Snikt snikt snikt. Boy, the judges really sharpened their knives for tonight, eh? It’s nice to see Paula try to be a bit critical but her incoherence is painful to listen to. Randy seemed hate everything and Simon was waaay off the mark tonight, over-praising on occasion and then just gutting contestants for no apparent reason. Really, only one of the contestants actually deserved it (you know who you are, Pickler). BTW, I am sorry if I’m a bit distracted and rambly, but I’ve been checking the DialIdol rankings every ten minutes like election results and I keep losing my train of thought when I get back to writing. I love and hate that site. I also mostly liked David Foster’s mostly unvarnished feedback, although you have to be suspect about someone who works with Celine Dion, the worst singer in the known universe. Hearing her sing makes me cry, not the kind with tears, but rather, “Oh my God my ears are bleeding! Turn it off! Turn it off!”

Katharine – Kat brought out the “big guns” tonight, with “guns” being a metaphor. And by metaphor, I mean boobs. I know you already figured that out a while ago, but did you catch the fact that “big guns” also sounds like “big’uns”? That’s why I discarded “polished off the canon balls” and “took the puppies out for a walk” as potential metaphors. Jeez, this was the most cleavage I’ve seen on Idol since Paula many weeks ago and the most by any contestant. Of course, the outfit was marred by VPL (that’s visible panty line for the non-Glamour readers) and cascading back fat. I know why the dress was so tight up top (no one wanted any “guns” drawn on stage during a live show), but the result was that it cut under her shoulders and the fleshy flap was not exactly sexy from behind. And although the panties were too tight, she was lucky to have them after her slight wardrobe malfunction, wherein a button flew off the bottom of her dress causing her skirt to open up. I mean, nothing shocking really and if you blinked you missed it, but let’s just say if it weren’t for the VPL there would be a different kind of VPL (I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but I’m sure someone will figure out something that works with those initials). Also, the hair (on her head) was weirdly styled, with a couple of oddly placed curls on the sides (still talking about her head) giving the impression that she was wearing cat ears like Josie or one of the Pussycats. As for her shoes… umm… wait, this is a singing competition, right? Okay – the best thing I can say about the performance was that a couple of notes gave my wife goose bumps. I thought she was kinda boring, and like last week, she didn’t really try to wow the audience which gave the impression she was holding back to avoid potential screeching and it ended up uninteresting and uninspired. While the judges were correct that the song was too big for her, I think it was her utter lack of reach that made it seem rather pedestrian. Of course, I was unprepared for the critical attack that left Katharine (rightfully) incredulous, as listening to Paula of all people tear apart your performance is about the most surprising thing an Idol contestant can hear. I mean, really – Paula? It’s like we’ve landed on some bizarre parallel earth.

Elliott – Listening to Elliott’s pre-clip conversation with Ryan illustrated his biggest weakness – a total lack of charisma. I mean, he seems like an earnest, nice guy, but he sounded a bit autistic and disjointed in his thoughts and lacked anything resembling a sense of humor or charm. As for the performance – he started off almost loud enough and he got off the blocks pretty good, and then it just started getting softer and droning and ultimately became quite boring. You gotta crescendo in a competition like this, and instead he just went downhill until he flatlined at the finish. BTW, Elliott may be getting the illiterate vote judging by the “Get Abord the E-Train” sign. Hey, it could have been worse – “Get A-bored the E-Train” would have been a perfectly acceptable Freudian slip. Out of nowhere, the judges started going hog-wild and Paula actually started to cry, and I was thinking, “are we in some sort of alternate universe where a guy who sounds like a car stereo with a busted sub-woofer is the best singer in the competition? And how can I get back to reality?” Bizarrely over-effusive. Now that Elliott is the King of Inappropriately Positive Feedback he can get together with the Queen of Inappropriately Positive Feedback (Katharine, although not tonight for sure) and their spawn will become the Worst President Ever and then get re-elected. Wait – something like that actually happened? How can I get back to reality?

