PREVIOUSLY ON HALEY & THE OTHER PEOPLE
Lopez, verbatim: "That was some American Idol stuff right there!"
Tyler, verbatim: "I swear to God I saw you dance with the Devil tonight."
Scott's fans: "Oh my God, he did? Well, hang up that phone. We are not voting for witches. Sarah Palin, I'll expect a tweet on this by week."
Scott, verbatim: "Um, no. I love Jesus?"
Tyler: "Like anything I say means anything whatsoever."
Jackson: "The award tonight for Best Performance Of The Night goes to... EVERYBODY! Whoever is in front of me, they are the American Idol."
I'M SO SURE STEVEN TYLER WROTE A BOOK
Ryan's hair is, once again, fiercely Conan'd. It's such a great thing when he does that. I like when it looks rock-hard, like you could cut crudité on it.
Seacrest: "Steven, you wrote a book?"
Tyler: "Well, somebody did."
Seacrest, setting up the obvious joke: "You've really exposed yourself here."
Randy, awesomely, off-camera: "GROSS!"
Seacrest, going for try number two: "Is there any area you haven't touched?"
Tyler: "[Could legitimately be described as nonsense. Even Ryan looks concerned for a moment, like Steven might be smelling toast. Then Tyler goes into a random British accent.]"
The title of the book is something like, Does The Noise In My Head Bother You? Which is so perfect! Folksy, not actually funny or witty, and centered firmly two inches north of his rectum: Everything we know about Steven Tyler. His problem isn't solipsism, it's like, more serious than that. It's philosophical, not mental. (That too, but this is cosmological.)
It's like that thing, you know, when little kids wonder if possibly this is all an elaborate Jim Carrey joke and we're robots and they're the only ones that are real, and you realize that is a natural thing to wonder about but that also you have less than one split second to intervene before they flip the switch and become a sociopath forever?* Like that, but if you did it wrong -- not all the way one way or the other, but stuck somewhere in the gushy mushy middle -- you'd have Steven Tyler, who honestly thinks we're all just subletting our space in reality until he needs it.
Seacrest: "Congratulations! Later, J. Lo will sing a song, so that's fun, too. And she has a video for another song, so we'll watch that."
(Ryan also excitedly throws Randy a bone by hyping his Bake Sale on the side of the road.)
*(I am not a trained medical professional, but this is always how I feel when kids start that Platocrates Brain Aerobics stuff. "What if I am a brain in a jar?" "What if my green is your red?" "What if everything is like Dark City and things are changed while we sleep or don't even know that we're asleep?" "What is The Secret?" I don't really know how to respond to that stuff, because it's your trip and you should go ahead and do it, drugs will come eventually and you can try those out, but also, I don't really truck with that business, and I know it would be soul-crushing if I said what I honestly think, which is, "Shut up about karma and just be a good person, it's not that fucking complicated.")
Lusk, Durbin and Scotty sing horribly, and then Haley sings and that part was good, and then Lauren sings, and then there's bad harmony, and then James Durbin's just kind of gay right now, today. It's going of be one of those Gay Days. I don't know how else to describe it, but you know how Jacob Lusk is? It's kind of like that, but nice to look at. They're all singing in this weird breathy, husky way that most of them have never used before just now. Even Lusk is singing in the low Durbin voice.
Anyway, they sing the entirety of "Happy Together," and a more boring song you can't imagine... Until, that is, they start going "ba-ba-ba-ba" and you realize the song has become too boring to even have words.
I always remember this song in connection with Ernest Goes To Camp. A turtle attaches itself to Ernest's nose, and they calm it by singing "Happy Together," obviously because the song is by The Turtles. I think that might be the first joke I ever understood on my own. It might be the only joke to this day that I've completely grasped.
JACOB LUSK, YOU HAVE REDEFINED WHAT IT MEANS TO BE "SO RAVEN"
Ford Motor Co. involves Jacob shimmying around even more than usual. This show is now just like 79% Jacob Lusk doing gay dances he should have left at home.
"Do you like watching obese drag queens in their civvies waddling around awkwardly? Then you might also enjoy test-driving a Ford Focus."
That hot British guy with the face like a macaron that always yells about donkeys and dogs' breakfasts. Everybody makes omelets, just to waste your time and mine. Jacob Lusk has become his own kind of hate crime. Scotty is having a little bit of a Gay Day too, so there you go: It happens. Lauren and Jacob win their omelet thing, but then we just stop that story in the middle so we can go listen to Lady Antebellum.
We don't really need to talk about their bandname again, but we can talk about how annoying the lead singer is all day long if you want. The song is very pretty, their music is good -- for a bunch of proud white supremacists* -- and they are very dorky as usual. Watching Mr. Antebellum do the whiteboy overbite and jam out to his own song makes me want to freak out every time I see it, and that girl... That girl is hard. She looks like every friend of Mindy Collette Riggins at once. That girl has seen some things.
