From here to the red-haired rocker

I was looking at the screen more closely than usual. I was coming off a pretty big surprise moments ago, when my predictions – which have been right for most of the past few weeks – have gone seriously off kilter. Three people remained standing, and another verdict was to be delivered.

“Adam, you are safe.”

Yeah, that was a given. It’s always been that way for most of the past few weeks, expect for the week before, when he surprisingly appeared on the bottom three. But that wasn’t the purpose of the moment. In my five years of watching American Idol – the first two seasons weren’t aired in the Philippines – I’ve never felt so nervous about what was going to happen in the next two minutes.

I was staring at the screen, my heart pounding, waiting for the inevitable.

“Danny, you are safe.”

Yes, in those five years, I’ve had bets and I’ve had favorites. In the third season – the first one aired in this side of the world – I was, like everybody else, rooting for the two Filipino-American contestants that made it to the finals: Camile Velasco, and eventual third-placer Jasmine Trias. The next year, I was rooting for eventual runner-up Bo Bice. The year after that, it was Taylor Hicks. I never got to follow the next two seasons, because I was getting busier with school, and even if most of the crucial performances happened over the summer, there was just no time to get settled with the contenders. You were watching them sing, but you never really rooted for anybody.

But that didn’t mean I wasn’t aware of things. I was, after all, still plugged in to the Internet and to friends who were still keeping track. Of course, last year was about the Davids – either you were rooting for David Cook or David Archuleta. I wasn’t fond of the younger David because everybody else was gushing over him. The girls were all, “he’s sooo handsome!” and the same went with the older David. (I prefered him because I liked his style, but I wasn’t rooting for anybody.)

The finale happened, and everybody around me had a bet. While I was there to see who won, I wasn’t there to go crazy about it. I wasn’t annoyed for everybody who dedicated every blog entry and status message to the cause, but it did seem like it was too much. But I wasn’t the type who followed someone big to all ends. I was just at home, watching the finale live – it’s always that way anyway – and was a little relieved that David Cook won. The celebration, and the singles, followed.

Everything changed the following year, this one. I have since graduated from DLSU, and have started writing for a television website based in the United States. It just happened that I was assigned to do American Idol, which was a pretty lucky strike since I didn’t have to bluff about it – at the very least, I knew how it works, but I was able to watch a few seasons and get a feel for how things go. And, inevitably – or perhaps because I told myself I’d have to immerse myself in the show I’m covering so much so that I’d feel better with what I’ll write later – this season saw me getting more involved than ever before.

And, after those conversations with fans and pundits over all those years, I’ll become one myself.

As you probably know, the season started with some fanfare over the changes – Kara DioGuardi as the fourth judge, the return of the wild card round, the (unsuccessful) attempts to give audition episodes a feel-good vibe – and then, nothing much. There were some stand-outs, either in a good way or in a bad way. It was just work as usual – it was still the audition episodes, of course, and the only significant thing I did was write an opinion piece about why I don’t watch them.

Inevitably, however, I was having favorites. The girl then known as Megan Corkrey got my attention during her auditions, but never showed up again until the day she was sent to the Top 36. I was also seeing people already place their bets on people – there was this guy named Adam Lambert, whose slick hair and soaring vocals earned a million shrieking female fans. There was this guy named Danny Gokey, whose soulful voice got the attention of my mother. The same went with this girl named Lil Rounds, and by then I understood her appeal – a mother of three who can sing the way most Filipinos think is the right way to sing.

It took me a long time to place my bets on a few other contestants. I was impressed by Alexis Grace when she took to the stage – perhaps it’s me and my preference for artists who bring something different to the table, or in other words, don’t sound very much like the others I’ve heard, by choice or by force. And then there’s Allison Iraheta, whose name popped up only in that leaked list of Top 36 contestants. I only knew her as a 16-year-old who had a weird, toothy grin. I literally dismissed her the way I dismissed many other contestants; by the time, the judges were already hinting at the male contestants being better than the females.

She appeared in the second batch of semifinalists, decided to do a Heart song, and I noticed that her hair was very red, much more than the photo suggested. And, perhaps like everybody else, I was blown away. Or surprised. Actually, both.

Suddenly I have a strong favorite for the competition – a personal choice more than a bandwagon, an admitted first – and since I’m writing about the show for work, I found myself in an extraordinary position: I can follow the entire thing to an extent that others here aren’t probably privy to. But the weirder thing is, I’ll end up, and probably have to be, a little more obsessed to make sense of it all.

