Ryan's suit is ill-fitting in about six ways to even my untrained eye, and then he starts in on Simon's chest hair, and before you know it, "I'm Coming Out" is playing for real, and there's a redux on the Ryan/Simon gay soap opera that seems to be a nightly addition to this show, for better or ill. Get a room, you guys! So you could make love in it! Last night, Sligh was snotty, Stephanie was pretty, "Endleth Love" was boring and "Keep Me Hanging On" was magical, but Sligh and Blake both suffered from arrangement neophobia on the part of the judges. And, in Sligh's case, on the shittiness of his arrangement. Doolittle and Lakisha and Jordin were fabulous as always, Haley showed up out of nowhere and can't sing very well, and Phil's little Make-A-Wish visit to American Idol seemed like it was coming to a close. Meanwhile, Sanjaya hung around for no reason and Chris R. continued to be strangely wonderful. Everybody else was boring and/or dumb, and Brandon forgot the lyrics of his song.
Tonight: Diana Ross sings "Muscles"! No, not really, but my roommate would have died, it's like his favorite song in the universe. Actually, she sings that song about how she loves you more today than she did yesterday, but not probably as much as she will tomorrow. Maybe she'll go on another cop-slapping bender and stop keeping score, one of these days. The group song is an unending medley of every Diana Ross song ever, and the pimpmercial is a zombie movie of many eras, set to "Float On." Lakisha is safe, Gina's shocked to find she's safe, Brandon mugs for no reason and is in the bottom three. Jordin is of course safe, Chris R. is safe, Doolittle is beside the point on Wednesdays, and Phil's in the bottom three, duh. Sligh's safe, Stephanie is safe, and Haley's waaaay at the end of the row, which is cruel. Blake gets Doolittle-sized cheers, which warms my heart, and then it's down to Sanjaya and Haley. After a commercial, and Diana Ross's song, the results are in: Sanjaya's in the bottom three, for his sucking is more powerful than even Haley's invisibility. Ryan sends Phil back to the benches immediately, which is nice, and then kicks out Brandon! Over Sanjaya! Gross! And he doesn't even get a sing-out. Moral of the story: don't forget your words. And if you do forget your words, make it seem like part of the show instead of acting all bashful and bumbling, because we're not here to be your friend, or wish your dad a happy birthday, or clap for your stupid grandma; we're here to see you sweat 'til ya bleed. (Blake's song choice spoiler!) week: Joe R!
These twelve "people" have battled through the "world's most" grueling "auditions" and "worked" for "months," but now one of them is going home, Ryan says. Jordin's boobs are cinched painfully up to her eyelids, which is I guess their new home, Idols past are in the audience, where we already knew was their home...and we're live. Ryan looks dapper, by which I mean that he's wearing a dangerously ill-fitting suit -- shoulder pads like Rudy, lapels pulling out to here -- but his shiny purple tie makes him look pretty. My hair and Paula Abdul are looking more and more similar these days. That's disturbing. Ryan is captivated by Simon's chest hair, and just like that, "I'm Coming Out" starts to play. No info for the DEA!
"Everyone was in diva mode," Ryan tells us, and then Ryan and Simon discuss how they're both in the closet. About being homosexuals, I mean. That have sex with other men. Named Simon and Ryan, respectively. Remember that? Brandon and Haley forgot their lyrics; Gina and Phil were boring. Chris Sligh's "Endleth Love" was Coldplayerrific, and Blake was magical, but both of them got dogged for opposite reasons. Blake's singing was not great but his performance was amazing, while Chris was boring as only Coldplay can be, but sounded good in the voice. We also learned that he is a bad person. Sanjaya sucked, Lakisha and Jordin were great and amazing, and I'm missing some people, right? Can you count for me? I imagine this is because I was thinking about Blake some more. I do that a lot, you guys. Then Doolittle made Paula cry, which made me and Simon and Doolittle cry, and everybody cried, except Ryan, because he doesn't know how. I almost cried with joy when Randy made Sanjaya cry, and that's all the crying for this week, because somebody sucky's gotta go, right? Nobody good?
