Rock & Roll Suicide

Tuesday

What happened: last week Ryan and Paula looked each other in the eyes and they both said, "I wish you knew what it was like to be me!" and there was a loud BOOM! So now Paula is cool and professional and makes at least two intelligent comments, while Ryan does most of his work from the laps of various dudes, including: Clay Aiken, Anthony Fedorov, the memory of Anwar, and some guy in the audience. It's bizarre. Also bizarre, though, is how they all sound like crap. What an unenjoyable evening. The theme is -- get this -- "the last five years." Not a thing!

There's a "Carrie's town has one stoplight" segment, and it's adorable, and her mom loses it talking about how great Carrie is, and then I lose it with how terrible Carrie is. She sings Martina McBride's "When God Fearin' Women Get the Blues," and, like, I am none of those things, but I can get the blues too, and you just gave them to me. It's awful, and then she coughs kind of pointedly, like she needs to worry, but it sounds kind of gross and real. Randy enjoyed the other musicians, Paula backhands her with how it's great she has so many fans, and Simon tells her none of this matters. Ryan asks if she's at least attempting to learn the lyrics of her songs these days, and they both giggle like dorks because she already knew this one. I like her with Ryan. The blondening of them.

"The man who wouldn't make the choice," okay, is wearing a stupid dashiki and sunglasses and looks like a Halloween "hippie" costume, which is essentially what Bo is, but whatever, I'm ready to love it, because he's awesome. Then the pre-song is all about how he's got this realistical real reality that surpasses normal reality in a really real way. And I agree, insofar as he wouldn't know the difference, and that's what I can't stand about Bo. Disingenuously to the fucking extreme, he'll be singing Gavin DeGraw's "I Don't Want to Be," and what he doesn't want to be? Is anything other than what he's been trying to be lately. Barf. But the real problem is how bad he sucks tonight. It's his worst ever, and one of the worst non-Constantine songs in the last six weeks. I'm not hating, and I'm not happy about it, but it's honestly that bad. His voice is shot, he's off-key, he duffs the last note crazy bad. The judges "love" the "coincidental" song "choice."

Tonight is not going well. Vonzell's package is adorable -- Daddy, karate, Daddy, cute, Daddy, mail truck -- but we note that her cuteness is genetic: her whole family is like that. She sings the Christina Aguilera song "I Turn to You," and…I love her, you guys, but damn. This is turning into a bloodbath. Like, I don't even want to watch it again to tell you exactly why. One part just before the ending is pretty good, although there are some fucked-up faces, and she dedicates the song to Daddy. Getting over that, actually. Randy welcomes her to the Dawg Pound because he wants an all-white Final Five even less than I, and Paula notes that America is falling in love with her. Still. Simon has a "horrible" feeling that Randy and Paula are totally wrong, and he's right, and Ryan tells her she's awesome, and he's right too.

A-Fed's parents cannot, like, handle how great he is, to the point where even the sensitive finger-picked guitar score gets bored. He'll be singing "I Surrender," by Celine Dion, and he will be rocking it, even though it's the most boring song in the universe, and I don't remember ever having heard it, even though I just heard it not five minutes ago, but he's great. It's not a chick song, when he sings it, just a song, and awesome. And yeah, everything is relative, and everybody else is sucking, but still, he does that thing I've been talking about. Randy and Paula give him unabashed praise, Simon hyperfocuses on the awful song, and Ryan hyperfocuses on A-Fed's bod.

Ready to meet Constantine's family? Let's. Are they totally creepy? Why, yes. Does all of this make more sense now? Absolutely. Was he cute once? Wicked hot, actually. Will he be great tonight? Not at all. Not at all. He'll be singing Nickelback's "How You Remind Me," and even he will not enjoy it. His staging, his vocals, his karate kicks, all are lazy. This song sucks, and he's making it worse by singing it. Does he have the flu? He makes the 2Cats sound again, even. It's like we're in a time machine. All the goodwill he's built up is gone. Gone! The hate is back. With disinterest. Randy points out the sucky voice; Paula allows as how the performance and song and vocals were for shit, but feels that that is really cool; and Simon calls it a "bad imitation," and yeah, that's what me and Randy think too.

Scott's home life is going to be depressing, I think. I have no idea what his parents are saying, just like I have no idea what he is saying. They thought he would end up a priest, which was dumb of them. He feels he represents people who "get up in the morning." Thanks? Then he insults Cleveland on a massive scale: "You'd see a million of me walking around." I want you to close your eyes for a second and imagine that, please. And then understand that Cleveland is not like that at all.

Scott looks very nice tonight, and he sings Luther Vandross's "Dance With My Father," which leads to a whole host of confusion, because his dad hates him, but there's also a stepfather, or he wants to dance with his beautiful child (the kid is gorgeous, y'all), or I don't know what. I don't care for this song, and his voice is better than it has been, but that makes the bad bits stick out more. I couldn't care less about this. Randy calls it his "weakest performance in weeks," Paula calls it unemotional, and Simon tells him to pack his suitcase. I don't want to jinx myself by offering him anything other than total support, but I will say that I had a feeling about Nadia, if you'll recall, and the same feeling about Anwar, and I was right, and that's the feeling I'm having now. Fingers crossed.

Wednesday

”Songs of the New Millenium” is a much better title for a stupid phony theme than “The Last Five Years,” even if it doesn’t improve the concept. Last night, Constantine did not give his all, while Bo gave us a heaping helping of nothing special. The judges loved Bo and hated Constantine, who additionally may have become a Sith or whatever. Carrie kind of sucked, Vonzell did half of a really great job, and A-Fed was weirdly compelling. Scott was bad and gave us feelings, but Simon jinxed it. That’s my story.

Group sing: “Emotions,” Carrie and Bo mostly taking the lead, except for a lovely and terribly off-key set of runs and ranging around that made me sure Vonzell would be going home. Also, Scott rubs our faces in our future with some bullshit fucked-up falsetto. Why can’t these kids sing with each other? What’s the problem? Then there’s the dorkiest but also best pimpomercial ever, with A-Fed Eurovisioning it up around a house in different costumes. It’s weird.

Tonight’s loser got 35 million votes in the season’s entirety. That’s a lot of dialing, y’all. Vonzell is our Number One Goat because even though she made Randy feel proud and Paula magical, Simon’s right. Similarly, Carrie is the obvious first Sheep, even though she made Randy feel “off” and made Paula feel: nothing. You know what I feel? Unsurprised by this whole paragraph. Bo was a “true rock star” and “incredible,” and A-Fed was “impressive and “did his best job yet,” and Simon opted out basically on both, and you know where they go. This is so non-suspenseful. …For now! Scott and Constantine are left on the couch for the break. Man. That’s like my least favorite couch ever. I want to beat it up!

Scott and Constantine get fake Huffed, and it’s radically revealing of stuff we already know: Constantine joins the Sheep, but is dorky and self-conscious about it, Scott lumbers over to the Sheep with his cosmic-sized entitlement in hand, and Vonzell and Anthony bust out, because this sucks for them hilariously. And because they are cool. Everybody in America laughs because Scott is stupid and deluded and they want to see his brains extruded. Carrie doesn’t know what the hell to do with her face, because she can’t be happy right now, but everybody’s laughing, so it’s confusing.

Ryan leads the group to make fun of Scott for being retarded and discarded, but it’s a fast one indeed that he is pulling, because Constantine’s mistaken, and is in reality a Goat. He gives the hair quite a workout as he makes his way over across, and his co-Goats continue to giggle about the rich pageantry of it all. Say what you like, but I can’t imagine either of them doing a pathetic stunt-bitch about this show later. You know? Eliminate them -- or even Carrie, in the world of make-believe -- and they’d be like, “What a fun time I have had in LA. I will bring home t-shirts for my family.” The end. None of this half-naked Jim Verraros makeover hissing and spitting.

