anomie life

Every time a new season of American Idol comes on, I vow not to watch, but it seems, no matter what, my TV always finds it’s way to FOX whatever time it’s on TV. For some strange reason, watching people humiliate themselves on national TV is very compelling.

A lot of people I know with tender hearts hate the show, especially the audition process, because they can’t stand watching the judges crush the dreams and aspirations of young performers. The judges, especially Simon, can be very cutting, and many times he’ll go as far to not only critique their musical talent but just about anything else that he dislikes about them. In fact, a lot of the times the performers aren’t that bad, but their musical style just isn’t American Idol’s style, which is pretty much pure pop.

I used to not care about the humiliating of the contestants because I rationalized that many of them needed a wake up call if they really thought they were as great as many of the horrible contestants seem to think they are. But this season I’ve seen just about enough wake up calls.

I think its really gone beyond that, and American Idol auditions have pretty much turned into a freak show with the producers parading around the weirdest contestants they can find.

American Idol auditions aren’t as simple as getting in line and waiting for Randy, Simon, and Paula to listen to your performance. There’s actually a pre-audition audition where staff and producers decide who actually gets to sing in front of the Idol judges. One might think that these pre-audition are pretty ineffective since so many terrible people get through, but the fact of the matter is that the producers already know the bad people are bad. Even before getting to the judges, its pretty much decided who will make it and who won’t. The producers only let through the really bad people and the really good people. This has the effect of making the terrible people suddenly get a boost of confidence and make themselves look even more foolish.

This is only speculation, but I even think the producers have a lot of the terrible contestants come back later and sing particular songs in order to create a montage to radio hits such as “Don’t Cha“. I find it really interesting how during this particular montage most of the people couldn’t even get half the words right. Why would you sing a song that you don’t they words to? Maybe because you were paid to sing a particular song and sing it with your signature flare of suckiness that America craves.

One contestant, Nicholas Zitzmann, even has a different shirt on when he sings his version of “Don’t Cha”. Good job producers, you let that one slip by.

Hey American Idol producers, maybe you should make the show a little more positive and a little less about just making fun of all the weird people who show up to audition. I know its tempting because there are a lot of weird people out there, but eventually people will get tired of not even being able to look at their TV screen without a scowl of disgust.

Well, I decided to change blog managers. I was using Postnuke, but that really was more of portal/cms than a blog manager. I decided the look and feel was really boring too.

So now I’m hoping to convert this into a space where I’m going to document my experiences and struggles with music equipment. I’ve noticed I’ve purchased a lot of music gear lately and so I want to document my thoughts on that stuff and write about how our singleTree recording sessions go.

So thats about it.

-Mark