Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | T | Texas Monthly

American idle: in Austin the nation's hottest reality-TV tryouts featured emotional fireworks, uncensored tragicomedy--and endless waiting around. (Letter From Austin).

Article Excerpt
AT FOUR O'CLOCK ON NOVEMBER 5, SEVEN hundred wide-eyed singers lounged outside the Double Tree Hotel in North Austin. It was Election Day, and all over town here voters were scrambling to the polls. But no one here was talking politics. The following morning at the hotel, the reality-television show American Idol, a wildly successful hybrid of Survivor and Star Search, would hold one of seven nationwide auditions--the only one in Texas--for its second season, and nearly everyone in line was fixated on a singular, modest objective: overnight Hollywood superstardom.

There was more to this fantasy than misguided youthful ambition. After all, last summer twenty-year-old Texan Kelly Clarkson was able to quit her job as a cocktail waitress in Burleson after being selected as American Idol's first winner. The sometime karaoke singer not only dispatched her 29 competitors but also parlayed the experience into a lucrative, multifaceted entertainment career. Her success had become a model for those at the DoubleTree, many of whom had put their jobs and classes on hold for a few days and--some of them--driven as many as five hundred miles to give their own yet-to-be-recognized talents a similar Clarkson-size shot in the arm.

Fortunately, it wasn't a bad afternoon to be waiting around. The weather was gorgeous: sunny, 75 degrees, a cool breeze, and it was quiet except for the low drone of semis idling on Interstate 35. The mass of bodies, wedged between the hotel and a yellow "DO NOT CROSS" ribbon, stretched from the front entrance, down a cement sidewalk, around two corners, and on to the asphalt wasteland on the hotel's opposite side, where it had ample space to continue growing. Groups of contestants lugging overnight bags continued to arrive and were met by a grumpy Idol lackey wielding a black Sharpie, who branded them with numbers and told them to join the back of the line.

Up front, the impromptu ringleader was a nineteen-year-old prosthetics deliveryman from Kansas City, Kansas, named Curtis Cofield, who went by the nickname Dip. He was given this handle because whenever he ended one of his frequent Muhammad Ali-style rap-rhymes, he would strike a hieroglyphic sideways pose and up-sing "Di-i-i-p" before busting a swift, snaking break-dance move. Throughout the afternoon, Dip would aim his camcorder at a group of people (who, in turn, directed their camcorders back at him) and shout, "Somebody sing somethin"! Somebody uhnnn!" or "Come on, who's next? Come do your thang. Gonna sing, don't stop, if you stop this now I'm gonna have to get the cops," at which point someone would step forward and begin to sing--eyes closed, mouth down-turned and earnest, eyebrows dancing--about how his baby was so sweet to him (oh) and he'd be so good to his gift (awww)....

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!