Carrie now looks like somebody killed her dog and then dumped her and then burned her copy of Dirty Dancing, all on her birthday. She will look this way for the remainder: lost and confused and bummed and quiet and hurt. Randy doesn’t know why the hell this is happening, Ryan spells the word “wow” for us, and then Simon mentions something interesting: Scott’s getting 6-8 million votes a night, and that’s good enough to keep him in. This week, he did better than three other people, and that freaks me out. The top three all have fan bases that would vote insanely for them if they went up there and sang Pootie Tang’s smash hit single, “_____,” and I thought Constantine had that same fan base, but not so much. But like, Scott does, though. You know?

Vonzell’s safe, so it’s Constantine and A-Fed on the Seal. They both look freaked, and I’m sad, because I hate Constantine and little A-Fed, I don’t know why the hell he’s here, but I’m sad he’s clearly leaving. But then, you see, suddenly he’s not, and Constantine has been eliminated.

Everyone is freaked out. Like, Bo’s band is freaked out. Paula ages, seriously, eight years in the moment this occurs. She blabbers, and not the usual, but an honestly shocked and freaked out and hurt kind. He’s pretty gracious about it, as I expected. Although his Video Journey is a point-by-point mnemonic device for why this turn of events should be celebrated, I’m not…happy. I am not anything. I am shocked. It’s like whoa.

Paula’s in total meltdown, the Idols keep noticing the cameras catching their total freak out and trying to get it together, and then Ryan steps all over the beginning of the singout, because of how the song works. Carrie sings along with him like a little kid and it’s sad, and Scott is just openly laughing about his good fucking fortune. This song still sucks, but then we have a problem, because in the audience, Paula has climbed up on the table and is yelling encouragement and support at his mom, and the two do that thing with the foreheads touching and tears everywhere, and like, that’s his mom, you know?

It’s all very dramatic and you know what it’s like, it’s like when Kelly won, the first year, and it was mind-blowing and a large-scale occurrence and the glitter and the tickertape and the lights going crazy and everybody going crazy and you cried because some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this? Only this is the complete inverse. It’s not the fact that he’ll be gone, I’m fine with that. It’s the event of his leaving. History does not record my reaction to this event, dear reader. But it is not at all what I expected.

Tuesday

Ryan's wearing a light gray jacket, but it's not noticeable. Ryan's not really noticeable tonight, somehow. That takes a lot, frankly, and I'm glad the stylists are working on it, because God forbid his star quality overshadow the likes of Carrie Underwood and Scott Fucking Savol. He makes a weird proto-"Call Me" and then there's Heather Locklear all of a sudden.

If you don't know the story of Heather Locklear, you must be very young. In a nutshell: On the seventh day, Aaron Spelling took the night off, and then on the eighth day he suddenly wasn't God anymore, so he created Heather Locklear, and on the ninth day, lo but there was a crazy amount of Nielsens happening, and lather rinse repeat for seven decades of TV magic. Heather Locklear is the first through fifteenth comings of TV salvation and she deserves it every time, because forsooth, she is rockin' awesome and smokin' hot. Still!

I've seen every episode of LAX like twice and let me tell you that she's hotter than the hot British guy, hotter than Blair Underwood, hotter than the brunette Alicia Silverstone girl they've got; she's hotter than anything on this planet or off, and she's at this point technically thousands of years old as humans measure time, and she manages to become hotter every year. There is not a situation in this world that cannot be improved by the judicious application of Heather Locklear. I want a "WWHLD" bracelet. Well, actually what I really want is a "WWAWD" bracelet, because if Heather Locklear is the best humanity can do, then Amanda Woodward is the best that Heather Locklear can do, and that's…pretty much better than best.

Can you tell I don't want to talk about this week's Idol episodes? I had to face some troubling shit about myself this week. And it was Idol-related. Think about that, please. Stare into that abyss with me for a sec.

So let's go. Beauty in the breakdown, et cetera. Ryan cracks a joke about how Anwar has been eliminated, buttoned up his shirt, and now teaches little children to do "ten-minute high notes in impossibly tight pants." Which, wrong juxtaposition, Mr. Creepy, but yeah, that's what I remember too. I just hope they don't all end up singing all nasally up their nasal, like a generation of it, because that's kind of Tomorrow People to have to deal with. Also, Randy is wearing some very flattering pink and Paula is wearing some very comedic leopard and the judges all dap each other and it's quite realistic and street.

Fake time travel back to fake Wednesday, where Ryan points out there are only two "girls" left, and then everybody claps and everybody seems like a creepy robot, and then Ryan forces A-Fed to assume his masculine Idol power in a very, um, "respect the cruller, tame the doughnut" kind of way, and then asks some of the less interesting Idols what they were up to on New Year's, '00. To which the answer is clearly going to be, "Being born," with the exception of Bo, who has to say, "Finally letting go of the whole Mondale thing," because he's crazy old, okay, and Scott and Constantine both make arraignment faces, but then A-Fed goes all, "What happens in Pennsylvania stays in Pennsylvania," like that's this amazingly filthy turn of phrase, because he was fourteen and things got crazy on the millennium for him. And that's sad and funny in so many ways that I don't want to spoil it for anybody, but I will make a list, which includes some concepts: Anthony Fedorov, at the age of fourteen, getting wild, in Pennsylvania. And you can draw your own totally scandalous conclusions, but you and I both know they involved table tennis in somebody's basement, utterly insane amounts of Yoo-Hoo, and five and a half minutes in heaven with the exchange student from, like, Guam.

So that's the theme: What's been up in the last five years. Besides, like, high school, or potty-training, or rehab, or whatever. Tomorrow night, a long way from here, we'll retitle it the more realistic "Songs of the New Millennium," but nobody's that smart tonight, so whatever. We'll be going not so much "back in time" for the pre-song packages, but instead "back to their homes" and learning more about the Idols we give such a freaking toss about.

Fact one: "Checotah" rhymes with "Dakota." Fact two: It's just got the one traffic light. Fact three: Everything you ever thought about Carrie is twice as true as you might have imagined. Fact four: Carrie's hair? Looks INSANE. There are curls, there is straightness, there is bounce and non-bounce and places where little elves and tiny werewolves set up shop and are selling dreamcatchers, all in the Farmer's Market of her crazy, crazy hair. I mean, it looks cute, but damn you look very close to crazy cat lady right now. Life on the farm, for Carrie, is pretty simple: feed the cows, put out hay, collect cows if they go astray, sing to the cows. She loves the last one! Me too. Carrie was the baby by a margin where her sisters were out the door before she had anything to say, so her best bud was her mom, who talks about how Carrie likes animals more than people, and starts to cry about her beautiful heart as Carrie sweet-talks a cat, a bunny, a hamster, a whatever, everything that I'm allergic to, and my eyes start to swell up just looking at all these danderful animals.

Meanwhile, my friend and spy in attendance, Andrea, tells a different story than the one to which we are used, which is that what we didn't see was Carrie crying in tandem with her pretty mom on the screen, and having to pretty much get it together instantly, not mussing her makeup or dropping the smile, because the pre-song stuff happened about six seconds before the song started, and Carrie actually had to cover her ears because she didn't want to start crying from hearing her mom talk about her, and then the producer pointed at her as the video segment was ending and she was On. And I'm told it was fascinating watching her quote "get it together" and segue into the song, and none of us out here in TV Land actually saw that, but I think maybe it had to do with her snot-tastic coughing influenza performance, because man. She was pretty good regardless, but I imagine her mom is like what Heather Locklear is to me, you know? Important. And that is called grace under freak-out, and I'm proud of her. Also, she and Bo were the only people my spy saw thanking the band during the commercial breaks, and I'm glad about both of those, because the band really went freak-out awesome for everybody tonight, but especially the two of them. Color me unsurprised.

