Hold on to your butterflies, American Idol is about to get camp(er) and that’s not including Mr Simon Cowell. Yes Lambs, Mariah has confirmed that she is indeed joining the judging panel at the hit talent show American Idol.
Of course Mariah, 42, and her music are no stranger to AI, she appeared as a mentor during Season 7, where she guided contestants who were given the challenge of taking on one of her songs.
That same week, Mariah took to the famous AI stage to sing ‘Bye Bye’
The American Idol website has made a list of all the Mariah Carey songs covered by contestants they are:
Tamyra Gray, Season 1 initial audition, “Vision Of Love”
Heather Cox, Season 5 Top 20, “Hero”
David Archuleta, Season 7 Top 7, “When You Believe”
Carly Smithson, Season 7 Top 7, “Without You”
Syesha Mercado, Season 7 Top 7, “Vanishing”
Brooke White, Season 7 Top 7, “Hero”
Kristy Lee Cook, Season 7 Top 7, “Forever”
David Cook, Season 7 Top 7, “Always Be My Baby”
Jason Castro, Season 7 Top 7, “I Don’t Wanna Cry”
Season 7 Top 7, “One Sweet Day”
Danny Gokey, Season 8 Top 36, “Hero”
Siobhan Magnus, Season 9 Top 7, “When You Believe”
Karen Rodriguez, Season 10 Top 24, “Hero”
Shannon Magrane, Season 11 Top 11, “One Sweet Day”
★★★★★ My Policeman |Naive schoolmistress Marion first catches sight of handsome Tom in Brighton and is instantly smitten by his wholesome good looks and swimmer’s physique.
I always dreaded ageing. I cried upon reaching 25, thought hitting 30 would be the end of my life and 40 felt like an impossible milestone.
I was actually pretty certain that like a lot of my A-list celebrity idols, I would have burnt out long before I hit the fourth decade. I tried hard with generous slugs of vodka and copious cigarettes but I’m still here.
The funny thing is that I actually like it. I’ve gained a few scars along the way but the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. O.K., so I have a daily running battle with my ear and nasal hair and the hair on my crown grows thinner by the week. At least I don’t have to follow fashion so ardently. I actually don’t have to go through the tricky logistics of wearing trousers that start below my buttocks. I don’t have to wear things that stretch gaping holes in my ears. I can get away without having to squeeze myself into uncomfortable and unflattering fashions now. I can actually wear what suits me. Yes, I am growing old with a little bit of grace.
The most important thing about getting older for me is that I’ve learnt what I like and am no longer willing to waste loads of time on tedious things. I now know that weddings usually bore me senseless and have learnt to decline the invitations. I always say that I’ll go to the next one. If people bore me, I move on. I no longer have that desperate clamouring I once had to have people around me all the time, regardless of what their qualities are. If an activity doesn’t appeal, I don’t feel the need to indulge. I just say “No thank you” and do something else. It’s the same in relationships. I wouldn’t put up with things in my 40s that i did in my twenties.
There’s a benefit to all my grubby history. I’m not sure I believe in the adage that whatever doesn’t kill you will make you stronger. In most cases, traumatic experiences just made me more messed up and more cautious in the future. There is a benefit to heartbreak, mental turmoil and angst though. They make you more useful to other people when they’re in crisis and give you material to write about too. I like that I’ve lost my black and white view of the world. I recall saying at 17 that if a man ever cheated on me, hit me, lied to me etc. Then I’d be off. Guess what really happened. Life is much better in greyscale.
I always thought that being older would make me totally unattractive. I look back on pictures of me in my twenties and see someone who was more gauche and uncomfortable with himself. I might have had less crow’s feet but I wouldn’t have looked you in the eye. I might not have grown up to be prime older man totty but being happier with who I am definitely makes me feel more attractive. It’s all about the confidence and knowing your style. Naturally my bedroom repertoire is wider now. I just like to do it all a little earlier now and without the need for intoxication.
People surprise me when they say that inside they still feel like teenagers. I definitely don’t. I feel better than I did aged 16 and pity anyone who doesn’t. Being young can be bloody hard. I say embrace the older version of you. It’s coming at you anyway. You might as well grow to like him or her.
Not just a pretty face and a world class diver, Matthew Mitcham has just uploaded his cover version of ‘Single Ladies’ by Beyoncé on his ukulele to YouTube.
Have you had any bad dating experiences? For my circle of friends, both gay and straight, they seem to be the norm.
My default state has always been to be in relationships. I met my first boyfriend when I was 16 and was in the Lower Sixth and he was in the Upper Sixth. I was madly in love with him for 2 weeks and couldn’t eat or sleep. For the whole 2 weeks I thought about him constantly and loved the smell of him, the touch of him and the sight of him. I then spent another 8 weeks trying to get rid of him when I realised he was a complete nerd and irritated me intensely. There are few joys to being a hormonal and moody teenager.
