It's nice to have Idol back

Although I prefer the latter portion of American Idol,when we get down to the final 24 and then 12 and have the singoffs, I still enjoy the audition episodes. And thankfully, unlike some past years, it seems like tonight the producers gave us a pretty decent mix of good singers, horrible singers and unclassifiable freaks--so it turned out to be an not bad start. And Simon was in fine form.

I won't start the full, singer-by-singer rundowns until we get to the final 24, but here are a handful of observations and thoughts:

Did we see the next American Idol tonight? Hard to say. I guess if there was one person I might keep my eye on it would be Sarah Krueger, the one who sang Somewhere Over the Rainbow. She had a good voice, was pretty good looking, and Simon seemed to like her. But who knows, we'll probably never see her again. And I suppose the one who sang the Deanna Carter song might be someone to watch. As Simon said, she's
"confident without being irritatingly precocious." What a great quote.

I think I wasn't the only male who really enjoyed "Shakira Junior," Perla Meneses (no jokes about the last name yet). But while she has some very nice, um, assets, vocally I'm not really sure she's strong enough to get very far.

There's not really much to say about many of the strange or horrible auditioners, but the guy who sang Johnny Cash--did he really think he was good? And the "Urban Amish" guy? He's never seen the show and doesn't know anything about it. So how does he end up hearing about the auditions? Was he walking by the hotel and somebody told him about it? Did he see a flyer somewhere? Was he an actor making all this up?

The guy who sang "California Dreamin'" took me back--not to the Mamas and the Papas, but to year one, when Simon often said of R.J. Helton and others, "Boy band yes, American Idol no." Having said that, I love when people cry after they are told they're going to Hollywood--it's one of the great moments of American Idol every year.

On the other hand, I get very uncomfortable when the people who get rejected cry, particularly if they're obviously not very good and have deluded themselves into thinking they're going to make the show. Watching that first singer tonight, the one who did the makeovers at the mall, was not pleasant. And wow, Simon was pretty harsh with the "Hey, good news, you know you're not going to be a singer" so you know you should move onto something else.

I was thinking the juggling guy should have gone on "America's Got Talent" just seconds before Randy mentioned it.

One of the funniest comments of the night came from surprisingly solid guest judge Jewel, when she told the woman who said she was "BFF" with Idol that even though she had been rejected, she should be happy because "you got to be on your favorite show!"

That same auditioner also gave me something I was pining for last year. During Queen week, I thought Chris Daughtry would do a great job perfoming the Queen/David Bowie classic "Under Pressure." Unfortunately, he chose to do some obscure Queen song and then sang a couple lines of the song in the medley the next night. Well, I did finally get to hear someone perform "Under Pressure." Unfortunately, it was some shrieking, tone-deaf crazy woman. Oh well. Maybe next time... Oh, and how could I forget...perhaps the best part of tonight's show was the repeated suggestions of "other door." Fingerhut out.