Last night was so fun, wasn't it? We pretended we weren't indulging Durbin, and Casey kissed J. Lo on the cheek and it was so sweet and Jacob blamed his earpiece monitor and not the band, and lots of other things I didn't notice because I was on some other trip entirely. But it was fun, and that's the important thing. Beards and drummers and whatnot. So when Tyler comes out and does a little dance with his scarf just so we know who he is, and then booty-grinds a little bit on Jackson, well, that can be fun too. I guess.
Seacrest, verbatim: "Whassup whassup!"
Ryan tells us all about the things we just talked about, but points out especially Steven Tyler's nonsense bullshit. Tonight he is wearing, by the way, Steven is wearing a raccoon tail from one ear, as if to say hello to Paul McDonald's dear departed need for sartorial attention.
Scotty's Adam's apple goes kadunk kadunk, Haley's wearing a neon color story of which Grace Coddington would approve and creepy flesh L'Eggs of which nobody ever could, and for guests we have the idiotic Katy Perry and the not-quite-idiotic David Cook singing their current or upcoming singles. Ryan asks Randy his thoughts.
(The whirring sound of a CD drive attempting to start up, and then giving up again.)
Jackson: "I don't man I mean I'm a little like this I'm like What's going to happen?"
Lopez: "I hope a girl doesn't go home."
Seacrest: "Was Marc Anthony threatened by Casey kissing you?"
Lopez: "No, but it did bring up some things in our relationship I wasn't expecting."
Tyler: (Reminisces about things he said last night, at length.)
THEN HIS HORRIBLE FACE SLIDES OFF INTO HIS SOUP
A sadly Darren Criss-free version of "Hey, Soul Sister" follows, as Stefano and Lusk do a very gay dance and refuse to harmonize with one another. Then Haley's fleshtone tights and one more in a series of ill-fitted cowgirl outfits do a very flat harmony; Lauren's breasts have blossomed into womanhood in the last 24 hours, but her hips are still not quite as wide as Lusk's. He's got what you call those child-bearing hips; he puts them to use as Lauren is born right in the middle of their terrible singing. Hey, soul sister! Nice chunky highlights and tacky lowlights!
Too bad Casey and Durbin -- And who else? It's getting harder and harder to math -- are left out of this little joke performance, because it means something weird is going to happen in a minute probably.
I keep forgetting and then being reminded that Rachael Ray and that awful woman from the dancing show are totally different people. I would estimate that I have learned this fact at least 124 times.
A song called "World" is the song of the Ford Commercial, which I think is a retelling of There Will Be Blood. Casey is a preacher who moves into town and becomes locked into a battle of wills with Jacob Lusk, an underhanded oil prospector. Once Casey's adopted son Durbin is deafened by a thundering spout of Coca-Cola, Durbin goes a little psycho, eventually setting afire the brother-impersonating ne'er-o-well played by Scotty McCreary. In the end, Lusk attempts to drink Casey's milkshake, the which has brought Stefano and Ryan Seacrest to the yard.
WOCKA-WOCKA & THE BOOM-CHICKA-BOW-BOW
What more than "Viva La Vida" would do for Casey, Scotty and Durbin? My presumption is that Casey will sing the verses, Durbin will scream the chorus.
Scotty will of course be singing the unrelated and dissonant "Friends In Low Places," while flicking the tip of his tongue back and forth against his top teeth, woggling eyebrows over an unblinkingly lustful stare into the camera, and slowly and repeatedly sliding the index finger of his left hand in and out of a circle made by the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.
Casey continues to be adorable, although he's in a half-lotus on some stage element so we don't get to see the adorable stompy-walk thing he invented last night. I feel kissed on the cheek every time Casey appears in any capacity, so I guess I win. We do get to see them barely remember their lackluster choreography and nearly every single word of the song. The harmonies aren't as bad, but not great either; sadly the exact same notes present the problem for Durbin that they did for my man Matt Giraud, but happily he overcomes them in a somewhat more determined fashion.
