Last night, “American Idol” took their audition round for Season 7 to Charleston, South Carolina. It was humorous and disturbing at the same time to hear Simon Cowell ask Randy Jackson if they were on the “west coast.” And it was a pretty weak batch of auditions in all, with only 23 contestants earning golden tickets to Hollywood. For those of you doing the math, that’s 23 out of 10,000, or 0.23 %. Well, no one said it was easy to become the next American Idol.

With that, on to the freaks…..

Raysharde was the first audition, and with an afro that would make Tito Jackson jealous and a voice that he compared to Clay Aiken, you had the makings of a freak show. But then, dude wasn’t horrible, it’s just that he was TRYING too hard to be Clay Aiken. Think about that for a minute. Are you as frightned as I am? The judges were, too.

DeANNA, who corrected Simon more than once about how her name was pronounced, was a 27 year old waitress from the same small town in North Carolina as Kellie Pickler. But while Kellie was a charming, naive, country girl; DeANNA was a bitter, shouting lunatic. The best part was her talking about how her customers drove her crazy on Sundays for “all you can eat day.”

Crystal and Randy met online at the “American Idol” message boards, and then it was love at first sight when they met in person. Randy admitted to giving contestants advice on auditioning, but then when he and Crystal opened their mouths, dude lost all credibility. Simon called it “complete torture.”

Lindsay Goodman, an Air Force pilot, sang “Black Velvet” and while it was not bad, it wasn’t good enough. Paula correctly pointed out that Lindsay’s nerves were getting best of her, and we could all tell. It’s also worth noting once again that Paula appears to have gotten help for whatever was making her tipsy the past six seasons on the show.

Then there was Aretha, a woman with very large breasts from Buffalo, New York, who was named after the great Aretha Franklin. Whenever someone tries to sing Whitney Houston, you just know they aren’t going to cut it, and Aretha was no exception. It was all shouting. But then after the judges told her she sucked, Aretha went into some rant about how she knew she was great and that people stop on the street when she sings. Again, you do the math: 1 Large Crazy Person + 2 Large Breasts = 1 Large Crowd

Joshua, who was one of the worst singers ever to audition, wore a black shirt and red pants and was stomping as he was singing. When he got the bad news, Joshua made some comment about the show being “fake and rigged.” Simon correctly told Joshua he was “rude and deluded.”

Then there was Oliver. Oliver was waiting to audition with his very pregnant wife, when her water broke. They kept cutting to scenes of them in the car, and them in the hospital, and finally with their new baby girl as Oliver got to audition. Anyway, Oliver sang Oleta Adams’ “Get Here,” and it wasn’t horrible, but not nearly good enough.

With only 23 out of 10,000 making it out of Charleston, they didn’t have much to show us in the “good” category, but here are the ones they did…

Michelle and Jeffrey, a brother and sister, were two of the 23. They sang R. Kelly’s “I’m Your Angel” (is anyone else mildly disturbed?). Anyway, Simon said they were funny, and Randy said they were “in tune.” Me, I just didn’t get it. I thought they were both awful, but maybe the bar was lowered as a whole in Charleston.

Amy was a 16-year-old cheerleader from Knoxville, who admitted to being a part of some teen group that preached “abstinence” from sex, drugs and alcohol. I think we all expected poor Amy to suck, but she sang Christina Aguilera’s “Reflections” pretty well. Simon thought the song was too big for Amy but let her through, adding that one day in Los Angeles was going to change this poor girl’s views on abstinence. Look out….

The last audition of the first day they showed was a 24-year-old woman named London, who was a full-time musician. London sang Billie Holliday, and while the judges were sort of underwhelmed, it was pretty clear that London looked good considering the level of competition.

So that was it….Charleston was not a banner audition city by any means. Next week they start out in Omaha, Nebraska, and it appears that there are some real freaks on the way. I can’t wait. Or maybe I can. Either way, I’ll see you then…