature of Jem--why do they need a designer when they have Synergy, why is Jerrica not mad at Rio trying to fuck her AND Jem, and how could The Misfits commit attempted murder at least one time per episode and NO ONE called the cops--would drive most people mad but I revel in it. I survived the last two seasons of Grey's Anatomy for God's sake.


Somewhere between a very special episode of Jem where one of the Starlight orphans get hooked on pills that have the same side effects of about a million various drugs and the episode of Jem where they go searching for inspiration in Shangri-La--the writers were clearly on those aforementioned drugs--I found myself at the true, creative heart of Jem: the commercials.


The Magic Bullet be damned, 80s cartoons were the best infomercials ever created and Jem succeeded quite well at it, without even having one of those lame ass "Knowing is Half the Battle" educational moments like G.I. Joe. The only educational thing that ever came from Jem was that telling a Starlight Orphanage kid that her birth father is waiting in the lobby is a totally successful diversionary tactic.


Anyway, as I watched a few of the Jem commercials, almost all of which are variations of her Truly Outrageous theme song, I saw a little "You may enjoy this as well" thing that always traps me on YouTube for hours, days if I'm properly hydrated.


And then came the moment, the amazing-ness that is the Brooke Shields doll commercial.

So much perfectly encapsulated cheese with a wonderful jingle--"Brooke! Shields! she's a beautiful doll!"--to a vaguely bitchy voiceover--"Pretend she's a model! Pretend she's a teenage star!"--all combine together for 29 secs of delightfulness.



And it would have ended there but for the fact of my friend whom I'll call "Eddie," New Year's Eve filled boredom, and an eBay account. After watching the commercial a few trillion times, Eddie got the idea to find it on eBay and make a bid on it. And not unlike the real Brooke Shields, there wasn't necessarily a feeding frenzy over the doll. Eddie put in a bid for 25 dollars. He won the uncontested race for Brooke Shields and only ended up paying 13 dollars for it.


Brooke, as Eddie so jubilantly liked to refer to her, arrived some two weeks or so later to his humble abode with her box, her contents, and most noticeably, her eyebrows, untouched by time or tweezers.



From the back of the box:


"The most photographed...voted the best dressed...model, t.v. and movie star. Brooke Shields, a multi-talented, beautiful young lady who's captured the hearts and dreams of the young world. She's now a dazzling glamorous 11 1/2 inch tall fully posable real living fashion doll. Brooke's long wavy 'sun high-lighted' hair can be shampooed and styled for any occasion. Her adoring fans can see Brooke dressed in a two-tone bulky cowl-neck sweater, and her long slim legs covered in ribbed tights and white cowboy boots. A special personalized gift from Brooke to you is also included--A star shaped adjustable ring and an autographed photograph of Brooke Shields. Complete with stand and hair brush, Brooke's a natural beauty who will win over any little girl's heart."



I'm sure there were far cooler ways to ring in the New Year's than the way Eddie and I did. I know some of my friends went to the bars or had really crowded parties. Eddie, myself, and his yappy Yorkie dog drank Sierra Mist out of straws and ordered Brooke Shields doll on ebay while contemplating whether or not Whitney Houston was going to make her comeback and the horrendous state of her completely ashy legs in promo photos from her concert in Malaysia. Which, oh my god, have you seen some of that shit?



Go look right now on the YouTube. I'll wait.

. . . . .



I know, right!



Anyway, we may not have had the coolest New Year's with our 1940s vinyl records and crescent rolls, but I bet you're jealous you don't have a Brooke Shields doll to commemorate the ringing in of 2008.

THANKS BROOKE