IN WHICH JACOB LUSK IS INVITED TO RESPOND TO ALLEGATIONS THAT HE IS A "DIVA"
Jacob Lusk responds to allegations that he is a "diva."
IF YOUR BOYFRIEND DON'T MIND IT, HE'S EVEN GROSSER THAN YOU ARE
Seacrest: "McCreary, if at this point you'd like to mention your grandmother and/or apple pie or whatever bullshit, here goes. How are things going on back home?"
Scott: (Nope, no idea. Swamp people eating cupcakes, possibly? Subprime-mortgage refinancing your swamp-house? Too many stupid people screaming.)
Casey: (Shows us a fantastic painting of himself and his dog appearing on a upright bass, so it's like a painting within a painting; this was painted by a great fan of Casey's, of whom Casey is a fan right back. If only I had thought to learn to paint! God, I'm a loser.)
Casey is asked first to stand, and the wild crowd makes him nervous; Lusk stands to silence and crickets and rotten fruit being hurled in his directions. We remember how Casey transformed the entire show into a free-for-all full of profanities and wishing for others to do us like he does us, while Lusk did more of his usual crap.
Seacrest: "Casey, you kissed a girl and she liked it."
Stefano: "When I kiss girls, I sure like that."
Seacrest: "I am like constantly kissing girls."
Stefano: "It's our favorite thing to do, because we are men. Men who kiss girls. And love it."
Seacrest: "Casey, among all of us, you can grow a beard. Was the kiss spontaneous?"
Casey: "Yeah, my original plan was to just breathe in her face."
Amazing. He's such perfection.
Seacrest: "Lusk, how did you survive the whatever boring musical issue?"
Lusk: "Let me tell you exactly what happened, really vaguely and in a boring way."
COOL STORY, JACOB LUSK
Casey, after a nationwide vote your soft lips are quite safe. Lusk, because America is afraid to dance with its father, you are where you belong: In the Bottom Three.
Then a break so we can get ready, because there's nothing in this world more enjoyable than an original David Cook song, am I right?
He looks exactly the same; I guess his hair is a little more skyward, but he looks well. His skin has never looked better, although his beard-growing abilities seem stuck in a few years ago. I wonder if the chord progression will sound more like a Kings of Leon song, or a Lifehouse... It's Lifehouse, dag, I should have bet money with myself. Or no, even more: Shinedown.
Lifehouse? Shinedown? I know. It's like this whole abandoned house on the edge of the farmland of life, which we only visit when David Cook shows up. David and his ridiculous drummer and the chapstick-blotting thing he always does with his lips. Good thing his voice sounds great, though, if you like his voice and I do, it sounds like that. I can't wait until he's old and balding and stuff. He's going to be the cutest little dad. Whistlin' while he works. Singing the babies to sleep. Aww.
Durbin shows the rest of the Idols a small hummingbird he has plucked out of the air, in his outstretched hands; the rest of the Idols can't see it, but they nod and smile anyway, because he is singular and because he is exquisite.
LIKE I'M SO SURE STEFANO EVEN HAS PORES
This week they got to chill: Go to a Dodgers game, eat hot dogs, do the wave, wear a jersey, do a weird dance on the big camera thing, meet the svelte and youthful Tommy Lasorda, and then go bowling. How fucking American. Even in Hollywood. You cannot get away from it all, ever; not really.
God, baseball and bowling. Two of the many things I would only do if Brian Wilson personally invited me.
Stefano complains that he is losing at bowling -- not a sport, not anything on which one's virility rides, it's literally just rolling a ball, that's all it is, you could do that with both legs broken -- to Casey and Haley, and then subtly implies to the camera that he and Haley are doing it. I doubt very much that this is the case.
