don't stop believin'

Maybe it's just the earl grey vanilla creme tea latte talking, here (what do they put in these things anyway? Crack? They are SO crazy delicious!) but I saw this blurb in the paper** this morning and it makes me strangely excited...

"Also at the Bank of America Theatre, Tony Award nominee and ''American Idol'' finalist Constantine Maroulis will reprise his critically acclaimed role as Drew in the hit musical ''Rock of Ages'' for a two-week run, Sept. 21-Oct. 3."

So come on, who's coming with me to see Constantine? You know you want to!

**And when I say "Paper" I mean the Sun Times. And I also mean online.

the electroshock eleven

...As in almost all of them needed a good electroshock up on the big Idol stage last night. Seriously. Out of the million jillion people who auditioned, this lot was the best they could come up with??? It was pretty much a snore fest last night as the top 11 sang Billboard #1 hits. That's a lot of songs, yes? So why did almost no one sing anything current? Katie sang a Fergie song and Aaron sang Aerosmith but everybody else was back in the 60s and 70s. Miley Cyrus was the "mentor" this week, and she was fine. I mean, whatever. She's more relevant than some of the mentors they've had in past seasons - at least she's actually in the music business as opposed to Tarantino where it was like WTF? Can you tell them about a singing competition??

Anyway. Crystal is a star, she's in a league of her own, they should just give it to her now and spare us all 10 more weeks of this crap. The others are nowhere near her, not even Chiffon (sorry Siohban? Or is it Siobhan?) who is getting more and more annoying as weeks go by. I was not in love with her Stones song last week, and I didn't really care for her song this week and is there really a huge need to shriek through every single song? That is not performing. That's just shouting. (The American judge here was cranky last night, can you tell?)

So yes. My picks for the bottom three - Paige (!!), Tim, Andrew and Lee is on the bubble. By the time they rolled the recaps of the evening I was like, oh yeah, I forgot about you. I was right last week in my picks for bottom dwellers. Let's see if it happens again. My choice for leaving would be Paige, obviously, and then Andrew. Straight Up.

++ Update: And we were RIGHT AGAIN! My bottom 3 was a little off, Andrew was mysteriously safe, while Katie ended up on the Stools of Death for maybe 10 seconds before she went off to join the top 10. Paige went home, praise the Lord and pass the mashed potatoes! Next week is RB/soul with the mentoring assistance of Usher. Um. Yeah. I guess we'll see how the Top 10 (which could be the alliterative Terrific Ten or, more likely Terrible Ten. Torrid Ten?) fares with that.

a love-hate relationship

So, Idol fans, the top 12 sang last night. It was not the top 12 I would have picked (LILLY!!! but since I didn't vote, I suppose I can't grumble too much) and as much as I threaten to stop watching, I keep going back week after week after week. It's soothing, you know, lounging around w/a box of thin mints, watching these guys warble away at - wait for it - Rolling Stones songs. If they are the most "iconic band on the planet" (really??) why don't I know more of their songs??? Most of the time I was like oh, okay. I didn't know that was a Stones song, etc. I recognized a handful of them. But not all of them, and in fact, I had no idea what Tim Urban's song "Under my thumb" gone reggae was actually supposed to sound like. Randy was all like "Yoyoyo, what did you do to that song, dawg?" and Simon even said that Rolling Stones fans would be turning their tvs off at that point (but really? are real Stones fans likely to even be watching American Idol anyway??) and I was like oh, does it not really go like that? I thought it was okay. Kind of boring, but okay.

Actually that about sums up the whole show last night and this season as a whole: kind of boring but okay. Hypnotic, actually. But the show was on for two hours last night and it just dragged on. I don't think any of them have real star power so it will be interesting to see who wins.

And I hope that my faves, Crystal and Siobhan stick around.

My bottom 2 predictions: Paige and Lacey

++Update: Look who was right about the bottom 2! I shoulda had money on that one... although I would have picked Paige to get booted, as I don't get her AT ALL. And I think it was mean to have poor Lacey sing like there was any chance of the judges using the save on her. There's no way they would have used it this week, on either of those two.