One Small Step for Taylor Hicks, A Giant Leap for the Prematurely Gray

Just For Men may be going out of business. Taylor Hicks is our American Idol. He's gray and he's proud. And everyone loves him. Yay gray.

So here I am, suffering from yet another post-Idol funk. I don't know what it is about this show that always makes me reflect on the past few months and wonder why the hell I got so involved in it. I'm glad Taylor won, but now I'm just thinking that it's too bad the poor guy is probably going to be forced to churn out a bland, top-fortyfied record. (Look at this photo. It's as if the invisible hand of Clive Davis has him by the balls.) Or worse, TPTB will decide to have him record an album of standards a la Rod Stewart. Kids wouldn't buy that, but their parents might. Desperate housewives, perhaps. Most of them became "Claymates" back around Season 2, but if their gaydar has finally kicked in, they may have decided to jump ship and join the Soul Patrol.

I was really hoping against hope that the original songs this year would be a little more Taylor-ed to the contestants. No such luck. AI unleashed their crack team of monkey songwriters that has just been hanging out in their cages since last year, and they came through again with a couple more of those treacly, mid-tempo ballads. I can't even remember the one that Katharine sang. Something about destiny. I think the original title was "A Moment Inside Your Heaven Without Wings." Putrid and uninspired, just the way millions of record-buyers seem to like it. I have to give it to Taylor though, he actually rose above the crappy material he was given ("Do I Make You Proud") and made it listenable. He infused it with some white boy soul. I didn't know those songs could be infused with anything, except more sap.

Speaking of sap, I couldn't justify watching the entire two hour finale tonight. It's basically an ad-salesman's wet dream mixed with a bad Vegas revue gone wrong. I'm not much for medleys, commercials and forced banter. Pass. I just happened to catch the Broken Note Cowboys (mildly amusing) and Prince's performance. Prince is usually the highlight of any evening, and this one was no exception. I especially loved how the Purple One just dissed Seacrest by walking off stage before Ryan could get to him. Ha ha. Symbol, out!

By the way, Ryan is such a bonehead. He was reveling in telling the audience how many millions of votes were cast last night and then said, "that's more votes than any President has ever received in history." Yeah, Ryan because they don't let 14 year olds vote in elections, nor do they stick people in a booth and let them pull the lever as many times as they can in two hours. Duh. Moron. And you wonder why Prince dissed you. You're a jughead.

Anyway - good luck, Taylor Hicks! And Simon, I'll see you in my dreams, you evil, sexy British bastard. (I know, I know...I'm sick.)