I'm living the American dream

Oh my God, I can’t believe you did this to yourself again, Jillian. Every year, it’s the same thing. You say you’re not going to get involved with this tripe. You say you’ve got a million better things to do with your Tuesday and Wednesday nights, like putting your DVDs in alphabetical order and washing your hair... again. But then you catch some of those dreadful auditions and a couple of really awesome ones too– remember Paris doing “Take Five”? mind blowing!– and then you’re rooting for someone, and then you’re hooked! Again!

But really, is this show really complete tripe? I mean, sure, it’s schmaltzy and emotionally manipulative and sometimes cruel, but it’s also fun! And musical! And funny, particularly when Paula’s in a particularly deep in her drug-induced loopiness. And sometimes, it’s even sweet. (See: Elliott Yamin’s entire storyline this season.) It keeps me in step with the taste of millions of my fellow Americans. And it imbues communities with civic pride. Let’s face it. For better or worse, Raleigh has never rallied together like it did (and does) around Clay Aiken.

There! I feel much better about my continual enjoyment of this little show. Now, for the finale. Kat versus Taylor. Shrieky beauty pageant queen versus John Belushi doing Joe Cocker. I’ve liked Taylor (or “Gray,” as I unimaginatively call him) from early on, because dude, Joe Cocker is awesome. I’m not obscenely smitten with him as I have been with some contestants past (George! Bo!) But I do think he has a unique voice and great showmanship. And I haaaaaaate Kat. Hate. Not quite Diana DeGarmo/Scott Savol levels of hate, but very, very close. And Gray totally proved himself better than Kat last night. So he’d better pull through.

Now onto the show. These little duets with contestants and quasi-famous people always amuse me. Some of them are pretty cool - Vonzell with Billy Preston was awesome, even if no one but me knew who he was, and how happy did Bo Bice look when he got to sing with Skynyrd? However the duets so far tonight are just bizarre. They clearly hired Meatloaf just so someone in the room could look more doped up than Paula. And I really dislike Mary J. Blige. As Randy would say, dude, she’s pitchy. And she’s ignoring my beloved Elliott, who is a much better singer than she is. Boo showboating divas!

I hate these little music montages they make all the old contestants sing with the really bright themes like “songs with woman in the title.” They always manage to pick the absolute cheesiest songs ever. “Man, I Feel Like A Woman”? Wow, it took some poor AI intern about 2.2 seconds to suggest that one. Blah.

What the JEEBUS is going on with Raleigh’s Own Clay Aiken’s hair?!

I think, from a certain angle, Taylor Hicks looks a smidgen like Cary Grant. And now I really know I’ve been watching this show for too long. The next 8 months will be good for me.

Hang on a sec. The crappy guest singers are ending! It’s Burt Bacharach... and Dionne Warwick! LOVE her! And oh my God, they’re going to do “That’s What Friends Are For”! That song will always remind me of 5th grade girl scout camp. We were out in the woods in a tent during one of those awful North Carolina summer storms, and to keep ourselves unafraid and entertained, we sang “That’s What Friends Are For” and ate Hershey bars that were supposed to be saved to make s'mores. That’s one of the best awful songs ever! I would expect nothing less from my Idol.

Prince!! Holy crap! You are WAY too cool for this show. Ummm.. Ok. And he’s not even dueting with Taylor and Katherine? Whatever, Your Purpleness.

Getting near results time at last. It’s sort of nice not to feel too emotionally involved with these contestants. Last year I was freaking out, praying for my Bo to pull it out. Man, I loved me some Bo. Although I must admit, Carrie has a lovely voice. She could outsing Kat McPhee any day of the freaking week.

Well, of course they’re singing “Time of my Life.” The crack AI intern staff has been hard at work again, picking out the Most Obvious Duet in History to have our finalists sing. It was “Up Where We Belong” last year (too bad, since Taylor's so Cocker-esque). Next year I’m calling Peter Cetera and Cher’s timeless joining of forces, “After All.” Then it’s “Muskrat Love” and then the world will implode.

Results time... agony and ecstasy... I notice they’re not even saying how close the votes were. Like remember when it was Clay and Ruben and they kept saying the difference was about one-one-millionth of an iota of a percent? There's none of that this year. So Taylor’s won by about 54 billion. Aaaaaaand...

I’m right. Gray wins. Hasselhoff cries. And I feel... strangely uninvolved. Maybe next year, I really won’t watch.

Right.

Tuesday's on the phone to me

Today I revisited a stunningly convincing essay from McSweeney's that claims "She Came in through the Bathroom Window" is the greatest song in rock 'n' roll. I think the author may be my male doppelganger, because many of his opinions ring true with my own. For example:

• The Beatles are the greatest rock group of all time (Clearly.)
  
• Abbey Road is their best album (Picking a favorite Beatles album is like choosing between your own children, but when it comes down to it, I always come back to Abbey Road. You know your mother secretly likes you best.)
  
• The B-side medley is "quite possibly the best, most genre- and mood-busting twenty-two and a half minutes of rock music ever recorded" (Abso-frickin'-lutely. It never ceases to boggle my mind - it's so lovely and bizarre and disparate and perfect.)
  
• "Almost everything Paul McCartney wrote is pretty" (The only exceptions I can think of are that "Freedom" tripe and "Why Don't We Do It In The Road?")
• "McCartney was the most multifarious and phenomenally gifted songwriter within a group sporting a trio of musical divinities" (Paulites unite! Lennon was a genius too and George frequently came close, but Paul is bar none the best and most important songwriter of the 20th century.)
  

