AI3. Six Left. Salsa

American Aye-Dull AI3 Five Sick Up Salsa, One Rocks

But first. A tongue-bending Results Show in which LaToya projected the perfect picture of Latoya projecting the perfect picture of Latoya projecting a compelling blend of humility and cockiness. She has nailed knowing where the camera is while not letting it appear too obvious. After all, I had to watch a couple of times to come up with that description of the aura surrounding everything LaToya does. Any more polished and her pores would sweat Pledge.

For all we know, she's pondering how the hell she and her no-good husband who cain’t keep a job are gonna pay the damn debt-collectors if she don’t win this competition. I had to go into a trance and channel LaToya’s true inner self, for that tidbit. I hope you fans appreciate the lengths I go to for you. It was boringly refreshing. 

But what's up Ryan Seaweinie's butt? Or rather, who is not? He's obviously not getting anywhere with the Wooing of the Simon. He took altogether too much pleasure goading poor George into picking "the Safe Group." What an asshole. Faced with joining the Group As (Fantasia, LaToya and Jennifer) versus the Group Bs (Data Stevens, Diana and Jasmine) George literally spun his wheels waiting for someone to rescue him and just tell him where to go and what to do.

I think George’s mind imploded, which would explain this week’s robotic performance. Maybe he thinks that that’s what the public really wants. After all, it's working for "Data" isn't it? More likely it was the side-effects of performing Barry Manilow songs the previous night. In fact, the effects of Manilla-owtion were apparent in most of tonight's performances. Minds short-circuited by the blandness.

So anyway, LaToya’s polished humility is a complete act. Did you see how she helped pull George over to her “Safe Group?” Damn, that was fast. Aw, I shouldn't be so mean to LaToya. She's probably going to be our next I-Dull.

But didn’t learning the truth wipe the smirk off Jennifer’s face? She couldn’t hide how absolutely pissed off she was to find herself in the bottom 3 again, after having fought so hard to improve. How dare those mongoloids not support her? I’m just guessin’ here, but there sure was a lot of info encoded in that bitchy “What The FUCK?” face Jennifer pulled. Even if not her best work, it would certainly be good enough for Silas. He's getting stale over in Survivor Sucks and could do with branching out to share his life’s journey with the I-Dull Divas.

Fantasia laughed and I felt embarrassed for her. How could she laugh in the face of an American Tragedy? But maybe it should not have surprised us. Group “A” has been this year’s “Losers,” after all.

LaToya was safe, predictably. She is consistently preferred over Fantasia; I just find her voice boring. She’s a performer but not a compelling performer. Jennifer has improved, but I was rooting for Fantasia to be safe. I was in the minority who weren’t quite ready to see her leave. But that was last week.

While it's news so old, it's ready to move to Miami, I suppose I should officially report that Jennifer was sent home.  Then on Monday night (Apr 26) she appeared on Letterman to do the Top 10. Her topic: “Things I Can Say Now That I’m No Longer in American Aye-Dull.” The number one was, “Screw you Voters.”  If I weren’t lazy, I’d come up with the rest of a Top 10 "Ways Not To Alienate Folks Before They’ve Plonked Down Money To Buy Your CD.”  Especially when some of your fanbase was busy fighting death and homelessness due to tornado storms.

I admit I didn’t see it coming, 3 Divas in the Bottom 3. I can’t claim improbable telepathy or wonderful foresight or any form of imagination at all. I was slightly gob-smacked just like most of the rest of you. I mean, I’m sure some of you saw it coming. You’re intelligent readers. You’re here, aren’t you? ;)

Me, I created a duplicate thread at RTVT in my discombobulated state. A duplicate thread! Me!?!?! Don’t worry, it’s been tidied away.

