Below the Belt

'Raging Bull' or raging hard-on? One could make a case for either on the season's last performance show for "American Idol" — a David vs. David finale. On the one hand, the producers worked hard to pummel the boxing theme into viewers' heads. On the other, D-Archie was looking cute in his athletic robe, his white blazer and a jacket with an anchor on the back. Alas, what was missing from the sartorial ring was  a peek at the boxers themselves (though I think Archie prefers briefs).

Tuesday's show was a drawn-out fight that involved both song selector Clive Davis and mentor Andrew Lloyd Webber. Talk about playing dirty! This pair looked like an old queer couple ready to abduct the two Davids and take them to to their farmhouse, where they would join a collective of scantily clad prisoners forced to sing show tunes and lick leather boots.

By the end of the night, the lightweight (aka twink division) was proven the champion. But how did we get there? Let's take a look back at the three decisive rounds ...

ROUND 1

Clive's choice

David Cook: The first person to get  a U2 song on the show and it's this bastard? Clive had the good taste to recommend the soaring anthem "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." Though I didn't care for his performance much, the mere presence of the song itself lifted him up. Of course, when U2 sang the song, it was a spiritual answer they hadn't found; with David Cook, it's a decent stylist and vocal coach that remain ever elusive. C

D-Archie: Clive Davis, being a randy old git, draws a comparison that nobody else had yet made on the show: David Archuleta and Elton John — two bottoms who love to shop for fashion. Check out that nautical-theme ensemble he dons for John's "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me." I curse the executive producer who nixed David's inevitable suggestion to wear a sailor cap on the "Idol" stage, his quest for seamen delayed but not deterred. Speaking of which, we won't let the sun go down on you, dear. But we have someone else who'd love to do the honors. His name is Erick, and he's a Mexican. Archie's performance, if you pay attention to the singing instead of masturbating while hitting the mute button, is among his best. A

ROUND 2

Original songs (atrocities I shan't even name)

Cook: Original crappy song, lackluster performance. D

D-Archie: Another crappy song, but lovely vocals. B+

ROUND 3

Performers' choice

Cook: I give him credit for picking a song he hadn't performed, even if it's a dumb move. The song — "The World I Know" is mediocre, but it fits the singer. Paula, her own legacy a step below mediocrity — stands to applaud Big David and his "Idol" journey, which moves him to tears. C-

Archie: So he repeated a performance. It's a smart move when you leave voters with "Imagine." John Lennon vs. Collective Soul? Hmmmmm. He definitely wins the battle of musical taste. The song is as good as when he did it the first time. Though I would have preferred to see him tackle a different verse or add his own piano, the song was still genuinely affecting. Yet Paula refused to give a similar standing ovation as she had for Cook. Get off your ass, you lazy bitch. A

As Simon remarked, the night was a KO for that cute knockout, D-Archie. Cook, on the other hand, was rendered the equivalent of Hillary Swank at the end of "Million Dollar Baby." It would be the kind thing to do to pull the plug before he releases an album of Nickelback covers.

Archie, on the other hand, should feel confident that — even if he doesn't get the title  when the results are announced Wednesday night — he joins a list of runners-up more talented than the winner: Katharine McPhee over Taylor Hicks and Blake Lewis over Jordin Sparks in the last two seasons, for example.

Regardless of who ends up with the most hits in this musical match, Archie is the real champion. Keep swinging, baby.

David vs. Goliath

We have our Top 2, though it's clear who the bottom is in this pairing of David and David. D-Archie, though presented as an early front-runner, now must be viewed as the underdog against the "American Idol" producers' newly proclaimed Goliath: David "Bad Hair" Cook.

Mr. Cook should have long been sent packing with his sister in hideous voice, Kristy Lee, but the powers-that-be see dollar signs in his Daughtry-like stylings of mediocre emo rock numbers. On Tuesday, they gifted him with the night's best song, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" (which Ryan attributed to Chaka Khan instead of Roberta Flack; if anyone on the show had any musical knowledge, they'd have mentioned it was first written and sung by Ewan MacColl) and an orchestra to back him on the bombastic "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing," a hideous yet popular song.

