Theme, shmeme, lets call the whole thing off.

It's Disco Night! Or is it? Once again, our noble contestants take a running, leaping stab at hitting the theme and . . . well, they mostly kind of miss. And a pre-emptive warning. I love Irish. Shut up. No, really, shut UP. I don't care how bad you thought he was last night. I DON'T CARE. I love him, you can not shake me from my love for him and if I want to love him, I will. Go ahead, try and stop me, you will fail. YOU'RE NOT MY MOTHER.

ahem.

This week's Opening Performance I Won't Be Able To Remember By The End Of The Show Until They Recap, is Chris. He's singing Wild Cherry's 'Play That Funky Music' and . . .
Well . . .
I've . . .
Man.
I've just run out of ways to say : he sings well, he runs all over the stage, he brings out his Jack Black and he's pretty good. Because this is what he does every week and you know? I'm a little bored by it. This was probably one of the best performances of the night, he sang well, he used the stage he blah blah blah blah I'm BORED. The only thing of note was that Irish has lent him the group falsetto for the night and he avails himself of it admirably. So. Well played. See you next week. And do we really need to know what the judges thought? They'll say the same thing as well, Mark thought he was hot chizizzle (up the dosage Mark), Marcia gives him the Mutto excuse of singing through an illness (which we don't need to know thanks Marcia, he actually sounded exactly the same so we couldn't tell he was ill) and Kyle tells him he owns the show and (proving once and for all that the pulse his finger is on, is one set about five weeks behind everyone else on the planet) notes that the Jack Black thing is awesome.

Lavina has chosen The Emotions 'Best Of My Love', which is a personal favourite disco number of mine and which has also been used in at least three seperate Sandra Bullock film montages where she makes a fool of herself in front of the Hot Leading Man Of The Moment, before pratfalling, whilst learning something about herself and making him fall head over heels in love with her. Lavina has gone sleeveless again this week, in a big old Fuck You to Kyle. The tatts are on full display. She looks like she's having a hell of a lot of fun and sings it quite prettily, if not brilliantly. Her pitch is still flawless, she doesn't really break out any big notes but she still gets a good lengthy scream at the end from the crowd. Mark still hates that she's not Emily and has to take a moment, allowing Marcia to inanely prattle about how the song was made for her to sing and for Kyle to praise her voice and then harp on about styling issues again. Having composed himself, Mark then takes his turn and says he feels like he's repeating himself and she's not giving any emotion, not having any fun. I freeze the tape at the exact moment where her jawline becomes clenched. You can see her fighting the urge to roll her eyes at him in disbelief and ask him exactly what the hell he's talking about. I have no such qualms and yell at the television for a minute and a half.

Intense Ricky is back! Look! The eyebrows are furrowed, there's a tiny vein pulsing at the side of his temple! Its the crazy eyes!! Huzzah! Oh but his song is a little dull. Ouch. Kool and the Gang's 'Get Down On It' is a DULL snoozefest of a song, bland and repetitive, how I wish he had chosen something a little brighter. At least his singing is still extremely good and I don't know if you noticed, but his trousers were awesome. I begged for the cameras to pan around and give me a backview but alas, alack, they did not. Bastards. He asks me to get down on it and I nod at the tv that I would in fact, if so asked, get down on that. Mark freaking HATES this boy, Chanel/Marcia style, and calls it a long two minutes. But Marcia disagrees, calling it dynamite. Kyle subverts the world and rearranges the stars. He agrees with Mark, but - and this is the crucial bit - he actually tells Ricky what he needs to do in order to avoid being boring again by hooking the audience in within the first ten seconds. I hate hate hate it when Kyle is the voice of reason, but he's doing it more often than not this season. We call this frustrating.

Irish. My love. You are my heart. You represent the soul of this competition to me. I love every note that wistfully wings from your lips. Your beauteous celtic throat is a thing of wonder to me and I desperately want you to do ever so well. But, and my heart I mean this in the nicest possible way, you should never ever dance to disco music on stage, in front of people, actual living breathing people who are able to draw breath to laugh, ever ever again. Ever. I personally found it delightfully geeky and terribly British of you, but it is my understanding that others did not. That's why Mark was in the foetal position under the judge's desk when you had finished the Kylie Minogue version of 'Celebration', a woefully inadequate disco tune that I hope not to hear repeated anytime soon. Kyle calls it the worst thing on television ever and when Damian tries to defend that he was getting into the spirit of the theme, something not all the contestants did - BOBBY - he is shot down horribly. Mark hopes he won't be going because it will mean he'll have to listen to that song again. Marcia stands up for my boy saying that "at the best of times, all you can do is the best that you can do" and Mark denounces the stance, crying that if that's the best he can do then he should go. My darling delightful James throws their comments right back at Mark and Kyle telling them they're not watching enough tv if thats the worst and most bizarre thing they've seen and is beeped out by Channel Ten, I think, for referencing Dancing With The Stars . . .

And then in comes young Lisa, swooping in like a falcon from on high, to save my beloved Irish from having the worst performance of the night. Blondie's 'Heart of Glass' is an insouciant song, sung in the manner of a bored woman retelling her many tales of men who have disappointed her. It's high pitched, it's high strung, it's heightened and a little bit angry but mostly resigned. It is a mature song that should be sung by someone who has been betrayed in love many times and expects nothing less. It should not be sung by a sixteen year old who probably only recently felt that betrayal for the first time upon the realisation that Orlando Bloom was not in fact a silver haired, pointy eared elflord but was instead a skinny, kind of funny looking, appallingly bad actor. She is ridiculously flat, she misses a giant chunk of the second verse and the song is at least two octaves lower than it should be. It is much much worse than Irish's daggy dancing. Mark and Marcia practically claw each others eyes out arguing about Lisa and then Marcia - oh Marcia! - brings up Lisa's age and asks Mark to bear that in mind. I resist the urge, as I often do, to scream to the heavens about age restrictions and maturity levels and how NOT EVERYONE CAN BE JESSICA, MOST OF THE TIME THEY'RE CASEY and sixteen is too too young. Kyle thinks Lisa looks like she's being forced to perform by a stage mother and says if she makes it to next week - the famed guitar week - then she had better be fucking brilliant. I hope she goes, please, I'm asking for HER, let her go.

Fosse and I heard Dean's performance of Vicki Sue Robinson's 'Turn The Beat Around' in the car and he astounded us by actually sounding good. I was hoping that when we saw it, we'd see that he'd come out Peter Allen style in a slit to the navel jumpsuit with sequins, holding maracca's. Dean sounds the best he's sounded and backflips off the stage, which gets a wow from me, but Fosse shrugs it off, dryly noting that Dean didn't do the backflip, God did. I laugh so hard, the coffee I had an hour ago almost spurts out of my nose. He pops another one towards the end and the screaming fangirlies go out of their freaking gourds for forty seven seconds - I timed it. Mark just loves that Dean listens and learns because Mark so very desperately wants him to win. Marcia and Dean have formed a little mutual admiration society and just thank each other back and forth, whereas Kyle, who hated the song choice, loved the perfomance. Mathieson notes that in four years of Idol, no one has ever backflipped and I pause the tape to turn to Fosse and screech that in fact, Marcia backflipped on Chanel, thank you very fucking much.

Bobby has stripped all the disco from Rick James' 'Superfreak'. It's like he carjacked it at an intersection and he's going to sell it back to us and is just hoping we don't notice what he's done. I make vague muttering noises at the screen about having seen this all before and Boner calls him one dimensional. Don't get us wrong, we all acknowledge that he is a new and interesting talent and deserves to have some kind of career, but we're getting bored of seeing it on Idol. It's exactly the same problem I'm having with Chris. They're great singers and performers but so one note. Meh. All the judges rave about the arrangement so the audience at home realises how freaking brilliant Bobby is, yeah yeah, we get it. Kyle backhands all the other contestants who tried and failed to STICK TO THE THEME. Mark raves about how Bobby turns the genre upside down each week, making it sound as though if the others did what Bobby did that they'd get the same kudos. I call shenanigans and also bullshit on that remark, because the other contestants would get eaten fucking alive if they did that. And then he gives him a touchdown. My hands are up in the air, my forehead is creased and you are giving me WRINKLES, Holden. I'm ridiculously unimpressed but content to be on my own on this one.

Jess proves herself to be head and shoulders above the rest, once again, performing Donna Summer's 'On The Radio' with aplomb. She even has 70's disco Countdown hair, flat to the middle and curly at the bottom. In stark contrast to Bobby, Jessica is not afraid to stick to the theme, showing her amazing versatility. She rocked rock week, her number one song and incredibly deserved touchdown was amazingly good and she has picked great songs (Pussycat Dolls hate aside) pretty much every other time, she only sucked last week when she was ill. She has fairly consistently knocked it out of the motherfucking park. Her singing still has a slight strain to it - I hope she's not doing any damage to her cords - but they are still stabs at greatness. Her notes are almost all pitch perfect and only a little shaky in bits. She is great, she is mixing it up, she is an absolute contender for the top spot. Mark liked the key and that she's always got great pitch, but that she needs to let loose her tiger. She has a tiger? Man, they have really lax pet laws in the Northern Territory. She should bring that kitty to the show and let it loose in Mark's dressing room. Marcia thinks Jessica has one of the finest voices she's heard and Kyle notes she came from a sad looking bush frump (but a sad looking bush frump with a TIGER, Kyle!!) to someone who can potentially sell a lot of CDs internationally. Awww, I think it is SO sweet that they still think someone from Australian Idol will be an international star. So deluded, yet so much fun.

