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Still team #Ibelieve
Me, too!
A lot of my reasons for believing have to do with the clues already outlined in your great timeline. But my belief is also based on intangible things, the most intangible of them all being Adam's mood, which at times feels giddy or bursting with excitement, and it's a strong vibe I even feel bouncing through cyberspace when I read some tweets (especially that week before they left for Cabo).
There's no direct connection between Adam's tweet saying there would be a single announcement and a job on Idol, but the timing and subsequent delay seem related to me.
There's also the way he tried to clarify his comment in Japan. Why would it matter if a misinterpretation of what he said was circulating, unless he was under some obligation to not reveal that he, in fact, has a certain job in September. I think after that incident he knew he had to commit to a stock response at all times and realized he couldn't verbally wink or nudge in any way.
But still there were things in his answers that set off little flares for me, like the giggle during one interview when talking about "things in the works" or the slip when he said he was "excited" when referring to Idol, or the way he answered "apparently" when asked about Nick Jonas being considered as a judge or saying that he was waiting on the "green light"--a turn of phrase that doesn't suggest waiting to know but waiting to move forward with a plan already in place. He does seem a bit frustrated (I think anxious to reveal the news and get started on the next steps), but overall too calm and happy for a self-admitted control freak if his future is really so uncertain.
And at a couple of radio stations he visited in Australia he played a judging game. I know that could just be coincidence, or his management or label could have suggested/encouraged that kind of game (once Adam seemed to expect to be invited to "judge" something and the DJ asked him something else instead). It will be convenient for those stations that they have skits testing what kind of judge he'd be, which they can replay ("we had him here just recently blah blah") and reference when the news breaks, and when they start playing his new single.
And I think I read somewhere--I don't remember all the details on this--about Shoshanna planning a trip to LA in September back in July. She could be coming to see another client, but it's just another thing that influences my feelings.
If Nick and Keith and Nicki and Nigel know where they stand, Adam certainly should by now, too.
And as I said before, I don't believe Adam would suddenly follow the
American Idol Twitter account, knowing how fans would interpret that act and the hopes it would raise, if he knew there was a chance those hopes could be cruelly crushed and he wasn't sure about the job.
And there may be other little things that I'm forgetting at the moment that also aren't concrete enough to put on a timeline. None of these things are "proof" of anything and they'd mean nothing to me if Enrique, for example, did them, but after observing him for all these years, they're significant to me when Adam does them.
Shirley Halperin tweeting out Adam's picture felt like another one of those intangible signs. I didn't follow the selection of judges in other years, so don't I know if Shirley was a hundred percent right all along the way in her reporting in the past. But it seems to me that no show building hype and trying to sustain the public's interest in this process would leak to her (for publication) all four names weeks in advance of the actual announcement. Seems like that would just undermine their big reveal too soon. I think one or more names mentioned would have to be a red herring, and I think that's Enrique. Adam can be the out-of-left-field surprise. I know it's suggested that Idol is looking at Enrique to court the Latin audience but he might represent one too many ethnic minorities for the Idol panel (sorry to say it, but I think they might feel that way) and they already sort of gave that a try with Jennifer Lopez and I don't know if it helped ratings with that demographic.
Besides all of the other qualities he'd bring to the job, Adam is an awesome PR hook and provides Idol with another successful alum story that the show can use to differentiate itself from the competition.
I know that all of this can be dismissed as flimsy support for an opinion. These are just my beliefs and what feels true to me. And when added to the other clues we've all talked about before, it gives me a feeling I can't shake.
#teamIbelieve
