Hubris.co.nz

Tom posted on the Wellingtonista recently about the places to drink for free. Join me as I try to score free drinks every week until the end of the year.

For the second event in my series, tonight I went to:

“The 2007 Annual General Meeting of Members of Young IT Professionals Network Incorporated trading as Unlimited Potential (the “Society”) will be held at the Wellington Convention Centre, 111 Wakefield Street, Wellington on Thursday, 1 November 2007, commencing at 6.00pm. Join us from 5:30pm for networking.”

Now, if something says that there’s “networking” at 5.30, you’d read that as “drinks”, right? So in that spirit, myself and a couple of of other IT-ish people (Tom and James) RSVPed and concocted a clever plan to go for the drinks and leave before the AGM.

Of course, that’s not what happened. James, Tom, Shirley and I showed up at a little after 5.30 (apparently there’s no longer an umbrella on the corner of Wakefield and Cuba – when did that happen?), we found a group of people standing around in the town hall, and while the ceilings sure had pretty moulded plaster ceilings, THERE WAS NO BAR!!!!!!!!! James left because he’s a good family man, so we cut out of there straight away, and headed to Finc for a bottle of Squawking Magpie pinot gris. For $39 it was easily dividable by three, and peary and delicious. After Shirley decided to go study, I made Tom go back to the Town Hall with me, out of determination to live up to my drinking challenge for YOU, my dear Hubris reader.

So back up the pretty tiled stairs we went, going “hmmm, it sounds very very quiet”, but when we saw the door to the foyer room place where people had been gathered was open (wow, how badly constructed was that sentence?) we thought we might as well creep in there to see if perhaps the bar had been set up while people were still AGMing. We stepped in, and we saw that it was, so I raised my arms in a great big “Woooooo…” but then, I saw him. The Wellington Convention Centre’s very own Clarence Weidman, complete with blue blazer and grey slacks. He was standing possessively behind the drinks table, so I changed course and headed to the badge table instead. Clarence muttered something and made a move to hold open the door into the council chamber, and so somehow Tom and I found ourselves sitting at the back of the AGM, me trying not to snicker as we came in the middle of a speaker that I of course took totally out of context when he was asked “So what did you say to him in the morning?” and he spoke about how he let the mysterious him talk about himself, totally like they’d hooked up, especially after he said “oh yeah he pulled out all the keys”. Everyone looked very serious and not sniggery at all, so I tried to take photos of the council chamber’s chandelier instead, but my camera battery was flat. I said “Aye” to some things, and hoped that someone would say no, and then the meeting was over, and the “networking” started.

The event itself

Companion: Tom, who I have been doing a lot of drinking with lately. He works in ICT as well, so he was a legitimate guest of the event.

Venue: The drinks were held in the foyer outside the Council Chambers in the Town Hall, on the first floor. I love the Town Hall so much that my very first post on the Wellingtonista was about it, so it was nice to see a new area. The Council Chambers were all wood panelling and leather, just the way you’d imagine someone evil like Kerry presiding over, and the foyer was lighter-coloured, but nice and old fashioned. The toilets had sensor-lights in them, which was appreciated.

Drink: The bar table had glasses already poured of now-warm Sav, Chardonnay and red (I didn’t recognise the brand, it was probably some side-Montana label), as well as Heineken and perhaps Tui? They topped up glasses if they noticed you bring one up, but then stopped attending the bar so it was grab-what-you-can.
Tally: 5 glasses Sav, approximately $35 in a bar, $12 at home

Food: There were two platters of antipasto stuff on two tables, with a plate of mixed bread on each. The selection of meats and cheeses and bits and pieces, was really good-looking, but as I said to Tom “You can tell that Kerry provided it due to an obvious lack of thinking and follow-through in terms of not actually providing us with knives with which to cut the cheese”. Of course, Clarence Weidman came out with them then, just to ruin my joke as well as make me attend an AGM. Bastard!
Tally: A whole bunch of stuff, but not a sizeable meal of it though.

People: I recognised a lot of people from Bar Camp, and I got to talk to Mike and Matthew about the olden days of the interweb (like, totally last millennium!) which was fun. I also am now apparently joining a women in ICT group, and if my bag was at my feet I’d tell you exactly what it was, but you know, my couch is too comfy to get up from.

Scoring factor: There were some cute boys, but I didn’t talk to them. A lot of people seemed to take off straight after the AGM, so I wonder where their priorities really lie…

Celebrities: There was someone there who is going to be nominated for Wellingtonista Person of the Year. But I can’t tell you who. Yet.

Gifts: None. Apart from the gift of networking, I suppose.

Total freebie value: It cost me $13 in wine while waiting around, and then 20 minutes of listening to the AGM, but I talked, networked, ate and drank for an hour, so I’d say I was $20 up (that’s serving myself at home prices), ultimately. Plus I got to do this entry, and that’s what’s most important, right?

Tom posted on the Wellingtonista recently about the places to drink for free. Join me as I try to score free drinks every week until the end of the year.

For the first in my series, tonight I’m going to the

“AUT Alumni Cocktail function is this Thursday from 6 – 8 pm. at Hotel Inter-Continental.”

You can sneak in and join me there, and I’ll report back on how it is when I come home, including analysis of the food, the selection of drinks, the company and how much I got out of it and its approximate monetary value.

The event itself

Companion: Fellow AUT Alumni Shirley, and if we were bad sort of people, we may have snuck someone else in under the pretext that they were in our class. But we’re not bad people, honest.

Venue: The drinks were held at the Hotel Intercontinental, in one of the function rooms. It was a very bland space designed for around 30 people. Arm chairs were around the walls, and there were a couple of small tables in the middle of the room, cleverly placed for putting down empty drink glasses, and with bowls for rubbish. An effort was made to make them look more interesting by scattering flat blue glass marbles on top. The bar table was near the entrance door, which was guarded by an AUT staffer to make sneaking in people without them being added to the mailing list much harder. Some of the lights in the windowless room weren’t turned on, allowing the non-AUTer to lurk in the shadows more. Oh, and the toilets had individual hand towels. Classy.
How good was it?: I hadn’t been to the Intercontinental since we went there for KateB’s 12th birthday dinner when it was the Park Royal, so that was nice to do something different, but it was an incredibly bland space.

Drink: The bar had bottles of Montana wine displayed in classy silver bottle-coolers – Lindauer, Sav and a red I didn’t inspect. The beer range was Monteiths and Heineken, and in an unusual touch, they also had a cruet-holder with classy bottles of raspberry, lime and lemon syrups, as well as a range of mixers, suggesting that maybe there were spirits behind the bar. But given how long it took to get a glass of wine poured (there was only one girl behind the bar, who struggled with the Lindauer cork for aaaages), I didn’t bother asking for a mixed drink so I can’t confirm that they were actually offering spirits, or what brand they were.
Tally: 4 glasses bubbly ($28 value in a bar, $9 at home)

Food: Food was brought around on small platters by one waiter, who didn’t circle the room properly, so most of the food went to the people nearest the door, dammit! It consisted of mini sushi (I hate sushi), coconut-crusted prawns (they looked so good I almost tried one, but I don’t like prawns either), rare roast beef on polenta bites (really yummy) and tiny pieces of cheese on tiny bagel chips (only one lot of these circulated as far as I saw).
Tally: 3 pieces beef, 1 piece cheese – I’m estimating the catering was $2.50 per menu selection per person, with 2 or 3 items offered for each thing, so maybe a $5 catering value.

People: There weren’t many nametags left when we went in, but it turned out that there weren’t all that many people there at all. We were pounced on for conversation when we entered, and gradually we started talking to other ex-comms people, all at a very superficial level. There was, however, one woman there who might be a valuable business contact for both Shirley and I, so that’s a good start.

Scoring factor: Zilch. It was almost all entirely corporate women, or older men associated with AUT. And it was far too civilised to start to find out juicy details about the people.

Celebrities: Gemma Gracewood, who didn’t stay long.

Gifts: We got AUT Alumni Network branded pens when we left. They’re silver, with a padded grip and quite classy. However, when you work in an office, good pens lose their novelty value. Unless this one can write in SPACE! Which I don’t think this one can. I also got an AUT-branded lanyard on my name badge, which I’m sure I can be put to good use as a red accessory for my work ID instead of the usual pale blue I use.

Total freebie value: We were only there for around an hour out of its two hour window, so had Shirley not wanted to go and catch up with our mysterious friend who went out for a cigarette and didn’t come back, I could have made better use of the bar. But with such a small group of people assembled (20) and only one bar person, frequent trips to the bar would have been more noticeable and frowned on. Still, it cost me only a quick application of eyeshadow and a ten minute stroll from work, and I got to hang out with Shirley, and then her mysterious friend’s friend bought me a drink in the hotel bar afterwards, so not a waste of time at all. A fine start to free drinks each week, me thinks.

Longxiang Restaurant, on Dixon St opposite the cowboy (or where the Cowboy was), came highly recommended to me. The lovely Miss Fur eats her lunch there on a frequent basis (hey stalkers, she’s single!), and my father has told me a couple of times about how he took a couple of visiting Chinese dignitaries for dinner there and they returned three times during their visit, (having decided another Chinese restaurant they went to was rubbish).

And if real Chinese people from China like it, it must be good, authentic, and tasty, right? I decided to test it out for myself, having previously only tried takeaways that suffered from long delays before we got to eat them, which is hardly a sporting chance.

So after the Beckon VIP night, I grabbed my constant restaurant buddy/sister Karen, as well as the Wellingtonista’s Hadyn and the delightful Amy and set out to give it a go.

The menu is long – not cripplingly so, but enough that it’s easy to select one of each animal with different kinds of sauce. Collaborative ordering had us getting roast duck, Orange Beef, fish fillets with spicy sauce and chicken with ginger and spring onions, as well as rice, tea, vegetarian wontons and spring rolls, two Chinese beers and a cranberry juice.

I can’t say enough good things about the lovely woman who was serving us. She was friendly, helpful and really genuine-seeming. Lisa says that she knows her frequent customers’ names, and makes assumptions about their relationships. Brilliant. I love that in a place.

The atmosphere was fairly standard, pretty bland but that’s what you can expect.

So that leaves the food. How was it?

Well, I should probably say I have very Western tastes when it comes to Chinese food. I might avoid ordering Butter Chicken in Indian restaurants, but I do love me some Sweet’n Sour Pork. Therefore I was very very happy with the Orange Beef, which was battered and deep fried, served with a tangy sauce flecked with diced chillies, and holy crap, it was good. What appeared on first glance to be cellophane turned out to be shredded deep-fried spinach, and that was very very tasty too.

The filling in the vegetarian wontons was disappointing – I couldn’t tell if it was egg or tofu, but either way, it wasn’t my most favourite thing ever, but the spring rolls were crispy and yum.

The roast duck was exactly as it sounds – a plate of chunks of roast duck with crispy skin, served on canned pineapple. One of these days, I’m going to invent a boneless duck, because I am incredibly lazy. Or perhaps I’ll go back to Beijing Restaurant in Newtown for their shredded duck pancakes. You know, one or the other, whichever seems easiest at the time.

Meanwhile the fish and the chicken were quite bland, and suffered from too much cornflour goop sauce, while the rice was mushy and seemed more Japanese than Chinese.

If I went back, which I probably would, based on the awesomeness of the beef and the spring rolls, and how we hardly even had to turn over the lid of our tea pot to get more hot water (there’s a trick for you!), I would stick to the classic Westernised dishes and would no doubt be rewarded for that.

The bill came to $101.50 which was very reasonable, given that we couldn’t finish all the food.

Tonight, I had sex with Shayne Carter. Before you call the Sunday Truth (or actually, probably the Sunday Star Times is more tabloidy these days) though, you should know that I wasn’t the only one. There were probably about three hundred other people who did it too. None of them had as good an orgasm face as him though. And for such a rockstar, he’s not a selfish lover. He totally gave me aural pleasure.

I think if you’d been at San Frindigo tonight, you would understand why I am all about the comparing this gig to sex (you know, aside from intense sexual frustration, of course). It’s not a new thing for me to review gigs like sex – I started doing it with Shihad, but tonight Shayne’s face said “my guitar is a penis, and it is an awesome thing”, and it truly truly was.

Dimmer opened with ‘Crystalator’ (or as others have refered to it, the “reeeeeeeeeeeeh reeeeeeeeh reeeeeeeh song”), and has it really been TEN YEARS since I got that on the Pop Eyed Flying Nun compilation for Xmas? Holy crap! It was loud, so loud that I could have believed that the speakers had come to life and crawled in my ears. After a couple of songs from There My Dear on which the absense of Bic and Anika and Annna doing backing vocals demonstrated even more how Straitjacket Fitsy that album is, they played ‘Drop you off’. Live, it was perhaps a little less menacing than the video – trees out the back of a car window at night time, like lying in the back seat as a kid, normally makes it, but it was more pounding, and thrusting, and pushed and pushed and pushed at you, and my breathing sped up to go along with it, and the very strong coffee I’d made before I left the house and the nurofen plus worked together in harmony, and it was all washing all over my body. ‘Seed’ afterwards was even more thrusty, and it went on and on, and even in the bourbon-washed summer of 01/02 that I believe you are a star was on high rotate in my computer and I was actually literally fucking, I was never fucked as intensely as that song brought it tonight. Well, maybe a couple of times.

The only time that Shayne took off his ‘O’ face was when they played “You’re only leaving hurt”, the first chords of which made me well up, naturally. For that, he was cradling his guitar like it was the last dance with a lover, instead of the pornstar stance of other songs (and I mean that in the best possible way, of course). He said at the end “That’s a sad song”, and then said “this is another sad song” as an introduction to ‘Scrapbook’. I recently managed to find Siamese Dream on vinyl ($50 secondhand, mind you!), and so I’ve been listening to that quite a lot, so I can say with good authority that ‘Scrapbook’ reminds me (see, I told you I had authority) of ‘silverfuck’ – most especially the pounding pounding pounding drums, but ‘Scrapbook’ manages to be a thousand times more bitter and powerful , the whole “bang bang, you’re dead” line aside.

The last gig I saw at San Frindigo was of course the Phoenix Foundation, so I enjoyed the contrast between the highly personable stage banter between Sam & Luke, and stony silence and the eyes of daggers it seemed like James was getting as he tuned his guitar. A couple of songs in, it seemed like someone flicked the “make smalltalk with the audience now” switch though, and even the way too fucking predictable wanker yelling “Play ‘She speeds’!” and the so very stoic “Ta” after applause didn’t detract from the overwhelming intensity of the gig. During ‘Scrapbook’ I even wished that it was Shihad on stage, because I so so wanted to throw some goats, and they’re the only band I’ve seen that you can get away with non-ironic goats at.

The last track of the two-song encore had huge rolling cymbals that were waves of sound, and the feedback was totally consuming, just flooding into every last inch of me. I’m sounding like some druggie loser right now, I know, but I’m not. On drugs. Except for the aforementioned caffeine and codeine, of course. I’m just all woah still. My head is buzzing, and there are oceans of feedback still playing in my ears, and every inch of me is sore from the dancing, and from the bass that rose up from the floor, but I don’t care. I came in my pants like a thousand times tonight.

And awesomely, I just got a text from my friend going “Do you feel like Shayne is making love to you with the music?” Hahaha! Yes, yes I do! And holy fucking shit, I hope it was as good for him as it was for me.

Reality / Performance / Results

Reality

Previously on Rockstar I lost all respect for Gilby and instead fell in love with Jason when he cried as Storm sang ‘Wish You were here’ and I cried then too, and then cried when Storm was kicked out. And then I spent the week listening to Storm and Lukas’s originals.

We’re all voting for Magni this week, right? But not because we want him to win, but rather that we’re buying into the conspiracy that T’Lee hates him and we want to piss off T’Lee.

Toby says he can’t believe he’s got a car, and according to the internets, somewhere Mig is saying “you know what, I never got my car”. The rockers talk about Storm, and it makes me sad, but then Dilana is interviewed and I get angry again and want to give her a double jab, cross, jab, right uppercut. Magni goes over to the piano and starts playing ‘Karma Police’ and Dilana comes over and starts rasping with him and I’m like “SHUT UP BITCH” but then luckily Toby slips her a pie and so she shoves it in Magni’s face. And I won’t talk about how much I’d like to lick him clean again because I don’t want to cheapen him.

But oooh, speaking of Mig, he shows up to give Toby the keys to his HONDA ELEMENT. Because what the world.. needs now… is S. U. Vs. They’re the only thing that can kill… all the trees. Hehehe. Mig forever shatters the stereotype of Australians being dumb by saying “One of you is going to be the lead singer of Supernova…. but three of you aren’t”. That’s some smooth mathing, Mig. But then he proves why Rockstar is a thousand times better than Idol, by also warning them that they’re not very likely to get record contracts just like that. Oooh but he signed with Universal and his album is going to be out in January 2007. Nice plug there.

