Say I'm crying, I'm looking at what's on T.V.

Wednesday! Elimination night! Time for one of the pretenders to the throne to go home. INXS is in the house, Dave ‘back in black’ Navarro is also in the house! Last night BBurke gave some early voting results. The bottom three at that time were Deanna, Brandon, and Jessica. Brooke asks them to stand. But wait! It wouldn’t be a Mark Burnett show without a switcheroo. She says as the voting window moved across America and went to Hawaii, Australia and Asia the results changed. Now two other people join the bottom three. They are Suzie and J!D! The crowd groans! Out of disappointment? Pleasure? We’ll soon see.

But more importantly, what is Dave Navarro thinking? He is actually very surprised to see Suzie standing there. He thought her arrangement was great, her style was greatly improved and her vocals ‘were impeccable’. But ultimately it’s the fans that voted who buy the tickets and CDs. Right Tim from INXS? ‘Yes Dave.’ He tells the five to sit down and wants to see an encore performance by Marty or Ty. He liked Marty’s acoustic risk; he thought Ty redeemed himself from the previous week. Ultimately Ty wins out and does an encore of ‘No Woman No Cry’. He gets a big cheer from the crowd and a standing O from INXS and Dave. Enough of the good, on to the bad and the ugly.

Brooke swears this is hard to do, this elimination thing. Ahem. She makes Deanna, Brandon, Jessica, Suzie, and J!D! stand up again. J!D!? Deanna? You are both safe and can sit down. Man, I never thought I’d appreciate the subtlety of Ryan Seacrest, but here we are. The remaining three slog through the crowd to the stage. Brandon is wearing a big. White. Belt. And black pants and a shirt, but especially a big. White. Belt. Once he gets to the stage he does the arms up/WHOO thing like he’s won. Jess has on an undershirt, skirt belt, and jeans, Suzie has on grey pants and a brown shirt with a peek-a-boob hole in it. Jess looks resigned, Suzie looks sad, Brandon looks like he wants another line of the good stuff.

After a plug for a cell phone, Brooke asks us to give it up for Garry and Jon, who will be playing with the bottom three again tonight. Crowd shot of women giving it up. I wonder what the male/female ratio in this audience is? 10/90 by the looks of things. I think the men duck when the camera comes around. Jessica is up first, she’s going to sing ‘Disappear’. It’s an upbeat rock number and not too challenging vocally so she does a fine job with it. She stomps back and forth and jumps along on the chorus, making quick work of it. Andrew from INXS says hi to Brandon and tells him to perform “Don’t Lose Your Head’. It’s an upbeat soul-style song but it seems just out of his vocal range. He sounds strained has trouble remembering all the words in the song. When he sings the chorus, yes, he points to his big shovel-shaped head. Kirk thought Suzie was fantastic last night but the public saw it differently. She has to sing ‘Bitter Tears’. It’s another straight-ahead rock thing, kind of a variation of ‘Disappear’. She’s shaky in the beginning with the lower notes but picks it up in the middle, when she dramatically sinks to her knees to belt out the chorus. She looks very happy by the end.

INXS must now vote and dash somebody’s hopes. Brooke asks for the decision. Tim says this is a hard job to do. He says Suzie proved she didn’t deserve to be there and to head back to the Peanut Gallery, she’s safe. Jessica? Is a ‘resilient performer’ but she has to watch her pitching. But didn’t Dave N. tell us last night that rock and roll wasn’t about hitting all the notes? Easy for him to say, being a guitarist. But she’s not going anywhere either, she can go back and join the others. That leaves Brandon. He yells at the band ‘Why did you give me ‘Don’t Lose Your Head’? What were you thinking?’ Um, okay, way to ingratiate yourself. He then says he can’t even remember the words to songs he knows. This surprises nobody who’s been paying attention. Tim tells him that to forget the lyrics to one of their songs in front of them is not good, and sorry, ‘but he’s not right for our band INXS’. Dude, this is why Dave hates Wednesdays. His waxer has the day off. No, he loves Brandon and thinks he’s so awesome and he’s going to miss him. Does he have anything to say to the guys? As usual he babbles about thanking the band for the opportunity, it’s an honor to be in the top fifteen, he’s learning, he gets to sing to the world wah wah wah. Man, he didn’t learn anything from the journalism course about keeping his answers short. Cut to Suzie crying and Jessica looking like she could care less. Dave waffles that Brandon does what he does extremely well and to keep at it. Andrew invites him over to the Star Banquette to say a proper goodbye. Bye-bye shovel faced hick! You and your shmegeggy have a nice trip home!

There’s a special show on the contestants on Sunday that I may or may not recap. ‘Cause that’s how I roll. Megan out!