*Lady Antebellum are not actually white supremacists. They're just dumb, and kind of dorky. I keep trying to think of something similarly clueless and offensive that I could compare "Lady Antebellum" to, but it's all too real and I'm not even allowed to think of most of them, much less say them. Point being, you would never name a band any of them, because that would make you an idiot. "Confederate Yearning," that's a good one: "I'm starting a band called Confederate Yearning, but not, like, in a racist way."
"The Lynch Mob" was taken by one of our African-American contestants from years past, but still super classy. "Our Lost Southern Heritage" is a bit wordy. "Kenyan Ignominy."
"Katrina & The Waves" is no longer a valid band name, so you wouldn't name your band that anymore in 2011. But by all means you go ahead, Lady Antebellum.
STOP TRYING TO MAKE BING HAPPEN/OH NO THERE'S BEEN A SMUGGING
The glibness with which this episode is wasting our time is truly egregious. Just aggressive.
Q: How do you pick your songs each week?
Scott, Durbin, Jacob: "I just sing the same song every week, so it's easy for me."
Haley: "I clearly have no algorithm, no decision procedure."
Lauren: "Please don't pressure me with questions like that. You know that I can't read."
Q: How do you pick your clothes?
Lauren: (Stares into the camera in a harrowingly bovine fashion, huck-hucking her idiot's laughter.)
CRYING > SINGING
Iovine: "Remember when James Durbin cried instead of singing well? That's the kind of ballsy, clutch-play decisionmaking that can make you a star here, on America's Top Crybaby."
I cannot wait until week, when Lauren pulls out a steak knife in the middle of "Don't Cry Out Loud."
James goes to Group A, stage right, and Ry-Ry-Baby Productions calls up Lauren. Her hair looks pretty amazing right now.
Iovine: "What's great about Lauren is that you have to vote for her, or her crappiness might keep people from voting for her. I hope she's in the B2 tonight."
Crowd: "Booooo! We hate when people are rewarded for excellence! We have a low opinion of ourselves!"
She starts Group B, stage left, and assumes this means that she's going to be in the Bottom Two. But yeah, like Ryan would ever level with us like that.
Seacrest, verbatim: "What does it all mean?"
BUT FIRST, JENNIFER LOPEZ TRIES HER HAND AT MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
JUST KIDDING, FIRST THE STUNNING CONCLUSION OF THE OMELET STORY
Ugh, this is so dumb. He puts them through a Pickler thing where they have to taste food and say what kind of food it is, and Jacob makes everybody nervous as usual, and then they are both grossed out by tofu, because this show is stupid. Lauren fucks up here by recognizing the food as tofu, demonstrating what a fake she is. Demonstrating that she's actually a vegetarian mother of three, Lauren wins and becomes America's Top Hell Chef or something. I don't know, this week is such a fucking wash.
BUT NOW, JENNIFER LOPEZ TRIES HER HAND AT MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
Randy: "I can barely read, but apparently we saw the video for this song earlier."
Tyler: "I so very much hate that this is J. Lo's moment. I'm going to throw popcorn at the camera until I get some attention."
Audience: Pity laugh.
Then they play that video on the stage, and there's some gay dudes in glass cages, and J. Lo not even singing this stupid boring song. I love J. Lo, but her music is the least interesting thing about her. When was the last time you heard a J. Lo song and thought, "What a pretty voice"?
She gets to the part of the song where she names cities. Then it goes to the part that sounds like doing coke in a gay bar in 1996. Then she does a lazy dance. Then she tells everybody to jump. The costumes are all: Pants where the rise is at the knees, so it looks like everybody's wearing skirts formed of shimmying upward out of their sweatshirts. Everybody lays down for a little nap. There is writhing. Then humping the ground, and then a bald man who has been lurking abount finally comes to the stage while J. Lo says the names of more cities. For such a boring song there is such a great amount of it.
In the end, J. Lo is happy, and that makes me happy. Everybody, that is, except for Steven Tyler, who has pulled himself inside his jacket like Linda Evangelista having an adventure inside her sweater.
OR A TURTLE
Then there's another video of J. Lo, so Steven Tyler just pulls out a starter log and sets himself on fire and Seacrest is like, "Girl, you couldn't have done that during commercial?"
These are the words of the second song: "I feel lucky, like a four-leaf clover/ I'm into you/ Hey! I'm into you! (x1000)/ Yeah! Come on!/ Nananananananana. Hey! Nananananana!"
When you have a baby they write songs like this, all the time. Or else we have some amazing babies up in here. J. Lo should be made aware of these babies. Or be paying them royalties. That's it, I'm calling Baby ASCAP.
