American idle

I had nothing better to do than watch the taping of Simon Cowell's amateur-hour schlockfest. Here's my shocking story.

By Lee Soult

May 13, 2004 | The stage doors have shut and it's too late to leave. Wolf howls and simian screams ring out in response to the warm-up guy's plea for noise. Now he wants us to do the wave.

The audience waiting for the live West Coast broadcast of "American Idol" is all too eager to comply. CBS's Television City Stage 36, the annual home of Jerry Lewis' Muscular Dystrophy Telethon, is packed with a crowd reminiscent of "Let's Make a Deal," the World Wrestling Federation and Disney's Country Bear Jamboree. At least I'm not Phil, the fully consenting elder guy hauled up onstage to shake his booty.

I wouldn't be here at all if it weren't for my helpless addiction to "American Idol." The show revives all the deluded fantasies of instant discovery and overnight stardom that sustained me through a miserable suburban American adolescence. An older and wiser me finds watching others' hopes and dreams spectacularly dashed in front of a live national audience an opiate for middle age. But give me a contestant who can really sing, and I'm a gushing basket case, prostrating myself before "that most tragic of all instruments; the hopeful human voice," as novelist Kathryn Davis has dubbed it, "singing, trying to hold a note forever."

So when I scored two tickets to "American Idol's" big-band sing-off in early May with the Final Five -- Diana Degarmo, Jasmine Trias, Fantasia Barrino, George Huff and La Toya London (the last two have since been voted off) -- I had to go. I wanted to see how the contestants' live performances compared to the slickness of TV. I wanted to experience, as well, the revival meeting that was the studio audience. (I write this under a pseudonym lest my ticket source suffer for aiding an unauthorized journalist's inside report.)

Now, sitting in the midst of the before-broadcast hubbub, I long for the isolated comfort of my living room, where I can idolize in private. It doesn't help that Los Angeles is having a heat wave in this 16th week of the competition and practically everyone in the audience is wearing tank tops and shorts, their bare skin threatening to bump mine, creeping me out. If a guard hadn't told them to remove their gum, they'd be a wild, masticating throng. And what's with the cretin in the shirt printed with the picture of a depraved killer holding a smoking gun? Could someone remove him?

"This is nothing," says an L.A. mom whose child is waving a "Diana Is My Princess" sign. "You should see the finale!" Not for the performances, but for the after party. "They do dinner and give away fistfuls of Old Navy gift certificates. It's amazing."

The set is as gaudy as any Las Vegas show room, only smaller. It looks like the rear end of a '58 Chevy embedded with video screens. Swooping, swinging cameras on boom arms are stationed throughout the space to create the illusion of vast acres of raging enthusiasm from the audience of approximately 500.

Applause signs aren't needed for this crowd. "Cool It!" signs might help.

Next Page: Simon Cowell's almost as short as Paula Abdul!

• View blog reactions