I am going to come absolutely clean right here in front of the world. I never thought I would ever say this to my partner Earl, let alone everyone that reads my blog or stumbles across this on a Google tangent, but the time has come and I must announce it.
I am totally infatuated with Paula Abdul with this season of American Idol.
There, I’ve said it.
She has entered the realm of diva-dom. And that’s a good thing.
Last year, Paula seemed a little bit off kilter. Well, let’s face facts, she seemed downright drugged and it was like she was in her own little euphoric haze and she didn’t share any with anyone else. Then the whole Corey what’s his name scandal started to bubble and she came out of the fog and into reality and it all eventually settled down. This season, it seems like Paula has pulled herself together and I think she is doing a great job on this seemingly mean run of American Idol auditions.
One thing about this season that is making me a little crazy is all this hoopla about Randy and Simon’s “anti-gay” comments, for example, that one guy that was named something like Brandy that looked and acted and sounded like a girl, which is perfectly fine, but Randy couldn’t tell what gender he was. I don’t know about you, but if I went out of my way to go to the hair salon and ask for my hair to be cut into a Dorothy Hammill haircut and had my eyebrows tweezed slimmer than the ladies’ from Abba’s, I wouldn’t be offended if someone made that mistake either. And now that I think about it, I’d probably still have a beard through all this, which wouldn’t help differentiate me from women in some parts of the country, so you can see the reason for some of the confusion. I mean come on, if you’re going to go out of your way to be as androgynous as possible, then don’t be upset if people guess ‘wrong’. I’m just saying.
But back to Paula. I found it very charming when the policeman last night wanted to dance with her and she responded with an “I’m not allowed” (I snickered). She was gratious and fully rooted into this dimension and reality. Eventually Randy and Simon dragged her up to the guy so she would dance but she was such a good sport about the whole thing.
She has gone out of her way to find something positive from some absolutely hideous auditions and I think that’s wonderful. She even tried to coach the boy with no teeth but he wasn’t having any.
Paula baby, you’re back on my playlist and cocked (no pun intended), locked and ready to rock in my CD player. I’m feeling the Vibology.
She does seem a little clearer headed this year, doesn’t she? And pretty as ever.
I have to admit, however, that, as a longtime fan of the show, I’m a little over these early audition episodes with a few minutes of brilliance lost in hours of painful gimmickry designed to make us as viewers say, “Isn’t she stupid?” or “Doesn’t he know any better?” It all seems too obvious, like an episode of a bad sitcom where you can hear the next line coming before it falls. I’ll wait for them to whittle them down to the better talent.