So she sings the inevitable Martina McBride's "When God Fearin' Women Get the Blues," a song I surely don't have to tell you I've never heard, and don't care to hear again, although apparently Martina McBride wrote, like, every song ever, since I've had to type her name at least 60 million times this season. So I like her for her ability to write some songs that people will sing. Carrie's got that cute straight hair going, during the actual performance, but is wearing a barfimous western shirt like one of those kids you only ever saw in P.E. and wondered where their classes were held the rest of the day. Needless to say, she's rocking it like a second skin. She's singing at the utter ground-floor bottom of her range, but she has some kind of moves happening. More of those confused hip-rocks from last week, mostly. Adorable.

Once we get to the chorus, it's still not in the most comfy part of her range, but (luckily!) the music beefs up amazingly to compensate, to where you can barely hear or care, and I'm not even yet talking about the fiddle, which: oh, the fiddle. So there's the aggro fiddling, and the people in the crowd getting up on it, and still with her "moves" that are adorable, and just like her rock and roll performances there's a lot of taking of personal inventory and wondering where the hell this moxie came from, and noticing just how very much she looks like she knows what she's doing. I don't get it, frankly, because she had the voice but seemed to viscerally hate the stage part, and now it's like the opposite. Well, she sounds good. But she's now having fun. I'm guessing she knows this song from before, because she doesn't look like she's freaking out, and but mostly because the words seem to mean something when she says them, which is new. The hips, they seem to signal confidence. There's a big building note that she doesn't hit, but she's adorable right after it, so it somehow works. Afterwards she coughs, to show us that she's not at full capacity. In case we didn't know. She was still mighty fine.

Randy praises the instrumentation, over which she had less than no control, questions a few pitch issues, and points out that she and the band were two very different things; she and the backup were not "on the same train," and I agree with the basics of that statement. There are "Crazy For Carrie" and "Go Oklahoma" signs. Paula says something very pink-opaque, basically, "It's a great thing that you have so many fans…because you do." How…nice for her? Ouch. Simon points out that A) nothing Paula says matters this week, B) or any week, and C) last week sucked, and D) her fans, whoever they are, will love what she did tonight. Ryan says sweetly, "In the past, some of the songs have been tough for you, lyrically. What's your process now, for memorizing the words?" Translation: "Are you yet capable of memorizing words in a certain order? So that you're singing songs, instead of random words in a row each week?" And she answers the awesomest possible way, which is that she already knew this one, and they both laugh, and it is a real laugh, and it is beautiful, and this whole show is usually such a pear-shaped fuck-up that I'm willing to take real actual laughter at face value, so: the end.

, Bo will be singing Gavin DeGraw's "I Don't Want to Be." Also known as the theme song of the WB's One Tree Hill, of which show I've seen exactly five minutes, and in those five minutes I was treated to a newly-coked-up frustrated cartoonist drawing the red street light of her mother's death over and over again. And that was it for me, because I hated Joey Potter when she was cute and didn't have a dead mom. Or I mean, she did, but it didn't turn her into a cokehead or a cartoonist or what have you. (Dude, they're calling her and Cruise "TomKat" and I hope that takes, because it is crazy dumb, as is their relationship, insofar as Joey Potter will now I guess die a virgin, just like she wanted). But that's not even the point. The point is Gavin DeGraw. And we've talked about him before: stop looking at me like you've had me. Gross. You're gross. And Bo doing Gavin DeGraw? That's so much unknown fake piled on fake that I don't even know where my pants came from, and I make it a point to know always know where my pants came from.

Ryan introduces Bo as "a man who wouldn't take sides," just in case we don't recall in mind-numbing detail the clinical, explicit handjob we as Americans were called upon to deliver for him last week, upon discovering just how deep his real reality and goodness goes.

It's not, I stress, that he's not awesome -- because he is -- that bothers me. One more time: it's how he's being used, and it's how okay he is with that, that's at odds. Because he has managed to pick the one persona on the low-effort-identity tree that can't sell out, by definition, so I think it's the fact that he, perhaps unwittingly, has chosen this personality, only to sell it out, that bothers me viscerally. I hate to think that Constantine is better than Bo, in any way, but the thing is that they're both the same amount of fake, and at least Constantine's fake is fake enough that he can go ahead and sell his soul and both nads without running counter to his actual self, whatever that is, while the "Bo" that we love and adore has as its central tenet an integrity that a priori does not admit bullshit like this show to get a foothold in its pure, snowy-white fields of driven, well, snow. To be blunt. And on that note? Telling me Bo has a drug history is equal to telling me that Anwar has a kissin' dudes history. I'm not going to burst into tears of shock about it, and come on: Neither are you.

Also, Clay is there, and he's pretty much embarrassed to be there, even though Ryan is wiggly like a puppy to see him, which would put me so very much at ease with anything this carnivorous show brings, because Ryan as a man is pretty great, but Ryan as a puppy is a delight indeed. Ryan tells the people to scream for Clay, and they do, but they already wanted to, because it's Clay, he loves kids and talks to kids and they get beat up and the story is a palindrome, it reads the same way backwards and forwards, because he's Clay, right, but he's still and also Clay, and that is beautiful. A man, a plan, second place: Clay.

Bo takes us back to the highly-anticipated Alabama homestead. More drugs, more strip clubs to be arrested at, for holding. His girlfriend is very intense and ten weeks pregnant. His dad informs us that the "talent and pipes" came from Mom, while that signature really realistic and unstoppably authentic "attitude" came from Dad. Bo's mom? Is totally hot. She also had a gospel background, and thought Bo would follow in her footsteps, but of course Bo liked Anthrax (We know! Scott Ian cannot shut up about the awesomeness of Bo Bice! Nobody can! I can't, even! The awesomeness of Bo Bice is eating my language centers! And Scott Ian's!), spent most of the thirties and forties riding the rails and playing gigs until the New Deal, at which point he built the Teapot Dam and invented the Tighten Up, only to reappear as a major player in the infamous Affair of the Necklace, indirectly leading to the institutionalized assassination of Louis and Marie Antoinette and the influx of political power to the French intellectual anti-monarchist movement, before moving on to Sarajevo and setting World War One into effect with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who uttered only the name "Sophia" before expiring. At some point in there, he was into pot and blow. Try to care.

Right now, though, he looks like a douchebag. The voice is fine, but whatever: he looks like a jerk-off of staggering proportions. He looks like Patty Chase's idea of a "hippie" costume. Like the kind you could buy at the grocery store. Remember that smell? That plasticky smell? His sparkly new dashiki, his stupid carwash sunglasses, his shiny, lovely straight hair. Yaya would not approve of the fabric, I can tell you that much. She would disrespect his dashiki. So shall I. And we won't apologize, either.

His voice is fine, but whatever. It doesn't sound as bad as I remembered from earlier in the week, it's just…lazy. Everybody's too tired to Idol this week. There are parts where Bo loses the notes entirely, and the backup takes it for him. And these are not minor parts of the song, or the performance, but in fact kind of crucial, and he's not doing it in the cool "Vonz" way, either. I fully believe, as my spies have suggested, that it was hella better if you were there, in the studio, because he's magical. I've kind of assumed that every week, to be honest. I know what stage charisma can be like. I was not prepared for the full-on Midwich Cuckoo freak-out of my spies on returning to me, but I had an intuition that whatever he made me feel, naturally, here in my home would be multiplied by one thousand if you were in the room with the contained seismic event that is Bo Bice. And yes, I get it, and yes, we're calling Andrea "Tanya" now, and the deprogrammers are on their way. Comparisons were made to Sarah Hughes and that one perfect moment, which I actually saw, and which I am not ashamed to admit sent me into tears even though on my list of things I could give a fuck about, Olympic figure skating where they don't fall on their ass ranks right below whether Becker got worse or better as the seasons wore on. And I believe it, and I would like to see him live. I adore him.

