We'd always assumed that freshly voted-off American Idol also-rans were mercifully slaughtered backstage and later ground into the Simon's Sloppy Joe filling served at each Friday's Idol-themed lunch at the Fox News Cafe, but according to TMZ TV, the losers suffer a far more degrading fate: immediate assignment to the county fair circuit. We bet that after a week or so of warbling bittersweet renditions of "This Is My Now" to a warm up a dozen or so people for the hot-dog-devouring and pig-measuring thrills that await them, most of the fallen Idols find themselves praying for the sweet release of the Fox meat-grinder.

There is perhaps no one better qualified to hold forth on the Britney Spears VMA debacle than American Idol trainwreck evaluator Simon Cowell, who noted that while bigger shorts and a python might have helped her performance, "she stole the show whether you liked it or not." Unlike Dr. Phil, however, he refrained from commenting on his weariness of Spears' genitalia. [Extra]

The American Idols Live Tour, currently winding its way around the country and dropping its spaceship of Earthly karaoke delights tonight upon Worcester, MA, offers fans of Fox's reality behemoth the opportunity to get within screaming distance of the previous season's top 12 contestants. But as Sanjaya stands alone under a pink-gelled spotlight, pitchily singing to half-empty arenas about the "Man in the Mirror," organizers are wondering what happened to the throngs of teenyboppers who dependably lined their wallets in past years. From USA Today:

Panicked that the Emmys were rapidly approaching and they hadn't yet named a host for the awards telecast, Fox has convinced American Idol master of karaoke ceremonies Ryan Seacrest to borrow one of Ellen DeGeneres' tuxedos and assume emceeing duties for Hollywood's Third- Or Fourth-Biggest Night, Depending On How You Feel About The Globes And SAG Awards. While Seacrest's hosting bonafides are certainly beyond question—tens of millions of furiously texting teenage girls can't be wrong—those handling the production remind us why America is so crazy in love with Hollywood's hardest working man and offer a brief tease about the surprises they have in store for TV fans. Reports Var:

American Idol-"inspired" off-Broadway production Idol: The Muscial proves somewhat less popular that its TV counterpart, shutting down after one show; think of the quick hook as the rough equivalent of Simon Cowell throwing a contestant out of a cattle-call audition room upon hearing the first off-key note of their rendition of "Don't Cha" and telling them, "And say hello to Sanjaya for me when you see him on the breadline." [Reuters]

It's hard to believe that so soon after American Idol appointed its last karaoke superstar, the fame-making juggernaut is once again winding its way around the country, offering a generation of disenfranchised youth with a song in their heart a slim chance at escaping their dreary, service-sector lives. Such was the case with Dallas auditioner Antoria Gillon, who barreled through her one shot at greatness even after it became clear to judges that the very pregnant hopeful had gone into labor. From the Fox News report:

Normally, issues of child development fall outside of the purview of this Internets WebLog (unless we're talking about the latest supermarket checkout line cry for help issued by Britney Spears' pre-literate children), but today's LAT story about a University of Washington study investigating the effectiveness of popular infant-education videos in actually producing baby geniuses caught our eye, mainly because of the radical alternate course of study proposed by the professor at the end of the article:

A vigilant reader (i.e., one who didn't get cross-eyed drunk to celebrate the return of Top Chef) noticed that the new round of commercials for upcoming Bravo offering Hey, Paula!, a serialized documentary on the effects of prescription painkillers on talent-show judges, went to air without adequate proofreading. We suppose that it's possible there is a better reason than mere carelessness for the mistake; at a network where deep budget cuts force their programming executives to assume second jobs generating their website copy, it's not inconceivable that the talent is required to write and edit promos themselves, and that Abdul—busy juggling the demands of self-medicating, dodging the pack of fluffy dogs constantly underfoot, and approving new storylines for her "character"—was simply too overwhelmed by her multiple responsibilities to catch the error.

