AMERICA’S GOT TALENT AUDITION (For 2011)

I wanted to get up early and leave my place by 6am.  I had trouble sleeping and didn’t leave till after 7am.  I woke up in a unpleasant mood but reading all the well wishes from my friends put me right back on The Happy Track.  Throughout the day I kept a very positive mood, actually smiling far more then a normal day for me.  Whenever I started to stress a bit I would read “Happy Ron’s America’s Got Talent Lessons” and feel better.

The auditions were in LA on October 23 (when I went) and the 24^th.  The day was NOT the performance auditions that are shown on TV, but a private tryout in front of two or three screeners.   The goal is to take the perhaps 3,000 people that tried out over two days (I was #667) and screen them down to perhaps a few hundred that can go in front of the celebrity judges and audience on TV in a few months.

However the crowd shots of people trying out were filmed on that day, and I was repeatedly called by the producers to be at the front of the crowd of several hundred for almost all the shots, thanks no doubt to the purple jacket and hat.  I was standing right next to the host Nick Cannon as he would say things like “welcome back to the show, look at this crowd” and the camera would pan out.   They also called me over for an interview where I held the “Official HappyRon Songbook” in front of me as they asked me questions about happiness, “My name is HappyRon and I’ve got talent!”   So when they have the “LA Auditions show” expect to see a lot of me whether or not I actually get to perform.

The crowd as pretty well behaved I thought (with a few loud exceptions) and the whole thing was very professionally run, considering the chaos of having so many people.   I arrived at around 9:30 and I ended up waiting a total of 10 hours to play, most of that time in a huge room with 500 other people.   Most people seemed relatively normal, there weren’t as many apparent weirdos as I thought there would be, but the ones that were there got plenty of attention.  There were at least TWO Michael Jacksons, a female Elvis (“Elvis’s lost daughter” apparently), and a guy who put on a full gorilla suit as he walked into his audition, what he did during it, I do not know.

For my audition I was called into a room with 3 other people.  The room had great sound and the atmosphere was relaxed.  However they did have a timer and told everyone we had exactly 90 seconds (I heard for some of the other tryouts people were told they could play longer).  I was allowed to perform the whole of “Pitter Patter” (which probably ran 10 second over) singing and playing guitar.  Since I essentially had ten hours of waiting to “warm up” I think I did a great job on the song. The judges (and their apparent assistant) smiled a lot when I played and seemed to enjoy it.   They did not film me.  The other 3 people that tried out with me did well I thought

They said they would call me back within a month.  What are my chances?  Well considering how much attention they gave me before I even tried out (with two different producers deciding to film me) and how well my audition went, I think my odds are good.  But we’ll see.

I didn’t run into anyone I know there (surprisingly) until I was leaving and I ran into Michael Sullivan, one of my co-writers for “Terribly Happy”.  I drove home and saw Steve Poltz and Bushwalla play at the Belly-Up.  A great way to end a great day.