An American Dream

FOR NO APPARENT REASON, last night I had an American Idol dream. It was not similar to my wife's yearly American Idol dream, in which she is a participant. I was just watching the show. So, on that note alone, nice work, imagination. Way to really run free. In my dreams, I get to do things I ordinarily do anyway! Jealous much? I thought you might be.

Anyhoward, so in my dream I was watching American Idol and this contestant, who was about 6-foot-8, was about to do a song. Very quickly, the show reminded us of his previous performance, which was a little country ditty. They showed the footage of it. He had a big ol' acoustic guitar on and was flanked (for no good reason) by two attractive country-attired ladies. They did not provide background vocals and did not dance. They just hung there on his arms, like the sleeves of a jacket.

The show played just a short piece of this lame country song he sang, before we went to the new performance. The Giant Potential Idol (GPI) walked out on stage to very '80s sounding synth-pop. And once he was at center stage, he started doing The Robot. He was not good at doing The Robot, but he seemed very pleased with himself to be doing it. The song he danced and sang to was a medley, and I wish to Elvis above that I could remember what songs he quickly cycled through. Because they did not go together in the least. But there were three or four songs he sang -- and Robot-ed to -- before he landed on the main course.

First, GPI stopped doing the Robot to get the audience up on their feet and clapping and shouting. This, to almost no musical backing at all. The audience happily complied. They were eating this shit up. And I mean shit. He was horrible. But the audience was going crazy. He got them rhythmically clapping and shouting in a sort of "We Will Rock You" kind of way, and once they had that down, he added his part, a strident screech that he repeated every four beats. I will approximate it here in print since you cannot hear me scream from where you are sitting.

It sounded like, "EeeeYIE-uh-yi-yi-yi-eye-EEEEEE!"

He did that over and over again. And after two or three of them, the audience had their "ah-hah" moment. They recognized what he was doing, what song this was, and they went even crazier. He was singing Peter Gabriel's "Shock The Monkey" and it was a surprise (somehow). And they loved it (also somehow).

Once he started his weird shriek, he resumed his Robot-ics, which continued, with increasing awkwardness, throughout the whole song. His performance was a disaster, but no one in the studio seemed to notice that. They loved the singing. They went crazy every time he did something Robot-y. Everyone was totally won over by the GPI. Excepting of course Simon Cowell.

When the camera finally cut away to Simon, he looked flabbergasted. Or maybe he was gobsmacked. Whatever the case, he was not pleased. And you could totally read it on his face. He hated the performance. He hated the Robot dancing. And he hated that everyone in the studio, excepting him, loved the shit out of it. He looked bewildered. Yeah, that's the word I was looking for! Let's go with that one. Bewildered!

But the best part was that Simon, in the dream, looked just like Mel Gibson. Not Lethal Weapon-era Mel Gibson, but crazy anti-Semite Mel Gibson. The Mel Gibson everyone has found so cuddly and crazy and adorable and horrible of late. But I need to be clear here. It wasn't that Jew-hating Mel was playing the part of Simon (as sometimes happens in dreams). It was that Simon, for reasons my brain did not explain, was disguised as Mel "SugarTits" Gibson. He had a wig on, and a beard, so you could totally tell whom he was emulating, but you could also still tell it was Simon.

Unfortunately, my alarm went off before I could hear Simon/Mel's reaction to the GPI's Robot "Monkey". I'm sure it would have been good.