There's been alot of "Kelly Clarkson is back!" hype recently, in light of her newsingle, "My Life Would Suck Without You," setting a chart record byvaulting from #97 to #1 on the Billboard Hot100 singles chart.

But I say Kelly never really left.

A couple of years ago, much ado was made about the OriginalIdol's "controversial"third album, My December (aka The Album Clive Davis Didn'tWant You To Hear), and its supposed lack of commercial appeal.

Alongwith Kelly's poorly timed decision to fire her management firm (um, called TheFirm) and cancel her summer tour just two weeks before My December's street date, there were those troubling rumorsabout Clive "I Don't Hear ASingle" Davis tearing her a new you-know-what in record label boardmeetings. Or that gossip about him dangling a $10 million carrot in front ofher face to persuade her to cut five songs that apparently didn't sound enough like "Since U Been Gone Part 2:Electric Boogaloo."

Anyhoo, after all that hype and hearsay, I was

The auditions are almost over! The auditions are almost over! Huzzah! I don't know about you, but I've never been so ready for the Idol contestants to get through to Hollywood, already, than I have been this season. Season 8's auditions haven't exactly blown my mind, as few of them have been truly mind-blowingly bad and even fewer of them have been truly mind-blowingly great. I've been counting the episodes till Hollywood Week, and after tonight's auditions in both New York and Puerto Rico (packaged together under some sort of feeble West Side Story theme), I won't have to keep count anymore! The auditions will finally be over. In Simon Cowell's words, brilliant.

First up, in San Juan, was Adeola Adegoke, claiming she was (speaking of combo packages) Mariah Carey and Mary J. Blige all wrapped into one. She was so sure of her Mary/Mariah magic, in fact, that she'd already quit her paying job, assuming she'd soon been heading to Hollywood. So then she auditioned with the big Dreamgirls

Hey,remember all the controversy caused when Carly Hennessy--an Irish pop singer who'd been signed to MCA and whose one album had been sucha colossal multimillion-dollar failure, she'dmade #15 on Blender magazine's "20 Biggest Record Company Screw-Ups Of AllTime" list--resurfaced as Carly Smithson on season 7 of American Idol?

Viewers (myself amongthem) were understandably outraged that this show, a show presumably focused on giving undiscovered talent a chance, was beingused as a relaunching pad to revive the fizzled career of this has-been (or never-was). Sure, there was minor public outrage surrounding Idol finalists like former MaverickRecords rocker Michael Johns and ex-Arista Nashville signing Kristy Lee Cook,too, but since those singers' albumsnever actually came out, Carly caught most of the flak. And rightfully so.

Click HERE for more details on the Carly Smithson American Idol scandal.

Anyway, I honestly can NOT believe the AmIdol producers are upto their old sneaky tricks

I hate to say it, but I'm kind of getting bored of all the American Idol audition episodes already. And it's only episode 4! But for the most part, the hideous auditioners aren't hideous enough (where is this season's William Hung?) and the excellent auditioners aren't excellent enough (I've only really been genuinely wowed by San Francisco's Adam Lambert and Phoenix's Cody Sheldon). Bring on Hollywood Week, already! I'm beginning to understand why the Idol producers decided to focus less on the audition episodes this season--they just didn't have that much to work with, I guess.

Anyway, tonight the show stopped in Louisville, Kentucky, with the singers trying their luck at Churchill Downs. Up first was Tiffany Shedd, who looked like she was wearing all of Alice Cooper's makeup case on her face. Was this episode shot last Halloween or something? Anyway, Tiffany arrived on the scene with her well-meaning but deluded parents, who declared they would be the "happiest dad on earth" and