Saturday
5:30 am - Get up. Stare at clock. Think about getting out of bed. Cry. Pretend I'm going to get out of bed. Sleep for another 2 hours.
8:00 am - Jump out of bed and practically straight into a cab. A little bit too late, I think about my hair. Eh, it's alright, I'm going to Susan Boyle it.
8:30 am - Registration journey begins. In line with several people who have tried out before, feeling anxious. Wish I was with someone I knew.
9:30 am - Done. I was so worried that they weren't going to take my work ID as a real ID, that I actually forgot how old I was; they couldn't have cared less.
Sunday
1 pm to about 5 pm - Julie "Drill Sergeant" Campbell helped me go through and sing about a hundred songs before we settled on a few to sing for the family.
5:15 pm - 5:16 pm - 3 song show.
Monday
4 am - Woke up on the wrong side of 4 am. Fame isn't worth this.
6 am - In line with some crazies...I do love this.
7:30 am - They start letting us into the United Center. Several cameras have come by and quite a few Radio DJs have interviewed people in line over their cell phones. Lots of people are singing, more people are getting/giving advice, and everybody is drinking coke zero.
8:15 am - We film lots of screaming: "Welcome to Chi-Town"; "Welcome to the Chi,il"; "Season 9 Idol", etc, etc.
9:45 am - Waiting starts. Screeching from the floor begins. Auditions have commenced. It's actually really hard to wait for ridiculously long periods of time on your own. So I made some friends around me. There were the three people from the southern-most point in Indiana; they were trying to get their original music heard. The girls behind me were larger-than-life Italians that scammed the system by pretending to be "handicapped" (read: twisted ankle) so they didn't have to wait in line; by any stretch of the imagination, I did not believe that they could be famous. From afar, I saw a couple of drag queens in tutus, but I could hear their operatic voices reverberating off the hallway ceilings. It was pretty cool.
5 hours, a pretzel and 2 diet cokes later - They finally call the section next to us. From our section, cheers erupt as does my stomach. As we make our way down to the United Center center floor, I can see the 12 tables they've lined up. There are 2 producers behind each table; we approach them in groups of 4. It's blurry. The guy ahead of me makes it through. I step up; I start singing Celine Dion. "You were my strength when I was weak/ you were my voice when I couldn't speak/ you were my eyes when I couldn't see/ you saw the best there was in me/ lifted me up when I couldn't speak/ you gave me faith cause you believed...I'm everything I am because you loved me." Except I missed the note on faith by a full mile, and I knew it. 3 other girls sing. We're all called to the table. "You, you, and you, sorry, you're not what we're looking for this season"...which left just me, standing there, shocked. The judges were split/undecided, so I got a second chance.
American Idol Producer: Why did you sing Celine Dion?
Me (fumbling...): Well, I, uh, think that, uh that's the kinda music I would make.
AIP: Well, you're not Adult Contemporary.
Me: Ok...I -
AIP: And you're not Celine Dion.
Me: Uhhhh - Thank you...?
AIP: Ok well we're going to give you another shot. Do you have anything else?
Me: Yeah, you know I really see myself as more of a singer /songwriter anyway.
[I sing about 20 seconds of "Goodbye to You".]
AIP: You're a good singer; keep singing. Unfortunately, I think that there are some better singers than you in Season 9.
[I exit out the non-winners' hallway.]
And that was it. That was my American Idol experience. Maybe you'll see me during the Chicago auditions day, but most likely you won't. Despite the early mornings, despite the waiting, despite the rejection, it was worth it. I'm not quite famous, but I do get to say that I did it.
And lucky for American Idol that next season I won't be able to sit there and scream at my TV set that I was better than those crazies...Instead, I was just one of them.
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