Liveblogging the Idol shitshow
by Kathy Cacace

This year I’ll be doing one entry per week that includes coverage of all the episodes. After a false start with the top 24, I’m back from here on out, until the bitter, bitter end. Check back at this entry tomorrow for the results show.

WEDNESDAY: IDOL GIVES BACK

7:30: Liveblogging from my parents’ couch! Eating popsicles. With my mom.

7:31: Whoa, clash of the reality show worlds! The kids from “So You Think You Can Dance” are dancing circles around the contestants and it’s like how, in middle school you’d be out at the mall with your friends and you’d maybe see someone you knew from church choir and there’d be that weird interaction where everyone would pretend that you all belonged in the same place.

7:38: George Lopez and Kylie Minogue are asking for my money in Spanish and Gibberish, respectively.

7:39: Now Maria Shriver is on stage with a bunch of people in nonprofit t-shirts and wheelchairs. She’s asking for us to give our time, and I’d gladly do so if she’d let me make a refreshing glass of orange juice on her face.

7:41: Watching Ryan Seacrest say the words “Snoop Dogg” made me think “Cracker!” and I am POLISH.

7:45: Snoop’s stage posse is comprised of the “Snoop Youth Football League,” who are all between maybe eight and twelve and waving their arms side to side and, in general, looking like this is the most boring chorus concert of their young lives. You’re standing behind the man that made a generation of children sing “smoke weed every day” in the car, and a generation of parents weep for the future. Show a little pizzazz!

7:53: Sobgasm of a segment about starving children of migrant workers. And now Teri Hatcher and singing “Before He Cheats” or whatever that Carrie Underwood song is called, supported by that Australian guy from House, that plummer from her show, and someone on the drums who may have been a Soprano. The combined star power on stage is enough to light a match.

7:57: Seriously, Teri Hatcher is like the woman at the karaoke bar who had one Smirnoff Ice too many and is singing a painfully earnest version of “I Touch Myself.”

8:00: When was the last time Billy Crystal made you laugh? Seriously, that’s a legitimate question. Anyway, he’s introducing Miley Cyrus and her new grill, which I would describe as ponylicious.

8:09: “Now here’s a report from Bono, in Africa,” announces Ryan. “In other news, moms across the country reach for the Puffs and another spoonful of Breyers and tell you to count your blessings.”

8:16: Fergie’s singing. I hate this song, the slow one. The shitty one, you know? The one that makes me focus on the fact that she looks like Amanda Lepore minus the tits.

8:17: WHAT!? HEART!? THEY BROUGHT OUT HEART! Three years of putting up with liveblogging SHITTY CRAP after CRAPPY SHIT, and they finally throw me a motherfucking bone! A big, awesome, curly haired, really old, caftan-wearing bone! Fergie did the world’s quickest outfit change and is now wearing rubber gloves for pants and cartwheeling across the stage with one hand and crawling like a big, meth-faced cat toward the camera. But it’s Barracuda. There is nothing wrong with the world.

8:27: Eli and Peyton Manning are introducing a segment about New Orleans. Together, they look like a talking pair of feet.

8:34: Victoria and David Beckham want yo benjaminz.

8:36: Bono is rifling through the memory box of an AIDS orphan. Tearjaculation segment with Annie Lennox taking kids in Africa to get HIV tests. Kiefer Sutherland needs your coffee cans full of pennies.

8:49: Jimmy Kimmel is kind of roasting Simon Cowell. “Nipples the size of peppermills.” I think that’s really the image to take away from this whole thing. But seriously, I hate the Simon hate because he’s such a nonvillan. That this is still supposed to be funny seven seasons into this trainwreck is just us, collectively, as a nation, “makin’ COPIIIIIEEEEESSS”-ing each other.

8:56: Carrie Underwood is singing, and we’ve hit the first god reference less than thirty seconds into the song. I don’t know why this irks me like it does, but American Idol is so all about the Jesus songs. What if we replaced every Jesus reference in this song an Allah reference? Kristy Lee Proud to Be an American Cook would be defending our freedom with automatic weapons before the bridge.