· Suffering from nervous breakdowns induced by Sopranos separation anxiety? Breathe deeply and whisper to yourself that at least you've got The Walnuts to hold onto.
· Mental health professionals lament The Sopranos' passing, as Tony made those who sit in expensive leather chairs across from manipulative sociopaths seem cool again.
· Maroon 5 manwhore Adam Levine's got a sexy secret...and Us is letting you in on it!
· Ryan Seacrest makes Simon Cowell joke, touches off multiple gossip item trying to stir up Idol controversy.
· Sunset Tan shocker! Spray-tanned corpse not actually a corpse.
· The Office's BJ Novak on how to do old Reveille boss/new NBC boss Ben Silverman: "I've been studying his mannerisms: huge enthusiasm, and then he'll slip in an incredible knowledge of specifics, way deep into a lot of complicated handshakes and backslapping."

Last night's edition of brain-smoothing dinnertime celebrity newsmagazine Extra offered up a crazy-flavored appetizer for the upcoming Bravo reality series, Hey, Paula!!!, in which the American Idol judge unscrews the top of her head and allows the world an opportunity to climb inside and stroll around the church-parking-lot-quality carnival that is her mind. The brief clip reveals little, but now we do know this: her "best friend" is her stylist (always a sign that a famous person has disengaged from reality), there are many fluffy dogs—some of which will defecate on camera—underfoot to provide believable excuses for medication-induced mishaps, and we will get some glimpses of the Idol-related "exhaustion" incidents that are the reason the show exists in the first place. Unfortunately, we have to wait until late June before the star can officially welcome us into her home, a greeting that we expect will be followed by Abdul handing us a shopping bag full of half-empty prescription-pill bottles and urging us to makes ourselves at home.

We incorrectly assumed that as the end credits rolled on the American Idol finale, a designated producer would rush up to judge Paula Abdul, hand her a fist-sized pill for "nerve pain" to gnaw on for a few minutes, and then prop up her slumbering body in a janitorial closet, reviving her from her off-season hibernation only when the first group of Idol hopefuls arrived at January's cattle-call auditions. Abdul, however, has been quite active in the rags since last Wednesday night's sign-off show. She recently railed against how every slurred, on-camera utterance is unfairly scrutinized (can't a popular TV personality chemically manage her chronic pain without people jumping all over her when she momentarily forgets the order that makes strings of words comprehensible?), and today finds herself the subject of a Page Six story describing a "meltdown" she allegedly had on a conference call in which she "seems to be talking to a group of publicists at some point during the last week" about how her former flack wasn't properly servicing her crazy-person needs. An excerpt:

As the American Idol machine reboards its Magic Karaoke Spaceship and lifts off into the ether, perhaps the hardest part of it all comes in knowing that with it flies away the show's trusty center judge, Paula Abdul. Sure, she'll return when the entire sadomasochistic process begins anew in January, but for those of us who greedily relied upon her zonked-out, indecipherable energies being beamed to us twice a week through our TVs, there is little sweetness to our parting sorrow. Abdul recently opened up to OK! magazine, educating their readers about the excruciating physical conditions that led to a reliance on prescription painkillers:

In the interest of closure regarding the "Sanjaya is actually some sort of performance art stunt" video we posted on Tuesday that has certainly challenged everything you thought you knew about untalented karaoke competition contestants who refuse to disappear, we invite you to watch the above clip, in which the lusciously coiffed imp admits to some David Blaine-level mindbuggery. Sanjaya, it turns out, is real. All too real. (And now he's friends with Will Ferrell, who seems to be out of good viral video ideas now that he's exhausted all the creative possibilities of the drunk, foul-mouthed baby genre.)

· While the two-hour American Idol finale-clusterfuck dominates the ratings, it was down about 20 percent from last year's season-ender. Might this have been God's way of punishing Fox for allowing the ludicrously drawn-out show to stretch nine minutes over its allotted running time, fucking over DVR owners who didn't think to also record the local news if they actually wanted to see who won? Are we bitter? Nah, not much. [Variety]
· Just in case you missed the make-up announcement late yesterday afternoon, Alec Baldwin and CAA are back together. Always fucking or fighting, those two! [THR]
· CBS Corp. head Les Moonves is named MIPCOM "Personality of the Year." In an unrelated story, the family of the trade show's president, who had mysteriously gone missing at the beginning of Personality of the Year voting, was returned to safety shortly after the announcement. [Variety]
· Mary-Kate Olsen returns to TV (we know what you're thinking, but nope, no Ashley this time—free at last!) in a recurring role on Showtime's Weeds, in which she'll play a troubled customer whose eating disorder is so severe she can't even eat Mary Louise Parker's delicious pot brownies without purging. [THR]
· Warner Bros. acquries the rights to children's fantasy book Skulduggery Pleasant, hoping their possible movie franchise will turn out more Harry Potter than Lemony Snicket. [Variety]