So who's going? Come on, you know I'm no good at this. I've picked Lisa based on a truly woeful performance but I will literally be gobsmacked if she goes. If Irish goes, I'll go into a week of mourning and wear nothing but black. Hey, it could be anyone, but I would like to see a bottom three of Lisa, Chris and Irish, with Bobby as my reserve, only because those three boys have never been bottom three and well, they need to know that their schtick is getting old and they need to mix it up. But no more dancing Irish, yeah? Promise? Thanks.

TallulahBelle out.

(And Irish? Start visiting the TWoP boards. You would have seen my request for you to sing the Scissor Sisters song 'Don't Feel Like Dancing', which would have suited your falsetto down to a freaking tee and also? Song about not dancing. Do you see where I'm going with this?)

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?

Un, eins, I, um, one.

Ahhh, le sigh. Due to the new play I’ve just started (no please, hold your applause, I do it for The Art, for The Love Of Performing, I am merely a humble player in the tapestry of community theatre, a puppet of the muse Dionysius . . . ) and the first readthrough we had last night, Idol this week was viewed via remote control; ie when I wanted to listen to the boys interview the singers post judgement, Fosse would poke me in the back and urge me to fast forward through to the next song because he had to get up early. Pffft. So I didn’t hear any of what might have been pearls of wisdom from my boys and I only vaguely registered that the contestants were receiving some kind of ‘choreography’ lessons, which appeared to hinder the Idols much more than they helped.

To begin. Klancie looks like a sausage in a black wraparound dress. (Bad dressing will be a recurring theme tonight, it's as if the stylist guy from last week took the night off, ringing in only to ensure that Jessica wore what might be described as the perfect Fuck Off Kyle Dress – but we’ll get to that later) Klancie flounces around the stage, gyrating to Shania Twain’s ‘If You’re Not In It For Love (This Title Is Too Long)’ in a manner that makes me uncomfortable, and from the look on her face, her too. Its just same old same old with Klancie. There are many pitchy breathy bits and she just doesn’t know what to do with her hands. It is karaoke, plain and simple. Klancie reminds me of that scene in Bridget Jones where Bridget sings at her Christmas party completely off her scone. She’s still having a ball, but I’m just over her. She has the weakest female voice in the competition and I really don’t want to listen to her anymore, sorry. Mark calls her an undercooked snag – hah! See, she does look like a sausage – and daggy. Marcia blah blah fine blah girlfriend blah. Kyle thinks she’s sexy and vocally great. Is he wearing beer goggles? And . . . beer hearing aids??

Irish is singing Ronan Garth Keating Brook’s ‘If Tomorrow Never Comes’. He starts off sitting at the front of the stage . . . and that’s all I wrote until he was finished because I? Was. Fucking. Transfixed. That was just an amazing performance, so incredibly well sung, with the trademark falsetto that he has basically taken and hidden somewhere in the house so none of the other guys can play with it. He was just soooooooo good and – lets face it – sexy. Yep, I said it. The Irishman with the big scary teeth (my kryptonite, bad teeth) is sexy. Seriously. I turned to Fosse and new housemate Boner (name authorisation pending subject approval) when he had finished and told them that I had never actually felt my ovaries before. All the judges love him. Well, duh.

Sigh. The moment I’ve been waiting for arrives. Lavina performs, and I hate it. Granted, I don’t hate it like I hated every fucking thing her sister did, but her version of Thelma Houston’s disco classic ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’? Kind of makes me want to Leave Her That Way. She starts off really weakly in the lower register, which Boner attributes to the tights she’s wearing – I confess, until he mentions them I hadn’t noticed them but by all that is holy on this earth, they are HIDEOUS. They look like they’re cutting off the circulation to her . . . EVERYTHING. Blame the leggings!! They’re sucking all Lavina’s vitality away! Even the big powerful shouty bit of this song that Lavina should rock righteously? Is not big, powerful, shouty or righteous. Instead the whole thing is dry, dull and derivative. I’m really disappointed because I still want to like her. Mark wants to give her a touchdown – because, hey, he’d have given her sister one if she’d come on stage and belched the national anthem – but he doesn’t think she’s there yet. Marcia babbles about light and shade and calls it bad. Why, yes, Marcia, it was bad! Well done! Oh. You mean ‘bad’. As in ‘phat’. No. Kyle thinks she still needs to connect with the audience and I agree, there was no warmth to that, there were shades of Emily The Coldly Anointed One about it. Shudder.

Chris is singing one of the few Phil Collins songs I can get down with, ‘Against All Odds’ but tonight, once again, another Idol fails to live up to previous performance greatness. It’s like he’s a four cylinder Commodore and he’s only firing on two (I’m sorry, Boner keeps talking about cars and it’s sinking in). It’s bland as hell, if hell is wall to wall beige, a balmy 34 degrees, and populated with carpet salesman discussing whether Nicole Kidman is more like Naomi Watts or vice versa. His voice really suits this song but he’s just not punching out any of the big notes or making it remotely interesting to listen to. Marcia thinks it was all that, but Mark says he came off a little uncomfortable. Marcia – aware that she hasn’t given her ‘opinion’ in two seconds – butts in to disagree and ask Chris if he was uncomfortable. Marcia, you can’t fucking rebut everyone’s comments when you disagree, this isn’t a debate. Oh, and shut up. Kyle rightly calls it lame. I mentally high five him and then beat him around the head with a baseball bat for his comments to Jess last week.

Woah. Dean is SO flat at the start of the Goo Goo Dolls song ‘Iris’, he needs a key change, STAT. Not that the audience can tell he’s flat because the teenage girls are screaming so incredibly loudly for him. I drift off to wonder if I was that blindly stupid when I was a teenager and remember my crush on the phenomenally untalented Richard Grieco. Ahem. Moving on. The chorus is much better, but still a little flat. And I am aghast at the continual Beatles-esque screaming going on. Someone down the front makes the rock devils horns sign at him and I wait expectantly for Dean to leap into the audience, all Christian saviour in gleaming white lights, flicking holy water and chanting ‘the power of Christ compels you’. Sadly, he does not. Mark is just so desperate for Dean to win that he actually compliments the singing. For real? Jeez. Kyle babbles about Dean’s flaws and how he listens to the judges and the coaches and I just don’t like this guy. He’s cheese! And not good cheese, no, he’s the watered down 50% fat free stuff that has no bite that you have to have instead of the real stuff when you're on a diet because you need to keep up your calcium intake. I may be currently trying to eat well and be a little obsessed with food. Moving on!

I’d like to blame the choreographers for the pose-y ness of tonights show, but we’ve seen this schtick from Mutto before so they get a pass on the blame here. His Hoobastank’s ‘The Reason’ Hoobastinks. He starts off okay but then goes waaaaaaaaaaay off the note and stays there. The bigger notes are better because he pops some power behind them but his softly softly voice is really lacking any strength at all. And for the second week in a row he throws in a superfluous ‘oh my Lord’ into the lyrics. God. Well, actually . . . exactly. Mark tells him he’s flatlining and is in trouble, which gets a ‘hell yeah’ from me. Marcia takes her favourite position – diametrically opposing whatever the hell Mark says – and thinks he’s stepped it up this week and then blames the poor singing on some throat illness that he’s been carrying for a few weeks (so . . . he has stepped it up but sang badly? Make SENSE, woman!) and Mark interrupts to ask if she’s going to continue using that excuse for Mutto every week. Marcia has the barefaced fucking audacity to be pissed off that Mark is interrupting her. Kyle has no time for either of them except to agree with Mark that Mutto needs to perform better to continue winning fans.

As far as I’m concerned they should just crown Irish and Jessica the final two and stop this charade right now. Her rendition of La Aguilera’s ‘Beautiful’ is and I’m sorry but it needs to be said, beautiful. This is an awesome song choice in light of the Kyle Incident last week and I take a brief opp to explain to Fosse and Boner that the Idols in fact chose the song they’re doing tonight, ten days before, so pre-Incident. She looks amazing in a gorgeous white sheath-y dress thing (Sweater Girl could describe it better, I don’t know shit about clothes suffice it to say, she looks great and I fucking LOVE that she’s wearing white again, up yours Kyle). She RIPS the glory note and is just astoundingly good. The crowd screams for about a minute and a half when she’s finished and Marcia has to say her name a couple of times before they calm down enough for her to talk inanely at us. Marks howls at her and gets the crowd on their feet as he delivers the most thoroughly deserved touchdown I’ve seen in almost a season and a half. Kyle harshes my buzz by crapping on about the hard week he’s had defending his stance and his bullshit opinions. I yell at the tv that he’s a grown man who makes his living by being controversial, whereas Jessica is a seventeen year old in a singing competition. Jessica just giggles and bounces back to the boys who are obviously SMITTEN with the little cutie. As am I. In a nonsexual way, you perves.

