Photo: Becker/FOX

Since Simon Cowell and Co. are always on American Idol hopefuls’ cases about not sounding contemporary and skewing old, the show kicked off with references to the very young and hip West Side Story and A Tale of Two Cities last night. The towns in question — New York and San Juan, Puerto Rico — hosted the (thank you, lord) final auditions, provided an opportunity for an enthusiastic New Yawker to yell “Where’s Brooklyn at!?” into the camera and briefly revived the career of U.K. glam rockers the Darkness (we do not soon forget watching Ryan Seacrest strut around to “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”).

In the end, the judges doled out 9 golden tickets in PR and 26 in NYC to Hollywood Week. Here’s a quick rundown:

Ones to Watch:

• Smooth-voiced, smiley Melinda Camille likes to dance naked, auditioned barefoot and could be Rose Flack’s hippie soul sister. Which is why we were sure we misheard this quote the first time around: “Humanity is taking a shift right now and I want to be a part of it.”

• After Jorge Nunez beautifully sang “My Way” in Spanish, Cowell essentially admitted the show went to PR in search of a wider Latino audience. What ratings problems?

• Watch Nick Mitchell a.k.a. Norman Gentle for his sparkly shirt, khaki shorts and sass (”You mean the way you like it when Seacrest does it?” — even out of context, that’s amusing).

• Sixteen-year-old high school student Kenny Hoffpauer got approximately five seconds of screen time, but only needed that long to show he’s a contender.

Meh:

• Patricia Lewis Roman dares to sing Whitney! “Crazy song choice,” says Simon.

• Jackie Tohn makes guitar faces while singing (Song Face?) and had her audition interrupted by an act of God: the screen on the windows collapsed just as Simon started to criticize her.

• The judges imply Monique Garcia Torres got her ticket to Hollywood on the strength of her brother’s cuteness. They have half a point.

Ones to Wipe From Your Memory With Bleach:

• Hopefully Apple will sue Joel Contraras for dressing as an iPod for his audition and then performing like a Zune.

Thanks for the Memories:

• Wait … is that? … could it be? Our old friend Alexis Cohen from last year’s auditions! This time she shows off her “new attitude” for about five seconds before returning to her wildly cursing self. (For a good time, check out Cohen’s season seven Idol audition.)

• Adeola Adegoke from the Bronx was billed as a “former bank teller” because she stupidly quit her job before auditions. As Randy put it, “Singing is not your steez, dude.”

• Compulsive singing-contest-enterer Jessica Baier traveled to San Juan from Michigan with nine family members to set up Simon’s punchline by singing Celine Dion’s “I Surrender”: “So do we. It was absolutely awful.”