Is it really already less than a week until Idol Gives Back?

Before we get to tonight's elimination, I had no idea until seeing a commercial last night that "Idol Gives Back" was next week. Yeah, I know it's for a good cause (although I'm still waiting for Idol production company 19 Entertainment to announce its financial contribution to the effort), but do you realize next week's Wednesday show is going to last 2 and a half hours? They're starting it early, at 7:30 (or, because it's Idol on Wednesday, probably 7:27.) It's going to be a very long night, and they'll probably do what they did last year and not even eliminate anyone because they couldn't do something like that on such a great night, yada, yada, yada. But they did raise more than $70 million for AFrica, so I guess my complaining does sound kind of petty and stupid.

Anyway, the best part of tonight's show--other than the elimination--had to be seeing Bucky Covington and Bo Bice again. And Phil Stacey, too, I guess, although it seems like it's been hardly any time since he left us. In fact, instead of that increasingly dumb phone-in segment, or the typically ugly medley from the Idols (they couldn't even seem to get the mikes to work for it tonight--maybe the mikes were refusing to work in protest), perhaps we could spend a little more time with the former Idols. Bucky's segment was, what, 30 seconds?

Finally, it was good to see the right person go in Ramiele, and I felt no sympathy for her after her crying jag. I'm sure it's sad to leave Idol, but she had to know she was still lucky to be there, didn't she? And her "I want you to feel sorry for me being in the bottom three, so I'll scrunch up my face and look sad" face was really annoying. I think Kristy's "I'm dead meat" attitude is much more appealing, and probably winning her some fans (because her singing certainly isn't). Until next week, Fingerhut out.