...What in the holy hell was that? It was like that part in Clockwork Orange, crossed with the Jerry Lewis telethon. My irony meter is like permanently bent. I think I cried. I think I went running all Sanjaya wild through the streets. I don't really remember what happened. Ryan held down the stage at the Idol studios, and Ellen D was taking care of business at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, those things are true. So but then Earth Wind & Fire goes insane on a medley of songs, and then Randy remembers how New Orleans had a crackhead Leroy, then a Katrina, and then shows us how much things still suck there, and it's pretty hard to deal with, because the trailer parks FEMA gave them are full of drugs and gunshots so the kids can't go outside, but there's a community center that gives them a safe place to be, which needs money. The Idols hang out with Quincy Jones, and then sing a world-music kind of song about how it's time to care, with total insanity noises in the background like Banjo & Kazooie, which is only mildly insulting in that Lion King way, then Ben Stiller persists in thinking he's just the cutest fucking thing, then we see the gritty details of Simon and Ryan's trip to Africa, and they are quite gritty, and they include cryin' Ryan and cryin' Simon, and I guess I do have feelings, because turns out I cannot handle those two men crying for anything, so I was pretty much a waste for the next hour, and then Melinda is safe at this point, then Paula goes to the Boys & Girls Club around the corner and meets a little girl who isn't entirely believable but nonetheless has a believably hard life. Paula cries; I feel nothing.

Then Il Divo. Not in my fuckin' house.

Then Jack Black being, as usual, so mysteriously effin' hot, and Blake is safe, and still makes me wanna shoop, and then Carrie sings to African kids and then puts flowers on their parents' graves. This is in a music video. Then Rascal Flatts sings a song, then we go to Kentucky, which is even more tragic than we thought, and much is made of illiteracy, which is my personal thing I really can't handle and makes me hand out money, so that's when I donated some money, then the pimpmercial is "Crazy Little Thing Called Love," but inside the pimpmercial is a total freak-out hell-ride of a bunch of celebrities singing "Stayin' Alive," and that part was very GOD LOVES YOU AS HE LOVED JACOB, and supremely freaky, then Phil is safe, then Ryan and Simon cry some more in Africa, and it's heartbreaking, and like twice as intense, and I'm kind of not ready to talk about that either, so then Ellen pledges $100,000 and challenges her rich friends to match it, then she starts crying while she introduces Josh Groban, singing "The Josh Groban Song" with the African Children's Choir, then we meet some people from ExxonMobil and Esso Angola, who say with a straight face that they give a fuck about saving the lives of the people they're murdering, then a hundred actors say how many funerals they've been to, and all the movie stars in the world cannot equal the funerals that this one old African guy has been to, and most of them were kids, and lots of them were from malaria, which is stupid easy to fix if you've got a few bucks, and then Kelly Clarkson sings "Up To The Mountain" with Jeff Beck, Ben Stiller's still douching it up, the Simpsons feed Simpsonized Simon to the lions that ate Dunkelman, and then Lakisha is safe; at this point I stopped crying about Africa and started worrying about Jordin.

Randy hangs out with a kid and throws a football. The charities are: Save The Children, Boys & Girls Clubs, the Children's Health Fund, and America's Second Harvest. They are good charities and you should donate to them on any old day and not just via this stupid show. Then Celine Dion sings a duet with ELVIS PRESLEY. IN THE PAST. It's like Forrest Gump. In many, many ways. I got my cynicism back at that point, which was good because then there was Madonna in a moon-landing-fake kind of Malawi -- or, as she calls it, "the baby store" -- all guilting you and being all sucky, and then Annie Lennox singing "Bridge Over Troubled Water" dressed like Kat McPhee, lots of intense African kids, and then Chris and Jordin are left, and then Chris is safe! Jordin is not! It's shocking! But then Jordin is safe too!

So all the votes from this week go to next week, and they lose the bottom two, and that's when Jordin wigs out, and then they sing "American Prayer," a song I suppose, with Bono lurking about, and he tells them all manner of things, including another really depressing story about a kid that died, and then they group-sing that song again. I am going to go take a nap for one million years and then do some thinking about these things. So far here's what I've got: I am glad that Sting wasn't there. It's pretty cynical to trade on the misfortune of others when you're part of the very multinational conglomerate that depends on keeping them down; it's pretty awesome to do something to make a change, even if it's something small. What makes me feel cynical is patting yourself on the back for doing so, when what you really need to be feeling is not fake bullshit Hallmark pride and a sensitive Phil Stacey kind of feeling that you cannot name, that will fade by tomorrow morning, when your real life starts up again. What you need is a holy Sanjaya kind of anger that doesn't stop until you've accomplished the job, today and all the days that come after that, until the end of your life, and that's how you know you changed the world.