We're entertainment, right? What do you got for us?

Driving home from rehearsals last night, it struck me that although we couldn’t watch Idol, Fosse and I could listen to it. On Fox. (shudder) My fingers trembled as I reached for the preset station, also known as The Last Resort, Only To Be Activated If There Are Ads On All Other Stations, TalkBack On JJJ And Nothing In The CD Player. Actively listen to that network? The network that foists both Kyle ‘Undisputed King Of What Constitutes Good Song Choice, I Mean You’ve Heard My Girlfriend’s Song Ooh Aah, Right?’ Sandilands and his vapid radio partner Jackie O It Hurts To Listen To The Inanities That Spew Forth From Her Mouth on us? (Having said that, I currently hate those two remarkably less than I really hate their replacement, the loudmouthed, crass and sexist fuckwit Lowie – ohhh, how I loathe thee Lowie and your particular brand of ‘entertaining’. . . )
My radio appeared to flinch as I pressed the button and although I swear I heard a metallic cry of protest from my speakers at the indignity, my conscious mind insisted I had just run over an old coke can in the street. And so we listened, as Lisa, Dean and Mutto performed, marvelling at how pure Lisa’s voice sounds when you’re not distracted by the shiftless wandering, wryly acknowledging that Dean – although still flat in places – wasn’t anywhere near as painful when you can’t see his cheesy grin and ‘pointy pointy’ moves and wincing as Mutto murdered two big notes at the end of his song, but also agreeing that he still sounded better than he has on previous occasions. Was it the stereo system in my car? The advantage of not being caught up on the visual? We jumped out of the car and raced inside to watch Lavina . . .

Lavina’s version of the Bee Gee’s ‘Too Much Heaven’ is lovely and restrained, I like that she doesn’t feel the need to smack us about the face with the glorynoting but that when she does, she absolutely belts the living hell out of it. Her key change is sublime. Lavina knows how to take someone’s song, their baby, and treat it with respect. The Bee Gee’s don’t oversing their songs, they make slow lyrical love to them, and she respects that by restraining herself, resisting the urge to overdo every single line, by choosing carefully where to let fly, where to let ‘Lavina’ into the song – it’s an extremely well walked tightrope. Mark absolutely adored it and compares her to Diana Ross but still holds back on the Touchdown. Marcia calls it simply beautiful. Kyle, who can’t pick on her singing, instead picks on her tatts. True, girlfriend has a lot of ink, but when you’ve been watching Dilana on RockStar Supernova for the last couple of months, it just becomes background. Lavina very succinctly stands up for herself verbally as her eyes flash a big old fuck off at him and she gives her boyfriend in the front row the nod to take Kyle outside and beat the living daylights out of him after the show. Now Lavina, I called dibs.

Chris jogs onto stage as the band breaks into the opening chords of the Eagles’ ‘Life In The Fast Lane’ and proceeds to have the time of his life. He rocks out completely, bounding around the stage like he’s performing at Wembley Stadium to a crowd of 150,000. He interacts with the band perfectly, like he’s been playing with them for years. And this is a really good song choice for his voice – love them or hate them, the Murphy boys know music. There’s a familiarity to the performance that has Fosse hypothesising that Chris plays this song with his own band all the time – I concur, he knows this shit backwards. He rightly gets thunderous applause at the end but Mark wants more of a ‘shock and awe’ campaign from him. Marica – diametrically opposed! Must not agree with Mark!! – thinks if he did any more he’d hurt himself on stage (which gets me thinking what the Idol OH&S situation is . . . would he get Worker’s Comp, because that would kind of be sweet . . . ) and Kyle just wants him to get rid of the ‘Jane Fonda’ poses because he thinks Chris is the most consistently great contestant. I had earlier remarked to Fosse that I thought Chris had actually lost weight since the show started so hell, if he IS Fonda-ing it up, let him, Kyle Fatty McShouldn’tThrowStones.

