Idol gives whack

Funny night... Simon started off waaaaay too nice, but he got his groove on and so did the singers.

I'm increasingly of the opinion that Jordin is going to win this thing -- she's charismatic, she keeps getting better, she connects emotionally with the songs. Melinda can't match her in any of those categories. Blake had another bad night, Phil has too much ground to make up (and still looks like bat boy), Chris peaked weeks ago (despite the judges' praise last night, which I didn't get at all), LaKisha needs to step it up, but doesn't seem to realize it. Did I get everyone?

Anyway, Jordin. Looking like a winner. Sounding like a winner.

UPDATE: Gazette writer Christopher Short, who's like, musically inclined or something, had this to say about Jordin's performance (no, I don't know what he's talking about):

Jordin’s performance of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” was phenomenal. After singing the verse in the original key, she made something like a four-step key change for the chorus. It sounded like she was straining to hit the highest note in the first half of the chorus (the word “dreams”), and I figured all was lost, since the real high note is a third higher. Of course she nailed it.

If only America had recently entered a more-or-less justified war, we would have had a moment that surpassed Whitney’s Super Bowl anthem.

The Idol Gives Back thing was just as weird as predicted. Nothing against the causes they were supporting, nor am I against Idol trying to do something positive with its popularity, but that seemed like a totally random group of causes some focus group came up with ("So where are the poor people?" "Um, Africa?" "That's great, that's great... but we should do poor people in America, too. Because the foreigners seem so.... foreign.").

A couple "House" notes, too: I was talking to a friend during "Idol," and we both agreed that what "House" really needed was to kill a patient. They hadn't done that in a while and so they were falling into this repetitive trap of saving the patients at the last minute. Ask and thou shalt receive: Tonight, they kill the patient, but they make a whole big thing about it. Which was kind of after school special.

"House" is supposed to be about broken people messing up their lives while saving others. It's a good formula, but we don't need it rubbed in our faces. And we definitely don't need no stinking musical montage.

Actually, you know what it felt like? "Scrubs." Totally.