Bobby is singing the theme from the movie Arthur. I have to type that again. BOBBY IS SINGING THE THEME FROM ARTHUR. I heard this on Thursday and have literally just stopped laughing. This is a song that I can’t hear without immediately flashing back to the episode of Will & Grace where Jack sings the line ‘when you get caught between the moon and New York City’ whilst holding cardboard cutouts of the moon and New York City. Sean Hayes cracks me up. And Bobby? Is no Sean Hayes. I wish he’d Just Jack this up a bit actually, cabaret it a touch. GIVE IT SOMETHING. His voice drops in and out as though he’s trying to mask the fact that he’s forgotten the lyrics – UNFORGIVEABLE – and some of the notes are truly . . . bad. Fosse writhes in pain on the couch behind me and dubs it the Worst Performance He’s Ever Seen On Idol. I don’t think its that bad, but it IS pretty bad. I mean, Werewolves Of London was weird and out of place on rock night but at least it was well done. This is severely undercooked. Mark bemusedly notes that the phrasing was weak and the arrangement, bland. Even Marcia is taken aback and gets all mother-y, wanting to know what’s wrong and Bobby confesses to getting a little lost. Kyle queries if he lost some of the words as well and when Bobby nods, I jump up and down and point out in my notes where I wrote that then realise that Kyle and I were thinking along the same lines which makes me bash my head repeatedly on the coffee table. They basically all jump to make excuses for him and let him off for the shellacking he truly deserves for choosing such an inappropriate song. Once again, Bobby gets a Get Out Of Jail Free card. I suspect bribery . . .

Ricky’s choice of Chicago’s ‘Hard To Say I’m Sorry’ is further proof he is listening to the judges and moving way away from RnB. He sings extremely well again, even sneakily throwing in some RnB melisima, but as good as it is, on a night when Jessica and Irish have basically thrown down gauntlets to the rest with great performances, he errs on the side of good but not great. Marcia loves puppies, icecream and all the stars in the skies or some such nonsense. Mark calls it ambitious and doesn’t think he pulled it off, calling it out of his league. Kyle started off hating it but Ricky won him over from the middle – he blathers on some more about people losing interest quickly but I quickly lost interest and stopped listening.

Great song choice by Lisa continues with Vanessa Carlton’s ‘A Thousand Miles’. Seriously, what an awesome fucking song for her to choose. We are predisposed to expect a little girl lilt when this is sung and Lisa doesn’t disappoint us. She’s wisely perched upon a stool again – it makes her guitar-less state less obvious – and she’s actually connecting with the audience. There are a couple of flat notes but on the whole, this is my favourite Lisa performance since her audition. Mark reminds us that she’s only sixteen and blah blah criticised blah risen to the top blah well done. Marcia loves it. Whatever. Kyle asks her to compare her performance to last weeks shocker and surprisingly she thinks she did better. Shocking, I know.

It is a total crapshoot as to who is going home in just over an hour. My money is on Mutto to go, with the rest of the bottom three made up of almost any of the others – except Irish and Jessica. And probably I would count Lisa as safe and Ricky should be as well. But any of Lavina, Chris, Klancie, Dean and Bobby may taste their first trip to Bottom Threeville. I’d love to see Dean or Klancie go but I think their fanbase of, respectively, screaming fourteen year olds and . . . hell, I actually don’t know who keeps voting for Klancie but they seem to like her and I think they'll keep her safe for another night.


TallulahBelle out.

Rock, a bye. Baby.

Sitting down to Idol Round Two : Rock at Chez Belle, my guests and I make some early (and in retrospect, hasty) predictions. It is generally agreed upon that both Mutto and Chris should romp this one in and coast through to the next round but that it all hinges on their song choice, that if Klancie isn’t singing Black Velvet we shall wash our hands of her; and Gracie all but promises to stomp her feet in a little Irish jiggy hissy fit if there is any U2 this week. These points are agreed to in an Algonquin Round Table kind of way – ie with much nodding, murmuring and the occasionally bitchy and scathing bon mot as I get my Dorothy Parker on . . .

First gelled and plucked cab off the rank is Ricky who has left RnB at the five and dime and is yelling Franz Ferdinand’s ‘Take Me Out’ at us. The crowd goes freaking nutso for him, but there’s not a hell of a lot of actual singing going on. He still gets mad props for actually sticking to the theme but his nostrils are like some ever growing creature, threatening to take over the world. Seriously, he flared those damn things so much towards the end of his song that Idol lost a microphone stand, a spotlight and three members of the live audience. Luckily G had thought ahead and tied a rope around Mathieson’s waist so he could find his way back for the post song interview. Mark raves about rock suiting Ricky more than RnB and we all ignore him, its for the best.

Lisa continues to front with great song choice that she can’t back up with great delivery. Tonight, the mouse that squeaked looks hunched while singing The Donna’s version of Billy Idol’s ‘Dancing With Myself’. Yo. The Donna’s are some seriously bad ass rocking chicks and this? Lisa’s version of their song belongs on the soundtrack to a teen romance flick loosely based on something Shakespeare wrote. It isn’t bad, the song kind of suits her strange voice, but it is so seriously lacklustre and ONCE AGAIN she is wandering all the hell over the stage. It gets better at the end but she’s still basically aimless and almost totally lacking in charisma. Mark and Marcia get into a big ol’ cat fight about Lisa’s lack of energy and point. Mark bemoans her lack of experience and I almost pass out in an angry red haze as I scream at him for putting a 16 year old with no experience through to this point. Kyle jumps in and bitches about her lack of stagecraft and connection with the audience and Marcia, who quite plainly at this point can’t allow the guys to say anything without nonsensically disagreeing with it, jumps in to defend Lisa. I happily Shut Up Marcia at her.

There were a couple of really great performances of Coldplay’s ‘Clocks’ on Rockstar Supernova this season. Mutto’s version, who pulls some rock ninja poses whilst he sings, is nowhere near as good. He has Falsetto Envy. The crowd looks bored. The audience in my living room looks bored. Mutto gets even more pose-y towards the end and then gives the camera some serious serial killer eyes that make all the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Marcia tells us he’s sick, hence the disappearing falsetto and Shaneequa mutters that she makes excuses for her favourites. Kyle continues to be the voice of reason and notes that the naff choreography has to go. Mutto earns our love and gets a pass for the so-so performance when he stands up to Mark on Little Lisa’s behalf.

Klancie ruins my night with Georgia Satellite’s ‘Keep Your Hands To Yourself’. This was potentially an awesome song choice for her, its country rock and it gives her the opportunity to let rip a great country yodel but she backs away from it and misses all the really good notes. She makes it hard on me by having such a freaking good time, but I am just not sold on her voice - or her hair, Euph notes that they’ve given her the Cosima Fringe from season one – her voice is just not strong enough. None of the judges see fit to comment on her singing, it’s all about her look and the whole bullshit country/western thing. Do they really really REALLY think Klancie will sell records? Really? My least favourite performance of the night.

Okay, so we’ve already worked out that Bobby? Is a littttttle strange. We obviously haven’t given him nearly enough points on the Ripley’s Believe It or Not scale, because he is daring us to take him remotely seriously with his bizarre take on what constitutes Rock. Warren Zevon’s easy listening staple hit, ‘Werewolves of London’. I was in the kitchen when they read out what he was singing and my ‘WHAT???’ could be heard all the way down my street. The original of this song? Not rock. This version? Not rock. He renders the song almost unrecognisable. Sings it well, don’t get me wrong, but what the fuck? The judges all freaking adore him and don’t appear to notice that he’s performed the same song three weeks in a row, and that oh, by the way, that one? Not ROCK. I’m pretty sure that if Ricky had paid no attention to the theme and sung a rock song RnB style, he’d have been SLAUGHTERED. Ritually sacrificed on the altar of You Will Follow The Theme. Bobby has been given some kind of get out of jail free card with the judges. Fosse just wants to know if Bobby has more hair than he did last week . . .

Oh Reigan. Oh sweetie. I admire greatly that you chose to do such a JJJ alternative rock song like Karnivool’s ‘Themata’ but we need to talk. Do you actually want to be in this competition? Because you are practically begging to be thrown out. The tweenies are going to hate you so very much. Next to Ricky, Reigan is the only other contestant who steps out of their comfort zone and avails herself nicely, if slightly pitch-i-ly. Until she gets to the last note. Oh dear. Words fail me as to how bad it is. She’s trying to show off her soprano but she cracks and miffs it completely. The judges just don’t like her very much, Mark tells her she didn’t nail it at all and Kyle tells her how stupid her song choice is and calls her mental. I suspect she should already have her bags packed.

Irish sings Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ not as well as Lukas did on Rockstar, but its still pretty damn fine, if not a little bit too damn pretty. He’s unfortunately had to speed up the start which rips a lot of the feel away from the song. The falsetto is a tad shaky but the glory note is fucking awesome and the end is pure Chris Isaak. Mark criticises Irish’s need to elongate and hold every note and I reluctantly agree. Marcia continues her grand tradition of disagreeing with Mark just for the pure sake of it and disagrees with Mark. Kyle then picks on Irish’s dress sense which prompts a riposte from Mark and the pithy banter that ensues between the two is worthy of the writers of Frasier. Oh hang on, no, not Frasier, whats that show I’m thinking of? Oh yes, Married With Children. Sophisticated humour at its best, brava boys. Idiots.