Unless you've been napping in a sensory deprivation tank buried a mile beneath the earth's surface for the last ten or so hours, by now you know that Jordin Sparks (just 17, as we were reminded every 30 seconds of this past season) is this year's American Idol, a conclusion so foregone that runner-up Blake Lewis put in an application to run the mechanical bull at Saddle Ranch mere minutes after the finalists were announced last week. Indeed, the only real questions left unanswered before the bloated two-hour finale began were: What sexagenarian-and-up singers would call in favors to perform in front of a television audience of tens of millions of teenage girls? (Answer: Tony Bennett, Bette Midler, Gladys Knight, Smokey Robinson, a hologram of Fat Elvis, and the ghost of James Brown.) And: What washed-up celebrity would be this year's David Hasselhoff, caught weeping while lost in a transcendent moment in which all melts away but him, the singer who has reached down deep inside him and caressed his very soul, and Idol's all-seeing, audience-scanning cameras? The answer to this query comes after the jump, at precisely 3:44 of Midler's moving performance of that one song she does:

Because time is clearly of the essence with the show's blockbuster finale just a couple of hours away, we'll pass along this Craigslist plea by an American Idol worker in desperate need of a tension-breaker with a minimum of the usual preamble:

· Mike Myers is the latest star to try and take a whack at the long-gestating remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which has now moved from Paramount to 20th Century Fox, and to which Owen "The Butterscotch Stalliion" Wilson and Jim "My Career's Way Too Cold To Have A Decent Nickname" Carrey were once attached. [Variety]
· MTV Games has announced a Jackass video game, which will ship with a special controller that will deliver blunt-force trauma to a player's genitals or emit flatulence in his face as he steers Johnny Knoxville and his gang through a variety of wacky stunts. [THR]
· Fox's American Idol predictably dominates in its timeslot, but there's some potentially bad news for the network: the preview/premiere of On the Lot opens to a weak number, calling into serious question Brett Ratner's TV drawing power. [Variety]
· Cuba Gooding Jr. will produce and play a pivotal janitor role in "edgy," Napoloean Dynamite-esque teen comedy Harold. [THR]
·Writers' collectives are so hot right now: Screenwriters like Christopher "Usual Suspects" McQuarrie, John "Undercover Brother" Ridley, and Naomi "Jake and Maggie's Mom" Foner Gyllenhaal have formed the 1.3.9 co-op, joining forces to help each other maintain more control over the creative process.

Tonight, we as a nation will have one last chance to choose our sixth American Idol, a coronation that will be completed on tomorrow's bloated, two-hour finale, an event unlikely to be made any more palatable by a surprise appearance by Prince or a moist-eyed David Hasselhoff. What we're most anticipating, however, is the possibility of an old-fashioned Paula Abdul toxic meltdown. The signs are all there:
· We briefly noted yesterday that Abdul broke her nose in an effort to avoid stepping on her dog Tulip, which resulted in a colorful array of jokes in today's headlines. Could something have impaired her ability to maneuver around a Chihuahua? Only Paula, and anyone who can see or hear Paula, knows for certain. [CNN.com]

Some precocious students from RISD are currently circulating the above video on the internets, in which a postlapsarian Sanjaya Malakar begins a new campaign to rape the minds of an American public he hasn't been able to brain-diddle on a mass scale since his shocking Idol dismissal, claiming that "Sanjaya's" entire existence is nothing more than an elaborate art project by someone named "Bill Vendall." It's just cute enough to pass along, so: enjoy, even if it somewhat ruins your pet theory that tomorrow night's winner would dramatically tear off her latex Jordin mask to reveal the pony-hawked incubus beneath.

With American Idol soon set to crown its winner and its audience teetering on burnout—even the phone-in results have felt a little phoned-in since Sanjaya was sent packing—Fox is hoping to recapture the nation's sizzling love affair with the couchbound minting of new creative superstars through its latest reality venture, On The Lot. In keeping with current Hollywood trends, no step of the search for the next Spielberg (or, more realistically, the fauxteur apparent to judge Brett Ratner) will remain untouched by the almighty brand-integration dollar: