Reid About It

Down to eight singers on Rockstar Supernova, and this week's show is the stripped-down, string section version of the band. Everybody's hung over because they went to Vegas. Is that part of Tommy Lee's initiation process, too? Seeing how everybody plays when screwed up? Seems like it would be a good question to ask.

Zayra starts us off with an original song. In Spanish. While wearing a bikini and what looks like a theatre curtain around her waist. Not too bad, although still wrong for the band. She's so weird, I find myself wondering if she really knows Spanish, or if she's just making up syllables as she goes along.

Up next is Magni, doing a David Bowie song. Magni is bald, wearing a white suit and black t-shirt that makes him look a lot like a villain from "Miami Vice".

And for my younger readers, let me point out that before that was a disappointing movie, it was a TV show. That's what I'm talking about. I was talking about it the other day with my pool man, Phillip Michael Thomas.

I've noticed something. I don't even notice when Patrice is singing anymore. You ever start driving, and the radio is on, and then you suddenly realize that you've gone twenty miles and don't remember a single moment of it? Patrice is the soundtrack of that uneventful journey.

Lukas took the stage, and managed to take a song by Nickelback and make it worse, somehow. He was sitting in a kitchen chair, and looked just completely uncomfortable. If you're going to wear pink stuff on your eyelids, dude, don't smear it. It makes you look cheap. I spent most of his song trying to figure out what was on his left arm, covered up with what appeared to be black electrical tape. A misspelled tattoo, perhaps? Fresh gunshot wound? Mark of the beast? Who knows.

Storm gets blonder every week, this time with "I Will Survive." She's wearing a jacket with shoulder pads that makes her look like she bought her stage gear at Taylor Dayne's yard sale. I like the poerformance, but then again, I have a proposal to stick by. The band hates it.

It's quicker becoming obvious that making the singers perform with a string section is boring the piss out of the band. Why make them do this? Chances are, Tommy Lee won't ever perform with an orchestra. The closest he'll come is a group sex evening with four strippers who call themselves the "G-String Quartet".

Toby performs "Solsbury Hill" by Peter Gabriel, an intensely personal song that doesn't seem right when anybody else sings it. Luckily, in an effort to get into the performance Toby again mangles the words so badly you can't tell what he's saying. The first verse was even close to the original lyrics, or even intelligible words for that matter. The two trademarks of a Toby performance are mumbled lyrics and rockstar props. Last week, the bullhorn. This week, the bongos. Just not that impressive, dude. Bongos are toys they give to children. It's not that big of a deal.

Ryan does a Phil Collins song, and the band complements him on changing things up from week to week. Apparently "changing it up" means "sounding more and more like Eddie Vedder".

And finishing things off, Dilana does "Cats In The Cradle." She hits the verses so low, I'm afraid the furniture in my house is going to shatter. She's got the range of Axl Rose, except better, because she shows up on time.

Bottom three predictions: Patrice, Ryan, and Zayra.