Rewind the tape . . . . and it’s Irish up first! Yay! And he’s singing Elton John’s ‘Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest I Can’t Believe He’s Doing ANOTHER Ballad Word’. His dancing is daggy as hell, but the arrangement is great and his singing is just so freaking bloody good that I forgive him the fortyseventh ballad in a row (next week is Disco – try and ballad that bitch out, Irish!!). He falsetto’s – as we have come to expect – and finishes with a nice little vocal flourish at the end and a sincere stare down the camera at me. I wave, with a girlish giggle. Mark is tired, oh so tired of the ballads and wants Irish to stop bringing the dork. Irish tells him to fuck off, nicely. Marcia rightly (oh, I hate that) states that Mark would have ‘dogged’ him anyway and tells him to just sing what he wants as long as he’s good at it. I hand Irish the phone book and the music to ‘Chopsticks’. Kyle berates him for giving a midday television performance and Irish takes his fuck off back from Mark and hands it to Kyle. What I like the most about having older contestants this year, is their ability to stand up for their decisions. Irish cites 1976 as a great year for births but not a great year for music and then headbutts Kyle into a coma. And all is good in the world . . .

Ricky is doing one of my least favourite Aussie tunes, Men At Work's ‘Down Under’ and his punishment is a naked baby photo Nirvana CD cover style. Heeeee, look at the teeny peenie (I am twelve years old). I have a HUGE grin on my face (NOT because of the photo, you pervs) the entire performance because seriously? Great. It’s a strange, but strangely awesome song choice and I’m starting to think its impossible for him to hit a bum note. He makes me like the song and his arrangement is choppy but it works. Marcia pot-kettles it, calling it strange and Mark rubbishes it, shrugging the performance off as nothing more than RSL quality, nothing compelling or interesting about it. They really don’t want him to win, do they? Kyle calls it the lamest song choice ever and Ricky takes up where Irish left off, defending his song choice, citing some mysterious list that only had a few songs on it that he knew – I suspect they’re given a list of pre-approved songs and he chose the one he knew so he wouldn’t forget the words or fuck it up. I’m down with that. Shut up Kyle.

Did Jessica’s puppy die? She’s lost her sparkle a bit tonight, it might be the song choice because both the Phil Collins and Brandy version of ‘Another Day In Paradise’ are dull dull dullsville, baby. I’m bored in about four seconds of this. Its also at least an octave too low for her and her voice gets lost at the end of almost every sentence and her usually infectious grin is remarkably out of place when she’s singing this particular song. Ohhh, Jessica baby. You’ve got me worried. Mark also queries if the song was out of her range and Jessica cops to a scratchy voice. Marcia thinks it was great but honestly, the contestants could sing the wrong song, in a different language, without their microphones turned on, with their backs to the audience and Marcia would tell them they were great, she really felt that and the bit when you spat blood on John Foreman and then sacrificed a baby, whilst copulating with a goat was awesome babysistergirlfriendsolongasyoufeelyoudidagoodjob. Kyle, who tonight has taken it upon himself to really drill them all about song choice, drills her about her song choice and does she think that was a ‘wow’ performance. Jessica confesses to not being able to do the ‘licks’ (read trilling and vocal gymnastics) but Kyle doesn’t care about the vocal issues, he just thinks it was shit.

Heeeeeeeeeeee’s baaaaaaaaacccccccckkkkkk. Bobby has chosen one of my favourite Bowie numbers, the classic collaboration with Queen ‘Under Pressure’ (Ice Ice Baby) and Bobby fucking makes my day, by coming out with raccoon eye makeup. The band of black and silver he has across his eyes is just so Bobby Freaking Stardust, I almost stand and applaud. This arrangement is very very very cool. His big notes are totally buff and he croons the rest Bobbystyle. It’s my favourite Bobby performance since Under The Milky Way, in fact, I like it more. Mark french kisses the arrangement and lays it down on a blanket under the stars to make sweet sweet love to it. Marcia enjoys The World Of Bobby, buy a two day pass, get one day free. I fast forward through Kyle because I’m sick of him already tonight.

