First Class Jerk Josiah Leming Still Desperately Trying To Claw His Way Out Of Poverty
Taylor
school, hadn't turned your back on your loving family and friends in
your small home town and hadn't purposely lived in your car as a way
to garner sympathy and respect, you wouldn't be be trying to grasp at
even 25% of the fame Sanjaya Malakar has right now. Just a little
reality check, kiddo. Good luck to you!!!! :-)
---
"Idol" Wannabeen Says Ciao to Poverty
Posted Mar 12th 2008 12:00PM by TMZ Staff
Josiah Leming was living out of a car when he was on "American Idol"
-- but yesterday he was seen on his way to a business meeting at Mr.
Chow in Bev Hills!
The kid even plans on getting into the recording studio in the next
few months. That's more than many former Top 12ers (Scott Savol, who?)
can even claim. No word where or in what he's living.
See Also
"One Cook Too Many in "A.I." Kitchen
Filed under: Paparazzi Video, Wacky and Weird
TMZ (03/12/08): Josiah Lemming [VID!]
http://www.tmz.com/tmz_main_video?titleid=1454906605
_____________________________________________
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/JosiahLeming/
intang...@yahoo.com
You sound very Republican -- hate the poor, but hate even more the
poor who try to get un-poor.
Locutus
"Taylor" <tay...@live.ca> wrote in message
news:de0f18b4-ca52-4e3c...@d4g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
> Well, gee, Josiah....... perhaps if you hadn't dropped out of high
> school, hadn't turned your back on your loving family and friends in
> your small home town and hadn't purposely lived in your car as a way
> to garner sympathy and respect, you wouldn't be be trying to grasp at
> even 25% of the fame Sanjaya Malakar has right now. Just a little
> reality check, kiddo. Good luck to you!!!! :-)
>
> ---
>
You sound a little jealous. ;)
Taylor
Oh, noooooooooooooooooo. I take that as a major insult. If I were
American, I would not only be a Democrat, I'd be one of those "far
left" Dems (to quote the far right).
And, intangible, I speak out of logic, not jealousy. And I am not
alone. Googling "josiah leming jerk" will net you some pretty
interesting results.
---
Feb 20 2008 8:03 AM EST
Josiah Leming And Me, In Bigger Than The Sound
'American Idol' castoff reminds our reporter of himself -- and
everyone -- at 18.
By James Montgomery
On The Record: Josiah Leming Is You -- Only With More MySpace Friends
Any time you start your day with an impromptu business meeting at an
International House of Pancakes (in Tennessee, no less), you know
things are going to get fairly surreal. When that meeting is followed
by an hour-long drive to a bait-and-tackle shop in Dandridge -- "the
second oldest town in the state!" -- where you're greeted by a one-eyed
dog and taken upstairs to meet the biological grandparents of an 18-
year-old former reality-TV contestant who sings like Bright Eyes'
Conor Oberst and looks kind of like Haley Joel Osment (pre-DUI, of
course), well, let's just say things quickly head into uncharted
territory.
And yet, that's exactly how I spent my weekend, trekking around
Eastern Tennessee with Josiah Leming, the "American Idol" also-ran who
might very well be the most popular contestant to never make the
show's top 24, thanks in no small part to that voice, those looks and
his back story (which, depending on whom you ask, was either 50 or 90
percent embellished by "Idol" producers). Throughout the day, I met
his grandparents, his aunt-turned-manager, his nephew, his extended
family and his vindictive ex-girlfriend. I went to the high school he
dropped out of at the age of 17, the park he wasted afternoons in, and
the skating rink he used to haunt (the locals call it "the skanking
rink"). I saw the Chick-fil-A he used to work at, the basement where
he wrote his songs, and the final resting place of his now-infamous
1989 Mercury Topaz, the vehicle he drove across the country on his
quest to get famous.
Reeling off miles of Tennessee county roads in a pickup truck a family
friend had loaned him (being famous has its perks), Leming spoke about
growing up in rural Morristown, about the lousy jobs that come with
growing up there, and -- most prominently -- about the music he started
writing at 13 as a way of breaking the small-town cycle. He said he
writes mostly about emotions that course through his veins -- sadness
and anxiety -- and that he is obsessed with the concept of death, of
some great specter coming for us all. He wants to help people with his
music, to heal them and help them survive. And he says he doesn't care
if he ever gets famous.
Later, in the basement of his parents' house, he plays a couple of
songs on a battered old piano. The room is littered with Dr Pepper
cans, cigarette butts and bags of Friskies Seafood Sensation cat food.
The walls are covered with Radiohead and Smiths posters, a framed
photo showing him and his brother playing in a band, and a thrift-
store painting of an old wooden ship adrift at sea. It is exactly like
any other teenage melodramatic's hideout, dirty and closed off from
the rest of the world -- only the music that is currently filling it is
something otherworldly. Leming does not play piano so much as he
assaults it, hammering the keys with his stubby fingers. The music
that explodes from the rickety piano is booming and urgent, a little
unsettling, incredibly raw. Honest.