And now I’ve just spent a week reading indignant posts all over the place about vote-splitting and racism and conspiracy. Learning about the Vote The Worst (VtW) conspiracy got me ready to see the funny side and talk about the travesty without bursting a blood vessel. However, I’m still fed up with Randy Dawg Breath and Ryan “High on my SeaHorse.”  Following the reveal, Dawg and Seaqueasy led the scolding of America for not voting for “the talent” because, get this, “it’s not a popularity contest, it’s a singing contest.”  LMAO.

And Randy wants to be “proud as an American” for the I-Dull winner. Well, who died and made those two arbiters of worthwhile competitors? Are they for real? Of course Paula babbled like a broken wind-up doll. Her idea of “one word” to describe the debacle turned into a nonsensical thesis. Simon’s “tongue-floor” comment just reflects that this season is like one long trip to the dentist for root canal.

But honestly, who the fuck are any of them to tell the voters not to vote for the people they helped put in the competition? Notwithstanding Ryan's plaintive plea to the contrary, it IS partly his fault – he’s always insisting we vote, vote, vote for each contestant.  For the dummies on the panel, it IS a popular vote (i.e., a vote by the people) for the favorite (i.e., most popular) mainstream (i.e. seems to pacify the majority) musical and musical-ish performers. If voters keep someone like John, well, 100s of posters aren’t raving over Diana or Fantasia, my two favorites, either.

Mouths gaped all across the continent, but a few whooped, “Yay! We did it!” Indeed, at least one group is dedicated to voting for whom they consider the worst. They dial solidly for 2 hours for “Teen Martin” as they call Data, I mean John Stevens. At first I thought it was cruel, but now, you gotta hand it to them – by dint of remaining in the competition, young Data has actually improved. I mean, Mandy had a whole first verse that sounded really good! The VtWs grow in numbers each week, attracting some of each bootee’s fan base.

So, What DID Happen?  Before we go forward with tonight’s performances (and with only 6 contestants left, I expect a lot of crummy Ryan filler), I’d like to take a moment to answer Jennifer’s question in some seriousness. How did that result come about?  I think a number of factors were at work, simultaneously.

1. Generally good performances (except George’s, but his fanbase built up in the early weeks saved him again) made voters fear more for those lower on the ladder of perceived overall ability. The Divas all performed very well and were cited in 1, 2 and 3 positions on many posters' "charts."

2. Relative to previous bests, Data, Diana and Jasmine all stretched themselves and won some new fans.  Meanwhile, the “Divas” performed well enough to please established fans which at the same time lulled them into a false sense of security. Yet those performances weren't so good they wood hordes of new fans/voters.

3. There was vote-splitting, but not just among the Divas. In fact, I think it’s not even mainly among the Divas. People who like LaToya don’t always like Fantasia and/or Jennifer as well and vice versa (does 'vice versa' even work in a situation with 3 people? You know what I mean, I hope.) I do recognize LaToya’s ability, but if I were able to vote, I’d be calling for Fantasia and Diana. Many voters who stated their choices for voting, often stated a favorite “Diva” and a favorite “non-Diva.”

4. Posters were casting more votes for someone “lower” on the ladder than the person they support who is “higher” on the ladder. For example, they may have voted twice for LaToya (or Jen or Fantasia), and then cast 3 or 4 votes for George (or Diana, John or Jasmine). If these voters thought they were in the minority, the results seem to indicate the practice was in fact quite prevalent.

5. The VtW movement has been in place for some time, possibly since AI1. The AI3 group may have lured some of its members from a group trying to keep a dink named Robert in a dating phone-in show. But whatever, the VtW’s numbers are growing, and these people vote solidly for 2 hours just for John Stevens. Even if their actions aren’t successful in keeping John in the competition until the Final 4 or even 2, he is still around and he’s only been in the bottom 3 once.

6. There were storms, tornadoes and a power outage in Jennifer’s hometown of Chicago on the night of Mannila-oh performances. Her “natural” fanbase was busy dealing with RL tragedy and was not focused on American I-Dull. They might not have kept her out of the Bottom 3, but their support would have likely helped her avoid elimination.

