AMERICAN IDOL: and then there were two

Aloha, Since I prefer to spend only one night of my Hawaiian vacation in a hotel room instead of two, reviewing this final week of AMERICAN IDOL (call me crazy), I have asked a guest blogger to fill in for me for the performance show and then I will return tomorrow with a recap of the Final episode, along with overall thoughts of the season and future of the show. Since IDOL is tape delayed here in Maui I think I will be the last person in America to actually know who won. Well...me and Paula...but I have an excuse. She'll be IN the Kodak Theatre.

Reviewing Tuesday night's show is the lovely, hilarious, and completely smashed Tallulah Morehead. I just read her memoirs, LUSH LIFE and found it to be the funniest book I've read since CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES (seriously!). Check out her own website as well.

I promise you, of all the recaps of Tuesday's show NONE will be like this one.

Thank you so much, Tallulah. Your ten or fifteen husbands were lucky men. Now someone get her some coffee. A LOT of coffee. A Lake Tahoe size pot of coffee.

Talk to you tomorrow night.

Hello darlings. What a treat for all of you: clicking on By Kent Levine, and instead of finding Little Kent explaining how his concept of hell is eternity locked in a room with Teri Hatcher and Mary Tyler Moore with no baseball coverage, you find a guest column from myself, Miss Tallulah Morehead, the Nearly-Living Legend, the World’s Most Glamorous Movie Star, covering the performance show of the two-part American Idol season finale. I can’t wait for tomorrow night’s final finale, to find out whether or not Little Blake Lewis and Little Jordin Sparks can prevent Syler and Linderman from blowing up New York City before The Others can kidnap all the pregnant mothers.

You see, Little Kent is in Hawaii, and frankly darlings, when it came to a choice between a luau with beautiful hula girls in grass skirts, or sitting in his hotel room watching American Idol to share his insights with you, his loyal fans, he said “Aloha suckers!”, and headed off to the luau with a lawnmower, asking me to take a night off from my own award-eligible flog, The Morehead The Merrier, and review the American Idol broadcast for him and you. Typical! The laugh will be on him though. Don Ho is as dead as Jerry Falwell, LOST is on hiatus, Jurassic Park is closed, Jack Lord is fictional, or at least his hair is, there’s a foul-tempered secondhand smoke monster on the loose, and one of those hula girls is probably Sanjaya. Honestly darlings, there's no point to going to Hawaii at all anymore. Whenever I'm stuck there, all I do is lie in my room, watching pay-per-view gay porn on TV, enjoying a vodka martini, and typing in my laptop. Now if only I had a computer.

You know, American Idol was named for me! I was the original American Idol, back in 1915, when my debut film, Heat Crazed, was released, and America and the world fell in love with me. The whole idea was to lure in TV viewers thinking they would be seeing me, and then hope that they’d get hooked watching the no-talents at the auditions, and it worked. The combination of Ryan, Randy, Simon, and Paula, four of the strangest gay men I’ve ever married, has proven an unbeatable mix of no-talents.

As it happens, today is the 100th birthday of Lord Laurence Olivier, often called the Greatest Actor of the 20th Century, though not by me, given that he was married to that little trollop Vivien Leigh, who stole both Scarlett O’Hara and Blanche Dubois from me. (I wanted to play Scarlett O’Hara in the worst way, which was, in fact, the approach I was planning on taking.) It’s also the 80th birthday of that little Tallulah-wannabe Marilyn Monroe, an “Actress” and “Singer” of questionable ability but undeniable beauty. What more appropriate day could there be to choose the next American Idol? Will Little Blake or Little Jordin be the lucky winner who will go on to sell half as many CDs as Melinda?

There has been a tragic mix-up however. When I arrived at the Kodak Theater this evening to see the show for you, there were no tickets waiting for me, my name was not on the list, and I was asked to leave! For heaven’s sake, they let Constantine Maroulis in, but not me? I might add that Little Kent’s name opened no doors either. I guess in his rush to get his hedge-clippers to those grass skirts, he forgot to arrange for my admission. I’d already sent my driver off with my Lincoln Incontinental, so I ended up watching the broadcast on my cab driver’s cell phone during the taxi ride back to Morehead Heights. Frankly, Achmed’s phone’s sound system is none too impressive, though Little Blake’s dancing looks a lot better on a one-square-inch screen.

