Update: I’ve placed the bulk of this post in the extended entry to save the AI haters from the pain. That’s how much I love all y’all.

All the young dudes think that they deserve to be America’s next pop singing sensation. Most of them are wrong--so wrong--and they will spend the next two hours proving my point.

Simon wants personality, originality, and good singing from this group of karaoke all stars. Which means he is probably deeply disappointed every time he comes to work on American Idol--feeling whatever shred of artistic dignity he ever had being stripped slowly from his body with every missed note, longing hobbit glance, and whiny, boy band singer that goes by.

Poor bastard.

Aside: I can’t quite get my head around the MacBook Air. I mean, there is an obvious techno-lust thing going on, especially for the SSD version. But without a DVD, without an ethernet port, and without a couple more ports, how useful would this thing be to me? I’m guessing that the answer is not necessarily much.

But the techno-lust still fills me with longing.

David Hernandez goes all gospely on us and doesn’t sound bad. If you’re looking for Future Lounge Singers of America, I mean. Certainly, the boy can sing and his voice could even be described as pleasant (with the exception of some seriously missed notes at the end), but he’s boring. Bland. Nice enough, though.

Randy liked him more than I did. Paula offered him verbal hugs. Simon was reasonably nice--and he was right. The beginning bit was the best, the kid needs to loosen up, and there wasn’t much distinct about it.

Chikezie isn’t really well-known enough yet to have just one name, is he? I’m having a hard time with that--and with the salmon-colored suit. Beyond that, his vocals started weak and only got a little better as the song went on. And what was up with that arrangement? Didn’t do him any favors at all and, for the second song running, the back-up singers sounded lazy as hell. This was a little disappointing; I thought he would sound better.

Randy was nicer than Chickezie deserves. Paula calls him a throwback to great R&B--which is a huge overstatement. Simon screws up the name and then dumps on the performance in typical Simon fashion (including seconding my opinion of the suit). Again, Simon was right. Chikezie does his best to be a good advocate for himself, though, which I approve of; if you can stand up for yourself without sounding combative (and I don’t think he did), you’ll win a few more votes.

Aside: How many of these performances will people really want to download from iTunes? I’m afraid that the answer might be: more than enough to buy Steve Jobs another personal jet.

Another Aside: McCain wins Wisconsin. Not exactly surprising, eh? I’m far more curious to see the results between Obama & Hillary--my guess is that Obama wins. But by how much?

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