Screams I missed.

I couldn't watch "American Idol" last night, so I'm reading recaps and checking YouTube for video. Here's an excerpt from Throwing Things:

Kris -- "Heartless"

Finally! Solo acoustic Kris Allen! FINALLY!! Loved it, especially after relistening to the original. A ballsy choice. But for the weird Hickesque fan support for Gokey, I'd say that Kris is a lock. But of course Gokey is Gokey, so who knows. -- Kim

My wife disagrees, but I thought it was brilliant. If the goal is the find The Next Pop Superstar, that's a Next Pop Superstar. Sincere, well-sold, ballsy and completely unexpected from the Bible Belt. Not a "singer's song," but a great performance -- it takes real musical smarts and confidence to take a autotuned rap song and make that out of it. Put him in the finals. -- Adam

You can watch that, badly recorded, here. [ADDED: I've removed that link. Go here — to the official site — to watch that performance. You can find the other performances from last night at that link.]

The Lambert -- "Cryin'"

"Dear Danny, Get out your notepad. This is how you fucking sing Aerosmith. Love, Adam." Seriously, to take an artist that your principal competition botched, and do it yourself the next week? We've never seen anyone do something so in-your-face before on the show, and needless to say it kicked ass. Text VOTE to 5703, people. Over and over again. -- Adam

Seriously. THAT'S how you scream your ass off on the Idol stage... Have we ever heard Simon say "don't fuck this voting thing up, people" so clearly before? And once again, Adam is nothing but gracious on stage, this time praising Kris and Danny. Sure, he can afford to be gracious, but he never fails to thank someone. Adam Lambert is a class act. Stop reading and start voting. -- Kim

Watch that here.

What about Danny Gokey? Here he is doing "You Are So Beautiful." I hope Kris makes it to the finale, along with my favorite, Adam, but Danny's from Wisconsin, so it's all good.

And all bad, of course.

"Finally feeling better! Coffee! My next big worry - tomorrow is Danny Gokey Day in Milwaukee area and I don't know how to celebrate."

Michael_Haz tweets....

For Gokey Day - Put up a tree? Wreath on the front door? Carve a large vegetable? Personal Day off? What? Maybe buy a new shirt?...

What's a proper dinner for Danny Gokey Day? The other holidays have all the major meat groups covered, so maybe...ice cream? Help!...

Wisconsin has our own one of the "American Idol" final 3 guys. (They are all guys now. Sorry, Allison.) Danny is not my favorite. Not at all. (I've been all for Adam Lambert since his first audition.) But he's Wisconsin, and that means something.

So let's all go to Milwaukee and do some Gokey events: Miller Park — with first pitch and national anthem, sung, presumably, without screaming — the Harley-Davidson Museum, the Harley-Davidson Roadhouse, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the bronze Fonz....

Was it fair to introduce duets when there were 4 contestants left and 3 were males?

It meant — on "American Idol" last night — that one of the male contestants would have the advantage of singing with the lone female and the other 2 males would have to sing with each other. An added complexity is that one of the males is perceived as gay.

Is Adam Lambert openly gay? It's never talked about or alluded to on the show. And — the theme was rock — when he sang "Whole Lotta Love" for his solo last night the line "Way down inside, woman, you need me" was utterly convincing — thrilling, even.

But the perceived gayness of Adam made it a special disadvantage — or should I say a special problem — for him to be paired with one of the other males, and I think that was what determined that Kris Allen and Danny Gokey would need to be the male pair, and that Adam would go with Allison Iraheta.

Or do you think that the producers put Allison with Adam to hurt Kris/Danny? The theory is: Either Danny/Kris must go this week, because you want to keep the only female and you can't lose the truly exciting Adam. (Is Adam in danger? He was in the bottom 2 last week in a shocker, but he probably wasn't anywhere near the actual last-place finisher, Matt Giraud. And the seeming close call lit a fire under his fans, so they'd call like mad this week.)

So, put Danny and Kris side by side and let people judge who is better. In the duet, it was clear that Danny was better. Unfortunately for Danny, he subsequently performed solo, attempted to sing "Dream On," and was perfectly awful. Painful, really. What happened?

The whole point of "Dream On" are the screams Steven Tyler pulls off at the end, the ones that Adam Lambert could have pulled off at the end ... and as Gokey was going through this song, it seemed like he was just going to rearrange the song to avoid them. Jen and I kept looking at each other -- now will he? -- and then, when he did, it missed as much as Scott Macintyre missed everything on "The Search Is Over," as much as Corey Clark on "Against All Odds." It was brutal. Both on his cumulative downwards slide and especially on tonight, he deserves to go home now.

Spooked by Adam's superiority, then?

Speaking of "Dream On," I dreamed I was watching the results show — yes, lame of me to dream I'm watching "American Idol" — and Danny lost — not only lost, but they ran out of time and deprived him of the farewell video montage.

Here, now be careful:



AND: It's viral!