Well, I’m back after my week hiatus. Due to a perfect storm of grueling work hours, an unexpected power outage that took out all the computers in the house, and thunderstorms that made me leery of driving to a friend’s house to watch what I missed, I never got the time to sit down and write a blog for last week. But most of that is over with now, and I should be able to keep this going for the next few weeks.

It was Bee Gees night on Idol, and having grown up during the disco era, I wasn’t all that disappointed with this week’s theme. Even though most of the songs were written for a trio of castratos, it was a much better group of songs to choose from than previous weeks, so I had hoped the results would be more entertaining than has been typical for the season. But alas, the contestants put out a mixed bag that mostly sucked, which was a shame since it had a lot more potential than, say, Bon Jovi night. Tonight’s mentor was Barry Gibb, and something about the way he spoke, perhaps because his teeth or his dentures or whatnot were too big for his mouth, reminded me of Wallace from Wallace and Gromit. It seems that most of the people I talk to follow the show but don’t actually watch it, which I suppose speaks volumes about how much the show has tanked this season. Almost makes you miss the days when Sanjaya made for interesting viewing regardless of your personal opinions about his vocal talents. It looks like, after the smoke cleared, that we are down to the three most talented contestants plus a talentless mascot, but I guess there are enough people who are dying to vote for a guy that he’ll just keep hanging around until the final two. Such is Idol.

Melinda – There are two vocal stylings Melinda uses on Idol. One is an old-fashioned torch singer who sings things like My Funny Valentine. The second is cross between Gladys Knight and Taz the Tasmanian Devil. Tonight’s first song was the latter, full of 70’s head and hand gestures punctuated by growling, spitting, and yelling. This was one of those Melinda performances that sounded like, “laba laba laba WAAAAH! laba laba laba WAAAAH!”, and those bore me dreadfully. Man, those jeans were so tight she stood straight-legged and lock-kneed for most of the performance, and I was surprised that she was able to a) crouch down at one point, and b) didn’t split her pants to hell doing so.

Blake – Simon nailed this one – CORNY. Blake is vocally bankrupt, unable to carry a tune, express emotion, and lacks any tone or timbre in his voice. Without excessive echo or reverb, he constantly gets drowned out by the band. The Emperor’s New Clothes are a collection of tics, gimmicky sound effects, and Federline-esque pop & lock moves performed with the conviction of a 5 year old at a hip hop dance recital. I am not sure why people think the beat boxing stuff is original – The Fat Boys were doing this back in the 80’s for freak sakes, and the reason it died out with the release of Disorderlies in 1987 was because it was at best goofy, and worst tired and eye-rollingly stupid. How does sounding like a techno Porky Pig considered talent instead of a speech impediment? Tonight’s performance was so bad, so… rubbish, that I got angry at having to see this half-pint no-talent take up space on the stage. It’s the kind of performance that makes me say, “Bring back Phil Stacey!” And what was with the get up – it looked the British Invasion Beatles re-imagined by Bobby Trendy – Ryan totally lost his crown as the shortest, most effeminate guy on Idol tonight. It’s gotten to the point that whenever Blake makes that face with the open-mouthed half-laugh I want to punch him between the eyes. Who does he think he is, Dwayne from What’s Happening? Just a turdy performance.

LaKisha – I really thought, many, many moons ago, that this competition was Kiki’s to lose. But other than a spike here and there (last week looked like she might get back on track), LaKisha has been nosediving into oblivion, and quite frankly, I’m sort of surprised that she’s still hanging around regardless of her prodigious vocal talents. LaKisha’s strengths are her amazing range and pure tone and yet she keeps picking yelly songs or uninteresting melodies. If Jordin picked songs for LaKisha, the kind with strong melodies, big ranges, and big notes, this may have already been wrapped up. The other maddening thing is that she just doesn’t listen to any of the guest coaches’ advice – week after week, they suggest something actually constructive to her that she totally ignores. This week, Barry Gibb suggested that she sing the chorus higher and with the melody, and she ignored it for monotonous yelling. And while she seems to have permanently ditched the excessive cleavage, her outfits are still pretty bad – even with the ugly print, the top may have worked with jeans or even a pleated skirt, but the only excuse for LaKisha wearing tights is that she has an alter ego who fights crime.

Jordin – She sounded very good here, but I was a bit disappointed because the preview made it seem like she was going to tear the place apart. Instead, it built up with no real climax. It was also disappointing that she didn’t quite hit the big note in the middle (a touch flat), and it is precisely this inconsistency and inability to knock the entire song out of the park from start to finish that keeps me from really rooting for her to go all the way.

Melinda – When Ryan asked what the first album Melinda bought and she told him it was a tape, who wasn’t thinking, “8-Track?” Because that kind of old-fashioned-ness is in line with Melinda’s other vocal styling, the 50 year-old torch singer. Now, it is quite obvious that Melinda is technically brilliant – I mean, even a thickee like Paula senses that. And I wouldn’t dare impugn any of Melinda’s other vocal qualities. But there’s a distinct lack of spontaneity – there’s a sense that she would sound (and move) exactly the same each time, and that over-rehearsed, canned quality strikes me as rather soulless. This is the umpteenth time I’ve sort of zoned out during a Melinda performance, and I have to rack my brain to remember the last time I actually enjoyed listening to her (I think it was as far back as week two with the final twenty). Of course, I’d have to rack my brain to remember the last time I enjoyed any performance this season. I dunno – sometimes I find her belting to be fatiguing.

Blake – Everything I said about the first song goes for this song, except I will add plodding, adenoidal, and flat out boring. I will say it again – Blake is the least vocally talented performer left in the competition by a parsec. Now, realizing that Paula has no clue what she’s talking about isn’t exactly revelatory, but how is beat boxing contemporary? To me, beat boxing is totally 80’s. Perhaps in her booze and drug induced haze she thinks it’s still 1986, but that kind of doesn’t make sense since Forever Your Girl was released in 1989 and she didn’t really turn into insane Paula until after the 90’s. You know what? I’m going to stop trying to figure out what’s percolating I that crazy, crazy noggin of hers lest I turn to booze and pills.

LaKisha – Before LaKisha came to the stage, Ryan picked out Judge Judy from the audience, who promptly mugged for the cameras for five minutes. It was easily the most random thing I’ve eve seen on Idol (the shot of crying David Hasselhoff from last year preceded America’s Got Talent, created by Simon and one of the other producers, so it was quite calculated). But Judge Judy? WTF? She’s… uh… a judge like Simon? She sings? Demographics? A total waste of time and uncomfortable to boot. Anyway… LaKisha entered the stage with a nice outfit for a change, but the green hourglass shape in the front and the dark fabric on the sides made for an excessively slimming illusion (which reminded me of Paula’s Promise of a New Day video which was optically squeezed to make her appear tall and skinny), and if you ever wondered what Lakisha would look like after gastric by-pass surgery, this was it. There were some nice moments in the song, but again, she didn’t follow any of Barry Gibb’s advice, and she didn’t show of her range enough. Cracking on the last big note was quite un-Kiki-like.

Jordin – It was just too yodelly to the point where it sounded like she was crying or had the hiccups. It was also off-key all over the place, and whereas the first performance was good with a few problems here and there, this was uniformly not good. I really liked the color of her dress, but there was just too much fabric. It looked like someone sewed a 40’s era bra to a graduation gown. But jeez – Barry Gibb liked her a whole lot, didn’t he? “This is going to be, I think, one of our greatest female recording artists”. I’m not saying Barry is Nostradamus (that would imply he’s fraud who never actually predicted anything), but if he is any gauge of talent, she should win this thing – although, not if she sings like this again.