Jessica continues to show us how unbearably cute she is and what an awesome set of pipes she has by laying out Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Walk Away’, a move that initially had my head in my hands because that is a hard song to sing, but Jessica nails it to the freaking wall. When she hits the big KC note in the middle she gets a ridiculously pleased look on her face, she’s Cheshire Cat happy and tremendously hard not to like. It’s an extremely joyous performance and (along with Klancie and Chris) Jessica is having the fucking time of her life up on that stage. Kyle discards any and all brownie points he may have earned with me by saying that although he loved her singing and the performance that he doesn’t want to “see the jelly belly in the white singlet” again. There is a millisecond of quiet from an audience that can’t believe what the FUCK they just heard, before they go batshit crazy, screaming out how beautiful she is and James and G practically leap off the stage and gut Kyle where he sits, spitting at him that she’s only sixteen (she is, in fact, seventeen but that is SO very beside the point) and G tells Kyle “you can talk chubscout”. I fucking heart both of them and think Kyle should check his brakes before he drives anywhere. I sincerely hope she is able to forget he said that and that Jessica didn’t go to sleep last night with that fuckwit’s words replaying over and over in her head because that way lies an eating disorder and she is quite frankly adorable. But you can see on her face that she’s gone from the amazing high of her performance to the incredible low of wondering how fat she looks on tv and vowing not to eat for the next week. I loathe Kyle more than I’ve ever loathed him before. Congratulations asshole, you’re back on my shit list.

We quickly move on to Chris, who Gracie immediately dubs ‘Nacho Libre’ in honour of his ever so spot on resemblance to Jack Black. He’s performing The Darkness’ ‘Is It Just Me’ and its fucking hilarious. He is SO 70’s shaggy rocker that it will physically hurt me if he doesn’t sing Sherbert’s ‘Howzat’ when it comes to Australian night. I don’t know this particular Darkness tune but it is so perfect for his voice, a nice mix of rock and falsetto and the facial expressions are priceless. He’s ace. I think so and so do the judges. Kyle says nothing about Chris being a little heavyset but the boys bring it up. You can still see Andrew G seething.

I’m having Lavina put on suicide watch, because she’s SINGING EVANESCENCE. Doesn’t she read my blog? Doesn’t she know that she shouldn’t ever do that? She comes out and stands before the microphone with her hoodie pulled up (someone’s seen Dilana’s performance of Lithium on Rockstar) and she soprano’s the first bit before ripping the hoodie down and snarling the rest and is fucking brilliant. She comes to the edge of the stage and . . . it’s like she’s summoning the dark forces to come do her bidding by infusing with magic these monkeys she has given wings to so they can go pick up this young girl in gingham who dropped a house on her sister and stole her ruby red slippers. Damn. That is all I have to say. DAMN. Marcia and Kyle loved her, but Mark is so eaten up with hate and bile that her sister didn’t win last year – you can see it bubbling up inside him, it sits there, just at his larynx - that he can’t see past it.

Dean then proceeds to completely phone in the last performance of the night - seriously, he’s sitting in his dressing room with his mobile talking to his nanna - by singing Fuel’s ‘Shimmer’, a staple of every cover band that ever played a gig since this song was released. The cheese quotient is once again, fairly high. I don’t get the hysterical girly screams about this guy. Scary eyebrows aside, I think Ricky is the prettier of the two, even if my own personal tastes run more to Irish. Mark and Kyle actually call him out on the bland-y McBland performance and he stupidly owns up to not having a strong voice! Stupid stupid move! Marcia adores him, yeah, he’s young, cute and a Christian – of course she loves him.

All in all, a much better rock year than last years. Top three were Jessica, Lavina and a tie between Chris and Irish. I would assume bottom three to be Reigan, Lisa and maybe Mutto or Klancie, with Reigan my tip to go. Now excuse me, I have to go write some hate mail to Sandilands, the tubby fucker.

TallulahBelle out.

Further proof The Clooney reads my blog

Game, set and match.

The Doctor just didn't stand a chance against you . . .

Dumbass things I do that prove I'm not as smart as I think I am.

Example One : Watching tv at the gym after six pm when the fast food companies inundate the commercial breaks with ads for their new, improved burger/pizza/chicken flavoured goodness which make me think "I'm working out, I had a salad for lunch, I do deserve the new BBQ Outback Ribs from Pizza Hut for a limited time only" and then scheme Machiavellian-like to accidently have to pass that particular drive-through restaurant on the way home from said health emporium, thereby negating any and all hard work I may or may not have done.

Example Two : Inwardly mocking the man standing studying the tinned tuna who is muttering to himself about which one to get, for talking to himself and then getting to the toilet paper and audibly swearing and then muttering to myself because the brand I like isn't there and getting caught by the same guy I was mocking a mere three minutes earlier.

Example Three : Studiously avoiding all spoilers about who has won the current season of Survivor/Amazing Race/America's Next Top Model/Project Runway before it airs here and then logging on to CNN or TWoP and seeing who has won the current season of Survivor/Amazing Race/America's Next Top Model/Project Runway before it airs here. Thanks be to the gods that CNN apparently doesn't care about the season finale of Rockstar Supernova which airs tonight on Foxtel at eight thirty but which has already aired in the US . . . although if Toby Rand (the Aussie) has won, it will probably be all over the news while I'm at the gym.

I need a reason?

No. No, I don't. Enjoy the pretty, kids.

Cheaper by the Dozen

Here we go kids, get your hate on, it’s my favourite time of the year, it's TallulahBelle’s Christmas, Chanukah and Ramadan all rolled into one brilliant mess, it's two sixpacks, it's twelve drummers drumming, it's the dirty dozen - IT’S TOP TWELVE, BABY!!

We are given a swooping birds eye view of the New and Improved ™ set, which vaguely resembles the Countdown set circa 1983. The lovely Eupholoofo drops into Chez Belle simply to remark that it looks like a shopping mall and there’s a talent show going on in the downstairs foodcourt. I think it looks like a fire hazard and also a little rickety. Our concern for the dwellers on the top floor of the scaffolding turns to hilarity when we notice that the girls who drove down from QLD to support Klancie Keough, have nonetheless managed to spell her name completely incorrectly. Kudo’s to them, however, for resisting the urge to run their hands up and down G’s arms – he is wearing a plush, red velvet coat – and I would totally get served with a restraining order if he wore that thing around me. Our first look at the Idol’s prior to their performance, shows us that Lavina Williams (who is bravely soldiering on in the face of media coverage of an alleged incident regarding maryjane-d baked goods – marijuana muffins, baked goods to get you baked! Lavina, if you want to use that slogan for the ad campaign, call me!!) has tragically opted to wear a jaunty hat with absolutely no indication that she is doing it ironically, Huggy Bear style.

(I sidebar to advise I will not be discussing at any length the latest appalling attempt by Idol to Get Your Money Any Way They Can – 199 JUDGE. I quite simply refuse. To discuss would lend credence.)

Dean “Mainland Cheddar” Geyer is up first and is crooning Teddy Geiger’s “For You I Will”. Yes, he’s pretty and his eyes are fairly damn stunning but he is just so terribly terribly cheesy. Luckily for him, fifteen year old girls don’t have a sense of cheesy – otherwise Young Talent Time wouldn’t have gone on for so long and DeadtomeOnetrickpony Harding wouldn’t currently have a career. The band overpowers him slightly and he gets pitchy here and there but I am giving everyone a little leeway tonight because of the nerves factor and because I am feeling magnanimous. He’s not going anywhere if the screaming girlies are any indication and as Marcia says he lights up the stage, although when he blows a kiss down the camera I am literally gobsmacked at the high level of cheese and immediately develop fullblown lactose intolerance.

I can’t stand Richard Marx. I spent 1989 loathing his album because my sister played it nonfuckingstop and it drove me batshit crazy. I had to say that so you would understand exactly how much I did not enjoy Joseph Gatehau’s rendition of “Right Here Waiting”. He takes a really bland song and blands it up. Blandly. With a side of bland fries. I cut him some slack because he’s only seventeen, but the nerves are eating this boy up from the inside out. His voice, so lovely in the initial audition process, has been shredded by the Idol Journey™ (to the point where, late last week there was talk of him being forced to pull a Cosima) and his vocals are pitchy, his phrasing is messy and he’s a big puddle of I Don’t Know What I’m Doing.

Jessica Mauboy makes me really really sad by singing a Pussycat Doll’s song “Stick Wit You”. I hate the PD’s for two reasons. Firstly, that god awful “Don’t Cha” which epitomises everything I hate about skank music – the lyrics are appalling and I’m sorry, but if you asked MY boyfriend if he wished his girlfriend was hot like you? You’d get my boot heel in your thorax whilst I explained how feminism and the principles of the sisterhood worked, before I picked you up and took you to a halfway house because in your ripped tshirt and too small short shorts you’re obviously homeless and got your clothes from the Good Sammies bin, right? And eat something. Secondly, Don’t Cha and Stick Wit You?? Don’t You and Stick With You, it is BASIC GRAMMAR PEOPLE. They offend the English Teacher in me, they offend the woman in me, they offend the human. They are a skanky stain, a remarkably untalented blight on the musical horizon. I blame their parents. I blame Paris Hilton. I blame Bratz dolls. Moving on. Jessica starts off pitchy (almost everytime I cite pitchy-ness tonight, I think it’s actually more nerves because it affects the younger, less seasoned performers a lot more than it affects the older ones) and it would appear to shatter her confidence - to an extent. She looks concerned but picks up her funk and is kicking it by the end. Mark thinks she picked an age appropriate song and in my head I scream about padded bra’s for six year olds and shut up Mark.

Irish is sticking to his roots and rolls out U2’s “With or Without You”. His lower register is nothing to write home about but his upper is heavensent and he rocks out a bit. There are a couple of belt-y moments, which make me smile happily because he is being ridiculously awesome. Excuse me whilst I direct quote the lovely Euph once more : “That was it, shit and a bit”. Mark wishes he’d put an irish spin on it. Mark? He’s irish. He’s singing a classic rock song from a classic Irish band. Should Damien wear all green, bring out a leprechaun and do a jig? Shut UP Mark, honestly. The lovely Andrew G channels me and asks Mark if he wants Irish to come out each week and sing holding a pint of Kilkenny? I squee with delight at my boy. Everyone else in the room rolls their eyes at me.

