Seacoast of Bohemia

Day two, Monday:

Set out from Greenville bright and early, feeling -- if not exactly chipper, at least better than I had the night before. And excited. Oh, so so so excited! I listened to the American Idol CD and Clay’s single alternatively the whole way down. Oh, I love them so much!
About 8:15 a.m. I hit Atlanta’s morning rush hour traffic for the first time and got my first taste of driving in Atlanta. And let me say this: a little while ago I mentioned how much I dislike Boston traffic and would never want to drive there? Yeah, well, Atlanta now absolutely tops my list of cities I least want to drive in. Not only are Atlanta drivers nuts -- zooming in and out, never signaling, switching lanes like maniacs -- Atlanta is the most confusing city I’ve ever been in.

The whole thing seems to be a gigantic one-way system of the worst kind, with streets stopping and then starting up somewhere else with the same name, and streets that have the same name, but one runs north-northeast and the other runs west north-west or something, and unexpected closures or road-endings or places where you can’t even tell if it’s a road or a parking lot or what but dear god where are you supposed to drive?! So. Like I said. Confusing.

Nonetheless, I made it relatively intact to the neighborhood of the Georgia Dome (actually, this first time was the easiest I ever found the place), and managed to get, in fact, a really good parking spot in an unofficial lot right across the street from Gate D, where we were supposed to line up. Plus, I only paid $15 for my three days, and later they upped the price to $30. Ha!

Now, remember how earlier I mentioned that, in planning to be in Atlanta by 9 a.m., I was planning to be extremely early, because idolonfox.com had stated that the earliest we’d be allowed to line up would be noon? Yeah, so imagine my surprise when I approached Gate D only to discover about nine hundred people already in line in front of me, some of whom had been there since Sunday night! Oh, fickle fickle Georgia Dome and American Idol staff, then did I learn to mistrust ye!

At nine o’clock on Monday the line already stretched all the way through a series of zigzag barriers (like at an amusement park) directly in front of Gate D, around the side of the building (and a loooong side it was, too, the Georgia Dome being an enormous stadium), and all the way back into the area in front of Gate C. Which is where I joined it, cursing my lateness and worrying that I wouldn’t be able to get a spot.
Which, as it later turned out, was a completely needless worry because a) I turned out to be comparatively close to the beginning of the line and b) they ended up really and truly auditioning everyone who showed up, even if you didn’t show until 7:55 on Wednesday morning. But I didn’t know that at the time.

So I rushed up to claim my place and (after asking some nice girls near me in line to watch my stuff while I ran to use the portapotties in the parking lot – like I said, I have to pee when I’m nervous), stuck it out there. After a while, they moved us into zigzags too, and as the morning progressed, we watched more and more people line up behind us, filling the zigzags, filling the rest of the Gate C area, and then stretching on back to Gate B and beyond.

(I don’t know how far, since I didn’t dare leave the line. Mistrust of American Idol staff was already firmly established. Who knew what they would do while I was away! They might film the entire show and declare a winner while I was using the bathroom!)
The quarters were kind of cramped, since everyone wanted to feel as close to the front as possible, and thus kind of smushed themselves up, but I was near a bunch of nice people, who later became my line/seat buddies:

• Andy, who had auditioned last year in Atlanta and made it to Simon, Randy and Paula, only to be told “You’re good, but we just gave away our last pass to California,” and who has met Kim Locke and knows RJ Hilton's mom (he was the big celebrity in our group);
• Devon, who’d come from Ohio to audition, and Sheree, who’d come to be her moral support (incredibly, I later found out, they are both married, and Devon actually has a one-year-old daughter, though they are both younger than me. This made me feel both old and unsuccessful. Go me!);
• Chris, who is a friend of Andy’s from high school days, and who, though he’s a really big white guy with close-cropped blonde hair, has the sweetest, lightest R&B voice, and who has also been: a dancer, a cheerleader, a football player, an entrepreneur, a college student, a basketball player, and any number of other things;
• Lynn, who’s a darling and a Helper and reminded me of Hope;
• and Bliss, who I didn’t get to know at all because she mostly talked to her friends.
We were lucky in our line placement, because we were under a roof, so didn’t get too uncomfortable while we were waiting. Plus, we were near a group of kids who had a video camera and were videotaping lots of people singing, which was really cool. The one kid would point this umbrella he had at someone, and they would get up and sing, and then everyone around them would cheer. This is just an example of something I encountered the whole time, which was that this group of people, the auditionees, was remarkably supportive, enthusiastic and kind.

I mean, it was really just such a nice group of kids. Any time someone would really sing out, during the whole time, the people around him or her would be so supportive, cheering and clapping and whistling. It was tremendous. I mean, everybody there seemed genuinely supportive of everybody else – always willing to answer a question or start up a conversation or smile at you. I never felt worried that anyone was going to steal my stuff -- or, most of the time, my seat – and not once was anybody, at all rude to me. And everyone seemed genuinely excited to hear all the other voices there, too – maybe even to a fault, because I think that some kids really strained their voices singing too hard before we even auditioned. I mean, the adulation of your peers is really nice, but the adulation of the producers is way better.

But anyway, like I said, it was just such a nice group. And I really think that says something wonderful about the show, and maybe about the Southeast (we had everyone who wanted to audition from the whole southeast, and most of the midwest, because there basically was no where else. Houston is leagues away from anywhere, and then the only other venue was New York). That’s one thing I’ll definitely take away from the experience no matter what – this was the most good-natured group of auditionees I’ve ever been in, and I think that’s great.

