The Harpoonist

American Idol Recap: Week 3 Semifinal: The Girls

2010-03-09T22:22:00.002-05:00

After an unfortunate visual gag that involved Ellen nuzzling Simon's ear, we're off! No time to chat, because it's a one hour show! Let's choose our top twelve, people! Or, let's spend an hour asking these questions: "Was that the right song choice for her? Or should she have sung a different song? Oh, a different one? Well which one?"

KATIE STEVENS: Katie sings Kelly Clarkson's song "Breakaway." The judges have been telling her to go younger, so you'd think Kelly Clarkson circa 2004 would be appropriate. However, tonight Ellen tells her that she still wasn't old enough to sing these lyrics. Yeah, because singing "I'll spread my wings and learn how to fly" requires a really mature stature. Apparently, nothing is young enough for Katie Stevens to sing, and the judges request that if she makes it back next week she try out the song from Teletubbies. That might be young enough to accommodate her extreme youth. Simon gives her ten out of ten for trying but says it wasn't good enough. He tells her she sucked (long pause) the life out of the song. Kara says she just doesn't know what kind of artist Katie wants to be.

SIOBHAN MAGNUS: Siobhan slowly tell us that her father taught her to sing, and then slowly reveals that she will sing "House of the Rising Sun" to honor him. I'm sure any father would be honored by his daughter singing a song about being debauched in a whorehouse. It sounds pretty dope, in the words of Randy. The first verse she sings acapella, which provides that magical "moment" feeling we love to see on Idol, and then the lone guitar kicks in, and then the whole band comes in very predictably, which prompts Ellen to praise the fact that she made the song "current." Simon calls it ploddy, boring, and dark. Kara puts in that she doesn't know what kind of artist Siobhan wants to be.

LACEY BROWN: Lacey is lurking/sitting on the side of the stage during Siobhan's critique, so they can immediately transition over to her singing Belina Carlisle's "The Story." What, no stupid anecdote about her childhood? No drippy dedication to Grandma or dear dog Pedro or poor dead Uncle Hoss? We must really be on a time crunch. She never gets up from her seat, just stares down the camera and daintily yodels her way through it with her shiny, shiny lips and her fake, fake color contacts. Wow, the judges love her song choice! She's back on track, they say! Even Simon thinks it sounds like it's already on the radio. Kara is excited to report that she knows what kind of artist Lacey Brown will be!!!!

KATELYNN EPPERLING: Katelynn sings "I Feel the Earth Move," by Carole King, wearing high waisted overall skirt, and mildly be-bopping around behind some kind of keyboard. She seems to have been attacked offstage by a bath loofah which is still stuck to the top of her head. Or maybe it's like she teashed her hair up into a big huge blonde afro and then right before she went on stage she tried to shove her forehead into a furnace fan. The judges hate it. They're disappointed with the lack of specialness. She didn't look like she was competing, not trying hard enough. Mole visibility quotient: 60%.

DIDI BENAMI: Didi hasn't played her guitar since Hollywood Week but now she's going to play the hell out of it. Or at least she's going to play two strings in syncopated chords again and again during a trippy, stripped down version of "Rhiannon" by Fleetwood Mac. Randy missed the wow moment but thought it was better than last week. Ellen says, "Yes indeedy, Didi" and everyone around her literally barks out "Ha ha ha" as in three syllables of obligatory laughter. It's amazing to me that they hired a comedian to be a judge, an actual comedian with a successful career, and she has delivered less than half a dozen viable jokes in six weeks of screen time. Kara and Simon loved it. The judges praise her for coming back strong after being "mauled."

PAIGE MILES: Paige has taken her turn pressing her face against the furnace fan backstage, then maybe had someone throw a bucket of water on her hairdo for good measure. She sings a dreary, hopeless version of "Smile" by Charlie Chaplin, staying safely behind the beat and whispering shyly. The judges hate it and Simon calls it the "end of the road." Paige repeats a few times that she loves the song and that it's emotional for her. Ryan asks why it's emotional, maybe digging for a sympathy vote or two, but Paige seems to be saying that the reason she's emotional is that Michael Jackson recorded that song and is now dead.

CRYSTAL BOWERSOX: Crystal sings "Give Me One Reason" by Tracy Chapman, and plays the electric guitar. Then she sits down on her amp to take her criticism, too cool to even stand. Actually, we later learn that the weight of her extreme coolness has shattered her kneecaps, and she has had to be rushed to the hospital. We must all rearrange our schedules for the next three weeks so that she can get repeat kneecap replacement surgery, but this time she needs titanium ones, to sustain the massive encumbrance of her sick, sick cool. The judges ask her to please take a poo, so they can bathe in its glorious light. They offer to clean her feet with their hair. Kara reaches into her abdomen and pulls out a throbbing, dripping kidney, offers it to Crystal just in case. Simon calls her "most improved" and "the one to beat." Maybe she'll disappear when they move to the bigger stage. We can only hope. American doesn't like an Idol that peaks early.

LILLY SCOTT: Lilly plays an electric mandolin and sings "I Fall to Pieces" by Patsy Cline, zombie edition. It's violently overwrought and dull and halloween-ish. The arrangement is reminiscent of an olde time hootenanny, like you can imagine someone sucking a hayseed and playing the string bass. And not in a fresh, updated way. In a way where you chew the seeds of actual hay. Look, Patsy Cline is Patsy Cline. She's an icon. If you're going to do Patsy Cline as olde time country hayseed, you have to be, like Loretta Lynn or Willie Nelson. If you're going to do it modern, you're doing it like Cowboy Junkies or, like The Lemonheads or something. Ellen, clearly having listened to something completely different sung by someone other than Lilly, praises the originality of her style, and Kara calls it contemporary and current. Yeah. At least they're loyal.

Best Performances: Siobhan Magnus and Didi Benami
Worst Performances: Paige Miles and Katie Stevens
Going Home: Katelynn Epperly and Paige Miles

See you tomorrow night!

American Idol Recap: Semifinal Week 2: The Girls

2010-03-03T22:24:00.005-05:00

Tonight on American Idol and Local Craft Faire: Kara has borrowed Jermaine's butter dish in order to sculpt her very own hair tumor. Simon uses the word "misunderestimated" in all seriousness. The girls take their turn sharing little known facts about themselves. And we learn how to make a pin cushion out of a thrifted wool sweater!

CRYSTAL BOWERSOX: What don't we know about Crystal? Crystal has a twin that was too square for her, so she absorbed him into her body while they were still in the womb, and now wears him as a second liver. "I love you, bro, but you're so square and you know it!" she says kiddingly at her own abdomen. She also carries with her the shrunken heads and teeth of her fallen enemies in a small Chinese pouch. Did I mention teeth? Crystal is still missing several of hers -- I guess the medical emergency must have been a dreadlock stuck in the vacuum cleaner, not mouth surgery as I had guessed. She sings "As Long As I See the Light" by Creedence Clearwater Whatever, and promises she's going to gospel/church it up, which to her means taking a week to slide up into all the big notes. She does a confident, credible job and the judges build a temple for her worship. I'd say at this point if the judges get their way, between giving her pimp spot on week one, executing an unprecedented schedule change so she could recover from her illness, and tonight's fawning, that we're looking at a finale of Crystal Bowersox and Lee DeWyze. If America gets her jumpy, pimply way, it'll be Tim Urban and Alex Lambert in the finals. YIKES.

HAELEY SOMETHING: Haeley reveals a secret about herself: she likes to make headbands and hair accessories! I hope she's already got her Etsy shop in place because she's going to have a lot of time to wind that ribbon. She delivers a completely flat, one-dimensional performance of what was already a really annoying, one-dimensional song: Hannah Montana's "The Climb." She wanders hopelessly around stage, warbling past the pitch now and then, lisping, clutching, tottering around like a kindergartner in Grandma's heels. The judges "keep it real" and filet her with a sharp knife. Camera cuts to her small, gaunt, long-haired grandmother, who blinks her tired, sunken eyes and mouths these words to the camera: "I will cut out your heart and eat it raw if you don't vote for Haeley."

LACEY BROWN: Lacey's secret is that she refurbishes antiques to sell. She says it relaxes her -- and this is exactly what Haeley said about her headband creation. Because that's what you want in a pop star -- someone who knows how to relax with a glue gun. Not sexy, ladies! She's going to sing "Kiss Me" by Sixpence None the Richer, on Kara's recommendation. She has a bigger, maybe better voice than Leigh Nash. However, what she doesn't have that Leigh Nash has is the ability to sing "Kiss Me" without making me want to open a trap door under her feet and send her to the bowels of the earth, to be eaten by a balrog. She is either nervous or secretly forty-five years old, but the cute bounce and the wink and the twinkle play really fake. She seems like a nice lady, though. A nice, middle-aged lady.

KATIE STEVENS: Katie interviews so cute. She's goofy, she's irreverent, she laughs at herself -- what's not to like? Here's someone who, in stark contrast to Lacey Brown, is actually young, and in bangin' shoes she kills "Girl, Put Your Records On." You know who she reminds me of? Katherine McPhee. A lot. I bet she has a real moment later on in the show with "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." The judges criticize her fiercely -- WHY? I thought she sounded fine. Don't worry, she'll be ok for next week. I like to think that Katie is a closet nerd, who is, like, always on time with her papers and does all the extra credit. Ryan asks her what she's going to do about their critique of her song choice, and she says, "I guess research and look up stuff." Katie, I love you! Google it!

DIDI BENAMI: Didi reveals that she was the school mascot in middle school, and then a cheerleader. She plans to bring up her "star meter" a little bit by singing "Lean On Me" by Bill Withers. In my opinion, she succeeds. I mean, she bopped around on stage too much and had too much fun, like, overly connecting with the lyric, but I thought the voice was strong. Didi has been compared to Brooke White, and I get that, but Brooke could never have pulled off Bill Withers. The judges disagree, and skewer her with a hot poker. They hate the song choice, call it screechy, a disaster. Ellen suggests she should have sung "Lovely Day." Yeah, because that's one where she could have really showed what Kara calls her "vocal stylings." Glory notes left and right. Am I watching a different show than the judges are? Is Didi's actual flaw in the judges' eyes is her failure to be Crystal Bowersox?

MICHELLE DELAMOR: Michelle reveals that she is the children's choir director at church, and the tape shows her pre-show prayer and meditation, just so everyone knows what team she's playing for (the good guys!). Last week the judges called her safe, so this week she's going to sing "With Arms Wide Open" by Creed, because a song with a four-note range constitutes taking a huge risk. It goes about as well as you think it might it would -- listening to her was at least as fascinating as watching a bulldozer fill in a small pool. The judges (AGAIN) criticize the song choice. Randy hated it, Kara loved it, Simon agrees with.... Kara. Oh whatever. And you know how many people are going to buy Delamor/Creed on ITunes? Not a lot.

Hey, I have an idea -- what if the judges just criticize the song the contestant is singing and the performance that actually happens on stage, instead of dangling this other thing they might have done, something that the judges can't quite define, that the singers should definitely do next time. I'd like to hear "That was bad," or "That was good," but I am not interested in "What if this or that?" You know what it is? It's lazy. they focus so much on song choice, you start to think it's all about that. And when you realize that the song choice is *not in the contestant's control* it becomes harder and harder to pretend this whole thing isn't ridiculous.

LILLY SCOTT: Since the coaches have been working with Lilly to get her to open her eyes more, I may not get another opportunity to say: HAPPY VALENTIMES! The surprise that Lilly reveals tonight is that she was born by the river in a little town. Apparently just like that river, she's been running ever since. She sings her Sam Cooke very well, the judges scream with love, prompting a confused Randy to say "That's something we will never say about you, that you're unique, you're your own person." Huh? Oh well, she has silver hair.

KATELYNN EPPERLY: They give her a white grand piano, a miniskirt, and the "this is a moment" spotlights, and Katelynn delivers a really sweet Coldplay cover. Adequate as a mild but name brand mouthwash.

You know what does not make entertaining television? Watching someone do something on their IPhone. Like something really pedestrian and uninteresting. With their fingers in the screen saying, "I push this button, and then this thing happens, and then I push this button." It's like getting a video game tutorial from my 10-year-old son, an experience I have compared to being boiled in goat oil. If I don't have an IPhone, I don't care. And if I do, I already have figured out how to send a video with it. K?

PAIGE MILES: Paige relaxes by coloring. Literally coloring animals in a coloring book. With markers and crayons. Then she sells her nicely outlined , tidily-colored pictures on Etsy. Paige looks better than she did last week, but I think I've identified that it's the green contacts that are giving me the "I've actually been dead for weeks, look how fistfuls of my hair come out in my hands" vibe from her. Paige sings a Kelly Clarkson song that Kara wrote. The judges give a mixed review -- Kara indulges in a little "Hey, who wrote that? Oh, me? Right, me!" and points out that when she wrote it, she wasn't happy with the guy, so maybe Paige shouldn't be smiling. I realize that a lot of time has been spent tonight in debating whether these women are happy or not, if they should smile or not. If I cared, at all, I would be all -- did they ask the boys? whether they are happy people? or -- but wait, I don't care. At all.

