About Last Night: Thursday

Mini caps of American Idol, Top Chef, and America’s Next Top Model.

American Idol: IceQueen

Last night on American Idol the 13 remaining performers (I refuse to call them all singers) had to butcher songs from their personal idols. We learned that many of them are questionable in their idolatry (do you really want to publicly say that R. Kelly is your idol?), most are questionable in their taste in style, and JLo — judge on what might be the biggest show about music on the planet — doesn’t know who Ryan Adams is. I’m not particularly musically inclined, but even I know he’s that musician who’s married to Mandy Moore. What, you don’t know who Mandy Moore is?

The singtestants were coached by Interscope Records Chair Jimmy Iovine and his ragtag band of producers, who seem to be spending all of their royalties on hats, clothes that look like rags and bizarre haircuts. I guess it’s an art thing — and what do I know about that? I’m writing this from a cubicle and I have four spread sheets open under it.

Lauren Alaina’s up first and she’s singing Shania Twain’s “Any Man of Mine.” Great song if you like twang and ridiculous lyrics. Lauren pretty much butchers it, cries after the judges deem it mediocre and calls Ryan Seacrest “Peaches.”

Filthy Casey Abrams is doing Joe Cocker’s “With a Little Help From My Friends.” It’s spazztastic and growly and floppy and the judges love it. JLo gets her NYC on as she tells Casey she felt like she was “watching somebody impor’ant.” Relax, Rosie Perez.

Ashton Jones is doing Diana Ross’s “When You Tell Me You Love Me.” Very weird song choice, and while Ashton looks like Diva Diana, she sure don’t sound like her. JLo thinks she should pick more popular songs. Makes sense seeing as how this is a popular music competition. It’s not a pick-an-obscure-song-that-was-an-artist’s-pet-project-during-their-drug-phase competition. This is no place to be weird!

Speaking of weird… Paul McDonald is singing “Come Pick Me Up” by Ryan Adams. Another odd song choice followed by an odd performance. Paul is dressed like a member of the Confederate Army and throwing himself around the stage. After the judges say they enjoyed the performance (??) Seacrest tries doing the dance himself. IDK. It seems weird to do things on national TV that pretty much ensure you’re never going to get laid again.

Sparkly Pia Toscano is singing Celine Dion’s “All by Myself,” which is one of those songs that you don’t want to admit you listen to, but you belt it out in the car sometimes. Because your iPod’s on shuffle. And your sister downloaded anyway. Whatever. She does an acceptable job with it. Steven Tyler wishes her a happy International Women’s Day, because sure, why not?

James Durbin’s doing Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed.” He’s gotten his rattail cut off, is clean-shaven and seems pretty comfortable on stage. This is countered by his insistence on wearing a dangly crucifix earring and wallet chain. He does fine, but for some reason I have trouble watching him. Something about his eyes staring into the camera give me an uh-oh feeling.

Haley Reinhart is singing “Blue” by LeAnn Rimes and she has borrowed Taylor Swift’s hair for the performance. She does an impressive job on the yodeling parts of the song, but Randy said it made him sleepy.

Jacob Lusk is doing R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly,” the song that will never die and always needs a choir. The judges love his performance and I’m like, WTF judges?! Parts of it were admirable, but it was pretty painful. And all over the place — low, high, soft, loud, sharp.

Thea Megia says she’s going to be doing Michael Jackson’s “Smile.” One of the producers points out that it’s really a Charlie Chaplin song. Thea has no clue who that is. It starts out just fine, and then someone thought it would be a good idea to remix it, so it ended just… weird.

Stefano Langone is singing “Lately” by Stevie Wonder. This, too, has been remixed into something horrifying, but Stefano is nice to look at. When I look into his eyes… a different kind of uh-oh feeling.

Karen Rodriguez channels Selena to sing “I Could Fall in Love.” The judges think it lacked energy. I’d agree — the most interesting thing about her performance was her sparkly catsuit.

Scotty McCreery handles Garth Brooks’s “The River” pretty well. The judges like it because it stayed true to the original. This is a flip-flop on the times that they dislike songs that stay true to the original.

Finally, Naima Adedapo sings, dances and raps to a frenetic cover of Rihanna’s “Umbrella.” I think it gave my cat a seizure while we were watching and Naima nearly passed out. The judges helpfully suggest she get her breathing under control.

Who stays and who goes? I think Lauren, Ashton and James might be in trouble. America is a fickle beast, though, so we’ll see tonight!