Jacob drags everybody to the spa, and they all get pampering and Clarisonicking and mud facials and sexy massages, and then James Durbin climbs on top of Stefano's naked body, and they have a baby and they name it Lauren. Scotty worries that getting a pedicure will lead straight to sodomy, and decides that's okay too. It's all very much how teenage boys actually are.
Lauren, you sang an imaginary song by a person that is also imaginary. Durbin, you made friends with Muse. Stefano, you were actually good this time. So of course Stefano is going to the stools, because out of those three obvs he's the one. Then the other two are safe.
FOR REAL THOUGH SCOTTY ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING? BE HONEST
So now it's down to Haley and Scotty to determine the third person. Scotty, you have got to be kidding us. Grow up. Haley, you were fantastic and once again reminded us why you exist.
Seacrest: "Have you found your niche?"
Haley: "It's coming together, slowly but surely, as I try to figure out what you people want. I have no identity of my own."
Seacrest: "Undoubtedly true, but twice as true for Scotty, so dipshitty America is sending you to the stools. Honestly, I do hate this part for real with the parts of myself that have not yet died."
Then he walks over to her at the stools, quietly summons her for a walk, walks her back to the center of the stage, and then whispers in her ear, "Haley. You're safe." It's kinda hot, really neat, confusing for her parents, and clearly makes Ryan happier than anything has in a long time. I wish he would do things like that more often, it was great.
KANYE WEST FINALLY EMBARRASSES HIMSELF
Katy Perry sings her song about fucking space aliens. To represent the most extremely other Other she can fetishize, she chooses a black albino (It's a black person, but they're white! How crazy!) and then indulges a whole lot of rape imagery while wearing a Tron outfit that mostly involves her tits and LCD strips to highlight her cooter.
Finally, so exhausted by trying to figure out why Lady Gaga is a success, so desperate to suck some of that glitter off her body -- like the bottom-feeding carbon-copy whore that she is -- that she no longer has any kind of interest in life, Katy Perry welcomes the strapping black albino's poisonous negatively-charged semen into her body and it burns her from the inside out, like a Giger fairytale. She becomes one of the ascended, an extraterrestrial. Wombless. Hungering for degradation.
(And even still, none of this explains Russell Brand. My assumption is that they met in group therapy, because they have the most and scariest sexual hangups of any pair of people I can think of in the universe. John Travolta, Terry Richardson and Dov Charney all touching your body at the same time would not make you as uncomfortable as one single secret from either of their childhoods.)
That's when Kanye comes out wearing a Sonny Bono caveman vest and pretends to care about any of this. Luckily, Kanye is so post-authentic that he manages not only to save face in the midst of all this, but actually gain some respect back. "Heck yeah I'll rap this bullshit about probing you in a space car. That will pay for another gold-plated aquarium, and that's what I want this week."
And I've said it before: I love her songs, from the last album on. And girlfriend has a great voice. But the huge problems inside her make that the least intriguing thing about her, and you will never, ever hear her sing with her good voice, because she's too busy shooting ice cream out of her vagina and rubbing cotton candy on her areolas and calling everybody Daddy and resenting other women and spanking herself and licking the pole to actually, you know, sing.
Nothing means anything. Nothing is even meant to imply anything. It's just bad-ass beats and nonsense psychotherapy ranting. I mean, you could call Ke$ha a knockoff of a lot of things, but even when she tries to go Gaga it's so arts-and-crafts safety-scissors that it turns cute again. She has no idea what she's doing, so any mess she makes is wonderful and bears no resemblance to the original inspiration. But Katy Perry just throws money and her hotness at bullshit, offers to suck your cock eleven times in a baby voice, and calls it a day.
Katy Perry is to gender what will.i.am is to music: A cancer that won't fucking stop yapping.
THE FRONT-LOBE OF YOUR LEFT SIDE-BRAIN
Okay, that's done. Stefano believes in himself, while Lusk believes in America until such time as it disappoints him, predictably enough. As though of us who are better than everyone else know, it's pretty exhausting to be better than everyone else.