I continued the pattern by then entering a relationship with a much older man which lasted 12 years and lurching almost straight from that car crash into a much healthier relationship lasting 7 years. Oddly, I suddenly found myself on my own aged 36 and felt adrift. For the first time in my adult life I was living alone and had no boyfriend.
Naturally frantic serial dating was the only option. I needed a man. Being single was alien to me. My friends told me to spend some time alone and “get to know yourself”. I was horrified by this and wondered whether I might actually like myself or not and was better staying as a stranger.
I started dating and entered a strange and scary world peopled by the desperate, the freaky and the caddish. I met a few thoroughly decent men who were unattractive to me and a handful of men who I liked who weren’t attracted to me. I also met a few freaks and oddballs along the way. I’ll list a few of the more outlandish and odd but these are merely a sample.
1. The man who was so dull that he described meeting Joan Rivers and made it an uninteresting story. We met at 8pm and he told me he was planning to get the 2am bus home. I persuaded him to get an earlier bus.
2. The man who showed me a series of photos of his hideous collection of fine porcelain. He was so dull I almost did a runner. The only thing keeping me there was the fact that his dating profile said he had an enormous knob. I expect it had a Wedgwood pattern on it in. He may also have been lying of course. I didn’t see it.
3. The man who unashamedly told me he’d worked as a male escort and had starred in many porn films but hid the fact that he had a teenage daughter as he thought it would put me off. He was fun though.
4. The man who sang along to Beyonce in his car at full volume in a high pitched voice as he drove me home. It was a convertible though. He had money but no style. He also talked a lot about his money.
5. The uptight policeman I dated for a few months who was insistent on how keen he was on me but was actually dating other men the whole time. He was getting to the point when he was choosing my clothes for me when we split up, so I think it was a lucky escape.
6. The dancer who couldn’t stop tapping his foot and doing little dance moves all the time.
7. The teacher who accidentally sent me a text message intended for someone else then pretended it was a network error caused by a virus. The message told me he wanted to suck my truncheon. It later turned out he was also dating a policeman. I think he lied about the phone virus.
8. The man who bought me a box of chocolates and a pair of tight Speedo trunks on the first date and asked over dinner if he could pull my hair really hard during sex.
I came to the conclusion that being alone wasn’t such a bad thing. I’m useless at drilling and have to pay a man to do my DIY but it gave me more time to read and I knew my house would be the same as I left it when I returned home. It took a lot of getting used to. After spending 14 months as a single man and using all the time and energy I’d put into attending bad dates into enjoying myself instead, I realised it was time well spent. I made good friends, went on a couple of holidays on my own and took in a lot of culture and art. I also read a hell of a lot of good books too.
I’ve finally met a man, quite randomly, who is making me happy which is fine and dandy. We didn’t even go on a date to meet which was a relief. I couldn’t have stood another one.
Who knows, there could be a man out there right now talking about this odd bloke called Chris who he met on a date. Now he was a real freak.
We were curious to meet the man behind Grindr, so when one Friday night whilst, erm, “Researching” on Grindr, a message popped up telling us the man himself was visiting London for WorldPride. Unsure what to expect we meet the modest, easy on the eye and contemplative Joel Simkhai in a hotel, central London. Sounds like it could be Grindr working at its very best..
Welcome to the capital of Grindr, London being the #1 city for Grindr users, does that surprise you at all?
Thank you! It doesn’t surprise me, it’s obviously a large city and it’s obviously got a lot of gay men and Stephen Fry mentioned us on Top Gear about three years ago and it is a very popular show. It put us on the map here in the UK.
I think you’ve made the UK a lot less prudish, because with nearly every message comes a picture of someone’s pink bits! Did you expect that to happen when you created Grindr?
For me, when I look at Grindr I see all kinds of things, I think that’s part of it, but there are other parts to it also. Gay men have had to always look for other gay men, and we’re also men, so we’re hunters. I think it’s a big part of who we are. We’re looking to meet the other gay guy in the room and thats what Grindr does. It shows you the other gay guy in the room, the other gay guy on the block. For me when we launched this thing, there wasn’t much expectation or idea where it would go or what it would do, it was just a hope that I could find other gay guys. I’m glad that we’ve now been able to do that.
Gay men have had to always look for other gay men, and we’re also men, so we’re hunters. I think it’s a big part of who we are.
JOEL On Grindr’s purpose
Grindr has very strict censorship on its front-page. Users can’t have nudity on their profile picture. Is there any reason for that?
