So who's still watching American Idol? Did you like that quick, nasty cutthroat semifinal elimination round yesterday as much as I did? It was so fast and bloody. Let's take a look at the mess.

Anooooooooop! Our little dorky Indian a capella friend from Chapel Hill is... gone. Dead. Ruined. Over. Forced to go back to school and get his raggedy old college degree and, one hopes, live a successful yet unexamined life. But he seemed so nice and fun and could really, to use a mumbling Randyism, "blow." I thought he was a lock. Maybe he'll come back Jennifer Hudson style when the Wild Card happens in few weeks.

People I am thrilled to see go:

  • Crazy Tatiana. She's awful. And fame hungry. And ugh.
  • Hahahahaha, goodbye nondescript brown haired girls. Even you, raspy clown Jackie Jackie Tohn.
  • That fucking country fool who sang about going to truck pulls and football games in his "hick town." I just adore celebrations of dumb, cultureless America. And I just love people who already placed sixth on Nashville Star popping up sadly on Idol. Why not actually, you know, try to make it on your own (meager) steam rather than continually trying to have a silly reality show do it for you?
  • Um, basically everyone else. The whole night on Tuesday was a murmuring disaster.

I actually liked that bearded gay dude, mostly because this was the first we'd really seen of him and he was a welcome, warm-noted surprise. Too bad he's dead now. As for the three who will go on from this brief semi-final round into the big Top 12 dance... Well, I guess I like that calculating blonde girl well enough. And the roughneck guy is nice, though he is completely unmarketable. Who is buying that fellow's records? Other oil riggers? Swoony, young, budding bear aficionados? It's a mystery.

Last and absolutely least we come to Danny Gokey. It wasn't a surprise that he went through. The judges (save, bless him, for Simon) have been peddling this whistling idiot for weeks now. Why? I'm not sure. Maybe because he's a less heinously ugly Elliot Yamin. Or maybe because he whored out the untimely death of his wife at the preliminary auditions, which he attended just one month after she died. It was so hard to talk about! Here, just roll this footage of their engagement that he just happened to have! He really bothers me and the judges' clappy, slobbery display over his lackluster "Hero" performance on Tuesday night was one of the season's most embarrassing, "please just put this disaster out of its misery" moments. So yeah. I hate Danny Gokey. And I hate his stupid friend Jamar or whatever who didn't make it through but sat there at the semis in the audience like the simpering, grasping wimp that he is. They're not going to see you there in the crowd and realize they were wrong, friend. It's over.

For the uninitiated, that's Gokey above. Isn't he annoying?

So on we trudge. Next week another group of twelve gets whittled down to just three. NINE people eliminated! Oh it's so satisfying.