Randy gets it: he is scared to death of the intensity of Bo's fans, too. American Idol finally has a true rock star in you, he says, because there's a Shirley Jackson worth of people behind him ready to take him down if he doesn't. Paula basically says the same thing. Everybody pays tribute to the regrettable "Bo As Product" thing of the song -- I don't want to be anything other than what I've been trying to be lately and I don't care about who you're saying I'm supposed to be, because I'm just Bo, a real guy, just me and my guitar and my probation, blah blah blah -- and how he couldn't be more pure and real and alive right in front of us if his skin were transparent and it was just an hour of "Visible Bo" each week and Ryan said things every Tuesday like "This week, we'll be visiting Bo's liver: it filters out impurities, but where do they go from there? We'll find out…after the break."

Simon has nothing of import to say, because Bo's popularity is right where it's supposed to be on the PowerPoint bell curve up in the 19 Entertainment offices, so what does he care, but he does note that Bo's the strongest contestant so far, for the second time in as many weeks, but unfortunately, his "Lenny Kravitz" sunglasses were out in 1998. Which: whatever, but the crowd reacts like he just called him fucking Yoko Hussein, which, relative to the level Simon's allowed to criticize Bo right now, he kind of did.

Ryan jumps in all crazy Kyan moisturizer metro on the glasses, the least salient point of a virtual tongue-bath across the board, and Bo regrettably asserts that these glasses look like they cost "600 bucks." And unless you're talking about, like, dog dollars, or they use Canadian currency in Alabama and I didn't know it, you're so woefully off that Bob Barker and Don Pardo would team up to kick your ass. But see, he's so Wal-Mart real that he only paid "six bucks" for those designer originals, making him a "bargain shopper," according to the somehow not-at-all snarky Seacrest. I don't even know what to say. America, this is your Idol. He's better than everybody else, but in terms of the zeitgeist, I really, really do want him to win. Especially if the alternative is Scott, who's just another, less tasty flavor of the same thing, image-wise. Except he's nice to the band, and the fans, and doesn't care about the cameras, because he's all about the crowd, which is the sign of a seasoned performer. He was called by Spy Buddy "the anti-Constantine" in this respect, and yeah. Work the crowd and ignore me, and I feel implicated and into it, but lay all your shit on me, and I feel oppressed.

Now Ryan Seacrest is sitting on a man! He is thanking him for "dressing up, sir!" The tour matters and tickets will be going on sale before you know it! And there is the tsunami to deal with, plus Clay Aiken and all kinds of tangential stuff going on! And, exclamatorily, Vonzell!

She will be singing "I Turn to You," by Xtina, but first we will learn some things all about her family that we already learned about a billion times. There's not even any Cow Whisperer stuff to spice it up. We literally knew everything there is to know about Vonzell. If you didn't remember any part of the Vonzell story, don't worry. Here it is, in the Thorn Birds-length edition: she's a mail carrier, the baby of her family, which happens to be the most adorable family on the entire surface of this world, and she has two brothers that we meet, who are adorable, and they give each other permission to cry because that's how much they love their baby sister. I'm not complaining, but dude? I'm there. I live here now, in the mansions of Vonzell's cuteness. I don't need the tour. On the other hand, she breaks a board in half with her hand, which is always nice to watch, no matter who you are.

So but sadly, she's off-pitch, very halting and not even working her way toward the tune. I will say, though, that she does some pretty complicated mic work to compensate, and I enjoy seeing people do that in a way where you wouldn't notice. This entire song was written in a Liz Phair key that's at the very, very dungeon bottom of her range throughout, causing her to croak and do some very A-Fed hip-dancing. It's also easily the most boring song of the week, which is saying a lot. I mean, to be fair, she gets there fairly quickly, and gets into it five times as easily as I could, with such a downer boring "I believe that children are our future" kind of song, but then before you know it there are some runs with some crazy crowd reactions that are all "Wooooo!" out of context, and then it's done.

Sarah notes the degree to which Paula's feeling it, right now, and how come nobody told her this song is bad? Bad for her, bad for music. Bad for America. The high parts are too high, the rest is too low…there are specific middle notes she can do, and she gets them right on the dot, and then ends the song with a deeply unnecessary "I love you, Daddy." I mean, I don't begrudge her dedicating this song which is clearly about her all-important relationship with her all-important Daddy, but we get it, we get it, we get it. This isn't adding to your sum total of image, it's just adding to your making the point to your dad that this is all about your dad, and, like, I barely know you, but I do grasp that. I'm sure he's down.

Randy notes that technically this is the most difficult song of the night, and he loves that she's challenging herself -- and yeah, she has the voice for it -- and he also points out the craziness of "challenging a Xtina joint" and he welcomes her to the Dawg Pound because Lord knows she's not going anywhere and I don't want her to, and he points out that this show is about "finding the best we can, in America" and how he's proud of the performance tonight, and if you put it that way, yeah, she did pretty much rule. Paula was worried because -- again -- "Xtina is Xtina," but it turns out that not only is Vonzell still Vonzell, but also she has an ability to "turn on this magic when you hit the bridge" which is beautiful. I finally get what Paula's saying. She talks all around her point with metaphors and if you just let her go, eventually she'll create a word picture that approximates what you or I might just, you know, say in words. She speaks in negative space. But she will get there. ["Which is, actually, a kind of Paula way to put it in terms of your finding something nice to say (your sense level is obviously higher)." -- Sars] Simon warns Paula and Randy with a caution that, given the loudness and incompleteness of the experience they must deal with each week, there's a strong possibility that it just was not as good as they think. Randy and Paula act outraged at the idea that the first part was flat, but I mean, it was! Watch it back, guys.

Vonzell has this huge group of supporters, of course, in the audience, and she waves and smiles at them even more than we see her do, according to my spy. Ryan holds her hand and notes that Paula is right on the money about the "intangible connection" and then tells us this interesting and quite pragmatic "ritual" Vonzell has where she doesn't talk on Tuesdays, and Vonzell clarifies that there are two reasons, the first being to save her little voice, and the second being to focus for her performance. She smiles at the camera and does not look crazy, just sweet and good and all things pleasant, smiling. "Vote for me. Or don't. You'll be happier and I will too, but I don't want to pressure you, I just want you to have a fabulous day. Okay?"

Ryan tells us that after the break, Anthony "takes on Celine Dion" and I don't even know where he's headed with this, all "this should be quite a fight." Um, what? Scary French teacher versus tiny sweet little man-child? Two things enter, one thing leaves. He's singing yet another song I haven't heard -- I guess due to living under a rock between 2000-2005 and only peeking my head up like Punxsutawney Phil whenever I hear rumors of a Kylie Minogue or Death Cab album -- called "I Surrender."

But first, Heather Locklear. WOO! "Stars come out for the Idols," Ryan wishes aloud, and tonight we've got Heather, her daughter Eva, and her daughter's friend Hannah, and Ryan makes Eva lie about caring about the show, or having seen it, and Mommy supplies the name of her "favorite," Anthony. Could have been painful, but the kid is gorgeous (denim Kangol notwithstanding) and, I mean, Heather. I'll let you in on a little secret: I think Heather Locklear is awesome. Don't tell.

Anthony grew up in a small town outside Philly, was born cute as hell and boring as raw tofu, even singing adorably on a tape when he was just a little child. His parents wonderfully and touchingly freak completely out and cry and can't take it when they have to think about the awesomeness of their kid. Anna points out that, in terms of the Americana of this, or what I called the Kavalier and Clay of it, they're right on target for crying. Come on: they get it together to the point where they move to the U.S. from Ukraine, their child is objectively beautiful and subjectively super-talented, and now he's en route to possibly (well, never) becoming the American Idol. The streets actually are paved with cheese, in their experience. That rules.