Yes, a number of reasons, but the most important one is that we believe in having an environment that is not overtly sexualised. An environment that is consistent to real life as possible. In real life you don’t usually see someone naked when you first meet them. So when you do find someone that you want to be intimate with, there is an unveiling process and we believe in that. It’s human nature. Also, not everyone is looking for something like that, I been on sites where it’s a free for all, it’s like walking into a sex shop. I feel kind of icky, so my hope for Grindr is that people can feel very comfortable, very safe and don’t have to feel icky. The other thing is that Google and Apple they have their own guidelines that mandate that there not be any nudity so there’s a full spectrum of reasons why.
Are you a technology geek? Did you get down and dirty with the code?
I am a tech geek, but I’m not a developer, I’m not a coder… I love technology and I love gadgets and have an understanding of technology, so I can talk to our developers and architects on a certain level. I probably can’t talk with great detail and maybe they would say: “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about…” but I think I have sense of what I’m talking about. We have a team of 50 in Los Angeles and they work in-house and a good proportion of them are developers.
Do you have any technological icons or idols?
Certainly Steve Jobs, I think Steve Jobs stands out as someone I have a tremendous amount of respect for; and I’m very sadden by his loss. He’s changed almost how everyone lives. There are very few people out there who can take something so complicated and make it so easy and so beautiful. He made it fun. I think he’s ingrained a culture of innovation in his company; they’ve got a smart team, really smart people and one will never know what would have happened if he was still alive.
Can you ever take a holiday from Grindr?
Not really, but I’ve got a very great team. Certainly when I used to travel in the early days it was very difficult to actually get away from it, but it’s getting better. I’ll never be a guy who can turn off his phone and get off the grid, but nor do I want to be. I don’t have Joel’s time, I don’t want just Joel’s time. You know this is fun stuff, this is a great thing I’m doing for myself, I love it. There’ll be plenty of time at some point in my life where I probably won’t be doing this and I get anxious just thinking of those days – This is my baby, it’s hard. If you ask a parent to tell their kid that they’re not available they’d look at you pretty strange right?
Would you ever persuaded to sell ‘the kid’ at any point?
I don’t think about it too much, I get anxious when I give it too much thought. This notion that ‘Joel, ‘X days from now or X months from now that Grindr will not be part of your life but just be a part of my resumé or a part of my history’ makes me very anxious, makes me very uncomfortable. It’s largely part of my identity, some people call me ‘Grindr Guy’ so it is very much a part of who I am.
So are you happy with that mantle – the Grindr guy?
Absolutely!
If this was the last thing for you to be remembered by, would you be happy with that?
Absolutely, I mean, do I want to die tomorrow? Absolutely not… The one caveat to that is that I think I’ve got more in-store for me. One of them is that I certainly want to do more and I want to devote more of my time, possibly full time, to gay equality and doing more towards activism, particularly in the countries where it is illegal and it’s dangerous. We’ve started to do things with ‘Grindr for Equality’ but I’d love to devote some or all of my energies to that.
Ok, lets talk about Grindr for Equality, what is its purpose? What is it for?
It’s our effort to advance equality and leveraging our number one asset, our guys, our community, our engaged audience. That’s over a million guys every single day around the world. Pockets of concentrated gay men who have a voice, who have power and they have a lot of power united. So through Grindr for Equality what we’re trying to do is create a mass so that we can speak with a very loud voice – an influential voice. Grindr for Equality can be broken down into two things. One, our mission is to inform. To inform you of things going on around you, in your city, town, state or your country. Things that have relevance to you and then showing you how you can make a difference. Whether it’s to make a call, sign a petition or go to a rally. That’s what drives Grindr for Equality. Last year the New York senate was looking at marriage equality and there were five senators who were on the fence. They were undecided. So what we did was target their constituents and told them that their senator was on the fence. Please call them! And people could call them right from their phone. It was very effective, sometimes we go as local as possible, sometimes national, sometimes international. We can go as local as down to the mile. It can be very targeted.
What do your family think of the App? Are you open to your family?
My Dad sent me an email, he was at gay pride and he said: “Where’s the Grindr float?” and he sent me a picture. He was in a Grindr T-shirt running around and demanded that next year I have a float and that he be invited! A very supportive and excited family. My dad actually has Grindr and he’s added me as a ‘favourite’ he says: “I keep up on where in the world you are by looking to see how far away you are!” He can keep tabs on where I am!
Where did the name come from?
We looked for something that was masculine and tough and I think all our branding: our logo, our colouring almost everything about it falls into those categories. We were looking for something a bit aggressive and thought of this notion of the coffee grinder and the notion of mixing, but it’s not just the idea of mixing it’s about grinding, very powerful and so it’s a little rough, we wanted an edginess to it, we didn’t want a softness to it.
