Don’t know what to say… was it better than last week? Hell yes. Was it a good week? I’d have to say no, because so many people were so out of their element and, if you just look at the remaining contestants, you know that Bucky and Ace are going to stink, Katherine will be kinda boring, Kellie is going to give you 6 out 10, Chris will sound like a constipated goat, and Elliott will be washed out sounding. So the night mostly hinges on what Taylor and Paris do. Unfortunately, I have come to the conclusion that this bunch of idols pretty much stink compared to years past. On with the show!

Bucky - It is baffling at this point of the competition that Bucky is still around. I mean, it’s baffling he got on the show to begin with, but to get this far is plain weird. Let’s see – no charisma, not very attractive, can’t sing well, no stage presence, can’t enunciate, and appears to not shower. How is Bucky different from me? Or a homeless guy? Okay, I thought of one thing – me and the homeless guy have better teeth. Okay, okay, I know – that was just wrong. The homeless guy and I have better teeth. There. Yet another unremarkable performance, the kind of thing you hear in the background at any karaoke bar. You know, he’s up there singing, and you would talk through the whole thing without paying attention to it, and then, when you hear the music stop, you pause briefly to politely clap. And then the frustrated wannabe singer of a DJ stops everything to sing his own selection and you realize that you probably won’t get to sing your song because there’s too little time left, and American Pie is freakin’ long. Dude, I didn’t come out to hear you sing. Man, I hate that DJ.

Ace – Ace did two things very wrong tonight. First off, leather pants are supposed to be tight. They’re supposed to be like a second skin. Who the hell wears baggy leather pants? All these leather folds hanging up and down his legs… I imagine that’s what Star Jones’ legs looked like after her gastric by-pass. Second problem – he turned We Will Rock You into a question. And the answer is, NO. You will NOT rock us. Because you cannot rock. You are the diametric opposition to rock. Because Ace sounds like he’s been spayed or neutered (yes, I know which is which, but I don’t know what procedure Ace required). I imagine this is what the Lollipop Guild sounds like singing Queen. Just flat out awful, approaching painful. Marry Me Ace Sign Count: again, just one. I think the same one. Man that woman is a die hard. She’s going to be buried with that sign. Quick Ace, autograph it before you end up on milk cartons! Just don’t go to her house – because man, when she smashes your ankles with that sledgehammer, it just hurts. Speaking of hurts, how did you like the smackdown Brian May gave to Ace not once, but twice when Ace tried to inject some “flava” into the song? Great stuff. Man, it was like a kick in the ‘nads. ‘Nads which Ace no longer possesses.

Kellie – I couldn’t figure out if that was her own hair or if she was purposefully wearing a fright wig and she came out dressed like Storm from the X-Men. And then the lighting kicked in and she ended up looking like a tweaked out, hollow eyed meth addict. Now, I must admit that this wasn’t quite the train wreck that I had envisioned when it was announced that she was going to sing Bohemian Rhapsody. But would I ever want to hear it again? Please. Another uninspired Pickler performance, featuring her three moves. The first one is a hair tousling head shake. Then there’s the cross-eyed stare into the camera. Then she gets on her knees. Are any of these signs of a meth addiction? She also did that flirt thing with Simon as she crossed the judges table again. Definitely on something. I can just imagine, back at the hotel, one of the bellhops asking if he could assist her with her bags, and she would reply, “I don’t have any bags.” And then the bellhops would snicker, because honey, they’re talking about your eyes. One word: Cucumber. Preparation H doesn’t work. It’s an urban legend. No Kellie, you’re supposed to slice the cucumber first. No Kellie, it’s for your eyes. Kellie, just put down the cucumber. *sigh*.

Chris – More and more, Chris sounds like Goat Boy from Saturday Night Live. I keep expecting his handlers to come out with electric cattle prods at the end of the song. He appears to be taking make-up tips from Dave Navarro (“And just when you think it’s too much eyeliner? Put on some more. Because there’s no such thing as wearing too much eyeliner”). Simon was right on about the terrible song choice – for all of the songs he could have done justice to, he chose this atonal, repetitive also-ran. And Paula’s commentary was an all time low – not only did she insinuate that Chris was able to work out something Freddie Mercury wasn’t able to (this in reference to a freakin’ rock legend versus the guy who had to steal an arrangement from Live), she was so incoherent that I thought I was reading the Benjy passages from The Sound and the Fury again. Did I really compare Paula Abdul with William Faulkner? And once again, Simon let loose with the double-barreled bitchiness. He’s still not over the Live incident.

