I hope it’s kosher to link to this, since it’s officially a “preview” page, but here are last month’s WYSIWYG videos. [link updated: that’s the link to the real page] The complete performances in their entirety, including mine.

This is the first season of “American Idol” that I’ve been watching regularly. (Chalk it up to more of Matt’s TV-watching influence.) I really have only one comment:

I am so fucking sick of melisma.

I fucking hate it.

Melisma, if you don’t know, is the overused singing practice of taking a one-note syllable and stretching that syllable out to several notes. It’s very R&B-ish and happens all the time on “American Idol,” even for songs that totally don’t need it.

I know I’m late to the “American Idol” bandwagon, and its main fault has been widely documented elsewhere (most recently by Ben Brantley) – namely, that the audience rewards those contestants who sap the most individuality from their performances. Why Scott Savol is still around is beyond me. (At least the sappy Anthony Federov is cute.) At one point last night, Scott was singing a song and went needlessly melismatic, and I screamed and swore at the TV. Matt practically had to keep me from throwing it out the window. Could someone please tell that guy that not every song is an R&B song?

My favorite performers this go-round are Bo and Constantine, because they have the most individuality of anyone up there. I hope one of them wins. (Lately I’ve been leaning towards Constantine.)

Stephen Holden writes today about Barbara Cook’s recent cabaret performance, “Tribute”:

While watching “Tribute,” I thought back to the Broadway anthology unleashed on the April 5 edition of “American Idol,” whose nine contestants struggled to articulate fragments of songs like “The Impossible Dream,” “People,” “My Funny Valentine” and “Hello, Young Lovers.” The paradox of this toxic singing contest, which is the rough equivalent of the old “Ed Sullivan Show” in suggesting the median level of mass musical taste, is that it has the power to canonize songs, which its clueless judges then go on to treat as stunts in a gymnastic competition that rewards crude physical prowess. …

The contestants are urged not to be “pitchy” (the program’s favorite pseudo-technical word for off-pitch, which they usually are), and are congratulated for their high notes and telegenic appeal. …

Let’s not kid ourselves: the ascendance of “American Idol,” and its turning of music into sports, signals the end of American popular song as we know it. Its ritual slaughter of songs allows no message to be carried, no wisdom to be communicated, other than the screamed and belted song of the self.

Ms. Cook, who gives master classes in how to sing and tell the truth, could talk herself blue in the face to these people and never be understood. What a stunning loss we face.

Well, I wrote up a column-length piece and emailed it to Gay City News a week and a half ago.

I haven’t received any response.

Also, I made a new friend, a playwright who wrote a play I admire and who enjoys my blog. He said he’d love to get me connected with people in the business and stuff. Matt and I met up with him and his boyfriend a week ago, last Thursday night, and at his request, the next day I emailed him a copy of my screenplay. Also a short email saying it was nice to meet him.

I haven’t received any response.

This is all enough to leave a would-be writer dejected. And it’s working.

Perhaps I will just be blogging for the rest of my life.