SIOBHAN MAGNUS: Siobhan reveals that her method of warming up before the show is blowing raspberries. If that doesn't make the "Let's look back on your journey" clip montage, I don't know what will. Dressed like a second grade teacher doing a walk of shame (complete with a headband that might even relax Haeley), Siobhan sings "Think" by Aretha Franklin. She screams her way through it, mouth open, teeth flashing, hitting a note so far in the stratosphere that it instantly kills all the fairies in the room. The judges love her.

Let's look back at the weirdos in the competition, in reverse order: Siobhan Magnus, Lilly Scott, Crystal Bowersox. Then there are the boring people: Haeley, Lacey, Michelle, Paige. Regular people: Katie Stevens, Katelynn Epperly, Didi Benami. I think the boring people will go first, the weirdos will blow up at some later point, and it will be Katie Stevens standing there at the end. That's what I think.

What do the judges think? Well, just in case we forgot, because Crystal was first out of the gate tonight, they remind us specifically that like Crystal the best. Crystal, Crystal, Crystal. The judges will really cry when she goes home. They'll rant and stomp their little feet. But the teenaged girls of this fine land are not going to vote her into the finals. Consider that they're trying to get Lady Gaga to mentor -- can you see this field taking a crack at that catalog?

How do you relax? Have you ever bought a coloring book page off Etsy? What's in Lacey Brown's hair? Who won the week -- girls or boys?

American Idol Semifinal: Week 2 Recap: The Boys

2010-03-02T22:59:00.004-05:00

Breaking News! Crystal Bowersox was rushed to the hospital today, and cannot perform tonight! She cannot perform! Everything must change, and the universe must be restructured to accommodate this new information. Up is now down. Black is now white. Ellen is now a comedian. Kara is now a music industry insider. There are doctor's orders at work. This is official! Translation: We forced Crystal Bowersox to have dental surgery. She is still full of bruise and swell. Tomorrow, she will be sufficiently iced, but check her teeth! Do you dare gaze into the dental horror that is Crystal Bowersox's mouth? Let's go together. We don't have to stay long, just long enough to know the truth. Hold my hand. Don't look directly at the brown ones.

Fortunately there are 10 guys on the payroll, ready to perform tonight instead of Crystal and the Harridans -- and I'm sure the lack of rehearsal time and interruption to their schedule won't negatively effect them at all!

News! Kara got a spray tan. Good decision. If she had trotted out that bright red dress without turning on the tan, it would have been hard to take.

News! Ellen is doing a few jokes tonight! Real jokes, as if she were a comedian on a television show, trying to entertain an audience, instead of a wide-eyed regular guy off the street, just happy to be here, Ryan. Right, there is a reason that Ellen is on the show and it's not because of her blinding insights into the music industry. She can be funny -- if she can stop surpressing that, we might be able to figure out why she was added as a judge.

This week the contestants' interview segments will reveal something about themselves that we don't know. They will also extensively recap what happened on stage last week for us including bluetone taped segments of the judges' comments. Who needs these recaps? Was someone watching ice dancing during the show last week? Were you?

MICHAEL LYNCH: Michael's unknown secret is that he is really into musical theater, making him the first straight man to ever reveal this secret. He went to a performing arts high school and now he just loves to dance around on stage with his little shiny cane accessory, kicking up his heel accessories. Way to challenge my assumptions, there, Michael. You are just one giant man, full of cute surprises. He sings "This is a Man's World" by James Brown, with the stated objective of defining himself as a front man, not a supporting act as Simon described him last week. He's cute, and he does try hard, but he's kinda just goodish. The judges react as if he had just turned himself into a giant pile of money. Randy gives him a standing ovation. Ellen makes a JOKE! A REAL ONE, praising the song as "educational." She gets laughs. Kara calls him potentially "a great artist." Simon gets on the pimp train too. Ok, whatevs, but he will be slain in the theme weeks, srsly.

JOHN PARK: John tries to shock us in interview by sharing that he has only been speaking English since 4th grade, and his first language is Korean. This would be a surprising revelation if he didn't look so completely Korean. Like yeah, I was born in Michigan, are you going to frakin' die from shock now, or what? He has an acapella group called "Purple Haze" that is waiting anxiously to get their lead singer back, having long since given up on their collective manhood. John sings a very boring John Mayer song, sporting a white v-neck t-shirt, clearly aware of the source of his many votes. I am not in his demographic. At all. The judges praise him -- he is so much better than last week! Yawn.

CASEY JAMES: Casey's revelation is that he does not have a television. Instead he works on his house and tries out different hairstyles in the mirror, plucking a stray here, an eyebrow there, widening his eyes, narrowing them, opening his mouth really wide, closing it, going "WEEooWEEooWEEoo" and seeing what that looks like from the side, etc. While cavorting around in his rehearsal space, he shows us a mysterious box but quickly closes it, promising to reveal its contents only if he makes it to the top ten! Vote, girls! We want to find out what's in that medium-sized brown box, right?! Thank you, Casey. Last week I was bemoaning the lack of a reason to punch you in the face. Now, I have one. And maybe that's what was in the medium-sized brown box after all. A much-longed-for justification for scorn. Casey's rendition of "I Don't Want to Be" recalls Bo Bice, Chris Richardson, and everyone else who ever used it on the show. He pulls out some lead guitar, but no one really cares. Even Kara is unimpressed, saying he took "two steps back" tonight. Casey will not be going home, though. We must know what's in the box.

ALEX LAMBERT: Tonight Alex reveals that he has his own secret language that he made up in sixth grade. It sounds like fake "my ancestors are Cherokee" stuff like on Better Off Ted. He whines about his terrible stage fright, saying, "I get nervous that's not regular nervous. It's not even me any more nervous, it takes over my whole body." It takes over his body and styles his hair like Carole Brady*, puts on a plaid sport coat, vomits, writes a couple of bad checks, picks up a guitar and sings "Everybody Knows" by something or other. It was less of a disaster than last week. Randy praises his niche-finding. Ellen exhumes her banana analogy and praises his unique style (now the banana is ripe). Kara praises his recordable tone that producers would die for. Really? That twangy, coppery, whingy little voice? Ryan, experiencing a journalistic personal best, asks: "Would you be upset, like depressed, if you weren't on the show?" Alex: "Yeah, it's like, totally my dream right now, so yeah."

TODRICK HALL: Todrick is going to sing Tina Turner. Ryan asks Todrick why he's choosing another lady song after he got shouted at for picking a lady song last week. Todrick replies that he knows that he can change up the song just enough this time, and not repeat the mistakes he made last time. To be fair to Todrick, these contestants have been told again and again to pick a song and change it up, make it their own, just like David Cook and Adam Lambert. After some grainy footage of Todrick in tights dancing the Nutcracker, he sings "What's Love Got to Do With It?" all slowed down and breathy, with a weird tempo, weird rhythm, and a weird amount of fist-pumping. In other words, he does exactly what he did last week all over again. Ellen goes off her mission statement completely, and forgets to any anything funny. Kara criticizes his R&B runs. Randy tells him he changed the song too much. Simon tells him to quit singing.

JERMAINE SELLERS: Jermaine interviews that he wears footie pajamas because his father won't turn the heat on in their house. He complains cheerfully about the judges' comments last week, and comes off likeable. He emerges on the stage having shaved his hair up into an inexplicably rounded point. It's like he used the cover of a butter dish to mold his hair. Maybe he is trying to "change it up" and "make it his own" where "it" is the shape of a human skull and "his own" is a weird-ass hair tumor. To make matters not at all better, he is wearing a plaid bow tie, a spotted shirt, a grey cardigan, and jeans that look like he fell into a puddle of bleach. He sings "What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye with the same goofy, slippery vocals and sleazy eyebrow motions he pulled out last week. Everyone hates it.

The thing is, Todrick and Jermaine basically repeated their performances from last week. And got screamed at for it. But why should they not? Last week, they got enough votes to stay. Why change?

Back from the break, Randy warmly tells us, "Thank you for choosing Idol." Idol peanut butter? Idol for state senate? Idol = life?

ANDREW GARCIA: Andrew's secret is that he is a break dancer. He can spin around on the heel of his hand. He is singing, "You Give Me Something" by James Morrison. I've never heard the song before, and I probably haven't heard it now. However, it's not terrible. Without his guitar, sitting on the meaningful stool, bathed in a bank of blue spotlights, Andrew is completely believable as a kinda contemporary jazz guy. Likeable, if a little wobbly on pitch. The judges are meh.

AARON KELLY: It's time for the exploding fetus to reveal a secret about himself! What will it be? That he's secretly cooking two livers? He lisps to us apologetically that he really likes photography, and actually says the words, "It allows me to be myself in my pitchers. Nobody can tell me the right way or the wrong way to do it. I can do it just my way." Face to face with that kind of droopy, moronical optimism, I have no choice but to vomit flaming knives from my mouth, hair, fingers, and toes, and destroy the world with my fury. Sorry! But then, wait. Aaron's soft voice and blinking innocence lead me to believe, suddenly, that he is super gay. Now I feel bad talking about how he is a wet, dripping fetus clutching the microphone with his gelatinous unformed fingerbuds. But, I can't help what I know. He gives us "My Girl," singing and riffing through all the riffs and pauses, over an arrangement that couldn't be more diluted and Disneyfied. There was actually a pink and yellow sunburst radiating in and out on the LCD screen behind him. The judges liked it. Aaron giggles self-effacingly. So, yeah, he is a gelatinous, quavering, moist GAY fetus. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Except if you're on television. In which case, dry off.

TIM URBAN: What don't we know about Tim Urban? Surprise! He's one of the Duggars. Urban is just a stage name. Dammit! Now he will never get voted off. Tim reveals that before he squeaked out that whispering falsetto last week that he said a little prayer for help. He must have prayed to God to take his voice away and replace it with a handful of wet feathers and depressed beetles. Tonight he sings some crap like you probably heard when you were in college and you went to an open mike and some asshole with hair like Shawn Cassidy got up and danced behind the microphone like a middle school girl high on Fanta and orthodontic glue. Randy hates it. Ellen recommends that since he has no stage presence and no charisma, he should become an actor. But she meant it, like, not as a joke. Simon liked it. WHO CARES? The only reason Tim and Alex are still around is because the American teenaged girl likes her man limp, nervous, and licking his lips constantly.

LEE DEWYZE: Lee reveals his secret: He had to go to a school for juvenile delinquents for a while, and a teacher helped him turn his life around. Nice story -- I think I heard America give off a collective "Awww." Lee sings "Lips of an Angel" against the very significant night sky and stars background. He wears a blue t-shirt and jeans and manages to make it look like it doesn't matter. I liked it, the judges liked it, Lee is in the pimp spot, and I think he pretty much has it made into the top ten. I believe he will be dismissed at some point right before the end, basically following a Daughtry-esque plot progression into a career as a front man for a band, not a pop star.

Best Performances: Lee DeWyze and Andrew Garcia
Worst Performances: Jermaine Sellers and Aaron Kelly
Going Home: John Park and Tim Urban

*Carole Brady joke brought to you courtesy of my son's rockin' violin teacher, Mrs. V.

American Idol Semifinal: Week 1 Recap: The Boys

2010-02-24T23:16:00.003-05:00

When the show opens, the top 12 guys are standing at the edge of the stage as if ready to be shot to death with arrows. A pudgy Ryan Seacrest marches down the line, barking out threats and demands. Chest in, recruit! Scruffy chin out! Clearly under orders to ignore the camera, the "singers" look full of fear and polyester stuffing. They should be afraid. After all, the girls sucked big rotten mangoes last night and if these guys aren't careful, they'll be sucking on them too.

I actually do like a few of the contestants tonight. If I can maintain any level of respect or affection for any of them two hours from now, I'll be faint with shock. The judges predict nerves will rule the evening. Kara recommends that if they're nervous they find a place they're comfortable with. How about their garage? No? Nestled in their mama's bosom? No? Then it has to be the Idol stage. Sorry, Kara.

TODRICK HALL: Todrick's clothes are unremarkable: congratulations Todrick's clothes! He turns in a scant, nervous reinterpretation of Kelly Clarkson's "Since You've Been Gone," re-imagined as a Gwen Stefani style reggae song, like if "Sweet Escape" was sung by a nervous man who had been told to dance for his life. After demanding all night last night that they completely violate expectations and change up songs to fit their own style, the judges filet him for "making it his own." Simon called it "bordering on stupid." Ryan begs for votes based on creativity. Todrick's face says, "But I thought I was supposed to--" but then it's time to flash his numbers and move on, leaving Todrick's incredulous carcass blinking in shame.

