CHICAGO — Music, popular star of the hit reality series American Idol, crawled wounded into a cave and prayed for death's sweet release last night after being bludgeoned by a pack of auditioners hell-bent on getting their imbecilic mugs on the tee-vee.
''It was a hideous scene,'' said one badly shaken bystander. ''Music is a pretty tough customer. He's weathered Milli Vanilli, Ashlee Simpson, even the rise of Auto-Tune, but when that blue-haired chick with the accordion clubbed him in the back of the knees, he hit the ground. And then the pack closed in: The dude in too-tight Lycra hotpants, the spastic guy hamming his way through ''It's Not Unusual,'' and the faux-mincing Tiny Tim impersonator. I started to think the brutality would never end.''
Eyewitnesses say Music made a daring escape after his attackers were momentarily mesmerized by Amy Lang, 26, a ''boob-boxer'' from Westchester, OH, who had pretended to faint, then suddenly leapt to her feet and defecated on the musical legacy of Aretha Franklin.
''Three generations of soul fans revered my sultry ballad 'Dr. Feelgood,' but that's all in the crapper now,'' Ms. Franklin said in a prepared statement released by her publicist.
A police investigation into the incident is not expected to wrap up before the weekend, although a Chicago PD spokesperson said that country music star Shania Twain escaped the episode unscathed. Story developing....
Okay, okay, so this is EW.com, not the Onion, but you'll have to forgive my attempts at parody, seeing how most of last night's Chicago audition episode played out like a bad joke.
But before I get to kvetching, or perhaps in place of that, let's talk about the handful of undeniably excellent performances we saw this evening — especially because if you'll recall, season 8's very worst audition episode (from San Francisco) brought us none other than eventual runner-up Adam Lambert. So maybe John Park or Charity Vance or Keith Semple is on the brink of becoming a future Guest of Oprah and International Instigator of Rabid Fan Squealing. Stranger things have happened. And the eight talented kids shown scoring Golden Tickets tonight — plus the quintet the producers chose to keep chyron- and music-free — shouldn't have to pay the price because they were surrounded by fame-mongers who had me fantasizing about stuffing them into oversized bin liners and hurling them against a wall.
[We pause here for a moment so I can remember that just two sentences ago I was trying to be all positive and take a break from the gripe-a-thon. While I get my bearings back, don't forget to follow me on Twitter @EWMichaelSlezak]
NEXT: John Park makes a fan out of Shania Twain
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