Tom Bissell, are you me?! You have me on everything except your central claim: that "She Came in through the Bathroom Window" is the best song on the best album of the best band ever. Personally, I'd have to side with "You Never Give Me Your Money" or the impossibly gorgeous "Golden Slumbers," but hey, to each his own. The sheer audacity of your claim (come on, who but the very serious Beatles fan has ever even heard of "Bathroom"?) plus the perfect alignment of our basic Beatley beliefs make me love you. And isn't love all you need?

1) Dear Paul McCartney,

Oh my God! I just found out that you're newly single. Guess what? I'm available too! Also, you're English, and I love England. Also, you're a Beatle, and I adore the Beatles! (See below.) Yes, you're old enough to be my grandpa, but... they don't make 'em anymore like they used to. MARRY ME, PAULIE!!

All my loving,
Jill

2) Early reviews of the Da Vinci Code film have been less than positive, including this rather scathing one from the NY Times. A.O. Scott seems to share my opinion: that the book was dreck (he calls it "Dan Brown's best-selling primer on how not to write an English sentence"... burn!) but that it could've made a pretty neat movie if done properly. I'm sad to hear that Hanks, Howard, and the unfairly comely Audrey Tautou could not make a good popcorn thriller out of it. But who am I kidding? I'm sure I'll see it anyway, if only for the Paris/London/Scotland scenery and Paul Bettany.

3) If you're a reality television whore like myself, tonight was a big night in your world. I had mixed reactions to the evening's proceedings. On the positive side, the Hippies won The Amazing Race, which is awesome as I adore them. I also like that the final task came down to brains and who actually appreciated the places they'd visited.

On the other hand, I was sad to see Elliott go home on Idol. Elliott really had one of the best voices I've ever heard on the show, and what he lacked in stage presence he made up for with sheer talent and heart. But I also wanted him to make it to the final two because I can't abide that simpering, shrieky Katherine. The girl never met a melisma she didn't stretch into 20 extra notes. We're close to Diana DeGarmo/Jasmine Trias levels of hate here. SHE MUST NOT WIN. I'm sort of neutral on Taylor. I like his voice (so like Joe Cocker's! he would absolutely bring down the house with a cover of Joe's cover of "The Letter") but some of his onstage tics and the "Soul Patrol!" pronouncements make me cringe. But he's still a sight better than Beauty Pagent Kat, so I guess I'll be pulling for him next week.

But I reserve the right to pout over Elliott not being there.

The best thing I read today

I've been doing a whole lot of reading at work of late because nobody's had much else for me to do, so I had plenty of material to choose from - but this CNN.com article surely takes the cake, if only for this quote:

"We just like to be sure when it comes to plague."

The Essentials

I was around 16 years old when I first met the Beatles. Of course we'd been acquaintances all my life - as a character asserts in the film Sliding Doors, they may as well be called the Fetals since it seems we come out of the womb knowing their music. Just from listening to oldies radio with my parents in the car I probably knew more of their songs than most other bands. I had seen parts of the anthologies on TV (when the ABC network redubbed itself A-Beatles-C) and admired their disembodied heads on the cover of my mom's beloved Meet the Beatles album and learned "Hey Jude" on the keyboard and even bought their greatest hits CDs, which taught me the rough trajectory of their musical journey.

But I didn't know them, truly know them, until I went to Best Buy with a mission: I wanted a complete Beatles album, to see what the fuss was really about. I chose two of their last ones, the "White" album and Abbey Road. I've always read the ends of books before the beginnings to see if the trip will be worthwhile; perhaps my choices in albums reflected a similar impulse. I went home and put Abbey Road in the CD player beside my bed and turned off the lights and had a listen. The first half of the album was good, filled with some songs I already knew from the radio ("Come Together," "Here Comes the Sun"), some playful absurdities like "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and "Octopus' Garden," and some truly dark stuff like "I Want You (She's So Heavy)."

But then the plaintive piano chords of "You Never Give Me Your Money" began, and as the b-side medley played on, one song spilling into the next, I remember thinking to myself, "I didn't know music could be this good." Then and ever after, the Beatles became to me the best that music can be - the paragon in everything they touched, the most affecting, the most revolutionary, the most essential.

It's been many years since the shine of first love wore off, and while I've always carried my Beatley affection with me, it's been awhile since I've revisited their whole catalog. But I happened on Bob Spitz's new "definitive" biography of the band at the library the other day, and I've been consumed with it ever since. I'm 200 pages in and we've only just invented the name "The Beatles" (spelled Beatals originally), while Ringo is nowhere close to being in the picture, but it's great fun to read about genius in its infancy. The book is an amazing account of their early days, well-researched and absorbingly told, and reading it is rather like watching planets slowly align: getting their first guitars, Paul and John meeting at the church fete, little George showing off his amazing technique for the older boys.

As I've been reading, I've been listening to the albums, working my way through in no particular order. I just arrived at the best first song on a first album I know of - "I Saw Her Standing There." There's Paul's great count in, the "one, two, three, FOUR!" that immediately ushers you into their rip-roaring act as if they were jamming away right in front of you. And then the great lines that whisk you into their circle, make them and you in cahoots: "Well, she was just seventeen / You know what I mean." Then the "oohs" and the harmonies and the joyous trills and the handclaps and then it's over before they've let you come down, all the trademarks of the great early songs. All that greatness, and it's just the first song.

Revisiting the Beatles' music and biographies reminds me of why they are still so important nearly half a century after they began. I think it's because their music embraces the negative capability that Keats attributed to Shakespeare and all great artists; it still has an air of mystery and uncertainty about it. How can four unassuming lads from Liverpool become the most important musicians of the 20th century? How can their music affect people in such a personal and yet globe-spanning way? How can simple notes strung into a melody inspire veneration, evoke sentiment, and penetrate to the core of a 16-year-old girl lying in bed, just having a listen? Within the mystery lies the greatness.