AARON KELLY: Aaron Kelly is just a fetus still encased in an amniotic sac. He's the type of dripping, mucousy fetus that likes to wear jogging pants, a thin hoodie, and a gold necklace around its ropy, wobbly neck, but not tonight! Tonight, the moist and delicate Aaron is all cowboyed out in a flannel shirt and torn jeans, and sings "Here Comes Goodbye" by Rascal Flatts. He struggles along, straining away with his undeveloped lungs and his finger buds clutching that big heavy microphone. Panting, gasping, slipping, he hits the glory note hard and explodes. The judges like him. Ellen's critique: "Ditto to all that."

JERMAINE SELLERS: Jermaine interviews to remind us that he was the one who famously whined that the band messed him up on his last Hollywood solo. Then he sing "Get Here" in every key imaginable, with a whole lot of winking, nodding, sex-eye, and grinning. He is wearing a grey tuxedo coat over a cotton henley, with a satin rosette just like Granny used to make, and a black fedora with no brim. He looks like he was wearing a regular hat and then walked into a giant sander or something, scraping the brim right off it for a disconnected, disastrous effect. The judges hate him, and I also hate him. After the critique, Ryan asks Jermaine if he's made peace with Michael, meaning Michael from the band. Jermaine frowns and stutters, pricelessly, "Who's Michael?" Oh, really, who is Michael? He's the guy coming up on stage right now so spontaneously for this super-spontaneous moment of ha ha forgiveness, except that Jermaine is such a diva, he can't even laugh. What an idiot. Michael should stuff him into a compost pile.

TIM URBAN: Tim has a very catlike upper lip and also fangs, do you see this? And rained-on skater hair. In his photo shoot, he pulls a wacky-dacky pose jumping up in the air with his arms out. Like hey look at me with mah sweaty-sweaty armpits! And the gag is, he actually has big sweaty armpits! HA! Tim sings "Apologize" by One Republic, and the gag here is that he actually has, like, no falsetto register. At all. So it's like "It's too late to apologize! It's too late! It's too late to apologize! It's too late!" Where the greyed out words are actually little mouse squeaks. Recognize that there were multiple vocal coaches, producers, directors, and other bozos that okayed this song choice and this performance. The judges shred him and he admits it was a last minute switch. I thought Randy clarified last night that they weren't supposed to sing songs that made their voices sound bad. He should have mentioned this includes songs that they actually physically cannot sing because sounds that come out of mouths do not magically happen just because you really need them to. You have to make them down in your throat, and if the song calls for a sound that your throat cannot create, you end up standing their like a supreme doucheface, squeaking and wishing.

Hey, Edward Cullen is on Lost now!

JOE MUNOZ: If Ellen Degeneres was a small, Mexican man Joe Munoz would be that small Mexican man. As it is, he's just another black-eyed man the size of a jockey in a fringed scarf singing "You and I Both" by someone I don't know. He sings adequately, putting him right on the top of the pile for the night. Ellen congratulates him for being comfortable on stage, and surprises nobody by liking the performance. She says, "I think people are going to look at you and say 'He can sing, and he's comfortable on stage' and vote for you." Yeah, because here on American Old Sandals, we look for people who "can sing." Note: Joe is a lip-licker, and that will get more significant as the season wears on. I predict that by April, if I haven't killed myself yet and Joe is still on the show, I am recommending Clorox chapstick.

TYLER GRADY: Thank you, Tyler Grady, for being an actual entertainer. I enjoyed your fun, relaxed rendition of "American Woman" and I think the audience did too. No winking, no glory notes, no runs, no nerves. It sounded good, he worked the stage, and he was as authentic as a person singing a 45 second song can be. I think the main reason I hated him in the audition shows was that his skin was so relentlessly freakin' shiny that it hurt my eyes. The judges told him he was all style and no substance, and demand that he brings it into this decade. Because they haven't spent weeks telling people to know who they are and stay true to that. Tyler doesn't look too bothered, but promises he will go to the mall if voted through. Great.

LEE DEWYZE: Lee looks apologetic, as usual, for breathing the air. He is a constipated, resentful version of Elliot Yamin -- remember that guy? Lee sounds pretty cool for about half of his performance of "Chasing Cars." If you close your eyes you can almost forget he's a hunchy little troll. I can see him singing something Daughtry-ish, but I can also see him grabbing a bone from the carcass in the road and scampering back under the the porch to gnaw on it. All of the judges but Simon chastise him. Lee stands there pulling on the hem of his shirt like a dork. Shifting from foot to foot, he then charms the hair clips off America with his unpretentious answers to Ryan's dumb questions -- he is having the best time of his life and he never wants this feeling to end. I almost start to think he's kind of cool, and that his story arc will involve him coming out of this shirt-pulling shell and being a star. Then I feel manipulated and resentful, and I snarl at passers-by.

JOHN PARK: John sings "God Bless the Child." As Ryan announces it, I feel like calling out... No, John, no. You must not sing that song! How could it work? I don't know what I was expecting to come out of his mouth when he opened it, but what did come out was something bad. Something bizarre-o, because John Park has absolutely no accent when he is speaking. What happened to him when he sang was a mystery. It almost sounded like someone with a thick Asian accent trying to sing really jazzy black slang. The judges absolutely hate it (except Ellen, who would like it if the contestants squeezed a glop of poo out the bottom of their pants and then sat on it). John shames them by sharing that for him, the song is about his parents, and how they worry about money, and how the reason he is here is because of that song. Ok, he doesn't have to go home this week.

MICHAEL LYNCHE: Big Mike! The guy who skipped the birth of his child to compete in American Idol! This competition must mean everything to him! Enough that he certainly wouldn't show up on stage in a western shirt and jeans and tennis shoes. Oops, seems not. He sings "This Love" by Maroon 5, playing a tiny guitar which we never ever hear. He got through it just fine, and he reads as likeable and cool. The judges ask him to challenge himself more, and say that he shouldn't get cocky. When Simon criticizes him, he snaps back, "Aowww!" then threatened to give Simon some of his arm muscle. Standing next to Big Mike, Ryan Seacrest doesn't look so puffy. Big Mike will be back next week.

ALEX LAMBERT: Alex looks like the male version of that smelly hippie Crystine Bowsentowler, but instead of her ballsy attitude, he's got tulips for testicles. His goal is to show people that he can perform, as he puts it, that he is "able to." He sings "Wonderful World" which has the worst lyrics ever for an American Idol song pick. Check it:

I've been down so low
People look at me and they know
They can tell something is wrong
Like I don't belong

Staring through a window
Standing outside, they're just too happy to care tonight
I want to be like them
But I'll mess it up again

I tripped on my way in
And got kicked outside, everybody saw...

And I know that it's a wonderful world
But I can't feel it right now
Well I thought that I was doing well
But I just want to cry now

Yeah. Great lyrics! Who in their right mind would sing this song in a competition? It's like Eeyore's theme song. Bah. Alex looks miserable, hunches up his shoulders, lags behind the beat, and in general dies an awful death on the stage. No joy, no confidence. Ellen compares him to an unripe banana. Alex gives props to the band and reveals this is the third or fourth time he's ever sung in front of people. Endearing but sucky.

CASEY JAMES: Who doesn't want Casey James to do well? He's cool, he's hot, he's a good singer. He has given us no reason to punch him in the face yet, right? He sings "Heaven" by Bryan Adams, sitting on a stool with his guitar (which we can actually hear), and delivers a very decent performance. Yes, he took off his shirt in his audition. Yes, he's had his hair highlighted. Yes, he pronounces it "Lying here in my yarms," but for now I want to believe, okay? I want to believe. The show plays up the whole "Kara is in love with Casey" meme, and Ellen admits that he's going to get votes no matter what, almost admitting that it doesn't matter what he sings. Yes, he will get votes. Casey has a Sawyer thing going on, and a natural swagger. He is hard not to like. GOOD JOB, CASEY. For now, I am on your side.

ANDREW GARCIA: Full disclosure: I really liked this guy coming in. He's rough, cool, short, and looks like the birth control glasses are in this case not an affectation. He sings "We're Going Downtown Sugar" by Fallout Boy. I think the key could be a little lower, the song was a little repetitive, and in general the mix was a little light on bass, but I still like him. The judges like him too, and forgive all in memory of the day he played "Straight Up" by Paula Abdul.

Folks, this week was awful. This is the point in American Idol where we the people always say, "This was really the best you could come up with?" All those stadiums full of people, all those wails and riffs in Hollywood, and these 24 people are really the greatest unsigned vocalists in America? And we scoff and scorn. Luckily, we know that as the competition wears on, we will grow to hate some of them even more, and our current state of bewildered apathy will turn into a fine point of disgust and scorn. Something to look forward to.

Best Performances: Casey James and Lee Dewyze
Worst Performances: Aaron Kelly and Tim Urban
Going Home: Jermaine Sellers and Alex Lambert

American Idol Semifinal: Week 1: The Girls

2010-02-23T23:29:00.003-05:00

AMERICA! IT'S OUR TURN! TO TAKE THE REINS! OMG! ANOTHER SEASON OF AMERICAN IDOL!

The first segment of tonight's American Idol plays on a weird edge, as if someone moved up the broadcast time by half an hour and didn't tell anyone on set until thirty seconds before they were live. Like someone yanked Randy out of the bathroom and Ryan was off camera tying his shoes. Ellen is scripted to worry about Simon's grabby hands, complete with a "roll tape!" You guys had months to come up with Ellen's first joke, and this was it? Awkward. And boring.

News: There are a bunch of women. Tonight they are going to sing. Are you freakin' kidding me? This is awesome news, and I LOVE THIS SHOW!

Paige Miles: Paige is wearing the first fashion disaster of the season: a lacy homecoming funeral dress with a wide silver leather belt. She has been made up like a zombie, grey paste all over her face, including her lips. Really, I think the makeup artist hates her -- she couldn't possibly look worse if she went and pulled out a handful of whatever is in the drainspout and used it as foundation. She sings "All Right Now" by Free, virtually unaccompanied due to a mixing glitch, or maybe someone quietly laid a large marshmallow directly on top of the band.

The microphone is super sparkly.

Ashley Rodriguez: Ashley looks pretty cool in a white gold jacket, white gold shoes, and fantastically sheer pink lip gloss. Again with no band in evidence, she's just trying to be "Happy" by Leona Lewis. Kara identifies Leona Lewis as the Mariah Carey of "our generation." Eh? Kara is 39. Mariah Carey is 39. Ashley Rodriguez is 21. Leona Lewis is 24. So while Leona Lewis might be the Mariah Carey of Ashley's generation, I'm sorry to report to Kara that the Mariah Carey of her generation (and mine) is... Mariah Carey.

I already forgot both the first two girls. Who were they again?

Janell Wheeler: Janell sings "What About Love?" by Heart and does fine, considering no one can hear the band! Can you not hear the band either, or is it just me? Maybe they're doing this on purpose, so we can really hear the vocals, without the benefit of that pesky instrumentation? Maybe the style in Kara's generation is to have your backing band sound like they're under a dirty mattress, not even trying to get out?

Ryan asks the judges to pontificate about song choice, and Randy suggests the contestants not sing songs that will make their voices sound bad. Brilliant. Look, if anybody doesn't get by now that the way to choose songs that suit your voice is to choose a song that has nothing to do with your voice and then warp the key signature, time signature, volume, and tempo until it is completely unrecognizable, they have not been watching the show. You don't get props from the judges by singing songs. You get props by reinventing songs. We are only waiting to see who from this season will be our exciting reinventor. Which brings us too...

Lilly Scott: Lilly Scott reminds me of that whore character that Rachel Dratch played on 30 Rock. You know, the one that said, "HAPPY VALENTIMES!" Also, she has hair extensions hanging from her ears. Lilly sings "Fixing a Hole" by the Beatles. She oversings it a bunch, but her voice is the only one so far that can stand up to this empty mix -- unaccompanied she's just fine. The judges liked it. I get that she's cool and she sings on pitch, but they go on and on about how different, how authentic, how unique she is. People, she is not original. The judges love the fact that she's indie. Randy points out that while she sounds like Duffy and Lily Allen, it's okay because that's actually who she is. So, when you're blindingly original in a completely derivative way, that means you're authentic. Or something. Lilly makes the "I need glasses" face. Does she look like Tracy Ullman or Rachel Dratch? Tracy Ullman or Rachel Dratch?