Group sing. I have nothing to say about it. Chris ignores everybody else and waits for his turn to sing, Chris R is disgusting, Blake is not quite as cute as he thinks he is. Stay humble! Stay low! Blow like Hootie! Brandon forgets the words, I think. Which is great. Haley sings like hell some more, Doolittle is dressed like Missy Elliott as a woman, Gina is...whatever, Gina. Jordin's wearing a dress over pants and looks like a freak, but her straight-ironed hair is glamorous, and she's the prettiest girl in the world. The thing about medleys is that you never ever know when they're going to end. The answer is never. The girls sing to boys, and the boys act like idiots while ignoring the girls, as they are being sung to. Particularly irritating are Sanjaya and Sligh, although Brandon does a cutesy mime act thing that's totally annoying as well. To be fair, there was no way to get through that part, as a guy, without looking like a total glottal stop.
Gina's breasts are a force of nature, as is Chris R's crotch. I don't know what to say, there's like a million of them, and they're all singing, every song ever in one medley, and they're all moving around, and there's MICHAEL FUCKING RAPAPORT scratching himself and eating a fucking banana out in the audience, and it's just too much. Stop. In the name of love, Idols: please stop. They sing, pants around, hands in the air, every song ever sung by Diana Ross. Who later will be singing another one, not by Diana Ross. (Thankfully, not by any of these yahoos, either, but I hope she looks up Blake in a couple of years when he's the new Neptunes.) Ain't enough time here, ain't enough lime here: Coke's new slogan is "thanks for drinking," which is polite of them to just acknowledge what the show is doing to our souls like that. I don't wanna be rude, so I'm off for a drink. Since they're offering.
Oh, shit. So the pimpmercial is like this: "Float On" with them dressed like idiots through the ages, driving a car, and walking creepily toward the camera like Dexy's Midnight Runner, or zombies. Chris Sligh is like Black Power and Blake's a b-boy. All the girls are dressed like girls, time is a color in your wardrobe, it's stupid. Chris R as a longhaired hippie singing Modest Mouse. Thanks for drinking! Ryan and I bond telepathically as he also describes the horrible commercial walking as idiots/Idols "through the ages." That's comforting that we can still do that on the live nights. Although why he's telling me to break into Dave Letterman's house, I don't know. Never again.
Three lowest votes, here we go. Who's hot? Who's not? Who copped the blue drop? Lakisha is safe, Gina's shocked to find she's safe, Brandon's mugging for no reason and...is in the bottom three. Good. I just got tired of him in like the fifteen minutes the show's been on. Jordin is of course safe, Chris R is still highly confusing for me and is safe, Doolittle isn't even a freaking question, and the crowd makes her cry some more with their mania for her. It's sweet every time. Phil looks like he's going to succumb to his ailment, and then he stands. He's in the bottom three, duh. Thligh detherves to be in the bottom three, but of courth he's thafe. Stephanie is safe and Haley's waaaay at the end of the row. Blake drives the crowd crazy only a bit less than Doolittle, and he's in, Sanjaya is in because God's got a sick sense of humor...but Ryan won't pick between him and Haley yet because we just had a commercial three seconds ago. This break includes, though, the ad with Simon being adorable, and the one about Jeff Foxworthy's new show, My White Trash Ignorance Is Troubling, But At Least I Am Not Alone In America."
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The American Idol challenge this week is: "Identify this shape: is it a square, circle, or triangle?" ["And it's a triangle and it says "triangle" on it, and they even dial your phone for you." -- Joe R]
Or is it Diana Ross, dressed like the entire circus on fire? Ah, the latter, singing...Chicago? The band, not the... With hair all nuts looking and voice broken out. Her legs are fucking hot, though. You know who's got freaky awesome legs? Susannah Hoffs. She's like a billion years old and still looks like the babysitter you will one day marry. Okay, Diana's back, doing her thing. Rough start, dawg. A little pitchy. Paula dances around spazzily with her giant belt buckle. Giant belt buckle? Has the Texas joke begun to spread? That's awesome. I got one that lights up but I don't know what it should say. "This Ain't An Arms Race It's American Idol" has too many letters.
