America's Got Talent - Even More from the Atlanta and Dallas Auditions (Episode 305)

After a rather lengthy recap of the last four weeks of auditions, we're once again back in Atlanta - who knew this city was such a magnet for talent? How many rounds of auditions are we going to have to endure? I can't imagine we couldn't live without seeing the majority of the perfoemners on tonight's episode, especially our first wannabe, 29-year-old banker Michelle Wallace from Birmingham, Alabama. She's "passionate" about singing, and is wearing more glitter make up than any child contestant I've ever seen on this show. I'm scared. Once she hits the stage, she works the crowd. Hard. Her voice cracks during her first sentence, so my fears are pretty much on the money. She makes the unfortunate decision to sing "All By Myself" (when she finally gets to singing - for a moment, I thought her "talent" was merely hyping up the crowd. Heck, it worked for Flavor Flav.) Michelle apparently only knew the words to the chorus of the song. Jer-ry tried to help from the wings, telling us that "she's trying." Not hard enough. She finally gets buzzed by all three judges, but refuses to stop singing. When she finally puts us out of our collective misery, Hoff says that if she kept singing, she'd definitely be "all by herself." Sharon asked her if she had ever recorded her voice and listened back to it (I did that after a drunken evening of karaoke, hence you'll never see me on this show) and, of course, she said "no." And, of course, she won't be moving on.

Next up is illusionist Bruce Block, who actually made it to the Vegas callbacks last year, with a cute bit thanks to, in large part, his bunny assistant. Sadly, he relied on a human assistant for the callbacks who bailed on him at the last minute - leaving him to resort to a "plan B' that failed to impress the judges. Tonight, he gets a second chance at fame - can he make it to Sin City? He takes the stage in a gaudy swami outfit and I'm slightly frightened. He reclines on a bed of nails, while his latest lovely assistant sings "Anything Goes" while tap dancing. She eventually takes her tappin' tootsies to a platform on top of Bruce's bod for the big finale. I liked the bunny a lot better, but he deserves a second shot. Piers is not impressed and Hoff is skeptical. He asks if he can stand on top of Bruce. Bruce allows him to come on stage and, after he touches the bed of nails and identifies them as "real," makes good and stands on Bruce, making loads of li'l puncture dents in his back. Piers says he's "quite entertaining" but doesn't vote for him t move on. Fortunately, Sharon and the newly-converted Hoff give Bruce another chance to prove himself. Hey, try to keep this assistant happy, will ya?

Atlanta's next offering is Tina Turner impersonator Dorae Saunders. And, yep, it's a guy. He's got the mid-80s Tina down to a "T" (although the wig is a teeny bit over the top) and he definitely has the Angela Bassett in "What's Love Got to Do with It?" arms. He lip synchs to "Proud Mary" and, in my humble opinion, kicks ass. But, I love Tina Turner and drag queens, so maybe I'm a tad biased. If he has other divas in his repitoire, he's definitely Vegas material, but an hour of faux Tina may not be worth $1 million. Regardless, he makes it through to the semifinals.

Now, what I don't understand is why Dorae - as great as he was - gets a big, long segment and samba troupe Tropidanza (the scantily-clad dancers prompted Hoff to declare them "my kinda act") got a mere 30 seconds of air time. I definitely could have spent two minutes of my life more fulfillingly watching them rather than Michelle the banker. Anyway, the samba-ers advance, as does juggler Fast Wally and Bryan Cheatam, an exotic dancer/singer, who impressed me by actually being able to sing. It wasn't the world's best rendition of "Don't Want to Miss a Thing", but it was good, and Bryan didn't take anything off (not that I would have minded!) And then, there's the Zoo-perstars!, a motley assortment of inflatable mascots (I'm not positive, but some sports team in Seattle has a cockroach as its mascot) who do a cute little routine to "Tootsie Roll." Cute? You betcha. Cute for 60 minutes in Vegas? Not so much. We'll find out for sure soon enough, as they're going to the semis.

We're now back in Dallas for more auditions. First up, the Dallas Desperados Dancers. Glorified cheerleaders. Blah...blah...they've got tits, hot pants and chaps, so they've got Hoff's vote before they even move. If they win the whole she-bang, I'm boycotting this show. Seriously. Jer-ry takes advantage of the ladies' victory to get a group hug, which comes of as slightly creepy. I'm slightly scared of what the next act, 18-year-old Kenneth is bringing to the stage, as he's never performed his "talent" in public before. His talent is actually very unique and entertaining. Ken, a/k/a Xclusive, does a cool robot act (which reminded me a little of Shields and Yarnell...anyone...?) to an audio track he mixed himself (which Sharon seemed overly impressed by.) I'm glad he made it to Vegas - I'd really like to see him dance.

Why we have to suffer through a "performance" by 56-year-old warehouse worker Barry Collins is beyond me. His talent? Making barnyard animal noises. I'm sure someone would pay to see this in Vegas. Now, if you're actually going to attempt animal impersonations on stage - like chickens, hound dogs and coyotes - you should at least make them sound somewhat distinctive and you should never have to write them all down on a piece of paper that you read off like a script. His finale, "a Rottweiler and a wild hog having a disagreement", was as awful as you could imagine.

The sadness continues with 53-year-old retired construction worker Nance Upcheck, who promises goose bumps and tears when she sings. She delivers, but not in a good way. We then are (briefly) introduced to "performance artists" The Freak Show. I refuse to pass judgment, as we only saw 15 seconds of their act. Apparently, the judges didn't like 'em. They also had no love for "Music Makes the World Go Round," an accordion-playing duo. Piers put it best when he declared, "If there's one thing worse than an accordion player, it's two accordion players." Amen, brother. Also not heading to Vegas are dancer Mac Jay, who I believe did a routine I did as an adolescent at Boca Dance Studio (and I had a better costume) and some person called "Fancy Ray McCloney," who claimed to be "the best looking man in comedy." He didn't get to crack a joke on network TV, but he so reminded me of Keenan Ivory Wayans' impression of Little Richard from "In Living Color."

Ok, kids, it's time for the sob story of the week. Tonight it's car salesman/father of three Donald Braswell, whose vocal chord were severed as the result of a bizarre accident. His doctors thought he'd never speak again, let alone sing. He looks vaguely like Bruce Campbell, so I like him already. He takes the stage and sings "You Raise Me Up." The crowd is less than kind to him at the beginning, but they eventually do the TV equivalent of the "slow clap" in the movies and end up on their feet for ol' Don. And, since NBC loves to send us off with a warm 'n' fuzzy feeling, Donald will be winging his way to Vegas. I was hoping we'd all be in Vegas next week, but we're going to be subjected treated to even more auditions! See you then!