Why American Idol Makes Me Want to Punch Myself

I'll admit it. I made the mistake of watching American Idol last night. What does everybody want? They said they were going to have Andrew Lloyd Webber on there; do I not enjoy musical theatre? Do I not bleed red?

The basic premise of last night's show was that each performer had to choose a song by Lord Andrew, and they had to sing it for the American Idolites

Come close, children, and I will tell you what I saw.

Fistly, I saw a young woman forget her words. As a performer myself, I can tell you that that is among the worst places to be as a singer, with the only worser places being tied in a burlap sack and tossed into a river or Texas.

That's right: I just messed with Texas.

But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about today. I wanted to talk with you about the two young men who opted to sing songs written explicitly for women. I gotta tell you , it takes brass tacks to go to arguably the most important living composer in musical theatre (the folks that would argue would be Sondheim followers), and basically tell him, "You know what, I know that you're a smart guy and all, but I thought that, though you intended this song for an old woman, I'm 18 and a boy and I'm going to sing it with success."

In fact, it's more than brass tacks that that would take. That would take cajones the size of a parking garage. That would take gumption akin to agreeing to having one arm tied to a railroad track in the face of an oncoming train, and also having to fight off two bears, a lion, a great white shark, and a particularly irritable lemur.

But fine. Say you think you've found the greatest song, and it'll get everyone in America to vote for you. Then even grumpulous me would have to agree that it was a good idea to choose that song. I agree that they chose good overall songs.

HOWEVER, these morons didn't even choose the best sections of the songs! Both of the guys have little pop-tenor voices, and they opted for portions of song that were down in the basement vocally. In short, they had "A" songs, but they opted for the "B" sections. Why would you do that? Do you not like the idea of winning the competition? Did you wake up on the stupid side of the bed that morning?

Also, memo to the arm swaying audience: you make me sad to be alive.

Nevertheless, whatshername from San Diego was pretty good, if you like things that are mediocre. With that being said, it's off to punch myself.