LUSK, SLOTH & PRIDE
Everybody: "Jacob, each week you get more and more desperate and bizarre, and your dances are getting more and more queasy and aggressive. Nobody knows what to do with you, so we just slug some Pepto and go on. But that's going to end eventually."
Lusk joins Lauren, and they start a club for jerxxxx.
Ryan: "Haley, you really turned it around. That awful Lady Gaga song was totally Jimmy ruining your career for you. Then you chose a better song for yourself, and rocked."
Iovine: "She really withstood my bullshit move. What a pro."
Ryan: "Scotty, you are the embodiment of what this show is like now. Good luck."
Iovine: "I love how he did a song that literally every human being has covered at some point. But in his particularly grody way."
Ryan: "Scott, you've never been in the Bottom Two. Of course you are safe. Please, please give ma hug."
Scott: "You can have a shoulder. You can have my right shoulder. That's how men embrace."
Ryan: "Oh yeah? How about I Huff your ass right now? Smart mouth doin' good?"
Scott: "There's no Huffing anymore. Bo broke it. It's not possible to Huff people because everybody just sits down in the middle of the stage now. And you don't actually need to demonstrate my #1 USA authenticity, because of me only singing country songs all the time. Nobody needs to be convinced. They are all already fooled."
Ryan: Steers Scott over to Durbin and Haley without speaking, and since they're downstage they don't know that Scott never actually Huffed.
Haley, awesomely, to Scott: "Are you fucking kidding me? You actually played along?"
Scott, also awesomely: "No, it's okay. It was Ryan. I didn't have to."
Wonderwall: "Y'all are safe."
And I mean, of course they are. They all know what they are doing. They are put together and professional, and have the best technique (even though Scott is a liar and copycat, he's good at it; a phoney in the Golightly sense), and most of all: Their personalities aren't so ugly that you can see it on their outsides.
(Also, think about this: They're the smartest people left. Scott and James are at least as smart as Casey, and ever since Pia Toscano left, it's been Haley holding down the MENSA table for the ladies.)
Meanwhile, you got Lauren and Jacob Lusk, who are the same exact girl. Drama, giggles, outsized self-opinion. They're the only two of the Top 12 that would cry for themselves, so they start crying, of course. It's hilarious!
WHY DOES LOVE ALWAYS BE LIKE A BATTLEFIELD
God, I love Jordin Sparks. Just adore her. And you know how much I love Tedder, so them doing a song together is so great. But because they were both born yesterday, they didn't know that love had already been compared to a battlefield, famously -- or maybe they did but it slipped their minds -- which is how "Battlefield" edged out the Hilarious Idol Thing of all time, which is that song where Fantasia entreated us to create a national holiday, specifically for mothers. Just something to celebrate them, and all they do for us. I don't know what you'd call it...
I think about that every second Sunday in May: About Fantasia, and all the other mothers out there, not getting celebrated with their own special day, just for them.
Anyway. The person going home is... JACOB! Sweet. I am so glad. Watching him was starting to give me that thing you sometimes get at the IMAX.
BUT WILL JACOB SURVIVE
Seacrest: "What one memory will you take away from this show?"
Jacob, verbatim: "I got to share a lot with America, and I think America has fallen in love with me."
YEAH UH I THINK HE'LL BE FINE
He answers a bunch more questions Ryan didn't ask, and we go on a video journey. But you know what, I hate him, so we're going to assume that you've been watching the show this whole time and you pretty much know what he's about. He is about being deluded, mostly, but also devotes a lot of time to being into Jacob Lusk a whole lot. The rest of it is basically 24/7 putting a bathtowel on his head and pretending it's a lady's long, glamorous hair while he sings Supremes songs into the bathroom mirror, and that's Jacob Lusk.
But really Lusk, the deal is that you pussed out. This is the one time on earth that you could have sung "I'm Not Going" in front of literally billions of people and nobody would even have tried to stop you. This is the kind of bullshit that will keep you from ever being notable. That lack of gumption. I won't miss you, but I don't think I've ever had a more vigorous nemesissy.
week: Only four people! I think... Yeah, I think that's right. James and Scotty, and Haley and Lauren. And then it will be Scott and Lauren, and then it will be Scott, and my mind will break wide open like an ostrich egg and I will quit this job forever, and I shall go to the desert. With just like, an 8x10 glossy photograph of Brian Wilson and a modest-sized bottle of Stoli. Maybe get a backpack, like at REI or something. Those shoes with the toe-fingers, I bet those are for survival. Casey Abrams, maybe. Those backpacks can get pretty spacious. Or like some protein bars.
But that's it! I'll go the desert. And love only sand.
Check out what Jacob Lusk had to say about his elimination.
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