TVSquad

(S07E07) "My pen has got more charsima." Simon to J.P. Tjelmeland

The last stop of "Idol Train 2008" hit Atlanta tonight. There were some good singers and some bad singers but no real extremes on either side for me. I think I'm just getting kind of tired of this round of the competition. Here we are in week four and it's the same old thing just with different faces.

At least the new and improved Idol machine keeps on trucking along. I'm glad they read my letter and addressed my concerns. It really has improved the show tremendously. Let's just get on to the good stuff now. Thank god they don't go to more than seven cities each year or we'd be at this forever!

Atlanta brought us over 12,000 hopefuls, including my favorite accessory. I've Christened him Hubcap McBling. He's going to star in the next generation of blaxploitation flicks. Hubcap McBling in Don't Make Me Drop My Hubcap on You. He even showed up in the fabulous montage of the "best" of Atlanta singing Fergie's "Glamorous." I didn't see him, however, at the end among the singers who made it through. Editing mistake I guess.

THE GOOD
Honestly, I can't rank the top auditions because none of them registered with me as "great!" In fact, some were borderline at best, but they were apparently good enough to get through so the judges liked them.

Josh Jones, 26, Atlanta, GA - "Don't Stop Me Now," Queen
As an example, even the buggy-eyed weird thing he did while singing, Josh affected too much in his performance. Freddie Mercury sings in a very particular way and if you're not Freddie Mercury you're going to sound stupid when you do it. Josh did a lot of it and while he had some nice quality to his voice, I didn't see enough to think he has a real future in the competition. Not to mention that the judges made him turn around to sing as they couldn't watch his weird bug-eye tricks during his performances. He's no Jim Morrison so I don't think he can get away with singing with his back turned all season.

Alexandrea Lushington, 16, Douglasville, GA - "My Funny Valentine," Rodgers and Hart jazz standard
The most interesting thing about Alexandrea's audition was that her 93-year old great grandmother came with her. Don't get me wrong, I liked the way she changed up "My Funny Valentine" to give it a bit of a modern R&B flare, and I am extremely impressed with the poise and presence she displayed for a girl of sixteen, but there was no "WOW!" factor for me. When hugging her great grandma after the audition, grandma popped off:. "Don't' let me cry because they're taking pictures."

Amanda Overmyer, 22, Mulberry, IN - "Mean Woman," Janis Joplin
Amanda's a hot nurse. She's a hot biker. She's hot in a sheer top and black bra. And she's a hot rocker, as she wailed on Janis Joplin. Her voice sounded just as raw and real as Janis' without sounding like she was trying to sing like Janis Joplin. That's an extremely hard thing to do, as most just do bad Joplin impressions. The judges push her into a second song but the rawness is still there. She definitely stands out as a vocalist, being dubbed even the female Chris Daughtry by the judges. That's a pretty high standard as from his first audition, Daughtry blew me away. I don't know that Overmyer did all that for me, but I definitely dig her groove.

Brooke Helvie, 18, Wellington, FL - "Who's Loving You," The Jackson Five
I hate to say it but I was with Simon on this one, I fully expected her to be bad and in a way I wanted her to be bad. She had every annoying and horrible trait that the classic beauty queen/pageant girl has, from the constant primping to the talking with a smile and even the pageant stance. And she talked as if all of her intellectual capabilities were floating out of her brain on hair spray fumes. So what happened? She was actually good! Dammit! She's giving pageant girls everywhere a good name. At least we have Crowned to show us the darker side. Props to her for receiving flowers on her acceptance from her father and giving a "thank you" speech as she left.

Josiah Leming, 18, Morristown, TN, 19 - "To Run," Josiah Leming
The last contestant of the night was Jewel: The Man. Would that make him Jewels (get it, see what I did there? Like his-- never mind). See Josiah basically gave up on life and his family and took off a year ago and he's been living in his car ever since. His family thinks he's been with friends all this time, so if they still don't know, they might have gotten quite a shock tonight. Nobody wants to see their kid telling the whole world he's living in his car. What will the neighbors think?. Josiah says he's cool with it but at the same time is overwhelmed by the enormity of his situation and gets weepy.

In the audition, he's got a nice tone to his voice, and a strange accent. Simon picked upon on it first, telling him he sounds British when he sings. He picked up an English accent in his song. He then sings some Snow Patrol's "Chasing Cars" and that Brit-bit is definitely in there. He's got a good voice for fronting a band like that, too. He gets a slow yes as they wonder if he's got the moxy to be a solo. But a yes is a yes, and Josiah was so excited, that he ran all the way home ... to the parking lot ... where his car was.