Diana drops her giant netting wrap beast, I don't know what that's called. What's the...what happened to Andre, what was that he said? Where the fuck's my taffeta? Where's my fucking taffeta? Whatever. ["Where the hell's my chiffon?" -- Tim] It's the stuff that's not taffeta, and I think not the other thing, and it's the color of a circus on fire. She sings that song about how she will love you more than she loved you yesterday, which I used to sing to our friend Mary Schammel, because it was true. Afterwards, Ryan yells at her because she is old and perhaps hard of hearing, and Jordin is still dressed like a bedskirt at Prince's house. Or maybe dinner, it's kind of tableclothy. There goes my cutie. Diana Ross tells Ryan a multitude of things that are divatastic but content-free, and when he asks her who's going home, she stares at him for a second and then giggles. "I am!" How many cops' asses will she beat between here and there, is the question.
You know, it's interesting, because I actually do love her a little bit more today than I did yesterday, because she was clearly there for a paycheck yesterday, and today she's being awesome. But yesterday, I found out she was not Donna Summer, so I loved her more than I did the day before that. This means that tomorrow I will love her even more than I do today, and will possibly stop cracking up about the "pronunciate" thing, or how creepy she always has looked for her entire life. Then the day, I will join a fan club or post on an internet forum. HATERS BEWARE! Although really, love her or hate her, at least people are talking about her, I'll say, like nutbars always do. I won't even have time for grammar or punctuation, is how crazy and full of love I will be on that particular day, at which time the amount of love I will be feeling is represented here: y < d < t, where d = today, y = yesterday and t = tomorrow. Within a month, I will go all MJ and start seeing her head floating around in the air and giving me advice. Within six months I will be dressing up like her. By that point the hair will actually match, so I'll also be in love with Chris Sligh, or his gorgeous wife. I won't even know what I'm doing anymore. Soon I won't be able to sleep or eat, just sit quietly in a state of alertness, loving her more than I did just the other day. I won't measure time or do anything but listen to Diana Ross and be in love with her and learn the word for that thing that isn't taffeta.
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YES! And I love Ryan Seacrest more today too, because he just told us that Sanjaya is in the bottom three! It's Brandon, Phil and Sanjaya...and Phil goes back to sit down. Good, that's good. I don't dislike him or his voice. So is it the incredibly talented, beautiful Brandon Davis, or the shmucky, barfy, kiddieporn nightmare of Sanjaya? If the tension is killing you, go back and watch the last five goddamn seasons of this show. Brandon's out, Sanjaya goes back to the benches and barfs. Brandon is just that much more delectable in slo-mo, even with DAUGHTRY ruining the world with his song. Guess it's because you run with lame dudes too much. Ryan's even more incredibly poorly tailored from this angle suit thanks him, hugs him, and congratulates him on almost making it past the Final Twelve, and then his singout is cut altogether, but I'm hoping he forgot the words again. Shit, I don't even remember what he sang. I forgot the title of the song, so he beats me in that arena.
Meanwhile, Ryan's dialogue was worded as such that there can be no doubt that Sanjaya and Phil were also in the bottom three. No verbal jiggery-pokery this evening, no sir. But what that will do is motivate the five to ten niche groups that love Sanjaya -- most notably NAMBLA and tweener girls with those weird bisexual Japanese comics in their Sanrio backpacks -- while doing nothing for Phil, because I don't know what his fans are like, but I don't think they're terribly active people. Plus they keep dying off. Which means he better man up, take a multivitamin or whatever to replace what his body is clearly lacking, and get in there, because I won't live in a world where Sanjaya takes the better people out one by one. He doesn't even know what he's doing. I'm mad 'cause he's flagrant. Nobody knows what he's doing. He's a loose cannon of suck. After steppin' out with that hat and ponytail, could we ever really believe in an ordered universe again? Is Sanjaya the new Sundance? Is he Will Makar's Revenge after all? What is the meaning of this?
week I'm not sure what's going on, but it's Joe's problem anyway. Peace out!
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