"If she were a doggie, I'd walk her / If she were Columbo, I'd Peter Falk her"

That (written by Paula's stalker) was the Best. Song. EVER. I could've listened to it all day. Well, we sort of did, but still.

To my surprise, I'm enjoying the auditions more than usual. The producers seem to have found a decent balance between good singers, attention-starved freaks, and the truly sad. Yes, I could do with zero of the latter, though on occasion there's overlap between groups 1 and 3 (sweet girl with the sick baby, for example). But I've laughed out loud more than once, and that's saying something.

The Good Singers
No one really stands out for me yet; we have 20 pretty blonde girls with pretty voices (one fights in a cage; one's last name is "Stalker", one was on meth, one is "the best singer we've heard so far"—sure she is), and a handful of pretty black girls with pretty voices—fine. There's a pretty black boy with dreads, who thinks he has "a lot of growth potential"—well, his ego sure does. And there's Cowboy Drew, my new Idol boyfriend, who sings to his tractor; the judges were underwhelmed, but I was totally whelmed—he's all kinds of deep-voiced dreamy.

The Freaks

• Glittery Alexis—put her in a sequined tube top, it's the potty-mouthed freak from two years ago. ENOUGH.
• Mr. Chest Hair (it's American Hot Wax Idol!), who I should've hated but I liked his smile, so I'm choosing to believe his family is being held at gunpoint or something, and he did this under duress.
• Princess Leia. Charming girl. Yeah.
• Fingernail guy, even though he was an okay singer. Dude. Seriously. You will NEVER see a girl naked now.
• The next governor of Oklahoma—he's in Wikipedia under "whatever."

The Sad

• Temptress and her barely breathing mother. Said daughter Mimosa, "They just broke my heart." And that was before she even sang. (Mr. Lady Chardonnay happened by at that moment—he does not watch Idol—and said, "That was . . . cringe-worthy. They put that on national TV?" Oh, Mr. Lady C. Dear little naif.)
• Tammy Deadpan. (I shouldn't laugh, but the deadpan kill me.)

That Wacky Borderline Between Freakish and Sad, Which Seems to = Funny

• James Lewis, who sang "Go Down Moses" without moving his lips, mouth, or tonsils, and somehow made "people" a one-syllable word—a terrible singer, but he brought me much joy. Is that wrong?
• Yuka, who gave us this beautiful quote: "I want to love a girl from the hair to the the nipple." As who among us does not?

Other things worth noting:

• The mid-show recap of things we saw . . . two minutes ago. Idol clearly knows its none-too-bright audience.
• Paula "signing" along with that last up-with-people number. I audibly whooped.
• Randy's sideburns!

THIS . . . is American Idol.
I . . . am Lady Chardonnay.
And . . . OUT!