And I wonder when I sing along with you

Ahoy, mateys, ‘tis time for a big, fat RockStar:INXS recap (today is also National Talk Like A Pirate Day, arr!). This one is from 9/4, 9/6 and 9/7. Pardon for the compression, but I really want to get up to date in time for Tuesday’s grand finale.

RockStar Mansion. Everyone misses Ty, especially Jordis. She’s crying and sad. J!D! tells her to use that emotion in her next performance. Everyone in the truck for a clinic. It’s photo time! They are the new faces for Levi’s. There is a stylist. The photographer wants intensity and emotion! J!D! tries for a ‘sexy’ look. I throw up a little in my mouth. Mig does a little hop (for a little man). He moves around a lot and actually says ‘yay! I love having my picture taken!’ Jordis hates having her picture taken and was very uncomfortable. Marty has had someone play a practical joke on him. His pants end just below the knees, giving him a look like he just had a drastic growth spurt. The photographer liked him. Suzie is last. She is not ‘too sexy’ but in a good way. Group shot! I must read the wrong magazines because I haven’t seen this ad campaign yet.

Back at the RockHaüs, it’s J!D!’s birthday. Mig and Marty surprise him with a giant cake shaped like two wings reading ‘human being.’ How I wish he was a ‘human leaving.’ And because J!D! is a total tool, instead of cutting the cake, he grabs a handful of cake and throws it at Suzie and Mig. Jordis and Marty also get into the act and soon they are all completely cake-covered. Poor cake, it deserved better. Oh, but it gets worse! They all strip to their underwear (augh, I’m snow-blind! Oh, no, that’s just Marty’s pale body) and jump into the shower together. Whee! Then the boys are all in the hot tub together. Haa! Then Marty pours wine down J!D!’s leg and Suzie drinks it off of his foot. Barf! Oh, those nutty, crazy rock stars! What will they do next?

Time for songs to be passed out. This was shot out of sequence because everyone is back in their clothes, which are perfectly clean and cake-free. It’s viewer choice week. They could pick a song that the contestant has done or pick a wild card song. Everyone picked the wild card songs. There are also fan comments (my comment, ‘be more entertaining’ was not chosen). They are all happy with their song choices. But there’s more! INXS also wants them all to also do an original song as well. J!D! gets all passive-aggressive and refuses to read his comments, then tells Suzie to read just one, then says he doesn’t want to hear it. Someone actually has the nerve to compare J!D! to Han Solo. ‘Have they even SEEN ‘Star Wars?’ says J!D!

Marty wants to sing his song called ‘Trees.’ Jordis worries about her new song ‘Try Not’ coming right before ‘We Are The Champions.’ Rehearsal with the house band. By the way, where do the house band live? Are they in another wing of the mansion? A hotel? In their cars? Jordis had no direction for her song despite the house band’s suggestions.

And now, the ‘best’ scene in the whole show. Over the credits, J!D! Sits in his underwear on the remains of his cake on the table. Then in the next scene he’s gone, Suzie comes to the table and EATS come of the cake that was under J!D!’s shabby ass. I look for something sharp to gouge out my eyes.

Performance night! Brooke is in a belted purple nightie. Hi INXS! Hi Dave ‘no nickname this week’ Navarro! According to the audience, they are ready to ‘rock.’ Thank God for alcohol. Recap of Sunday night! J!D! is up first tonight with Nirvana’s ‘Come As You Are.’ He plans to do it ‘classy’ and ‘artistic’ and doesn’t want to be compared to Kurt Cobain. No danger of that happening. He does it sped up and with piano accompaniment. It’s very lounge-y until the guitar solo then it’s back to its original form. He sounds like someone from Crystal Ship imitating Jim Morrison imitating Kurt Cobain. That’s not a compliment. His segue consists of asking the audience if they’ve ever been searching for something. Then he adds ‘and when you find it you find that it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.’ Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? ‘Pretty Vegas’ is his original song and it features J!D! singing into a BeDazzled™ bullhorn at one point. Then he does a knees-bent squat at the front of the stage, looking for all the world like he’s going to crap a playground on the stage. Not. A. Good. Move. Oooh, he threw the mike stand! He kicked over the bullhorn! What’s next, throwing a tambourine? Dave thought J!D! was awesome. Tim liked both songs. Kirk notes past weeks haven’t been his best but now ‘he’s back.’