Katherine –Wait now… when did this become Barbara Streisand night? So slow. So boring. So… off-key. I think Katherine was trying to fill Mandisa’s shoes by picking a song with big, sweeping notes, but man, those are big shoes to fill and she could not keep up. She ended up mostly flat when she went big, and some of the notes were just painful. Katherine also appeared to have gotten hair and make-up tips from Paula Abdul (“And this is how you glue the rhinestones to your eyelids. And this is how you get rid of the alcohol smell from your breath”). At one point, when Paula was letting loose with the jibber-jabber, it was like she was talking into a freakin’ mirror. This was one of those instances when the judges gushed over what was an overall dreadful performance.

Elliott – Solid but unspectacular. I’m telling you, Elliott may sing well, but I can barely hear him because either his voice is really washed out or his mic is too low. I really hoped that Paris would have sung Somebody to Love instead, but Elliott was pretty good, I guess. One day, he’s going to squeeze the mic so tight that it will shatter into pieces, but he will be saved from being blinded by one of the flying jagged plastic pieces because of his incessant squinting. At one point, it looked like he was trying to give an Indian rug burn on the mic. Like, what’s that mic ever done to you except to not be loud enough to make you heard? Okay, that’s a big thing, so I guess it’s justified. Take that, mic! Ooh, burns, doesn’t it?

Taylor – You know when Lucy pulls the ball away when Charlie Brown tries to kick it? Well, there was no Lucy, but Taylor whiffed trying to kick the mike stand over, and I just about fell out of my seat laughing. It seemed to have distracted him a bit afterwards, as the recap vocals at that part of the song were much stronger than what he was able to accomplish live. Towards the end of the song, he clicked in, delivering soulful goodness. But most of the song was just singing along to the melody, and Taylor is not in his element when he does that. I was very surprised that no one else snagged Crazy Little Thing Called Love, because it’s just about the easiest Queen song to sing, and Taylor even switched his song halfway through the week. I liked the energy (compared to last week’s wet dishrag of a performance) and I liked the end part, but one of these days he’s going to have to deliver the total package. Is it me or has he gotten less spazzy in his movements? I mean, not counting the mike stand incident. I mean, I wouldn’t say he could dance, but it’s definitely evolved from the spasmodic full body heave he started out with.

Paris – It appears that, months after the constabulary raided L’il Kim’s closet for evidence, Paris raided it for an outfit (which isn’t that hard to do since L’il Kim is not home any more). Then she added hair extensions (that ended up in her mouth AGAIN) and topped it off with 1980’s era Madonna fingerless lace gloves. You’d think that it would all add up to a disastrous outfit, but it was… MUCH, MUCH WORSE. It was like some Japanese schoolgirl’s idea of a punk outfit. Just horrendous. I agree that Simon was bitchy to Paris, but I have to agree that it was weird. On one hand, she sang well. At times, she was right on, and a couple of notes were just awesome. But, much like the outfit, the song was ill-suited. I do think that she did a much better job with this theme night than Kellie. And waaaay better than Katherine, since she tried to sing the actual song and not make a Streisand cover out of it. I think it really helped Paris that Brian and Roger gushed all over her. Well, more Brian than Roger. I don’t know if Roger can actually speak.

And on a final note, if you want to end the suspense and spoil the potential surprises of Results Night, head on over to www.dialidol.com. The folks at DialIdol have created an automatic dialing program that let’s you vote inhumanly fast, but it also tracks busy signals, and those busy signals are used to predict actual voting. In the beginning, the predictions were shaky and ultimately unreliable, but they changed the methodology two weeks ago and have been dead on since. Again, don’t go if you like the suspense. Because these guys will wreck everything.