Around 12:30, the line began to move, as they began letting the people way up at the front into the Dome itself. Progress, though, was incremental at best, since for each person they had to put on a wristband, stamp your hand, check your two forms of ID (and they were checking very carefully), search your stuff, and then direct you inside to a particular seat, which ended up being the order in which we auditioned. The wristbands, actually, just had an ID number, and the seats were the really important thing. Which was kind of bothersome, because with a wristband we would have felt much more secure moving around, whereas you had to watch your seat at all times. But oh well.

It took about two hours from that point for my group to get into the Dome, which is pretty slow, but wouldn’t have been so bad except that I experienced a sudden and debilitating return of Mystery Ailment, and felt like I was going to faint the whole time.
Again, Mama insists that this was nerves, but really, I’ve only ever fainted before when I was really ill. And I definitely felt like I was going to faint. I spent the whole time moving an inch and then crouching down with my head between my knees, moving another inch, crouching down. Inch. Crouch. Inch. Crouch. It occasioned some weird looks. But it was all I could do. I mean, if I’d fainted they probably would have disqualified me! Or something! Plus, I didn’t want to faint. Fainting is for nineteenth-century heroines, not American Idols.

Finally at about 2:30 we made it to the door, me not having fainted, though my place in line had shifted somewhat. They checked my IDs, gave me a wristband, and ushered me in the door. And there I was! In the Dome! In audition order! Audition-for-American-Idol order!
My seats (everyone got two, one for you and one for your stuff) ended up being on the very top row of the second section filled, L44. Which was, again, a really lucky place in line to be, as it meant I could just climb over the seat back whenever I wanted to leave, and I could put my suitcase-on-wheels behind me, instead of next to me, too. Plus, I was right across from the bathroom. Score!

For the rest of the day, I kind of got acquainted with the area (concession stand to the right of me, concession stand to the left of me. Bathroom in front of me. Bathroom around further on. Etc.), met the people around me I hadn’t met (sort of. There were a lot of people I didn’t meet at all, though I knew them by sight), painted my toenails, and waited for the American Idol staff to make an announcement.

Which, around five, they finally did. We were free, they told us, to leave the Dome as we wished – as long as we had our wristbands – but THEY DID NOT ADVISE IT. This was a theme they came back to lots during the whole three days. They did not want us leaving that Dome, except for short periods of time, like to shower or go get dinner. They were very much against the idea of people going to hotel rooms to spend the night and then coming back during the day, and in order to hinder us from doing this, they kept hinting that they might start the auditions At Any Time. Like, say, now! Or how about….now! Or maybe…..now! Nah, psych. They’re not starting now. But they might! Don’t leave! Stay here!
This kind of annoys me. Because, see, they didn’t actually end up starting the auditions until precisely when they said they would, at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, and in fact they let people in right up to that time, too. So actually you would have been perfectly safe leaving any time up till then, which a lot of people around me did, but of course, as I’m neurotic, I didn’t.

Not, really, that I had all that bad a time of it in the Dome, and I probably would have stayed just for the experience anyway, but it would have made things a lot less worrisome on the actual night before and morning of to know for real when they would start. Plus I would have slept better. But oh well. I now think, perhaps, they were so insistent on us not leaving because they really want all the kids they eventually cast to have that back-story of having kept out for three nights – they kept asking us whether we had any amusing Dome stories, and later they asked me how long I’d camped out for. Which I understand. It is a better story.

Anyway, I slept that night, and all the others, at the Dome, staking out a spot for myself around near Gate C. (You could sleep in your seat, but you couldn’t really lie down there. So most people put their sleeping bags on the concourse floor – at least, where the Georgia Dome people would let them. The Georgia Dome people were seriously vigilant about Where Were Approved Sleeping Places and Where Were Not. Which is, I guess, to their credit, but also meant I had to move about three times. Eventually, though, I found an approved place.
Oh, by the way, I’ve forgotten about food. Turns out when I got there that all my obsessive food-preparation went for naught: part of AI’s agreement with the Georgia Dome was that we bring in no outside food, and buy only the Georgia Dome food (which, actually, they had priced very low for us, with the exception of the two dollar cans of soda). Which mean that for the time I was there I ate: four orders of fries and one smuggled-in Luna bar. Not exactly healthy. I tried to avoid eating any fries, but I got hungry. I did drink water pretty constantly, because I kept filling up my water bottle at the water fountain.

That night, I did not sleep so well. For one thing, they’d turned on these tvs above every section to VH1, with the intention of keeping us amused. Which was nice, but then when they went to turn them off, they had to do it one by one, so they didn’t all go off until about one in the morning. Plus which, “lights out at eleven” turned out to mean “lights kind of sort of dimmed like when they need new bulbs, but only the lights above the area where the people who put their sleeping bags out first are sleeping, not the lights above where you’re sleeping, you late sleeping-bag-slackers at eleven.” And add to that the fact that nobody could really sleep, so there continued to be talking and even singing late into the night.
Still, I dare say conditions were much better than what they had been last year. I mean, we had a roof, and air conditioning, and plenty of space to sleep in, and at least the bugs that ran over me weren’t biting kinds of bugs. I don’t think the dust and the light sleep did my voice any favors, but that would only have been worse outside, right? I did eventually sleep, clutching my teddy bear, Bear, whom I’d brought for moral support.

And in the morning, it was Day 3

Labels: american idol, celebrity, trips, tv