Suzie’s fan song is Bonnie Raitt’s ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me.’ Everyone loves that song. Except me. It’s a sitting-down performance, very dentist’s office music. INXS fidget on the couch. So it’s a mellow thing, Suzie sounds fine, not as good as last week. Nap, er, segue time. Time for ‘Soul Life,’ dedicated to the ‘most true man she knows,’ Ty Taylor. It’s also a mid-tempo snoozer. Eyes getting heavy…It’s a really boring song, it never really takes off. Her long denim split right up to her crotch is much better at showing off her range than her song is. She’s made the first row her gynecologist. Dave thinks Suzie is the strongest vocalist on the show and says she really delivered. Tim agrees with Dave. And the house band is one hell of a great house band. Garry (Garry) thought her song was incredible.

Now Mig (and his Wig. It’s not too Big) is up. He’s singing The Black Crowes’s ‘Hard to Handle,’ which he had wanted from the second week. He sings and does the stompy move. And yes, at the line ‘take my hand,’ he puts his hand into the teeming masses (audience). Off comes the shirt. He’s going to bring it down now, singing a song about the pain of losing someone. INXS look concerned. Mig’s original song is called ‘Home In Me.’ He’s playing electric piano keyboard. Drunk girls in the audience drunkenly clap their hands. Yawn. More dentists’ office music. Mig gets a very lukewarm reception from the audience. Dave thought Mig showed a lot of range tonight, but he’s not sure how his original song relates to INXS. Mig says that they of all people would understand losing someone and moving on (naming no names). Tim says his original song is not an INXS song. Garry (Garry) liked both songs (songs).

Jordis (another word my spell-check hates along with ‘Mig’) is up now. Her fans’ choice is Queen’s ‘We Are The Champions.’ J!D! and her fought over the song in week 3 but now it’s hers. She notes it’s a very hard song to sing. Off we go. Well, she sounds better than J!D! did, but that’s like saying a kick in the shins beats a poke in the eye. She’s not bad but she does it in a key that sounds a bit too high for her and she doesn’t hit all the hard high notes. It’s over! Her original song is ‘Try Not,’ which she wrote with her pal Marty. It’s about something we can all relate to, being overwhelmed by being on TV. INXS have no reaction to that. It sounds really half-baked but at least it’s not slow. The audience doesn’t really react to her except for the drunken front row, desperate to be on television. Dave thought her original song had a Fiona Apple sound to it (I think that’s a compliment). However he doesn’t think her lower range is as strong as her upper range and wonders aloud if she’s ‘losing fire.’ Jordis says she feels like she’s stumbling. Jon appreciates her youth and thinks she’s doing a great job.

Last of all is Marty with the Foo Fighters’s ‘Everlong.’ He’s concerned because the chorus is really high and screamy and INXS doesn’t like Manic Marty. He does the same thing that Dave Grohl figured out; it’s easier to sing with just acoustic guitars instead of trying to hit the high notes in the rock version. INXS appear to be enjoying him. On to the original Marty song ‘Trees.’ It’s about being in love or trying to get someone to fall in love or something like that. And it’s about Marty himself. It’s an upbeat rock thing, not bad. Marty’s hip bones sighting! Gah! Way too much white-white skin. Dave liked how Marty ‘dialed it back’ with ‘Everlong’ and thought ‘Trees’ could be on the radio today. Garry (Garry) also liked ‘Trees.’ Jon thought it was catchy and was ‘the hit of tonight.’

