Week 5 of
Advocate contributor Dave White’s American
Idol recap: This week’s installment was
more fun than watching the Fonz jump over a big tank
of sharks. Just not much more…
Simon, shooting
off his mouth in the press, has announced that he
believes Kellie Pickler, Taylor Hicks, and Chris Daughtry
are going to be the final three. In other words,
he’s dying for someone white to win. And if it
can be a guy, even better. A straight guy, please. A
straight white male for Simon. One that’s not
all goony like Hicks. A man’s man with
impeccable chick-banging credentials. One named…oh,
say…Chris Daughtry, maybe. That’s such a
good, strong-sounding winner’s name, don’t you
think?
Seacrest
introduces the top 11 and they all trot out to take their
applause. Pickler seems out of it. She’s got dead-eye
face until she remembers she’s on a stage where
people can see her, not hiding in a fort she made out
of the box the washing machine came in. That’s when
she turns on the Pageant Grimace. It’s a small
moment, but it’ll return for an encore
later…
Tonight’s
theme is the 1950s, a time of racial segregation, rigid
social conformity, and repression of women and
homosexuals. You know, the Good Old Days. God, these
theme nights are the worst, chosen by what can only be
a team of dullards. When, for example, is Björk night?
Danzig night? Joy Division night? Scott Walker?
Roxanne Shante? The Fall? That’s the one I
really want. Mark E. Smith comes in and works with the kids,
pours booze down their throats until they’re
raging, berates them until they cry, then gets into a
fistfight with Bucky. Or how about Everyone Sings
“Hey Jealousy” by the Gin Blossoms night?
This
week’s special celebrity oldster is Barry Manilow.
Barry is, after all these years, still phenomenally
popular. He was the Clay Aiken of the 1970s, but even
more successful than Clay, in an era when it was still
impolite to publicly speculate on the sexual orientation of
a male performer, even if he played piano for Bette
Midler in gay bathhouses. Barry’s latest CD, a
collection of boring cover versions of 1950s songs, is
the number 1 record in the country, so he’s spent the
week with the AI kids, arranging and coaching
and freaking them out with his immobile face. His jaw
moves when he speaks, and that’s how you know
he’s still alive.
First up is
Mandisa, singing “I Don’t Hurt
Anymore,” made popular by the legendary Dinah
Washington. Before she takes the stage, Barry, in his
“How I Helped” reel, accidentally says that
Mandisa “has no range.” He means, of
course, that she has no limits to her talent, but why
didn’t they reshoot that quote? They could
have. It’s not like he’s providing live
commentary. I’m puzzled. And she’s great
tonight, finally singing softly with some guts instead
of just foghorning her way through it. When she opens
her mouth wide, though, you can see that her tongue is all
orange. Someone was snacking on Cheetos, Sunkist soda, and
circus peanuts before the show. Afterward, Paula says,
“You took me right back to the
’50s.” Except that Paula wasn’t even
born then. Then Seacrest, in an archetypal Type 3 Gay
moment (see last week’s recap for an explanation of
Type 3 Gay, because I don’t have time to explain it
again), coos over Mandisa’s shoes. Cut to
Mandisa’s well-pedicured toes for the second time
in as many weeks. You just know that every dude in the
country with a thing for BBWs and feet is having a
very good TV-watching time tonight.
Last week Simon
tried to emasculate Bucky the Babymaker by comparing his
gleaming blond hair to Jessica Simpson’s. This must
have stung poor Bucky, because it appears as though he
hasn’t washed his hair since then. He was right
to do that, because he ain’t the man I’ve come
to know and love without his trademark layer of grime.
And Barry doesn’t get Bucky. This is clear. If
he did, he wouldn’t have taken a cool old Buddy Holly
song and gayed up the arrangement with horns and tambourines
and whatever else. Why don’t you call Rudy
Galindo and get him to loan Bucky one of his skating
outfits too, Barry? So now we know what sort of
“’50s” we’re going to be
served this evening: the same version they have on the menu
at Wowsville, the “Authentic ’50s
Diner” from Ghost World.
Click here to follow The Advocate on Twitter.
Page 1 of 3
Dave White is the author of the American
Idol–less memoir Exile in Guyville
(Alyson Books), available everywhere soon. He blogs
at djmrswhite.livejournal.com.