All the top ten were there, including Jordan Sparks, Blake Lewis, Lakisha Jones, Chris Sligh, Chris Richardson, Haley Scarnato, Melinda Doolittle, Gina Glockson, Phil Stacey, and of course Sanjaya Malakar! They performed most of the songs they did on the show and some extra stuff not seen before. The live action was great, and Blake threw down a solo performance with all his gear that likely showed the doubters that he truly is an entertainer.

During the show, we spotted Shyamali Malakar (Sanjaya’s sister) by the stage. Melissa talked to her a bit and managed to get us some after show party passes (us, and almost all of Phil’s family that is — 30 people at least)!

Here are some pictures from the after party, it was great to meet all the idols that we spent every Tuesday and Wednesday night with for so long this spring.

Jordan (Your American Idol)

Me and Blake

Haley

Melissa and Sanjaya

Melissa and Lakisha

We have more pictures, but those were the ones from the after party. It was very cool, a lot of interesting folks in the after show (and Phil’s entire family it would seem, including his lovely wife and child that we all heard about during the show).

Oh, and this picture was of a couple of fans, a girl with a Ponyhawk and a girl looking like “The Crying Girl” which if you watched season 6 you know exactly who she is.

Good times!

At approximately 40 minutes into the show after the first two home town visits, Ryan announced that after the break “and Melinda goes home tonight.” After that statement, the show cut to commercial (as happens often in the results show). Both my wife and I looked at each other and said, “Did he just let slip that Melinda was going home tonight?”

At the end of the show we realized his mistake. And when the show returned from break, you could see it on her face and even Simon had that disapproving look for the rest of the night. They knew that he screwed up and said she was going home instead of mentioning that her home town visit was coming up after the break. He blew it (and what else we can only wonder) on live TV.

I’m curious to see if there will be any mention of it in the coming days and if any sort of fallout will happen.

http://www.idolaid.com/

Update: Looks like Ryan let a little thing slip during the show. It seems that the show has to pay royalties to the original artists for all the songs used on the show. He said this as Blake was about to bust into a No Doubt song, “Don’t sing it or we’ll have to pay for it.” He followed with, “I’m sure I’m going to hear about that from Fox tomorrow.”

You have to give it up for America, the horrible singer Sanjaya is still on American Idol for next week. Just think, if he stays on long enough he’ll have the joy of going on the Idol Tour and millions of Americans can continue to suffer his tragic whales (or do we just call them screams here in the States).

The folks at Vote for the Worst are trying hard to keep Sanjaya in the competition for as long as possible. Did you vote for him? I sure as hell did!

Katharine, a fan of the Internet mini-series LonelyGirl15, appears on the new episode “Truth or Dare” today. Now, if you aren’t up-to-date, there are a lot of clips to watch but this one pretty much stands on its own without any background.

You can watch the new video on the official LonelyGirl15 web site or on YouTube (where LG15 got started).