I’m not exactly fond of being a fan of something. I’m not the type of guy who grabs every detail about something just to prove that dedication, although there have been a number of exceptions, all of which ended in disaster. Or, I always have this tendency to be objective in everything – I can see some flubs even in the people I get pretty fanatical with. Perhaps it’s what my work asks me to do, or it’s something more built in. I wasn’t exactly made to blindly say “oh my gosh” like what I saw my friends do the previous season.

So, it’s work that led me to the biographical stuff that fans would usually search on Google. She’s sixteen, born some time in April (I actually forgot until it happened), won a singing contest aired on a Spanish-language network, and is of Salvadoran descent, quickly debunking my “is she Japanese?” thought bubble.

Then again, she’s cute. All right, she’s cute. That’s where it all begins anyway. The moment I recognized that, I knew resisting is futile. But I’m the guy who’s very uncomfortable with having a crush on a celebrity, much more a younger one. My friend Icka – who readily admitted to being obsessed to another finalist, Anoop Desai – was basically telling me not to feel bad, because the age gap is just roughly three years.

In between work, we ended up chatting about her obsession. I wouldn’t call mine that, but inevitably what I’m doing is release of some sort. And then, back to work.

The objective part lies in my comments on the performances themselves. The nice thing with doing American Idol for work is you get to see everything on a wider level. The average viewer would usually watch their favorite’s performance and just gush. I end up looking beyond that. While most are gushing about how great their favorites are, I’m probably a little more unforgiving with mine, while still giving some part of me to the getting-blown-away part. For example, Megan was one of the most unique performers the show ever had, and yet she polarized everybody. As much as it pained me to see her go, I had to guess that she’s going early, and that indeed happened.

In that case, my bias towards Allison – can I call her Allie here too, like I always have? – was a weird combination of objectivity, a requirement for work, and what they all call spazzing, at least to a slight degree. That weird feeling of not wanting to stare at the screen, but having to do just that? It’s uncomfortable because it’s becoming a crush, and it’s not exactly what I wanted to do – I’m literally falling into what everybody else has done. Is that what watching the show is supposed to be like?

Probably, but then there are the recurring themes that I end up playing with for work. Elimination felt like a weeding out of the undeserving, to the point that I predicted it in stages quite accurately. Danny was not improving, and suddenly paled. Adam started to bore. Both still have large fan bases, and both have arguably become a pain in the ass. Kris Allen, the unsuspecting quiet guy, has sprung ahead with surprisingly good arrangements.

Inevitably I’d pay more attention to Allie, even if all I actually did was listen. (Then again, I always did that.) Sure, her performances were pretty good most of the time – and that’s being objective – but she veered towards being predictable, and she was different on stage than off, and she was just being outstaged by screamers and sob stories. Eventually, you knew she wasn’t going to last – she made four trips to the bottom three – but as the competition neared its end, and she continued to perform and attract more attention, it suddenly dawned on me. She might just last.

Is that how you really watch American Idol? There’s the speculation, and there’s the arguments about who deserves to stay and who deserves to go – probably a much more different thing if you’re not in the United States – and then there’s the passionate cheering for a particular contestant, for whatever reason there is. In my case, it’s Allie’s talent that defies her 17-year-old self, and perhaps the attached infatuation, for lack of a better term. I did say there’s a first time for everybody. I ended up doing what they all did with the Davids the last time this happened.

“Allison Iraheta is going home tonight,” Ryan Seacrest said – or at least something like it. I was watching the rest of the show before getting to work with the usual contestant wrap-up ditty I was supposed to do, and I knew this one would be a little more difficult, or a little more too extensive than usual. And it was weird, too. It was the first time I felt really nervous while watching the program, and almost the first time I cried. And I was in front of the computer in a full office.

So, I thought, that was it for me. No more of the slightly giddy viewing habits, the constant wondering about whether someone can actually trump front-runner Adam, or he-should-have-been-eliminated-eons-ago guy Danny. I was just there, taking photos from the past four months, cropping them, assembling them, and writing about the, and my readers from both sides of the pond called the entire write-up either “emotional” or “excellent”. I was getting a little curious as to how someone like her could act that way despite the seemingly bad news – gestures to the big screen showing the elimination video package, seemingly happy that she made it this far, spunky and misunderstood at the same time. The last song, and you see that one tear.

And then I was over it. Slightly, at least. I did get a little too attached, judging from conversations with who actually cared about the show. But it’s just work. I continue writing, about other shows, about other things, for other fans, and then some. Icka did say I’ll lose it when I read the exit interviews, especially since I’ll see all of that when I return to work.

That night was crazy, but I got home anyway and caught the moment of elimination twice, on two different channels. And yesterday, I caught two replays of her last performance.

It felt uncomfortable, to say the least.