On The Air

You know, my wife has hit on the best way to watch American Idol. Just keep your finger on the TiVo’s Fast Forward button at all times, and don’t be afraid to use it. Like when Martina McSomebody goes on and on about anything having to do with country music? [Beep boop]. If you don’t like the first three bars of a song? [Beep boop]. Thursday’s show is 85% filler? [Beep boop] You get through the whole show in about 20 minutes this way, and it really makes things go smoother.

I’ve also found that when my wife and I talk about the show we don’t use anybody’s real name. Everyone has a nickname, and that’s all we use when we talk. Like Blake’s nickname is “Beatbox”. LaKisha, Melinda and Jordin have all been lumped together as “The Supremes”. Haley’s nickname was “Boobie Girl” and Chris Sligh was “Jack Osbourne”. Chris Richardson is “Justin Timberlake” (once you’ve been put in the box, you can’t get out), and Phil of course is “Gollum”. Sanjaya’s nickname, oddly enough, is “Sanjaya”. He’s become such an iconic character in popular culture that it’s like he’s transcended reality, and now every time he appears on stage he seems to be doing an impersonation of himself. Like when you see George Bush Sr you think of Dana Carvey. The archetype of “Sanjaya” is actually ages-old, going back as long as there’s been popular music. Style over talent. The hair. The eyes. The swooning girls. Frankie Avalon and the Monkees. Fucking Britney Spears. This is nothing new, and this is the kind of thing American Idol has been banking on for six years now. This is the reason I always say American Idol is not a singing competition, because there are about one hundred and fifty different things that motivate people to vote, and if you listed them all and ranked them you’d find “voice” very far down the list. Obviously voice counts for something, because really what else does LaKisha have going for her? She’s 1-for-149. But Sanjaya is just the opposite, he’s 149-for-1, and it’s what’s keeping him in this thing. It’s what’s kept American Idol on the air for so long. It’s what’s kept record executives in business for so long. It’s been going on for longer than any of us have been alive, this indefinable thing, and now, after so many years, now we can finally put a name to it. And that name is “Sanjaya”. That’s why it’s so mind-bending when the judges diss Sanjaya, because by doing this they’re dissing the entire show, they’re dissing the last six years of their lives, they’re dissing the very thing that keeps them relevant. They’ve invented a popularity contest disguised as a singing contest, and now they want to disavow that it is a popularity contest at all. Maybe it’s all an act. Maybe it’s part of the joke. Maybe it’s part of their characters. Maybe Simon Cowell is really tongue-kissing Sanjaya backstage because he realizes that Sanjaya’s the best thing to ever happen to the show. Whatever. I just can’t understand how people say that Sanjaya is ruining American Idol when Sanjaya is American Idol. Like, brought to life. The purest essence of the show, collected, encapsulated, breathed into a living vessel, and wrapped up in a shiny do-rag. Motherfucker’s going to be president someday.

And so that’s why Sanjaya’s nickname is “Sanjaya”. Because it’s not a name, it’s a noun. It’s a thing.

And how about the show itself? It was country night, and my wife had the remote, so there was a lot of [Beep boop] going on. She fast-forwarded LaKisha before she even started singing, so I didn’t find out until today that she sang that hateful, hateful Carrie Underwood song about Jesus saving you from black ice. We really dodged a bullet there. Thank you, TiVo. Phil, I have to say, was the best of the night. And Dial Idol agrees with me, so maybe he finally climbed out of the bottom. And Blake was surprisingly boring, which he usually isn’t. He’s usually spot on with his song choices. But he gets massive points for taking a country song and making it sound not at all country. It’s called “making it your own,” something that Blake does every week, and alternately gets lauded or panned for. I still think that Blake is the only one of the bunch that I could legitimately imagine hearing on the radio, which is the same thing I said about Chris Daughtry last year. And look, he’s the only one I ever have heard on the radio. So things will probably be looking rosy for Blake, even if he doesn’t win.

And he’s not going to win, because Sanjaya is. Come on, Sanjaya is the perfect embodiment of everything American Idol is and stands for. He’s the perfect contestant, how can he not win? Dial Idol has him in last place this week, though, so maybe folks are starting to pay attention to his voice and ignoring those other 149 things. Could be trouble tonight. Stay tuned.