PLATTSBURGH -- Ever thought about trying out for "American Idol"?

Have you wondered what it would be like or if you could make it to Hollywood?

Amber Elethorp has. So has Sean Wood.

"I always wanted to try it," Elethorp, a Hartwick College student from Ticonderoga, said during a recent phone interview.

She didn't want to go to be silly, though. Elethorp doesn't even watch the auditions on TV.

"I usually skip the first hundred or so episodes," she joked.

Wood, a young Dannemora man who works in Plattsburgh, said he, too, takes singing seriously and wanted to try out as a test of his talent.

He's been an aspiring hip-hop and R&B performer for five years now. His tryout for "American Idol" commemorated a year since he stopped smoking and a year since his mother died.

Elethorp wanted to go to see how the singing voice she'd been polishing since age 7 stacks up. She did want to make it to Hollywood.

"I'd say, Oh, I can do that. I can do that,'" she recalled of watching the show. "So, I did."

She saved up the money, found a friend's house to stay at and headed for East Rutherford, N.J., last month. It was the last of the auditions for the eighth season of "American Idol" and the same one Wood took a stab at.

And what did Randy, Paula and Simon think of Elethorp and Wood?

The show's famous judges weren't there, actually.

Producers said that prospective contestants go through several rounds of auditions before meeting the show judges.

What the two local people, who have never met, did encounter was a big group audition. Everyone had to learn the two same songs and practice them for hours.