Craig David comes out looking a lot like Ricky Muscat and sings his hit “Walking Away”. Ricky’s eyebrows are once again set to Determined : Factor Five. He is SO pissed he had to take a judge’s Wildcard and he will SHOW you, home viewer, you just watch! Really, he sings extremely well but its not mind blowingly great or anything. Mark disses him for singing RnB again but correct me if I’m wrong but this IS Contestants Choice, right? If you don’t want him to sing RnB all the time, take the option away from him but don’t bitch him out when he sticks to his strengths.

Euph, Grace and I have a quick discussion about Lisa Mitchell’s decision to sing the Crowded House classic “Fall At Your Feet” and come to the conclusion that we are physically unable to be objective about this song being covered by anyone other than Neil Finn. I am relieved because it gives me the option to take a snap poll of my friends to see what they thought of this performance. Y’all hated it. To be fair to Lisa, her voice has a natural flatness and she has a weird cadence that either works or doesn’t. This time, it really doesn’t. She awkwardly shuffles around the stage – for the love of god, will someone please put a guitar in her hands?? – and is gawkily selfconscious in that way that only teenagers can be. I heartily wish she had waited a few years to do this to herself. She may surprise us all and bottom three with this performance.

WE ARE ONLY HALFWAY THROUGH . . .

Lavina and the Hat are performing Alicia Keys’ “If I Ain’t Got You”. I am happy to report that I don’t remember Emilia Rusciano doing this song at ALL so it feels brand new! She has a sense of the theatrical that took Emily weeks to pick up – see Mark, musical theatre is NOT a dirty word – she starts right up in John Foreman’s face but he loves getting his mug on the telly, so its all good. She is pitch perfect and wows me again by restraining herself beautifully. The judges give her a big old tongue bath until Kyle rips on her dress sense – thank you – because that hat is frigging awful.

Fosse remarks that Chris Murphy is so Jack Black and he’s right, in fact he’s so Jack Black he has his own little School of Rock. It is remarkably cute. Chris then shows us that impeccable song choice is genetic when he sings a cover of Bernard Fanning’s “Wish You Well”. His voice suits this so fucking much and he works the stage like a pro. I hate his shirt. His song choice is immaculate but I really hate his shirt. The crowd goes nuts for him and the judges rave about his professionalism this and stage presence that. Mark wants him to step out of his comfort zone and I grit my teeth and spit “Contestant’s Choice Mark, SHUT UP!” at the screen.

Oy gevalt. Klancie Keough is singing Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”. This is a heartbreaking song about a man-stealing tramp and how you don’t do that to other women (Pussycat Dolls, take note) and a Dolly song will brilliantly cover any flaws to her voice because we expect a Dolly song to quaver and shake because that’s how Dolly sings it. It does all that but it doesn’t help her when Klancie fluffs a line towards the end and gets a nervous as hell look on her face. The crowd and the judges didn’t hear any of the flat, pitchy bits I heard because they all thought it was ace. I am reminded at how very different it sounds coming through the surround sound as opposed to how a live audience hears it. Mark does not bust on Klancie for singing another country song, or ask her to step out of her comfort zone or insist that she bring some sheep on stage with her next time to inject a little more ‘country’ into her music.

Guy Must I Call Him Mutto? Mutton is performing our second U2 song of the night “Where The Streets Have No Name” and he has gone the whole Bono hog tonight, he has Whosoever written on his right hand, he’s sporting an Oxfam Feed The World rubber bracelet on his left wrist and he’s got armbands and steely eyed glintness in spades. The vocals are a little tamer than I would have expected from him, he’s dialled it back for some reason, but he sings very very well. The vocals are lovely but leave me quite unsatisfied about the whole thing.

Reigan Derry has quite the lovely soprano (alto?? Shaneequa? Which was it?) but doesn’t use it at all when she sings George’s “Breathe In Now”. Her performance is still lovely but it is lacklustre, as if she tackled something that just got away from her. Euph calls her beguiling but I don’t know. I think no-one should sing Katie Noonan, but Katie Noonan because sister can sing - can I get an amen! – but it is still quite nice. Mark likes it but doesn’t love it and Marcia basically spits in her eye and gives her the Chanel treatment, if she had fun then that’s all that is important. Oh, she haaaaaaaaaates you Reigan.

Bobby Flynn is such a big honking dork, bless him. He is singing Cold Chisel’s “When The War Is Over” and I am not ashamed to say that waaaaay back in Season One, Ms Cosima De Vito made me cry buckets when she sang this song. Bobby’s doesn’t pack the same emotional punch, but it is still fairly awesome. It meanders along very nicely and he actually slams a couple of big notes out as well. His instrument is pretty great and the crowd goes fucking nuts for him. Mark hung on every word, but not enough to give him a touchdown (this is where the punchdrunk live audience, having sat there for two hours and who haven’t been able to flick over to 60 Minutes or mute the judges or go to the toilet whenever they want like we have start getting hysterical for a Bobby Flynn TD) Bobby actually looks like he couldn’t give a shit if he gets one or not and is more interested in noting that people should use the 199JUDGE that I’m not talking about to text the judges to let the contestants perform original songs on the show. That is the only way I will text anything to 199JUDGE I’M NOT TALKING ABOUT THAT LA LA LA LAAAAAA.

This Top 12 is actually a boatload better than last years. And not a little tiny wee skip of a boat either. I’m talking the QEII cruise ship better. For me, the top three were obviously Bobby, Irish and Lavina. Bottom three were Joseph, Lisa and a tie between Klancie and maybe even Jessica. I’ve tipped Klancie to go because I just don’t know if she’ll have the fan base to get her over the line, even if Jolene was one of her better performances. Joseph has the girly vote and Lisa has the Missy Higgins set behind her. The first one to go is always interesting.

TallulahBelle out.

The competition

George? Baby?? I know that you're off making your little Boy's Club Film Oceans Thirteen and probably whooping it up and basically having a gay old time (and FYI, if you are LITERALLY having a gay old time with Brad and Matt, please email me some pictures. I'll never have to work another day in my life) but I need you to know that since the new season of Dr Who started I've developed a tiny wee skerrit of a crush.


Meet the new man in my fictional life. His name is . . . well, I don't know his name, no-one does, he just goes by 'Doctor'. But he's funny as hell, he's cute, he's well written, exceptionally well dressed and he can reference pop culture like no-one (else) I know. (He is currently involved with some blonde british bint but secretly I don't think thats gonna last.)

I just, you know. Thought you should know. It doesn't mean he's replaced you in my heart or anything. Its just that I see him each week whereas I haven't seen you in a while except for that one photo of you in Who Weekly last week in LA with Brad and a flamingo and you're covering your face in that so . . . yeah . . . I don't have to decide what to pop in the DVD with the Doctor, he's there, every Saturday night at 7.30. Its a very easy relationship. Trouble free really, if you don't mind Daleks and Cybermen crashing your date.

Take heart though - remember, you fought back Ryan Reynolds that one time and he was incredibly stiff competition. And you pretty much just sneered at Johnny Depp and he went and hid behind his hot french model wife. So if you could maybe, make some comment about the upcoming elections in the US? Or randomly start spouting some liberal rhetoric about winning back the House? And if you made an appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart I would completely forget about this time travelling hottie and his awesome coat and incredibly adorable facial expressions and manner of speaking.

Promise!!

Last Train To Clarksville, four aboard, no stops.

We’ve had the good (Lisa) and the bad (Joseph), the sublime (Lavina) and the surreal (Bobby), the magical (Irish) and the meh (Dean and Reigan) the fabulous (Jessica) and the flatout flat (almost everyone else). And, if I may paraphrase Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben - with great second opportunity Wildcard comes great responsibility to be . . . well, great. It’s not just the second chance, it’s the last chance. Unless I’m mistaken, I believe you can come back and re-audition if you bomb out at the Seymour Centre but you can’t come back from a failed semi-final performance (and I believe there is tar and feathering involved plus a naked stroll through the city centre.) Kind of begs the question as to why the hell the Wildcard show last night was so god damned boring, doesn’t it?

Brendan Boney meshes Lonely No More and This Love in his final and – one can only hope – failed attempt to crawl into the Top 12. Yes, he sang it ‘nicely’ and no, I didn’t so much mind the segue from one song to the other, but he had flat bits, he had pitchy bits and on the whole there was nothing great to be seen here. Nothing mindblowingly remarkable or memorable. I would still buy a released version of Gangsta’s Paradise but only if there was no B side. Both Mark and Kyle applaud the risk of a medley (such as it was, it was really only two lines from This Love) but neither thinks he hit it out of the ballpark. Marcia of course thinks it was a ‘damn fine job’. I just don’t even have the energy to hate on her anymore.

