Since I didn't want to mix my final thoughts on the war (previous entry) with lighthearted joshing about American Idol, here's my second entry in the last 10 minutes, or however long it takes me to type.

If I'd have taped the episode last night, I think I would've broken it down into everyone's catch phrases or something to that effect. But I didn't, and I only have a few small observations to make.

All this was inspired by Randy Jackson's comments about Corey's performance, the first of the night. In his 80-second response, Randy said "dog" four times, an average of once every 20 seconds. I remembered at least two "dogs" from the show's introductions, when Ryan "Yes, this is an acid-washed-denim-style suit" Seacrest showed those old photos of RJ. We had six "dogs" and the show wasn't yet 15 minutes old, so I decided to keep track.

To my dismay, Randy added only six more dogs the entire night � two to Joshua and one each to Charles, Ricky, Kimberley Locke and Kimberly Caldwell. With Caldwell, he said it right at the end � probably, "You did your thing, dog." � and she responded, "Thanks, dog." Funny. But though the "dogs" only added up to 12 over two hours, I did catch two dudes to Ruben (plus a "dope") and two dudes to Clay. There were probably more, but I can be certain that the dog/dude count reached at least 14 over the roughly 88 minutes of air time (figure 22 minutes each half-hour), so that's one "dog" or "dude" every six minutes. But when you factor in that Randy only gets about somewhere from 80 seconds (and that's a very liberal estimate; I think it could be closer to 60 seconds) on air per contestant (11 contestants plus the photos gives you probably at least 12 minutes), that's more than one dude/dog per minute.

Simon was pretty funny, too, when he responded to Clay's performance of "Somewhere Out There" from An American Tail by pretending to be choked up and saying, "I just love songs about mice."

The tendency of the judges to fail to come up with one original thing to say about all but maybe three contestants a night is pretty amusing, and for some reason (please, PLEASE don't ask me why) I started thinking of it in the spirit of the John Madden Sex-A-Strator� (which you, dear readers, have made the fourth most popular entry in this journal, behind Crappy Kids' Drawings, my 250th Entry and Duff Man). Throughout last night's show, Casey and I kept paraphrasing Heather whenever Paula spoke and inevitably said something like, "You performed. On stage. In a blue shirt." Usually she said, "You got up there and you did your thing." Just once I'd like one of them to respond to a crappy performance by saying, "You got up there and you did your doodie. Dog."

OK, so anyway, I bet after sex it might go something like this...

Only it's not a real dog. (Eeeeeeew! You people are disgusting. How could you even think that??) Come to think of it, that must be Randy's all-purpose phrase. He probably uses it when he walks his dog. "You did your thing, Dog, now stop sniffing that other dog's ass, Dog."