So I decided to throw my hat into the idol ring once again since this was my last year for eligibility. For those who may not know, I auditioned once previously for the second season. You know, the Reuben who?/Clay Aiken year? The funniest part of the whole surreal and altogether strange experience was that even though they pretty well have the "people processing" now down to an art, I felt much dirtier by the end of the day than after the experience seven years ago. Dirtier in the sense that they now spend ALL morning whoring the crowd out for the cameras. I pretty well expected them to do all of the typical crowd stuff like having us all shout random coin phrases to be used during the promos as well as the run of the show, but they also ask you to scream and cheer after absolutely EVERYTHING they have you do. So, you end up with six thousand people spending the first six hours (no kidding, six) screaming their voices raw before, um, a vocal audition. Don't tell, but I totally faked it. By the early afternoon there were people crashing out everywhere. Before heading into the arena, however, I did manage to get a decent shot of just a few hundred people. Can you find me in the crowd?
Wait, wait, hang on, I think you might be able to find me in this one.
Those two enthusiastic fellas over my shoulder had sat in line with me for three and a half hours outside before they actually let us in the building. Sweet and funny kids. Reminded me of what it was like to be 20 again. After they finally did get auditions up and going for about an hour they stopped them again for about another hour for more crowd crap and because, of course, Ryan Seacrest had to get his promotional and show stuff done.
Now, the funny part about having him around was that it made me really realize just how great my seats would have been if I was there for a Jazz game because of how much smaller Seacrest would look if standing next to any of the players. I have about an inch on him and everyone knows I'm not breaking any height records except in my own family. So, all I could think of watching Ryan was that the players would on average tower a full foot and a half above him (and me). If you know the Delta Center at all (I refuse to call it by that other name), my seats were in section 6 third row. That's the first row of stationary seats right behind the folding chairs. Sweetness. All in all though, the nicest moment I had the whole time I was there was feeding bits of my hamburger bun to this bird that was stuck inside.
By the time I was finally able to audition I had already been at the arena for thirteen, count 'em, thirteen hours and had passed apathy several hours earlier. I had gone in with the thought process of it just being any other audition for a specific part that you either fit or don't according to the director, or in this case, the producers' direction for the production. I didn't fit the criteria and that's ok. Salt Lake brought in some amazing talent that the crowd at least had the pleasure of listening to before them also being shooed out the door. It's sad to see those faces walking out who emulated that true disappointment as though this was it for them, their only shot. I put myself through that the first time and was much more satisfied with my performance this time around and knew that a solid audition with a "no" doesn't mean you're not good, just not right for the part. I still hated seeing those who were going through what I put myself through before. I stopped questioning my talents and just enjoyed the ride.
On another note, I live out in the thickets of Davis County and didn't get out of my audition until about 5:45 p.m. I was expecting rush hour. This is what was waiting for me on the freeway:
Fortunately, I heard a traffic report right when I got in my car and took the advice of all of the reporters and headed across the road to Gateway and saw a movie.
Oh yeah! 3D action! Good kid movie. Getting out of the movie put me out to about 8 p.m. when I thought it should be safe to head for home. Wrong! That tanker hadn't moved an inch yet. Once again, however, the traffic report saved my buns and pointed out that people had been texting that highway 89 was actually a good alternative. After some pretty typical rush hour-type traffic on Beck, 89 was a breeze. I heard later on the news that some poor folks never quite got the clue and kept getting on the freeway anyway and getting stuck until well into the night. Bummer.