His awesome parents say without irony that Anthony is "our dream" and "his dream [is] our dream" and "I can't believe our dream came true." I am a mean old grouchy man, okay, but dang. Maybe this is where I went soft. You'll see what I mean. "He's not just a dreamer: he is a dream maker." I don't even know what the fuck Dad means by that, but the choking up that Dad does while delivering that non sequitur is enough to tailspin my whole vibe. I like puppies and children. For the moment.

Okay, so he starts very dramatic, sitting on the stage with all these feelings and some shiny shoes and looking right at you. I will face this, the looking of A-Fed into my soul. This is not a wiggle-dancing kind of song, so we'll be all right. The yelling on key is so very much in effect here, and I love it. My notes all say shit like, "How nice." "I am happy with this performance." "I would like to enjoy this again some time, possibly." He gets the close-up on the big screen behind him, because that's all he's got. He's going to go ahead and surrender, is the point of the song. This point is reiterated several times. Dad's got an airbrushed sign that he can't hold up, and it is adorable.

Randy is pleased, because although it started off rough, he was really good with the high notes. However, again, it's the low notes that need work. Paula points out the shut up fact that Kelly sang that song, in the first season, and of course that it was a Celine song. And you know, I'm not familiar with the song, or Celine Dion's body of work. (Although what I can tell you is that her song "Treat Her Like A Lady" is one of the finest things you can go through, as a human being. It's a Siege Perilous, but the dividends are excellent. In ten words: Celine Dion, rapping like she's Jamaican, about murdering the unchivalrous. Trust me.) But, like, it didn't even seem like a Celine Dion song, when he sang it, to me. Just a song, like a song a guy would sing. Admittedly, a guy like A-Fed, which restricts it to certain people whose feelings are out of control. Rob Thomas, for example, could pull this off -- if, of course, he could keep the crotch in check as well as A-Fed has done tonight. Well done. So Paula noted a beginning, middle, and end -- way to follow the thought the whole time, baby! -- and Simon calls A-Fed a "very brave man," admitting that he personally hated it, which I would have too, assuming that I didn't adore A-Fed, and that I were less ignorant of what Celine Dion gets up to. But on the other hand, Simon knows damn well that A-Fed's fans love him so very much that none of this matters, and he's right about that.

Spy Andrea writes, "Anthony, as I'm sure you know, has the hugest gay following in the world, and there were loads of them there with signs for him. He didn't quite know how to respond to all of it, although was pretty gracious and did a lot of shy waving." See, I knew it. I'm glad he's a gentleman about it, though. Ryan calls it a tough song to sing, and tells us that Anthony's been itching to sing this song for weeks. Why? Ryan doesn't know. Anthony may or may not know. Things are constantly touching his soul. Grand Canyon amounts of things touching his heart and soul all the time like the unstoppable power of the stream and the river to reshape rock is how he picks his songs. His heart is worn down like the toe of a saint by this point, but he doesn't let it get him down. Why should he? He has so much cheesy music to lift his spirits and ours. Also worn down: my threshold for shit like Ryan being all, "He goes the gym twice a day, you guys. Check out those arms." Ryan won't let me get away from it either way. I mean, he's wearing like three layers and we can pretend this is all on the up-and-up, but leave it to Ryan to West Hollywood some creepsville in there all unnecessarily.

Speaking of? Constantine will be singing Nickelback's "How You Remind Me." If you're not familiar with the song, let me tell you some things: first of all, you've heard it. Second of all, it's trashy. Third of all, it's the same song as the "paperback novel/Hollywood horror" song, only not quite as idiotic.

Constantine is -- well, actually I thought he was from Jersey, but hey, let's streamline -- from Brooklyn, and grew up in a very traditional Greek Orthodox household. His mom is very intimidating and the whole family has a, well, a certain creepiness. I can't identify it and I hate to say it, because I feel weird enough about insulting a person (except Scott), much less a whole family (except Scott's), but…yeah, there's a creepiness. Mom has a thousand pictures of Constantine at every stage of development, categorized by time of day, facial expression (all the same, from birth: icky), and his brother is totally the undead Phantasm guy that throws the whisk-slash-julienne balls at people. Ehhhhh, hehhhhh -- Constantine -- mmmmehhhh, hehh hehh. He's my brother. Shhhhhh mehhhhh. Yikes.

Mom tells us he was a pain in the neck -- imagine if you will -- and we see thirty pictures, and yeah, one of them is from this moment in time where he was totally hot and somebody took a picture, and I'm happy that his one time of being hot can carry him through those times of bloat and retention, like now. Too bad nothing can carry him through the sucking of this. Nothing. It's really like we went back in time to Wednesday to find the theme, but Ryan took us too far, to when Constantine was just my own personal Kryptonite and there was nothing to him but a big black blotch of awful and nightmarish mushmouth, all faces and affectation and no good sounds coming out. To a time when Constantine lived underground and bred Anthony and Carrie types for food. Like, he even makes the sound, that sound of cats, a little bit. Skreeeeagh. A tour of Constantine's Low Points. Ugh. Spy Buddy says that he really has a presence in person, and while it is somewhat cheesy, he is also very tall, and his features are very dramatic, but that, and I quote, "It is ALL FOR THE CAMERA in a desperate, almost Norma Desmond kind of way." I believe this to be one hundred percent true.

All the giving a damn that I used up on when he was good, and now he's going backwards in musicality and okayness. When I say that I want to kick him in the face, you know I mean that, right? Boom. Right in the face. Speaking of kicks, he will now serve up three cruddy ones. I think he has the flu. That's the flailing, weakened, kittenish way he's getting this done. Poor Constantine. Sometimes, you have to suck. Learn it, live it. Sometimes excelling is just not in the cards. Charitably, Sarah's like, "Um, maybe I don't like this song?" No, I must admit, it's him. Trust me. Because the hating of this song that you should be doing? Is on a totally different vector from the hating of this singing that you must be doing. It's suck squared.

Randy "keeps it real" and tells Constantine he's "glad people like him" but that he felt like he was "sitting in a bar not really caring." Ouch, but yeah. Paula also hated it. It just bounces off me and sticks to them, though, because, like, he's Constantine, right? One billion wiener dogs can't be wrong? And if he leaves, I'll lose a major source of pleasure and pain and interest and…come on, that'll never happen. Even the sad people who all they have to fall back on is "Love him or hate him, at least people are talking about him," they all add to the math, so it doesn't matter how terrible this is, right? Right? I'll still have him to kick around come Wednesday?

Paula talks her usual mess of how, even though this is as crappy as he ever has been, he was still awesome, that even though she hated both the song and the singing of the song, at least he was still Constantine. She's just happy that he didn't turn into Vanessa Redgrave or something, I think. If you're Paula? Shit happens. Simon is nonplussed, because it's a rough week, for singing. Simon welcomes Constantine to the "dark side" due to the leaving of his band for cheesy pop, and then corrects himself that it might be the "light side," or the whatever, the wayside side of sideways nothing. This show doesn't know from music. Come on. He calls it a bad imitation of the original, and that is something that I can agree with. That's exactly what it was like. Ryan says that he was reminded of Clay during the performance, interestingly, and Constantine simply doesn't know what to do with that information, but it's not so much of a speed bump for him that he comes off rude. I mean, nobody on this earth would say that Clay isn't perfectly suited to the show, but if your whole life is about thinking you're way too special for this show, and somebody compares you to the ultimate example of what this show is about, I bet that's rough.

