It's late (well, really early), so a quick recap of festivities on American Idol last night.

It was Billboard #1s as the theme, which gave the kids a chance to go to Billboard HQ and ask a real suck-up question about how their group sing of "God Bless the USA" might chart. Surprise, the Billboard folks see it going to the top! Lionel Ritchie was the guest judge, and I have to go back to Deathtongue and agree that running him over with a tank would be a good idea. Though he did give some modest criticism of the kids, which is more than we've gotten from others.

The kids mostly stuck to recent (within the last 10 years or so) songs, and did very well generally, much better than last week's disco march of death. With the carry over of votes from last week, it is possible that Kimberly Locke and Trenyce will wind up back in the bottom three, but doubtful if last night's performances have anything to do with things. Camera whore Kimberly Caldwell may wind up at the bottom after getting dissed for singing "Everything I Do" from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Go figure that she takes the comments from last week about doing the same thing all the time, actually listens and attempts something different, and gets crapped on for it. For once she sang rather than yelled the song, and it'd be nice for her to get a little bump for it.

I'll put Rickey in the bottom three as well, as his falsetto on "Endless Love" didn't do much for me. Hmm, second week in a row Rickey did a song the guest judge was involved with. Suck up!

Rounding things out is Carmen, whose flat and dull rendition of Blondie's "Call Me" made the baby Jesus cry. She did almost hold a short note, though, so good for her! The subtext between her and Clay breached the surface during a Nokia-AT&T placement bit where she took a photo of herself blowing a kiss and sent it to Clay. Hope there was something to that picture, as I have to think she'll be moving out of the house after tonight's results show.

Ruben, Clay, and Joshua did fine. Ruben did give the biggest surprise of the night by not wearing a 205 jersey. But he was still representin'.