THE BAD
There were no quick snippets of good singers tonight, but we were treated to some of Atlanta's most beautiful disasters. Michael Gregory was lame, Chris Lars looked like the Amish Brawny man in a kilt and Jared Wiley sang like a Disney Princess with a lisp. That last one was creepy but strangely mesmerizing. I can still that little tongue flicking out ath he thang hith etheth.

J.P. Tjelmeland, Auburn, AL - "Me and My Gang," Rascal Flatts
J.P.'s claim to fame is that he auditioned two people in front of Carrie Underwood in Season 4. That's pretty exciting. I once got some birthday cake on my hand from the guitarist of Saigon Kick. Eat that J.P.! No seriously, I haven't washed my hand since it happened back in 1994 and there's something growing there. It might be edible. J.P. says people tell him he has a star quality. He's a music major in singing. And I had no idea they had singing programs at deaf schools, but why not I'm sure there are some great deaf vocalists. As long as the instructor is deaf too, J.P. might even have a shot at a scholarship to one.

Speaking of montages (I did that earlier. Keep up!), they do a pretty cute one on how Paula can never really come out and say "No." She always tries to be sweet and supportive. I'm waiting for it one day. "Honey, you were just ... you just need ... you just f*****g sucked. G**, you were horrible!"

Nathan Hite, 16, Savannah, GA - "Paralyzer," Finger Eleven
I knew a kid in high school who was in a terrible band who thought he was all bad-ass and awesome because he was the lead singer in a band. Nathan reminded me of that kid. He made this really funny joke about how Simon writes down all his retorts in advance and uses them over and over. It was so much funnier if you saw it. I have tears streaming onto my keyboard just thinking about it, I'm laughing so hard. I need to hurry up and finish this because I think I just ruptured my spleen, Nathan's joke fell a bit flat, though, because that may have been the first time I've heard Simon call an audition a "bedroom performance." Oooh, too bad, Nate. I bet you wrote that joke down and prepared it for the audition, too.

Eva Miller, 26, Atlanta, GA, - "A Thousand Miles," Vanessa Carlton
The South with sass. Something went horribly wrong about halfway through this audition. Suddenly, Simon became convinced that Eva was putting them on; that her whole audition was a joke. His persistent insistence (say that five times fast) that she was joking and that her pratfall was intentional brought her to tears and made the whole thing awkward and sad. Halfway through her performance, Eva's number fell off her shirt and she slipped on it and fell in a very seemingly fake way, legs flailing about. Then when she got up and asked if she could continue, it was like a flip switched and she was "on" singing and bouncing with a big smile on her face again. The whole thing was odd but in the end it just made Simon look mean, and even he felt bad when he realized she wasn't putting him on. Possibly one of the most uncomfortable auditions ever.

AND THE TRAGIC
Asiah Epperson, 18, Joplin, MO, - "How Do I Live," LeeAnn Rimes
One of the most painful auditions to watch was Asiah's. As I'm here in St. Louis, I consider a Joplin contestant a hometown girl (close enough!). Two days prior to the auditions she called her dad to tell him she was on her way there. Thirty minutes later she got a call that he had suddenly died in a car accident.. What can you say about that? Just unbelievable.

She stuck to her guns and stayed in Atlanta because her dad was really behind her doing this. She changed her song and performed "How Do I Live" for her dad. You could see the rawness of her emotions in her performance and it touched the judges. I'm getting misty-eyed just writing about it now. Vocally she was passionate and powerful and best of all, good. She couldn't finish the song though, choking up at the chorus, but it didn't matter. She was through.

CONCLUSION
19 people made it through which puts Atlanta about on par with the other cities. Tomorrow is just a filler "Best of the Rest" episode. Here's a suggestion. Skip "The Rest" and give us two solid episodes in Hollywood, followed by the revealing of the Top 24. Once I've seen Atlanta tonight, how much do I really care what other video footage you've found to show me. If it was that good, why wasn't it in the episode for its city?

You ballooned two cities to two hours to add in more crappy footage I didn't want to see. Why not make more super-sized episodes? Then I can see more of the talented contestants with two episodes in Hollywood. Especially since this year they're allowed to play their own instruments in Hollywood, so it looks like there's more to see. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, more of the same tomorrow night!