And then there's his voice, which is startling as much for its clarity
as for the reckless way Leming wields it. One minute he's barely
whispering; the next, he's screaming in a ragged, full-throttle roar;
then he lets it fade out in an airy vibrato. In the room, with it
bouncing off the walls, it's almost disorienting. You don't hear
people sing this way ... with this little regard for their vocal cords
or for the people around them. To say that the television cameras do
not do it justice is an understatement of LaKisha Jones-ian
proportions.
Then it's over -- we shake hands and I return to my hotel. The
following morning, I am sitting on a plane in Knoxville, and my
BlackBerry is positively humming with e-mails from friends. "What's
Josiah like?!?" they want to know. "Does he cry all the time?" "Does
he still live in his car?!?" It seems they are just as fascinated by
the boy with the voice as I am.
So, as a service to pretty much everyone, here it is. Josiah does not
cry all the time (he didn't tear up once when I was with him) and he
doesn't live in his car anymore, though it is sitting in the driveway
of his parents' home in Morristown. As for the man himself, well,
that's slightly more complicated. Because Josiah is unlike anyone I
have ever met before, but also a lot like everyone else, too.
He is very nice. He answered all my questions and was willing to talk
about anything. But at the same time, I also got the sense that he
could definitely be a jerk if the situation warranted it, in the same
way that Radiohead's Thom Yorke or Oberst or anyone with a prodigious
level of talent and a mission could be a jerk. He was very wary of
those close to him latching onto his fame, and because of that I could
see him alienating people just because they were standing in his way,
or because they are out to get him. That is the way it has to be.
He speaks in glorious generalities, about death and life and his
dreams, in a way most idealistic, gifted 18-year-olds do. They tend to
think they are very wise, that they have seen it all. And maybe he
has. Who am I to judge? I wanted to snicker, to think in my head, "Oh,
just wait ..." But then I remembered that when I was 18, I spoke in
the same all-knowing manner. So did -- or will -- all of us, probably.
But perhaps the thing I got the most from my weekend with him was the
overwhelming feeling that he is going to be very, very famous. He is
prodigiously talented, largely self-taught and driven beyond his
years. At the moment, the world is his oyster.
Yet I could also see him not amounting to much of anything: He could
very well sign with a major label that would not know what to do with
him, would waste his talents and eventually drop him into the castoff
bin. He is in a precarious situation, to be sure -- an indie-caliber
talent who didn't seem all that keen on signing to an indie label,
because he has big dreams and big ambitions.
Who knows though? I could be wrong about all that. But I don't think I
am. And in the meantime, I'm going to stick with my gut feeling that
this kid from Eastern Tennessee truly has something and that we'll be
hearing from him for years to come, and that he'll always be known as
"The one 'Idol' producers let slip away."
Regardless, it's a safe bet that he won't be packing his things into
his Mercury Topaz any time soon; he's clearly graduated to another
level. What that next level holds for him, I'm not exactly sure. But I
hope it's big things. In a way, he represents the dreamer inside us
all ... his goals were once everyone's goals, and we're all rooting
for him to make it, because we don't want to think about what it means
if he doesn't.
After all, for all the ephemera surrounding him, Leming reminds me
most of another 18-year-old dreamer that I once knew: me. And you
probably feel the same way too.
B-Sides: Other Stories I'm Following This Week
True story: on her Web site, you can buy a pair of "Kanye's latest
video vixen" panties -- or at least, that's what someone told me.
Pink and Carey Hart separate: If a reportedly bisexual, sorta pop star
and a professional BMXer can't make it work, who can?
When I first saw "No Country for Old Men," I said Javier Bardem's
character was like "a Hispanic Darth Vader." That may or may not have
been racially insensitive.
Locutus
<intang...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:d76a2010-3558-4767...@s13g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
> Sounds like things couldn't be going better for him.
>
> You sound very Republican -- hate the poor, but hate even more the
> poor who try to get un-poor.
As opposed to democrats who love the poor and love to keep them poor? ;)
Taylor
Glad he didn't make the Top 24 so he won't appear in the post-season
Lame Tour '08. You know, where all the dipshits from the 24 are
contractually obligated to go on tour to sing as one big group and bow
and curtsy like peasants to the alleged best-of-the-best winner who
headlines this unbelievable fit of stupidity.
Lorraine G
>
> Glad he didn't make the Top 24 so he won't appear in the post-season
> Lame Tour '08. You know, where all the dipshits from the 24 are
> contractually obligated to go on tour to sing as one big group and bow
> and curtsy like peasants to the alleged best-of-the-best winner who
>
> - Show quoted text -
Since when do the top 24 go on tour, Taylor?
Lorraine G.
Taylor
Is it 12? I don't watch the show. I know the top [something] do.
sapphi...@gmail.com
Scott Savol and his wife are living in Nashville, where he is
recording his up and coming CD. His just released single, "Don't
Rush" is available on iTunes.
Pat