Well, in case you missed the paper, the television, and all the blogs in the world last week, Sanjaya is off American Idol. When Ellen Degeneres asked him on her Monday show who his favorite is to win Idol this year, he dodged it awkwardly by saying Ellen is his favorite.

That's really the only awkward Sanjaya news we have for you. Honestly, he's been more endearing and entertaining since he left Idol. He even did a top ten list for David Letterman. The only thing left for him is SNL. We'd watch.

Meanwhile, back on American Idol, Seattle (ahem, Bothell) native Blake Lewis continues to disappoint us. He had a great thing going there for a while. He was one of the only people during lounge singer week to impress with his version of "Mack the Knife." Country week wasn't his strongest moment, and he followed it up with one of the greatest songs ever written. Unfortunately, there's really nowhere in "Imagine" for beatboxing or doing that thing with his legs. Nowhere for fedoras and snarky smiles ... and let's face it: that's what Blake Lewis does best.

The judges were bored. We thought his vocals sounded excellent, but Blakeypoo should never sit on a stool. Because of the glare on the piano, we couldn't tell for the longest time that he was leaning his arm against it. We were caught up in the fact that his arm appeared to be frozen in a really awkward robot-like position, which means we weren't enthralled enough with his performance to care how good he sounded.

Meanwhile, every single other contestant turned in a great performance. Even Phil Stacey. The only place we saw a little lacking was in Timberfake's version of Eric Clapton's "Change the World."

The theme this week was "personal anthems of inspiration and all-that-change-the-world-hippy-shit" (paraphrasing Seacrest). That said, the only parts of the show where we thought someone could be canned were when the two hot guys were performing, and we're not just saying that because we're a lesbian. We went into last night's show expecting Stacey to fail, so maybe our bar was too low on him, but he delivered his best vocal yet. Surrogate Seattlite Jordin Sparks actually outdid Melinda Doolitle (oh my God, yes, we said it) with "You Will Never Walk Alone." MindyDoo did some Jesus-Loves-You gospel song that we've never heard of, but that blew us away because we love her and want her to be our personal singer to have whenever life requires us to have a singer on hand. LaKisha Jones did another song by another American Idol winner. And we already mentioned Phil Stacey didn't suck.

So there you have it. The bottom two this week will be Chris "Timberfake" Richardson and Our Man Blake. Or, as we've begun calling them: Chrake. In other words, who has more voting power on American Idol? The 14-year-old girls (Chris)? Or gay men (Blake)?

(photo courtesy of RamBear on Flickr)