American Idol Finale - What a Night

By now you know that David Cook won the title of American Idol. What a show it was tonight, in between all the commercials.

First of all it was pretty cool that Randy Jackson managed to get his hands on Captain Kangaroo's old duds. It was, after all, a night of bringing out the old, and I say that fondly.

I enjoyed ZZ Top backing up David Cook on one of their hits from the 80's Sharp Dressed Man. David Cook was around the age of one when that song was a hit.

Donna Summer looked a little older than 59, but Graham Nash looked younger than his 66 years.

Lots and lots of commercials and now we know that David Archuleta wears boxers and David Cook wears briefs.

Bryan Adams! I love that guy. He looks pretty damned good for a man in his sixties. Wait, he's forty eight. Never mind.

Who else? Hmmm. Carrie Underwood must have gone to Dolly Parton's dress designer. She wore that half-dressed-bride look that Dolly sported on her American Idol appearance.

Was Ryan Seacrest mixing it up with the dancers from last season's So You Think You Can Dance?

Mike Myers is not funny. It's now out there for everyone to see. He's a one trick pony, plugging his new movie The Love Guru. Same character, different costume. Not funny, not cute.

Syesha and Seal sing together. They shouldn't - their voices don't compliment each other and that was the first time I didn't enjoy hearing Seal sing..... ever.

Amanda Overmeyer looks like she might have celebrated with mass quantities of beers this last month or two. I forgot how good looking Michael Johns is.

Then there were some cute, well dressed boys who had a band. I have no idea who they are - Ryan said they needed no introduction, so he probably didn't know either. But they sounded nice and looked clean. My fourteen year old niece probably knows who they are.

David Archuleta sounded great singing Apologize with One Republic.

More commercials. Itunes featuring Coldplay is my favorite. Moving Art!


There was a video of Gladys Knight and the Pips - the Pips in this video are Ben Stiller, Jack Black and the amazingly cool Robert Downey Jr. It could have been good, but it went on for a little too long and what the hell was with Jack Black and Downey disappearing and Black coming back with his pants around his ankles? If you want to see the video on YouTube, click here.

They also brought back Reynaldo Lupez and sent in the USC marching band to back him, along with cheerleaders. I think just seeing him in the montage of bad auditions was enough for most viewers.

George Michael actually made an appearance. He looked and sounded good. After all this waiting to see the man, Ryan had a brief exchange of words and Mr. Michael said something about having a cold. And then it was back to business. A little bit of a letdown.

The judges all had a little something to say and Simon was very gracious, offering up an apology to David Cook for being borderline disrespectful to him the night before. David Cook is announced as the winner and it all gets really emotional, with his Mom and brother up on the stage. Then David Cook has to sing the winning song, which was better than last year's drivel. Cook keeps hugging his little buddy Archuleta. Cook's brother mouths into the camera "that's my brother". It was a nice ending to a very, very long show.