I hate American Idol.

No reason to mess around with a clever title. A little over two years ago, my beautiful wife and I got hooked on American Idol. I'll never really know why. It was always a bit frustrating, what with all the inane pop music, the making fun of people during the audition period who are probably mildly mentally disabled, and the judges who don't really know all that much about singing. But there were a handful of people who were really, really talented and fun to watch, and while neither of the last two winners (Carrie Underwood and Taylor Hicks) fits that description, the good people were always at least in it until something close to the end.

I haven't seen it as much this year, to which I think I can credit my continued relative sanity. In one year, it's gone from a slightly embarrassing but harmless distraction to an unmitigated disaster. I'm not even going to talk about Sanjaya, except to say that he was exactly as awful last week as he was every other time I've seen him, and I hope he wins and ruins this show forever, because the show is an abomination even ignoring the most abominable of them all. But a picture is in order for the uninitiated:









Yeah, they really put that guy on TV. And he can't sing any better than you can.

But that aside, very nearly everything about this show is now unspeakably awful. There are two exceptions--two singers who, while they're not the goddesses the show puts them out as, really are pretty decent singers. Unfortunately, they look like this.











Lakisha Jones above; Melinda Doolittle to the left.

Now, I'm really not making fun of these two. They're very good performers, and thus are totally out of place on this season of this show. The obnoxious truth is that people (especially women) that look this average just don't become stars. There's always plastic surgery, I suppose (though how well that worked for this desperate and far less talented Idol alum is not for me to say). And while their future star potential doesn't necessarily bear upon their watchability on the show, I honestly don't think they're good enough to make it worth putting up with all the other crap, a summary of which follows.

First, there are the six (five, after tonight) other contestants. Haley Scarnato, who was booted tonight, is beautiful but essentially talentless. Phil Stacey, who will almost certainly get the hook next week, is probably the best of an absolutely horrendous group of males. Seems like a nice guy; can't sing as high as he thinks he can, and can't stay in tune. Blake Lewis, who seems to be the favorite among squealing teenage girls, is the kind of guy with whom I could stand carrying on a conversation for precisely seven seconds, looks absolutely ridiculous week after week and can't stay in tune. Chris Richardson is basically the same as Blake, only with even less talent and personality. He really wants to be Justin Timberlake, and can't even live up to that astoundingly low threshold. Jordin Sparks is a 17-year-old girl with good stage presence and energy who sings like a pretty decent 17-year-old.

Second, the judges have gotten worse. Randy Jackson appears to have no qualifications to judge a singing competition, and it shows; the few good performances are "pitchy" and the many truly terrible, torturous, off-key performances are invariably "hot." Paula acts pretty much like this in every episode (watch that video if you haven't seen it--it's hilarious). With Danny Devito getting all that attention for that one interview, how does Paula go out there in a considerably worse condition twice a week without causing any actual controversy? But I digress. Simon remains by far the most realistic of the judges; his comments on the technical aspects of the singers' singing are accurate probably 70% of the time, which is at least twice as accurate as either of the others. He's just not funny anymore; he's completely run out of clever insults.

So this is pretty bad. How to make it worse? Try hiring celebrity "coaches" Diana Ross, Gwen Stefani and Jennifer Lopez. Now, Ross had some chops once, but now she's gone loopy (best moment of that episode was her use of the "word" "pronounciate"); the other two are never-weres. This is like hiring Billy Joel to teach you about driving or Paris Hilton to talk to your kids about abstinence (of either commonly discussed variety). Roseanne may well be next. And the video behind that link may actually hurt my ears less than hearing Blake butcher Marc Anthony's already cringe-worthy "I Need to Know." But I digress again.

I mean, needless to say I won't be watching anymore (I have to be a pig for a moment and admit that Haley, despite being no better than the rest, was the only reason I was still watching at all), which is how I can justify wasting just one more hour to blog about my frustrations with it. If you're not a singer, think of something you're passionate about; now imagine a show that purported to be an attempt to find the next best thing in that hobby, but featured contestants who couldn't do it, fawned over by judges who didn't know the first thing about it, interspersed with appearances by other people who already make a lot of money by sucking at it (is there a Gwen Stefani of, say, cooking?) and hosted by this soulless gnome:
You there with me now? If so, you may be beginning to understand my pain...