Self-Sacrifice For The Greater Good. Yours.

For inexplicable reasons, my friends Monsieur Shinn and his wife turned into American Idol fans last season. The rabid kind. The glued to the little screen ones who won’t go out three nights a week for fear of missing something idolly earth-shattering. I believe they may even have voted once or twice, not that they would ever cop to that. Sigh.

Last week, the Shinns informed me the AI try-outs would take place on the 26th in Arlington at the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium. My interest was purely photographic, of course, as I have been known to kill wee animals when I attempt to sing anything. I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to capture the madness. For you. My faithful readers whom I’ve neglected lately because of a cute French man. Who could blame me?

I thought about planting a small tent in the stadium parking lot the night before, hanging out, being down with the peeps, roasting s’mores on a makeshift fire, and bursting into spontaneous Thriller choreographies with the kids. However I do not own a small tent (nor a big one.) My idea of camping generally involves a chalet and room service. And, let’s be honest, all these pretenders to the throne are artists, bohemians if you will, and probably not proper company. So scratch that.

I woke up early instead. A few unexpected events foiled my initial plan to arrive at the Stadium well before 7 am and photograph the mad crowd: a half hour struggle with the snooze button, the absence of Starbucks coffee dripping down my veins, and the fact that Arlington had decided, since the last time I was there, to add 1) a new street with a stupid name right where I was supposed to veer off the highway, and 2) a new stadium. In close to 20 years in Texas, I have yet to set foot in a stadium. My ignorance showed. I ended up at the Ballpark, the baseball stadium, instead of the football stadium. After realizing the error of my ways, locating the right stadium, and taking 15 minutes to find an illegal spot to park, I realized with great dismay the 10,000 hopefuls had already vanished in the confines of the new shiny building.

All that was left for me to photograph was the lazy ones, those with not enough drive to get at the audition on time like the other 10,000.

Some looked just too cool to care about the time.

Some looked like bad reincarnations of the Village People

Some brought home-made paraphernalia

Others, their good-luck tattoos, some of which looked… original and frightening at the same time:

Kinda looks like me when my brother shoots my portrait!

Even scarier than the above-referenced tattoo, Heather Elmer, 27, who has already auditioned SEVEN times (some folks do not know when to call it quits), and was going to sing… Yeah, that’s right. Over the friggin’ Rainbow. Incidentally, she made it to the next round. How creepy is that?

And oh surprise, reporting for the TV Guide Network, Alexis Grace who finished 11th last season. She is minuscule.

Here she is, interviewing Jason Castro’s brother, Michael. For all of you non-Idol initiated, Jason was a semi-finalist on Season 7, and Michael got eliminated at Hollywood’s final round of Season 8. Was Michael going to audition again? I have no idea! I did not ask. I’m a crappy reporter. I’ll have to ask the Shinns next Season.

While all of this exciting stuff was going on, Pat was chilling. Numerous were the peeps who did not know they could have registered to enter the stadium as supporters. Pat was waiting for her granddaughter. 7:30 am. A forecast of 100 degrees for the day. The auditions concluded at 6 pm. I hope she found a way to stay cool.

This girl got the cooling part down pat, sending herself to oblivion.

Some, like this lady, had brought their own sitting apparatus. 10 hours of wait. I would have brought a damn sofa. And fluffy pillows.

Not auditioning but making a lot of noise anyway, a bunch of youths with ‘tudes:

The kids and not so kids were part of a new step ensemble, managed by a savvy business chick (mommawonder, I suppose) who immediately made them pose with the banner displaying her contact number. I need an agent like that.

The band was led by a tough cookie, a small girl who, I’m sure, could kick my butt in one minute tops.

I hung out a bit, being all hip and stuff

The boy with the light colored shirt up front is Dominic who speaks French. Salut Dominic!!!!

DJ Wild Hair (on the right) was in da house (see how I’m down with it?)

And there were also very menacing looking men (who were actually the sweetest kids ever and who posed for me forever – we were having a swell time!) But a hot time too! Too hot for comfort. Time for me to head home but not before snooping a bit and taking a photograph of the $1.15 billion Stadium.

This is what a $1.15 billion stadium looks like. Some call it “Six Flags over Jerry” (that’s Jerry Jones, the footballers owner. Even I know that!) The City of Arlington participated to the tune of $325 million. Personally in my own opinion, I think that I would have insisted for the Cowboys to be re-baptized Arlington Cowboys had I been the City of Arlington. To thank them for the $325 million, the new Stadium will only charge the honorable citizens of Arlington and others $40… for parking at major events. That’s $40 for a parking spot. Let’s say you decided to attend the U2 concert on Oct. 12. The ticket in the nosebleed section would cost you $30.00. Parking: $40.00. In other words, it would be more expensive for you to park your car than to attend the concert. Mmhmm…

I continued snooping around and guess who suddenly appeared in my line of vision?

That’s right! The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, all decked out with their sparkly pompoms, their wholesome cleavage, and their almost non-existing shorts!

They were being filmed saying something very intellectual like “Texas is hotter!”

A dude snooping next to me screamed at them: “I thought you’d be taller!” I turned to him and told him “I’m sure they thought you’d be slimmer!” That silenced him. Don’t you be rude to my sistas! Anyway, this did not excite me much but I thought that, after depriving my readers from Miami models, I owed them the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. It was time to hit the road and find the closest Starbucks. I felt I deserved a extra humongous  latte. After all, the snooze button could have totally won…

Dallas Gay Pride Parade – Bears – (13/gazillion)

I called it the Village People float because all the guys looked like the construction worker but it turns out it was the Bears. Sounds like a scout troop but, er, not quite the case. The bears are in fact a gay sub-culture which consists mostly of hairy corpulent gay or bisexual males with a working class look. Please forgive all the gross generalizations.

A slew of expressions emerged from the bear community. A Panda Bear is Asian. A Pocket Bear is short. A Bear fag hag is a Goldilocks. An Otter is hairy but slimmer than the usual bear, etc.

The bears have their own code system for placing adds. For example: Bob Donahue, one of the co-author of the code is a: B5 c+ f s- w t- k or a full bearded definite cub, furry in a bearish sense, relationship oriented, with a little tummy, shorter than average, and open-minded bear. The code saves a lot of money to U.S. bears.

I believe this is a Dallas Polar Daddy bear holding the International Bear Brotherhood Flag.

Annually, the Dallas Bears host the Texas Bear Round-Up which attracts hundreds of bears. The code of conduct for the event includes a specific ban on public defecation (!) and public nudity (complete coverage of genitals and butt crack – jock straps do not qualify.) 😉