9:00: Whoopi demands your dinero.

9:05: Oh fuck, they’re just trying to to kill me now. Gloria Estefan (and Sheila E.) are performing “Get On Your Feet,” which, I swear to God, I have had stuck in my head since 1991. I think about it once a day.

9:10: Forest Whitaker and his wife and that Sia song from Six Feet Under where everyone died and malaria babies. Weepsturbation.

9:21: The finalists are singing “Seasons of Love” from Rent. David Archuleta singing musical theater is plucking a heartstring that has been dormant since I was about 9.

9:33: Miley’s doing “See You Again,” and I had no idea she was such a spaz! Like, a spaz of Celine proportions.

9:37: They dispatched Miley and Billy Ray to somewhere in Appalachia to visit a poor family and a charity that brings books to school-age children. You know, Reese wore a ponytail when she went and hung out in the school in New Orleans–there’s something almost offensive about Billy Ray standing around in this kitchen with his soul patch and his blonde highlights and his ladies camel blazer.

9:49: St. Pitt of the Rainbow Brood manages to do a segment from New Orleans without it being a total weeper. Then he’s in the studio, and his microphone breaks and an mom-ish kinda woman comes out to switch it, saying “I just needed a reason to touch him!” If they could just get her to duet with Heart, this show would’ve paid off.

9:55: Daughtry is singing somewhere in the third world. Please, Daughtry. Stay there and do more good. There’s so much more good you could do there. Not here. Ever again. Please.

10:01: I’d like to point out that this show is running over, directly into my beauty sleep. But for Mariah, I’d stay awake. Bitch is SKI-NNY. And she has a fan on her, which is AWESOME. I suspect she’s done something kind of surgical to her eye region, because when she gets all squinty on the high notes she kind of looks like Daisy from Rock of Love.

10:04: Ryan thanks you. I thank you. You are thanked. This is over. Thank god.

10:06: Speaking of! This isn’t over, and the contestants are all wearing white and singing a straight-up religious song called “Shout to the Lord.” I do not understand this! Is there no other song we could close this with? Did Jesus smite “We Are the World?”

10:08: The confetti is falling. Amen.

TUESDAY: THE TOP 8 PERFORM

I’m on the eve of a week long vacation on a lake in New Hampshire (no shit, really, nature and everything!) and hence, beer drinking is in the cards for tonight. Tomorrow night I’ll be liveblogging American Idol Gives Back, which is sure to be a disaster of epic proportions. Mariah and Paula in one room? I’m just imagining a big Xanax vortex, like the end of “The Little Mermaid” when Ursula stirs up the big whirlpool.

But, so as not to leave you high and dry, a second round of American Idol haiku. See you tomorrow!

Jason Castro

You still make my heart
Go pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat.
(Maybe pit-a-POT.)

The thing about you:
I’ll never buy your record.
But a sex tape though…

David Cook

Okay, you’re not bald.
You just have a huge forehead.
Who’s the winner here?

Farewell, emo bangs.
Bet you’ve still got a secret
Stash of eyeliner.

David Archuleta

Oh David, David.
How are you not a Jonas?
Even an Olsen?

America needs
Six or seven more singing
Kids from your gene pool.

Syesha Mercado

Nope, still don’t care.
You seem like you’d have been kicked
Off ANTM.

Everyone gets two
Stupid haiku so here, miss.
That’s the second one.

Kristy Lee Cook

HOW ARE YOU STILL HERE?
This might be some serious
Voodoo shit, for real.

Better not cross you,
scary, black-magic-doing
Tennesee Barbie.

Carly Smithson

Simon hates your clothes.
Gotta say it, though, sister:
DELIA’S IS NO GOOD.

No more tunics! No!
Happens to the best of us,
But we’re stylist-less.

Brooke White

Last Wednesday you cried
As though a horse had been trained
In method acting.

Something about you
Is fishy. You’re too blonde…
…not to be a Nazi.

Michael Johns

I finally got it:
Universal Studios
Indiana Jones.

Like the guy who’d do
The lame stunt show twice a day.
That’s you bro. For real.