Unless Idol is changing it's format this year, it would seem that Jordin is damn sure she'll be in the final two. According to this article from AZ Central, Jordin said the following:

Sparks sang two songs, Broken Wing and To Love Somebody, a Bee Gees song she performed on Tuesday's disco-themed Idol, drawing praise from its composer, Barry Gibb.

She also told classmates that next Tuesday, she will again sing I Who Have Nothing, a song she performed early on in the competition that got warm reviews from AI judges Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul.

As you know this Tuesday, if Idol holds true to form, each contestant sings one song picked by the judges, one song picked by the judges, and one song they pick that they haven't sung before. They in fact, do not sing a song they have already performed until the following week. But I guess its okay to plan ahead but she if quoted correctly, it certainly reads as if it is in the bag.

Oh, and the Jordin Tears? If you read the entire article, you'll come down to this little statement:

The densest poster-waving section was the corner where the school's drama club sat. When she attended Sandra Day O'Connor, Jordin was "a total drama kid," said the club director, Amanda Moore.

Enough said.

Melinda Doolittle returned home too. Wayne Gretzky didn't stop by but she did get a street named after her. Unfortunately she had to compete with the Nashville Crawfish Boil for air time. You can check that out at WKRN Nashville.

As for Blake, his return to Seattle didn't seem like much of a big deal either. I don't think he got a street named after him. Worse yet, I'm not sure about his tastes in shirts as the photograph would attest to. You can watch this Q13 Fox clip if you can stay awake through it. I was ready to fall asleep about halfway through. He does eventually mention something about the judges contradicting themselves as I did the other night so he's still boring, but he's not an idiot. And if that isn't enough you can watch him perform an original song with this clip. Have a good weekend, I'll be lurking.

An argument I often hear is that viewers should not base their voting on Idol because of someone's strident campaign to outlaw a woman's right to choose and turn thousands of women and their doctors into criminals. Yet, there is absolutely no doubt that this someone has received and is receiving a lot of votes from groups organized for just this reason. One group, even seems to be holding a prayer vigil to pray her on to victory. Finally though, someone in the main stream press has kind of sort of picked up the story just as we head towards the finish line.


Onward, Christian idol

BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic

Where are the viewer votes for "American Idol" front-runner Jordin Sparks coming from? Possibly the Christian right.

A photo that seems to show her holding a "Stop Abortion Now" sign is making the rounds of "Idol" fan postings online.

Most viewers are unaware, though. In "Idol" fashion, no one on air ever asks Jordin about politics, since "Idol" builds up these future musical properties with cotton candy profiles.

On another note, it seems they are still going to pass the "average high school" kid myth on Idol, even though she hasn't been to High School in two years.

Phoenix School Readies for Jordin Mania

This morning, Sandra Day O'Connor High School principal Jack Dillard sent an e-mail to his faculty: "As you can imagine the Jordin Sparks American Idol frenzy has hit the O'Connor campus. It is a nice problem to have."

He outlined events that will take place at the north Phoenix school Friday, as AI contestant Sparks and a Fox film crew gather hometown footage to be aired on the show's semifinals next week.

Sparks, 17, was a student at the school and will sing two songs at a pep rally, which will take place at 1:30 p.m. Friday. She left after her sophomore year to be home-schooled so she could focus on her music.

More on the average High School Kid who can magically get Wayne Gretzky to drop in:

Gretzky to attend Westgate's pep rally

The Phoenix Coyotes announced Thursday that head Coach Wayne Gretzky will attend Westgate's American Idol pep rally to honor Glendale contestant Jordin Sparks. Gretzky will present Sparks with a personalized jersey.

The rally begins at 3:30 p.m. Sparks will arrive by motorcade at 4 p.m.

The event is free and open to the public. Sparks will also sing songs for the crowd, which she has performed during the competition.

Sparks, 17, is one of three remaining contestants vying for the title of this year's American Idol.




And previously on Clyde's blog:

I have removed the rebuttal by the person who claimed to be Jordi Sparks from this article and this article or this article as I have no confirmation as to that is who it was and no reply at all when I wrote to inform I would print their so called rebuttal. As a matter of fact, I know at least one claim made is now patently false so I have to assume it was not her but a fan from her fan club as the email address would indicate. That is, if it was Jodi, then certainly this My Space page would no longer be available and have been removed long before now.

Four score and seven thousand years ago….okay it only seems like it’s been that long but back when the final twenty four first performed there was no doubt in my mind that there were two really good accomplished singers this year. Those two would be Squishy and Doodoolittle of course. Nothing that has transpired in the long excrutiating weeks since then has caused me to change that opinion and in fact has only reinforced it.

One can sit here and moan and groan about some of Lakisha’s songs choices. One can also speculate all day as to why she chose some of the songs that she did but from everything I have been able to find out, the answer as to why is not that difficult to come by. Of the remaining four contestants going into tonight, Lakisha was the one who for the most part appeared to lack the right kind of professional advice or background that probably would have aided her a great deal. It happens that way when you don’t have the money to grease some palms with to get your foot in the door.

Jordin, for most of her life, has had the best professional advice and connections mummy and daddy’s millions could buy, and enough influence and palm greasing by daddio to open not just one door, but a few hundred. Hey, if daddy’s money talks, then you get to walk the walk. Even Melinda brought along her own hair stylist and fashion advisor, although I think they were girlfriends first and unofficial advisers second. As Lakisha made her way through the competition she was basically winging it, and it was obvious at times she didn’t have the outside expertise that some of the the others did. She was solely in the hands and discretion of the Idol makeover artists and advisors.