Scott sings a song I don't really agree with, Luther Vandross's "Dance With My Father," but first we see Scott's boring parents, and the dad calls him "sympathetic" and Mom calls him "sensitive" and remembers a time when they thought Scott would become a priest, but that really, "I guess being a singer's not so bad." Scott's son Brandon, who is completely beautiful, is four years old. Mom gives some extended metaphor about how Scott is thrown curveballs but he hits them out of the park, and the dad stares into space vacantly. And I mean vacantly. Like he has been vacated. If you still have this on tape or whatever, I highly recommend that you check out the dad, because it's crazy. Scott opines that he "represents the people who get up in the morning" and Mom calls him an "average Joe," the "heart and soul of American Idol" and Dad stares off into space, his head cocked at an alarming angle, looking like he's having an event of some kind. Maybe it's just the stress of the huge, huge lies they are telling.

I'm told that in person, much like on my TV screen, Scott was "so, so, so, so bad" that it was depressing. That the audience is told at the beginning of the show that all the performers will be receiving a standing ovation, but that a lot of the crowd didn't even stand up for him, and he got weird and defensive right away and it was "so sad." He starts out completely flat, singing in this weird uninvolved way where it's like he's humming, but with words. Neither of us could care less, and there's some more of that lazy bullshit vibrato, and this weird self-satisfied way of resting his hands on his tummy after every phrase, and the chorus just eats ass. There's this awful thin falsetto that fades out on some notes so that you can't even hear it, and the boringness of the song and its "heart-tugging" lyrics about praying for your mother and dancing with your father and his stupid face looking at me like he can't imagine why anyone wouldn't just want to give him their wallet and a foot massage, because he's a sociopath, and all this is, is pop signifiers and vocal tics and he's not cycling through them fast enough to fool me anymore.

Randy calls it pitchy and all over the place, Paula says that it was emotionally a failure, because it's a really emotional song and he gave it none of that, but honestly, since he's just parroting what he thinks an actual "singer" would do each week, you can't expect him to juggle that too. Simon simply tells him to pack his suitcase tonight, and I honestly thought for sure he was right, and Paula just murmurs, "Oh, Simon," and ugly, rude faces abound, but this time I can't really blame Scott for it.

Other notes from Spy Buddy Andrea include confirmation of her insight last year that Paula is all about hair and makeup and doesn't care about the fans at all, Randy is in the middle, waving and doing Dawg Pound whooping at the girls who scream at him, and Simon is totally sweet to the fans, winking and waving and signing autographs. She also said that he kept tugging on his shirt self-consciously, because it was so tight, and that he sucked in his gut when he went to talk to Heather Locklear. So would I. Andrea was annoyed by Clay chewing gum throughout the show, but thought it was interesting how rapt he seemed during the judges' comments, that he felt the pain when it was bad. "If it was an act, it was a good one, I bought it," she says, and then immediately my worst fear is true: "…But that's the weird thing -- when you're sitting there in the audience, you buy EVERYTHING. It feels so much less cheesy, because everybody is running around working so hard and it feels like a real THING, not just a bullshit TV show. You get totally caught up in it, and how everyone acts when the cameras are off. Bo was so cool." I was scared to death that was true, and now I know it is, so as much as I would like to attend a taping, I don't think I ever can.

To review, Carrie had her whole thing going, and enjoyed herself despite homesickness and a cold; Bo looked idiotic and was barely trying but is a mesmerizing performer even on his off days; Vonzell was boring but good and sweet as a piece of cuteberry pie a la mode; A-Fed was feeling it so very, very much; Constantine and the whole issue there, and I will miss him; and Scott and the cockroaches and Master Blaster and Cher and the robots one million years from now living in harmony and occasionally throwing futuristic phones at each other in their post-apocalyptic agrarian society.

Eine Kleine Paula Musik

On the Biography channel, there were two specials, first Simon's and then Paula's, and they were very interesting but mostly I don't want to talk about the results show, so I'll tell you a little bit about the Paula one first, because it's in some ways more interesting, because I was there, you know, in the history of it, and in some ways it's less interesting, because I already know a lot of this. Somebody, possibly Nigel Lythgoe, mentions right out the box that "She created a new movement in pop entertainment." Really? But an hour later, I can see what he means. Crazy. Across the bottom-third of the screen throughout this whole show they're advertising Intervention, which is funny in several ways. ["And let me just 'intervene' myself for a moment to tell you that 1) that show is like a drug its own self, and 2) if you think you've already experienced the most loathsome person on reality TV, think again, because: GABE. Get a Season Pass and let the healing begin." -- Sars, and Wing totally agrees with me]

One thing I didn't really know before this was that Arsenio Hall is super-awesome and I think he's great. He's a nice guy. The other thing is that Paula is quite taken with her image of herself as a secretive martyr, and will tell you about it multiple times, how she never tells anybody when things get bad. It might be true, in fact I think it's quite likely, but hearing over and over about how these horrible things were happening and she wasn't telling anybody, or that her story is "that of tremendous triumph, with all the odds against" her, is annoying the first time and then exponentially more annoying each successive time. "Broken legs and broken bones and unbelievable things happening and no one would have known because my level of professionalism was really really [nonverbal]."

There was an accident with a drunk driver in 1988, which caused a neck injury, and then in 1991 she danced and performed on a broken leg. Which, okay, Paula? That's not "professional," that's stupid. That's a lot like trying to prove that you're really effing "professional" and "keeping it secret" but not keeping the fact that you're keeping it secret, secret. Lame. Then on her tour her private plane exploded, one wing and one engine burst into flame, and Paula describes this as "the loudest noise, the biggest flash of light," and she hit her head, and then the thing she knew, everyone was holding hands saying goodbye to each other as they crash-landed in a cornfield in Iowa. Sometime later, she started having "seizures and weird things," and "from that point on, it was downhill." And then there was one day she collapsed, and learned that she had "reflex sympathetic dystrophy," or as Anna calls it, "made-up disease." There were 11 surgeries, bad depression, loss of friends, I swear she says "I lost my tour de force," which makes so much nonsense that I think I misheard it, and she could no longer dance or record or sing, or in fact speak, for a while, because of scar tissue. She was "virtually crippled by disabling pain" and kept lying and saying the surgeries were working when they weren't. Why?

Anyway, she isn't on drugs, but a lot of other stuff happened in her life. She was born. She decided to be a famous performer at four years of age, after watching Singing In The Rain. She became obsessed with the ballet school of her carpool buddies in second grade, and ended up doing work around the studio to earn classes. She was a natural but felt that her body wasn't right for dance, so she didn't believe in herself. She was in a terrible musical movie called Junior High School. ["'Terrible' kind of doesn't even begin. I've seen it in its entirety (…don't ask) and it's brutal." -- Sars] She was a cheerleader. She had horrible perms. She was never given a chance to dance or sing or act because she was not willowy. She turned the Laker Girls from a cheerleader group into a dance troupe and now that there was a reason to watch the Laker Girls perform, Arsenio Hall lost 300 pounds from not going to get a hot dog or whatever during their routine.

Through the celebrity of basketball world she was hooked up with that Jacksons, specifically and most famously Janet Jackson, and so on. This was the most awesome part because you could see all the pieces falling into place and her life just getting more and more intense and good by the day. By 1986 she had won an MTV award for her choreography, and Donna Summer had a dancer who was also a Laker Girl, so now she was connected to basically everyone in the business, and her career went nuts. To explain how nuts it all went, you see, she choreographed for ZZ Top. Side note: ZZ Top is Bo to the third power, up to and including taking such goofy pride in their inability to dance.

She says a cool thing about how scary it is, as a singer, to know within your own heart that you are a fraud. "I never knew that everyone else does the same thing. You end up becoming who you are by actually jumping into that circle of fear, doing it, and that's how you end up believing in yourself." Good, Paula. Good deal. Please don't anyone tell her that actual singers don't really feel like that. It's a good lesson for her to have learned.

