America’s Got Talent Auditions: Gourmet American Cheese

It’s June, and there hasn’t been much to watch on TV lately. I’m in the middle of writing my first novel, so I don’t have the patience for anything serious or complicated- I just want to watch something fun and entertaining- so I turned to the new season of America’s Got Talent.

I’ve watched the show in the past, when Howard Stern was one of the judges, and I was interested to see how the addition of Simon Cowell in his place might change things up on the show. Simon, after all, has real credibility in the music industry.

I decided I’d tape the show so that I could fast-forward through any of the cheesier acts that the producers decided to put on air. My main problem with the show in past seasons had been the number of weird or creepy acts that I had to sit through, before they got to showing us the good ones.

Well, this season has been a revelation. There were very few unpleasantly bizarre acts, a whole lot of amazing ones, and a few delightful surprises; even a few shocking moments - but the good kind!

There were too many great acts to mention on the second night of auditions, so I’m just going to talk about some of my favorite acts. The first was a sweetly smiling businessman, Jonathan Nosan, who has a background in Asian studies. They even showed a clip of him before he went on, talking to a client on the phone, in Japanese.

He got onstage, in his suit, and everyone wondered what he was going to do: singing? comedy? And then, when he literally bent over backwards, the audience became hysterical. The guy is a brilliant contortionist. His stage name is “contorture!” He was truly surprising and amazing.

Another one of my favorite acts was a Japanese dance troupe, Elevenplay, who combined flying drones with beautiful dancing to make something ethereal, breathtaking and magical.

There was a charming and extremely funny hearing-impaired comedian, D.J. Demers, a terrific family singing group by the name of Edgar, whose daughter Simon singled out for praise; and a high-school choir, Musicality, from the South Side of Chicago, who just crushed their rendition of One Direction’s “Night Changes.” All these acts were terrific, as well as inspiring.

And then there was the biggest surprise of the night: an 82 year old retired aerospace engineer, John Hetlinger, who’d worked on the Hubbell telescope project and who’d begun singing karaoke in the past seven years.

When he got up on stage and opened his mouth to sing, everyone expected to hear Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett. Instead, we got something that sounded to me like a mix of heavy metal and punk rock. The audience went crazy and despite Heidi Klum’s protestations that the other judges were all crazy, he was put through to the next round.

My favorite act of the night is a young girl whose audition video has received over two million views so far, on YouTube. She’s twelve years old and her name is Grace VanderWaal. She’s a singer-songwriter who, according to her mother, has been writing music in her head since she was three years old.

Her mother even brought a clip of little Grace singing one of her own songs as a toddler in blonde pigtails. And when she told the judges she was going to sing an original song for her audition, everyone thought. “Oh-oh, this could go one of two ways!”

Well, she was absolutely amazing. Her voice, her music, her personality, the whole package was utterly endearing. Simon even predicted that she’s going to be the next Taylor Swift, and I wouldn’t be surprised if his prediction came true- she’s that good.

Howie pressed the golden buzzer, and sent her through to the live shows, and she totally deserved it!

It turned out that I thoroughly enjoyed the show and only had to fast forward while watching a hand-balancing act by a fellow named “The Amazing Sladek,” whose climb up a tower of stacked chairs was just a little bit too scary for me to watch live.

America’s Got Talent is still pretty cheesy, with all the flashing lights, garish colours and gaudy costumes - to me, it feels like Las Vegas on steroids- but this season, the quality has definitely been upgraded, to gourmet cheese.

If things keep going this way for the rest of the season, I’m going to love watching the show - I probably won’t even have to fast-forward, except maybe through the commercials!