Top Chef: J-Mo

Hey y’all, here we go with the Finals of Top Chef All Stars! We’re down in the Bahamas, which I’m sure sounds really great to those of you stuck in the Ass-End Of Winter… which just makes tonight’s show all the more tragic and unfortunate for some of the events that plague the chefs.

For starters, it’s obviously been a few weeks since that last awful tense Challenge where EVERYBODY did AMAZING and MAGICAL food, so there’s been a little downtime and some of the chefs have returned with new looks and new attitudes… in the former category we have BlazeHawk, who has FINALLY figured out that his stupid fuckhawk hair-doo-doo went out of fashion in 2004 so he’s actually looking a lot better as far as that’s concerned. On the downside, he’s trying to grow a goatee, but he’s got patchy facial hair, so he mostly just looks dirty and homeless (in fact, Beaker tries to toss some spare change in his coffee cup and skitter on by before she recognizes him). And then in the latter category, we have Sexist Pigshit, who has somehow managed to surpass all previous levels of assholishness and misogyny and take them to levels that had me wanting to set fire to my own house.

But first things first: a High Stakes QuickFire in which each of the chefs has to cook head-to-head against the winners of their respective seasons, which means we get to see Stephanie “Yoda” Izzard cook against BlazeHawk and LowFatSo, Hosea “Hoser” Rosenberg battling Beaker (The Hoserbag is also cultivating the chin-pubes and he’s REEEEEALLY bitter, so I’m guessing he’s done some internet reading, possibly of TVGasm.com), Michael “Li’l Volt” Voltaggio vs. Sexist Pigshit, and Kevin “JerseyMoobs” Sbraga (a.k.a. The Worst Top Chef Ever) goes up against ChesTiffany. They each have a Mystery Protein chosen by Daddy Tom. Winners get $10,000.00 each. The results of this QuickFire are actually quite gratifying in some cases, as certain people have their cocky asses handed to them (and a few others who wind up losers, well, it’s not such a surprise).

Then the Elimination Challenge comes along and here is where the episode starts to unravel for me. For one thing there is major misdirection going on at the hands of the Magical Elves, as they lead the chefs to believe they are going to cook for “royalty” of the Bahamas, but they don’t tell them it’s some cheesy annual Mardi-Gras-esque party fake-royalty title and the diners are actually just regular schmoes (or whatever the correct Bahamamamian word is for “poor people”). Also, the kitchen they are cooking in catches on fire (this was scary) and all their food winds up ruined so they are made to start over from scratch and make everything all over again. As a result, the dishes are nowhere near as spectacular as they were last week, and in fact, everyone’s food suffers. And I really can’t tell you much more than that at this point, you’ll have to check back for the recap (no spoilers in the comments please, especially this week) but if you want to hear what Flipit and I thought about the outcome, be sure to check out the PodGasm that will be going up in the next day or so, we discuss it at length, and I have a pretty new PodGasm sponsor!

America’s Next Top Model: P-Baby Walker

Tonight on America’s Next Top Model, our top 12 are subjected to the ever popular makeover session that leaves a third in tears, a third ready to let their inner slut fly, and the remaining third looking like Klingon children. (And you all thought I only watched reality trash. There are many levels to this P-Baby.) while the rest of us at home think, “Over my dead, decaying couch potato body would I let a Tyra Banks employee near my eyebrows.” So the inevitable meltdowns occur, ill-advised weaves get sewn to heads and it’s all par for the course. I think Mr. P-Baby sums it up best.

Brittani, post makeover confessional: “I didn’t cry and complain when my hair was getting chopped off.” Mr. P-Baby: “Yeah, well you probably should have.”

Can I just note that the descriptions for these makeovers are full of sexual innuendos AND appear to be written by 7 year olds, if that’s even possible. Example: Long, black, and straight. (If you didn’t zing a That’s What She Said, then you are dead to me.)

The photo shoot this week is styled by Lori Goldstein and while some of the ensembles feel a little Dr. Seussyish to me, I’m kinda digging it. These bitches still cry at the drop of a hat and Alexandria is
playing the game where she shits on everyone and everything. Can’t wait to see how that pans out for her, owner of fleshy lips and serial killer dead eyes. Check back in a few days for the full recap, to see if Molly’s hair actually falls off of her head in total scientific weave rejection, and to see who get’s the boot.

If you guys wanna check out the forum links for these shows, click their names! American Idol, Top Chef, America’s Next Top Model