I guess Paula didn’t return the love, since she was found dead of an apparent suicide outside Paula’s house yesterday:

A woman who authorities said once tried to become a contestant on “American Idol” was found dead outside the Sherman Oaks home of “Idol” judge Paula Abdul in a case police are investigating as a possible suicide.

Authorities identified the woman as Paula Goodspeed, 30, from Thousand Oaks. (Police earlier had said her name was spelled “Goodespeed.”)

Goodspeed was found dead in a car about 6 p.m. Tuesday outside the house in the 3800 block of Beverly Ridge Drive.

“We are investigating the case as a possible suicide,” said Ed Winter, a spokesman for the coroner’s office. The cause of death will not be determined until after toxicology tests are completed, he added.

For the curious out there — which is probably you, since you’re reading this post — Goodspeed also had a Myspace blog post about her American Idol audition, which includes gems like “my style is a mix of 1980’s icons: Punky Brewster, Rainbow Brite and Cyndi Lauper.” She also has a long discussion about how she changed her audition song in the months between the huge stadium audition and the Randy/Simon/Paula audition, and that’s what doomed her. Not that she was chosen simply because she’d make for funny television. No, couldn’t happen.

Her AI clip also has her talking about drawing life-size drawings of Paula Abdul, and says that Abdul was the first thing she drew as a kid. Alarm bells! Look out!

The rumor I posted in the title of my post was that Paula was psychic. Therefore, Ryan is claiming that Paula Abdul is not psychic.

Other people are using Paula’s screw up as proof that the judges watch the dress rehearsal performances so they can get some notes down ahead of time. I never thought that was up for debate, I always assumed that was a well-accepted fact about the way that American Idol works. After all, earlier this season we’ve seen judges give good reviews to contestants who gave a crappy performance on the live night, but had given a much better performance on dress rehearsal night (I seem to remember that with Michael Johns.) But since some sites are posting the dress rehearsal watching thing as rumor, then Ryan is also denying that.

And if anyone is rumormongering that Paula is an alien, Ryan Seacrest is denying that as well.

Really, he’s just denying everything he possibly can. If you can write about it in a rumor-like fashion, he’s denying it.

Anyway, on to the show. Some of the worst singing of the whole season as the top 5 do a Neal Diamond medley. Oh my God, that was one of the most painful things to listen to so far. The songs are all Neal Diamond cheese with lackluster arrangements, and the vocals are just all over the place. Pitchiness like that should get them thrown out of the building without a second chance.

And then Ryan Seacrest calls Jason Castro “J-Cas.” Oh, Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick. Worst freaking nickname in the history of the planet. I threw up a little when I heard that.

Interestingly, they give us Brooke White and Syesha at the end, with the three guys all safely seated. They seem to be implying that they are in the bottom two, but never actually say that. And according to DialIdol, Syesha was the top vote-getter, and statistically could only have been in the first or second position (along with David Cook.)

So you have to wonder why they left her for the end. She didn’t get the second lowest number of votes, and they never said that she did, but they certainly implied it. The most likely explanation is that they want her to stick around, and think that’ll help boost the number of votes she gets next week.

All I’m hoping is that David Archuleta goes home soon. He’s been there about 10 weeks too long. See ya, David!

Ken Levine at the Huffington Post points this out as proof that the judges watch the dress rehearsals and come up with their comments at that time. I didn’t realize that was up for debate, I always assumed that was a generally accepted fact about the way the show works. Was that really not known conclusively before Paula’s big screw-up?

Paula Abdul actually critiqued Jason Castro’s second song even before he sang it! And she had specifics!! This proves two things: Paula Abdul’s brain is not as highly developed as a mollusk’s. And two, the judges watch the dress rehearsal and in many cases formulate their spontaneous opinions beforehand.

Anyway, that was the highlight of the show. The rest of the show involved:

• A lot of annoying girls shrieking about David Archuleta, as usual.
• David Archuleta singing pretty poorly, as usual.
• Syesha Mercado being more boring than usual.
• David Cook being introduced by Ryan as “The Rocker,” which made me want to punch Ryan in the nose.
• Brooke White didn’t forget any words, which is a step up for her.
• And, nobody did anything remotely interesting or memorable vocally or musically.

So, there you go. Thank you Paula Abdul for at least keeping us semi-interested in the season. Who wants to bet that Ryan comes up with some bullshit explanation for Paula’s slip-up last night that somehow avoids mentioning that she had already watched Jason’s second song? I’ll take your bets right here.

Brooke White, “Jolene” — Meh.

David Cook — Ryan Seacrest makes sure to emphasize that yes, David is admitting to ripping off other bands’ arrangements, and isn’t trying to pull a fast one over on America. Ok, whatever. He sings something boring, blah blah blah. Meh.

Ramiele Malubay — Worse than “meh,” Ramiele is completely forgettable. I’d predict her going home tonight, and it looks like DialIdol agrees, she’s in a (distant) last place. See you later, Ramiele.

Jason Castro — Jason sings something reasonably well, but the song is all about Jesus and Jesus and more Jesus and Oh Jesus Isn’t Jesus Just Awesome! Yuck. Way to make me not like you any more, Jason.

