After Tuesday night’s performance, we’re gettin’ down to the short strokes on American Idol and one of the big, early favorites to win the whole thing is teetering on the brink of elimination. With two weeks to go before the big final event, Lakisha looks pretty shaky. So does Blake, but I wrote yesterday that he and Jordin would be in the final and I’m going to continue to will them there. So, Lakisha must go.

Lakisha has two singing volumes: loud and louder. Give her a tender ballad and she can’t resist the urge to shout it from the choir loft like a standout gospel soloist singing Gabriel Come Get Me or something. This lack of versatility—her annoying sameness—will ultimately doom her, whether it be this week or next.

Blake came up with a couple of pretty weird renditions on Tuesday. The Redhead called them original. I call them crap. Novelty acts are fun for a while, but Blake needs to reel in his instinct to beatbox everything up—at least until acknowledged stardom gives him the right to establish “weird” as the new mainstream. He ain’t gonna get there if he keeps up the Robbie the Robot stuttering sound effects.

I’m enjoying Melinda’s singing less now, because I’m seeing through to her core. She thinks she can win this thing by being a coolly professional technician. I think differently. Absent a recognizable, edgy personality, Melinda might just fall short. She’s a singing computer up there. She programs herself flawlessly and hits all the right notes, with the right crescendos and diminuendos, the right phrasing, and all the right moves. Only one thing is missing: emotion.

And thus, I continue to support Jordin as my favorite to win the whole damn kit and kaboodle. She’s fresh, she’s young, and she can sing. Unlike Melinda, she has a personality. She occasionally stretches beyond her capabilities but, unlike Blake, she doesn’t take that all the way to the lunatic fringe. And most of all, she’s likeable—the most likeable of all the finalist candidates. Last, but not least, she’s big—if she wasn’t so sweet, I’d be hoping for her to pick up that midget, Ryan Seacrest, and toss him into the audience mosh pit.

Come to think of it, I really don’t care if Blake is in the final, just as long as Jordin makes it. I really like that girl.

No, I’m not writing about UCLA, Florida, Ohio State, and who da hell was the fourth? Kansas? Anyhow, no, I’m writing about American Idol. Dear, dear mindless American Idol—the perfect vacuous escape from our accumulated angst associated with the great Paris Hilton sentencing debacle.

With that said, is anything I write here consequential to anybody or anything? Hell no! But it feels good just to vomit out this bile through my keyboard. It is at once purgative and just plain biliously pleasing. I love my bile. You see, I have no gall bladder to store it in, so it must be regurgitated through my computer in order not to accumulate internally. Get it? I thought you would! Read on for more incoherent ranting.

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