Lukas interviews that as soon as Mig said “you might not win” he switches off his mind because he wouldn’t have come here if he didn’t want second place. Toby says “I won a car!” like he no longer cares about winning, which is funny because he’s the only one I can really see fitting into Supernova. Plus as the forums have cackled, Lukas couldn’t win the car because even an SUV isn’t big enough to fit in his ego.

The rockers then go crazy because their photos are hanging in the song selection room. Toby’s, naturally is one of him surrounded by girls. He says to Magni “She’s from Melbourne” and Magni’s all “How do you know that?” and Toby says her name is Ashley. Magni incredulously is like “Oh my god, you know their names!” like Toby is a total horn dog into the groupies or something (fact: he’s the only single person in the house, apparently, although Ryan started big rumours of a relationship going on with a girl who had a partner and someone else. Many speculate it was Lukas and Patrice, although she had a girlfriend. I like to picture IceStorm/Stagni but have too much respect for both of them to think it’s true. Let’s move on).

Dilana says their pictures captured their personalities. Oh really? Cos I thought that pictures capture the soul. Magni says the pictures are more important than the cars and clothes and phones that they got (and he avoids product placement), while Toby laughs at Lukas’s fishmouth in the picture and says it’s humanly impossible. Heee!

For song selection, they’re singing their originals again, and then they get to choose through the whole music library of the season. As Paul said, the house band have had to learn 200 songs for the season. <3. They're so awesome. Anyway, as the rockers read out the names of the songs they remember all the ones who have left, such as Magni saying "Duran Duran anyone? Matt, I still love you!" and calling Phil crazy, and Dilana telling Toby that if he's going to sing 'Jenny 7568' he has to wear the outfit, and Toby's like "Pffffft (evs) yeah totally". Hehe, I'd like to see that. And they laugh about 'Born to mild', and then I almost wet myself at Magni's impression of Lukas singing 'Don't Panic'. Lukas, however, does not look nearly as impressed. Hahah suck it, Lukass.

Oh, then they find four new songs that haven't been played yet, including 'Fix You', which is of course O.C soundtrack music, and I have a special kind of hate in my heart for that song, because just before Xmas my Oma died, and while Anji and I were sitting at the hospital with her waiting for the rest of the family to show up, and I’d already been feeling like a TV show – specifically Willow in ‘The Body’ episode of Buffy freaking out about how I was in a singlet and sunburnt and it was so undignified, I heard ‘Fix you’ drifting in from a radio somewhere, and I was Not. Happy about the soundtracking of my real life.

But we will ignore that in favour of going squee at Magni singing ‘Comfortably Numb’ with his accoustic guitar. And now Dilana and Lukas are both wanting it. Magni’s like “we have 150 songs and everyone’s fighting over one”. Magni pushes ‘Fix you’ towards Lukas and starts strumming, and they sing, and Lukas gives ‘Comfortably Numb’ to Dilana. And then he interviews “if you can’t sing any song – and literally we had every song, then why are you here?”. Literally. Every song. Ever. I would have liked to see him bust out ‘Tu teramai nga iwi’ if that’s that case, but EVS. And then of course Dilana decides she wants to go for ‘Roxanne’, which of course Chris fucked up so bad at the start of the season that it became the new JD doing ‘We are the champions’. Dilana singing ‘Roxanne’ sounds okay, but mostly because Magni’s in the shot playing his guitar. And so no one sings ‘Comfortably Numb’ – and I think I agree with a poster on the TWOP forum who hypothesizes that Dilana has never actually heard the song in the first place. Except for maybe the Scissor Sisters version. And then Dilana decides she’s super proud of herself and her supersoul because at the start of the season she wouldn’t have taken that song.

And after Lukas sang ‘Headspin’ (which I think is not a very nice song) about his mother, he’s singing ‘Fix You’ for his father, and hopes he’ll see it and the song will fix their relationship. Riiiight. Dilana meanwhile is doing an unplugged version of ‘Roxanne’, saying that Chris rearranged it and fucked it up and she’s not going to do that. And we get an interview with Paul who is struuuuggling to remain diplomatic while basically saying she’s a total fuckwit. He conveys that with a “………. I personally don’t really care for her arrangement, but music is a subjective thing”. Dilana, of course, however, interviews “if I get crucified for my arrangement, then whoever crucifies me for it needs their head read, because it’s stunning the way I’m doing it”. Hey interwebs, let’s grab a hammer and some nails eh?

Over audio of Toby singing ‘Karma Police’ Magni says he’ll miss the guys in the house, but he misses the people back home. So i guess he’s packed his bags and isn’t expecting to win then? Dilana’s all “they’re the family I never had!” which is why she’s fucked up so badly I suppose. Lukas says it’s all overwhelming man, in just a few days man. Toby folds up his Australian flag. I just figured out that he’s actually Colby from Survivor. And then there’s a long shot of them all leaning on their guitars looking at the pool. And we only hear Lukas and Toby talking about how they might win this thing. Hmm….

Performance

First, an announcement. I’m going out to Food Baby tonight, as I generally do on Thursdays, so please don’t text me spoilers. Please please please.

Second. I want Toby to win. I want this because he’s the best fit, and because I want to piss off Dilana. I want Magni to come third, because I want to piss off T’Lee, and also because I want him to get the credit he deserves. I want the band to just ‘fess up about how they don’t want a chick singer and just send Dilana home first. And if you want another reason to laugh at Dilana, check out her solo video.

Third, the performance show! We get some oh no not at all biased cut (it skims and hugs all your curves!) footage of the rockers’ journeys to the final four, mentioning Magni’s two trips to the bottom 3 and implying that he only got his groove on when he did ‘Fire’ (umm, hell the fuck o, what about ‘Dolphin’s Cry’? Bitch made me cry. Or even that he got the encore in Week 3), but saying that Dilana went from strength to strength. Riiight. And Toby gets a buildup story, while Lukas has a reigning champion type one, although I think those actual words were used to describe Dilanadrama, not him.

But before we get down to them actually singing, we get a special encore performance voted for by people with VERIZON WIRELESS CELLPHONES. And while I was hoping for Matt or Dana, and the TWOP forums were calling for Zayra, it just so happens that Mark Burnett is producing a certain R.Star’s record, and so of course, it’s Ryan who comes back to announce that he’s put out an album called Dark Horse. OH. MY. FUCKING. GOD. This man thinks that irony is that thing on the periodic table represented by FE. After a pukey pukey “thanks for this amazing oppotunity Supernova” speech as if he didn’t make the goodbye that he did, he sings ‘Back of your HONDA ELEMENT’. For the first time (because um, i haven’t listened to this song a fuckload or anything. Ahem), I realise that he’s singing about having the sexing with a lady in the back of her car, and yet he’s singing “you won’t be sad, but you won’t be satisfied”. Ha HA! I suppose at least he’s honest. Maybe more people should use that as a pick-up style. “Hey baby, you wanna come home with me? I’ll tweak your nipples like they’re a volume dial, make a couple of cursory stabs at your vag with me fingers and then stick my cock in, pump for about thirty seconds then collapse on top of you. It’ll be AWESOME!”. And Ryan gets a car too, and it appears that Lizzie Grubman did the PR for this show, since the car is parked in the middle of the audience. Hahah, seriously, this recap is very funny today, with that and the bias cut joke. I’m on fire. And I’m not just talking about my loins every time that Magni is on stage.

Once we return from the ads, Toby does ‘Karma Police’ and I’m like meh, this is like a singalong around a camp fire. But then Magni joins him on guitar for the oh oh oh oh song, and, as the TWOPers say, it is a performance full of what they term ‘HoYay’ or “hurrah for homosexual undertones” as Toby cuddles up to Magni to sing and write “EVS” on the back of his head. Gilby talks about the energy that Toby brings to the stage and Dave also gives him a tongue bathing. And the person in the audience holding up a “Rand Wagon!” sign makes me both throw up a little in my mouth and wet my panties in delight at the stupid but perfectness of it as a team name. And speaking of throwing up in my mouth, Paula FUCKING Abdul is sitting in the audience, and gets cut to quite often, leading Dave to say “And Paula’s here to see some real singing” – and perhaps to teach the rockers how to slur all their words. Of course, Lukas will have a headstart on that bit…

Lukas sings ‘Fix You’ and my feelings about this song have already been discussed. He cuts the really high part short to progress the song quicker to the rockier bit, and in parts he actually uses his singing voice rather than his growly voice, so it’s okay, but not outstanding. A forum poster pointed us to a myspace page of a woman who claims to be his vocal coach, who says that people who drop their jaws are more likely to damage their vocal chords, so it’s possible that he’s all conflicted, but who knows? He sings ‘Headspin’ with just an accoustic guitar, and while he sings a little better than previously, I really miss the rolling drum and the guitar parts of the myspace version of it.

And now let’s just take a moment to talk about that myspace page. I mean, it’s what the kids are down with, right? And so therefore should be a pretty good way to tell what the kids are into. So on Lukas’s band Rise Electric’s page, ‘Headspin’ has been played 36,373 times. That’s pretty sweet, even if 20 of them were me. But Toby’s Juke Kartel page shows that his song ‘Throw it all away’ has been played 45,862 times. But you know who has more than three times the number of plays than Toby, which sort of disproves the Mark Burnett conspiracy theory and supports him as a guy who’s somewhat on to it? Ryan on 159,854 plays. So Ryan’s top of the Rockstar game, right? Oh wait, hang on, there’s also a certain Miss Storm, whose ‘R’ rated version of ‘Ladylike’ has racked up 114,507 plays. Wait a minute, you’re saying, 114,507 < 159,854? Well how about the motherfucking TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY SIX THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY FIVE plays that the 'G' version has had? 360,682 > all the rest put together. Suck a fuck, Gilby Clark.

(We will be very quiet about the fact that the A M?ti S?l page shows only 18 plays of some random pop song that has parts that sound like ‘Luka’ and the rest is insanely sunny and just odd. It’s in fricking Viking after all…)

Remember how Dilana tore a calf muscle? She certainly doesn’t want you to forget it, as she makes sure she has a cane in sight whenever she’s sitting down. And yet, somehow as she performs, she can walk all over the place just fine and do her high kicks. (A TWOP poster says “I figure it’s like the end of Attack of the Clones, when Yoda hobbles in on his cane and he goes, “Count Dooku, calling you out I am.” And Count Dooku goes, “Bring it, beeyotch.” Then Yoda ditches his cane and pulls out his little green lightsaber and goes nuts.” Heee! Although I’m not a Star Wars geek, obvs.) I really really wish she wasn’t doing those kicks, and it’s not just because they’re dumb. Oh no. Tonight she’s wearing a dress that’s cut so I can see out of her nose. Up her vaginal passage. And you know that’s going to be an acidic journey to take. Shudder. Dilana of course sings better ‘Roxanne’ better than Chris did, even though it was pretty uncool of her to say so, and gives us a HoYay! moment with all the boys on backing. One of Supernova tells her that it was smart to make them her backing band, and she makes a face like “Damn, I wish I’d thought of that”. And then before she sings ‘Supersoul’ she impassionately says “This song is not a rebel song. This song is ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’” “this is not an angry song, it’s a freedom song” and everyone’s like oh yeah that’s right, we totally didn’t see you say that you wanted to write a fuck you to your fans and control alt delete them”. and she gets a tongue bathing that makes me nauseous.

Magni’s appearence on stage just makes me giggly and smiley and I lean forward to pay special attention and just bask in his glow because of his awesomeness and the way he just seems to be totally a part of the House Band. I know that they play extra specially hard for him because they feel his musicianship, and then I fantasize about them ‘feeling his musicianship’ as him and Rafel duel and have even more HoYay when they play each other’s guitars as he storms his way through ‘Hush’ by Deep Purple and Gilby looks on like “oh, is that what a good guitar play looks like? I must make a note of that”. His performance is utterly electrical, and so so natural. I can’t gush about it enough. His original grips me a lot more this time too, but then of course his number one hater T’Lee is like “I can’t even remember a single line of that”. Really T’Lee? Because I can’t remember a single supernova song, or a Motley Crue one other than ‘Girls Girls Girls’ and ‘Dr Feelgood’. You are so off my list of people that I want to catch veneral diseases from. And just for that, I spent half an hour voting for Magni online. I love you Magni. I hope you come here with the House Band. That’d be awesome. But of course, he will be the next to go home. Jason pretty much said so at the end with his “thank you for your closing performances tonight” speech. Waah.

Reality / Performance / Results

Results

Okay, here we go, Russell.

So. That was emotional. No really. I was expecting to watch Rockstar on tape after the usual Thursday Food Baby with many bottles of wine, but because Helen and Katy have been so busy lately with Real Hot Bitches lately, it got cancelled. So I took my red wine and my unset chocolate mousse (I overwhipped the cream and it started to seperate. Normally our family’s chocolate mousse is so sex that when I post the recipe I’m going to have to lock it down to Level 2 because of the indecent content) spilling all over the car seat to Anji’s house, via massive traffic jams through the Hataitai tunnel and a total lack of parking near Domino’s. I was having a very bad stomach pain day too, and when I got to her house the people who were moving in since she’s moving out were showing people through the house and they were talking and talking and it was a reminder of how much I need a flatmate so I was like aaaaaaaaaaaargh anyway and was close to having an anxiety attack and I was in a filthy bad mood. I appreciate this is supposed to be a rockstar recap, but I want to demonstrate the emotional state that I was in before we got started. Okay? Okay.

Now, I spent far too much time yesterday checking out previous Rockstar performances on Youtube, which has the advantage of not only showing the fucking annoying VERIZON WIRELESS commercials before every clip but also including the judges’ comments. You should look up Jordis doing ‘Baba O’Reilly’, which was the very first song performed and the one that told us that there was actually going to be some talent in this show. In fact, I was feeling so fucking nostalgic already I even watched Zayra singing ‘Jenny’ again. Yes, it’s been an obsessive winter. And that obsessiveness was enough to observe that Brooke was wearing the same marijuana leaf dress again, which means that the programme we were watching must have been taped on the Sunday along with the performances. Of course, the fact that in NZ we had a two hour finale, while in Australia it was 90 minutes and in the USA only one hour should have clued us in to the fact that we were just going to be getting a retread of what has happened over the season. This time though it was cut a little less biasedly. And I get to laugh at my bias cut joke again, and point out that if you didn’t know who Lizzie Grubman was in my previous recap you might not have appreciated that she was a PR bitch who drove her SUV through the crowd waiting outside a nightclub in the Hamptons. Um, not that I’m also obsessed with Gawker or anything, oh no.

Anyway, so we get a whole hour of nostalgia and me screaming “TAKE SOME FUCKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR FUCKING OWN ACTIONS DILANA! This shit isn’t just happening to you, you’re causing it.” And like Willow in ‘Graduation Part I’ I even went “awww” at people I had disliked in the past, like Zayra. Anji tried to say that Patrice showed herself to be a catty bitch, but I don’t believe that’s the case. After all, she’s a lesbian. Although she pashed a boy in Vegas. Evs. Haha, speaking of evs, who else caught Lukas saying it really early on when they were writing songs together in groups? It’s weird to look back not just on the rockers but also on what I wrote about them at the time. I’m so sorry for implying that Magni was a member of HIM. How could I ever have doubted him?

And so we come to the actual hour and Brooke has changed her dress, and the set looks a bit different, like they’ve actually moved back to the Mayan theatre that they pretend they’ve been filming in all along. Except that at the start of the series Supernova didn’t look so fucking bored. And Butch Walker was there before he got pissed off about his helpful comments being edited out and refused to come on the show anymore although apparently he’ll still be working on the album. A producer called Butch? How do they expect to sell any records with a name like that eh?

Brooke tells us that Toby, Magni and Lukas were all in the bottom three at some stage. I’d just like to say that I am NOT. HAPPY about the amount of eye liner Toby has started to wear and Anji says that even Magni is wearing it, but I ignore her. Lukas, meanwhile has found for himself at the bottom of a box in an op shop in Eketahuna some WHITE-RIMMED aviators and is stupidly covering up his greatest talent – his purty eyeshadow application. And he’s wearing pale shiny lip gloss. It’s really not a good look. And I’m also unhappy about the white jacket that Magni is wearing, although luckily he’s not in the matching white pants. It is after Labour Day, after all.