Then "Forever Your Girl" had the most #1 singles of any debut album ever, and if you think about those videos, that's awesome. She won a million awards, was terrified, and had a Milli Vanilli moment where accusations were made by her backup singer. Then apparently some stupid people thought that "Rush Rush," the most perfect single in the history of pop radio this side of like "Eternal Flame," was -- get this -- a betrayal of her artistic sensibilities: "Paula's not Paula," they said. When the whole alleged backup-thieving was dismissed as lies, she says, her vindication was "buried on page fifteen." I imagine that's rough. On the other hand, "Rush Rush" was at #1 for five weeks. I call those the best five weeks of my young life.

Then she accidentally married Emilio, divorced him after a couple years, and went into rehab for her eating disorder, but she had to check herself out when the paparazzi got all in her grill and scared the other "girls." She keeps talking about the other "girls." So she, very cannily, waited long enough for the news cycle to complete, six days, then went right back to Oklahoma to resume treatment. Then she wrote "Spinning Around" for Kylie Minogue, a huge British hit which was #1 for a billion years, and as a result, when Pop Idol started, a lot of kids were auditioning with it, so whether the Simons and Nigel troika already hated it or not, this caused them to kind of hate it a bunch, and then when AI was underway, one of those funny fate things happened where the Brits couldn't understand why everybody kept singing that Michelle Branch and Santana song (God! Me neither! All those Santana collaborations! I hate them!) but that Nigel kind of liked this one Kylie Minogue song, "Spinning Around," and Paula started singing it, and they were like, "That was never released in America, how do you know it?" and Paula laughed, because she wrote it, and that is I think when they started respecting her. To the degree that they respect her period, I guess. It's still an awesome story.

Simon, Joy Of Nobody's Desiring

Dynamo. Heartthrob. Trendsetter. Comedian. Icon. Rocker. Tyrant. Dreamer. Legend. Simon Cowell.

Heartthrob?

Randy gives succinct and hilarious approval to the Cowell Treatment: "If you look like hell, you look like hell."

Over one thousand pictures of one of the most beautiful children I've ever seen, Simon's mum tells us about how he was insanely difficult and obnoxious, from birth. I'll give you a second to contain your shock. Later, he decided he needed to make money and started obsessing on that. Then he went to boarding school and hated it. He wrote a letter that said, "Dear Mum and Dad, I hope you're very happy in your central heated house. I'm living in an awful room which is cold." Et cetera et cetera. The year I went to summer camp, I sent one letter total home that entire summer: "When the ancient Greeks wanted to rid themselves of a child, they would leave it exposed on a mountaintop to die."

You know how you feel like you know the whole story with Simon Cowell and it involves records and producering and maybe a label or something, but if you try to look close, it just evaporates? Yeah. That's not because it's so very complicated? It's because it's too fucking boring to retain. Suffice it to say that he was a young upstart marketing genius with an eye for opportunity, and an ability to network like a machine. He created Westlife as a male (basically) counterpoint to the Spice Girls, in order to fuck with the Spice Girls for not signing with his label, and they were inordinately successful, with like twelve #1 UK singles. The third best part is when he describes how "four of them were too ugly" and he demanded that they be replaced, and this led to their superstardom. The second best part is how that proved to everyone that he was the Antichrist. And the total best part is how hilarious he still finds that. Then, in a nutshell: Pop Idol, American Idol, household name, nobody knows the truth, which is that he's totally cool. But I do.

Wednesday

Anyway, that was fun -- mostly because it wasn't this show. Because I'm burning out so fast, Ruben/Clay style, because it's so close to the end of the season. If it were a drama, I'd have a whole host of things to bitch about, but it's not, it's a competition, which means that every week is just as important as last week, so there aren't even any Carter-in-Africa episodes where I can point to it and say, my God am I tired of this. Just the ongoing, with some weekly scandals by the pound.

"Songs Of The New Millennium" is the improved name for the theme of this week. If you'll remember, Constantine sucked, but I realized I kind of like him. In that way where he'd be funny and could sit with us at lunch, but he wouldn't be allowed to hang out with us after school. I always go to the high school place with him, because that's where he lives. Bo was Bo, but I didn't like him, and everybody loved the song. Including me, even though it wasn't half of what he's capable of. Carrie and her hips were all happening and she was great, and that's weird. Vonzell was ridiculously cute after a shaky start -- remember? It was like a day ago, but I went off on some judges in between, so it feels longer. The other diva was…Anthony, which is funny. Ryan is funny. Thank you for that. Scott was better than he has been, but the higher notes were assy.

Pamela Anderson, whom I love, is in the studio tonight. She and Ryan engage in some painfully scripted chit-chat about how her household is split "between the blonde and the rock stars," her new show (on FOX, of all the crazy coincidences!), and how Pamela Anderson still has breasts.

The group sing, Ryan explains, "barely" fits the theme, but it's okay because Destiny's Child performed it in the last five years. Carrie starts it, and then Bo has to throw off the beautiful falsetto harmony because his line necessitates him dropping to his actual range first, and he sounds great. Vonzell: again with the pants in the boots already. Constantine singing from deep in his crotch; A-Fed singing his little heart out; Scott doing bad note after bad note, then some falsetto bad notes, and then some bad notes; Constantine nailing his pitch and having very healthy, pretty hair and too much complicated modulation and actual singing of notes to do for him to do the one hundred things I hate. Vonzell fucks up her solo so bad, but the crowd goes wild anyway, and she gets it together with a quickness.

The pimpomercial is unusually freaky, even in the context of the pimpomercial, and this week is to the bad singing of the song "Twentieth Century Boy," which is funny, if you think about it, because it also does not fit the theme. There's a radio-controlled car going through this house, and Bo finds a note taped to it, and follows the car, and then somehow A-Fed is part of the refrigerator, like all painted white with post-its stuck to him, creepy, and then in the living room he is part of the wall, scary, and then he is a lamp, improbable, and the Idols are all getting together to chase and follow this little car and nobody knows that it's A-Fed that's behind this particular shenanigan. The freakiest one is when he's part of the wall, because over his face? Is a picture of his face. That's not right. At the end, he's a shrub and Constantine sprays him with water but he continues to operate the radio-controlled car, with a strange grin on his face. Clay's still here, in the studio again tonight, and he makes this face like, "Man, I never did that on this show." How did they talk A-Fed into this? Actually, I bet it was easy. "Anthony, you're the star of the pimpomercial." What do I have to do? "You are kind of a ninja, and you fade into your surroundings, and you play with a remote-controlled car." This is what I was hoping you would say.

Tonight's loser received 35 million votes over the course of the show to date. That's a large number, folks. I don't even know how big that number is, that's how big that number is. Ryan's going to divide them into two groups again, and I for one hope that Bo is given the opportunity to prove his mettle once again. Since I fucking loved it so much the first time. Vonzell gave Randy pride, turned us on with her intangible magic, but kind of screwed the pooch toward the beginning. She's actually a Goat this week, and the crowd screams. Carrie was off, the judges "didn't feel it," but Simon knew the fans would love it. She's a Sheep. So are they. She smiles, even though this is dumb, and then Bo is a "true rock star," "incredible," and wore stupid glasses, and he's a Sheep, and the crowd freaks out like any of this is real. Carrie and Bo hug each other, because I've noticed she does not mind touching him, any old time or place. First of all, neither would I, and second of all, I imagine he's totally comforting. Like your grandpa. A-Fed -- honestly, I think he did the best job last night, which isn't really the praise for him like it sounds, it was just a really off night -- impressed the judges, but he's a Goat, and Simon grins because all of this is boringly obvious to him.