Honestly, I’m surprised that Keke even made it this far. It became apparent several weeks ago that she had outlived her usefulness to the producers of this show, especially after she had served her main purpose early on to help them stick a shiv into Jennifer Hudson’s backside simply because she dared to suggest she owed this show absolutely nothing. Certainly I have heard and read time and time again that she didn’t have the look of a real idol. I mean aren’t Idol contestants supposed to have the polished manufactured, and manicured, appeal of someone like Jordin? So it was quite apparent that if any of the previous departed contestants had even a handful of Keke’s singing ability, she would have been gone a lot sooner.

I think it was also obvious that of the remaining contestants, Lakisha would absolutely need a win to further her career or at least a win would have helped her more than any of the others. Both Jordin and Melinda are backed by the same Gospel Music Association and Blake the Boring has the tweeny crowd locked in to his beat boxing prowess. Jordin as a matter of fact, was already working on a second album when she put it on hold to appear on this show, and seems to have had her picture taken with more celebrities than Fox has TV shows.

But I’m way ahead of myself. Let’s go back to Tuesday night’s show. Yeah, I know, I don’t like reliving that horror show either, but it’s another great example of how this show manipulates everything they do in the hopes of achieving their desired results. And it is also another fine example of how the judges are generally useless with their comments and so called advice, and yes, everybody’s pet Simon is every bit as guilty as the other two.

Simon: It’s a singing competition.

I wish I had a dollar for every time that any of the judges has uttered those words over the past six years. Yet, as often as they like to ballyhoo that philosophy, they only want to abide by it when there’s a contestant they don’t like going further and getting more votes than the judges think they should. When it’s somebody they are trying to move backward a few spaces, than it’s everything but the damn singing. Case in point, Melinda Doolittle’s first song last night, Love You Inside and Out.

If you’ve noticed, over the last three weeks or so the judges attitude toward Melinda has begun to be less than enthusiastic and was downright chilly Tuesday night as they continued their not so subtle movement to push upon us the manufactured talent of Jordin, despite the obvious fact that in just about everyway, Jordin couldn’t touch Melinda vocally even on her best day. And last night for Doodoolittle’s first song their critique was basically this: good vocals, she always is the best vocally” and the biggest slap in the face came from Simon: backup singer quality. This from the guy who for weeks was telling her she wasn’t a backup singer. So once again when it suits the judges, the singing ability doesn’t matter at all. And even though her critique was slightly better for her second number, it didn’t come close to the tongue bath they gave Jordin later when she dared to sing the super simplistic To Love Somebody. Talk about taking the safe road.

Then there was poor Blake the boring. Now I’m no Blake fan but I have to give credit where credit is due. For his first song he chose You Should Be Dancing. It was a strange choice and I wouldn’t have advised him to try it but he did. I thought the whole performance was rather odd and scary but not as scary as the judges criticism. One week they are telling Blake: Take chances. The next week they are telling him, “Don’t take chances.” Another week it is, “Beat box more and you should beat box on every song.” Then of course, the following week they will tell him just the opposite as they did this week. This week he got the double whammy which was getting criticized for both his innovation and his beat boxing. How can you win? You can’t, so don’t even try.

If in six years it isn’t obvious to anyone, it should be by now. What the judges prefer for the finals is safe generic manufactured wholesome entertainment. They absolutely don’t want another free spirit like Taylor Hicks in the winner circle. In this case that would be Jordo Roboto Thumper. It was bad enough that she took absolutely no chances in her song choices the way the other contestants did, what made it worse was that both songs were ballads, and one of the songs was actually a Streisand song, one in which the Bee Gee’s wrote but only sang back up for. Streisand owned that song.

Still, despite all those advantages, Thumper managed to do just so so on the simpleton song To Love Somebody, and then completely tortured us with her off key emotionless screeching performance of Woman In Love. Was she criticized by the judges for it? Just very slightly, although it was the third week in a row she had completely trashed a song. I had asked someone earlier in the day if they would give her the, “There is only one Streisand” routine the way they have in the past (just as they have for Whitney and Mariah songs). Of course, they wouldn’t do that to Jordo Roboto. Give me a break.

Squishy, in my opinion, overcame all odds with Staying Alive. I had heard that she was going to sing this song the night before and thought there was no way she could pull it off. But she did, and did it damn well I thought. But you wouldn’t know it by listening to the judges who nitpicked a very good effort to death.

So I knew it would be either Doodoolittle or Squishy going home. It would only be Doodoolittle if Squishy was able to cop just enough votes from VFTW to help her stay on and that didn’t happen. It should have been Jordin, but when you put a bright shiny manufactured product in front of the Idol sheep who sit mesmerized and hypnotized by the glow of their TV screens, sell it as if it’s the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel, then you can pretty much have a guarantee that you’ll get the results that you want. Of course, it’s only a rumor but I’m told that if you look closely at Jordin’s left butt cheek, you’ll see these words prominently tattooed: Manufactured in the USA by Freemantle Media.

Or at least Scarborough, Rasmussen and Ridley think it may be. Honestly though, they certainly don't need the question mark. At this point there should be no doubt in anybody's mind that this season sucks. Let's go to the video evidence.