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Ah New York… or rather, East Rutherford, New Jersey. Since American Idol lies to us about everything else, why not pretend we’re in New York when we’re really miles away. It’s like pretending we’re watching a singing competition when we’re actually watching American Idol. East Rutherford is the city of tears, as we’ll find out soon enough. Everyone cries here. It’s like a whole city of Picklers. Our guest ghost of the week is Carol Bayer Sager, some songwriter. Since she does absolutely nothing interesting for the entire episode, I won’t mention her again.

 

Let me start this column by saying “Praise all things Idol for making me only sit through this for one hour!” I can’t take these awful two hour crapfests anymore. We got to see some people make it through to Hollywood who just sucked ass. Like big time. The only possible rationale I can come up with: VFTW is sweeping the nation, Paula’s sauced up, or the talent is running low. Since Paula seemed less fucked up than usual, I’m gonna go with numbers 1 and 3.

 

We start off the episode with what was promoted all over ads today as “the most outrageous audition EVER.” A guy comes in, sings over the top, then goes outside so his marching band can play for him. That’s outrageous? At least Ryan got to call Simon a bitch, a little role reversal from their usual bedroom positions. But yeah, Frank Byers wasn’t bad, wasn’t good, and certainly wasn’t outrageous.

After hearing that Seattle was one of the worst audition cities ever, tonight’s show had a lot to live up to. Oddly enough, even though a lot of mediocre or bad people are going to Hollywood, the show produced more actual good singing talent tonight than an average episode. We still got to see very little of Paula, and when we do, she barely speaks English. You know what? I’m almost getting sick of making jokes about her being drunk. It’s just not right. Who am I to say? I mean, I shouldn’t just be lobbing insults like that. So from now on… I think I’m going to focus on her addiction to pain killers. There we go. I’m gonna go with a Vicodin overdose as Paula's drug of choice. Not because I know, but because it gives me a lot of material to work with. Wikipedia cites some of the side effects of being a pill popper like Paula:

Idol’s back, bitches. And gone is my inability to fall asleep at night! Coincidence? Ambien? Warm milk and honey? Either way, I know you’re all at this site because you want me to rip into the farce that is American Idol, so I shan’t disappoint. I missed you all.

 

The Minneapolis auditions were just horrific. There were only 2 people who made it through that couldn’t qualify as future VFTW contenders… so far. It seems that the producers will run this show into the ground and kill every ounce of talent until it’s The William Hung show. Not that I’m complaining. But seriously, do you have friends who watch this show for the talent? And do they have IQ’s above 100? We have guest judge Jewel who, according to Ryan, is “one of the most popular artists of the decade.” Ryan also announced in his pre-show monologue that “Katharine McPhee is America’s sweetheart” after launching into the other Idol’s successes. I guess the producers aren’t hiding the fact that they lie through their teeth anymore. Next week, Paula will be deemed the "world's most sober celebrity."

In the knock down, drag out finale of American Idol 5, the final 2 competitors knew that the VFTW votes would make or break them. Forget that guy with the messed up teeth or that Penis With Ears. Their fans have stopped watching the show. Even the casual viewers have stopped watching. The ratings have dipped down to about 100,000 people a week. VFTW is the only small thread of survival to latch onto. We… are their last hope. The only way to win at this point is to go all out and suck hardcore.

Of course, that may be somewhat fabricated. But Taylor and Katharine treated some of their performances as if VFTW was the way to win the show. The judges again treated the show as if they were at a strip club and they’d had one too many (OK, in Paula’s case, five too many). Randy dawged it up, Paula’s incoherent rambling was out in full force, and Simon’s sense of self-importance was through the roof.

Sweet heavens, Paula’s back on the sauce. Now that’s the stuff VFTW dreams are made of. Miss Rehabdul was back to her drunk ass self this week, and I couldn’t be happier. While the show dragged a little with boring performances, Paula’s antics kept me pointing and laughing. As a special tribute to my Forever Just Swirled judge, I’ll pull out the Boozehound Awards (also known as the Boozies) after every contestant performs. Get ready, Paula. I feel a whole slew of Boozies coming on!