You know the drill, here’s the voting, la la la, voting voting voting. Early results show the contestants in this order, from best to worst: Marty, Suzie, J!D!, Mig, and Jordis. But everything could change! Oh yes! And off we go…

To Wednesday night, elimination time. The most painful elimination so far, I’m sure. And because someone in Mark Burnett’s company likes me, it’s only a half-hour show tonight. Hello again to INXS. Hello again to Dave. Recap. Dave thinks it’s been a hell of a week. Dave also notes how uncomfortable Jordis looked at the photo shoot and reminds her that the winner of RockStar:INXS will have to have their picture taken a lot. Jordis felt she was rushed and hates people looking at her. Dave claims if he saw a picture of her mowing the lawn, he’d be riveted. Probably to see whether her dreads will get caught in the machinery. Suzie, Dave wants to show everyone…your picture! What a look! What a tranformation! Suzie really sees how much she’s learned and changed over the weeks. J!D!, if you were any more of a tool you’d have to change your name to Home Depot. No, he did the photo shoot well, yeah yeah, but how was the birthday party? J!D! says they work hard all week and he wanted everyone to play hard at his party. Dave notes that Suzie was drinking off J!D!’s toes and wishes that he could have been invited.

So there was voting and the most popular original songs were Marty’s and J!D!’s. Who gets the encore? The world picked J!D!, the tool. But wait, who gets to be J!D!’s opening act? Oh dear, it turns out that INXS has noticed things in the world have kind of gone to shit, and they’ve written a ‘powerful’ song about it, called ‘Us.’ And all five contestants will be singing it behind INXS playing. How ‘American Idol’ of them. Hey Dave, come on in, the water’s fine! Onstage, dude! His pants are pulled so far up the crack of his ass I’m wincing. J!D! sings about things changing. Love is all we need to bring us all together apparently. Jordis sings. Marty and Suzie sing together. Everyone now! Suzie sounds good doing vocal gymnastics over the other people singing. Mig is hitting an unfortunate note. Hey, Marty never got his own spot singing alone. Oh well. Time for J!D!’s ‘Pretty Vegas’ yet again. He talks about searching for something and maybe finding it. Suddenly a huge piece of the theater breaks off, hitting J!D! and reducing his body to a thousand broken parts. Oh, that’s me just projecting my dreams again, sorry. Singing etc. Learning nothing from the previous night he squats again, legs wide apart.

God, Brooke says that they’ve been on the air all summer long. THIS is how I spent a chunk of my precious time, recapping this damn show. And there’s a RockStar:INXS CD for sale, go look for it yourselves. Goof on the singing! Squat along with J!D! Make your cat run under the bed and refuse to come out! Back at the mansion after last night’s show, Marty says that Dave’s comments made him a very happy boy. Suzie didn’t think she did the Bonnie Raitt song well enough. Mig has been trying to suppress his nervousness, but today his hands were shaking so much he could barely rip his shirt open. Jordis thought J!D!’s banter was great and she’s feeling the pressure. She wonders if she’s the right person for the job.

Dave asks Jordis about the pressure. She denies feeling pressure and wants to continue. Dave thought J!D! was better this week than the last few weeks. What did he do? J!D! says he stopped the ‘game playing’ and just focused on becoming the lead singer of INXS. Mig, why were you so nervous watching J!D!? ‘Well I hadn’t seen him perform like that.’ You know, pogoing, squatting, posing, while barely singing in tune, or well at all. Mig claims that J!D! made the audience froth at the mouth and that following that with a mellow song was not a good idea. I think following that with a painful series of shots to the stomach is usually the course of treatment.

On to the voting. Brooke asks who thinks they are in the bottom three. Mig and Suzie and eventually Jordis raise their hands. Here are the first results from best to worst: Marty, Suzie, J!D!, Mig, Jordis. But then the rest of the world got to vote, and things change! And just as they come back from commercial…my DiVo asks me if I would like to erase this show now! Aaah! So, I went to the official website and turns out it was Jordis who was sent home. Wah wah. Sorry for the anticlimax. I don’t even think they got to sing the INXS songs this week. Hopefully they’ll do better next time (and so will my machine). Until next time, me harties. Arr.