Katelynn Epperly: Katelynn hasn't decided whether to cover that mole on her forehead or just let it ride. Some of her interview shots she's tried to cover it, sometimes not. Tonight it is out in full force, like a beacon of authenticity in a world of Duffy wannabes. Except she looks like a young, tarted-up Bernadette Peters. Someone needs to tell Katelynn that you have to spend a lot of money on red lipstick for it to actually be red. Hers is pinked out. She sings "Oh Darlin" by the Beatles with a whole lot of fake angst. She delivers it adequately, despite the fact that half a crow is burrowing into her hair during the performance. Ellen actually says the words, "I liked it a lot." What the hell is the purpose of having judges, seriously? "I liked it a lot"???

Haeley Vaughn: Haeley sings a Disney channel slash porno version of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" wearing a shorted-off wedding dress, complete with a little veil holding thinger in her head and lace white tights. This is definitely *the* visual of the evening, wow. She never stops smiling, through the entire interview segment, song, and critique. Kara responds by calling her "pure." I hated the performance more than anything I've seen on television in the last twenty years. Her chin-digging, the shiny red guitar she couldn't really play -- she sounded and looked like she was on Barney. It made me want to kill everyone in the room and then die myself. Ellen says, "Speaking as someone who likes music, I enjoyed it." Simon agrees with me -- THANK GOD.

Lacey Brown: Wearing a tablecloth over black leggings, a plastic Lacey Brown doll and her lone vapid backup singer massacre Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide." They slip and slide around every single note up and down the scale like a couple of limp trombones. It was sickly and sad, riddled with the kind of knowing, you-and-me-baby eye contact that contestants seem to think will provoke people to vote. Her lip gloss looks fantastic though. Do we have to hear from every judge? It's like a chore getting through them all, takes much longer than the performance itself.

Michelle Delamor: She interviews that the most exciting thing about this experience is that her family is there with her. Maybe her family normally ignores her or runs away from her when she comes near. Must be special, getting all this attention from them. She sings "Falling" by Alicia Keyes, and it sounds like someone has fixed the mix a little bit, but it's still deadly boring. I don't remember anything about her from Hollywood week or auditions... do you? She certainly has a lot of teeth. The judges give mild praise.

Didi Benami: She fondly remembers singing "Terrified" for Kara, and reports cutely that her Idol journey has been emotional and spiritual. Gross! She needs her head slammed in a book, before she can experience one more inchoate emotion. She sings "The Way I Am" by Ingrid Michaelson, and she's wearing a crocheted rainbow vest. Sounds comfortable, quirky, and for once a little understated -- I actually like it. Simon accuses her of trying to sound like Duffy, and misses a spark. Then we make our death march down the line of judges where they all say the same thing, one after the other, all down the line. Why do we have four judges? We could just have four barking dogs, or four people leaping into different colored pools of water, or four bells ringing. It would be faster.

Siobhan Magnus: Throughout the audition process, she was unbeautiful, long on teeth and short on polish. She cleans up, however, pretty well in a black shirt dress, with a magnolia behind her ear. Someone has taken a stern stance on her eyebrows and attacked them with a mower. She sings "Wicked Game" by Chris Isaak, which shows remarkable restraint, and she pulls it out like a pro. There was almost no audible back-up, but it's okay. Nothing to be ashamed of in this performance, and that's saying something.

Crystal Bowersox: Crystal interviews that the reason someone as obviously cool as she is deigned to try out for a low, greasy-hamburger-and-fries show like American Idol, even though she's all indy and shit and awesome and can like play the harp and has dreads, is because she has a son. She adds, "Mama needs a bigger paycheck." She sings "One Hand In My Pocket" by Alanis Morisette, and right in the middle she gasps and pulls on the harmonica some. Simon calls her bullshit, and points out there are 10,000 girls capable of doing that song that way. He recommends she do something original, and she whines that the show doesn't allow originals. Then everyone on the show falls down at her feet and froths and foams, begging her forgiveness and promising to change their whole format to accommodate her. Simon rushes off to consult with another executive, and when he comes back, they let her win the show, right now, tonight, just because she is so real. Or, they ignore her comment and tell her to sing David Bowie. Oh piss me a river, dreadlots. You sold your soul; don't pretend you still own your music.

Katie Stevens: Katie reminds us that she is young, has a grandmother, and that we care about her. It wouldn't be the semifinals without am attempted haunting via heartfelt rendition of "You Know How I Feel" by Michael McBubble, so here we go. Katie tries winking and shoulder-shaking, and it looks like a middle schooler doing karaoke. If I'm listening to her, it's not that ridiculous, but as soon as I open my eyes, I'm ready to decapitate her. It was cutesy, weird, and ultimately it was unbrave, and that's what was wrong with it. It was timid. Simon calls it pageanty, but Kara points out that if she'd killed the song, he wouldn't be saying that. That's true. She didn't kill it.

This has been another show on my television. Now, vote for your favorite.

Here is something I must say: Ellen follows everything with "You're great." Ellen should be fired right away. She's not funny, she's not insightful, she keeps on talking. Also, if you want to hear how the show was supposed to be mixed, listen to the reminder clips at the end of the show -- they have the balance right at last.

Best performance: Didi Benami and Siobhan Magnus
Worst performance: Haeley Vaughn and Lacey Brown
Going home: Paige Miles and Michelle Delator

The Widow and the Tree by Sonny Brewer

2010-02-18T00:33:00.002-05:00

In a connected world, where every place is right next door to every other place via cell phones, airplanes, and the internet, it was really lovely to read a novel that was truly of a very certain place. The Widow and the Tree takes place in extremely rural Alabama, and the disconnected nature of the location separates the reader from any particular time, or any invasive modern influence. Without the ringing, buzzing, and informing, what's left is a quiet book that ends up booming, a small story that resonates.

A five hundred year old live oak is the central character, as it frames the lives of a few strange characters who also inhabit this swampy and wild backwater. If you told me before I cracked it open that I would be deeply engrossed in a novel which is essentially about a tree, and tangentially about a couple of hermits, I would have been skeptical. However, the scene that Sonny Brewer paints is compelling and surprising in its depth. Rather than limiting the book, the narrow scope propels the reader farther into the landscape, so it's possible to read a chapter about the noises a bird makes tapping on the branch of a tree and actually still stay engaged. It's possible to really be quietly present in this dangerous, haunting world of the Ghosthead Oak and start to know it, or at least to know how much you don't know about it.

The book is small, but it penetrates like a bullet. It's as specific as a fingerprint, and as unforgettable as a face. I'm impressed with Brewer's restraint, both in language and in characterization. There is nothing goopy and romantic about this widow, nothing drearily tragic about her hero either. The wilderness is hard, and the book is hard, but it's also beautiful in its simplicity.

The Widow and the Tree is a prime example of why MacAdam/Cage is great and would be sorely missed.

Water for Elephants is a Master Class in Craft

2010-02-13T17:14:00.000-05:00

Water for Elephants was a runaway bestseller, a breakout book for author Sara Gruen, and a book club darling. The comments you hear in reaction to this book range from "Loved it" to "It blew my mind, changed my life, and I chewed my own wrists open when it was over." Not everyone likes every book, but I have to say that this one has met with universal approval from readers of every stripe. Writers, take heed. Water for Elephants is more than a good story; it's a seminar in technique from which aspiring writers could definitely benefit.

Lesson #1: Milieu. Choose to write in a world that people want to read about. Gruen set her book in a traveling circus during the depression. I wanted to read it before I had any idea what the plot might be like just because of where it was. For this book, you could almost write the pitch just based on the setting: the time, the place, the freaks, the violence, the hidden world, the desperation... it is automatically interesting just because of where and when it is. Want to write another book about someone who lives in an apartment in a trendy neighborhood in a modern city? Good for you. Have fun tweaking that one. Sure, Gruen had to research the hell out of her book, but she wisely chose a deep deep deposit of fuel in which to sink her well.

Lesson #2: Pacing. Water for Elephants has no down time. There is no break in the plot, no difficult middle section, no long period of rising action and building complication. The story goes from peak to peak, escalating constantly from the day the main character sets foot on that train to the very end. Gruen provides relief from the action by switching from the main plot in the past to the framing story in the present, but she never gives us a slow chapter in the circus plot. Looking at the structure and pacing of WFE, you realize that the thing about writing a novel is, you really don't have time for those slow chapters. Are you sitting on a middle section that kinda drags, just because things are "developing"? Are you happy with a plateau in the center of your book? Don't be lazy. Ratchet up the slope of that line that takes you from low start to high finish. Steeper is better. Don't waste time on low energy chapters.

Lesson #3: Transparency. In this book, there are no distractions from the characters, the story, and the world that Gruen is revealing to us. Her prose is not glamorous; it's not fancy. It is effective because it disappears. It's the kind of book you forget you're reading. You think you're listening, and not listening to some pretentious twat rhapsodizing just to hear herself talk, but listening to a story urgently told, every detail important. Instead of witnessing the construction of a narrative, it's like we're seeing a curtain pulled back. The focus is only the story, only the work, and it's so clearly rendered it's like a pane of glass. Any imperfection and you know you're looking through a window. So when you're writing away and you're falling in love with a turn of the phrase, a bit of something you think will be called "lyrical" or whatever, think carefully about whether what you're adding in there is going to show up in that pane of glass, or whether it's going to work to make the view more clear.

Writers, if you're waiting to read Water for Elephants, don't wait any longer. There are more than a few ways to tell a story, but here is a very successful formula for you: 1. Write in an interesting world. 2. Write without pause, relentlessly, every scene amplified and alive. 3. Write transparently. You're not the focus, the words aren't the focus, but the story is the focus.

Ten Questions to Ask Your Friend Who Just Read Your Novel

2010-01-07T20:21:00.000-05:00

An aspiring author recently asked me to help him figure out what to say to his friends before he gave them his novel to read. He wants them to read critically, give him honest feedback, but he's afraid they'll just phone it in because they like him.

When you hand your friend a novel you've written, he or she knows you've slaved over it for months, maybe years, and how much it means to you, and how devastating it would be if he told you "Oops, it's terrible." He doesn't want to be critical, or hurt your feelings, which is why the most common response from a friend who critiques you is something along the lines of "It's good!" or "Good job!" Hearing "I liked it" presented as a critique is not helpful to you at all. But how can you get your friend to be honest when she only wants to make you feel good?

Here are ten questions to ask that will not put your friend in a tough spot, but will still give you some useful input on your novel:

1. At what point did you feel like “Ah, now the story has really begun!”
2. What were the points where you found yourself skimming?
3. Which setting in the book was clearest to you as you were reading it? Which do you remember the best?
4. Which character would you most like to meet and get to know?
5. What was the most suspenseful moment in the book?
6. If you had to pick one character to get rid of, who would you axe?
7. Was there a situation in the novel that reminded you of something in your own life?
8. Where did you stop reading, the first time you cracked open the manuscript? (Can show you where your first dull part is, and help you fix your pacing.)
9. What was the last book you read, before this? And what did you think of it? (This can put their comments in context in surprising ways, when you find out what their general interests are. It might surprise you.)
10. Finish this sentence: “I kept reading because…”

Your friend is probably still going to tell you, "It was good!" However, if you can ask any specific questions, and read between the lines, you can still get some helpful information out of even the most well-meaning reader.

Maybe Female Writers Just Aren't Relevant?

2009-12-31T20:10:00.000-05:00

It's the time of year when magazines and web sites are publishing their "best of" list. This year we not only have to hear about the "Best Books of 2009" but also "Best Books of the Decade" even though the decade doesn't officially end until next year. As December wanes, it's the traditional time for women everywhere to scan the names on the "Best Books" list, realize they are woefully underrepresented, and complain. In Publisher's Weekly's list, none of the top ten were written by women, and only 29 of the top 100 were. Hmm, what a shame.

As Juliana Baggott pointed out in her Washington Post OpEd yesterday, "Amazon recently announced its 100 best books of 2009 -- in the top 10, there are two women. Top 20? Four. Poets & Writers shared a list of 50 of the most inspiring writers in the world this month; women made up only 36 percent." It's an incontrovertible fact: Women writers aren't as celebrated as men.

While Baggott and others call out a sexist bias, Baggott goes a bit farther, asking why this imbalance in artistic recognition exists. Too often feminists and other axe-grinders reel around shaking their little fists and saying "This is bad! Bad list!" Then they totter away, ending the train of thought in comfortable outrage. But this isn't about morality, or whether something is right or wrong. This isn't church, and we don't get points for being right. It is what it is. The interesting question is "Why is it the way it is?"

Baggott suggests the lists favor men because they favor male themes: "war, boyhood, adventure." She says that she was discouraged, early in career, from writing about motherhood, a female theme, because "it would be perceived as weak." So, maybe the reason women aren't "Best of" is because they don't write about "Best of" things.