Nathanial Willemse’s suit is a pinstriped pimpin’ number that screams Luck Be A Lady Tonight - and not in a good Daniel Belle belting it out suavely at Capers in Melbourne way, but more like . . . okay, like say, a highschool production of Reservoir Dogs where no-one dies and Mr Blonde is played by a sixteen year old girl because not enough boys auditioned. And they’re not allowed to swear. But at least the girl playing Mr Blonde is pretty good. Except the bored ninth grader who doesn’t understand how props work and who doesn’t read the script properly, accidentally lets her take a real razor blade on stage when she’s doing the policeman ‘Stuck In The Middle With You’ scene and consequently that high school’s insurance goes waaaaaaaaaaaay the fuck up and no-one will eat lunch with her anymore. It’s a trainwreck basically, is what I’m trying to say about his suit. And he’s singing My Girl by the Four Tops. Aw, sweet baby jesus. I love motown as much as the next person but what a ridiculous song choice for the Wildcard round. It’s cheesy and it’s boring. Like Vertigo, he sings well (the odd higher note notwithstanding) but the performance and his singing style feels really stilted and mannered – he HANDS OUT A FREAKING ROSE TO A GIRL IN THE AUDIENCE WHO IS WEARING A T-SHIRT THAT READS ‘I LOVE NATHANIEL’. I throw up in my mouth a little. Kyle and Marcia must have drifted off to sleep or something because they both enjoyed it but at least Mark picks up on the pitch problems. No-one points out to him that his song choice could only have been worse if he had stood up there and sung Rum Tum Tugger from Cats.

Klancie Keogh’s Dad made it up to the Big Smoke for her Wildcard performance. She’s revisiting her Seymour Centre solo performance and is singing Red Neck Woman. It’s a good song choice for her, this number highlights the Dolly Partonesque country twang and she’s having a HELL of a lot of fun. The vocals aren’t perfect, and she wobbles a bit but she’s a lot more confident. Mark gets into her about whether or not Ostralya is ready for a C&W Idol winner (and really Mark, she may make it to the Top 12 but what the hell are you smoking if you think she has a chance of actually winning?). Marcia babbles about liking her energy and freshness and says we’re all listening to country music these days. I check my CD player and she is correct. My KT Tunstall CD has inexplicably morphed into a Garth Brooks : Live in Baton Rouge, 1998 Tour Edition CD. Kyle ruins one of my all time favourite drinking songs by confessing to singing The Gambler with Mark backstage. You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em. I don’t know if Klancie has pocket Queens or a two and a seven but I’m telling her to go All In!! (This joke zone reserved for Texas Hold ‘Em fans only.)

Chris Graffiti still looks like Bobby Brady, only a more intense wild eyed version, the kind who would shoot Carol Brady and hold Sam hostage until Alice made more pork chops with apple sauce. He’s taken Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish” and turned it from a funky bopping hizzit into an Illustrated Guide on How Not To Arrange Classic Songs. He leaves the funk alone for about two thirds of the song and then sloooowwwwss it right down, leaving the band behind and singing it almost a cappella, although it comes off more Acapulco . . . (am I saying its like a seaport resort in southern Mexico? Yes, but only if you hate the heat. And the sea. And resorts. Which I kind of do.) This is one of Marcia’s favourite songs and she loves what he did with it although she damns him with faint praise by saying that he sang it in tune, which is all she can ask. Doesn’t ask for much then, does she? Mark thinks he’s too intense and asks him to back up and put down the knife. Or maybe he just says that Chris is making it look too much like hard work. Kyle halfheartedly mocks his Thunderbird style moves but says he has superb vocals and that he hopes people are voting on that. And that’s Today's Sensible Comment From Kyle of the night out of the way.

Guy ‘Mutto’ Mutton is singing one of the most overrated Australian songs currently glutting the market. Seriously, I liked Black Fingernails, Red Wine about a month ago when I heard it maybe once every couple of days, but when I was recently in Perth I heard it at least three times a day for five straight weeks and am officially Over It. Guy ‘acts’ out his lyrics, getting all touchy feely with his face and ‘emoting’ all over the place – dude, someone has to clean the stage after you perform, you know. This arrangement is a lot less frantic and dark than the Eskimo Joe version and the lyrics lose a lot of their impact when it is stodged down so much. It is plodding and dull for all that he sings it well. Mark also doesn’t know what to make of the arrangement and says it didn’t hit Mark. Hell, if he had hit Mark I’d have voted for him . . . oh . . . hit THE mark. Yeah, that makes more sense, actually. Marcia thought it was a little awe inspiring but I think she means insipid – they’re very similar words – and Kyle thinks it was an average job of an excellent tune and then offends the drummer from Guy’s band by calling it a bit Michael Hutchence-y and in a bad way. (So his performance is hanging from a belt in a hotel room, asphyxiating? Annnnnd you can officially mark that joke as the one that made God throw his hands up in the air and let Satan reserve me a place in hell. Yep. Okay okay, yes that was an awful awful joke to make, I'm sorry, Michael was a rock god and I admire his musicality greatly, I do. May he rest in peace.)

Amanda Rock Chick (or is she??!!) Streete is singing the same Powderfinger song that got Taaaaarni ousted last year, On My Mind. She does a much better job, the vocals are much clearer than Tarni’s were and I also find her voice more pleasing. She works the microphone stand like a pro, but it looks odd and a bit show-offy on a bare stage where she doesn’t have a killer house band (like the boys on Rockstar Supernova – the HB is FUCKING AWESOME on that show) behind her. She brings pub rock to the stage, grungy and a tad feral, but it falls oddly flat because of her surroundings. All three judges query her authenticity as a rock chick. I question their authenticity as human beings. Schmucks. This sucks because odds are that the public will vote through two boys and the judges will pick two others, one of which should be a girl and right now its looking an awful lot like they’ll go Klancie’s way. Bah.

Ricky Muscat sings Usher’s Caught Up and the judges can officially go to hell, because the odd shouty bit of this aside, I really enjoyed this performance. It was probably the most energetic and one of the best vocally and for fucks sake he shouldn’t even have to be a Wildcard, he should have gotten in ahead of Joseph. *breathe breathe I don't even know why I'm upset because I'll never vote for him and I'm not an RnB fan but there you have it breathe breathe* Ricky busts some dance moves and stares fairly bluntly down the camera, his eyes saying vote for me or fuck right off. He is pissed he didn’t get through last week. Marcia and Mark pick on him for picking a song without much melody, with Mark especially pointing out that you can’t just sing the whole thing loudly – why not Mark, it worked aaaaaall season for Emily, hell it garnered her more touchdowns than anyone else who has ever been on the show. Kyle begs Ricky not to get bogged down with RnB. Kyle has himself a little man crush on Ricky. If he doesn’t get the public vote I suspect Kyle will threaten to hold his breath until the others let Ricky through as Judges Choice.

Ohhhhhhhh no. Chris Murphy is singing H&C anthemic Holy Grail, the song that DeadtomeOnetrickponyLee Harding cocked up so magnificently last year and signalled the beginning of the end of TallulahBelle’s Love for Lee (cemented by The Green Day Affair a few weeks later). Do NOT fuck this up, Murphy. I am worried at the beginning when he starts off too easy listening but he grunges it up quickly and his voice is lovely and husky. He has nice shades, its still a little bit dull and he’s not showing the impeccable taste in music his brother did but he can still sing and perform well. His last grunge-y pub note is lovely. Mark says he normally cracks on people who spend years in pubs (pub rockers all over Australia throw their beers at the tv and in unison yell ‘fuck off Holden’ then jump straight back into the second chorus of Khe Sanh) but that Chris’ experience was well worth it, his stage and microphone work is impressive. Marcia tells him he’s a performer who considers every inch of his song choice and every move he makes on stage but that it never comes across as robotic. Kyle leapfrogs back into my haaaaaaaaaaaaate books by bagging the CourtJester to his brother’s face, saying he wasn’t a fan of Courtney at all but that there isn’t anything Chris can do that isn’t good enough in his eyes. I cross my fingers for him. He should get through.

Realistically the four to join the Top 12 should be the final four performers – Amanda, Chris, Ricky and Mutto (purely on the strength of his voice). But if the public put through Ricky and Chris – which I think they will – then the judges won’t put through two rockers, so my money would be on Klancie and Mutto to be pushed through which will frustrate me because as lovely as Klancie is, Amanda has a better and more interesting voice. Either way, it starts for real next week, FINALLY. Euph, Gracie, Fosse and Shaneequa – you know the way to Chez TallulahBelle, see you there for the first actual real show of the year and snarking & snacks . . .

TallulahBelle out.

Would you believe I was abducted by aliens?

Okay, maybe not aliens. Truth is, since the show aired Wednesday night I've been wandering the streets of Perth in a daze. I haven't known which way to turn. Should I join a religious cult, maybe become a Scientologist or get a bicycle and a mens suit and move to Salt Lake City and teach the ways of the Mormon's? Up has been down, black has been white, cats have loved dogs and I liked Lavina Williams performance. No, strike that. I LOVED Lavina Williams' performance.

I DON'T KNOW WHO I AM ANYMORE.

I'm going to retrace my footsteps, maybe see exactly where it all went so horribly, tragically, disfiguringly wrong . . .

We open the final night of semi-finals with the winners from the previous night. G and Mathieson have swapped again and G completely and utterly breaks my fucking heart by NOT announcing that Ricky Muscat is through. No, its Joseph Gatehau. You guys. Thats crap. Idiotic self deluded fucking fifteen year olds should not be allowed mobile phones!! I mean, its no Laura Gissara but still. Thats pretty fucked, right there. Joseph is barely articulate and Kyle gets an 'amen' from me in the peanut gallery, when he advises Joseph to step it the hell up and that he can't coast on cute anymore. G makes me much much happier by then announcing Bobby Flynn is through and I've worked it out - dude is a spaceman from another planet and his hair is actually another sentient being who is filtering out all the pollution and pesticides in our atmosphere and keeping Bobby alive. Bobby thanks god. I'm almost certain he's taking the piss.

Onto the girls!!