The first person in the bottom two is Magni, and even though i knew it was coming I start crying because this means he’s gone. It looks like there’s something in Anji’s eye too, though she tells me to cry quietly so we can listen to him doing ‘Fire’ again. There is much much much HoYay! in this performance, especially when he hugs Rafe at the end. Oh man, he just looks so good with that band, and his performance is much better than Toby’s, who phones in ‘White Wedding’. But of course we know who’s going to leave. Remember how Supernova kicked out Dana by saying she’d come so far? And kicked out Ryan because he’d come the furthest of anyone else? Remember how they like to kick out people for the VERY REASON WHY THEY SHOULD WANT TO KEEP THEM? And remember how when Magni played with Supernova, he tried to interact with Gilby who just turned his back to him (well, maybe he was presenting his rear to be humped like Jill. But I doubt it)? Bear that in mind while Gilby asks Magni about how comfortable he looks with the House Band. Magni says he’s not playing with them, he wants to join them, and I gush all over my chair at the thought of a concert of just Magni (and Storm!) with the House Band. Gilby says that Magni looks more like a member of the band rather than a front person, and so he has to go. WHAT.THE. FUCK? I mean, I know Magni wasn’t going to win, but that is seriously the worst fucking excuse ever. Does SuperEgo really want someone that they’re going to clash and fight with rather than someone who’d work with them? Apparently so. Fuck you, Gilby Clark. Jason looks gutted as he well should as Magni makes a beautiful eloquent speech and actually looks really really sad. I’m guessing it’s just because he’s going to miss the House Band rather than that he actually wanted to be in Supernova.

(Apparently around this point in the show, American audiences saw a commercial for Survivor using ‘Headspin’ as the soundtrack. Hmmm, I wonder why that could be…)

So now the final three all give the judges a reason why they should win, which boils down to Lukas – “I’m ready to lead you”, Dilana – “I’m the one” and Toby – “I’m the tallest”. And of course they rehash another song Toby does ‘Somebody told me’ again, Lukas does ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ and I am so over his voice, and Anji and I speculate about what Dilana’s going to sing because she’s all decked out in a bustled parachute for a skirt and we wonder what song that outfit goes with. ‘Zombie’ apparently. Yawn. I can’t believe I ever liked Dilana. But it’s Toby’s time to go, and I am rather surprised. Perhaps the rumours that Suzie McNeill started when she said her friend at Pulse Studios where she’s recording her album had told her that Lukas has been coming in to record the Supernova album for the past couple of weeks was correct. Dilana looks like she’s crapping in her pants. I guess she didn’t get the ‘Lukas has already won’ memo then. But when she’s told, Gilby adds “Dilana, for you, I’d like to help you write and produce your album” and the internets are all like “AHAHHAHAAAHA oh Gilby, if Supernova is anything to go by, your writing’s almost as bad as hers” (although apparently his solo album’s not bad. Well, not lotion/thong / control alt delete bad anyway. And did you guys check out her solo video on Youtube like I told you to?) and Tommy and Dave say they want to play on it. Jason, of course, is saving himself for Storm, as well he should. And it’s interesting that the focus is all on Dilana rather than Lukas, who just won and is supposed to be surprised and overjoyed. But he’s strangely calm. Supernova join him on stage and sing the hey hey hey ho ho ho song that Toby sang about the five cliches (and again I make my hillaaaaaaaaaaarious joke about how there’s only four of them on stage though) and then they sing the one that Magni sang last week, and I start crying again because Magni comes out on stage to play accoustic guitar with them. I say that having him come out must have meant that they practiced it and therefore Mark Burnett has just destroyed any last remaining illusion that the results were a surprise, but then I remember that of course Magni played the guitar in this song last week so maybe it was a last minute addition. Sob.

What the hell am I going to do with my life now, once I’ve finished reading all the forums? And perhaps more interestingly, 1. What the hell are ‘Supernova’ going to call themselves now that they’ve lost the lawsuit brought by another band called that? and 2. Who the hell is going to be up for the third season? I’m betting Mark Burnett is trying to slip Scott Weiland some heroin right now in the hopes that he’ll overdose…

EDIT: I know what I’m going to do with my life now – aid this poster on TWOP who said “And after JD last year, I’ve a mind to go to Toronto with a school bus and round up all the homeless musicians with pretensions of rockstar greatness and practice a little rendition of my own. I’ll lock them all up for a year in a secret prison in North Dakota where they’ll be forced to listen to an endless stream of polka bands just so someone else can win.” Hee! And also as Anji reminded me last night “Maybe someone will be playing in the States while you’re there.” Come on Storm, play San Fran between Oct28 and Nov 6, pleaaaaaase…

And if you’ll allow me one more edit: “Lastly, I think I want to go as Dilby for Halloween this year. Just add fright wig, and go door to door rejecting the best candies at each stop. “I don?t like your Peanut Butter Cups because the peanut butter meshes too nicely with the chocolate.”

Reality

Previously on Rockstar: Supernova Ryan gave the most awesomely egotistical goodbye speech, but it doesn’t get repeated.

Lukas says that he’s going to miss Ryan. Dilana says she wishes she hadn’t screwed up her song. Lukas says “you’re only human” which is fairly nice of him, since he’s not human, he’s a mole man, but naturally Dilanadramarama has to throw it back in his face and go “you did it on ‘Celebrity skin’”. Lukas isn’t happy about that at all, but as usual, Magni is there to break up the tension somewhat by pieing Toby. And so people throw their drinks in each other’s faces, Storm shakes up champagne to spray it around, and Lukas says that he needs to take off his jacket. Haha, you’re SO rock’n roll Lukas. Cos rockers care about their clothes. Oh wait, hang on, they don’t because they go jump in the pool in their clothes – except for Storm, who does a nudie. Awesome. And then Toby, sitting around topless, says “watch Lukas come down in a new tie and makeup” and indeed, we cut to Lukas reapplying his eyeliner.

They then get a new Supernova track to work with, which starts out like ‘Blind’ by Korn, and apparently it’s what they’ve all been waiting for, something dark and moody. And Toby interviews about how things seem to be working out for him quite well, and everyone on the interweb goes “yeah, we’ve been noticing that recently”. Dilana meanwhile struggles with songwriting, because hi, lotion and thong anyone?

Then we get some car pimping (honda ridgelines, everyone! And Gibson guitars! Just in case you didn’t know already) and now we’re going to get a songwriting clinic with Gilby. Because of course, he’s responsible for writing some of the best rock songs ever, like ‘Sweet Child’o Mine’. Oh no wait, hang on, that was Izzy. Silly me. Gilby interviews about how professional Storm is, and how she’s found the balance between getting the job done and having fun and it looks like they’re doing well, and having chemistry.

Magni meanwhile says he has a minority complex when it comes to writing English lyrics. Hehe, that’s so cute, a minority complex. I am so in love. Have I mentioned that lately? He says that basically 90% of rock’n roll lyrics have the same words and cliches. Gilby says he’s not sure if Magni is a creative musician. Umm, hi Gilby – have you even LISTENED to the crap that you guys have turned out so far? Hey hey hey, ho ho ho? Yeah yeah yeah? Yeah, exactly. Meanwhile apparently Lukas is very creative and doesn’t take the cliched route – so he’s obviously not right for Supernova. And Gilby’s pissed that Lukas only bothered with one verse and one chorus and thinks he can get away with that, and says “I believe he feels that this is his gig already” – which is what many of the internets already believe.

Gilby uses the word ‘cliche’ a thousand times more while talking to Toby, and says that he has a young energy that they need. Because they’re all a good twenty years older than him? Yeah. And he praises Toby some more and thinks he’s been listening to the whole package. And then he says he was curious to see what Dilana would have come up with, because they’re not sure where her writing is at. Well, apparently her writing is at the stage of calling the song ‘Metamorphisis lizard skin’. Riiiiiiight. That rolls off the tongue. And all the lyrics are ‘from the heart’. As oppposed to from her ass. And apparently “it’s about people on the internet who vote for us, you know, the fans, basically it’s a screw you kind of song”. And Gilby calls it a cliche. Hey Gilby, I have a Mr Kettle on the line for you. Hahahhaa Dilana wants to put in a chorus about “control alt delete”. That is so unbelievably bad it’s almost awesome. And she interviews saying that she didn’t know that there’d be a song-writing aspect to this gig, that she was there to be the singer. Aha! So it’s what we suspected all along. And that totally means Dilana is out, from the way they’ve cut it. It’s not a redemption arc at all.

Song selection! There’s five songs, and also everyone will be singing an original as well. Dilana pretends that she’s happy about that. They’re getting ‘sets’ which means they have to talk to the audience in between songs. Everyone wants ‘Behind Blue Eyes’. I suspect Dilana only knows the Limp Bizkit version. Because I hate her. And because I hate Fred Durst. And therefore they go well together. Of course, no one is ever going to look as hot singing that song as Giles in ‘Where the wild things are’ (yeah I know you probably won’t remember him doing it because you would have poked out your eyes at the amount that Buffy and Riley were humping in that episode). Magni gets Lukas to take ‘Living on a prayer’ by saying that he thinks it’d rock, and I think Magni actually means it, as opposed to when Dilana got him to do ‘Creep’ cos she thought he’d fuck it up.

Storm’s original song is called ‘What the fuck is ladylike?’, but she’ll be calling it just ‘Ladylike’. And interviews that she’s lost herself in the past couple of weeks trying to show a little bit too much flesh. Now I’ve seen a video of her singing it on youtube, and it’s a fucking rad song.

HAHAHAHAHAHA Dilana tells Paul that she only knows the song from the Limp Bizkit version, and I cheer because I was right. And Paul is piiiiiiiiiiiiissed off about it because she’s changing it up in ignorance. Awww Paul, your posts on TWOP were so gracious, if I had a chance I would punch her for you. She says she’s going to win back her fans, because she has to. She needs them and they need her. Umm, I don’t think that they do actually. Nor do Supernova. But we’ll see…

And then they show the rockers skipping, and Lukas’s pants fall down. Hahah. And Magni falls over. Awww.

Performance Night

So it’s performance night, and Supernova have been soaking in orange juice – or at least Gilby and T’Lee have, right? Or is it my tv? Everyone just looks so fucking orange these days. Maybe that’s a sign that I shouldn’t be watching The Apprentice. Brooke also announces that Ryan is at the top of the MSN download charts, so already his goodbye speech has come true. Shame I don’t think he’ll be getting any money for it but…

Dilana apparently ripped a calf muscle during rehersal (what? You mean they practice their stage shows?) so a big burly man carries her on stage to a stool. I think they should have got Storm to carry her again, that would have been awesome. She’s singing ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ and while the clips don’t show her saying she only knows the Limp Bizkit version, they do show Paul saying she hadn’t even heard parts of the song, and this is where I must put up my hand and admit that part of what she was singing sounded totally unfamiliar to me. But that must be because she sang it so crappy, right? Right. Anyway, when Dilana sees that clip, she gets VERY VERY ANGRY and it looks very much like she’s hexing Paul right then and there. Despite being stuck on a stool, she tries to rock out and Jim takes pity on her and comes up and riffs beside her. Don’t you dare touch my Jim, bitch. In her little talk she says her original is about “all this stuff that’s been happening to me lately” and I scream at the TV “ALL THIS STUFF THAT YOU HAVE BEEN DOING TO YOURSELF LATELY, TAKE SOME FUCKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR ACTIONS!” and Bart and Smoo look at me strangely. And when she sings her original which is called ‘Supersoul’ she gets up and hops to the end of the stage and jumps up and down on one foot. Oh she’s so rock and roll. Or not. Supernova are nowhere near as mean to her as they should be. As one TWOP poster puts it “this whole Emancipation of DiDi thing has gotten old”.

Magni does ‘Back in the USSR’ and as much as I hate to say it, it’s kind of boring. But I blame the song, not him. And his original, which he says he hurriedly translated from Icelandic is called ‘Your time will come’. Beat THAT, other Supernovices. Lukas didn’t bother to take the time to translate his song from whatever language it is that he sings. But we’ll get to that later. Tom says that “Whereas Magni’s song was like if Scott Stapp and Ed Kowalcyk made
friends” and much as I hate to compare my darling to those people, he could be right. Except that I’d take out Scott Stapp and add in Disturbed. Which doesn’t make it much better. But you can tell the houseband love him (and I’m happy that people have been giving shoutouts to the houseband so much this episode) because Sasha does a big waterspraying fountain for him. Someone take Sasha out of that jacket too please. He looks like a hired heavy. Supernova tell him that’s the most angry they’ve seen him, but Dave asks why both the performances were the same. Magni says “Well Dave, they were the same because I was singing them both” and all is forgiven as I flood my panties. Oh the cheeky deadpan, how you turn me on.

Storm’s wearing a buttoned up coat to sing ‘Sufferagette City’ which makes me happy cos I know she’ll be taking it off soon. Dave’s all “hey dude, I love that song man, can I play with you?” in a bid to appease all the people who hate on him in his blog for hating on her all the time. And they play together, and it’s pretty good, but then Storm takes off her coat and frees her Magni-ficent boobage, and annouces that she’s going to be singing ‘What the what is ladylike?’. Oh maaaaaaan, fuck the motherfucking censors. FUCK YOU. It’s WHAT THE FUCK IS LADYLIKE. FUCK! Okay, I feel better now. This song kicks some serious fucking ass, and if it came out as a single, I would buy it in a second. T’Lee has come in his pants about a thousand times and now everyone in a ten foot diameter around him also has syphillis. Dave tells her that he’s been up on stage with some of the greatest front people ever (really? He’s played with Robbie Williams?) and that playing with her (heh) felt like being up there with them again, and then he says that her original was the best original he’s heard in both seasons. That means it’s better than not only ‘Pretty Vegas’, and ‘Trees’ but also ‘Stop/Go’ and ‘bring your lotion and your thong’. Way to go Storm! I think her and I in my blonde wig would make a totally hot couple. You know, just if she’s reading this.

Oh, and another TWOP comment I really really really must repeat because it’s a Weddon line – “After the song, she kissed Brooke full on the lips. Using a parabolic mike, I was able to hear what TLee said to Gilby right after when the camera went to them. TLee said, ?I?ll be in my bunk.?” HEHEHEHEH. Oh that makes me so happy.

In case we didn’t realise that Lukas was emo, he’s wearing a stripey shirt (the fact that I’m wearing a stripey shirt today is well beside the point), a vest with a skull & crossbones on it (the fact that last night when I watched the show I was wearing my pink with skull & crossbones pjs is well beside the point as well) and he’s spent two hours striping his hair and combing it in front of his face (My side fringe and the two boxes of purple and blueblack hairdye that I have at home waiting for me to finish with job hunting are also well beside the point). I feel like my mother because I really want to get that fucking hair out of his eyes. He does a strumy solo electric version of ‘Living on a prayer’ slowed down, and I’m like fuuuuuuuuck I wish Magni was singing it, because I dig on the arrangement, but I can’t take his growly shouty enunciation. Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to sing with your mouth full, Lukas? And the same’s true for his original, which is called ‘Headspin’ and he says it’s about his mother having a hard time growing up (or something like that, I don’t speak French Canadian eh, and yes, I know he’s not French). The chorus is totally lighters-out anthemic, and I think I’d like it – if only Magni was singing it. (EDIT: I found it on myspace and it sounds much cleaner and I really like it). Predictably Supernova love it, and Gilby says that Lukas inspires him. Inspires him to obsess over his hair, according to the forums, who counted Gilby touching his hair 15 times in the eight minutes he was on camera in the reality episode, and one poster said that her roommate went to a taping and that Gilby got his hair fluffed (heh) in every break. Because you need to know these things. I’ve gone off Gilby since he’s become so orange. Plus, he’s wearing a jacket. Put him back in a tshirt and a cuff and we’ll talk. Oh and Dave and Gilby banter about how waving a cellphone around is the new lighter, and it makes me giggle.

I should mention here that all the rockers have been rocking out (haha) to each other’s songs – except of course for Dilana Dilana Dilana who looks PISSED OFF that others are doing well. I’m sure she might just be in a tremendous amount of pain, but meh. I’m a bit worried about her, I hope they’ve got her a psychiatrist to talk to because she’s crashing and burning so hard. And I must quote another TWOP poster:
“I cracked up when Dave told Dilana that her leg injury didn’t show in her voice.
The shin bone is connected to the
Thigh bone
The calf muscle is connected to the
Larynx”
Hehe!

