Around 8 a.m. the 12,000 would-be Idols were let into the arena, where they’d be judged in groups of four in about a dozen curtained-off booths on the United Center floor. As the morning progressed, contestants with sad faces emerged.
“I didn’t make it,” sighed Marie Ruff, a 16-year-old from Carol Stream.
“It’s B.S. Because my baby can blow,” added her mother, Early May Ruff.
“Well, I don’t think it’s a bunch of bull,” Hopkins said. “It was fun. That’s just how things are sometimes.”
Getting picked Monday didn’t translate into a ticket to Hollywood. The two judges in each booth would winnow the thousands of auditioners into hundreds, who will return to Chicago later this summer for two more rounds: one in front of the show’s executive producers and one in front of Simon Cowell et al.
Still, for those who passed the first test and began exiting the United Center in groups around 11:30 a.m., they sure felt like they’d made it.
“This is just a whole new thing to me,” said Josh Shaneour, 18, in Chicago for the first time from Temperance, Mich. “I’m very shocked right now.”
Wearing a buzz cut and thick glasses, he sang “God Bless the U.S.A.” “They said I had a really good voice, and they were surprised,” Shaneour said.
Nicky Schwenke, a 23-year-old new Schaumburg resident and Cheesecake Factory server, was all bright-red-lipstick smiles as she emerged from the building.
“They said to keep my sparkly smile and bright eyes and don’t change anything because I’ve got the whole package,” Schwenke said. “It’s what you hope for, so it’s not just in your head.”
Schwenke sang bits of Bonnie Raitt’s “Something To Talk About” and Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical.” On the latter, she said, “I added some pelvic thrusts. They liked that.”
I would just like to know, how many people in the chiago adition made it through the first round? and how many came from michigan,and made it through? thanks, sandy