First up is Raechel Lee, another 'new' contestant we've never seen before, she's an absolute cutie and she's singing another Australian anthem - Paul Kelly's Dumb Things. Its not a bad choice for her voice, she has a strong Aussie rock pub voice crossed with Kasey Chambers. She's extremely ocker and is a tad breathy. She also gets some pitch problems towards the end, most likely because of the breathiness, and there's a quaver to her voice and I can't tell if its a natural one or if its nerves. Mark loves her Aussie twang and Marcia also compliments the individuality that she brings to the competition. Kyle says he's a fan of her voice but that the performance came off as awkward and boring. G shoots back that Kyle just has a problem with any music released before 1999. To give us some background on Raechel, G talks with her about the fact that she's played the US, Canada and Nashville (which I always thought was in the US . . . its okay G, you're pretty) with her family band. Hmmm. I'm going with natural quaver and not nerves . . . I don't think she'll get in tomorrow night, but they should Wildcard the little spitfire.

Sidebar : I was at dinner with grandparents and so had to ask my father to tape Idol for me - he objected quite strenuously to having to tape 'that crap' but as I'm only in town for another couple of days visiting, he decided to pony up and make me happy - so I'm watching this on tape . . .

Lavina Williams. Lavina, Lavina, Lavina. Sigh. I take my natural Darwinesque aversion to her sister and tuck it into a box under my chair. I WILL try to be neutral, I WILL. She's much easier on the eye than her sister but by god she's singing Aretha Franklin's Natural Woman??!! I have to pause the tape here whilst my poor addled brain recovers from the pain that another Williams is singing Aretha. Midway through her performance I freak myself out completely by taking back EVERYTHING I EVER SAID ABOUT THIS GIRL. She is NOT her sister. Her voice is astounding clear, her tone is incredible, she performs one of the best key changes I have EVER seen attempted on this show and the glory note is perfect. It was everything an Aretha deserves. I would take every touchdown Holden ever gave her screeching sister and give them all to Lavina. I can't believe this, but I love this performance. I love it. I am so fucking confused right now. Marcia babbles about a song steeped in tradition and she tore it up. Mark babbles about how he loves you 'Williams' girls', that she showed impressive range but that she's missing 'fire'. I'm still punchdrunk from loving her and mistakenly think he's talking about Serena and Venus and something to do with their backhand drop shot. Kyle loved it and then takes me back to the glory days of hating Kyle when he comments on her weight - 'you're a bigger girl' who knows how to dress - the fuck? No, she is not a bigger girl, you git. He then kind of makes it better by saying that normally she looks like a hip hop chick who would stab you and I almost fall off my chair laughing. Lavina calls it all a humbling experience and I am once again astounded at how different she actually is to her sister, but to be fair, it took a couple of weeks before Emily got that higher than thou, attitude of enititlement that drove me bug eyed fucking crazy. I hope fervently that Lavina, that way does not go when she hits the Top 12, because even without the fans of her sister who will randomly vote for her anyway, she's in the Top 12, no question.

Next up is Moulin Rouge dancer Rebecca Pearce who is doing Breathless from Days of Thunder. There is some discussion when she starts as to whether this is from Days of Thunder or from Top Gun, but that is quickly forgotten when it becomes blatantly clear that Rebecca is flubbing it. Her singing is flowery and weak, her power notes are insipid, she's pitchy, she's blah. She's history. (At this point I think I've seen the worst performance of the night but oh, how wrong can one person be??). Mark adds insult to injury by telling her (and lets face it, she's painfully aware how bad she was) that it was like the talent section of a Wagga Wagga beauty contest. Marcia says she knows nerves played a big part in it and is sympathetic. Kyle absolutely hated it and tells her it was a dog's breakfast and he's really disappointed. She takes it well, but later when they show the others standing on the balcony she's clearly crying her eyes out. No Wildcard, no nothing darl, sorry.

Spunky Jess Griffin has made a terrible error in judgement. She's singing Christina Aguilera's song Fighter. This is such a balls to the wall song and I firmly believe that Xtina's the only one who can sing it with any conviction. Jess starts out off the beat annnnnnnnnd stays there. She is obviously flustered that she fucked up so quickly that she gets pitchy and breathy and looks like she's going to burst into tears. Its an absolute mess, this is such a shame because every other time we've seen Jess, she has exuded confidence and charisma. I want to look away when she kind of taps herself on the forehead as if to say 'stupid' three quarters of the way through the song. She's right though. Stupid. Marcia and Jess "woahhhh" at each other and agree that "that was a hard one". Jess sighs that she lost control and Marcia actually critiques someone - "you were ahead of the band, behind the band, you didn't trust them and you let yourself down". Thats the Marcia equivalent of beating your adopted daughter whilst screaming 'no wire hangers' . . . (only Joan Crawford fans will get that one . . . ) Mark "oh Jess"s for about thirty seconds while she practically begs for his forgiveness, he notes that she can't let nerves get to her like that because she'll crash and burn (gee, you think??) but he still 'digs' her. Mark, can you 'dig' her out of the grave she just dug herself? Huh? Little help? Kyle says it was a joke and disastrous and he doesn't want to go on about it but he kind of does a little. G asks her that if she still worked in a pizza shop, what kind of pizza would that be? She stumbles on the answer but finally comes out with a gour-mess. I applaud her chutzpah but don't think she's a real contender to get in the Top 12 or even Wildcard.

Little Lisa Mitchell's own personal Idols are Clare Bowditch and KT Tunstall - awesome choices, fuck she's got impeccable musical taste (the fact that they are similar to my own have nothing to do with the price of tea in China. Shut up.) She's singing her Seymour Centre solo perf song, Ben Harper's Diamonds on the Inside. She's sitting down and looks like she should be holding on to a guitar. I do love her singing, she does a very good job, the odd pitch issue but nothing to get upset about, her voice sounds laid back but she can barely stand to look into the camera - she fleetingly glances at it every now and then but that's it. She's remarkably awkward on stage and I don't know how she'll go performing other people's songs week after week. Of course Mark, who has picked on every other performer who has shown any interaction weakness on stage, completely ignores Lisa's ineptness, calling it instead a naive delicateness that he wants to protect. You want to protect her naivity Mark? How about telling her to go home and come back when she's a couple of years older? How about you don't let her put herself into a competition where people like me will bay for her blood at the first sign of vulnerability? I speak the truth, I think she's out of her depth, no matter my regard for her voice, can't this wait a year or two? Finish high school Lisa, I beg you. Poor Poor Casey. Marcia says some people are just born to do this - this? a reality singing show? - and calls her the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard come out of Marcia's mouth - 'baby girlfriend'. Ugh. I get full body shudders. Kyle thinks she's going to win and makes the audience give her a standing ovation because she "could be the best thing ever to come out of this country musically". Whatever dude. Lisa's eyes are huge and a little starstruck looking and G brings her down gently, teasing her that she's "16 years old, you look great, you sing great, you're a tv star AND you've got a pony!! What more could you want??" She laughs appreciatively and looks not a little relieved that not everyone is putting an enormous amount of pressure on her. Kyle. Oh, but she's a shoe in for Top 12. If the audience doesn't put her in, the judges most definitely will.

Last, but not least is Lydia Decker. She's singing Whitney Houston's One Moment In Time and its good if not a little same old same old. She's a proficient singer, but she's hampered by the fact that she's on the same show as Lavina who has done the same thing but did it a thousand times better. She's sincere and her glory note is very very good but no-one is really moved by it. Shame really, she has a good voice. Marcia loved it, the theatrics, the pacing were all great but Mark dismisses her as just another 'good' singer and that she has the same voice as a hundred different singers in this country and there isn't really room for them all. Hell, its along the same lines as what I said but I didn't say it to her face. Kyle says Marks full of it and that she's cooking with gas. Wildcard.

Thats it. Frankly it shouldn't be anyone else but Lisa and Lavina but I hope that Raechel and Lydia Wildcard. The Wildcard round will be made up of eight of the leftover contestants and four of them will go through. I'd like those odds if that was me. I assume that it will be two from each night picked as Wildcard . . .

. . . and I'd be terribly horribly wrong. Of course it isn't anywhere near that fair. The judges stack the competition by making SIX of the Wildcard contestants boys - Chris Murphy, Nathanial Willemse, Guy 'Mutto' Mutton, Chris Graffiti, Ricky Muscat and Brendan Boney, leaving only two boys out, Paul Vercoe and James Steele. Unbelievably they only put through TWO girls - one of my favourites Amanda Streete and country girl Klancie Keough. Although this makes the likelihood of Amanda of getting in that much better and I would hope that of the boys that Chris Murphy will make it through. But I am confused. They deliberately choose twelve boys and girls and made them compete against each other so there would be an even number of both sexes in the competition and now this? The odds of both Amanda and Klancie getting through are incredibly unlikely, so we're most likely to see three boys and one girl. I just don't get it. But I'm kind of past trying to work out what this show is trying to do . . . and obviously Lavina and Lisa got through from the previous night, but you knew that . . . right?? See you at Wildcard.

TallulahBelle out.

Snips and snails and puppy dogs tails.

Alright, everybody out of the pool. The judges have decided - they want a boy to win this year. How else to explain the blatant love in they received last night? Granted, the majority of the performances last night were pretty good, with one or two verging on awesome but (Joseph) there was at least one (Joseph) that was absolute (Jo) shite (seph). But I’m getting ahead of myself . . .

