See you next Tuesday

It’s the penultimate Idol. That means “next to last” for all you people who aren’t professional writers like me. It also means that this week is the last time you have to hear that shitty “Bad Day” song after they send the next person packing. Next week it’ll be all confetti and explosions and people being shot out of cannons. There’ll be no time to weep for the second-placer.

Seacrest is beardish again. It really doesn’t look bad on him at all. It softens up all those right angles. I’m a fan. He says, “This is where it gets serious, America.” Like almost as serious as our decimated privacy rights and the fact that our awful president wants to invade Iran. That serious. Cut to Roseanne in the audience with her son—the son with Roseanne’s old nose still on his face. She’d better get that kid to a surgeon soon or she’ll never be happy with his appearance.

Seacrest introduces an incredibly lengthy clip reel about tonight’s guest, music mogul Clive Davis. First I watch the clip reel, where we learn that Davis invented music and created the following artists by scooping up little balls of clay from the still-cooling Earth and molding them into pop stars: Janis Joplin, Chicago, Blood Sweat and Tears, Billy Joel, Earth Wind and Fire, Santana, Bruce Springsteen, Aerosmith (but not the puppet that’s sitting in the shot next to Steven Tyler), Barry Manilow, Patti Smith, Kenny G, Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Alicia Keys, Maroon 5, Luther Vandross, Annie Lennox, Rod Stewart, Foo Fighters, Dave Matthews, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, Pink, Outkast, R. Kelly, Justin Timberlake, Ciara, Chris Brown, and Usher. I pause the TiVo and go to my copy of Hit Men, the book about how evil the music industry is, and look up Clive Davis in the back. All I can get from it is that he was in trouble for tax evasion once and that he’s got a big ego and did a lot of talent-roster raiding. But whatever. That just makes him smart. Also rich. So rich, in fact, that he can dress in superugly clothes, like the royal-blue suede tunic thing he’s got on, while he talks to Elliott. Davis has chosen the crappy Journey song “Open Arms” for Captain Caveman to sing tonight. Everyone knows that Elliott is the hip-hop Hebrew. He’s smooth R&B–quiet storm man 24/7, but Davis wants him to do a rock power ballad. In the music industry this move is called, “Get this kid out of here, he bothers me.”

Elliott sings approximately 27 seconds of “Open Arms” and then it’s done. Seriously, I hate these abbreviated versions of songs. I’m as short-attention-span as anyone else in this great land of ours, but I want to hear an entire song, even if it’s a crappy Journey song I’ve always hated. Good thing Leeza Gibbons likes it; she’s applauding wildly. Randy likes it too. He looks wet-eyed, as though he’s been weeping. Choked-up Randy says that the song holds a special place in his heart. “I was in Journey for a while. One of the greatest bands ever.” This is true—that Randy was in Journey for a while, that is. The “greatest band ever” line is bullshit.

Davis “gifts” McPhee with the lamest R. Kelly song in existence, “I Believe I Can Fly.” It’s the love theme from Space Jam, by the way, a movie R. Kelly probably used as bait to attract his sexual conquests. Now, I own the latest R. Kelly CD because I really wanted as much “Trapped in the Closet” in my life as I could get, and I know for a fact that there are cooler songs from his catalog. “Sex in the Kitchen,” for one, which is about doing it on the counter “near the buttered rolls.” Or Davis could have gone back a few years and selected “Feelin’ on Yo’ Booty” for McPhee. But no; my entertainment is, it seems, not important to Davis. He tells McPhee something about what he wants to do with her “when we record together.” I mentally add, after dinner, if you know what I mean, because you just know that’s what he’s thinking.

As McPhee galumphs her way through the boring number, she looks heavenward a few times to her pal God, silently begging for a spot in the final. She’s got some hard notes to hit in this one and accomplishes the task efficiently, with just a touch of bratty shrieking at the end. The judges aren’t totally pleased. Randy says, “These kind of songs, you want to be that singer, but you’re not there yet.” I want him to say, “Look, I was in R. Kelly for a while…”