Idol Thoughts || Dispatch from Philadelphia

This week's Idol Thoughts are brought to you from the land where Whiz is king. While I'm still waiting for the first cheesesteak of this Philly visit, I managed to indulge in a little Idol chatter Thursday afternoon, pre-results show, with Tavia Nyong'o, our Bluegum compatriot. T and I were rather prescient about this week's eliminations...

But first things first: O!I is pleased to be able to follow up on last week's Idol Thoughts query--WWAIS (What Would Adria Imada Say) about Ramiele Malubay's tropicalia magic? Here's the scoop:

"It's hilarious that you all picked up on the 'Polynesian' theme, since we were watching and wincing at Ramiele's moves and were reminded of Sanjaya's previous tropicalia forays. Hawai`i or no Hawai`i, she was a more competent dancer than Sanjaya. (Though she described her movements as 'hula,' her hip movements are part of a dance vocabulary most commonly identified as 'Tahitian' today, but which may have originated in the Cook Islands... but who's counting?) What more authentic Filipino subject could Ramiele be -- between the PCN,fidelity to R&B, and hula hobby? After all, to the chagrin of many on-island (that is Hawai`i-based) observers, hula on the US continent is probably practiced by as many Filipinos as Native Hawaiians, since Filipinos have become competitive with, if not preferable to, indigenous Hawaiians because the former are more legible as Hawaiian bodies. This slippage has been happening at least as early as the 1930s, when Filipino men and women began passing as Hawaiian musicians and dancers on the show room circuit."

Big salamats to Adria for getting back to us about this! We're hoping to hear more from AI as Ramiele's primetime persona evolves during the finals.

Right now 2/3's of O!I are currently on the road, so we've seen only snippets of this week's Idol (girl's night and the results show are waiting on the Tivo). Suffice it to say that we were saddened, though not surprised to hear that the sassy emo queen, Danny Norriega was axed from this week's show for his performance of "Tainted Love." The other 3 pretty much deserved to go, especially Luke Menard who managed to make Wham's "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go" sound both gayer and squarer. (I'm personally of the opinion that As'iah Epperson should've outlasted Rock Band avatar, Amanda Overmeyer--but I understand the allure of novelty, especially on Idol). As Tavia and I discussed over a healthy and fagulous lunch, Danny N was set to be AJ Tabaldo-ed. His dramarama, flamboyant gestures weren't enacted by an innocuous white body (think Clay Aiken).



Like Tabaldo before him, the double-dose of brown and fey--a finger-snapping, shoulder slinking fey at that--may just have been too much for mainstream America. They opted instead to keep former gay stripper David Hernandez for his take on the diva gut-buster, "It's All Coming Back." My hunch tells me his brand of out, studly gay beefcake (or perhaps the pointedly "butch"/fratty anecdote about his "walnut sized booger") was just a much more acceptable, legible form of post-millennial masculinity (think Ricky Martin).

More to say, but that elusive cheesesteak is a callin'. - (KT)