False Idols: An "American Idol" fan is cured by a trip to the TV hit's spinoff concert tour

The Weekly Standard ^ | 08/07/03 | Matt Labash

[Pokey78]

They just won't leave Clay alone. hehe

[Howlin]

But he WENT, I see.........LOL.

[wideawake]

Shhhhh . . . I've been screamed at for even suggesting that Clay might be the prancing, mincing nancyboy that he appears to be.

[ConservativeConvert]

Thanks for the post. Can't wait for Clay's album to come out later this month.

[narby]

Someone appearing on TV meant that they'd likely worked their way up through the ranks: doing school plays, regional theater, and embarrassing commercials, until finally, they honed their skills,

The greatest boon to the great entertainment of the past was vaudville. There were thousands of live shows a day, all across the US. Every one needing many live performers to do their stuff.

The humor of Will Rogers, the dancing of Fred Astare and hundreds more, were the best that the crucible that vaudville produced.

With live vaudville dead, entertainment is slowly dying, as the generations of imitators slowly drift away from the best there ever was.

[whereasandsoforth]

Re: "The greatest boon to the great entertainment of the past was vaudeville. There were thousands of live shows a day, all across the US. Every one needing many live performers to do their stuff."


Just the other day I equated the current democrat situation to a bad vaudeville show. They should all wear zoot suits and feather boas.

[L.N. Smithee]

Charlie is succeeded by Julia, who he calls "one of my best friends on the tour." After her number, she introduces Rickey, who she calls "one of my best friends on the whole tour."

WHEW! Nothing nasty about Julia, my fave. But what a job he did on Carmen Rasmusen....rrrrrowwwwl!

[B-Chan]

That's it. First daughter we have, we're moving to Greenland.

[Richard Kimball]

This guy needs to spend less time being concerned with American Idol and more time raising his daughter.

[Sabatier]

{I brought my 11-year-old niece, Adria, and her friend. At my house, we nearly didn't make it out the door. "There's a serious problem," my wife warned, "Adria forgot her pink eyeshadow, she only has white." "That's bad," I concurred. But fortunately Adria had remembered her glitter dust, which she promptly sprinkled all over her face. Nobody, it seemed, would notice the eyeshadow faux pas. }

Say what? These kids are eleven years old and wearing make-up?

[Luis Gonzalez]

Oh my God...I have tickets for this.

[rabidralph]

Oh my God...I have tickets for this.

Ha-ha!

[merry10]

I have tickets too,for 31 August in Anaheim. Anyway, turns out Ruben might NOT be the American Idol after all...if he indeed did profit from the makers of those 205 shirts as the company is claiming he did. Ialways knew Clay was the true american idol.

[glory]

Agreed. I can't believe folks let their kids listen to the crap they do.
Parents seem to be out to win a popularity contest with other parents and their children instead of setting healthy boundaries. I don't know how these parents can even be comfortable listening to their children belt out the "knob" song. Disgusting! 11 year old is very young, parents should be ashamed of themselves.

[FreeReign]

In my eyes, this was just a group of your average high-energy, semi-talented kids...

Most popstars are JUST semi-talented -- that's what makes them popstars and not musicians.

Does this guy actually think that this group of popstars doesn't measure-up talentwise to other popstars?

[Not_Who_U_Think]

"Appropriately enough, Ruben covers Vandrosss's cover of Karen Carpenter's "Superstar," making it a cover squared."

Actually, Leon Russell wrote it and recorded it first. I never got the true feel of it until I heard his version. He also wrote "This Masquerade", "Good Time Charlie's got the Blues" and others I'm probably forgetting in addition to his own hits.

[small_l_libertarian]

As I saw her singing along to "Night Fever," surprised that she'd know the lyrics to a song that Chingy didn't sing, I realized that we were now able to speak the same language. Sure, it's a useless language--like Esperanto--but now instead of talking at her, I could talk to her, albeit, in a Barry Gibb falsetto.

This gave me the giggles.

[fightinJAG]

Without Simon around to horsewhip the performers, it's all sweet, no sour.

This is the real problem these type of critics have with the AI phenomenon: "it's all sweet, no sour."

Meaning: no disgusting lyrics, no dirty dancing, no simulated sex acts on stage, no drug-induced vomiting from the performers or the audience, etc. etc. etc.

The Washington Post review, which ultimately was positive, led with the line, "This [the AI concert] makes the '50's look like the '60's."

IOW, it's just too darn wholesome!!

Well, I was there at the MCI center, Teen-Agers in tow. Was the show fairly cheesy? Sure. Was it fantastic fun? YES. Why? The audience was incredibly diverse in age and every other way. There was no hint that anything other than just plain good fun was going to occur.

When 7-year-old boys are standing on the seats and shaking their skinny little booty while four rows over an 80-year-old lady with a HUGE picture of Clay on her shirt is waving her arms in the air while her daughters and granddaughters have a ball, when everywhere you look people are actually SMILING and laughing, the screams were deafening for four hours straight, and people were NICE to each other . . . there's something right about that picture.

I've really never been to a concert where 20,000 people were ALL having such a just plain fun time.

If someone needs disgusting lyrics to feel cool, that's their problem.

[csvset]