Carly Smithson — Did they say in the intro that Dolly Parton didn’t write this song? How does it count as a Dolly Parton cover if she didn’t even write it? Anyway, meh.

David Archuleta — Another religious nut Jesus song. What’s with Dolly Parton and Jesus? Anyway, meh. I’m starting to actively hate David Archuleta because having him around means I need to hear annoyingly screamy kids whenever he sings, or appears on stage, or his name is mentioned.

Kristy Lee Cook — Surprisingly doesn’t sing “God Bless the U.S.A.” yet again. Kristy manages to rise all the way up to “meh,” which I guess is low thing to reach for considering that she’s singing her precious country music this week.

Syesha Mercado — Meh. Starts out ok, and then gets all Whitney Houston on us. Bad Syesha. No cookie.

Michael Johns — Pretty good, and for this show, that means he’s the best of the night. Who knew?

Sorry, I don’t know why I’m doing that. It must be my bitter, seething resentment that Chikeze and KKKristy are still around, but Danny Noriega and Asia’h Epperson got kicked off last night. Way to screw it up for the rest of us, America (see also the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. You really suck, America.) I won’t even bring up Alexandrea Lushington. Oops, I guess I just did.

At least Luke Menard and Kady Malloy are gone. I’m still shocked they stuck around as long as they did (which was much longer than they should have.)

Anyone disagree? You can rant against me in the comments, below, but be warned that you’ll be wrong, since I am, pretty much by definition, right about this.

Asia’h Epperson — Jesus Christ that apostrophe is annoying me more and more every week. Seriously. Although seeing the text “ASIA’H'S FATHER” was pretty funny. She sings very well. Good job. Naturally DialIdol had her in second to last place for much of the night. Way to go, America! You want endless KKKristy, instead of someone who can actually sing, you’ll get what you deserve.

Luckily Asia’h’s (ha!) moved up in the rankings a bit since then, but it’s all still disturbingly close. And, in usual DialIdol fashion, he’s predicting that every one of the girls will finish somewhere between 1st and 8th place. Really? No shit? And then whoever gets voted off, he’ll be able to put the thumbs up indicating he predicted right, and use that next year with “we correctly predicted the outcome 95% of the time!” Yeah, I think I could get a better percentage if I was doing predictions that vague.

Kady Malloy — Kady starts off talking to Ryan and agreeing with everyone else who watches this show that she should have gone home last week instead of Alaina. But she didn’t, so we have to listen to her again. It’s bad. Not as bad as Amanda-last-week-bad, but still very bad. Bad bad bad Kady. I mean, better than some of her other performances, but so out of her league here (much like Luke and the rest of the guys.)

Amanda Overmyer — Her “most embarrassing” story was the time she accidentally burned down her deck, pool, and the side of her house. Wow. Combine that with the DUI arrests and car crashes and this girl is just an all-around mess, huh? She’s not as terrible as usual this week, but it’s not really a performance that does anything for me. The judges inexplicably like it. It was ok, but just kind of boring, if you ask me. Her pitch was much improved over her last drunk driving car crash of a performance, but that shouldn’t be enough to praise the hell out of her. At least she looked her age last night (instead of her usual 35-year-old look.)

Carly Smithson — I have a hard time believing that getting your leg stuck in a railing is more embarrassing than having your multi-million dollar record only sell 300-some copies. Anyway, she sings. She’s still a good singer, but I still just find her boring. I keep forgetting about her, and this performance just doesn’t do anything to change that.

Kristy Lee Cook — But at least Carly’s not Kristy. Poor Kristy. All blonde and pretty and full of horse-selling lies, and without the vocal chops to force us to like her. She sings “Faithfully” by Journey, and kind of destroys the poor little song with her non-Steve Perry voice and her country crap. And then she reveals that she’s aiming for 10th place. I think that just about says it all, doesn’t it?

Ramiele Malubay — Ramiele is apparently Danny Noriega’s secret girlfriend, what with the gang signs and glasses sharing and TMTH code and all that. She does well, as usual, but doesn’t blow anybody away. But she’s still very good, and it’s too bad DialIdol has her placing so low and relatively likely to go home.

Brooke White — Brooke’s most embarrassing moment is something about a wrong Dad at church. I guess the hidden message there is that Brooke goes to church, and, naturally, finds that incredibly embarrassing. I’d be embarrassed also if people found out that I believed in an invisible man living in the sky who tells me that science is a lie. Oops, this is American Idol. I mean, Go Jesus!!!!1111 Despite her religiousness, Brooke does surprisingly well with “Love Is a Battlefield.” Even if Paula thinks it should have been more cheesy and full-bandy. Wrong, Paula.

Syesha Mercado — Poor Syesha. She gets the last-song-of-the-night pimp spot, but because they all wasted so much time earlier in the show, there isn’t enough time for the judges to say anything about her performance. And now DialIdol has her in second-to-last place, just above Kady. Poor Syesha. How much would that suck if she gets voted out because they screwed around too much earlier in the show? That would suck a lot.

Alexandrea Lushington would have been a huge addition to this episode. Bah. I still can’t get over that KKKristy and Kady are still around, and Alaina and Alexandrea aren’t. That’s messed up right there.