On the couch are Scott and Constantine. Gross couch. Ryan asks them to stand where they think they belong tonight, and in such a way that there's no arguing with it this time. Constantine shakes his head like he won't make a choice, Scott doesn't even get that far into the lies here, they both go Sheepside of course, and Anthony and Vonzell, awesomely, start laughing their asses off. So anyway, one of the two guys is wrong. Is it Scott or Constantine that belongs in the bottom three? Everyone on earth is like, "Scott." But in fact, it's Constantine that has made a mistake, and so now he's a Goat in sheep's clothing in wolf's clothing in Sheep's clothing. Carrie looks ill, Bo looks confused and a little bored, and Scott is very busy with Fake Jesus.

The judges consider the resulting bottom three: Constantine, A-Fed, and Vonzell. Randy explains that while he is "really shocked," he also finds that "nothing surprises" him. I hate that feeling of unsurprised shock, don't you? So intense. Simon says that if it were his decision, Scott would be going home, but if he's earning the 6-8 million votes a week, he must deserve to be here. Vonzell is safe, and Scott seems genuinely happy for once. Okay, I'm going to say this again. The people that are voting for Scott have nothing to do with the internet. "Vote For The Worst" is not the explanation. It's mathematically irrelevant, demonstrably so, and to even worry about it overmuch is to give way too much credence to the fact that even now, in 2005, internet-world and non-internet-world don't really recognize the existence of each other. We're just not there yet.

A-Fed has the glasses back on, and Ryan reminds us that we! Must! Vote! And then Constantine is out, just like that. And I'm surprised for like the fifth time tonight. How crazy. Paula looks very nuts, the couch kids freak out, his crazy family freaks out, A-Fed looks unsteady and nauseated walking back to the couches, and Carrie hugs him, worthlessly smiling at the freak-out going on in the outside world. Ryan asks whether he's surprised. I sure as hell am. Paula is out of her tree and can't even form a sentence about all of this. It's pretty affecting and real sad to watch her grasp for words and finally just admit that she's in shock and can't formulate anything to say about it. Even though he's gross, it's kind of touching. She has aged about ten years in the last two minutes.

Video Journey: They welcome him to Hollywood, he pouts his way off a bus, he's gross the whole time. In the corner of the screen, he is worried about his sing-out because the song and the lyrics start on the same downbeat. He is doing warm-ups and I can't pay attention except to note that he gives himself a "rock on" fist at one point, and laughs in that real, actual, accidental way he sometimes does, and I can't disagree with either of these things. Ryan reminds us of that lie told long ago about how he once "barged in" on the fake band rehearsal and took Constantine away from them. Carrie tries not to cry as Constantine shouts out to everybody involved in the show, awesomely. Paula looks like a fucked-up mess and one by one all the Idols try desperately to look cute instead of what they are, which is freaked out and shocked by this turn of events. Ryan tries to say his farewells as an intro into the song, but he's counting the beats wrong, so Constantine has no choice but to start singing while Ryan's still talking, and then Ryan doesn't know what to do, so he stands there for a second and then claps him awkwardly on the shoulder and runs away.

Carrie sings along with him, because she's heard it a million times this week, which, the singing along always gets to me, I think because it's the intention of support, the desire to support, but with no actual way to do so, so it's totally focused within you. Like when you're watching baseball or that movie with Helen Hunt where Jack Nicholson is mean to everybody, and you realize your every muscle has been sympathetically clenched for an hour and you're getting sore. Like that. The singing along is trying to help somebody do something that you can't help them with. I like the idea. He sings the line, "I said I love you, and I swear I still do," and at this he points to his mom and Paula, and…okay.

Miss Alli will kill me for this, but see, I've been thinking about ways I can be more like Bo, because Bo's so fucking awesome. And I've noticed that one thing people like about Bo, among all the many wonderful fucking things about Bo, is that he's very honest about himself. What you see is what you get, nothing hidden, just an all-around straight shooter. So fine. I know what's coming, here, and that's Paula and Mama Maroulis getting very, very close, and very sad, with tears everywhere and getting all abject forehead with each other, and ask anybody, that's the thing I cannot handle. If your forehead touches somebody else's forehead, that's for real and that is for forever, because it's not lips and it's not tongue, it's just close. And what it says is, here we are together. And he swears he still loves them, and…now here I am crying a little bit. I am outraged at this turn of events. Because of Nickelback? Nickelback! Constantine singing Nickelback is apparently just too much for my little heart. Anna's pregnant. Can you have sympathy mood swings?

This is how you remind me: your stupid faces and your crotch up in my life and singing bad songs badly and good songs goodly and continually throwing me off and making me surprised and uncomfortable. Making grown women act the fool in a way I haven't seen in at least two years. Being that guy at every fucking opportunity. Being just obvious and gross enough that even the most sexually passive young lady on the internet understood that your charms, such as they are, were pointed right at her like a machine gun of desperation, a Mutually Assured Destruction of gaywad proportions. I took your Elimidate apart frame by frame to point out what a tool you were, I took every opportunity to call you a dick, because I had the motive and the opportunity and the means and the hate. I knew you in your Broadway days, I knew you in your sad not-getting-the-message post-grad days, I knew you when you had your sad, sad little band which is now at #2 on the Amazon charts.

But what I also remember is one day when you didn't suck, not really, not any more than you could help being who you were, and then there was another day, a week later, when you didn't suck again. And I started to question myself, what was I all about, hating and Psych-101ing you on like this basic level, and I started getting offended that you were trying for this "rocker" vibe when you were a DQ, everybody knew you were a DQ, your family, you yourself, everybody knew, and you gave in to it on the show finally, and you were kind of great, in some ways. And I could not fault you, and I could not hate you, and I tried to be clear about it without doing such an abrupt about-face that people would get worried that I'd been replaced by a look-alike. But you knew, and your fans knew, that you had me. Not all of me, but a part of me. The hating part and maybe the pity part, but also a small admission of defeat.

This is how you remind me: by singing some bullshit throwback song from the beginning of the competition, back when you didn't have choices, and it was only your constant cock in my paid-to-be-here face that kept you onstage. Back when I hated you. Back when I didn't feel weird about thinking you were, well, kind of awesome, because you'd become pretty awesome, and just thought you were a little boy who needed desperately to be on TV, with the confusing self-assurance of someone totally hot, because you remembered a time long ago when you were actually totally hot, which time I learned about this week. And I bitched at the time, because you clearly wanted me to think you were that guy, for some reason, just a jump to the left and a step to the right, that guy whose pretense at adult sexuality was almost exactly like being viable. The guy I hated. And even though your fan base seemed cool with it back then, I think we could all feel it slipping away, because how long is that stuff sustainable? Either you're cool the way you are, or you aren't, but switching bases twice during the game doesn't make you flexible, it makes you inconsistent, and that's the killer. Pick a persona and stick with it. Preferably a new, different, better one.

And now -- I swear just to fuck with me -- you're accepting your dismissal with the grace of a real man, with the beauty of a Bo, or a Judd, and Paula's kissing your mom, and there are foreheads, and you're getting the shit done, and as per usual, singing the song in your sing-out twice as well as you did last night, and like…I get slammed for borrowing from the recaplets, but damn. It isn't that you're gone, because I'm glad you're gone; it's the event of your leaving, which is far from a personal party pizza for me. Because now of all the reasons I hate you, and there are one hundred and one and they are all valid, but of all of them, the number one reason is that you made me cry. And this for a contestant who I would have taken a cashier's check in the amount of 20 dollars to rub out. $20 Canadian. Okay? For shame.

So to review: somebody who doesn't matter, on a show that doesn't matter, whose whole point (along with half of the other contestants') is to actively point out how irrelevant the show is, somebody I hate more than fifteen given senators in a mushy Republican ball of people, on paper, made me cry a little, and I kind of hate you for that. Because I'll be damned if you didn't want it, bad, and I'll be damned if there's not a secret part of me I didn't know about -- and I'd cut it out all Passions-style with the aid of a random orangutan and/or spare X-acto knife if I could -- that wants you to be happy for the rest of your life. And I swear I still do.