Maybe we should blame “Pauly Nipple,” that Paula Abdul “stalker” guy.
Last year, the American Idol auditions in Philadelphia drew the show’s biggest crowds ever - and some of the zaniest contestants.
This summer’s talent quest, however, which starts Thursday in San Francisco, has only one stop northeast of Louisville - and it’s nowhere near a Liberty Bell.
The tryouts Aug. 19 in East Rutherford, N.J., will conclude the summer search.
The rest of the itinerary: Louisville, Ky., July 21; Phoenix, July 25; Salt Lake City; July 29; San Juan, Puerto Rico, Aug. 2; Kansas City, Mo., Aug. 8; and Jacksonville, Fla., Aug. 13.
(For rules, forms, instructions and other details, go to www.americanidol.com/auditions.)
Talent-wise, the tryouts here last year weren’t exactly a rousing success.
The Final 24 failed to have a single contestant Philadelphia could call local - unless you count Joanne Borgella of Hoboken.
It’s up there near East Rutherford.
And she didn’t make the final 20.
The only two Philly auditioners to make a significant splash were both from the West Coast - California’s Brooke White, who finished fifth, and Oregon’s Kristy Lee Cook, who was seventh.
The region’s Season 7 legacy, therefore, rested mostly on its bevy of pranksters and oddballs - not necessarily mutually exclusive categories.
For example, it wasn’t the Princess Leia slave-girl outfit but the woolly mammoth chest hair that caused Ben Haar, 27, of Newark, Del., to gross out judge Abdul. So, at her request, he agreed to get his chest waxed a la The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
No “welcome to Hollywood” for him.
Atlantic City social worker/comic Milo Turk crooned his own song, “No Sex Allowed” - “So I promise her love and she strings along / Because sex is weak and love is strong!” - and got booted for being 39.
Allentown’s overly glittered Alexis Cohen, not one to take rejection lightly, appeared to blow a bunch of gaskets with a finger-flashing rant about judge Simon Cowell.
“Philadelphia’s scariest woman,” Ryan Seacrest said.
But the contestant who was the nerviest - and the most unnerving - was New Hope’s paunchy Paul Marturano, a.k.a. “Pauly Nipple.”
The Drexel Hill-born, Monsignor Bonner grad serenaded Abdul with creepy lyrics:
There is this girl I know, I follow her around
She hasn’t noticed me, it really gets me down.
I broke into her house when she wasn’t there
Took off all my clothes and tried on her underwear
I’m always thinking of her, I really think that I love her.
I’m not much of a talker, so I think that I’ll just stalk her.
Adbul batted her eyes, while Cowell seemed horrified, as Marturano continued:
If she was a doggy, I would walk her
If she were a blackboard, I would chalk her
If I were Columbo, I’d Peter Falk her,
But I’m not, so I’ll just stalk her
If she were up to with a guy on first I would balk her,
If she were Winona from “Good Times,” I’d be Jimmie Walker
If she were a bathtub, I would caulk her,
But I don’t bathe, so I’ll just stalk her.
Security escorted him out.
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