Hawleywood, Baby!

I just crack up every time Randy would yell, "It's Hawleywood, Baby!" And yet I am helpless not to type it myself.

So it was Hawleywood last night and it was fine. I was looking forward to the group sing but I guess they realized that it wasn't fair to those who got saddled with the weak. And I was looking forward to the rooms o' doom where everyone looks around at each other and tries to decide if they are in the room o' winners or the room o' going home. But they 86ed that too.

What they (foolishly) gave us instead was the questionable treat of seeing pre-idols playing instruments. Not a good idea... If they were too good at playing, Simon hated it. If they were too lame, Simon hated it. I do think that the boost in confidence the contestants may have gotten from having an instrumental crutch was far outweighed by the fact that they couldn't concentrate as hard on their singing.

So the ones I see going far are Irish-American girl, Australian-American boy, car-liver (ewwww, but my kids love him), cute 16 year old boy with preternaturally good voice, gay-ish 18 year old boy with sweet big eyes, gorgeous black girl who had no voice but sang Aretha like a dream, no-R-rated movie piano playing girl, and maybe tiny Asian girl. At least they are the only ones I remember.

Four minutes into the episode they were showing a rehearsal and I stopped my TiVo (yea, Tivo!!) to see a girl in a bright pink sweater reading a copy of Catcher in the Rye while she was sitting around waiting to sing. I was so thrilled to see a reader. I told Lady Char about this miracle and she said, "A reader? Oh, she'll go far..." Which, of course. And then we bonded about how we both think Holden Caufield is a bit of a whiner. Then we decided to go tanning and get extensions and not even study for our biology midterm. Kegger at the Chars Friday night!!

I am a little concerned about how much I am looking forward to the cutting heads tonight! If we flood out and my house floats away I don't know what I am going to do about missing Idol!

Brunie, OUT!