"American Idol," the Los Angeles auditions.

"You sound like Cher after she's gone to the dentist," Simon says to a woman who is trying to follow in her mother's footsteps. They're in Los Angeles, inviting in the Hollywood crowd, and this mother was one of the so-called "Golddiggers" on the old Dean Martin TV show. She sings a song that ends with the line "Shall I stay or shall I go?" and they scoff that they know the answer to that question. Told no, she gets down on her knees and begs, saying "I'm down on my knees, begging." She says "please" over and over, melodramatically, demonstrating that she'd also lose if this were an acting competition.

And I'm just not in the mood to describe anything else. It was a rather boring show tonight. There was a guy who used to be a backup singer who was good and seemed nice. There were a lot of quite bad people, unsurprisingly. And they had a guest judge. I hate that. Olivia Newton John. How terribly nice for her. How hideously boring for us. How it undercuts Simon's power to tell the contestants that they are hideous. To tell the truth, I'd probably have enjoyed the show a lot more if I weren't simultaneously -- Simontaneously -- trying to fix the problem with the damned feed on this blog that switching to New Blogger caused.

Perhaps I can snap out of this bad mood by watching "The Daily Show." I don't usually watch it these days, but I still TiVo it, and I see that Joe Biden is on! Watch for the new post about that. How can the poor man show his (unclean) face?