7. “Power voting,” i.e., voting for 2 straight hours using some kind of gizmo on the phone or computer, appears to favor the “Group B” people. Whatever the motive, these so-called "power" voters are calling for a non-Diva more often than for a Diva, to judge by the posting.

I realize it's a small sampling of the voting population, but I think it does give us a good cross-section of the non-message board voting public.

All of these factors contributed to Jennifer, specifically, being booted. Item #6, her hometown experiencing tornado crisis, would have contributed most directly. But in my view the most important factor in terms of explaining all three “Divas” being in the bottom 3 has to be that voters feared for the continued presence of their “lower down the ladder” favorites, and threw more votes at their Group B people than at their Group A people.

I don’t expect we’ll see this kind of result again this season, but then again, this season is weird. One thing is sure: by the nature of the system, the Divas could not be targeted for elimination per se; rather, their safety was taken for granted by their fans, allowing other factors to assist in bringing about the “shocking result.”

And now for Salsa Night or rather, the music of Gloria Estefan. What, she has six songs we’d even recognize? She joins the judges to help with the smiling platitudes of “praise.” Paula has that covered, Gloria, we could do with some more honesty from the Gallery.  Ryan says she’s the undisputed Queen of Latin Pop. Really? I did not know that. The Miami Sound Machine band will provide backing, sometimes even enthusiastically.

Fantasia goes first with “Get On Your Feet.” She has on a blue, white, yellow & black patterned dress and no bra. The jiggling boobies are not attractive. The song permits her to command the audience to get up, as she is wont to do regardless. They obey, like the robots they are. She’s doing some kind of Latin-style dance steps – I think. Latina Bobo.  And there wasn’t a yeah yeah in sight or sound. Maybe I missed it?

Overall, “not bad” but not great. And ya’ll know I’m a major fan, but in spite of the rehearsal chit-chat with Gloria, Fantasia just didn’t click with the song. Her voice sounded hollow, like her heart wasn’t in it. The Jennifer shout-outs went from annoying to “would you let it go already?” A lot of moving around and a plastic smile don't make up for a lacklustre voice. It's probably just sadness.

It’s hard to be the opener, I know, but she’s done it before, and done it well. Maybe it was the “props to Jennifer” that ruined it? That may have been Fantasia’s worst performance so far, which still,  wasn't as bad as some of the dreck we've seen, but I haven’t seen evidence (to judge from various boards) that she has a solid fanbase.

Fantasia will be lucky to get away with this really bad week. To my mind, she’s had more good weeks than bad, so it would be a shame if the one week she leaves the “yeah yeahs” out, she gets tossed.

Oh my god, Randy says something of substance, for once. Vocally it didn’t wow me either, Randy. Simon agrees with Randy – she sounded like a cartoon character, like Donald Duck on helium. She goes, “Lots of people tell me I look like Bugs Bunny.” He adds, in a kindly voice, “more like Jessica Rabbit.” But the sound is usually sultry and provocative. Sad but true, when you've set your own bar high, it's hard for the fans to get excited over "meh." 

The idiot women judges of course praised her, but it wasn’t a great performance by any stretch.

George Huff performs something I think was called “I Lip for Loving You.” He’s apparently going to do Latin moves? Uh, right, with dip. A lot of dip. Hardly any salsa, but a side of fried loony smile. Blue jeans, gray tee and white shirt just look… wrong. The Latin moves last three seconds and then go out the window in favor of more dipping. That's a lot of ice-cream, Georgie.

His fans are probably going nuts. Me, not so much. Not wowing me, George. The bouncing up and down in place and the goofy smile are not wowing me. He does a slow spin and the crowd goes nuts out of proportion. Jeez, he turned around. Once.

Randy gives props, Gloria “great job,” Paula says “you gave it up” but makes most of her portion about fighting with Simon. Simon gives props to the band before telling George it was amateurish. Ryan asks Simon to elaborate on what he means by ‘amateurish’ and Simon adds, “George was as good as your presenting skills.” Burn! Go Simon!