Someone who’s been slowburning, meanwhile, is Toby. His ‘Mr Brightside’ is nothing special (remember Marty doing it accoustically?) but his original is very very clever, full of “oh oh oh” choruses. It sounds pretty much like Supernova’s stuff so far, and that’s very telling. Rafeal does a big guitar solo in it, and I crack up thinking about the bit in School of Rock when Jack Black’s all “I’m going to take a solo here, you can take one later”. Girls in the audience have written ‘EVS’ on their hands, and Dave says it’s not just a Melbourne thing anymore, it’s a worldwide phenomenon. Umm Dave, we’ve talked about this before, and remember, it should be attributed to Jessie, not Toby. Sheesh.
But Toby’s quite clearly demonstrated he would be the best man for the job and the initial ranked voting results show this too, with him in front, followed in order by Lukas, Magni, Storm, and Dilana. Does this mean Dilana’s going home? It looks like she’s going to have to pull out something truly amazing to save herself, otherwise her lack of songwriting skills (that Supernova so desperately need) might send her home, because her alienation of her fanbase isn’t going to do her any favours.

Wait a second. Stop everything. Storm’s myspace profile say that Storm and the Balls are “Metal / Jazz / Christian Rap” CHRISTIAN RAP? I want my three votes back, bitch!

Results Show

First up, I must confess that I spent much of yesterday hunting down both Lukas and Storm on myspace and listening to their originals on repeat. Yes that’s right, I just said that I listened to a Lukas song on repeat. And I’m okay with that. I’d still love to hear Magni sing ‘Headspin’, but the recorded version is much clearer, and I’m a sucker for the power ballad.

So let’s move on to last night’s reality show. Dave says to Brooke “let me be the first to congratulate you on your pregnancy” because apparently she hasn’t got a doctor. Or a partner. Or friends and family. And T’Lee is overjoyed to hear she’s having a girl because what’s hotter than a fetus? Pretty much nothing.

It’s Magni’s turn to play with Supernova, and he manages to pad out their sound a bit playing the guitar, but Gilby refuses to interact with him on stage. This may be because Gilby’s a dick, but is probably also due to a lack of rehersal time with Tommy being off playing with Motley Crue on the Aerosmith tour. Huh? I thought he couldn’t stand Vince anymore. I suppose all that fake tan must be expensive. Apparently Magni fucks up the lyrics a bit, and has them taped to the ground in front of him, but I don’t notice.

Toby’s original got the encore, because it was the song that sounded the most like Supernova. You could say it was as catchy as fuck, but you can also say that about syphillis. And I’m sure Tommy has. And he dedicated it to the Crocodile Hunter. What? Oh yeah that’s right, got to play up that Aussie thing. I was listening to Marty Casey on my iPod this morning (more on that later, no doubt) because Anji emailed me yesterday to say “I knew you’d prefer Marty’s version of ‘Mr Brightside’”, and the thing is that Toby sang the words, but Marty expressed them. Yeah. But wahoo, Toby wins a fuckoff big gas guzzler. How’s he going to get that back to Aus? Drive it on the bottom of the ocean?

Everyone was in the bottom three at some point. Apparently in Iceland Magni’s buddies have set up a tent with a wireless connection that everyone can take their laptops to and spend all four hours voting for him. That is so awesome. I wish I was in Iceland. And that I had my laptop back from the shop (which reminds me, I really must call them). And that my laptop had a wireless card in it. I know that I’m voting for Magni because I know he won’t “win”, and I’m glad about that because I don’t see it as a prize, but because I want to see as much of him as I possibly can. Same with Storm. And if by see as much of them as I possibly can I might mean “naked”, well that doesn’t make me T’Lee does it? Please?

However. Storm is first in the bottom three, and according to spoiler forums, she says something along the lines of “I’ve been singing what I thought you wnated to hear all along but now I’m going to sing something for someone else”, and she dedicates it to her (dead) mother. She sings ‘Wish you were here’ and while it’s not quite as moving as the Marty Casey version (although it’s more true to the original without the chorus and with the synths) it’s powerful, and real, and she’s crying, adn then HOLY FUCKING SHIT, Mr Super Tough JASON MOTHERFUCKING NEWSTEAD IS CRYING, and then I cry some more and Smoo mocks me so when he leaves the room I rewind the tape and watch it again. And now I’m going to watch the clip of it again.

When she says she’s doing Cheap Trick, I pray Dilana isn’t doing ‘The Flame’ because I love that song, and I hate her. She has decorated her crutches, but in being in the bottom three she still manages to do high kicks as she slaughters (in the bad way, not the good way) ‘I want you to want me’. And of course, in her very literal way, she says this is for her fans. You just know that Dilana’s the kind of person who would go “Oh man, I was so tired last night I was literally dead”. And what do we think of people like that? That’s right, we hates them, my precious. And yet Supernova are like woo. Whatever. Jason isn’t. He’s my favourite now.

The Rossi Posse fails and Lukas ends up in the bottom three for the first time and decides to give himself an encore, which is fine by me because ‘Headspin’ is my new guilty pleasure. But ‘What the fuck is ladylike?’ is a much stronger more empowering song. Did I really say that? Yes I did, and I’m happy with that. I read a great essay by Storm about her decision to get breast implants because she used to be fat with no tits, and basically, there is nothing she can do wrong.

Except, according to Gilby, she’s not allowed to be in the bottom two times in a row. Apparently that’s many, but Dilana’s twice in the bottom two isn’t. Fuck you Gilby, you can wear a tshirt and a cuff all you like, but I no longer find you hot. A rumour on the TWOP boards is that Magni is Gilby’s wife’s favourite because she’s insecure about Storm and also about the groupies that Lukas and Toby would bring to the band (And I am a little bit in love with Toby for saying “in ten years girls, when they scream). And that might explain the Jill grindage thing being so so wrong. Apart from just the fact that ewww, it was disgusting anyway. T’Lee is so upset that he makes Jason do the cut, and of course it’s Storm. Everyone but Gilby jumps up straight away to say that they’d love to record her original with her, and I’m like hell yeah, that’s the way it oughta be, them jumping through hoops for her. And then I cried again. And watching her really really gracious goodbye speech on the website makes me tear up again. Bye Storm, you were awesome. And according to my latest measurements at the gym, I’ve lost six cm on my thighs, and as soon as I can crack walnuts with them, I’m coming for you and we’re going to rule the world.

Reality / Performance / Results

Reality

This is the first episode that I’m watching on my laptop at home, and I should warn you that it’s making a crazy ticking sound and is too hot, so I suspect that it may blow up. Bear with me.

Previously on Rockstar, apparently everyone did great performances and then Dilana said stupid shit everywhere. As a poster on the TWOP forums said “Her ‘oh I’m new at this’ carries no water, because wasn’t she like, huge in Holland?” – those wacky Dutch people. And Patrice went home, surprisingly enough.

I must also mention now my favourite new thing from the TWOP forums – Stagni shippers – or Ice Storm, which is of course people who dig on Magni and Storm, and possibly even the two of them together. One poster even said “they’re totally making this out to be like X-Men the good guys Magni Storm and Toby vs the baddies Dilana, Lukas and Ryan – they even have the costumes”. Haha it’s funny because it’s true.

Dilana says that when they got back from Eliminations, you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. Storm tries to drink to Dilana’s first spanking, but Dilana doesn’t want to toast it. Ryan says he won’t talk bad about people because he needs to sleep at night,a nd what Dilana says about him won’t affect him, it’ll affect her. Oh yeah? How about what you said about Dana then eh Ryan? She’s all “I was being myself, I don’t know what I was supposed to say”. She’s all “I’m just an imperfectg person”. Lukas wants to take it back for her, and that’s just his strategy talking. Apparently Supernova laid into her for a full half hour at the elimination taping, but you know what? Who gives a fuck? You’re a dick, Dilana. I’m all with the hating on you like the TWOP forums hate on the final episode of Gilmore Girls season six (with good reason, because WHAT. THE. FUCK. happened there?). But back on Rockstar, Magni goes to hug Dilana and she breaks her glass and storms off, and a bit of glass hits him in the face. Right, that’s it, bitch! You don’t cut up my Magni and get off scott free. Lukas is like “what if that’d hit him in the eye?” and they all go to see if Magni is okay, because of course since Magni is a grown-up, he has chosen to remove his bleeding head from the camera in order to try and tone down the drama. Awww, give him a cuddle Ryan. Lukas says “we’re all professionals and we should learn to govern ourselves properly”. Good fucking point. Also, have I mentioned lately how Lukas is like 2 feet tall?

Dilana gets to cry on Storm’s boobies, and how is that fair? Toby cleans up the broken glass, and Ryan says Dilana’s had the sweetest ride so far and yet she’s self-destructing. And to prove that, we see her sitting on a window ledge, wondering how she can fix it. Jump Dilana, jump!

But seriously kids, suicide’s not cool. Unless a rockstar does it first. But no rockers would ever kill themselves, right?

The next day, they have a photoshoot for In Touch and Dilana’s all “i’ve been crying all night and my eyes are puffy” because the world is like, totally ending. Storm used to model (dirty pictures, I bet), so she climbs straight up on the table and poses all hott and filthylike without any guidance. Toby’s all shy Australian, so he says he’s not so good at it, but he’s wearing a cuff, so he gets bonus points. Lukas wears a huge medallion, and talks in his non-English voice. Is he like, French Canadian? Or just drunk all the time? The photographer tries to get Ryan to smile, and Ryan of course looks all intense. Magni interviews that he’s done a lot of photoshoots before, and I remind myself that I need to search for his band’s mp3s since I’ve got my own computer back. He has problems with the photoshoot, because he is a genuine person and doesn’t want to fake it. But I love that this brings in America’s Next Top Model elements because that’s my second favourite reality show. Dilana’s all “I have so much going on in my head, but I have to be strong”. Oh gee, your life is so hard Dilana. Tell us more about the mean streets you came from.

Song selection is Fan Selection week, so the public have chosen what they’re going to be singing. I should point out, that song selection was limited to three songs they’d already sung and one song that someone else had sung, which is ass. Lukas gets ‘Lithium’, and some fan comments. He’s all “Maybe the fans want to see me show up Dilana and it’s going to be fun to see what I do with it. I’m not going to be wearing a hoodie and then exploding it at the end” Heh. People making fun of Dilana is funny. Magni gets ‘I Alone’. Storm gets ‘Bring me to life’ and says it’s hard. Ryan gets ‘Clocks’ by one percent ahead of ‘Losing my religion’, which is much closer than anyone else’s votes for a rehash.A fan says she wants to hear his falsetto, and he’s like “woah, this is what the fans say, and that’s important’. Dilana gets ‘Mother, Mother’ and she says it was chosen for her by her fans. Except that that’s what I voted for, and I’m not her fan. Hahaha, suck it, bitch. Woah, so angry. I need to chill out. Toby thanks Ryan’s mum for writing on all their fansites. Heh.

Lukas is playing his guitar on ‘Lithium’ to demonstrate that he’s a real musician, but he says he doesn’t even like the song. Umm, what the fuck? Did you really just say on TV that you don’t like a Nirvana song? That’s it, hobbit – you’re off my Xmas card list. And then he says it AGAIN. You’re stupid. And Paul interviews that Dilana loved the song and that made her better at it than Lukas. Dilana, meanwhile is trying to strum away at her acoustic guitar, and I’m not even sure that she can play. Oh okay, maybe a little bit. But oh the irony of her singing a song aboiut her mother when she all doesn’t talk to her, etc etc. So she gets her redemption – isn’t that convenient? They could have strung the villan arc out longer. Nevermind.

Reality / Performance / Results

Performance

So apparently there’s been a bit of drama in the Rockstar Mansion lately. Who knew? Well, you did, because you read it here. And you probably watched it too. But did everyone else? Just in case anyone missed it, and also because they only have six songs and are therefore in desperate need of filler, we get to see it all over again, Dilana’s “breakdown”, etc etc. Supernova make shocked faces, but only Dave talks to her about it, therefore allowing the band to keep themselves totally clean so that when they eliminate Dilana because dude, there’s no way that there’s going to be a woman fronting the band.

Anji says “EVERYONE LOVES A REDEEMED SINNER – is the theme of the show?. Do you thin kit was all a PR set-up to make people ?re-love? Dilana??!!” Gee, do you think, Anji?

Now, the more observant amongst you might recall that in week nine last year, contestants sang the fans’ choices as well as their own original numbers (And also when it was down to just six contestants is when we got ‘Wish you were here’ and ‘Imagine’, which have yet to be met). But do you think Supernova want to have their own poor song-writing skills compared to that of the rockers? Hell no. So instead, we get long versions of the six songs, which is nice as well, I suppose.

First up is Lukas singing ‘Lithium’, despite his Nirvana hatred. He makes it pianoy at first, but then it becomes more like the original. He sings in a cross between his singing voice and his growly voice, but still sounds a fair bit like Bobcat Goldthwaite, or however his name is spelt. Dave does that whole “You took a classic song and rearranged it to that?……………. I loved it” fake fake-out, and I’m like oh my god, you are worse at this than Joey on Friends, plus how often have you done that this season?

Anji says “Lukas ? why oh why the piano??!! Angie doesn?t like the piano! Is he going to get told off for closing his throat? I did not enjoy it. And Dave Navarro is soooo predictable. I don?t understand what is with the Lukas-love. Should I read something into it? Do they want him and only him?!”

Magni, replescent in a pretty white jersey and no bleeding from the head tells the camera that everyone needs to start voting for him even if they’re not from Iceland and he makes fun of the other boys’ countries of origin in a way that you know that he’s just gently ribbing, like I want him to gently rib me. Umm, sorry what? I was just drooling. He’s singing ‘I Alone’ and his veins pop out while he wanders around the audience. As always he is great, but I’m not big on Live, his accoustic version aside. The judges love him too, and Gilby says “I know you want this” in perhaps the only shout out to Dilana’s dickheadedness.

Anji says “Magni ? Magni ? he so funny!! Is he wearing eyeliner for the first time?? This performance and vocal effort is at least as good as Ryan?s. And he?s hotter. And he?s taking it to the boys ? smart career move! Nice work.”

Ryan starts out playing ‘Clocks’ on his grand piano, and ends up humping it and rolling around like he’s Michelle Pfiefffer in 1988. Innnnteresting. I think the piano thing was a mistake – not in terms of humping it, but rather how it shows Supernova that he clearly has his own thing going on with it, and Gilby isn’t Slash and won’t climb on top to solo (in fact, many people on the TWOP forums say Gilby can’t even solo at all, but I’m no guitar expert).

Anji says “Ryan ? I don?t like the histrionics at the beginning. His performance is great, but I think his falsetto?s pretty shaky. Not sure about sliding around on the grand piano like Michelle Pfeiffer though! He?s definitely in ? he?s pretty popular.” And I say ooh, is that how you spell Pfieffer?

Did you know Brooke was pregnant? Me neither. She’s having a girl, apparently, according to her their-space.

Storm does ‘Bring me to life’ in a red dress, but it’s not very good. Mostly because the song is a piece of crap, and also it so doesn’t suit her. Poor Storm. And Gilby even says that Toby stole the show from her doing the backing vocals. With suspenders hanging around his ass. Why oh why?

Anji says: “Storm ? She?s easily the best of the 3 attempts at this song. But I HATE the song! So that doesn?t help. It was good to have Toby though. She did start off a bit lower than usual, I agree, and it is also sadly true that Jill?s performance was more memorable. But I suspect that has more to do with the fact that this was a departure from Jill?s usual awfulness, and also she kicked Zayra?s butt, which is always fun! (if you can find it!)”

Toby then does ‘Rebel Yell’ and it’s very similar to when he sang ‘White Wedding’. He did sing that, right? At the end he hauls a bunch of girls up on stage with him (side note: the producers admit to paying 25 hot girls each week to be in the audience so that the camera has someone to focus on) and dances with them. Supernova naturally go crazy for this shit, and I’m reminded of how the TWOP forums are buzzing that maybe Toby’s the best guy for the job, because he doesn’t really have his own style, he’s just a great big larrikan and would certainly get on with T’Lee. He’s mallable and comes across as stupid as their songs. So maybe I agree. Plus, I don’t love on Toby at all, so I wouldn’t mind if that was his fate. He does get props for clearing up Dilana’s glass mess though.

Anji says “Toby ? Gotta love this song!! Nice crowd-wrangling (I?m SURE it was ?spontaneous?!!). Great singing and performance too. I enjoyed it a lot, and I liked his comment re ?id?.” id? Oh right, ID – T’Lee was like, “right, let’s grab those girls and go party in my dressing room” and Toby was like “maybe we should check some IDs first”. And I nearly fell off my chair in laughter. Nice work Toby. But yeah, I still wanna sleep with Tommy Lee and that disgusts me too, don’t you worry. Well, do worry if you like.

