This Idol week was like pizza to me. Even when it was bad it was good because of the material. As much as I love the Beatles and the Stones I believe that my favorite genre of music would be the pop standards.

I thought Kris was pretty much in the pocket with The Way You Look Tonight. He is a contestant that has grown on me week after week. He is one of two performers that came closest to hitting the mark for the Rat Pack genre.

Allison? I still don't get it. Her rendition of Someone to Watch Over Me was like nails on a chalkboard for me. The Gershwin song is written with such a beautiful melody and it was all lost with Allison. You need a great range to do justice to this song and, despite the glowing praise that Randy heaped on her, I don't think Allison has that kind of range. It sounded to me like she was forcing all of the high notes in the song off of her hard pallet. It sounded whiny and much too nasal to me. She would have done better this week with the song that Danny sang, Come Rain or Come Shine, or with Judy Garland's The Man That Got Away. With her raspy voice Allison would have been more successful with that kind of a choice.

Matt did an okay job with My Funny Valentine. I think he would have done much better if he had left the song alone in the key he was singing it in during rehearsal with Jamie Foxx instead of taking Foxx's advice about changing the key. During the rehearsal period the key he was originally singing in captured that smoky saloon singer quality that I love to hear when I listen to the standards.

Danny is the other performer who I think hit the Rat Pack style. I could have done without the faux scat that he did as he stepped forward dragging the mike stand behind him, but overall I thought he did a very good job.

Adam---Feeling Good is from the Rat Pack era, but I don't think Nina Simone when I think of Rat Pack type music. Adam did a great job with the song, but I wish he would have chosen a song that is more identifiable with the style and theme of the week.

And, I would agree with Ghost. The fix is in, or at least is as in as the producers can make it. Again I would point to the production values of the contestants numbers. The first four singers were lit with straight stage lighting and fairly standard camera angles. Adam? He had a light show that would make any glitter rock era rock star green with envy. And the camera shots were anything but standard. Think about the setup for the shot that swooped down from behind him to the back of his head and then pulled out in front of him to focus in on his face. A very elaborate camera setup. It's fun to watch, but it's really not fair in this competition to give one contestant that kind of produciton. The average viewer won't realize that they are being manipulated by the production values. American Idol did the same thing a couple of years ago with Chris Daughtry and you know that the show's executives were livid when he didn't go on to win that year. The night he was cut from the competition they could see the platinum albums flying off of the stage and away from them.

A couple of years ago Paula told a contestant that you hear with your eyes. As much as I didn't like what Allison did I bet I would have liked it more if she had the kind of production backing her up that Adam did. The playing field is anything but level.

As a sidenote; I've mentioned before that my old boss was Mickey Deans, Judy Garland's last husband. One night in New York when he was the manager of the jet set night spot Arthur he had an amazing experience. The club was locked up for the night and there were three fellows sitting at the piano bar. Mickey was a wonderful pianist and he sat down at the piano and began to play. The three fellows sitting at the piano bar? Jack Jones, Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra. Mickey played standard after standard and the three took turns in round robin fashion singing. Mickey told me the story about fifteen years ago when I had discovered Sinatra and was going through a real Sinatra phase. He said that Sinatra didn't have the greatest voice in the world. He said that what made Sinatra great was the way he phrased a song. So, I found it interesting that a couple of times tonight contestants were singled out for handling their "phrasing" well.