Kellie – Holy shit! Maybe she should change her name from Pickler to Butcherer. That’s two weeks in a row of performances so wretched that, had she sung like that in the beginning, she would have never made it on the show. Not that she sings well enough to be on the show anyway, but the producers could not, in their good conscience, allow her to participate if she sang like that during the auditions. And as if it weren’t bad enough that she sang so badly, she stood there dead-eyed, occasionally cross-eyed, and looked bored throughout. She dressed like she was going to a dive bar right after the show, her overdone blush clashed with her gold eye shadow and orange skin tone, and her hair was reminiscent of Cameron Diaz’ in the scene from There’s Something About Mary when she uses a… um… biological hair-styling agent. It was so bad that it resulted in a universal panning from the judges, and a scathing review from Simon that was so involved that he had to eventually be cut off with a music cue as if he was giving an overlong Oscar speech. And Kellie was actually, for the first time, speechless. It was otherworldly that there were no cute canned comebacks for our Idiot Princess tonight – it’s like we’ve walked through a wormhole and ended up in a Bizzaro World where “goodbye” means “hello” and Kellie actually has talent

Paris – I loved the outfit, the hair, the whole ensemble. Plus, she sang like a mutha. My wife had goosebumps most of the performance and she hit just about every note (maybe just missed one) and sounded great. The judges’ commentary was simply stupefying – to say that was “just aw’right” is moronic, and to say that she sounded like she was imitating an older singer would only work if you could actually tell me whom that singer was. Because that just sounded like Paris to me. It was flat out the best performance of the night, deflated by the judges irrational comments and some sort of weird alternate reality where the best singer in the competition will end up fifth or sixth because some people believe that having a famous grandmother (who no one can name) with enough industry connections to secure her a recording contract (that she doesn’t have) renders her undeserving of winning it all. Oh wait – that’s exactly what’s happening.

Taylor – Dressed as he was, it may have been more appropriate if he was Number Six and not fifth in the batting order. Of course, he is not a number, he is a freestylin’ man. Uhh… so… you know, I don’t think I’ve seen enough Prisoner episodes to keep this going. Anyway, he starts out well enough, and as nice as his voice sounds, it’s starts to veer off into Boringville when all of a sudden, he just unleashes. Now, he peaks a bit too early (the very end of the song just kind of lies there) but you see that flash of soulful brilliance shining through. I hope that one day he can deliver more than a flash or flashes, but I think, in a studio environment, he can really polish his sound. Simon was absolutely dead wrong in his assessment of Taylor’s performance, the deadest, wrongest he was all evening – you absolutely cannot walk into “any” hotel bar a hear something like that. Unless that hotel is in a divergent universe where Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Joe Cocker, and Michael McDonald are cloned and forced to work in every hotel bar. Okay, I know that’s overblown and I’m not trying to say Taylor is in that league, but I am trying to make a freakin’ point.

Chris – So let me get this straight… “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman” by Bryan Adams is, like, the amazingest, bestest song ever? Did I get hit on the head and wake up in Oz? Okay, so it’s not a bad as “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” (which may be the worst song in the known universe), but it did make me wonder if a Flying Monkey stole Chris’ penis. Because loving that song is just sooo unmanly. Merely listening to it will lower you sperm count. As for his performance – look, if he wasn’t “Chris the Rocker” and it was just some dude named Mike and he sang like that, he wouldn’t be on the show. Because he sounded like a goat big-time and he choked on a couple of notes because he has no range. He did try hard to reach those notes, grimacing and straining so hard, that not since Bucky left have I seriously wondered if a contestant had pooped his pants on stage. I mean, it was decent enough if he sang it to his bride at their wedding (and jeez, you gotta believe he must have), but seriously – it was not as good as the judges would lead you to believe.

BTW, if Celine Dion were to sing “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You”, it would rip a hole in space time and cause the instantaneous destruction of the known universe.