I have to agree with Baggott's theory. Women generally do not write about war and adventure. The female purview may be, as Baggott posits, emotion and motherhood, love and feelings. Faced with the undeniable evidence of the "Best of" phenomenon, we have to ask ourselves, how important is motherhood? How important is emotion? Let me ask you something. When have you ever heard motherhood immortalized in a historical date? Probably only when it coincided with the birth of... a man. And probably only if it was a man who participated in war and adventure. When has emotion left a mark on history? History is war, sex, and violence. The female issues do not make it onto the calendar.

The list is real. The numbers are what they are. As I see it there are three possible explanations:

1. The list is sexist, purposefully oppressing women. The solution in this case would be, I guess, to burn down the list. Make a new list. Get those bastards. This seems kind of weak and paranoid.

2. The list is false, reflecting a lame and lingering cultural bias that is on its way out. The solution is to wait. After all, we didn't count the black writers, or the South American writers. It will all come around, given more time. I guess this is what I would like to believe.

The third possibility is more alarming than the others, because it is the simplest explanation, and therefore the most viable:

3. The list is right. The things that women write about are neither culturally nor historically significant, and the books that women write are not the best books.

Baggott mentions the deification of Faulkner, Chekhov, Hemingway. I have to ask: In the last decade, what woman would you put up against these giants? Maybe there were moderns that could carry the torch -- Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, or others from the 20th century: Harper Lee, Willa Cather, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison. But now? Where is my Gertrude Stein? Who can stand up against Junot Diaz and Khaled Hosseini and Kazuo Ishiguro? Is it really supposed to be Alice McDermott?

The lesson of the list is that nobody's going to do us any favors. We're not going to get prizes just for showing up and writing our little books. Girl books are great; I like to read them and write them. But if we're writing girl books, we're not getting on "Best of" lists, and that is the reality. Do with it what you will.

I'm writing this as a woman who has spent the last ten years working on a novel that is about motherhood. Yes, it's also about death, space, humanity, and artificial intelligence, but mostly? It's about motherhood. And I have to say, as that woman, that I'm looking hard at the book I'm writing, at the things I'm saying, and wondering, "Is this going to make it onto the calendar?" Yeah, motherhood is important, we wouldn't be here without it. But we wouldn't be here without eating either, and I don't see a lot of cookbooks winning Pulitzers. Maybe it's not about writing about "man themes" but about human themes. Maybe it's not about pandering to the list, but evolving, as a gender, into people who address the important stuff, the big stuff: death, war, sex, adventure, as it pertains to women and men. Where is our Cold Mountain? Where is our Kite Runner? Seems like the greatest innovation in female writing in the last decade is the mainstreaming of Chick-Lit. And that is a little embarrassing.

Everyday Psychokillers: A History for Girls by Lucy Corin

2009-12-28T10:12:00.001-05:00

That's no catcher, and this is not rye.

Everyday Psycho Killers: A History for Girls

Lucy Corin's first novel, Everyday Psychokillers: A History for Girls, published by FC2, begins as a wild, unapologetic mess. The story of a young girl in southern Florida, Psychokillers reminded me initially of Lynda Barry's Cruddy, Kathy Acker's Blood and Guts in High School, or a number of other ragged, jagged narratives yanked out of confused teenaged women. It's messy in that way, in that essentially female way, and its zigs and zags are almost familiar to me, this unpredictable, non-linear tempo.

It's the kind of book that leads reviewers and jacket copy writers to create lists of disparate elements: a Ted Bundy reject, the God Osiris, a Caribbean slave turned pirate, a circus performer living in a box, broken horses, a Seminole chief in a swamp, and a murderous babysitter. And the book is good in this way; it's inventive, fresh, out of control. You spend most of the first half asking yourself, "Where is she going with this?"

But ultimately what's interesting about the book is not the way it's fragmented. The story is told in mad, intense chunks, increasingly so disconnected from the central narrative of the young girl. We go from a fairly chronological account of a home life, a school life, of this main character, into digressions that start as anecdotes or asides from the character herself and evolve into separate stories -- stories of death and killers, murders, fear. That aspect of it is great, and Corin pulls together a very bold collage.

The interesting thing, though, is how it isn't fragmented, how the book spirals back on itself, revisiting ideas, images, and even sentence structures, so that while in some ways time, characters, and realities are fractured, the idea of the book spirals inward to a point, and comes together where the book blows apart. There are six or seven absolutely tight and monstrous pages toward the end that clearly express the book's central theme. I realized, reading them, the path I had to take to get there, to be told I am a killer, and that I am being killed, and that both are me. That realization is at the center of the spiral.

Looking at it from the top, a spiral moving outward looks the same as a spiral moving inward. It's not immediately obvious how Corin's book functions in this way, but the destination is worth the journey, and the investment in the book, you will find, sneaks up on you. Along the way, you'll find chapters that work as short stories, you'll see a dazzling slideshow of images you definitely have not seen before, and you'll find yourself falling into suspense over this character. Yes, in the middle of a novel built of formal experimentation, you'll be worried about this girl, and the question central to her psycho psyche -- will she kill or be killed?

Elegy for a Fabulous World by Alta Ifland

2009-12-24T09:40:00.000-05:00

Elegy for a Fabulous World by Alta Ifland

Publisher: Ninebark Press

For its second offering to the hungry world of literary fiction, Ninebark Press brings us Alta Ifland's short story collection, Elegy for a Fabulous World. From the very first story, Ifland had me in her grasp with merciless, darkly funny tales from her childhood in communist Ukraine. In bleak, unapologetic images, she shows us the gypsies that camped outside her town, the gravedigger the children all harrassed, the way the trash collectors failed, and the magic of one coveted bottle of Coca Cola. You can read the titular story online at AGNI Magazine. Not my favorite example, but the strange picture of what constitutes a seaside vacation for Soviets will give you an idea of what the rest of the book has to offer.

Ifland's gift is control. She shrugs at absurdity with the measured pace of a female Nabokov. Yet just as you're sinking into a mild rhythm of predictable slice-of-life revelations, she jerks the image just a bit, skews it enough to remind you: this is foreign. So, the mute adopted sister you're accustomed to seeing, with her iconic silence and her mild beauty, may not stop as a symbol of some unknowable aspect of childhood. She may suddenly go jetting off into space as the story takes a sudden flinch outside the deftly drawn limitations of the village, the family, the characters, the way of life. Ifland injects just enough of these blank surprises to elevate her work from competent memoir into the realm of contemporary craft.

The second half of the book delivers more typical contemporary short stories. Well crafted, interesting, satisfying, but lacking the depth and impact of the first section.

A few stories into the collection, when I was so enchanted with the voice, the landscape, the complex dark shadows of it, it occurred to me how impossible, how thin it would all seem if these same stories were set in modern times, in the loud, plastic American world. Is it possible for her, I wondered, to create this same kind of elegant starkness without the exterior starkness of village life, without cell phones or televisions or that brisk cacophony a more contemporary set of characters would be wading through. There's a timelessness to the childhood that Ifland renders that would be, maybe, fractured by the introduction of technology, information, something faster and less private. The second half of the book answered, to some extent, my question, as the stories that took place in office buildings and other less austere locations didn't have the same effect on me as those in the sort of anti-fairytale settings of the earlier pieces. So the mute sister could only fly away into space out of the house without wires attached to it, and the man crying in the graveyard could only be as profound if his life existed in rumor and legend, instead of a newspaper story.

The best thing about the book is the way the identities shift and change, particularly the mother and the main character herself. One can find these common characters in the earlier stories but not necessarily pin down a "she" throughout, or even an "I." A great example of this is a story where the main character takes her husband back to the old country to meet her parents, whose desire to feed him and nurture him and impress him with food nearly kills him. Her return to her homeland, accompanied by the uninitiated American, made me think of my experience reading the book, how hopeless it was for the husband to understand her family, or for her to show him to them properly. Ultimately, there is only the reality of what they are, and what he is, physically, to show for it. And this was what impressed me about Elegy for a Fabulous World. Ultimately, it is in surreal images and what facts and memories can be clearly delivered that this other, fabulous world exists. And if this old, communist life can only be understood in fragmentary, shifting narratives, looped through with the myths of the old country and the realities of the new, then Ifland's atttempt is a success.

For more information: Purchase Elegy for a Fabulous World, visit Alta Ifland's web site, read more about Ninebark Press.

What's on your Inspiration Shelf?

2009-09-20T00:52:00.002-04:00

If life is finite, your book stash must be too.

I think that hoarding books is a stand against mortality. If we've read them already, we might want to read them again. If we haven't read them yet, we might want to. Looking around at my shelves and boxes, I want to believe I will have time before I die to read them all, maybe again and again. Even if my current rate of reading means I'd need to live three lifetimes. To admit that I can't read all these would be to admit that at some point I'll stop reading. Difficult to imagine.

I recently some changes to my personal book hoard, and culled three boxes of books from the stacks. I decided to get rid of all the books I've read that I do not want to read again. That helped. But it also hurt to say goodbye to these objects. I'm tech-positive in so many ways, but like so many writers and readers, I am in love with the physical presence of books, and I have a hard time getting rid of them. A hard time embracing Kindle, and hard drives.

To make myself feel better, as I was sorting through the books I would let go, I decided to make another stack of books that I would never let go, that I would fetishize in the extreme. I made my inspiration shelf of books I've read that motivate me to write, a little shrine to their actual selves, a space for them to take up unapologetically in the world. If I must be mortal and my reading experience must be finite, then let's make it exquisitely finite, limit my great books to one shelf only. These are the books that are important to my life, at least, right now.

Here's my list, in no particular order. For some, it's the scope of the book. For some, it's the daring. The personal connection. The theme. The innovation. For a few it's just the time it was in my life, and how much it affected me. This is not a list of great books, or a list of personal favorites, but these are the books I can look at and feel something in me reaching. So, it varies:

Moby Dick by Herman Melville. The very copy I first read in high school. I have read it maybe 20 times, and in this copy I can see all my teenage notes.

House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman.

Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Penrod by Booth Tarkington. A book I read again and again when I was a child, before I understood the irony, before I understood racism at all.

My Horse and Other Stories by Stacey Levine

You're a Bad Man Aren't You by Susannah Breslin\

Between Georgia by Joshilyn Jackson

The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

Observatory Mansions by Edward Carey

The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead

The Most of P.G. Wodehouse

We the Living by Ayn Rand

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

Dubliners by James Joyce

Candide by Voltaire

So, I've broken it down to these 20 volumes. If I add another, I think I should subtract one -- that's how the brain works best. My own two books are not on the shelf, but I hope my next one will be. It's what I aspire to: to write something that belongs in my brain with these.

Challenge: What's on your inspiration shelf? What one book would definitely have to be there? If you take a picture, I'd like to see.

How Twilight Killed "The Wasteland"

2009-09-03T00:37:00.000-04:00

Lev Grossman, book reviewer for Time Magazine, has bravely prophesied an end to modernism. In his Wall Street Journal article, Grossman posits that the modernist stranglehold on novel-writing is finally over. A new day has come! Nuts to you, Joyce, Eliot, Faulkner, and Kafka. You guys are history! No longer will readers suffer through beautiful language to get to an epiphany. Today's readers want plot, plot, and more plot. "Lyricism is on the wane," gloats Grossman, citing high sales of the Twilight series as proof that plot trumps beauty for these kids today.

Grossman, possibly unaware that Joyce and Eliot have been dead for fifty years, believes that these "modernists" have tricked us into thinking that a decent plot is indicative of a weak book. So, we're secretly reading mysteries and scifi, wishing literary writers would just take heed. "Should we still be writing difficult novels?" he asks, "Isn't it time we made our peace with plot?"

Grossman has graciously forgiven the moderns for blowing up the conventions of the Victorian novel. But he now feels that the time has come to embrace plot again. His evidence? The popularity of young adult novels, which never aspired to disregard plot in the first place. For Grossman, there have been no intervening literary movements. No novels of consequence that delivered any measure of plot with their lyricism, or any lyricism with their genre. The article has the intellectual weight of a strawberry tart, and yet the internet is upside down with panic over it. Is literary fiction over? Do we all have to start writing vampire novels?

Relax. Grossman's thinking is reductive, cowardly, but mostly just silly.

Consider these three major flaws:

1. It's weak on literary history. Did modernists shatter plot? Maybe. But look at the novels Grossman cites: Wharton, Hemingway, Lawrence, Fitzgerald. Really? These writers may be moderns, but in theme and ethos, not in formal experimentation. Pound, yes. Kafka, yeah. Joyce, okay. But Grossman's list of defiant modernist novels is full of plot. Sorry.

