Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

American Idol was something of a shocker last night. Trenyce ended up making her exit, which was not totally unexpected at some point soon; lately she's been ratchetting up the "Frenetic Factor" in her performances in an attempt to catch up with Clay Aiken, Ruben Studdard and the quickly-ascending Kimberley Locke. (I may well have misspelled a number of names here. Oops.) Conventional wisdom, not only by the judges but by just about everyone I've seen or heard discussing the show, is that Trenyce and Josh Gracin were to exit soon, and the smart money last night was on Josh being eliminated. Yeah, he's a Marine and all, but the fact is, with each passing week he looks more like a fish flopping about on the deck of the boat after being plucked from the water. Josh's voice and performing style are geared to what he's admitted is his first love -- country music -- and he's simply at a gross disadvantage in trying to perform the pop stuff featured on American Idol. Trenyce has done pretty well lately, but Josh's performances have been shaky at best.

So, jaws across America dropped to the floor last night when Josh was voted "Safe" and Ruben was put in the bottom two, to be possibly eliminated. Ruben -- the crowd-favorite who's been favored to win the whole thing pretty much since it began. When that announcement was made, the live audience lustily booed, judges Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul nearly hit the roof in anger, and Simon Cowell literally said, "What?", thinking he'd misheard.

My take on what happened is that, for some reason, Josh has built up some good-will by taking potshots at Simon on live TV. I suspect Josh pulled in a pretty big "sympathy" vote this week, but after the voters were scolded by Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul that it's not a popularity contest but a singing competition, I expect things to get back to normal -- especially now that all the sudden-Josh voters see how close they came to eliminating Ruben, who is so far and away a better performer than Josh it's not even questionable. Josh was able to parlay some anti-Simon feelings into staying alive one more week, but I really don't think that's likely to work again. If he lashes out next week, he'll just start looking snarky.

Hey, at least I'm not watching that show with all the guys in masks or whatever.