Thursday, January 21, 2010

American Idol Auditions - Chi-town and Orlando

So this week we got AI auditions from Chicago and Orlando and both towns hoped to have lots of promise, only turns out that Orlando lived up to some promise as Chicago hardly got any golden tickets to Hollywood which was surprising.

First up was Chicago and the guest judge was Shania Twain and she was very good as judge.

Chicago had an interesting mix of characters and the 2nd day of contestants was brutal in trying to find anyone to give a golden ticket to. Here are my contestants of note from Chicago:

First up was Katelyn Epperly who was there because her parents were divorcing? She said she had always felt jaded about doing the AI audition in the past and was contemplative about not having both parents for support at an event of hers. As a child of divorce myself I can understand some of her thoughts but I found the way it presented as her reason for doing the audition as strange. Regardless, she had a nice voice and a good look.

Amy Lang was getting on my nerves with her antics before she even went before the judges and I'm glad that she kept her over the top ways with the judges and got sent home. Wouldn't be able to take much of her. Tatiana last season was enough! LOL!

Charity Vance was very cute and had a nice tone to her voice.

It was good to see Angela Martin back for another try, she's had a lot of bad luck in her prior tries in Hollywood and is getting one more try to hopefully have everything go right. Hopefully this is her season. Regardless, I have to say that I admire her tenacity and persistance.

John Park had a nice voice and tone and it would be nice to have an asian male make it onto the show.

Paige Dechausse got her story given to us and it was quite a story. Here she is an asthmatic and showing that she wasn't letting that hold her back. Gotta admire that! She had a nice voice too.

With that we move to the Orlando auditions where Kristin Chenowith was the guest judge for the first day only. Her and Kara really got along and it was very amusing how they kept themselves entertained and Simon on his toes. Hopefully Kara and Ellen can have this sort of chemistry, if they can then this season of AI will be more entertaining than usual.

Lots of good contestants from the Orlando auditions:

Seth Rollins - We saw his story of him being a Dad of an autistic child, something that is becoming all too prevalent in our society today. Hopefully he can make it onto the show and help raise awareness of the challenges of raising an autistic child. He had a real good voice and seems like a real good guy and father. Those are qualities I can definitely admire and support!

Jermaine Purifoy was another contestant that refused to give up and tried out again and made it this time. He has a real good voice.

Shelby Dressel didn't let a problem with her facial muscles stop her from trying out for her dream and I was real happy to see her make it. She has a great attitiude that can inspire a lot of people. She also had a real nice tone and voice.

Vocal beatboxer Jay Stone was interesting with his ability to sing and beatbox at the same time but we've seen that sort of thing before with Blake Lewis. He did have a decent voice though so it'll be interesting to see how far he makes it.

Then there was Cornelius Edwards and his painful looking jumping split! Forget that his pants tore, I'm surprised that's all that tore! He made it but honestly, I was too busy recovering from his painful looking split to remember if he could sing well or not! LOL!

We got to see sisters Bernadette and Amanda Desimone and I found them both to have good personalities, looks and voices.

Then came the Jarrod Norrell who gave it up to God before singing his rendition of "Amazing Grace". While it wasn't good and the judges weren't very kind, I found that he didn't want to leave as his way of showing passion but he had to listen and respect too. I will say that I don't agree that he needed to be handcuffed to be ushered out (we've seen worse and more dangerous seeming contestants and they haven't gotten this treatment) BUT we don't know what else happened that wasn't shown so I assume they did that because they needed to. Sad that what should be a positive thing turns into something like that.

Lastly, we got Matt Lawrence and his story of how he spent 4 years in jail as a youth and how he wanted to make something of himself to repay his parents for all the pain and grief he put them through. Very noble and he looks as he's learned from repaying his debt to society. He had a very good voice and picked a real good song to audition with.

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