2. He uses the word "Pavlovianly."

3. His prognostications don't make sense. In proving his point that plot is back in style, Grossman uses Chabon, Lethem, Niffenegger, Gaiman, and Susanna Clarke as examples. These are the literary champions that are boldly bringing back the storylines we have all been silently, hopelessly craving for 80 years. However, these writers are all contemporaries of the Twilight juggernaut. The figures that Grossman so gloomily references (adult trade sales down 2.3% while Twilight author Stephanie Meyer sells 8 million books) would seem to reflect that while Chabon and Niffenegger may have been slinging Grossman-approved level of plot, the book-buying public wanted to buy Twilight books anyway.

I hope that writers of difficult books will not pause to listen to Grossman's confused ramblings about how literary movements from one hundred years ago are stultifying contemporary fiction. I hope writers will disregard all petulant whines about how "we the people" really want to read inglorious garbage like Twilight. I hope writers of difficult books will not take plot advice from a guy who lifted his own plot from Harry Potter. Yes, Twilight is selling. Yes, cheap fiction does move. It always has. But greatness is not easy, in reading or writing, and you weren't really writing for guys like Grossman anyway. Write for the smart people, the people that filled a football stadium to hear T.S. Eliot, the people who still celebrate Bloomsday. Write for me. I will still work for an epiphany.

To Hell with Publishing: Neither Irreverent nor Inventive

2009-08-17T00:33:00.000-04:00

The name promises much. The name inspires obstreperous agreement. Yeah, to hell with publishing, anyway! This is 2009. We're all about downloads, and Kindle, and Twittered novels, and free information, and Google books, and plots we can download via wires straight into our arteries, and plugging into authors via Friendfeed, and instant updates, and modules! To hell with publishing, to hell with journals, to hell with prizes, to hell with first novels. Yeah! Fist-pump!

From a group of projects so provocatively named, I now expect mind-blowing innovation. I expect earthshaking progress. I expect, at the very least, heaps of scorn for the old way of doing things, and arms flung wide open to the new, digital world. Please, make sense of fiction on Twitter for me. Please, package blogged novels. Please, help me to understand new media. I beg you! Unfortunately, what I'm finding here is same old, same old. Instead of revolution, "To Hell with Publishing" is pushing cardstock, ink, and contracts. Readings at a library under a dropped ceiling. Submission guidelines -- click here! And please include a cover letter.

"To Hell with Publishing" is just another small press. Like every other small press in the history of earth, they desire to "return vital writing, and in particularly, the best in contemporary fiction, to the main literary stage." Well bra-thumping-vo. They publish... books. Books made of paper and glue. And they publish journals. They have a prize for... unpublished manuscripts, but unagented manuscripts are not considered. Please submit paper copies in triplicate, because at "To Hell with Publishing" they are all about the snail mail.

That name followed by that business model is like the sound of a trumpet fanfare followed by the sound of a drunk falling downstairs. Where's the innovation? Where's the middle finger raised to the literary establishment? Listen: Here are the two ways that "To Hell with Publishing" bites its thumb at the mainstream presses.

1. They will only publish first novels. No second novels! Oh my god! Their plan is that other publishers will swoop in and take over their authors' careers after novel #1. Because yeah, mainstream publishers are so interested in picking up seconds after the author has been deflowered of his first novel. Do I really have to pursue that analogy?

2. Their journal (To Hell with Journals) will only have 26 issues. They have decided this... in advance. Only 26 and no more, even if thousands of screaming fans are lined up outside the bookshop, demanding just one more issue, tearing up their organs in despair that only 26 issues can possibly be produced. They will stand innovatively firm on this principle: THEY WILL FOLD AFTER TWO YEARS.

These two policies manage to be simultaneously defeatist and overly ambitious. Yeah, we MEANT that journal to go under, and we MEANT that author to never produce another book, because that's all part of the rakish, devil-may-care plan we have here at "To Hell with Publishing." Look, there are already small presses out there doing exactly what THWP desires to do, but without these weird stipulations that seem to undercut any kind of longevity or long term relationship between press, author, and reader. Obviously a few more domain names are needed: tohellwithlegitimacy.com, tohellwithauthorloyalty.com, and tohellwithrelevance.com. "To Hell with Publishing" is a profound disappointment, leaving this reader still looking for the next great thing. When it comes along, I have a feeling that "To Hell with Publishing" would be a really cool name for it. Unfortunately, that domain name is already taken.

For more info: I found out about To Hell With Publishing from the Book Ninja.

The Significant Objects Project

2009-07-02T00:25:00.000-04:00

How to create a significant object:

1. Find some tchotchke. Any tchotchke will do. The weirder the better.

2. Pretend in your brain that it is significant.

3. Write a story telling everyone about how significant it is.

4. Sell the object, and the story, on Ebay.

In other words, (from the web site of the Significant Objects project): A talented, creative writer invents a story about an object. Invested with new significance by this fiction, the object should — according to our hypothesis — acquire not merely subjective but objective value. How to test our theory? Via eBay!

In order for the significance to be created, the object must begin with no significance at all, before the story is written. The items in the project were collected at thrift stores and garage sales, obtained for very little coin. If an object of no actual value gets valuable via its place in a piece of fiction, then these garage sale finds (the web site categorizes them as talismans, totems, evidence, and fossils) should be commanding a higher price on Ebay than they did at the garage sale. According to the evidence, this is actually happening. Take for example Susannah Breslin's story about the button in the photo, the All American Official Necking Team button. The button is for sale on Ebay, along with the story, and the bidding is now over $35. It was listed at $0.50, which was the price it commanded at the thrift store. There are five days left -- who knows how high this piece could sell for?

The idea of making "real" the objects that appear in fictional work is not new. Here's one example: When author Joshilyn Jackson toured with her book The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, she took along a quilt that represented the quilt created by her artist main character. The actual quilt was made by collage artist Pamela Allen, and brought the quilt in the book to life in the smallest detail. Another example: last month a gallery in the UK showed a collection of books that exist only as titles in other books. The idea of an object from a piece of writing coming to life as a physical object you can hold in your hand is kind of magical, it creates the kind of fetish object that deserves the title "totem" or "talisman."

However, when I think of these pieces from SignificantObjects.com, I am less interested in the value created in the object via the fiction, and more interested in the value created in the fiction, via the object. How difficult would it be for an author to sell a short story on Ebay, without the object attached? Especially a story given in full, which a potential buyer could immediately read online or print out for him/herself? Pretty difficult. Yet here is a story, connected to an old button found at a thrift store, that's selling for the price of three paperbacks. Remember, we are in a time when even books are seen as archaic, where people download cheap digital versions of novels, and fiction is readily available all over the internet in a bazillion online magazines.

Maybe what this buyer is actually purchasing is a feeling of ownership that escapes the average reader of a Kindle download or a mass market paperback. This reader will possess the button, and therefore possess the story, in a way that no one else will or can. Like an illustrated text, before the printing press was invented, there is a real sense of exclusivity to this type of writing -- it can only truly be owned by one person.

For more info: For more significant objects to bid on, follow @significobs on Twitter.

Alice Hoffman Freaks Out, and Plus Her Book is Bad

2009-06-30T00:14:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, angry author Alice Hoffman used Twitter to publish a reviewer's phone number and (misspelled) email address. She encouraged her followers to "tell [the reviewer] off," after reviewer Roberta Silman published a lukewarm review of Hoffman's most recent book, The Story Sisters, in the Boston Globe. Instructing followers to "Tell her what u think of snarky critics," Hoffman caused eyebrows around the twitterverse to raise a few languid millimeters, as the book world vaguely pondered whether reviewers should really be punished for saying what they think.

Their conclusion: No, they should not. After receiving some flack for her tweet, Hoffman tried to turn this tantrum into a principled stance, saying, "Girls are taught to be gracious and keep their mouths shut. We don't have to. And we writers don't have to say nothing when someone tries to destroy us." Uh, yeah.

In an incredibly synchronous coincidence, I just yesterday finished reading Alice Hoffman's novel Here on Earth. Do I dare tell you exactly how I feel about this book? Will my phone number be posted on Twitter tomorrow, beside an impassioned call to action?

I did not like Here on Earth. I only picked it up because my brain somehow crossed wires and I thought I was picking up an Angela Carter book. Carter wrote The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman. She is not, as I now know, related in any way to Alice Hoffman. I had never read Alice Hoffman before.

Here on Earth is a romance novel dressed up as literary chick-lit. Its central character is an unlikeable woman whose choices are dense and reprehensible, and whose family and friends are only slightly less loathsome. Switching through point-of-view characters with irritating frequency and loping along in an uncomfortable present tense, the book spirals outward away from an increasingly irrational and self-destructive heroine as if the plot is mirroring the reader's desire to get out of her unsavory story. Several times in the book, young characters are told that they just don't know anything about love. Maybe my failure to connect with this novel is a result of a similar misunderstanding.

Or maybe it's because of lines like this: "He can spend hours watching a wounded cedar beetle and weep over its rare beauty, as well as its agony." Or this: "He knows what can happen to any man who won't let go of his pain." These lines were written without sarcasm about two different male characters, and they're not even the ones we're *supposed* to hate! Maybe it's because of the close attention paid to sweaters and cookies. Ultimately, though, I didn't buy the violence, the pain, the delusions, or even the love.

The Boston Globe said about Here on Earth: "A sound addition to an impressive body of work." I wonder if that reviewer would have been called out on Twitter, had it been around back in 1997 when Here on Earth was published? Because all that reviewer really said was, "Alice Hoffman has written another of many books." And sometimes, if you're trying to be nice, that's all you can really say.

UPDATE: Alice Hoffman's twitter account is no longer. However, Gawker has screen caps.

Here's a list of the people I referenced in the article if you want to follow them on Twitter:

Alice Hoffman @alicehof (deleted? suspended? torn down in a fit of rage?)

Ron Charles, Washington Post Writer: @roncharles

Islinda, outraged fan: @darkonfire

Thanks to Maud Newton who retweeted it: @maudnewton

Thanks to Susannah Breslin who sent it to me: @reversecowpie

And this is me: @lostcheerio

Reading Wickett's Remedy in the Time of Swine Flu

2009-06-28T00:09:00.001-04:00

You think you've got it bad?

Myla Goldberg's novel, Wickett's Remedy, begins pleasantly enough, as a quaint period piece about a young girl in the early 20th century, escaping South Boston to experience big city life as a shop girl selling men's shirts. Lydia Kilkenny finds love, gets married to a medical student, and sets up house. The narrative is augmented by marginal notes in the point of view of ancillary characters, and newspaper articles and editorial letters from the time, and other snatches of dialogue.

Then the Spanish Influenza happens. The book stops being cute, derails itself from a nice little plot about a ghetto girl who conquers the world, and heads into dark and dangerous territory. Now the marginal notes, the newspaper articles, and disembodied dialogues and unexplained bits of correspondence become sinister, threatening, and the main character, who had seemed a little too sweet, too plucky, too dear, is now our only hope. The book was extremely moving, after things got dire. Once I got to the awful part, I could hardly put it down. The multiplicity of voices becomes part of the story itself, as if the only way the unfairness, the starkness, the confusion of the times could be portrayed is through this fragmentation of the narrative.

Goldberg illuminates a world of which I had absolutely no knowledge, no experience. One third of the world's population was infected with this flu. The mortality rate was 10%. That meant that more than 3% of the world's population died of this disease. Seventeen million in India. Six hundred thousand in the US. The most gruesome fact of the pandemic was that the disease killed strong young adults more effectively than the old or young, because the stronger your immune system the more violently the disease came on. Truly horrific. And the things that happened on the Navy ships. Goldberg hints at horrors, via snatches of dialogue and reports, that defy belief.

I highly recommend Wickett's Remedy to anyone who has been loudly panicking about the swine flu, has felt themselves put upon and afflicted by this outbreak, or has been walking around in a face mask. The things Goldberg will show you will make your life in 2009 seem like a paradise of health and vigor.

How to Compete for a Woman with Twilight's Edward Cullen

2009-06-26T00:03:00.000-04:00

The coat is key.

As we all know, Edward Cullen, dark and dangerous (but not too dangerous!) star of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, has ruined women on regular guys for the next ten years. (Read this: Ten ways Twilight has ruined a generation of high school girlfriends.) Merciful creature that I am, I have some tips for the victims of this literary vampire, who has sucked away your chances for getting a prom date and left you feeling fleshy and inadequate.

1. Purchase a pea coat. After that, if you feel okay, get some pants that actually fit. Wear them together at the same time. If you have anything in your wardrobe in any shade of red, green, or yellow, push it to the back and don't touch it again.

