American Idol 10: The End of Auditions

That's right, San Francisco is the last audition city. Thank God. This process has been nearly unwatchable.

Inessa is from Ukraine. She make music video of herself in shower for YouTubes. She talk in baby voice and sing Air Supply. BeckEye love Air Supply. (Not kidding, assholes.) Inessa get no love from judges. She leave with her beautiful eye and ancient Chinese husband.

Somehow, we're already at the first commercial break. Holy hell, I'm bored. But Seacrest has promised us lots of sob stories to make up for the lack of them last Thursday, so there's that to look forward to.

The birds are shitting on the hopefuls waiting outside. A sign of things to come, perhaps?

Three Hollywood-bound peeps fly by on screen: Brittany and Lara, who both try their hardest to fake a blues/soul voice, and Matthew, who looks like he was created in a Petri dish from Keith Urban and Bill Pullman's DNA.

Stefano (not DiMera) is the first Very Special Contestant (VSC) of the evening. He was in a car wreck that no one thought he'd survive. But he did, so give him a recording contract, please! He sings "Heard it Through the Grapevine" fairly well, but he has terrible enunciation and an overabundance of saliva. Man, I'd hate to be the person after him in that grapevine.

And that does it for Day 1. Seriously!

Day 2 begins with Clint singing that annoying "Billionaire" song and sounding like hundreds of other guys. The judges love his conformity. He's in!

The requisite "bunch of weirdos" montage features a poor man's Mr. Peepers, Mush Mouth and a Transformer. Now, here's a guy who's more than meets the eye. I'm not even a nerd and I'm digging this. His costume is pretty kick-ass, but his version of "Born to Be Wild" (while in car form, of course) is not so much. Then again, it's really not that bad either. Maybe if he had shingles or a cat with feline AIDS, he'd have a chance at a golden ticket. Alas, he has neither.

A bunch of nameless California gurls make it through to Hollywood...probably never to be heard from again.

VSC #2 is Julie, a girl from Colombia whose parents fled the country in the '90s to escape the guerilla warfare. Wait a minute...don't we already have a girl whose parents are refugees? Yes, we do. Julie needs to come up with a new sob story, stat. How about that skirt she's wearing? It is INSANE. Why is it so big? Is she poor and had to make it out of curtains, like Scarlett O'Hara? Is she hiding more refugees in there? Who knows. It doesn't really matter. She sings well, she's pretty and she knows just when to flip her hair, so she's bound to end up in the finals, sob story or no.

Fake rocker Dave sings "Oh! Darling" (which seems to be one of the go-to songs now ever since Katelyn Epperly did it last year) and sucks. This upsets the Beatles tee-shirt-wearing Steven Tyler. Now Steven is in a bad mood and is being mean to rejects. It'll pass.

VSC #3 is Emily, whose house burned down a week before the auditions. Looks like she managed to save her guitar, at least. I'm all prepared to dislike her because of the sob story and all, but I think she's one of my favorites so far. She's got a cute, jazzy voice...very "old timey." It should be accompanied by fuzzy phonograph needle noise. She's sort of like a cross between two Joneses—Norah and Rickie Lee—which most likely means she won't find a place in this competition. But it will be nice to hear her sing while she lasts. She's on to Hollywood.

The last audition of the day belongs to James, VSC #4 on your program, but bucking to be VSC #1 in your heart. As if looking like a prepubescent Ed Grimley isn't sad enough, James tries to cover as many sob story bases as possible. His dad died of a drug overdose when he was nine. He has sleep disorders and a couple of syndromes: Tourette's and Asperger's. Then he got his girlfriend knocked up, so now they have a baby for whom they can't afford diapers. Wow. Some guys would just go with one BIG problem, but this guy just couldn't stop spinning the wheel of misfortune. Perhaps all contestants should get to give it a spin, eh? Just to even things out a bit.

Oh, as for James's voice, which Seacrest has been promising for the last hour would make rainbows shoot out of our asses, it's not living up to the hype. He's basically trying really hard to be a straight version of Adam Lambert and it's just not interesting. But I can guarantee that he's already got the devotion of bored, fortysomething housewives.

Tomorrow night, it's off to Hollywood. I really hope with all the changes that have been instituted this year that they haven't done away with group day...for the second time.

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