AI:6 - New York
NYC: Welcome to the Freak Show…
35 golden tickets out of an undisclosed number of auditions.
We saw 10 of the 35, including two Jersey Girls — one of whom is both hotter & more talented than the other, which is fun because it ain’t the “she has training!” queen bee - there’s some Hollywood drama to be found with those two. The others we saw were an eclectic group, ranging from the AI “boot camp” girl who was oddly compelling, to the opera-trained hippie-like chick who wasn’t too bad, to a tremendously cute girl from Ohio who defied her parents to audition and thankfully didn’t stink, to a guy who made it through to Hollywood last season only to flame out & quit when he couldn’t remember his lyrics.
This was a group where we finally saw more than one or two kids who really seem to have a shot of getting past Hollywood: 19 y/o Jersey Girl Antonella Barba, 19 y/o Ohio cutie Sarah Burgess, 25 y/o transplanted Canadian hottie Jory Steinberg, 16 y/o Jenry Bejarano who could easily pass for 25 and is most likely gonna make lots of older women feel really conflicted about how hot they think he is, ’cause he ain’t no Chicken Little! 
to 22 y/o slacker hottie Chris Richardson, to 25 y/o Hollywood vet Nicholas Pedro. Oh yeah, and the previously mentioned “boot camp” & “opera hippie” chicks could also be surprises in Hollywood…
If only we had just had an hour long show that introduced us to these 10 kids… it would’ve been such an enjoyable experience.
But no, we had to get the other hour of crapulence interspersed throughout the good stuff — the NYC Freak Show… 
I give you these examples of why 2 hours is 2 much:
- Attention whore and all-around over-the-top queen Ian Benardo. I remember him from SYTYCD? and the AI producers should be beaten about the head & shoulders for giving in to their baser instincts by giving this bozo another 15 seconds of fame.
- Multi-time loser Ashanti Johnson. Here’s a tip - if you don’t get past Hollywood twice, then you probably should hang it up. Thankfully, Ashanti will be too old to try out again next time. The airing of her full melodramatic appeal to the judges is the prime example of why 2 hours is TOO MUCH.
- Sarah Goldberg, who doesn’t think that the American Idol needs to be able to sing. Er, what now?
- Nakia Claiborne, a round mound of manic energy who took us on a guided tour of the entire range of bipolar behavior over the course of her audition.
- Stunt casting gone horribly awry in the persons of a 47
y/o Sinatra wannabe, and an alleged George Michael/Simon Cowell lookalike who sang in the female register/range. - Finally, a complete & utter whack-job of a singing (sort of) clairvoyant (but one who doesn’t realize that God wouldn’t be the one who “blessed” her with such an “ability”…). Honestly, by the time we got subjected to her, I just wanted the hurting to stop…
On the plus side, we got to see Paula & Simon fight, and we saw just how necessary & valuable Simon is to the judging process when he was indisposed and we were subjected to Paula, Randy, and Carole Bayer “Joan Collins” Sager.
I guess it’s hard to really expect anything more from an evening of AI auditions.
<*sigh*>
Next time: Birmingham
-ghp
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