2. Tell a girl you're bad, very very bad. Then never do anything even remotely bad.

3. Get your hair off your face. Purchase mud, shellac, cream, pomade, or wax but *not* hairspray. Squeeze your product into your hands, and then grab at your head as if it's causing you agonizing pain. Continue to clutch your skull until all your hair is pointing away from your forehead. For style reference, check out Brandon and Dylan from Beverly Hills, 90210 circa 1992. No more Disney Channel shag.

4. If you can't think of anything to say to a girl, just glare at her. Never explain anything. Say almost nothing at all. If she asks you what you're thinking, put your arm around her and look away.

5. Imagine the expression you'd have on your face if someone stabbed you with a pencil in the gallbladder, spleen, pancreas or pyloric valve (any other dark, secret, unlocatable place in your abdomen will do). This should now become your default expression.

6. Your excuse for not doing anything should be that you want to too much. As in, you couldn't call because you wanted to *too much.* You couldn't wait for her because you wanted to *too much.*

7. Refuse to do anything physical with your girl, and only relent when pressed to extremes. At each base, you must stop yourself and her from going farther at least three times (claiming, of course, to want her too much).

8. Don't hum, laugh, punch other guys, or behave in any way that could be perceived as happy, relaxed, or lively. Instead, hold a book in your hand and stare off into the distance, maybe about half a football field away.

9. Never think of or mention football again, except if you're using it as a reference point for your distracted, tortured staring. Do not participate in sports, no, not even baseball unless you are an actual vampire.

10. Lead with your forehead. You should always be able to see a little bit of your eyebrow hair as you are peering out from under your brow. This is particularly true if you're attempting a smile. And your smile should always say, "I'm full, but I could eat more" and never "I'm happy" or "That's funny" or "Do you like me?"

Now, there are some lengths to which you should not go to bag a Twilighter. DO NOT:

1. Attempt to run up a tree.

2. Take off your shirt.

3. Wear lipstick.

4. Pretend you can type blood by sight.

5. Jump off a building.

6. Engage in warfare with a rogue vampire.

7. Take her to meet your family.

8. Attempt to stop a speeding car with your body.

9. Drive like you're immortal.

10. Eat a raw deer.

Good luck! Happy hunting, regular guys!

Ten Ways Twilight Has Ruined a Generation of High School Girlfriends

2009-06-23T23:58:00.001-04:00

Your girlfriend is mine.

It used to be hard to get a date in high school. Now, thanks to Twilight, it's got to be damn near impossible. What Mr. Darcy did for husbands, Edward Cullen is doing for boyfriends, and another generation of women is losing interest in the happy jocks while musing over the dark-haired, troubled guy with all that anguish in his eyes.

Edward Cullen is the fictional teen vampire / Byronic anti-hero in Twilight that seduces awkward, brainy heroine Bella Swan. The characters in the book bump around school and rainy Washington, being moody and misunderstanding each other, as Bella and Edward fall in love. Then there are mean vampires, and then more love.

So what makes Edward the Vampire Fantasy Boyfriend such a PR problem for real life teens who just want to get a date to take to dinner and hang out with at the prom? What do the girls see in those black gold eyes?

10. The reason Edward rejects you initially is because he loves you *too much*.

9. Edward has super powers like running superfast and walking up trees, which he can perform while carrying you, making you feel very small and thin.

8. He's strong as an ox but physically effeminate and beautiful, looks great in a full face of makeup.

7. He can save you from speeding SUVs and vampires and thugs without sweating. If a real boy saved you from a thug he'd probably rehash the whole event in front of his friends forty times, but Edward just wanders off.

6. When he's being cryptic, and you push him to explain himself, it just makes him like you *even more.* Real boys tend to have to get off the phone when this happens.

5. When he's moody, it's because he wants to eat people, not because he's about to break up with you.

4. He can read everyone else's mind, but yours is a total mystery.

3. At the beach, his skin turns into diamonds. Real boys turn red and blotchy.

2. He's immortal. Real boys can be killed by almost anything.

And the number one reason that Edward Cullen has ruined things for average teenage boys:

1. He is overcome with deep, torturous lust for you, but he can never, never act on it, or you will die.

Edward Cullen is the safe boyfriend. He will never make you actually take your pants off, but he will constantly reassure you that he only wants to ravage you.

What does this mean? Teenage girls don't actually want to be ravaged. They want to be desired but not deflowered, that they want to be constantly, urgently threatened with intercourse, but never have to experience it. Edward will never, ever satisfy himself with Bella, because doing so would kill her. Let me make you a metaphor map: Loss of virginity = death. Edward = impotent. Therefore the perfect teen boyfriend.

So what's a regular guy to do, in the face of this kind of competition? Now that the movie's out, even the illiterate girls have Edward as a measuring stick for male perfection.

Next time, I'll give you ten ways that regular, average boys can compete with Edward Cullen, using sneaky tactics and clever ploys instead of actual vampirism.

From Susannah's "A Photo a Day," June 22, 2009

2009-06-23T22:15:00.001-04:00

A Photo a Day, June 22, 2009
Originally uploaded by Susannah Breslin

Shut up, Barbie.

Ten Words to Make You Sound Smart in a Book Discussion

2009-06-17T23:47:00.001-04:00

Try to impress Jacques Derrida.

Here are ten words to stock your conversational arsenal that will make you sound like you spent six years in a PhD program reading Derrida and Joyce and drinking absinthe. Warning: With the wrong audience, you might end up punched in the face or wearing your underwear outside your pants involuntarily. Use at your discretion.

1. Hegemony: This word describes a stronger group inflicting its self-serving ideas on a weaker group, while making the weaker group believe these ideas are awesome. Hegemony is pretty much a cuss word, for book nuts. Example: "This is a total hegemony, man!"

2. Proust: Proust is a fiction writer, and gay, and French, and dead. Those are the facts you need. His most famous work was over 3000 pages long. It's about the nature of memory and art, and no one except his mother has ever read it all. You can say it contains whatever character or plot twist you wish, and never be contradicted.

3. Deconstructionism: Contrary to popular use, "deconstruct" does not mean the opposite of construct. It actually means to reduce a written work to its most basic assumptions and then show how those assumptions are paradoxical and therefore meaningless. Instead of good vs. evil, it's neither. This is not a synonym for "analyze." Sorry, Sean Hannity.

Marcel Proust is scintillated by your discourse.

4. Hermeneutics: This word means the study of ways to find meaning in a text. There are a million ways to go about finding meaning, all predicated on the idea that it can be found. Believe it or not, there are people who believe that hermeneutics and meaning are stupid and boring. For serious rockstar points, publically discard hermaneutics and everything it implies.

5. Post-colonialism: At some point in the 20th century, the world decided that making colonies was bad, and that reading any native literature from a colonized country as "cute" and saying "It's neat how they keep writing things down!" was also bad. So we had to develop a new term for our new enlightened way of interacting with this type of discourse. Post-colonialism means "after the colonizers decided the colonized might actually have something to say."

6. Foucault: Foucault is a philosopher, and gay, and French, and dead. He wrote in a very smartypants manner about a bunch of stuff, including how there is no truth or meaning, no way to interpret discourse. He was super-against hermeneutics. In fact, if you want to disagree with something that ends in -ic or -ism, you can probably cite Foucault.

7. French Feminism: French feminists invented the idea of a female kind of writing, "ecriture feminine" which is super-sexy and completely different from phallocentric male discourse. French feminists believed women should write about women, and their bodies. If you use the phrase "writing the body" you will get knowing nods from male friends and phone numbers from the girls.

You fail to convince Heidegger.

8. Joycean: James Joyce's catalog is varied and deep, which means that "Joycean" can go in front of any noun you want, including "Joycean monologue" and "Joycean symbolism" and "Joycean analogy" and even "Joycean discourse."

9. Heterogeneous: Heterogeneity is good because diversity is good. Therefore the word "homogeneous" is bad, just like hegemony is bad. Note: None of these words can be properly applied to milk. Just political movements, world populations, ideas, and granola.

10. Discourse: Use this word in place of any synonym for language. Any chunk of words, spoken or written, can be discourse. Do not ever, under any circumstances, call words "words" or sentences "sentences." Try "heterogenous discursive units." For bonus points, find three places I've used the word "discourse" in this very article, just trying to sound smart!

So, have we learned anything today? Did you know all of this already? What's your favorite word to use in a book group?

For more info: There is a lot more info. But do you really want it?

Blogging is Dead. Long Live Blogging.

2009-06-16T10:30:00.001-04:00

Is it just me or does blogging these days seem tragically onerous? It's a little bit like living in a cabin in the woods, all by yourself. Your cabin may have been built with your own hands, and may be a cabin you're really very proud of, but ultimately it's a cabin that no one ever sees. It's just so far out in the woods, you know? No one sees the brick path you laid, the planters you filled with geraniums, the really neat pot hangers. No one sees your blog either.

It's lonely in the cabin. A person starts to feel like the only person in the woods. So we all come out to the lodge or the campfire, and we start chatting with the other mountain dwellers. Of course, when you're sitting around the campfire, you can't pontificate for hours on the state of your geranium planters. You have to keep it brief, keep it entertaining. That's Twitter. That's Facebook. That's Tumblr. Meet me at the campfire. I'll listen to what you have to say for thirty seconds at a time.

Here's the reality: I'm no longer visiting your blog. Well, that's not entirely true. I'm no longer visiting your blog just to visit. I will read your blog posts if one of these three conditions is met:

1. You tweet or Facebook a link to it that attracts my attention.
2. It appears in my reader, in which case I read it there, in my reader.
3. It turns up in a google search for something specific I want to know.

I don't care about your awesome page layout.
I don't care about your 18 inch blogroll.
I don't even care about your tag cloud.

No, not at all.

I do care, deeply, about your ability to write 140 words at a time in Twitter. I care about your ability to post funny or interesting Facebook updates. I care about your blog posts too, insofar as they fit into my reader, uniformly formatted with all the other posts by bloggers with which I've categorized you. I care about the words you write, but I no longer care about the context in which you write them. And really, I want to say to you, and to myself -- enough blogging. If you can say it in 140 words, you should. No more "What we did today." No more "Here's a funny anecdote." No more "Have you ever wondered about this question?" None of those things merit a blog post any more, and I'm not traipsing all the way out to your cabin to read that! Say it in 140 characters, right here at the campfire, or don't say it. Sorry!

It sounds extreme, and obviously, I'm not entirely done with blogging myself. So what kinds of things can I *not* say in 140 words? What topics do I actually feel justified blogging about, and what blog posts will I still trudge out to your blog to read?

1. Something that's long and funny.
2. Something that's long and useful.
3. Something that's long and contentious.

I might also blog something that's full of pictures, but it must also be either funny, useful, or contentious. Otherwise I can just Tweet or Facebook a link to the Flickr set.

That's really it.

Does this mean that we no longer have the attention span for blogs? Am I now supposed to say something wan and dire about the decay of this or that, or the disintegration of blah blah blah?

No. Because the writing isn't gone. The text isn't even really shorter. It's just that the internet has become more modular. Instead of the context of your layout, your blogroll, your About Me, your profile, your color scheme and the rest of it, you now exist in a larger context. You are now in the context of whatever feed that brings you to my screen. You are adjacent to everyone else. You are without context.

This isn't the decay of anything. It is a literary evolution. Now more than ever, content is king. The blog posts that people do write and pay attention to are less like journals, less like casual diaries, and more like articles -- meaty and complex. The blogs that survive Twitter and Tumblr and will be the ones with actual content that's accummulated into a body of work with merit. For the rest of the blogging population, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Flickr, and Friendfeed will more than suffice. This is a good thing, people. While "Blogging" may be alive and well, "blogging" is dead. Face(book) it: It's just not worth posting the small stuff anymore.

Tweeting this post? Here's a short URL: http://bit.ly/ry1o8

American Idol Recap: Top Three: Adam Lambert is Heartless

2009-05-12T22:46:00.003-04:00

America, there are three white guys standing before you. But you only hold two photographs in your hand. Only two of them will go on in the hopes of becoming America's Next Top Douchepouch. Which one will you choose?

You know, now that we're here, now that we're staring down the finale, I'm thinking maybe you should scrape the stage clean and start over, America. These puppets' felt noses are starting to pill. Their bright little jackets are frayed. As they stand there, shifting from foot to foot, showing their teeth, I realize I'm truly more interested in the commercials for Glee Club than I am in the show tonight. The contestants remaining are all treasured little darlings of the judges. They are predictable, solid performers who have nothing left in them besides obedience. Convenient, because this is the week they sing songs the judges have chosen for them. Three singers, four judges -- Randy and Kara have to collaborate.

