American Idol Season 6: Top 9 Perform

I didn't get to blog this live, and the weather is kinda nuts outside, so I'm gonna give you the main thoughts for the night. Digest at your leisure.

1. Tony Bennett: After last week, I thought Idol might be on its way to being current and contemporary. Oh well. Instead, they raised the dead again, and gave the Top 9 a mentor who has one foot in the grave and the other foot on a banana peel.

2. The Songs: Overall everyone sounded great tonight, but let's face it, these songs are almost impossible to sound bad on. Lyrically, they're mostly on the level of "Mary Had a Little Lamb."

3. Gina Glocksen: Still consistently fabulous, no matter what Simon says. I don't understand the need to de-pimp her. She stepped out of her element tonight, looked lovely, and still knocked it out of the park. A thousand times more emotion than RoboHaley.

4. Haley Scarnato: I was barely able to contain my fake surprise when Haley showed up again nearly nude. As her diminishing talent hid behind her high hemlines, I found myself resenting her. I don't even think she's as pretty as everyone says. She's kind of a butterface (everything looks good but 'er face.) Vocally, I just didn't even care. She can't interpret a song; she can just sort of sing it. Not good enough.

5. Blake Lewis: Didn't catch all of this, but I figure "Mack the Knife" was a perfect song choice for him. What I did see was good. More of Blake being Blake.

6. Jordin Sparks: Ah Jordin... where have you been all of my musical life? Loved it. Second only to...

7. Melinda Doolittle: Love. Monster love. I don't care about the competition anymore, because this is our winner.

8. LaKisha Jones: She did alright singing tonight. I bet that dress was stitched with barb wire to keep it on though. Good grief, I thought a bus load of Mexicans might have been hiding in there.

9. Chris Richardson: I don't know why, but I just have this urge to pull his underwear up his butt and over his head. Atomic wedgies are generally only reserved for people I really can't stand. Vocally, he was just sort of alright, but based on his stupid smug look, I don't know how anyone cares for him.

10. Phil Stacey: What Simon said was right: that was a dark performance. Sometimes that's a good thing, but Phil looked like the Undead up there. I felt like I was being serenaded by a shorter version of Lurch from the Addams' Family.

11. Sanjaya Malakar: What is left to be said about this guy? Tons more deserving contestants are sitting home because he's there. He set out tonight to prove that he CAN sing, and he sort of can, but only just alright. To be fair, tonight was his best performance ever, but that still puts him many MANY skill sets below Melinda. I want to be clear on something here: When Simon said "Let's try something different; that was incredible" he was NOT praising Sanjaya. What he was saying was this: "We criticized you last week and your fans rallied and voted you in. Perhaps if we praise you this week, they won't vote and you'll go away." I'm not kidding about this.

Sorry for the truncated recap. See ya when there's no tornado watches!