On last night's eliminationapalooza, several things happened. A robot was given divine power. A pretty girl was scorned. A cutie patootie went skating again. And Puff Daddy Diddy P. shone a strobe light into our eyes and made us crazy.

What else can really be said about last night? There wasn't even a group number! Can you believe that? All of us Americans toil endlessly all week. Shoveling coal, sweeping chimneys, boiling down orphans to harvest their bones, making lukewarm tea for lonely old misers. It's just what we do. It's the American work ethic. And we don't ask for much in return. We ask that our roads be fixed and our airplanes fly safely and our schools foster our children with us paying as little as possible for it. And we ask for an American Idol group number every Wednesday night from January to May. Because they give hope (the good kind of hope) and joy to the world. Because they are the be-boppingest, rootin'-tootinest celebrations of American art and ingenuity since that wonderful stool song in that delightful patriot musical Red, White, & Blaine. We deserve the group numbers. They are proof of our proud citizenship, evidence of democracy in action.

And yet last night... nothing. Probably because group number funds have all been funneled into godless gay health care. Because Kevin Jennings wants to give some freeloader a college loan, we were left to subsist on a measly "Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting" Ford ad. Now it was good to see a group of scrub-cheeked youngsters sing the praises of a proud American auto company like Ford. And the song was appropriately ching-chongy and scared of illegal Asio-Hispanic immigrants. But it still wasn't enough. We wanted more. So much more. And then came P.Diddy.

Now a couple of years ago, maybe ten who can tell anymore, our grandson, Dax, was really into the Puff Party. He wore the loose dungarees with his undertrousers showing and when we offered him lemonade when he was visiting us at the Sarasota house he said "Nah, I'm coo." He was going through a phase, you know. And during that time our daughter, Dax's mother, told us to buy him a record by the P. Doodles for Christmas. And so we did. But that was years ago! Since then Dax has graduated from a nice little college in Maryland and he's working as some kind of business something for the OfficeMax. The corporation, mind you. Not just one of the stores. So it was a surprise to see Piddly Duff doing a song last night. And then he lit up a strobe light and we swore we had never felt so nerve-jangled in our lives. (Well, not since two Sundays ago, we'll tell you that.) Who knew that Dingle Poof was still making records. We thought he was irrelevant, and we're grandparents! What must the kids think??

After Paddle Doof was done doing his rap song, Brian Scarbreast announced that it was time to tell us which of the nice kids was going home. We crossed our fingers and desperately hoped that it wouldn't be the nice Aaron Kelly boy. That's a nice American boy right there. The kind that used to get killed in WWII. Just a good kid. We also said a prayer for Phil Dweezy. You know Phil Dweezy. He's Myrna Dweezy's grandson. Myrna Dweezy, from back in Allentown? We used to play bridge with her every week. Oh for heaven's sake you worked with Hank Dweezy for thirty-two years. You remember them. You're just being stubborn. Well anyway, Myrna's grandson Phil is on the Idol program now as one of the singers! So we said a prayer for him and Rick Stainfresh had the lights dimmed and we were told who was in the bottom three.

They were: The loose young lady with the blonde hair who doesn't dress very appropriately. The teenaged girl from Connecktuhcut who's what our mother, rest her, would have called "a real steamroller." You can tell from the eyes. And then there was the Tim Urban boy, who our granddaughter, Lyla, thinks is just a peach. She told us on the phone when we called on Sunday. Of the three we were hoping it would be the Connecktuhcut girl, because we just don't like the stride of her slacks. But in the end it was the Didi hussy who went, which is fair because of her dress but not because of her singing. And of course the little dimple fella is just safe. You can thank our granddaughter for that one.

Well, it's about twenty to one in the afternoon down here in Fort Lauderdale (we sold the Sarasota house years ago) which means it's almost time for dinner and we haven't even put on the water to boil the hotdogs. Happy April's Day, and we'll see you next week. Hopefully we'll have our group number. And hopefully our granddaughter will be heartbroken next week. We're just so tired of those darn dimples.

Now where did we put our glasse...ZZzzzz...