Dilana goes last, just for a change, and plays a flying V and I think that right there sums up her music credibility. She looks 54, not 34, and sure she plays okay but man, I just hate on her so much, especially when she climbs up a carefully placed amp to sit on the Russian bassist’s shoulders. So. Calculated. And I hate how this episode was all about her redemption arc. She so hasn’t redeemed herself. Puke puke.

Anji says “Dilana ? Very KISS. Nah, I think she sounds awesome. Her performance was a little bit manic, but her vocals rocked. I just really really like her voice. And it helps that I quite like the song.”

So Storm was definitely the worst of the night, but they’re not going to send her home yet becasue that’d leave just one woman. Instead, if my darling precious Magni hits the bottom three for the third time in a row, it may very well be him, which is why I voted for him three times to keep him out. Or maybe they’ll think Ryan’s thing is just too different from theirs.

Anji says: “My bottom 3 ? Lukas, Ryan & Storm. My picks for bottom 3 ? Magni, Storm & Toby”.
Reality / Performance / Results

Results

Previously on Rockstar, Dilana Dilana Dilana. And Brooke Burke says that Dilana had a heartfelt apology, but when they repeat what she said, it was all “I am a human, I messed up, but I’m back and I’m stronger”. Is that South African for “I’m sorry”? I’m pretty sure it’s not eh, so that doesn’t really qualify as an apology to me. In fact, it’s just more asshattery.

Supernova have found the solution to their crap lyric writing ability – get Lukas to sing. I seriously couldn’t understand a word he was saying, it was a whole new language. What a cunning plan.

Toby gets the encore but doesn’t bring the girls up again. Instead, he does what Magni wanted to do last night “but I didn’t want to get out of the stage lights” (heh) and prowls around the whole audience, revealing what maybe we weren’t supposed to know, which is that Rockstar is filmed in a CBS studio that’s been built to look exactly like the Mayan Theatre that the first episode of Season One was filmed in last year.

Brooke confirms what people on the TWOP boards had been saying as they had problems with voting, that last night saw the biggest amounts of votes ever, and I realise that I am a superhero because I voted for Magni ten times, and saved him while every single other person was in the bottom three at some stage. Wahoo! Although I’m disappointed not to get to hear him again, naturally.

Ryan is the first in the bottom three, and he tells Supernova that he’s going to blow their minds with ‘Baba O’Reilly’. He sprays convieniently opened champagne over the audience, and Toby jumps up to take the bottle over to the rockers. When he climbs up on the speaker stacks, we get a cut to Gilby leaning back in his chair going “clicheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”.

Storm cheers when she finds out that she’s in the bottom three, and says she’s happy any time she gets to rock out with that band, and I’m like “hell yeah!” because more people need to give props to the house band. She does ‘Helter Skelter’ and spanks the snot out of it, running all over the stage, through the audience and jumping on the laps of T’Lee and Gilby (man, I hope she double-bagged it). This is as close to her ‘Anything Anything’ performance as she’s done, and it was such a good song choice for her, even if Patrice had already done the song.

And the final person in the bottom three is ooooooooooh Dilana, who says that this is her redemption. No honey, you don’t get to choose your redemption, the word you are looking for is penance. And you are still wrong. She perhaps has no idea about what the hell irony actually is either, except for that thing that Alanis sang about, and so she does ‘Psycho Killer’. And she’s in bare feet and a long skirt, and it’s just crap. At least, I think it is. But of course, Supernova aren’t about to send her home, so she gets to sit down first.

They say that Ryan’s come the most far (except that they even use worse grammar than that), but that Storm hasn’t progressed at all. Enough with the Storm-hating, boys! Just because she could spank your asses six ways til Sunday and would box the fuck out of you if you tried anything she wasn’t in control of. And then they say that Ryan has to go, without saying that he wasn’t right for the band, but we all know that’s true. He’s Intense, they are Thongs and Lotion.

Ryan’s wrapup interview is fucking AWESOME in its audacity. He says that he was the best performer, and again that Supernova could have had a 20 year career, and without him they won’t have two years. Then he bitches that when Gilby Clarke said his performances had been getting better and better he hadn’t done his research, unlike Jason, because if he’d ever seen him perform before he would never have said that. And he says that he’s going to release an album straight away and go to the top of the charts. Is that your tongue in your cheek, Ryan? Oh no, it’s just your oversized nose. Well, I’m still going to download ‘Back of your car’. One day. Until then, bye bye.

Also in bottom three interviews: Dilana says she wasn’t surprised, and that maybe next week she will climb on some amplifiers. Instead of the Russian bassist? Good idea. Or perhaps you could stop being an asshat and maybe people might vote for you again. Maybe. And Storm says that the bottom three is just another chance to rock out. That’s the spirit girl!

Reality / Performance / Results

Reality /Performance / Results

Reality Show

Wahoo, the ‘webisode’ isn’t even on the Rockstar site yet, but I have recapped it for you. How l33t am I?

You know, I almost miss Zayra. Oh no wait, I don’t. Haha. I should also apologise for not talking about how when Supernova did their song, they did it on film rather than video, and how I should have mentioned that it was obviously pre-recorded. But I didn’t. But if you care that much, you’d have read all that on the forums. Unless you’re relying exclusively on me to tell you all about all the Supernova scandal. Oh god, the pressure!

And speaking of pressure, that’s what the rockers are feeling now that the Zar Crash is gone. They say it’s quieter in the house without her, and that her goodbye speech was great. Dilana interviews that it was very ballsy of Zayra to go up with an original, because singing an original song undresses you. And reveals your lotion and your thong, apparently.

Storm drinks a toast to Dilana, front woman of Supernova, while Dilana looks smug. And Storm wants a go singing the song too. Really? Why? Let’s face it – it was a pretty shitty song. Dilana’s all “you might have a chance to” and interviews that she can’t imagine anyone else fronting the band now. Oh Dilana, you are the new JD. I love the way the editors have made me hate you so.

Toby pies Ryan in the face for getting the encore and Ryan looks like he’s pretending to pretend to cry. But we don’t have time to dwell on that, because the press are coming to do a junket interview with the rockers, and this means we must all keep our fingers crossed for another “human/beings” revelation, okay? Cross those fingers, and let’s get on with it…

Lukas is all “you have to know how to handle the media” and then when he’s talking to someone from Fox, he is asked if he was a fan of the band growing up, and comes up with the brilliant answer “I actually had sex for the first time listening to Metallica” – for the record the song was ‘Unforgiven’. That’s all very well and true, but you don’t see me auditioning for Aspen now do you? Heh. Toby is finally clean-shaven and looks much hotter for it. He says he could survive for a year touring with the band depending on what medicinces are created. Storm is told that she shakes like a man when she meets her reporter, who turns out to be the mean journalist, who tells Storm that she’s got nothing special, implies that Toby isn’t a real rocker because he hasn’t got enough tattoos, and asks Magni who he doesn’t like in the house. Magni is like “you’re mean!” and I want to give him a cuddle. Ryan interviews all articulately, except that Jason Newstead walks in while he’s at it, and that flusters him.

Lukas is asked if he thinks anyone is faking it to get the job, and every single person on the internet starts coughing and going *cough Lukas cough cough*, but he says he doesn’t want to dog any person, but that apparently won’t look good in Rolling Stone. Dilana says that she doesn’t think everyone’s hearts and minds are as set to win this thing as hers is, and she knows who is serious and who’s just along for the ride. The reporter says “let’s name those people”, and she says Toby and Magni because he wants to be with his family. Then she’s asked about how she felt when she first heard the song, and she says that she told everyone she loved it, but some people were like “oh I think the lyrics suck”. The reporter says “Who said that?” and everyone on the internet again starts coughing and saying “Um ME!” as loudly as they can. But Dilana says Storm and Ryan hated the lyrics. And then Dilana says Patrice shouldn’t still be here. And Jason says that there’s going to be repercussions any time you say something bad about someone else in the press and I tremor with glee thinking about Dilana getting a roundhouse kick to the face. Dilana tells the mean radio reporter that she wants to strangle Lukas every day, and it makes me giggle. Then the radio interviewer gets ahold of Lukas, and asks him if his sunglasses inside is a rockstar thing. Hehe. He says he’s just hungover, and takes them off, and calls her ‘baby’. She tells him what Dilana said about him being two different people, and so he interviews that Dilana needs to mind her own business, and gets really dicky to the reporter. Hehehe. Oh rockers, how is it that you don’t see when you’re getting played? I mean, apart from Ryan, because he is Mr. In Control. Jason interviews that if the media treats you with disrespect, then you can treat them with disrespect back, that is allowed. How about your fans, Jason? Should you sue them for downloading? Lukas says that that Dilana needs to think before she opens her mouth about someone behind their back on television, and that’s the fine line between professional and punk. Ummm, Lukas, the pot just called to say you’re a negro. Do you like granny smiths? Well, how do you like them apples, bitch?

So with all that bad feeling generated, song selection is going to be interesting. This week there’s two originals, and everyone’s going to want one. The reason Toby and Ryan want to do the originals is because their songs “f*cking rock”. And then Ryan adds “My mom loves my song” and I giggle at the computer, which makes me happy cos he’s normally so serious and Intense. Storm also only wants to do an original, and she says she hasn’t fought enough, and then she says she’ll box for a song. Ryan’s like “that’s not really realistic”. It’s more The Contender cross-over. And Patrice says she’ll stand up all night and not eat and not sleep to win an original, so oh, it’s a Survivor cross-over too. If these guys are so familiar with Mark Burnett’s work, how the hell did they open up to the reporters that much? Except I guess that we didn’t see clips of Patrice and Storm cos they were wiser than Dilana and Lukas. Magni says Patrice should get an original because she’s been in the bottom three 3 times. Aww Magni. And so Patrice gets it. And Storm goes for ‘Cryin’ instead because she thinks she can sing anything. And Magni asks if he can play guitar with her, and if his wife will be happy with Storm sitting on his lap burying his face in her breasts. Storm’s all “your wife loves me and I’m sitting on you like a brother” and Magni’s like “i have two brothers and that has never happened before” and I giggle with glee a little more and remember how in the first week I was all “Storm’s boobs are so fake” and wrote her off for that but now I like her a lot more.

Storm’s doing ‘Cryin’ and that makes me happy because I know that Aerosmith suck, but I used to have the biggest crush on Alicia Silverstone, and she had the same backpack as me in that video, and then I got my mum to make me a dress like she wore in the ‘Amazing’ video. Back to Rockstar though, and Dilana wants ‘Every breath you take’. She should work with Puffy. I’m sure he’d bring his lotion and his thong. So Toby pretends he wants that song, and gets Dilana to run around the pool naked. She says “I ran around the pool naked. Because I’m tough. And I’ve got a hot body…… For a midget”. And those three words almost redeem her to me, but no, I still hate her. For a midget. And Toby says “you look like a twelve year old boy with a wig” and I start to like him a lot more.

Apparently she went for that song because it’s her mother’s favourite song, and she interviews that it’s going to be her best, strongest performance to date, cos she has such a huge connection with the song. Oh really? I can’t help but feel like that means she’s going to fuck it up. And she tries for a falsetto and ends up just huffing it, like the bit in ‘Hush’ when Riley’s trying to use the voice prompt in the lift into the initiative, but of course he can’t because the Gentlemen took away everyone’s voices, and the music makes that “dong! doing!” sound that they always use when people are being dicks, and it makes me happy. Is this going to be her Jordis’s ‘Dream On’ without Jordis’s likeability? Probably. Toby and Ryan are playing pool, and Toby says he wishes she’d shut up, and Ryan’s like “is that her? I thought it was the dog” and Toby says “She’s becoming Jill” and that’s a shout-out to me, right?

Speaking of Jordis, Toby’s singing ‘Layla’and he’s trying to make it sound more like a Supernova track, which probably isn’t such a stupid idea. You know, there’s no sign of Supernova playing on any of these songs, so maybe it’s going to be a surprise performance or maybe they’re too tired from their original number to play again. Magni is singing ‘Teen Spirit’ (dammit, back to the Nirvana) but he’s sick, poor baby. Ryan’s singing his original song, called ‘Back of your car’ which is about the world coming to an end, and there’s people in the church praying and there’s people making love. Who will you be? Paul interviews that Ryan is funny to work with (read: an ass) because he micromanages. And he tries to teach Jim a dance-move. Fuck you, Ryan, Jim is teh awesome, and needs no teaching. He could learn you a thing or too. But I like the sound of Ryan’s song, and I’m (as always) looking forward to Wednesday.

Oh, and over the credits, they show footage of Magni handling the “what do you think about Lukas’s make-up?” with incredible grace (“oh, I thought that was just his face, that he was some sort of weird Canadian breed”) and Ryan interviewing that he grew up reading Teen and Vogue and that they’re better magazines to read than Maxim. Umm, WHAT. THE. FUCK. ? If he’s trying to show his sensitive side again, like when he wouldn’t box Storm because he’d never hit a girl, he’s got it all wrong. The way Teen portrays girls is a thousand times more badder for girls than the way Maxim does. Puke puke.

Reality /Performance / Results

The Performance Show

I was at Snakes on a Plane last night (and it was FUCKING AWESOME) and so when I came out and turned on my phone again I had a barrage (well, three) of text messages all talking about what the ladies were wearing. Nice. So home I went to my taped performance episode. And Gilby has brought his dog along tonight, making me hate him a little, because dude, you’re not actually Paris Hilton eh.

When they recap what happened over the week, they only show song selection and Dilana’s nude run, not her total and utter bitchiness and skankosity during the press interviews. Innnnnnteresting. I wonder if perhaps the webisodes have a different editing team and that’s their quiet way of rebelling against the inevitable, like how someone at my work stuck stickers with “Diet” and “Regular” on the two taps of the water cooler (it wasn’t me, but I wish it was). Because I’m sure if greater America knew what Dilana was really like, they wouldn’t keep voting for her. Unless Jeb Bush was running the election maybe.

But anyway, since Patrice “fought so hard” for her original (oh really? I thought she just kind of sat back and Magni said she should get to do it and everyone went “well, she is only here to showcase her original talent and not to be part of the band, and surely she’s going home this week so okay”), she gets to step up and do it first. She’s wearing more eye liner than usual, and she looks fucking gorgeous, and so comfortable on stage, which I know we’ve talked about before and how she’s almost too comfortable. Her song is jangly and happy, like Guyville Liz Phair meets Eight Arms Veruca Salt. I quite like it, but it’s so not Supernova, and everyone knows that. Dave says “I’m going to give you the same advice I gave Zayra..” and I’m like “what, check yourself into a mental clinic right now? That’s unfair”, but he is of course suggesting a solo career. She says that when she was 19, (so that’s a good fifteen years ago, mind you), she made a pact with the guitar player in her band that she’d never work a day job again, and apparently she hasn’t since, and that’s pretty fucking rock’n roll. So long, farewell Patrice. I liked you, for what that’s worth. And maybe I’ll buy your album.

It’s the return of the Nirvana, and Magni says that he chose ‘Teen Spirit’ because like ‘Creep’, it’s an anthem for his generation, and I’m like “that’s SO true!” and squeal like the fan girl I am. But of course, my VHS is super stretched (ha ha, I’m so going to use that as another ‘sausage down a hallway’ euphemism in the future, if I remember), and the sound goes wobbly on me. Still, the first cords kick that thing in my heart that remembers how very important grunge was to me (although if you follow that link, you’ll see that my paragraph on legal matters is probably no longer valid), and my pulse speeds up. Even though he’s sick, Magni hits the notes better than Kurt did, but just the idea of having our anthems so cooped makes me a little not happy. But I do love the way he smiles and points to the other rockers when he sings “our little group has always been and always will until the end” – it comes across really really genuinely and I don’t think anyone else could have done it like that. And T’Lee asks Magni why he didn’t play guitar, and Magni was like “I didn’t want to be tidied down” and Tommy’s all “you don’t need to be tied down with a guitar, you can take it off and smash it”. Umm, Tommy, not everyone’s shooting as much smack as you that they think a rolling guitar cage would be a good idea, you know. But as it happens, telling Magni to smash his guitar (which is extreme Gibson product placement, like how toothpaste companies give away toothbrushes with bigger heads so that people use more toothpaste) sets up the next song rather well.

