ShareThisBy VINCE HORIUCHI
Friday, January 19, 2007
In just 6-1/2 minutes, Nicholas Zitzmann went from being just another Utah software engineer to the country's butt of all jokes.
He sang on "American Idol."
The 27-year-old with the awkward demeanor of Napoleon Dynamite _ minus the curly blond coif _ stepped on the "Idol" audition stage Wednesday night and belted out his rendition of the Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody."
Let's just say it hardly was a righteous performance.
The sixth season of the blockbuster Fox reality show began this week with wildly popular audition episodes that showcase the good, the bad and the harmonically ugly. Zitzmann traveled to Seattle to try to get on the show.
Looking nervous and lost, the Midvale, Utah, contestant began to gently sway and then veered off-key, sounding more like a sick banshee when he tried to reach the high note.
As one "American Idol" fan wrote on the show's Internet message boards: "(It) drove my cats OUT of the room."
The three judges _ Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson _ were paralyzed into silence.
"What the bloody hell was that?" Cowell said in amazement.
"It was me," Zitzmann said quietly. "Was that not good enough?"
"(It's) one of the worst I've ever heard," Cowell replied. "It was almost non-human."
Zitzmann was unavailable for comment, but he had an explanation for his "performance."
"My biggest regret is I chose the wrong song," he wrote on his MySpace page. "I had no idea going into this that the song was Simon's favorite song (Ryan Seacrest told me right before I stepped into the room). If I had to do it over again, I would have probably performed a comedy number instead and tried to make the judges laugh."
Not that he needed to. Apparently, he provided enough laughs for many of the 37 million Americans who tuned into Wednesday's episode.
"My dog sounds better when he's howling at fire trucks," wrote "geoturtle" on the American Idol message forums.
"Koolade" wrote: "That was a real life Forrest Gump singing that song."
Ouch.
Video of the performance was posted Thursday on YouTube, along with critiques from viewers. "What a strange human being indeed," was another take on Zitzmann.
But Zitzmann may not worry. The last time a picked-on singer was humiliated in front of millions of "American Idol" viewers, he parlayed it into a moneymaking venture, albeit brief. That singer was William Hung.
Besides, Zitzmann already is starting to accumulate his own fans.
"Don't listen to those jerks on 'American Idol!' " someone wrote on his MySpace page. "Follow your dreams!"
