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lankiness and vapidly
Tuesday, March 23 2010
I had to run a fire in the woodstove all day due to overcast conditions and seasonal chill. But it wasn't all that cold outside and with just half-assed fire maintenance, I somehow managed to develop sweltering conditions indoors. Wilma the stinky-eared cat was loving it. She was all stretched out on the ottoman, which happened to be pressed up near the woodstove.
Every week Gretchen and I anticipate American Idol a bit more than I feel entirely comfortable admitting. On some level we like seeing great singers succeed. But just as important to me is watching the young and naive making foolish decisions.
On the whole, performances tonight were markedly worse than they had been in previous weeks, and I suspect this was all a result of the gimmicky choice for mentor: 17 year old Miley Ray Cyrus (aka Hannah Montana). I didn't have big expectations of Miley, and for the most part she didn't exceed them. The combination of lankiness and vapidly, coupled with the quarter-inch-thick eyelid makeup, was not attractive, particularly when it was applied to the task of hugging the contestants in that "I have to keep my feet four feet away from yours" style practiced these days by the chaste teens of the Bible Belt. The guidance Miley gave was either ignored or did no good, and the result was one head-scratchingly bad performance followed by another.
Tonight's theme was songs from Billboard's Number One Hits. There are a few good songs in there but [as I'm learning as I scan through it] most of them are dreadful'; "Baby, I Love Your Way / Freebird Medley" anyone?. Still, there was no excuse for some of the choices made by some of the American Idol contestants tonight. Don't these kids have people advising them, telling Casey, for example, that Huey Lewis And the News wasn't cool when they were popular and their sound hasn't aged well. Still, Casey managed to improve on the original, just by virtue of not having Huey Lewis's smugly douchetastic voice (everything people thought was cool back in the 1980s has proved, in time, to be douchey).
Last week I realized that Katie Stevens' disembodied head wouldn't be out of place swimming as an sea creature along a coral reef. I can picture it now, a smooth white belly where her neck used to attach, her long straight shiny hair trailing behind her as her ears paddle her through sun-dappled waters. Occasionally her mouth snaps shut on unfortunate prey.
No matter what Katie sings, it always ends up sounding country, even though she's from Connecticut and doesn't seem any more country than did George Bush Sr.
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