LaToya London is in a red dress with big earrings to perform “Rhythm is Gonna Git Ya.” She smiles a lot, looks the part, performs with her usual hefty helping of Pledge, but the spark is missing. Why isn’t she connecting? Is it my fault? Or is she just not putting that extra “oomph” into it?

She takes time out for a bit of dance moves, which also don’t particularly wow me. It's not a dancing competition. I thought that was made perfectly clear at the auditions. I mean, woo, she moved her body a wee bit. Yay. I tell you what, the spotlights aren’t helping, coming as they do from behind her and making it next to impossible to actually see her.

It seems as if she is having a slightly longer song than usual. Standing O for her just for moving around. It was pretty good. I have to remember that these people aren't really seasoned performers. Oh wait, except she is, and she ought to be better than this, for someone with her experience. Well, this competition is a marathon. It's just LaToya was better earlier, and now it's like she's running on auto-pilot.

I really thought she was gonna wow me with this one, but no.  I remain unwowed. I will not be wishing I could phone up on the strength of this performance.

Randy tells her she looked amazing and beautiful. He notices she worked well with the band. Did she? I didn’t think so, particularly. Up to that point maybe, yeah, she was the best with the band. The band just didn't seem into working well with her. It was just there. But he’s not wowed either. Gloria completely avoids addressing the performance, just saying she “deserves to be here.” Paula wants more of her than just 1 min 30 secs. Simon says he thinks she needed to do this – she was in danger of becoming boring. It did prove she could do more than just stand there and sing quite well and be boring. Simon’s comments use the word “boring” a lot, and that’s the problem. She IS boring.

The kids made a Subway commercial and it completely sucked. As I watched all I could think about was “where are the hairnets?”

John Stevens will be singing to his grandmother, so I think we might get a good performance. We don’t. For “Music Of My Heart” John is in a dark pinstripe suit jacket with a dark shirt, white tee, and I think dark jeans. He’s still got a thin voice. Will it be breaking soon? It’s flat and it’s down and it can’t get up.

Randy loves … the shoes? “You’re one of the nicest guys. The song was horrendous – maybe 3 notes in tune.” Randy is not pulling punches here. I guess he wants John to stick around, with these negative comments that will likely galvanize his fans and the VtWs to dial extra-hard. Gloria thinks he made his grandma proud – and he probably did, if she’s the one who’s encouraged him. Paula thinks it was a valiant effort and she’s proud of him, like that matters.

Simon compliments John on having taken every bullet thrown at him like a man.  But the bad news is, “You and Latin music go together like chocolate ice cream and an onion.” Was Simon preparing that remark all week? Lame. How about blueberries and pickles? And mentioning bullets? Just invites low-class jokes.

Jasmine Trias sings “Here We Are.” Black pedal pushers, black halter top, white sash tube top underneath. No flower unless it was black and I couldn’t see it. Outfit, meh. Singing, nice. Nice in this competition is NOT good.

She seemed to hit most of the notes but I’m not a professional note identifier. It sounded okay in the beginning and not so okay by the end.

Randy says it was a good song choice, and it had the potential to be amazing, but fell a little short, so he gives it 7 out of 10, which is much too high a score, frankly. But she did look the part. Her hair was really sexy.

Simon gives props to Gloria and says Jasmine was a pleasant imitation. Paula argues that Jasmine is better than pleasant. Oh Paula shut up. For the first time tonight I notice Ryan telling people to vote, for Jasmine. Is that reverse psychology, so that they don’t?

Diana DeGarmo  does “Turn The Beat Around” in a red dress that looks as if someone attached a lot of streamers to it at about the mid-thigh or knee region. It’s kind of shmuttery and not very appealing. It also highlights that she is carrying a bit of pudge. The outfit should not do that. She's a really pretty girl, with an amazing voice, and the outfit should work to her strengths, which um, I don't know what they are, but I know that dress didn't do her any favors.

