Published Monday, April 21, 2008 8:13 PM
Updated Monday, April 21, 2008 8:13 PM

 

Fanfare for the Common Man 4/23/08

I am an Idolite


I have a confession to make.

I love American Idol. I watch it whenever it’s on.

Tuesday and Wednesday nights I try to keep as free as possible, especially between 8 and 10.

I start the countdown around Thanksgiving each year.

Idol’s coming to town, not Santa. I gut through New Year’s Eve because as soon as the bowl games are over, I’m grabbing the remote because it’s Idol Time.

I laugh at the interplay between Ryan and Simon. I get down with it with Randy. And there are times when I can actually understand what it is Paula is trying to say.

I follow the show through the drudgery of the auditions, all the way through the middle 24 down to the final 12.

I know their names.

I have in my CD collection enough Idol CDs to start my own show. I actually think Chris Daughtry’s CD is pretty good. I like Bo Bice.

Carrie Underwood’s cover of Heart’s Alone actually brings tears to me eyes (and yes I call up the Carrie and Ann Wilson duet of the song on You Tube every chance I get. Like now. I’ll be right back).

All Carrie Underwood has to do is ask and I’ll sign my paycheck over to her.

I have picked every Idol winner in every year that I’ve watched it (minus season one and last year).

Yes, I am an Idolite.

My Idol street creds established, let me ask you fellow Idolites a question: Does Carly’s husband seem to show up with more tattoos each week? This week his face looked like a 3-year-old’s Etch-a-Sketch. I notice that the wardrobe folks had a long-sleeved dress on Carly this week to cover up the arm art she’s sporting.

Idol winners don’t do tattoos. At least not yet, anyway.

Michael Johns, the Aussie from Atlanta, was voted off last week in a shocker, but as the numbers whittle down one at a time, the only surprise should be that there are no surprises.

This year is a guy’s Idol. The next three to get let go will all be ladies as Carly, Syesha and finally Kristie Lee will get the axe. Each week I say that this is finally Kristie Lee’s time to go but somehow she keeps escaping. My gut tells me this is Carly’s week to go. Her appearance in the bottom three irreparably hit this girl’s confidence and she won’t recover. Brooke might crack the top three at the expense of Jason ‘Dr. Dreadlocks’ Castro, but she won’t crack the top-two David nut of David Cook and David Archuleta.

In this case, for Idol’s sake I say give the Idol crown to the 17-year old and let David Cook go off and sign his Chris Daughtry record deal and release a Top Ten single. David Cook might not win American Idol, but that guy – stealing covers or not – is the most seasoned and star-worthy performer on the show.

Can you believe all this is coming out of my mouth?

I can’t.

And I haven’t had to Google the Idol website once to get names or spellings either. Scary, ain’t it?

American Idol is my one concession to trash reality TV.  I didn’t watch last year’s Idol because I didn’t have cable and decided to take a year’s sabbatical from paying $80 a month to watch TV.

I ordered up cable when I moved to Moncks Corner for two reasons: baseball and Idol. I had had enough of my sabbatical from television. I spent a year without TV. I did this for a number of reasons, first and foremost being slipshod service for a monthly King’s ransom. It was an illuminating 12 months.

If I wanted to watch TV I rented a movie. If there was a TV series I simply had to see, like Smallville or Everybody Loves Raymond reruns, I bought the season collections. If you really want to experience a mind-altering moment, watch about 10 straight hours of Smallville or Everybody Loves Raymond.

After hour number six, if you talk to them on the screen they’ll answer you.

During those 12 months without cable I rediscovered radio.

Whatever baseball games I wanted to watch I saw on my computer. Most of the time I listened on radio.

I read books. I kept up with the news online.  The television, for days on end, remained quiet and dark.

But American Idol brought me back.

While I did miss last season, looking back at the cast of characters that followed Taylor Hicks, Chris Daughtry, Katharine McPhee et al I don’t think I missed out on too terribly much.

Who or what is a Sanjaya and what was he doing wearing a Mohawk?