DANNY GOKEY: For Danny, Paula chooses "Dance Little Sister" by Terence Trent D'Arby. Wow, I can't think of a less current song or a less relevant artist. Gokey sings it with moist scatting and damp foot-kicking and comes down to goofily play up to the judges like it's his farewell song. If James Brown married a beetle larvae and their baby was trying to sing a Terence Trent D'Arby song, that beetle child would be like, Gokey, I owned you just now. Paula and Simon get into some kind of wrestling match that results in Simon having a big smear of tan makeup directly over his right tit during the rest of the show.

KRIS ALLEN: Kara and Randy have chosen "Apologize" by One Republic. They predict that it will show his range, and his "dark melodic beauty." Unfortunately he proves completely incapable of hitting that high note. You know the one that recurs about a million times throughout the song? Totally inadequate voice for this assignment. He goes to a lower note, thrums simple chords on the piano, and looks beaten and a little stoned. Kara and Randy are disappointed that he didn't just come out on the stage with an acoustic guitar and sing it straight. The elephant in the room farts and bellows: "HELLO! HE CAN'T HIT THAT HIGH NOTE. WERE YOU LISTENING? ASS?" Simon: "Kara, I don't think you can blame him for the song, when you picked it." Kara: "Don't tell me about interpreting songs. Have you ever interpreted a song in your life?" Puff puff huff huff. They argue about whether he interpreted it right.

ADAM LAMBERT: Simon has chosen "One" by U2 for Adam to sing. Adam turns in a bizarre and unsavory performance. It starts low, sounding a bit like a song from Cats. Adam turns in a few very sweet and surprising notes. I'm thinking, damn, if he keeps it kinda creepy and low like this, he's going to blow me away. But then he starts belaying it, slaying it, and fileting it. He goes higher, squealier, squintier, and then unrolls his gruesomely long tongue, and ruins it. Completely. The judges love it with deep abiding love. I kinda just hate it. Adam reminds us kindly that the lyrics in the song are really beautiful. Yeah, but you delivered them like the front man of an eighties hair band. Sorry, Adam.

After we come back from the break, Ryan lets us know that in the last two years Idol has raised $140 million for Africa, and really, everyone feels like that's enough. No "Idol Gives Back" this year. Idol is resuming its policy of only taking. What a relief! Africa is grateful for the mosquito nets it got.

DANNY GOKEY: Did you forget last week that Danny Gokey's wife is dead? Well she is. Completely dead. And he *really* loved her too. Isn't that sad?

KRIS ALLEN: Kris Allen, allowed to make his own song choice now, chooses "Heartless" by Kanye West. I've heard Kanye's version on SNL, and on the radio, and I strangely like it, although this is not usually my thing. Kris Allen's version was actually really cool! He did it completely straight, with just the acoustic guitar and his own voice. It was very good. The judges love it. I love it. It's Kris Allen! Maybe he can bump out Gokey to edge into the finals. I hope so.

ADAM LAMBERT: Adam sings "Cryin'" by Aerosmith. He picked it because he can. He sang it because once he had called everyone there, worked out the arrangement, led the judges to expect something magical, invited a throng of people with hand-lettered signs, he had to go ahead and deliver. No one was surprised. The judges predict he will be in the finals, but Simon takes the time to remind us to vote, vote, vote for the white man in the leather jacket, who looks like he owns it, who looks like he can be the next gay rock star that girls can't wait to fuck.

This season it seemed like the producers might have wanted an Amy Winehouse, a Duffy, a funky edgy girl Idol. But failing that, they'll take another rocker. Whatever.

Best performance: Kris Allen's "Heartless"
Worst performance: Adam Lambert's "One"

Going home: PLEASE GOKEY PLEASE

American Idol: Top Five: Jamie Foxx Loves Everyone to Distraction

2009-04-28T22:56:00.004-04:00

I have Idol fatigue. Do you? No? Are you panting for more? Well, that's what you're going to get tonight. More. Not better or different. Not fresh or unusual. Just more.

Tonight's theme: Songs that would sound like Christmas songs, if they had Christmas lyrics. Cruise ship standards. Brat pack hits.

Tonight's mentor: Jamie Foxx.

KRIS ALLEN: Let's start out the show with a little hysterical hyperbole. Jamie Foxx loves Kris Allen so much! Kris Allen is his number one. If this doesn't work out, Jamie Foxx will marry Kris Allen and take him away from all this meaningless drudgery. As if to underscore his deep love of Kris, Jamie Foxx stops talking and grabs his own breasts. Kris sings "The Way You Look Tonight" in a super-boring, mind-numbing karaoke way. The judges rip out their hair and canter around the stage, rhapsodizing about his impeccable phrasing and charm. Randy, Kara, and Paula tear their clothes and pile ashes on themselves in humble adoration. They're not worthy. They abased themselves by urinating on each other in shame before him. Simon calls it, appropriately, a little wet.

ALLISON IRAHETA: Jamie Foxx LOVES Allison. She is his favorite, for sure. She sings "Someone to Watch Over Me" in a manner that would be ludicrous and repulsive in a 27 year old, but in a 17 year old is apparently precocious and inspiring? Or that's what the judges say. The judges peel their skins off and create little Allison dolls to sell to the crowd, decorating them with their own teeth and hair. It's an Allison love-fest. She is the best ever.

After the break, Matt Giraud will sing "My Funny Valentine." Can I go to bed yet? I swear I will put my eye out with this laptop if he winks.

MATT GIRAUD: Matt is like, hey, I wore a fedora before a fedora was appropriate. Yeah, that's not a point of pride, fool. Jamie Foxx takes one listen and then tears off his head and fills it with candy for Matt Giraud. That's the least he can do to prove the intensity of his love: create a bloody, brainspeckled candy dish for Matt's personal use. Matt sings pinkly and with a weird forcefulness, like he's trying to convince us of something related to the border with Mexico. Surprisingly, the judges actually manage to critique him. Maybe America will be allowed to actually vote him off this week! He was brought back and selected in the wild card show, then saved by the "save," and now... oh... wait. Simon calls him absolutely brilliant. I have a feeling Matt will be back to wear his Fedora yet again, maybe during techno-pop week or "white guy brawling songs" week.

DANNY GOKEY: Ace mentor Jamie Foxx needs to creepily violate Gokey's personal space in order to make him be more pure and real. Seriously, he like gets right up in his grill. He reports that Gokey's breath is fresh. Weird moment. Awkward. Gokey looks like he feels hit on, the opposite of pure and real. He sings "I'm Gonna Love You" and sounds like an old man. At first I think he will be denied his favorite technique of shouting his way through from the chorus to the end, but then he gets hollering about "rain or shine" and peels his lips back for the big ending as usual. Randy pulls out a record contract and begs Danny to sign on, eager to do an entire album of just minutely diverse versions of this same song. Kara wraps her neck around and around a stripper pole, seductively mouthing, "Gokaaaay." Paula demands that Danny suckle on one of her teats. Simon looooooves Danny.

DUDE, AM I CRAZY: These performances are just so completely unremarkable. Are they just setting us up for Adam Lambert? What can he possibly do to top the way the judges perceive the other contestants have performed tonight? What adjectives and analogies are left to describe him?

ADAM LAMBERT: Adam is going to sing "Feeling Good." Jamie Foxx predicts that our heads will fall off. Adam wears a white satin suit, rides in on the glowing red stairs, and delivers the only performance of the night that couldn't have been found on any cruise ship in the Caribbean. A little Freddy Mercury. The judges' heads all fall off. And the show is over.

Best performance: Adam Lambert
Worst performance: Matt Giraud
Going home: Matt Giraud

Or whatever. Seriously, the relentless lovefest is getting so old. Am I wrong?

American Idol: Top Seven Take Two: Disco Mild Blaze

2009-04-21T22:16:00.004-04:00

Say hi to your judges! Hi, judges! Randy points heavenward as if to say, "It's not about me, it's about God." Then he confusingly gives the UK version of the middle finger, as if to say, "Go eff yourself, America." No, the sign for peace is not a palindrome. When you turn it around it means something else. Kara in a pink homecoming dress, Paula in a floral cardigan, and Simon in an undershirt. Tra la la, isn't it all wonderful? Do we have to sit through six confused amateurs, poorly produced and ludicrously dressed to get to some Lambert?

LIL ROUNDS: Lil sings Chaka Khan's "I'm Every Woman." She's wearing a black spandex cat suit and a super funky wig. The judges have been trying to get her to sing something like this for weeks, but then they hate her for it. Yeah, okay, it was a steamy mess. Only Paula throws her a bone, saying she had laryngitis yesterday and has made an amazing recovery. As Lil listens to the judges' comments, she crumples like a dropped puppet. Then Simon says she's going home for sure -- this is her last week. Someone from the crowd yells angrily and the camera shows us some variety of Rounds relative who is saying unmentionable, I'm pretty sure, to the lip-readers in the audience. Poor Lil. Pimped early, dropped late.

KRIS ALLEN: Kris sings "She Works Hard for the Money" with a Latin folk vibe. Oh my goodness, somebody has changed up a genre! How shocking! They even drag out that drum that you sit on to play it, and bring all the percussion right downstage. Kris sings kinda like a fuzzheaded little cat or something. Sometimes he yawns and a note comes out. Kara repeats the perpetual lie with her overworked, ruthlessly articulating lips, "Oh, wow, you took a HUGE risk with that performance! And it paid off BIG TIME." Yeah, a giant risk. Because last year's winner failed utterly in switching genres on songs. And this year's front runner is having terrible trouble with his "Looky, I made it my own" performances. So yeah, big risk. Trust me, when they bring out the drum you sit on, accusations of blistering originality are right around the corner.

DANNY GOKEY: Danny sings "September" in a super dorky way. You know what, it just feels like everyone has given up. They're done. They're on the tour. Lambert is the winner. They don't even care anymore, they just want to get to the part where they get a few weeks off to take horse tranquilizers and lie around. Gokey's dancing is just beyond laughable. Gruesome even. When they go to "Danny's friends and family" the camera picks out four undead girlbots in sundresses. Who are these people? The camera visits them again and again. Are they more Cheesecake Factory conquests? Danny has an entourage that takes its ranch vinaigrette on the side. They droop and leer at the camera. The judges fawn and gush about him. Kara's lips disengage from her body, crawl down her front, swing out from the microphone and land on Gokey's scruffy chin, grabbing for purchase among his weedy little beard scraps, and landing at last on his pink, thin mouth hole. We know the judges love Danny.

ALLISON IRAHETA: Allison arrives on the stage riding a glistening chrome staircase illuminated with red bulbs and bathed in the glow of the fiery jumbotrons. She is a rocker! Take a memo! They're trying to help her out of the bottom three, I guess, but then Randy says, "You're one of the best singers in this competition." Really? One of the best? There are only seven left. Out of like thousands, hundreds, dozens, etc. So, really, one of the best -- that's overwhelmingly generous. The judges quibble. Do they like the arrangement? Or not? Who cares. They drag out the old lauds and honors -- she's authentic, she's genuine, she's real.

We are going to commercial BUT -- THERE IS ADAM LAMBERT! He's in the crowd -- I see his HEAD! I see his smiling head all wreathed in hair product and favoritism!

ADAM LAMBERT: Adam is pinching off a little Elvis tonight, and I totally want that snake ring on his pinky finger, microphone hand. He sings a really tortured, eye squeezing, look-at-my-pulsing-soul-seething-with-angst version of "If I Can't Have You." An unremarkable song that has now has all of the corpuscles wrung out of it forcibly, in the meaty fists of our favorite son. The judges froth and foam. Kara shakes her head in fake, contrived disbelief. By the way, Kara shouldn't wear her haid pulled back -- it makes her look like a fetal monkey. The kids love it. Paula confesses tearfully that she could feel Adam's pain. Simon calls it brilliant. Whatever! I didn't actually like it that much. So!

MATT GIRAUD: Matt bores the shit out of everyone with a predictable, crotch-touching, Whiny McPulerson version of "Stayin' Alive." Randy searches around for something mildly inaudible to say, and decides to opine that this group of seven is one of the most talented groups they've ever had. Oh, really? Out of seven groups, this is *one of the* most talented? I'm overcome with awe. Matt in a black straw fedora and burgundy leather jacket. Just the most completely unattractive man I have ever seen. Just that.

ANOOP DESAI: Anoop sings "Turn Down the Lights." I don't understand the song, the pink v-neck sweater under the taupe business suit, the judge's comments, or the show itself anymore. I am utterly, completely bored by Anoop, to the point that I clicked away from this window to investigate an incoming mail alerting me to a auto-thanks-for-the-follow-DM on Twitter. Just to see if maybe there was anything else there besides the autothanks. Equivalent of changing channels to watch the channel guide.

BEST PERFORMANCE: I didn't like any of them.
WORST PERFORMANCE: Matt Giraud.
GOING HOME: Matt Giraud and Lil Rounds