Lisa makes me feel so old. Sigh. There is briefly banter between G & Mathieson about the possibility of a little MC Hammer but Lisa is doing Steve Miller Band’s ‘The Joker’ – which Fosse and I already know, having listened to it in the car. It sounded brilliant. She is looking less uncomfortable on stage these days and seems to enjoy the sheer ridiculousness of the lyrics of this song – seriously, what IS the ‘pompatous of love’? That isn’t even a word. She just chooses great songs. Her performing is still lacking something but she’s improved and she sounds great. Marcia congratulates her on her song choice. Mark was concerned but says she pulled it off admirably because she was having fun – this comment sends Fosse into a paroxysm of fury because Ricky’s level of fun having has been blatantly ignored, pushed aside and treated as unimportant and his performance was about 100% more fun to watch. Kyle bitches about her shoes and I la la la la la as he talks.

Cheesy Dean is cheesily singing that cheesetastic 80’s anthem by Bon Jo-cheese-vi, ‘Shot Through The Heart’ and he doesn’t fail to add a little gouda to it. When he Callea Points at the screen about three seconds into it, Fosse screams in pain and declares Dean Dead To Him. Every time he Callea Points at the screen (about eight times all up) Fosse twitches in pain, it’s hilarious. Dean’s singing is better than it has been in weeks, but there are still flat patches and when he tries to hold his notes, he wavers. He twists some more notes out of shape and finishes with a finger flourish Fosse freaking point and then blows kisses to the audience and gives someone the thumbs up. I put my head in my hands, you guys, he is JUST so painful to watch. Mark wants him to dirrrrrrty it up, Marcia loves his Godfearing self, and Kyle cracks me up by bringing up Dean’s virginity. To be fair, Dean made this part and parcel of his package, he uses his virginity as proof of his GodLove and whether its for real or just part of his endeavour to get the Guy Sebastian vote, it is public domain now. Kyle says he can be a virgin in the bedroom as much as he wants but that he needs to sex it up majorly on the stage. I pause the tape to go and have a shower.

Mutto is trying out his Steve Tyler by singing the Aerosmith biggie ‘Dream On’. He doesn’t have the power of Tylers cords. He has words written on the inside of his left palm and when he gets to the first chorus he looks down at his hand – lyrical crib notes? Cheating!! His voice wavers too much on the big notes for me to be happy with it, but it is still tons better than anything he’s done recently. He wins points for actively involving the audience and for getting out there amongst them but he loses massive points however, for CHEWING GUM WHILST HE’S SINGING. Ugh. Mark liked the show of experience and thought his use of the crowd was fantastic. Marcia says great about eight times in a row and Kyle loved his song choice but proceeds to pick on his hairdo, his facial hair and people who listen to JJJ. I run outside and change my car radio station back to Anything But Fox and do NOT hear a relieved sigh from my car. No siree.

So. To recap. Don’t have the first clue who is going tonight. By rights, the bottom three should definitely have Mutto and Dean in it, who although they were greatly improved over previous weeks, were still two of the weakest performers. Jessica should probably join them. And that pains me. Because I love the little cutie so very much. But Mutto’s fan base has kept him out of the bottom three on weaker performances, so he might actually still be okay. In which case, expect to see Ricky in the bottom three because people just don’t seem to have warmed to him. Or Lavina so don’t be surprised if you see her there as well. You shouldn’t see either of them, but the quality is so much better this year that ANYTHING could happen. But if Irish is bottom three I will get medieval on someone’s ass. Possibly my own for not voting. Dean is my tip to go, ergo he’s safe.

TallulahBelle out.

PS - today's title comes from Dog Day Afternoon, a film that wasn't released the year I was born, just in keeping with the majority of the perfomers not actually doing songs from the years they were born. But they were probably filming it the year I was born, therefore like Down Under and The Joker, that counts, right?