All right, tonight my girl Allison Iraheta was in the bottom three, and since her performance of No Doubt's "Don't Speak" (complete with guitar!) was super-awesome last night and the judges had very little negative commentary to say about her actual vocals, I can only assume that it was her "controversial" dress that did her in.

But I am here to say:  Allison's outfit was not that bad, haters. Please remember that the girl is only SIXTEEN! Yes, I know it's easy to forget how young she is because of her astoundingly mature voice and seemingly seasoned command of the stage, but the girl is a TEENAGER. And what she was wearing last night was completely appropriate for a rocker girl in the 11th grade. Any bittersweet-16 girl buying her junior prom dress at Hot Topic would end up looking how Allison did last night...and she would be the belle of the pop-punk ball. Come on, now, if there's any time in a girl's life when she can get away with a pouffy persimmon-pink party dress and

I admit I haven't been the most vocal cheerleader for Danny Gokey--I still don't quite understand what all the fuss is about him on American Idol this year, or why he's such a frontrunner. But I'm not made of stone, and so my heart of course went out to him when I learned today that his grandfather just passed away. This loss comes less than a year after the sad passing of Danny's young wife, Sophia, who died from a congenital heart defect just weeks before Danny's Idol audition last year.

According to the religious website everydaychristian.com, Danny returned home to Wisconsin over the weekend for his grandfather's funeral. However, word is he will be performing on tonight's Idol show.

The death of a spouse and a close relative, on top of the immense pressure to perform for Simon Cowell and millions of Idol viewers week after week...that's definitely a lot for someone to handle in such a short timespan. So far Danny is handling himself with grace, and it will be interesting to see

Last season, David Cook became the first rocker to win American Idol, succeeding where Constantine Maroulis, Bo Bice, and even Chris Daughtry had failed. Idol-worshipping rock fans, myself included, rejoiced at the time. But then David's disappointingly Nickelbackian debut album came out, which made me reluctantly realize that David Cook was really only a "rocker" WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF AMERICAN IDOL. Sure, compared to the nervous-giggly David Archuleta or the bubbly-blonde Brooke White, David Cook (and Carly Smithson and Michael Johns, for that matter) practically sounded like Motorhead or Slayer. But in the real world, he didn't really ROCK.

But you know who does rock? Um, Adam Lambert, that's who. (Who'd you think I was going to say, Scott MacIntyre?) Adam is the best, most awesomely rockin' thing to happen to Idol since Sanjaya Malakar got voted off, and I'll tell you why.

Here's the deal: Real rock 'n' roll is supposed to have some element of danger to it. It's supposed to make

I don't often use the term "guilty pleasure" when referring to the many reality shows I watch and write about. Why should I feel guilty about relaxing after a long, hard day at the Yahoo! office with a nice, brain-numbing episode of Dancing With The Stars or Confessions Of A Former Teen Idol? I have no reason whatsoever to be embarrassed.

But I must admit, I do feel the slightest twinge of guilt whenever I tune in to watch For The Love Of Ray J.

Man, and I thought the women on Rock Of Love and Flavor Of Love were tore up from floor up. The chicks on Ray J's new dating show--Danger with her tiger-tattooed face, Chardonnay who does stripper-splits in a purple bikini on the first date, binge-drinking Feisty who seems most interested in the free glasses of champagne Ray hands out at each elimination ceremony--are so skantastic, I'd probably feel less guilty, and less dirty on the inside, just viewing Ray's sex tape with Kim Kardashian, or watching him rub up on rumored ex-paramour