Lopez: "I love it when Jacob sings, while Stefano was a Wild Card and thus shouldn't even be here."
Jackson: "He doesn't even go to this school! And don't forget, the season finale is only five weeks from now. Big props to being here until tonight, whoever."
Seacrest: "Do these two deserve to be the Bottom Two?"
Tyler: "Nobody deserves to be up there. I wish this was the Special Olympics."
When you're Steven Tyler, every day is Special Olympics Day.
THANKS FOR JUST SHOWING UP, BRO
The person who is leaving us tonight is going to be Stefano, obviously. If only he had gotten wet.
The Judgery do not, of course, lose their shit. I'm surprised frankly when they don't start ranting about Pia again. Seacrest runs his hands all over Stefano's body like a gentled horse, while Durbin begins to lose his entire mind onstage. Casey demands that Stefano kiss him, and Stefano thinks about it for a while before stupidly turning it down, I can only assume because the cameras are on and for no other reason because the fuck you turn that down. I wish kissing Casey Abrams was my full-time job. Stefano, so much younger in the video journey than he is now. And still so very dry, is he.
Seacrest: "How has this show changed your life?"
Stefano: "I was on TV."
Seacrest: "I know! It's so fun to be on TV."
Stefano sings "Lately," a song I don't immediately recall ever having heard before; he's clearly been prepared for this for some time. He joins Casey and Paul as the only Boys ever kicked off this show... Oh, it's the running around having a crack fit song! Awesome. Lose it! Lose it! I wish he was singing "Closer," but this will do too. The song redoubles it efforts while Durbin weeps and shakes and shivers and repeatedly drags his fingernails down the side of his face like he's determined to die tonight.
He rocks the end of the song and then James Durbin comes flying into him like a freight train from off-camera, swings him around and bear hugs the shit out of him while J. Lo cries at the table, and I have to say that part kind of got to me. Good old Stefano. Good old America.
week: Why, Bruno Mars will be stopping by for Carole King week.
WAIT, CAROLE KING WEEK?
Yeah, I said it. And I did not make it up. Holy shit that's a brill idea. (Sorry.) Oh my God, that is going to be so awesome! This show sometimes!
If Pia were here she could sing "I Feel the Earth Move," because they always do, while Stefano could have sung "Pleasant Valley Sunday." For Casey I'm guessing "Smackwater Jack" (since "Jazzman" is unworthy of him). Although I think "It's Too Late" would suit his voice, or maybe even "So Far Away." The runs in that one would do a lot to diversify Durbin's portfolio, but he will probs do the Pia one because it has earthquakes in it. Earthquakes of love.
Haley or Lauren will sing one of those two, maybe even "Where You Lead," for Lauren, because of her being a single mom in upstate Connecticut and all. And since she already did "Natural Woman." Although Lusk could do either of those, probably he will sing whatever has been covered most recently by a contemporary diva artist. Probably the Celine Dion one she wrote that nobody knows about.
Scotty... Probably will also somehow circumvent the theme altogether. "Home Again" or "You've Got A Friend" would be super sexy for him to sing, if he did it the way he does things. But then, on the outside -- since he's never heard of any of these songs anyway -- he might pick "Way Over Yonder" sight-unseen, just because of the title.
I'm guessing the Thursday medley will include "Earth," "Where You Lead" and possibly "You've Got A Friend." That's my guess there; that's something I've never ever given thought before, but this shit is important. I never know what the fuck is going on with this show. Carole King is like one of my ten Jeopardy categories, so I'm probably going a little far right now, but: Very Important Stuff. It's just so exciting!
I don't, honestly, care -- although picture Casey singing "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?" and then picture me doing something drastic; so cross those fingers -- because I know that any old way it shakes out, this is going to be great. You can't -- and I can't wait to eat crow on this assertion, come Wednesday -- you cannot fuck up Carole King. Can't be done.
Are big changes in store for the show season? Find out.