But who cares? She sounds awesome!!  Yay Diana!!! She’s bringing the Diva-ness, all of a sudden. I get chills in a good way. Listen to her doing the trills. Her voice sounds deep enough for this kind of music. She has a woman’s voice – unbelievable she’s only 16. Just goes to show, being 16 doesn’t have to mean incapable of delivering the goods. She said she chose a song to showcase the band and herself, and she did it. I hope she can keep this up. I am wishing I could phone up on the strength of this performance. WOW!

Randy gives her props. Gloria thanks her for giving props to her band. Paula seems resigned to the fact that Diana is good and there’s nothing Paula can do to change it. Simon gives her performance a 7 and her dress a 0. Diana talks back, “Okay, you take me shopping for next week.” Heh, nice sass. Diana easily gets my top marks for the night.

Final Thoughts. Diana definitely rocked and is my vote for best of the night. The polish LaToya brings week after week gets blown away by someone with a little less polish but a whole lot more energy, emotion and performance. Diana is hopefully completely over the cold/flu she had a few weeks ago, and will go from strength to strength. She really connected with the song, the band and this audience member.  Even Mr. Islands was going, “Yeah!” and “Woo!” which believe me, is rare.  He even stopped playing his video game to check out her performance.

At the other end of the spectrum, John still sucks, which probably just has the VtWs happily dialing to keep him in another week.

The other three middle positions are almost inter-changeable. BUT, an order has to be selected.

6 Diana - awesome

5 Latoya – polish but no “pull”

4 Jasmine – nice effort, tried to put some feeling into it

3 George + Fantasia (tied) – hollow performances, and disappointing, especially from Fantasia. But both should have been able to connect with the right song. I know George has been unwell, and Fantasia felt particularly hard-hit by Jennifer's departure, but still.

1 John – flat and thin and yecch.

John should be in the bottom 3 and should go. However, the VtWs may be able to squeeze him thru for another week, sending George or Fantasia or even Jasmine home this week. I’m almost at the point where I don’t care who goes. Almost. But I’ve enjoyed more of Fantasia’s performances and I hope she can survive another week and bounce back from what was obviously a traumatic elimination last week. I think she realizes it would have been her if Jennifer’s hometown had been voting in full force.

If I had to choose, and it had to be someone other than John, I’d rather see George leave. I’m tired of his phony smiling and stupid Dipping.

At this point, I reckon just as many, if not more, fans would be disappointed with any one of the competitors being declared the Idol, as would be happy. With every passing week, I find myself enjoying someone else’s performance the most, yet becoming less and less interested in a whole CD of any performer’s work.

Yes, each of the Final 7 does have real fans. The multitudes who stick glued to their computer-phones dialing for two straight hours, no matter whom they’re supporting, aren’t necessarily the folks who’ll spend their own hard-earned after-tax dollars to buy CDs. They might be willing to spend mom or dad’s money tho, but don’t delude yourself, Mr Record Producer, that you’re looking at 24 million copies sold of this dreck. 

The RESULTS since I'm posting a bit later, thanks to the new improved EZboard which necessitated the board being down.

So there were 28 million votes cast, and even the person going home received over 4 million. How 'bout them apples?

After "Conga" Ryan splits them into two groups, Fantasia is in Group A, which is probably the loser group.

Diana is in Group A as well. Uh oh. LaToya is in Group A. They're screwing with us, aren't they?

Therefore the other three are Group B. No? Ryan is not going to tell each one individually that he or she is in Group B, is he? God, he is.  John and Jasmine and George. This SHOULD be the bottom group for a change.

And ... it is. He tells the Group A gals that they are safe. As they should be.

Jasmine is safe. One of the guys is going. I am happy with that. But yet another break? Man, this is why I can't bring myself to recap the Results show this season. It's torturous.

And... John goes. Finally. 4 million votes isn't too shabby, just wasn't enough. Bye, John.

Thanks for reading.