Halfway through Hollywood

It's still too early in the process to do a full American Idol play-by-play, because you can't really judge anyone by the ten to twenty seconds of clips we're still getting. But it was great to finally get out of the endless audition phase and whittle the 175 down to under 100. And how about the American Idol producers shelling out some money and hiring vocal and musical accompaniment for the singers in Hollywood, huh? I imagine the show can afford that by now.

Maybe my memory isn't as good as it used to be, but I don't remember the first Hollywood show in the past so heavily focused on the auditioners we already know, instead of introducing us to some more new people. But I liked the people they did focus on, and am hoping Kellie Pickler (the one with the dad in jail), Taylor Hicks (the gray-haired guy), and Paris Bennett (the relative of the Sounds of Blackness singer) keep moving on. As for the farmer kid, I like him, like his story, but I'm not really sure he's a good enough singer. And who was the guy who sang "Hopelessly Devoted to You." Him and his country inflection were kind of interesting--I'd like to see more of him.

Glad to see "arrogant guy" (you know who I mean) go home. Although I think I mentioned this last season, I'm still disturbed that Ryan Seacrest has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And did we need to see so much of the full of themselves but not really all that good Brittenum twins. If you haven't heard, they were arrested last month for identity theft (Maybe they were posing as the other American Idol twins from Chicago)and have been kicked off the show. So there's not much drama there, although to be fair, these shows were taped well before the Brittenum arrest, and perhaps couldn't be altered. And although I think I briefly saw her twice, we didn't see any singing by "fit model." I hope she's not gone.

I'd write more, but I spent too much time watching the Grammy Awards, where I see there's already a wire story posted about how Kelly Clarkson didn't thank American Idol in either of her two acceptance speeches. I don't think I care that much for these two reasons. She did thank the fans, which obviously includes all the fans she developed on the show. And let's face it, even if she doesn't acknowledge it, I can't believe there is even one person in the entire United States who bought her album and didn't know she had won American Idol. And she also didn't thank Max Martin, the producer behind her hit "Since You Been Gone"--and let's face it, you can have the greatest female pop vocal performance in the world, but if it's a bad song no one cares. And that's a great song--and led to the album becoming a huge hit.

Anyway, Tuesday we'll see the always entertaining night in the hotel preparing for the group sings, and two weeks from tonight we'll be in the midst of the most intense week of American Idol in history. Yes, on Tuesday, Feb.21, Fox will give us the final 12 guys in a two hour show, then two hours of the final 12 girls the next night, and an hour results show on Thursday, Feb. 23. I love American Idol, but that may even be too much for me. And the following week, it'll be 90 minutes on Tuesday and Wednesday and an hour on Thursday. So stock up on food and water and start preparing your bodies for that grueling experience before it's too late.