A few weeks ago, I talked about how Paris Bennett was cursed to leave us in the final five because she sang in the dreaded second spot. The same goes for Elliott Yamin this week. Every single person in Idol history who has ever left in the final three has performed first. This includes VFTW inspiration Nikki McKibbin, Kim Locke, VFTW alum Jasmalien Trias, and white-bread Vonzell Solomon. Because of this, there’s no use in voting for Elliott. He’s gone. The curse always holds. I’ll pretend, though, that he stands a fighting chance for the sake of this recap. For his first song of the night, he sang “Open Arms.” This was just an elaborate set-up for Randy to remind us for the ten millionth time that he was in Journey. Elliott also screwed up the lyrics in the chorus, but the judges were all too busy keeping Paula in her seat to comment about that. Elliott’s second song was “What You Won’t Do For Love,” and again, it was not great and it put me to sleep. VFTW message board poste r Mikalah Rocks hit the nail on the head, saying, “Elliott’s performances are like extra commercial breaks.” Finally, Elliott rounded out the evening with “I Believe To My Soul.” These are the kind of songs I like hearing Elliott sing, and I actually really enjoyed it. His first two performances were too boring for comment, but number three was enjoyable. Of course, it was nowhere near VFTW standards.

Priscilla Presley summed it up best when she said, “Man, I look like I’ve had a lot of plastic surgery.” OK, so she didn’t say that. And she didn’t sum anything up. But hey, she’s had a lot of plastic surgery! Tonight, the contestants sang 2 Elvis songs: one fun song and one ballad. In most cases, this meant the contestants sang one crapfest and one borefest. Despite what Randy thinks, this was definitely a night of VFTW delight.

VFTW champion Taylor Hicks took the stage first with “Jailhouse Rock”. His outfit certainly was the worst; that maroon pin-striped get up was funky fresh. He also didn’t turn the Taylorometer to “fun” like last week; it was kind of stuck between fun and decent. But he looked like he had a great time and it was pretty funny watching him twist around on stage as if to say “Suck on this, Cowell!” Simon hated it, of course, but what else is new? Taylor’s second performance of “In the Ghetto” was a sleeper… no, I don’t mean that it was a surprise hit. I mean I fell asleep during it. I have no idea why the judges creamed their pants so much over it, but Simon told Taylor that he earned a spot in the semifinals after that one. Um, Simon… the semifinals happened months ago. Even Stevie Scott had a place in the semifinals, that’s how easy it was to get there. You might as well have told Taylor that he’s “going to HOLLYWOOD!” again. What a moron. I love Taylor's strategy of doing one V FTW performance and one Soul Patrol performance per night for the last 2 weeks. That way, he appeases his two main fan groups. What a smart guy!

The top 5 Idols proved to be a wildly inconsistent bunch. Par for the course, they almost all selected songs from the year they were born that didn’t suit their voices at all. Their “hits of today” were also barely hits, with Taylor going out of his way to select a 30+ year old song. Paula was unfortunately too docile for my tastes this week, because no one moved her to tears. But Simon did play his famous “gotcha” game on her again. I love when he does that. Here’s how it goes: Paula insults a contestant because their performance was bad. Simon then compliments them just so he can say he disagrees with Paula. Paula gets mad and embarrassed. Gotcha! This week, the stage was set by Paris. Paula knew that there was no way that Simon could compliment her after her bad performance. Wrong, Paula. Gotcha! Now if only Simon liked women, you two could just do the nasty and get it over with.

The Idols were back in fine form this week, making sure that VFTW didn’t have to spend much time being bored. Elliott Yamin performed a show stopping number this week that was pretty phenomenal, but the other 5 really went out of their way to suck it up. It seems that the only genre of music these people can sing is standards. This, of course, is perfect, because the winner will be sent in a time machine back to 1940, where they will release their record! It seriously is a sad state of affairs when the contestants can't sing love songs. Love songs? That's probably 90% of the songs ever written. Next week, all of the contestants will screw up "songs written by people," and the following week they will ruin "songs that have been sung by someone else." We've got some creative people on the Idol theme week production team, let me tell you. Here is a recap of another awful night from the least talented singers in America:

The Idols rehearsed with Rod Stewart for “standards” night, which meant “standards from Rod Stewart’s albums that we could clear in time for the show and that the music libraries didn’t think you’d screw up too much” night. To give these kids their due, most of them sounded pretty good this week. It sure was a snoozefest of a week for VFTW, but our own little angel shined like no other. She was a steaming pile of dog crap in an otherwise pristine park. And that dog crap was Kellie Pickler.

Kellie decided to tackle “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered.” First off, can Kellie seriously pronounce and define all 3 of those words? Secondly, that mean old Rod Stewart played a trick on our mink, confusing her into thinking that “lyrics” and “words” were not the same thing. Seriously, who’s writing this crap? There must be a writer behind this. The girl gets dumber and dumber each week. But all of the pre-song setup was nothing compared to Kellie’s raping rendition of the song. She started off okay, but soon started hitting bum note after bum note. Soon, she lost the tempo and started coming in too early. And by the end, the damage had been done.