Ryan’s performing an original too, his song ‘Back of your car’. Now, if you’re dedicated enough, you can go to his myspace page and listen to the piano version of this song, but as he explains to Supernova that he’s played in all kinds of rock bands, and although recently he’s been doing a lot of piano stuff, he’s changed the arrangement of this song because he thinks it’s a track that Supernova could really get on board with. He’s dressed simply, black pants, black tshirt, and black guitar (and his “heal the world” or whatever it is arm bandage), and I know I made fun of him for trying to teach the House Band some dance moves, HOLY FUCKING CRAP his performance blows me away. The song is catchy as hell, and he prowls around the stage with his guitar, leading them to do cut-tos of Magni, apparently trying to show that Magni is jealous that Ryan is rocking it out, but come on man, it’s MAGNI, he’s far too much of a gentleman to be like that, there’s no Lukas/Dilana rivalry there. But yeah, I actually say “FUCK YEAH” out loud a couple of times. I’m not sure if I like Ryan as a person, but he is definitely very very smart. He’s the new Marty. Remember how Marty said in interviews with INXS how he chose to do newer songs like Franz Ferdinand and the Killers because they fused dance with rock, and that INXS were the pioneers of that, and that he had what it would take to bring them into the now? Ryan choses his words that carefully when he talks to the band. Dave’s like “who the hell are you? What the fuck happened to you?” because he was so electrifying, whereas if you read my recap of the first episode I was like “Huh? Ryan sang… ummm… something… I don’t remember” (and while we’re at it, remember when I hated Magni and compared him to the Rasmus? Don’t worry, I hate myself for that too), and Ryan’s like “I got laid!” and whether or not that’s true, it gets the laugh and it shows the whole ‘I am like, totally a rockstar’ attitude. And if that song came out as a single I’d buy it. Well no, I’d download it. But that’s beside the point.

One of the texts I got was from Harvestbird saying “I’m thinking you could do justice to a top cut like Storm’s, which is incredibly sweet, but very not true. Sure, we’re both 6 feet tall and do boxing, but I’m like, two Storms big. But in her corset, I realise why exactly it is that I’m so drawn to Storm, and it’s because she is totally Faith, the Vampire Slayer. With a little Mean Girls era Lindsay thrown in (or maybe that’s just boob pervage). Storm does a mean version of ‘Cryin’, but it’s a little too ballady, and she really really needs to bring the rock if she wants to stay in contention. T’lee is of course all “I wish you were wearing less”, and that’s just awesome, I hope that at the next job interview I go to, someone on the panel says that, because I think that’d be a good sign of a smooth road ahead. You can’t have it both ways, you know, Supernova – either this is a job interview or it’s a perve fest. Storm’s like “I could crush you with my little finger” in her head, but she laughs it off on stage.

The sexual harrassment continues when Dave tells Dilana that next week song selection is at his house, cos he’s got a pool, and T’Lee’s like “I’ve got a pool too!” and Dave is like “yeah but my pool is olympic sized”. Cock fight! Dave’s apparently going out with Jenna Jameison now, which is interesting because I want to read her autobiography, and I also want to read I’m with the band which according to Amazon.com was co-written by one Dave Navarro. Anyway, do you remember how in Bardot’s video Sophie was dressed like she was a bird, with a skirty tail and stuff? Well, Dilana has chosen to recreate this outfit, out of old newspaper. With high heeled roman gladiator sandals. Her hair is straightened and looks really good, but you don’t really notice, because as the texts I got from Heather say “THE LASHES! O MY GOD THE LASHES!” with a follow-up text a minute later that says “…and not in a good way”. Someone apparently thought it would be a good idea for Dilana to wear pink and black eye lashes that are – with no exaggeration here – AS BIG AS HER FUCKING FISTS. And of course the reason she’s wearing htem is to draw attention to her eyes, because she’s singing ‘Every breath you take’ which of course contains the line “I’ll be watching you” and when she jabs her stubby L** S*** fingers at her eyes to illustrate this, I hope for a second that I’ve somehow managed to enchant those fingers and she’s about to gouge out her own eyes. But apparently not. Her voice doesn’t hit the notes, but it’s not quite the dog whining of the webisode. It’s definitely her worst performance so far, but Supernova are very mild with it. I suppose they can’t be all like “dude, you suck” when they let her sing with them already. Plus, Jason’s the fall guy today and he’s like “Was there a reason you sang that song?” as a total planted question, and Dilana’s all “yeah, it’s my mum’s favourite song…” which we knew from the webisode, “… and I haven’t spoken to her in years” – which we didn’t know, which just goes to solidfy my theory that the webisodes are cut by someone who hates her, and the performance shows are written by someone who loves her, because now we can be all “awww that’s so beautiful and deep”. And also somewhat disturbing, that Dilana is apparently, according to the song anyway, stalking her mother like a lover scorned. Riiiiiiiiight.

Toby rearranges ‘Layla’ a little bit, but no one really pays attention because in another gimmick move, he takes off his shirt. Gilby’s all “what does that say on his chest?” to T’lee, because Toby has the letters “EVS” written on his chest, which makes me think of Jessie and her catchy-like-syphilis habbit of dropping off the ends of words and adding an ‘s’ instead, but then I’m like, “Whatevs, I’m sure it’s like, a charity thing, or a dead grandmother thing” but when he’s asked, he says that it’s what people in Melbourne say instead of whatever. Who knew? Jessie, you’re like, like a rockstar. Haha.

Lukas, who has been cut to every time Dilana gets praise, starts out singing ‘All these things that I have done’ by the Killers in his singing voice, but quickly reverts to his mumble-mumble growl, and I tell Bart that Jason is going to spank his ass for it, but strangely enough he doesn’t. In fact, although this is Lukas’s second-worst performance ever, the only criticism he gets is Gilby asking him not to turn his back on the audience so much, which suggests to me that Lukas will be singing with Supernova tomorrow night. Although perhaps T’Lee’s incredibly insightful comment of “Cheque please” as a criticism. Who even knows anymore?

The bottom three are going to be Patrice, Toby and either Storm or Lukas. I would actually like both Storm and Lukas to be in the bottom three so that I can see what they do for their own choice. I’m pretty sure that Patrice must be going home, although I’m no longer sure that Storm’s going to be in the top four. I think maybe Ryan has pushed his way in there. I don’t think he wants to win, but I think he wants to take it as far as possible, just like Marty. I think he deserves the encore too.
Reality /Performance / Results

The Results Show

Brooke says that in three short weeks one of the people on stage will be in Supernova, and I’m like, hang on, only three more eliminations? Some doubles are coming up. People on the TWOP forums say this is because of the other band called Supernova who are suing, and there’s some kind of stay of execution until the middle of September so they need to wrap up the show by then. Or something. Hmm…!

As the TWOP summary starts out, “More evidence tonight that if Dilana wins this thing, it won’t be through strategy”.It seems that after the performance show, when she was very very average and sang “Dilana, Dilana, Dilana” as part of her song (WHAT?) and Ryan fucking killed it, she told him that he’d have been nothing without the House Band. Well, I’ve heard both versions of his song, (okay, a whole bunch of times, I’m a little obsessed now), and while I like the Rockstar version better with teh full band and all, he’s not singing about no lotion and no thong, Dilana. It’s a good song, dick. I’m aware that you wouldn’t know one if it got caught on your labret piercings and all, but still… Dave tells everyone that they’d all be nothing without the house band, and everyone at home goes “duh, that’s why we’re watching this and not Idol – we’re not in it for you, Dave”. There’s footage of Dilana telling Ryan that she’s got more fans than him, and Magni chimes in with a “We’ve all been growing throughout the show (which is true) but you’ve been doing the same thing (which is also true!”. Delicious. Like a Red Delicious. How do you like them apples, Dilana? Then when they do a little pre-recorded rave about the awesomeness which is theirspace, Dave says “one of the fan’s comments was that maybe there should be two singers in Supernova – Dilana and Lukas” and Dilana’s like “Over my dead body”. Way to be professional. Oh, and I have to rage against the person who posted on the TWOP forum saying “Hubris, they name is Dilana, Dilana, Dilana.” Because um, Hubris’s name is Jo. Don’t you compare me to that midget, bitch!

Toby gets the ‘honour’ of singing with Supernova, and for the first time I see that it kind of works, that together they can all sound as dumb as a sackful of hammers. The song’s called something about five cliches, and I’m like “but there’s only four of them on stage”. They don’t cut to film this time, or bring out the booty dancers, and I’m sure that’s totally because of the TWOP forums on the matter. The song is completely unmemorable, but that’s partly because I was really drunk. I do know that it reminded me of a song that I couldn’t think of the name of. Haha, is this the BEST. RECAP. EVER or what?

I guess they didn’t wanna let Ryan have the recap for two weeks in a row, so they’ve decided that tonight the encore performance is showing the footage from the webisode of Dilana slagging off everyone in the house during her interviews. She tells Dave “I guess they’re making me the villan this week” and I’m like, dude, Dilana, I don’t want your fucking shoutouts, back the fuck off. Dave asks Lukas, who tonight is wearing blue eyeshadow like I do sometimes, what he thinks about that all, and he makes a blah blah unprofessional blah blah noise, and Dilana tries to explain that she meant that she wants to take care of him like a mother hen, and then Lukas is all like “EVS!” which makes me laugh a lot because apparently Toby is as infectious as Jessie.

First up in the bottom three is Magni, and all of Iceland and I are like WHAT. THE. FUCK? But I figure people didn’t vote for him so that they’d hear him again. He sings Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Fire’, which you may remember best from Cassandra singing it in Wayne’s World (No? Is it just me?) and it’s absolutely fucking stomping. He plays the guitar but moves around the stage, duelling with the House Band, and he knows how fucking awesome a job he’s doing. This isn’t a bottom three ‘save yourself’ song, this is a motherfucking encore after he joins the house band and tours the world to raputous acclaim. This is the triumpant end to an epic gig. Hells yeah. Okay, so I mentioned that I was rather drunk when I watched it, and Magni was making me moisten my panty gusset rather a lot, but I stand by my assesment.

The second person in the bottom three, unsurprisingly is Patrice. When her name is called out the rockers pretend like they didn’t know it was coming, and Storm makes her “why god why?” face. Lukas reaches behind him to pat Patrice’s leg sympathetically, which endears him to me somewhat, and not just because it reminds me of a boy who was gladhanding me so much in Good Luck recently that I tried to move his hands away and he ended up stroking my boots instead. Heh. In another bout of “ha ha, it’s funny because it’s true” like the title of the Supernova song, Patrice sings a Pretenders song called ‘Middle of the Road’. She says she changed the arrangement, but i can’t tell. I’m bummed that this is her last song the world will see, because it’s so so boring.

Finally in the bottom three is Toby, and it so should have been Lukas. He sings ‘Plush’, and it’s good…. if he was playing in a pub coverband down at the Espie. Which he’s not. But of course because he sang with Supernova, they’re not sending him home tonight, so we’re left to contemplate who Supernova might possibly be sending home. Here’s a hint: it’s not going to be Magni as they struggle to say anything bad about him at all. In the end Tommy Lee says “Patrice, this is the fourth time you’ve been in the bottom three, and fans buy our tickets, so you’ve got to go, baby”. Nice, I like the honesty there. And speaking of liking the honesty, check out Dave Navarro’s website – it’s surprisingly unsanitised of his opinions.

Reality / Performance / Results

The Reality Show
I realise that I didn’t complain about them putting a camera on Gilby’s guitar while he was playing. What is this – The Amazing Race? So I will complain now, as they recap it in the webisode. Let me complain again about that word. And be glad again that Shakira and Mr Maroon 5 are gone. And that now I get to see footage of everyone in Vegas. Vegas baby, Vegas!

So the private jet is spraypainted with Supernova, but I’m going to bet that it’s actually just computer-altered, cos I bet that’s cheaper. T’Lee’s waiting on the jet with bottles of champagne and Jagermeister, because can we get in a little more product placement? Yes we can. I’m going to put in a story about a private jet here, if you will allow me a digression: The father of one of Brad’s classmates was Keith Richards’s neurosurgeon, and apparently they got to be quite good friends, so Keith arranged for the doctor to fly to New York so they could hang out some more, but his jet was busy, so they used Tom Cruise’s, and apparently Tom Cruise’s jet is stocked with all of his movies. And also apparently Tom Cruise is a dick. What a surprise. But back to Rockstar: Supernova instead of Trapped in the Closet.

They go to the Hard Rock Hotel and see all the memorabilia there, and for some reason they get Zayra to talk about it, and she says she can’t wait for her own stuff to be up there. Perhaps the producers thought this would be a good chance to get her to actually learn somethign about music, since she seems to know nothing about it. Inncidently, in all the rockstar blogs, all the rockers mention how Storm knows every single song that they’re presented with at song choice. Go Storm!

They go see the venue that Supernova’s first gig is going to be performing at, and famous rockers such as David Bowie, The Rolling Stones and errr Seal have played there. Jason says that it was good for the rockers to go there and realise what they’re going to do, because the first impression of Supernova as a band is going to take place where they’re standing. Because apparently the whole TV show Rockstar: Supernova doesn’t actually exist, or perhaps it makes no impression on people. Well, I suppose those wacky kids with their internets do have the memory of goldfishes. What was I writing about again? The awesomeness of custard yoghurt? Quite possibly.

Ryan says that now the remaining eight rockers will want to win it. Just as well Phil’s gone then. They go up to the Presidential suite, and it’s crazy like the movies – or perhaps you know, The OC when they went to Vegas for Caleb’s bachelor party. And that means that Rockstar: Supernova is now partly responsible for what’s going on in Lost. And oh ho, there is scandal afoot in the presidential suite when Dilana comes up to T’Lee and says with a screen caption “By the way, I just wanted to let you know that all these ______’s can go home”, and I’m not sure what word they bleeped out, but I am ONE HUNDRED PERCENT CERTAIN THAT THEY DIDN’T NEED THAT MOTHERFUCKING APOSTROPHE. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGGH. Then she says “You don’t have to say a damn word” She interviews that she went and had a word with Tommy, and it felt natural and what she actually says is “I can sing, and I can draw a _________ crowd, and I can hang with the boys”. She then says she wishes they’d hurry up and bump everyone off so they can get on with it. Oooh girl, you nasty! So you were trying to fuck up Lukas with ‘Creep’. Ha ha, sucks to be you, shortass.

T’Lee, who is wearing a ‘Mr Happy’ t-shirt (way to traumatise children all around the world, buddy), tells people to have fun in Vegas, they drink champagne and next thing you know, Ryan is lying on the bowling lane (Zayra: “a bowling alley in a hotel room, what a great idea!” Like, a greater idea than a latex jumpsuit? Surely not!). Are you sure that’s a good idea Ryan? You’re not the most popular guy in the world. And Gilby bowls at his head, very very slowly. If that was Jill he’d have bowled at normal speed. Lots of hot girls show up, but strangely enough they fail to stack the room with hot men as well. The random girls dance on each other in an incredibly unhot display of psuedo lesbianism. Toby interviews that a couple of the contestants couldn’t handle their drink – and that he was one of them. We cut to seeing him hugging Jason going “I’m smashed, man”. Jason interviews that a couple of people couldn’t hold their drink, and that he was watching them because it was definitely part of the deal. “They’re always representing the band – at a party they don’t have to go and get so smashed that people are laughing at them”. Poor Toby. He thought he was doing the right thing by playing up his g’day mate Aussieness. Ryan says that at 10.30, a time when you could still get your grandparents on the phone (Ryan, can you call up my Oma and tell her I love her please? Good luck with that), Lukas and Toby, the “rockers” (his air quotes) of the house were passed out on the floor. He says “this is our dream, and I’m not throwing it away by drinking too much”. He is, however, apparently perfectly happy to hook up with the hired bitches. Isn’t he supposed to have a girlfriend back in New York? Perhaps one of the audition parts is having a three way with T’lee.

Storm says everyoen was hungover and tired when they got back to the mansion, except for Dilana who pours water in Lukas’s belly button and jumps on his bed. Apparently it’s her birthday so she wants to party, and by “party” she means tie up Toby while he’s lying on his bed. Ryan of course was all Mr Sober, so he finds the songs first, and one of them is called “Your Original” and the sheet music is blank. Do you think they meant ‘Original by Leftfield? Heh. This week they’re stripping it back and going acoustic. Gilby’s going to be playing ‘Solsbury Hill’, which just makes me think of that family-feelgood-movie Shining. Hopefully they’ve realised that they need to fight for that song. Ahh yes, they do. Dilana is wearing a flowered bathing cap. Ummm, what? She’s my least favourite this week, and I appreciate that this means that they’re cutting it so that she is this week’s villan – especially when they show a clip of Storm interviewing “I don’t even think Dilana wanted to sing ‘Solsbury Hill’ – she just wanted to fuck with Toby” . Lukas tells her that ‘Cat’s in the cradle’ would be awesome for Dilana, but she’s all “I wanna play with Gilby”. But she agrees to give the song to Toby if he strips off totally naked and runs around the pool. He says he was still half drunk so it would be a good idea – “and I just want to let everyone know it was a really cold day”. He’s wearing tight boxer shorts which are definitely the best kind of male underwear, but I still don’t understand why people go on about the hotness of him. Perhaps for Americans the accent is a novelty. He keeps his hat on when he does his run. Oooh he has some abs. But we don’t get to see penii. Zayra says she cannot believe what Dilana made him do. Umm, Zayra, we cannot believe what you make yourself do. So shut up. She fights with Ryan over the original song, saying she should get to do it because she’s always in the bottom three and might not get another chance. Ryan isn’t giving it up for her. Toby suggests to him that he should do ‘In the air tonight’ which I agree Ryan could kill, so he takes it. I’m intrigued to hear an original song from Zayra, to be honest. Can batshit insane people write songs? Let’s find out.