What a season they’ve had on AI this year, completely ass-backwards right from the start, as was made clear when born-entertainers Ian Bernard and “Eccentric” didn’t even pass the auditions. I guess Simon just feared having contestants even more full of themselves then he is. Then gorgeous Brandon Rogers was eliminated, dropping my interest down a well. (Brandon, call me. I’ll world your rocks!) Everyone was sad when Sideshow Chris Sligh, who was two of the finest singers on the show, was eliminated before Shirtless Week. Then there was Sanjaya Maladroit’s Reign of Terror. Where did he come from? It turns out, Mars.

I don’t know who was voting to keep him on the program for so long. All I know is that after he sang each week, for four hours, you could not get tech support. And if Sanjaya and Marvin were separated at birth, look whom Father of the Year Phil Stacey was separated from at death: Which one is Phil? Send your guesses to me, c/o Morehead Heights. The first 100 men with the right answer get to have sex with me, as do the losers, and the women. (I think I may have been married to one or more of those chrome-domed crooners about 70 years ago.) Of course, this season’s big shockers came when Lakisha Jones and Melinda Doolittle were voted out. What were you thinking, America? What is this popularity contest: a popularity contest? Let’s see; the sexy and mildly-talented singers are still here, while the plump girls who could sing rings around them were thrown out. It’s Dreamgirls all over again! Dust off some shelf space for your Oscar, Melinda.

Over the weekend, Little Paula Abdul, eloquence personified, broke her nose when she tripped over her Chihuahua, Tulip. Yes, she trip-toed through her Tulip. There’s no truth to the rumor that she was drunk. I’ve been drunk since the Roosevelt Administration (Teddy, not the young upstart married to the toothy lesbian.), and I’ve never tripped over a Chihuahua, although there is a malicious dust bunny lurking near my kitchen doorway that has toppled me sixty or seventy times. The upside for Paula is, a new pain medication prescription. There’s nothing like more Vicodin to really clear up slurry speech and slurrier thinking. In fact, I think I’ll have another right now, washed down with vodka.

Ryan was either severely disoriented, or his radio background hasn’t prepared him for stage work, as he opened the show facing upstage, back to the audience. Turn around, monkey boy, and face the music.

Randy Jackson must have feared the vengeance of loser finalist Phil Stacey, as he was wearing a large, bejeweled crucifix about his ample throat. The only reason for that I can imagine is warding off vampires and singing nosferatus. But it was so chi-chi, that I can only assume he borrowed it from a gay Van Helsing. It was nicely framed by Sergeant Pepper’s old Sunday suit coat.

There was a coin toss for who would go first, and Blake won. He really should have let Jordin sing first. She still needs to finish her homework. Her term paper on Luddites & The Industrial Revolution is due tomorrow and she hasn’t even started it.

Blake’s first song was Bon Jovi’s You Give Love a Bad Name. Actually, my dear old friend, horror icon Guy Thanatos, was always known as “The Man Who Gave Evil a Bad Name,” so when the Idol-wannabes aren’t copying me, they’re emulating my friends. He’d performed it before, on the night Jon Bon Jovi’s chest hair, a.k.a. God’s Floss, was the guest mentor. I guess that’s easier than learning a new song. Little Blake amusingly simulated the sound of putting a needle on a worn vinyl record to start off his performance of a song written after the last Vinyl Tree had long since been made into a record. The children young enough to think he's hot and/or "Up-to-date" must have wondered what the hell he was doing. Vinyl? Record needles? What the Hell are they? Records are small, made of plastic, and "Record Needles" are lasers. It is amusing that Blake is considered current because he’s a white boy beatboxing, something black singers gave up as overused and hackneyed 20 years ago. That said, it was kind of fun.

Paula said she wished she could give Blake “More than ten.” I think what she really wants is for Blake to give her at least ten, though I wonder if he has more than 7.

We saw the finalist losers, sitting in a pack, desperately pretending they were happy for Blake taking what they wanted. Ever seen a losing Oscar nominee at the Governor’s Ball? Exactly. (BTW, where was Sanjaya? Oh yes, dancing at Kent’s luau.)

