Nice job with these, O'Neal
Good to see this feature evolve from an inessential filler item into some damn entertaining reading. Just thought I'd share that.

Alaina
My initial reaction was to recoil a bit from that naked display of emotion, but then it sunk in as a genuine moment. And to tack onto what Claire wrote, I tend to think of the contestants as cast from the same mold as like a Britney Spears, little hardened show-biz types coached from birth to perform and grin…

Not the best night
I think the bookworm and the word-nerd should hook up. Aside from their shared love of language and peculiar hairdos, they're both mockers, which by itself may be grounds for romance. And speaking of the word-nerd, did anyone else catch Paula dropping "juxtapose" into her evaluation of Amanda…

That's funny. And nice heads-up on the Youtube thing. It is curious that he'd go out of his way to substitute the word evil, especially since it doesn't make much sense in the line. Your guess seems as good as any.

Yeah, on second thought, "peachiest" might not have been the best adjective there, but I definitely wasn't calling him preachy.

Imagine, in medias res
I can't help thinking that David Archuleta's dismissing the first two verses was less about his preference for the third, than a reluctance to shit on Heaven and religion (sublime though that might've been) and risk jeopardizing his image as the peachiest little cherub this side of Kelly…

Actually, he doesn't know or embrace it. What I thought was a quote was just the snarky commentary of some blogger. He is a dead-ringer though.

It took the length of his performance for me to decide that Jason Castro looks a lot like John Travolta in "Battlefield Earth." Turns out (thanks Google) that he not only knows that, but embraces it.