The House Band say it’s a pretty simple song to learn. Oh, it’s in another language. Spanish I suppose. Or Plutonian. Toby doesn’t get the ‘Solsbury’ beat. The bandleader calls him intense, and it’s cut together to make us think that he’s going to fuck it up. Storm’s singing ‘I will survive’. Ouch. Mostly that song makes me think of the version we sang at the last Hens’ Party I went to, which was all about men with tiny penises and thank god for batteries. Storm’s trying to mix up the song to make it not as disco. She’s freaking out about the arrangement, but I bet she’s going to be okay. I can’t wait to find out…

Reality / Performance / Results

The Performance Show
This may not contain the usual level of detail and intrigue as my recaps usually do, so I apologise in advance, but I’m in a fuckload of pain, incredibly busy and in a fuck-off bad mood, in such a bad mood in fact that I’m considering taping the results show tonight and watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition instead tonight so that I can fully get my bawl on. Luckily Anji’s sent me through her notes so I can use them to flesh out this effort.

We get recaps of Vegas, but not of Dilana saying to Tommy how everyone else can go home cos she’s going to win this thing. Innnnteresting. I wonder how much Interweb access the rockers are given, and whether or not they get to watch the reality episodes while they’re updating their their-spaces. Speaking of the their-spaces, I’m sure that someone else must be writing Brooke’s because it seems a little too literate for her. I’m going to be talking more about their-spaces tonight, I think.

Tonight’s episode is going to be acoustic and stripped back, so what’s this? What’s Dave doing taking his shirt off? Oh right, he’s stripping it back. As is Tommy. Woo-ha! But the camera cuts away before they start comparing tattoos. I wish that the house band had issued a mighty badoom-CHISH for that terrible joke. But as always, they are consumate professionals. Is consumate the word I’m looking for here? I mean, other than in a “I want to consumate my love for the house band with them” kind of way. I don’t think it is. But I don’t care.

The rockers get berated again for not fighting harder for the chance to play with Gilby, except of course Toby who ran around the pool naked to win the chance. Tommy tells him that he has a nice ass, so Toby reverts to his psuedo Australian ‘mate’ ness again. Dick. And Zayra is congratulated on stepping up to sing an original when everyone else seems afraid. Speaking of original songs, remember the webisode when everyone wrote their own lyrics and Dilana’s was all “bring your lotion and bring your thong” and everyone on the forums said it was the Worst. Lyrics. Ever. and compared it to JD singing ‘We are the champions’? Well in her their-space Dilana’s like “I thought my song was great at the time”. Yeah and smoking that crack rock was awesome at the time too.

Speaking of crack rock, Zayra’s up first, wearing a sequined black bra and a giant red parachute. She stands behind a mike playing a guitar, and sings her original song, in Spanish. Her subduedness, and the fact that she’s not fucking up a song I like, means that this is my favourite performance of hers by a thousand miles, and behold the awesomeness of the lyric translation she posted: “Your crazy waves hitting my hungry hell / Until you make me want it”. Oh wait hang on, that’s not awesome, that’s laaaaaaaaame. Gilby says that it was nice to hear her do her thing but he’s not sure how it fits with Supernova, and everyone is like “duh!”.

Anji says: “NOT SuperNova! How will we know if the words are really really cheesy?? Is her song another Lilith Fair example? Do you think she?ll appeal to a wide audience if she is alienating so many with the language barrier? That said, I don?t actually mind the song.”

In the ‘stylist”s space, Miles has written that he’s got a lot of comments from people about how Magni needs to dress up more – well tonight, he’s been forced into a white suit. Supernova ask him if that’s the most dressed up he’s ever been except for his court appearence, and I’m intrigued. I still remember the cute cute baby, so I can forgive the white suit. Magni sings ‘Starman’ gorgeously, and cements his place as my total favourite. Gilby says he wishes Magni got the audience to sing along more, but that it was great anyway. Not the most rock’n roll ever, but what can you do with a string quartet? Before I forget, at one stage Supernova give the string quartet the big ups, and Dave’s all “I’d especially like to big up the blonde one” and she goes “eww, I learnt to play an instrument so that I wouldn’t have to make my living staring in creepy midget porn actually buddy, so why don’t you go back to your lameass wife that you’re divorcing and make another MTV show about that process?”. I’m astonished at how much she manages to convey with one cringe.

Anji says: “more Bowie? I thought that was pretty loungey and wondered if they?d accuse him of being too Vegas again. And a white suit is NEVER good. I thought he was perfectly pleasant, but not exciting, not intense.

Patrice has obviously been paying attention to TWOP comparing her hair to a cocker spaniel’s ears, and she’s got dready extensions in it. It looks awesome, but the dead cat hanging from a belt over bike shorts arrangement does her no favours. She sings ‘Message in a bottle’ and her voice is as always awesome, but Supernova do sleeping faces throughout it. She’s going to be the next to go, and I think she’s resigned to that now. Her their-space even says “Even if I don’t make it, I’ve got my album coming out pretty soon”. Does anyone actually want to win this?

Anji says: “I thought her voice was really pretty when she sang softly at the beginning of the song, and was something we hadn?t heard from her before. I thought she did really well, and I liked her hair too. Shame the boys weren?t so into it ? I liked it done the classic way.”

Lukas says in his their-space that he’s doing ‘Hero’ because it’s by a Canadian. You know what else is by a Canadian Lukas? The NAZIS. I mean, ‘Summer of ’69′, ‘Man, I feel like a woman’, ‘You remind me’. Blame Canadia eh? He’s got bare arms and a white collar which makes me think he’s Sonic the Hedgehog crossed with a Chippendale dancer, and that’s not a picture anyone should have in their head ever. I definitely prefer Lukas’s version to that of the (officially) ugliest man in rock, but Supernova nail him for sitting down, and also Jason goes on about how he’s closing his throat again. According to the TWOP insiders, the reason you don’t normally see many comments from Jason is not because he doesn’t say much but rather that he says too much and is hard to cut up into soundbites.

Anji says: “Lukas ? The song is GAY!!! But he sounded really good, and performed well, for someone who was sitting. Dumb excuse to say he was recovering from Vegas ? what kind of hard man is he??!! Nonetheless, I think they really like him and he could definitely be a contenda.”

Storm got stuck with ‘I will survive’ and sings it the best she could, in a suit so padded that even ‘Express Yourself’ era Madonna would turn it down. I don’t understand why she’s covering herself up so much. I mean, she’s told us to google, and I imagine that means we can see it all, so why oh why is she making such conservative clothing choices these days? Oh, apart from showing her ant segmentation last week. A thing I do really like about Storm though is that when others are singing and it cuts away to her, she’s always singing along and smiling, not scowling like Dilana or Lukas do if someone else is singing well. She tries to dediscofy the song, but it’s a bit of a mess. She takes the guitar part from Cake’s cover, but with the suit and all, boy, it just doesn’t work, and all of Supernova tell her that they hated it. She takes it very gracefully in her stride, and says that the song is pants, while Dave points out that Marty Casey did great things with ‘Baby one more time’ last season. Yeah, but that song KICKS ASS. And besides, he just did a cover of the Travis cover anyway. And if I’m getting all uppity about Marty Casey then this must mean I really like Storm.

Anji says: “Storm ? Once again, very stagey. I didn?t mind the arrangement ? I mean seriously, what can you do to help such an unbelievably AWFUL song?! But, ooh, NASTY trousers, and the shoulder pads?? I enjoyed Tommy?s comment very much (for once) ? ?saut?ed in wrong sauce?!! But I still think Storm?s awesome cos she just seems so composed and self-assured in the face of criticism.”

Toby of course ran around naked for ‘Solsbury Hill’, so it’s nice to know he’s stopped singing it “solbury” as he was in rehersal. I really have to quote the TWOP recaplet here because it nearly made me piss myself: “Supernova is impressed with Toby’s commitment, which suggests to me that Dilana really needs to stop trying to manipulate her fellow contestants. It always just backfires on her, and Wile E. Coyote? Not a rock star.” Does Gilby’s guitar really have a HEART for a hole? What’s he playing – a carebear? Toby sounds okay, but I wish he was Magni. Or maybe Marty Casey. And when he starts playing the bongos, I’m like no no no, and I laugh that Jason’s drumming along, but T’Lee’s all “Bitch, back the fuck away from the percussion or I will cut you down like a motherfucker”.

Anji says: “Toby ? I do love that song. I thought his voice sounded pretty good for it, but the Peter Gabriel one has more notes, more tonal variation, and he seems to have skipped some of that. Nice bongo, nasty screeching at the end. And shouldn?t the NAKED and the BONGOS have come together at the same time?”

Ryan says in his their-space that he’s officially the roller-coaster constestant. I must have missed the passing of that by-law, but okay, fair enough, one week you’re up and one week you’re down. This week he’s gone all Captain Ahab on us, standing on stage in a big black peacoat like he’s on the prow of a ship sailing on into the stormy night. I think he looks hot, but I’ve gone off him after reading his “please vote for me” crap. But when have I ever not fancied wankers, particularly if they have big noses and broody angst? Exactly. He’s singing ‘In the air tonight’ so I have ‘Stan’ quite firmly in my head when it starts, but he manages to push it away. You know, I can actually quite easily imagine him singing ‘Sussudio’ whilst wearing a plastic raincoat and cutting Jared Leto up with an axe. That would be awesome. But yes, an intense song, and an intense singer work well in combination together, and Dave says it was the best performance of the night, and I can agree with that. Jason’s been miming the “he’s CRUSHING IT” during the performance so I know he’s picturing Ryan in the band too.

Anji says: “Ryan ? Seriously, every time that man starts singing I think Creed. I know it?s a good voice, but it BUGS me. Maybe too common with power-ballad groups. He?s pretty good with his intense stare thing though. He would also suit the band I reckon. He?s certainly no snag. Good performance and vocals, it?s just a REVOLTING song. Nice work on the loud-to-quiet too!! The boys of the group are getting stronger?”

Dilana’s up last, just for a change, and Bart says “she looks like a witch, and like she’s trying to be a slut but she can’t” and that’s true. Her tatty short black flared-sleeve dress that laces up down the front looks like a rag Stevie Nicks would clean her car with. I am big with the Dilana-hating this week, so the editors of the webisode have done their work well. Dilana’s singing ‘Cat’s in the cradle’ and to be honest, it’s more boring than Ugly Kid Joe, and even they hate everything about her (If you don’t get that joke just yet, it’s okay, you can have Three Days Grace. Hahah HA. Oh I am fucking hilarious). And yet Supernova go nuts for it. I don’t get it. Dave’s all “if my dad wasn’t here right now I’d cry”. Blah blah blah. And they even say “sorry Ryan, but Dilana was better”.

Anji says: “Dilana ? I really do enjoy her voice. It strikes me every time. I think she got one of the lyrics wrong though! I liked it, but it wasn?t special. I hate to say it, but I think Ryan was better…”

Well, they said that Dilana was the best of the night, so I guess it’s not a stretch to say she’ll probably get the encore, and maybe Ryan too. And I guess they’d go non-accoustic. The bottom three will be Patrice, and maybe Storm and Zayra, with Patrice going home. Anji says “BOTTOM 3: – Storm, Zayra, Magni (not borne out by initial results, but we?ll see)”

Just for laughs, this is the elimination order I think it will go in:

8. Patrice – always the same thing
7. Zayra – people will revolt if she gets much further. There’s no way she’d ever front the band.
6. Toby – he can’t quite cut it with the big boys.
5. Storm – she’ll never make her stage presence less theatrical, and if she gets another bad song, she’s outta there.
4. Ryan – can’t rock it out enough
3. Lukas/Magni – this one’s a toughy, cos Lukas doesn’t open up his throat enough, but Magni might not be insane enough for the band, plus he might just decide to give up so he can get back to his family.
2. Dilana – a woman is NOT going to win, but they’ll take her to the edge to pretend like she might.
1. Magni/Lukas – see my previous comments.

Reality / Performance / Results

The Results Show

OH. MY. GOD. They finally did it. Thank fuck.

So they recap the previous night and repeat everyone cringing at Storm’s song, and she takes it manfully in her stride, and Dave tells her he wished she’d done it ironically like cake, but that he knows he can give her criticism because he knows that she more than anyone can take it. Which is true, because Storm is fucking awesome and every time she makes “what? How could they be in the bottom three?” faces and sings along with whichever rocker is on stage I love her a little bit more.

Then Supernova go and land a surprise on me, which is that they’re going to pick someone to sing an original Supernova song with them, and the audience starts screaming for Dilana as if they know something I don’t. Dammit, how’d that happen? They cut to a clip of everyone in the recording studio and do a montage of all the rockers singing a line, and Jason says that the competition is by no means over, but there’s one person who did something different. And Gilby’s all like “well you all think that a woman can’t lead our band” and I’m like Gilby, is that a shout-out? And so of course Dilana gets up, and she’s got her hair scraped up into a fauxhawk, and man, I just hate her. It turns out that the song she’s singing, which is something like ‘leave the lights on’ fits in quite well with her “Bring your lotion and your thong” school of lyric writing, because the chorus goes something like “leave the lights on, because everything else in the room is going to be off”. I guess they’re unplugging the clock radio then… And then the thing happens that means that I know that neither Ryan nor Magni will be winning this competition, because they’d have more intergrity (or faux intergrity in Ryan’s case, perhaps) – booty dancers come out, dressed like they’re fresh off the set of a Paula Abdul video, and they shake their thangs all over the stage and surge around Dilana, and I’m texting WHAT. THE. FUCK. ? to various people, because ewww!

And then it all makes sense as to why they could declare Dilana the best performance of the night before, because people would expect her to get the encore, but instead it goes to Ryan, and I really like his performance again, but that might be because he reminds me so much of a combination of many young men that I have known that I can almost taste his cock in my mouth. This means that he and Magni have both had two encores, and that makes me happy. And yet, Magni is in the bottom five, along with Storm, which makes Dave unhappy, and non-suprisingly Patrice, Toby and Zayra.

Zayra sings first, and announces she’s going to be doing a very serious, intense song called ‘Razor Blade’ by Blue October, and that she’s going to be doing a very serious, intense performance. Silly me, I didn’t realise that ‘serious and intense’ meant “heavy breathing, screaming and turning around to show your panties”. Perhaps this is why I will never be famous. Patrice is not surprised to be in the bottom three, but she steps up her game and says she’s going to take a risk and do something rocky instead of the ballad she had planned, so she takes on both the Hole curse and the ‘do better than Lukas, ha ha’ snark, and performs ‘Celebrity Skin’. The TWOP recaplet says at least she doesn’t forget the words, but um, she kind of does, she fucks up verses beyond the point of what they must do in order to shorten the songs, and she can tell that she’s doing it too, but she covers it up much much better than Lukas. She also wanders around the audience, and the stages and goes and sings to Supernova, putting delicious tasty emphasis on the “have you ever felt so used up as this?” lyrics, which is what Lukas should have done in the first place, and so despite the fact that she’s wearing a white shirt that looks not unlike a strait jacket, she does pretty well. She’s definitely a better singer that Courtney, but I have no idea if she’s as a good a lyricist.

Last in the bottom three is Magni, which is received widely with boos, but I am happy because I know it means I get to hear him sing twice. He decides to go for ‘Betterer than Lukas Part Deux’ and picks ‘Creep’, which he says he chose because it’s an anthem for his generation. Awww it’s adorable because it’s true. He does a pretty much straight forward cover, so it includes the chuuuuuuur ch ch ch guitar shift into the chorus, and that is awesome. And he’s so much more authentic than Lukas, and oh hey, what’s that water trickling down my face out of the corner of my eye? Ummm, I must be warming up for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Honest. Plus I have so much love for his beanie and tree of life tshirt combination. Supernova of course tell him that he is miles away from going home, so they send him back to the other rockers while they debate Zayra’s risk-taking versus Patrice’s always-in-the-bottom-threeness. In the end, they decide that Patrice has more potential for their band, and just like that, the reign of Crazy is over. Which means that my predictions were wrong. Crazy.