Little Jordin’s breasts came out next - I think that was Little Jordin herself somewhere behind them - and performed a song called Fighter. When I remembered that Jordin is still just 17, or as I like to think of her, “Jailbait,” I found myself expecting that after her song, instead of Ryan coming on, Chris Hanson would walk out and say, “I’m Chris Hanson, and this is To Catch An American Idol. Mr. Cowell, I have your emails to ‘Jordin’ right here. ‘I want to watch you working hard, and then I will massage my own breasts while I dress you down. If you perform like a professional, you’ll get the big prize I have for you.’ Do you think that’s an appropriate message for a 47 year old man to send a teenage girl? Mr. Jackson, you used the screen name ‘Randy.’ Not very appropriate. ‘Yo dawg, you got it goin’ on. Just keepin’ it real.’ Now, I’m not familiar with your secret code, but calling a young girl a dog isn’t very nice. And Miss Abdul, you wrote ‘You did your thing. You’re a star. You know what I mean.’ No I don’t.” And then the entire studio audience would be led out in handcuffs.

But I gotta say, Jordin’s dad is kind of hot. I know he used to be paid to handle the pigskin. Well I have plenty of skin, and that bitch Delores Delgado always called me a pig. Mr. Sparks, call me. Blake’s dad? Not so much. He doesn’t really fit on a one-inch screen.

Love Blake’s sweaters. Who was his clothes stylist; Ozzie Nelson? But the four inches of shirt front hanging out below his sweaters suggests someone who had to button up fast after getting caught with Paula in a men’s room stall. He sang She Will Be Loved quite prettily. I had no idea he could sing.

The endless Coca-Cola product placements had their desired effect. By halfway through the show, I’d put aside my vodka, and was enjoying a rum and coke, though I asserted my independence by making mine with Pepsi.

Jordin’s second song was a country number called A Broken Wing. She wore a faux-work shirt, like real people (ew.), if real people wear theirs with diamond-studded belts. Did she win a boxing title? Randy told her “You gotta know tonight, you can blow,” so he still hadn’t learned not to make inappropriate remarks to an under-age girl. Chris Hanson was all set to run back out.

Poor Blake was hobbled for his final number by being forced to sing This Is My Now, the winner from their absolutely-nobody-cares song writing competition that was apparently going on off-screen all season. It could have been worse. He could have had to sing another Bee-Gees number. At least he got to wear a lovely argyle sweater vest also from the Ozzie Nelson Collection, while he demonstrated that ballads are not what he does best. Blake, tuck your shirts in. This is what happens when a boy is taught to dress by an obese father. During the song’s release, Blake was hopping about in a manner suggesting that he was trying not to release something liquid himself. Speaking of releases, I understand this song will be released as the winner’s first single, by which I mean, it will sell a single copy.

But then, as a month-late April Fool’s joke on the viewers, Jordin had to sing the same stupid song we’d just suffered through. I began to fear that Michael Bolton was going to slither out and sing it too. Looking lovely in the dress she’ll wear to her prom next week, I have to say, she managed to squeeze out all the juice that dreary ballad has to offer. She was actually - dare I say it? - good. I think I smell a winner, Oh, never mind. It’s my cat, Snatches. No, Snatches. Outside! Do that outside! Anyway, Jordin wowed the house. The last time I saw that many excited people, Joan Crawford was “entertaining” at a fraternity mixer with her heels in the air. Somewhere, David Hasselhoff is weeping, and frankly, I was so damp myself, I slid right onto the taxi’s floor.

Ryan asked Randy for his ”Final thoughts”. He’s years too late with that request. As for Paula, we’re all still waiting for her first thoughts.

It all ended up with last year’s third place finisher, Chris Daughtry, singing over a montage of the whole season. Good grief. Suddenly, after an hour, we are presented with a man who has some real, honest-to-God, sex appeal going on. Even wearing Divine’s old eyebrows, he was smoking. Looking back at the clips, I found myself remembering the losers, the freaks, and the night I gave Sundance Head. But they didn’t include everyone’s two favorite moments of the season, the instant when Sanjaya was eliminated, and Antonella’s nasty pictures? Good times.

That’s it darlings. Now I’m busy speed-dialing - my neighborhood liquor store. Kent will be back tomorrow, if he can tear himself away from the wahinis long enough to watch them announce Jordin’s name. Jordin will be crossing the River Jordan, and entering the promised land of stardom.

Oh Brandon, Brandon. We hardly blew ye.

My thanks to Kent for this lovely opportunity, and cheers darlings.