Organizing your writing life

IDOLATRY: First let me say how pissed off I am that Dubya fucked up Tuesday night by cutting American Idol to one hour so he could talk out of his ass. He's totally lost the plot and should be impeached. Dubya and Cheney-of-Fools don't care what Congress or the American people think about the troop surge in Iraq. They are going to send them anyway and the only way to stop it is for Congress to get some balls and cut off funding or begin impeachment proceedings. Stop voting on "symbolic" resolutions and get these two war-mongering fuckers out of office. Now.

So there was an hour of Idol on Tuesday, with auditions in Memphis. The mentally ill and the crackheads were out in full force, including this unfortunate guy with busted teeth who thought he could sing like Elvis, and this hoochie mama whose giant jugs were barely contained by her hooker dress. The poor slob from Kennesaw, Georgia, whose wife had left him and had a crush on Paula, was a closet homo. I bet that's why the wife left, or maybe she just got tired of seeing his crazy, fat ass dancing around the house to "Footloose."

Last night it was back to two hours of train wreck goodness in New York, with Carol Bayer Sager (who's written some of the cheesiest pop songs ever..."That's What Friends Are For" is one) sitting in as a guest judge. At some point, Carol and Joan Collins became the same person because that was definitely Joan sitting at the judge's table last night. It was freaky. But not as freaky as the people who turned out to audition. Again, you had the people who just wanted to be on tv (like Ian -- the mincing, foul-mouthed, rubber-lipped queen who also tried out for So You Think You Can Dance) and the emotionally unstable. Tears were flowing like the wine in Paula's dressing room last night.

There was one young woman -- big, sassy and brassy -- who sang a fun version of "Dancing in the Street" but then blew her audition by singing a second song in a lower register that revealed her vocal limitations. In the lobby, sobbing, she said she was just tired of being told "no" all of her life. That was very sad. Even more sad -- and a little frightening -- was Sarah Goldberg, who looked normal and sweet, but became unhinged in the audition room. She admitted she couldn't sing and started demanding that the judges teach her so she could become the next American Idol. Out in the lobby, she was screaming and crying. A total cuckoo bird.

One girl had taken two days off from school in Ohio and came to NYC to audition and wept endlessly about how unsupportive her father was and that he didn't want her to be a singer. She sang well and made it to Hollywood. Then Ryan Gaycrest got a cellphone and made her call her dad on speaker phone. She was sobbing so hard that her father didn't even recognize her voice. She had better make it because chances are she's already been disowned.

Then there was Isadora (or Julie as Ryan kept calling her...and I still have to give props to whoever is writing Ryan's banter because it's hilarious this season). Isadora was a singer/songwriter/rocker chick/palm reader/street busker who moaned her way through a truly bizarre version of "Lady Marmalade." It sounded like a porn audition. When the judges told her to take a walk, she of course got nasty. If you see this crazy-eyed freak on the streets of Manhattan, run quickly in the opposite direction.