I can’t wait til next week! Except it’s request week, where they’re going to be doing old songs again, unless you go and cast your votes for them all to do the ‘wildcard’ songs. Which others have done before, but still something new is better than the same thing again.

Reality / Performance / Results

Okay, before I get started, if you don’t get why I love Rockstar so much, please go watch the videos for a couple of performances last year – choose Jordis singing ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ or Marty doing ‘Wish You Were Here’, and then hopefully you’ll see. Otherwise, check out an episode of NZ Idol and compare it to an episode of Rockstar and then give me a call from hospital after you’ve gouged out your eyes.

I can’t believe they let Dana go when she had grown so much over the past five weeks. That’s insane. Sure, Shakira sang the verses of ‘Alone’ okay, but the chorus was still that full-on hideous “more louder is more betterer” bullshit that she always pulls out. And she is so taaaaacky. Ewww. I mean, obviously, Dana was never going to win. But she should have stayed another week. Jill shouldn’t still be here. And don’t even get me started on Zar Crash. And while I’m not getting started, it’d be awesome if I could stay away from the TWOP forums and recaps but I can’t. I really can’t. So I’m not even going to try.

The Reality Episode
Patrice doesn’t know why she’s in the bottom three. Brooke Burke wants to lie on the piano while Ryan plays. Well, I suppose the piano is less wooden than you, Brooke, so it might be a good match. Gilby shows up on a motorbike. I must interject now and talk about how much I’m currently in love with Gilby, even though apparently he and his wife started the craze for real low rise jeans with their label Frankie in 1998. And Frankie is named for their daughter, and there are articles linked from the TWOP forums about them that are just super cute. But I digress.

Back at the mansion, they all get electric guitars from Gibson, and Gilby plays a song for them and tells them they have to individually write lyrics and melody for the song and then perform it for Supernova the next day.

Lukas says the Supernova song makes him want it to pump it to ten. He’s obviously not a real rockstar or he’d turn his amp up to eleven. A fun wikipedia fact about Lukas is that he sings on Macdonald’s ads in Canadia eh, and also various cartoon soundtracks. YOu shouldn’t let someone who can’t even speak English talk to kids, right?

Dilana’s song is about living in the rockstar mansion, apparently. Storm goes running to write her song and she looks a lot more like Lindsay Lohan then she did the week before. Ryan wears a lot of eyeliner while he works on his song, and interviews about how authentic he is, but how his music is opposite to Lukas’s. Also his dress sense is totally opposite, given that Ryan dresses like a normal person while Lukas is wearing half a dozen necklaces. Apparently he’s the new Mr. T. Yeah I’m still angry about him fucking up that Hole song, in case you couldn’t tell. And Ryan gets shitty with him too for bugging him while he’s trying to write.

The next morning Gilby asks if they had enough time, and everyone says yes, and Ryan is like whaaaaaaat? because of course he didn’t even party the night before he was working so hard. His song sounds like Live vocals crossed with ummm something a little honky-tonkyish. Storm jumps up and down in a not very supportive bra. Jill forgot to put on pants and T’Lee says that she is a really good singer who always oversings. Gilby laughs at even interviewing about Dilana, and Jason says her song was cornball – strangely enough given that she’s singing about lotion and thongs. Lukas says his song rocks, it’s dirty and sexy like himself. Hmmmm. Well okay, it sounds pretty good. But he’s still an ass. He’s so the new JD. I am waiting for a human beings moment from him.

Magni’s fiance and baby show up and it makes me wanna cry because oh my god, what’s cuter than baldheaded rockers looking all softy? Oh no wait, that’s right, I’m coming up on a period, of course I’m going to be emotional. But holy crap that baby is cute. Magni is definitely in my top three now.

Song choice time! We’ve got Bowie, ‘Creep’, and umm I didn’t see what else. Dilana takes the songs out of The Room to the dining room table. Gilby’s going to be playing on ‘Won’t get fooled again’, so Dilana takes it. I wonder if she’ll grind. Ryan says “this isn’t a house of brilliant strategists, this is a house of musicians, so maybe that’s why we’re not all going for the Gilby song”. Dilana wants to show him that not all girls grind, and she says maybe she’ll headbutt him. Heh. Then she tries to convince Lukas to sing ‘Creep’ so that he can show Supernova his sensitive side. They talk about about him opening up his throat again. Hehehe. Yes, I’m still five. But also, remember how when they had a vocal coach and he was all “I’ve never formally trained”? That’s bullshit cos he went to some singing and dancing academy, according to Wikipedia. And Wikipedia never lies. The episode closes with him standing by himself in a spotlight at night trying to hit the note. I hope he can do it. The only thing worse than people covering Radiohead is people covering them badly. I’m looking at you here Zed…

Reality / Performance / Results

The Performance Show

So there’s all sorts of footage about how people didn’t want to play with a member of Supernova for various reasons, which is cut basically to make everyone look like whiney little brats, which of course means that Supernova gets pissed and Dave says that if he was in charge Dilana would win right now. Then Gilby takes off his jacket so he’s in a t-shirt and I swoon a little because he’s working the wrist cuff thing, and he gets up to play ‘Won’t get fooled’ again with Dilana. Her crazy hair is tied back in a big headscarf, so she looks very different than normal. She’s also wearing burgandy leather pants straight from the wardrobe of Season five Buffy which make it apparent that actually, Dilana has no ass. I never realised that before. And she sings the song just fine, and as promised, doesn’t grind on Gilby. Now some of the posters in the TWOP forum for the reality episode were like “why does Dilana keep going on about how Jill did the grinding? Get over it!” but seriously, do you think Gilby’s over it? He’s probably still waking up in the night screaming, and I bet it’s affected his lovelife with his lovely-sounding wife, because I’m sure he poured lysol over himself to try and get rid of the Shakira smell, and lysol’s just stingy. So as far as I’m concerned, Dilana can make as much fun of Jill as she likes. And the band love it.

Speaking of Jill, tonight performing ‘Mother Mother’, which is a flatout odd song, even if Brooke says it’s “Grammy nominated”, she’s Storm-lite, and she pulls off the same Avril Lavigne performance that Jenny did before she got evicted. She’s finally realised that “dressing like a rockstar” means going less heavy on the lip liner and more heavy on the eyes, but her eyebrows are totally black and look incredibly wrong. Plus, she’s wearing shorts and I can’t help but think of gofugyourself rants against formal shorts, and also unlaced clumpy boots. That’s not pratical, Jill! You could trip and hurt yourself. Although according to her official MSN bio it says that she had a pair of boots by Steve Madden named after her. Who the hell is Steve Madden? But nevermind. Supernova say it’s her best performance yet, and it’s true that she didn’t scream, but also she wasn’t fit enough to pull off all the running around she did while still hitting the notes. I haven’t said it yet today, so I’ll say it again now: I hate Jill, so I nearly piss myself when someone (probably Gilby) says “You know, I figured out why I’m scared to criticise you – it’s because you remind me so much of Carmella Soprano”.

Brooke’s all “somewhere in this auditorium is Ryan Star” and the new spotlights shoot through the crowd and pick up a hairy hooded figure making his way through the audience. Yes, that’s right, I said a hairy hooded figure, because it turns out that Ryan is wearing a wig over his hood. As you do. And he has a thick band of black makeup all across his eyes, ala Michael Stipe’s blue at Live8, and I am like WHAT. THE. FUCK? And text the same to Anji. And the feminist in me is glad that I get to bitch about male clothing as well as female clothing. But oh right, he’s singing “Paint it Black”. Of course, silly me. That explains the black tights. As the TWOP recaplet says “Good thing he didn’t sing “Honky Tonk Women,” because I’m not sure I needed to see him decked out like a truck-stop waitress. ” His vocals are on, but the energy seems really fake, and he’s taken the ethnicy bits out of the song in order to strip it back, and I’m just not feeling it, dawg. Supernova are like woah though, and say “you are totally a contender” which is funny, because when Brooke introduced him she said “Ryan proved last week that you are a contender”. And it’s also funny because season two of The Contender is now on in the States and as it’s Mark Burnett too they’re all about the crossover – the rockstars keep blogging about hanging out with the contenders. And if I gave a crap about boxing other than looking forward to my lesson today of course, and read Contender sites, they’d probably be talking about the rockstars. Nice work.

Storm’s white pants (white pants? What is she, a fourteen year old girl three years ago instead of a 37 year old now?) reveal that she has that curious ant segmentation-type torso, like D’Angelo or Pink. Creepy. She’s singing ‘We are the champions’ which of course JD absolutely slaughtered last year which led to the whole “Mig has already recorded the album with INXS conspiracy theory” after Mig was able to fucking kill ‘We will rock you’, although given that he was in the Queen stage show, that’s just as fucking well. I swear this much because it’s what rockers do, like when Jason was confused by Ryan and Dave was like “It was the * Jason, and you know it”. Storm sings it rather well, but she’s all standing in one place and so T’Lee worries that they’ve scared her into taking out her craziness, and she’s like “don’t worry, I can still rock the crap out of you” and I laugh.

Brooke says “there are two questions the world asks itself every week – what’s the weather going to be like, and what will Zayra be wearing?” I thought it was like “what’s for dinner, and why the fuck is she still in the competition?” but hey, I’ve never hosted Wild On, so what would I know? As it turns out, today Zar Crash is wearing huge fuckoff black platform shoes, a top hat and long black wig, and a skintight strapless flared gold latex jumpsuit. I don’t want to alarm you, but I’m pretty sure she’s not wearing any panties under it either. She’s singing David Bowie’s ‘All the Young Dudes’ so maybe this is her interpration of Glam Rock. Harvestbird texts me out of the blue to say that she looks like Willy Wonka, and haha, it’s funny because it’s true, and I’d like to encourage the rest of you with my number to text me similar thoughts as we watch. Curiously, Magni is playing the guitar for her. I’m not sure why. Maybe he’s into autoerotica, in the David Cronenburg Crash sort of way. What is autoerotica if it’s not getting off on car crashes anyway? Hmmm, if only there was a place I could go to where I could type in a word and find an answer. Perhaps monkeys could deliver me the information in a tube of sorts. Oh, it’s masturbating. I should have known that. Well I suppose that’s probably what Zayra will resort to next on stage. For the record, her singing it pretty atrocious too, and at one stage I’m pretty sure they’ve turned off her mike. Bless you, house band. Dave says if this was Rockstar: Pluto she’d win, and someone says it’s important that their singer have confidence. The TWOPer recapper suggested last week that people realise Supernova aren’t going to send her home until much later because they are also fans of her auto erotica, people are now voting for Zayra so that she doesn’t end up in the bottom three so that we don’t have to sit through two songs from her a week. Hehehe.

T’Lee says he feels like playing the drums when Josh announces that he’s singing ‘Interstate Love Song’ and Josh is like “What? Are you serious?” and it’s like the first time I’ve seen Josh in any kind of likeable light. He stands playing the guitar for this song which is boring boring boring and he misses his cue once again. Filllllller. The band say his voice sounds good, which is true, but meh.

More footage is shown of Magni with his family who were flown over to visit him, and his baby is perhaps the cutest thing on the face of the planet ever. Magni comes out with just an accoustic guitar and he sings “the Dolphin’s Cry”, and despite the many years I spent making fun of Live with Tom, I suppose it helps that there’s not a ridiculously bloated video with water crashing through an alleyway knocking down models, because all of a sudden my allergies flare up, and there’s something in my eye. It must just be dust, right? Right? I mean, I wouldn’t cry when someone was singing a Live song. That’s ridiculous. But they do cutaways to his fiancee in the audience and his baby wearing protective ear muffs, all Apple Paltrow-Martin at Live8 except cool, and oh, just the vulnerability in his voice, and the beauty of just him in the spotlight and wow, I really should take some allergy pills. Magni is now officially my favourite. Especially when he gets all choked up when Supernova ask him how it was having his family over. How moved was I? Enough to spend 99 cents on a text vote and then leave the realative warmth of the lounge to go and vote for him three times online as well.

Patrice is singing ‘Instant Karma’ by John Lennon which I thought I didn’t know until it came to the chorus. She does the playing the guitar thing, sticking to what she knows, and I’m like oh Patrice, why? I like you, but you’re going to be in the bottom three. Where’s the over-the-top drama? Where’s the ridiculousness?

Lukas is wearing a silver brocade jacket that’d make a nice bedspread. He’s toned down his eyeshadow to display his sensitive side, but the shoulderpads are still totally unnecessary. His delivery of ‘Creep’ starts out as a muted affair, which I’m a bit disappointed in, because I would have loved to hear the house band to the chick-chick-chugga-chugga lift into the chorus. He winks at Supernova when he sings “I don’t belong here” making me wanna punch him in the face, but when he launches into the “Run, run, ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun” bit he totally nails the note and gives me chills. He’s opening up his mouth and letting it pour out as Jason has always asked him to, and that’s how I know he will get the encore, although I want Magni to, but Lukas hasn’t had it before. Did anyone get double encores last year? I should check that out and report back to you.

Toby sings ‘Burning Down the House’ exactly as if he was Brandon Flowers and he was with the Killers, until Zayra brings him out a megaphone swathed in an Australian flag and it becomes apparent that he actually thinks he’s Scott Weiland. Dave tells him it was an unnecessary gimmick, but Supernova like it. I suppose none of their bands were exactly models of restraint and taste either.

Bottom three are Jill, Patrice and Josh, or maybe Zayra though I have my doubts, and the encore will be Lukas’s.

Reality / Performance / Results

The Results Show

I was of course right about Lukas getting the encore. Dilana looks pissed off when his name is announced, which gives some weight to the theory that people on the TWOP forums have been bantering about, that she only told Lukas to sing ‘Creep’ cos she thought it’d fuck him up – but I still don’t believe that. Or do I? I do hate on the South African accent after all, and she must get that Lukas is probably her strongest competition in terms of being the other person who appears to be right for the band. Then Supernova then announce that they’re giving out two and I’m stoked that Magni gets it. I’m also stoked that plugged in, I’m not nearly as moved, so maybe I’m not going to start liking Live after all. Phew! That was a narrow escape. Supernova tell the rockers that if they survive tonight they get to go to Vegas with them, and dude, how fucking awesome would that be? I’d even sleep with Jason Newsted to get to go on that trip – and I imagine he’d be a crier. Actually, perhaps sleeping with Jason wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world – he’d order me to “CRUSH IT” and I could deliver. I digress.

The bottom five are Zayra, Jill, Patrice, Ryan, and Josh. No surprises there. Jill’s the first person in the bottom three, and she’s dressed like my sister used to dress in 1989, light-ish jeans with holes in the knee that are a little baggy and look like they’d be slightly tapered, those stupid undone boots again (although full credit to Anji for never wearing those) and some kind of ugly black top, which would be fine if she didn’t announce she was going to sing ‘R.E.S.T.E.C.P’. I always knew she got the wrong memo and thought she was on Idol. And she belts it out as she always does, and I’m like, woah, awesome display of subtly there Jill – NOT. Yeah that’s right, it’s so bad it makes me revert to 1991 slang. In fact, it’s so bad it makes the House Band sound bad, and that’s never ever happened before. And yes, I know that most of the House Band also play for Michelle Branch, and that she’s not the coolest singer ever, BUT she was on Buffy so I think they were too, and that version of ‘Goodbye to you’ was killer, and Tara was leaving, and Willow was crying in the bathroom and oh, it was so sad and beautiful and tragic. Obviously I need to revert to a happy place to deal with the Shakira.

Josh is also in the bottom three, and he sings umm hmm, I can’t remember what he sang at all, and the TWOP recaplet doesn’t tell me. I guess that says a lot about Josh and the memorability of his performance. I do remember him bobbling his head about like Phil x 1000 though, and that he sang strapped in to his guitar again, so it’s obvious he’s had enough and wants to go home. Ryan, meanwhile, does not want to go home, and he makes that rather clear, along with how cunning and calculated he is when he says he’s going to be doing a Depeche Mode song “but I’ve changed the arrangement to make it more like what you want to hear…. which is what I like as well”. Nice work there Ryan, aligning your values with theirs. Now how are you at raping girls in the closet?

Ryan sings it well enough for Supernova to say thatt they want to see more of him, so it’s Jill and Josh left, and then the awesome happens, and both of them get kicked out! Josh asks if he still gets to come to Vegas, and in that moment I love him a lot. But I am happy that they are going. Now when the fuck will they evict Zar Crash? Stop voting for her! Hearing her sing twice will be okay if it means she’s finally leaving.