Implosion and "Idol"

It turns out that this past Saturday – not Friday (see “Friday Is for ‘I’”) – was the big day for Riverview Square implosion and “American Idol” tryouts Day 1 – and Vincent and I – in a way missed both of them. You’ll recall that this past week the office building a block from mine (pictured above from earlier last week) was to be demolished to make way for the new $500 million Louisville waterfront arena to be constructed across 2nd Street from us and a round of Season 8 auditions was to run for three days this past weekend in Louisville.

Vincent and I left home late to check these activities out on our way to Ikasucon anime convention and other activities in Fort Wayne primarily because I was trying to e-mail myself pictures so I could blog in Fort Wayne. We got downtown at 7:03 a.m. and – to my surprise and disappointment – we had already missed the 10-second implosion (Stephanie watched it several times on CNN in the Tallahassee airport and it’s on the Web - http://www.wlky.com/video/16929306/index.html ).

(You’ll recall that I got a day off of work Friday so they could seal up the air-conditioning vents and some windows could get covered/sealed off – probably partly to keep asbestos from flying into our building – although our building is undergoing its own construction as they prepare the first floor to house the construction company directing the arena construction.)

(I should mention that – at 7 a.m. – there were several thousand people there – some in the street, some up on the parking garage roof – almost like this was a mini-Thunder or Fourth of July – to see a different kind of fireworks. It was fun to see these people out early on a Saturday morning – some with their kids – out for Implosion Saturday – (Of course, it turns out there were some other people- no doubt many from out of town – up also, elsewhere in town.)

This week they’ve continue to tear down leftover sections of Riverview Square (picture below). Apparently there will be no implosion with the beautiful old brick utility building. Already they are going after it with wrecking balls. Several dozen Louisville building feature banners/posters with portraits of Louisville favorite sons and daughters, and I bet the first one to go up – next to the 2nd Street bridge, looking out over the Ohio River – was of Muhammed Ali has come down. I noticed today that they must have taken it down a week or two ago. Not only is it gone but the wall it was on is also gone. I wonder if they’ll put it up elsewhere (though there are Ali likenesses built into the exterior walls – overlooking Interstate 64 – of the Ali Center).

Unbeknownst to Vincent, we then drove south – instead of north across the Ohio River into Indiana – to the Fairgrounds. There obvious from Interstate 65 (the King expressway) were probably 10,000 people going from the South entrance of the Fairgrounds building all the way around to the other end of the giant building. It was now 7:20 a.m. The official start of Day 1 of Louisville “Idol” tryouts was in fact 7 a.m. But the paper later said there were people gathering at 12 midnight the night before. We paid the $6 and drove through the parking lot. We overhead one would-be contestant near the start of the line practicing “Lean on Me’ (some of those contestants pictured below).

We also drove around the back and I took a picture taking in most of the thousands and thousands of people waiting in line in the back of the building.

The “Idol” crew was out hunting for interesting people with interesting stories and good voices – both to do the “reality show” stories and also to go to the actual tryouts. With this many people – more than you realize from watching the show – it’s hard to understand how someone – like, say, Carly Smithson – ever made it through. If you watch the early parts of the show, “Idol” makes it seem like all of the thousands of people who show up get to sing before Paula Abdul, Randy, and Simon Cowell – including all of the bad ones- and it all takes place in a day or two. But what actually happened here is that the staff picked a very small fraction of the 10,000 plus people here and brought them over three days in Freedom Hall, the arena that the $500,000 downtown arena will partially replace (see “Arena football” from the week before). There – according to the paper and broadcast reports- four contestants sat at each of dozens and dozens of tables – each with one or more staff – and each sang – until they brought in the next group. A mix of speed dating and a real crap shoot. Then – at least in Louisville this year – in September the people who learned (when?) they got call backs, will return to Louisville for a set of tryouts- some with Paula, Randy, and Simon this time – at Churchill Downs, scene of the Kentucky Derby, where Stephanie has watched horse-racing and we’ve seen the Rolling Stone and the Police.

There the other part of the early rounds of “Idol” that many of us are used to watching – will take place. I’m not sure how the actual show next winter – where we’ll get to see some segments about Louisville – will paper over the fact that there were two separate segments – because this time they will be in two different venues (fairgrounds/Freedom Hall vs. Churchill Downs). Already having gotten attention in the press is this not totally obvious feature of the contest. All of the William Hungs and other apparently bad singers and outlandish characters that Paula et al. bounce off the show are people that the staff had given call backs too. An “Idol” producer whom the local paper interviewed the week before the tryouts insisted that the staff does not purposely send up buffoons/bad singers so that they can embarrass themselves and Simon can skewer them. Another interesting thing the producer said: You know all of those annoying people who, when they get bounced, are shocked and hold on, not quite believing it. The producer said that’s exactly the kind of contestants they want. If you’re not totally shocked that you aren’t “going to Hollywood,” you don’t have the kind of self-confidence that a successful contestant is going to need in order to carry him- or herself through to the finals. If you’re humble, try a different show, he said.

Wondering what we’ll see in September (when for a while it looked like they might be imploding the electric company building, just like they imploded the old hardware building between my current building and the Humana building) – will I get a picture of Paula, Randy or Simon? – after stopping at a bakery in Germantown – I did finally drive Vincent (and at least two pets, it turns out) across the river and through Southern Indiana towards Fort Wayne.

-- Perry