By: Mary Cavaliere

I hope everybody watched last night’s episode of Idol Gives Back.  God knows I tried.  But I have that new AT&T U-Verse and it decided to seize up all of my television sets (and my DVR) so I caught only bits and pieces of it.  What I was able to watch was great and I was grateful that at least my phone worked and I was able to make my donation.  Did you make yours???

Paula looked fabulous in that red dress didn’t she?  Besides watching all of the celebrities asking for donations there were a couple of musical numbers that I thought rocked.

Teri Hatcher sang Carrie Underwood’s Before He Cheats and did a darn good job with it!  I loved the fact that her background singers and her band consisted of several celebrities.  On drums was Greg Grunberg from Heroes.  On guitar was James Denton from Desperate Housewives, and on the fiddle was Jesse Spencer from House.  How cool was all of that?

Fergie graced us with her presence and sang a solo song but if that wasn’t enjoyable enough she then joined Nancy Wilson from Heart and together they performed one of Heart’s biggest hits (and one of my personal favorites) Barracuda.

The best laughs for the night were provided by Jimmy Kimmel with a well written roast of Simon Cowell.  Then we had the infamous Robin Williams pretending to be the winner of Russian Idol.  Robin is just genius, that’s what he is.

My only disappointment was when the Idol contestants sang Seasons Of Love.  Anyone who knows me knows I’m a Rent-head and this is one of my favorite songs from that infamous Broadway show.   I didn’t think the group blended well vocally on this number but it doesn’t matter.  Over $60 Million has been raised so far, so rock on American Idol!

As for tonight’s elimination show they graced us with a montage of celebrities lip-singing I’m A Believer by The Monkees.  It was cute.  What was not so cute was the clip done by Forest Whitaker and his wife in Africa with all the little children who live in conditions that we wouldn’t expect our dog to live in.  It just makes you cry and feel helpless.   So I’m going to be like all the rest.  If you haven’t donated yet, please do so.  Every dollar counts.

Jordon Sparks sang a duet with Chris Brown on tonight’s show.  Jordon was one of my favorites last year and I’m thrilled for her recording success.

Tonight’s show was great because they didn’t do this long and drawn-out bottom three ordeal. They took care of the bottom three announcement and this week’s elimination in the last twenty minutes of the show.  I wasn’t surprised at Syesha Mercado or Carly Smithson being in the bottom three, but how Kristi Lee Cook made it past the bottom three over Michael Johns is beyond me.   If that wasn’t shocking enough, Michael being eliminated was the real killer.   I wasn’t a big fan of Michael’s when the season first started out, but he has grown on me and I realize now that he does have a great voice.  So Michael, I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of you yet.

You can read more of Mary’s television blogs at www.myspace.com/italiangirl57

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