We begin the night with some swapsies – G is upstairs on the balcony doing the presenting and Jimmy is downstairs with last night’s contestants. So G gets the boys and Mathieson the girls. Was this decided via rock off? Thumb wars? Did G sink your Battleship, James? Or was it that they feared whichever young lass who gets through might - in a fit of excitement - hump G on national television, and that James is safe because he’s not as much with the pretty as Andrew? Imbeciles!! I would gladly make a fool of myself on national telly to smooch with Mathieson. I totally heart him and his bug eyed ways. It's just that Fosse called dibs on him and in the interests of housemate-y détente, I focus instead on G (who, lets face it, isn’t exactly a booby prize). Plus Fosse let me have Phil from The Amazing Race, three quarters of the cast of The West Wing and those delightful Jewish boys from Numb3rs. We are currently fighting over who owns George from Grey’s Anatomy though . . . this recap has now taken more time to get to the winners of the girls round than the show did. James lets us know that the two girls going through got 32% of the vote . . . each. So that leaves 36% split between the remaining four. Ouch. That doesn’t bode well for any of them getting a large public vote when they Wildcard. WA girl Reigan Derry is the first of our twosome through and she giggles a little hysterically, then to absolutely no-one’s surprise NT’s Jessica Mauboy is in – she is also giggly and takes the opp to hug Mathieson – see show, a lot of us do like our boys funny and adorably dorky. Proving my point, Mathieson tells her that ‘Australia liked the cut of your jib’. I fucking adore him.

Ricky Muscat is first up – they rehash the Jorge incident and I now think that Jorge may have been the best thing to happen to young Ricky, he’s just another pretty boy with a good RnB voice but he’s the guy who stood up to Jorge, it sticks in the memory – and he’s singing – don’t fall out of your chair – an RnB ballad So Sick. He elongates his vowels a little strangely and the start is slightly weak but he’s kicking it by the chorus. It strikes me that he looks like Anthony Callea and sings like Guy Sebastian – holy crap, he’s a SonyBMG wet dream. The judges just about froth at the mouth to tongue bathe him, they all absolutely love him, his song choice and his package. I accidentally looked at his package and now I feel dirty.

Tasmanian James Steele, saddled with the Single Dad moniker (is James the only single parent we have now?) is singing 3 Door Down’s Kryptonite – can you say ‘perfect song choice’? – he starts off singing quite low and builds up to a nice intensity. His levels are nice and he has some of those infamous ‘shades’ Marcia’s always talking about in his vocals. He lets out one final rebel yell – it’s the only shouty bit of his performance – at the end. It was just restrained enough to be intense but not cheesy or too RAWK or annoying. Mark thinks he’s committed and that he chose a really good song but will the public embrace him? Is he going to to Hollywood or Hobart? Marcia gives more of her patented Not Really Advice advice and comments that he’s no longer flying under the radar. How exactly do you fly under the radar on a show like this? Did he slip the editors a couple of hundred bucks not to show any of his footage? Marcia?? What? Kyle thinks it was all good but that he’s still holding back and Last Word Marcia chimes in that she doesn’t want to see negativity in his eyes again. Sigh. Mathieson then serenades him with a reworked Billy Joel classic and sings “Say goodbye to Hobart”. He can’t sing but god he is good tv. I doubt James will get through, I think he’ll have to reassess for the Wildcard round.

Chris ‘Bobby Brady’ Grafitti is tackling I Don’t Wanna Be, another song I am heartily ooooover. He sings well for two thirds of it but then he fucks up his breathing completely. He starts swallowing the ends of words to get to the next breath and almost loses a line completely as he gulps towards the end. It's called breathing technique dear, look into that before the Wildcard round, mmkay? The judges are arses and don’t so much as mention the fucking up. What? Mark blathers about how Chris was in and out of some mythical pocket. Marcia tells him to ignore Mark because she loved it – and we all know that Marcia’s comments are the ones to listen to, right? Kyle actually gives some sage advice from when he was just another viewer (oh the glory days of Dicko – sigh) and he’d listen to the first fifteen seconds and then everyone would start loudly critiquing and miss the rest of the performance. It's actually a pretty spot on summary of what happens in my house, but Kyle (who gains and loses my respect at least once each show) promptly proves his complete lack of any musicality by telling Chris his best bit was at the end. What? When he couldn’t breathe properly and massacred the last couple of lines? Shut up Kyle.

The show throws in a little sidebar of its own, focusing on a sign in the audience that reads : Mark Holden, You’re A Gankett. Like Mark and Marcia, I have no fucking clue what that means and am too busy admiring the fact that they used the correct contraction of ‘you’re’ instead of ‘your’, which drives me nuts. Mark promises to use the ‘totally goony’ word at some point and gets his moment when Jimmy also advises Chris that Mark’s opinion means nothing . . . because he’s a gankett. I hope that this segment ends soon . . .

Carrot Top’s up next – Bobby Flynn baby!! We didn’t see nearly enough of this guy at the Seymour Centre (or indeed any of him) and I’m chaffing at the bit to hear what he’s doing. When they announce that he’s singing The Church’s Under The Milky Way, I just about jump out of my chair in excitement. UTMW is one of my favourite Australian songs and I have been waiting for three seasons for someone to sing it at Australian Music night. Bobby starts singing and I almost give myself whiplash tilting my head – do I like this? What the hell is he doing? He circumnavigates the melody of the song like he’s competing in the America’s Cup. It's . . . strange. It's dischordant. And I love it. I’m weirdly all about this guy – he took the tune and sang above it and below it and behind it and occasionally in front. His tempo was out of whack with the band and I normally hate that shit but knowing that it was a deliberate choice for the arrangement impresses me greatly and his voice isn’t perfect, it wavered all over the place but FUCK he made me sit up and notice and everyone in the room stopped talking to listen in a kind of askance awe and fear. I want to pause the tv and not have to listen to the judges for a moment so I can take it all in. Marcia smiles that its great to have such an individual on the show and I flashback once again to Chanel receiving the same advice before Marcia psycho’d on her. Mark thinks he’s utterly unique and calls him a trippy crooner and Kyle calls him Sideshow Bobby – yeah, I’m not doing that, we had a Sideshow Bob last year and this guy is completely different, so no – and then says he hates that song. The fuck? Its one of the great Australian songs of all time Kyle, you fucktard, I loathe you, I bet you know all the fucking words to You’re The Fucking Voice, don’t you Kyle? Gah.

Joseph Gatehau is our second RnB performer of the night and his version of Let Me Love You by Mario is weak and doesn’t deserve to be anywhere near this part of the competition. His voice is cracking all over the place and yes, he’s young but fuck it so is Jessica and she stomped all over any nerves she might have been feeling last night. His eyes are pleading with the tv audience to love him, let him in, don’t send him home, but his voice is weak and tinny and he misses a lot more notes than he comes close to hitting and his falsetto cracks horribly. It’s a fairly gruesome trainwreck. Marcia who adores this boy to the point where she actually says ‘I love you Joseph’ puts it all down to nerves. Mark bypasses the ‘obvious pitch problems’ and says he doesn’t think Joseph will have any trouble getting the girls to love him (translation, vote for him) and Kyle tells him everyone’s talking about you man, everywhere I go, its Joseph this and his eyes that and what a cutie blahdey blah. (Tell that to Ngairre, Kyle - I remember everyone talking about her too). Mark takes the last word to tell him not to restrict himself to RnB. If Joseph gets through it will be entirely based on his Seymour Centre solo piece and his audition, not this performance.

Oy. Guy ‘Mutto’ Mutton is up next. Seriously, we’re advocating Mutto as his Idol name? Is that going to be on the CD cover? Do people really want to be texting Mutto to 19 10 10? It's Hotdogs all over again. Ugh. He’s chewing gum sitting next to G in the Contestants Waiting Pit and has ‘hope’ written on his hand. Again, oy. Look, we need a rocker in the comp (unless Amanda Street can Wildcard) so I’m willing to cut him a little slack. What is he singing? It's Swiftfoot’s Meant To Live. He crouches down at the foot of the stage and stares intensely into the camera – its very Pub Rock 101 – and there is some microphone feedback during the first chorus and he won’t freaking stand still for a minute. Dude, plant your feet!! He sings a little to Kyle and plays up to the front row of the audience who ‘whoohoo’ appreciatively – the front row always loves that kind of shit. The song requires a little more control than Guy has, the singing is a bit pitchy and flat but its okay. Not great, but okay. Mark loves his obvious experience and then kvetches about Guy’s bumpy bald noggin. Marcia ‘you did just fine’s him and laughs that he frightened the hell out of Kyle, an action I applaud wholeheartedly. Kyle loved the perf but hates his Fresh Prince of Bel Air inspired back of the head bowl cut. I hate to agree with Kyle but I reluctantly agree with Kyle . . .

More technical fuckups as the last look at the performers and their voting numbers leaves Ricky Muscat singing in silence for three quarters of his bit – they tack him on to the end and again, that could work in his favour. I want Bobby and Ricky to go through. Ricky was the better of the RnB singers tonight and the competition needs an RnB at this point. Bobby will compete with Irish in the Top 12 for votes which may do neither of them any good, but there it is. If Joseph doesn’t get through, the judges will Wildcard him before he leaves the building and they’ll toss a coin for James or Guy to represent the male rock.

TallulahBelle out.

PS – in the ever decreasing divide between myself and the Idol contestants, I found out on the weekend that my 21 year old cousin went to school with Reigan Derry and has in fact swapped spittle with the girl. I feel closer to her than ever . . .