Since the magical first season of American Idol, when my girl Kelly Clarkson rightfully won (despite claims of racism, because the black girl from that season didn't win, when Kelly clearly had the better voice, talk about white guilt! Okay I digress) - AI has been increasingly exhausting to watch. Every season the format got more and more stale, and yet the episodes got longer and took up more days of my week. Every season I would vow to never waste my time again on this piece of shit show. I would swear that I was sick of the crazies who audition, sick of the corny old songs, and most of all the judges and their asinine non comments to each and every performance. Now we all know about Randy's 2 catch phrases he recyles over and over, and Paula's zoloft prozac cocktail rant. But Simon, who was supposed to be the voice of reason, was the worst offender. Now I have never ever given credence to the common consensus of "Simon is right. Simon just knows." The only thing Simon has going for him is that he's got decent instincts and happens to be a little more articulate than the other two judges, which is really not very hard. But here's two other things about Simon: a)he talks in mad libs- uses the same metaphor over and over, and b) he is a big fat BEIGIST*. Now let me clear up your amnesia here- because I clearly remember him not being very supportive of Kelly Clarkson at the beginning of season 1. He only jumped on the bandwagon, when it became clear that the girl has never been at the bottom 3 and was clearly headed to win. He was also the biggest supporter of Carrie Underwood, the very vanilla stepford wife turned scary skinny fembot.
Anyhow back to why I find myself climbing down to the abyss of hell and spending two hours of my time watching AI again. Every season I would fail to follow up on my resolution not to devote my time to this show, but it was always too hard to pass up the chance to voice my very opinionated opinions around the water cooler the next day. Last season I came the closest to not watching it when I milked the TIVO to its fullest potential, and managed to watch every episode in under 10 minutes. And yet yesterday and today, I watched 80% of each episode, why oh why! Well ladies and gentleman, just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in with... a new judge! A lady judge! She's cool and sassy and is a singer herself and actually makes specific comments when the other three let her talk, and she wrote Kylie Minogue's "Spinning Around" and my fave Kelly C. song "Walk Away" and other tolerable/catchy songs sung by obnoxious pop stars. Her name is Kara something, and so far she's brathed new life into the show during the audition episodes which have thankfully been drastically shortened and far better edited than past seasons. I'm not promising that I'll start watching 80% of every episode, but so far this is a good start to a show that used to make me ill at myself for watching.
*Beigist- a term coined by my favorite journalists/troublemakers Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi. It's a person whose personality and taste embodies the color of beige.