David Archuleta and No. 3-finisher Syesha Mercado, on the other hand, got scraps from Billy Joel and an animated film about penguins. The producers wouldn't even let Little David change the arrangement on the obscure, treacly number "Longer." D-Archie wanted "Longer" harder, bigger and uncut, but they made him settle for the musical equivalent of a diseased vagina. He still managed to bring a beautiful a cappella opening to Joel's "So It Goes" that made it the performance of the night.

A rare misstep for D-Archie was his decision to do a modern R&B song about his beloved "boo"  — dedicated no doubt to his "camping buddy" in the audience. It's actually a really funny story because Archie was telling his sleeping-bag mate a ghost story around the campfire one night when they were out in his dad's backyard. It was a Mormon ghost story, so the only people who suffered gratuitous violence were non-believers and sexual reprobates. David tells his buddy about an abortionist whose soul is captured by Satan — he actually reads it from a LDS pamphlet — and totally freaks his cutie friend out. When he's shivering, David jumps at him and yells "BOO!" really loud. The friend is so scared, Archie has to hold him tight in his sleeping bag all night to calm his nerves. After that, it's their private little in-joke (or an in-and-out joke as the occasion permits) when Archie sings about his boo.

For her part, Syesha came in second for the night — even with her penguin number. If that was decidedly child-centric and her first number, a soundalike take on Alicia Keys' "If I Ain't Got You," was youthful, her sensual take on the Peggy Lee classic "Fever," was certainly the adult number of the night. It wasn't as good as Paris Bennett's more intriguing take from a couple Idol seasons back, but it was better than the cabaret act Simon dismissed it as.

Cook did his usual crap and was hailed the winner of the night — including an execrable number he chose himself for the second round. Unfortunately, it seems  like the producers are firmly in his corner and want him to come out on top, leaving poor D-Archie biting the pillow again. But, let us rally the homosexuals and the tweens and the granmas and the Mormons and the Latinos and fans of socially responsible ballads unite and help Archie show a bit of versatility so that he might stand proud (and erect, let us hope) at center stage and be crowned champion (with a pretty tiara, he hopes).

Let Goliath go back to singing at bars and bar mitzvahs.

The roundup of grades:

D-Archie

So It Goes: A-

With You: C+

Longer: B-

Syesha Mercado

If I Ain't Got You: B

Fever: B

Hit Me Up: C-

David Cook

First Time Ever I Saw Your Face: C+

Dare You To Move: D-

I Don't Want To Miss a Thing: D+

Love Him Tender ...

... love him sweet, never let him go.

We certainly won't — not if our leather restraints have anything to do with it!

Love him tender, love him true,

all his holes are filled.

OK, maybe he didn't say it quite like that, but David Archuleta definitely played the sensual card tonight on American Idol's Top 4 show, ensuring a return for the Top 3, the audience on pins and needles to see if he'll touch himself inappropriately to ensure a place in the finals.

Granted, he pulled off his eroticism with classic rock staples and not Justin Timberlake's "Rock Your Body," but following a week in which he sang "Sweet Caroline" after vetting Neil Diamond's supposedly debauched catalogue (we're using Mormon standards here) for songs about drinking and staying out late with women (oh my!), he ended the night with Elvis Presley's eternally beautiful and suggestive "Love Me Tender." Unlike those other "Idol" fags in the top 24 opener, Danny Noriega and Colton Berry, David picked an Elvis song that played to his sensitive side.

David started the night with "Stand by Me," and though it's no "Lie Beside Me," the opening lyric "when the night has come" surely prompted the homosexual-at-home response, "who hasn't?" There wasn't a dry crotch in the house after that performance. David was wearing black pants (not leather, unfortunately) and a black V-neck shirt with birds on it — because he likes to soar like an eagle or something. Paula liked that he opened his eyes and made a connection to the audience, though there was evidence of heavy lids later in the night for "Tender." Personally, I don't care if the eyes are opened or closed — he can wear a blindfold if he wants (and I know he wants to), as long as he sings like that. He can get rid of that "for the beautiful girls" stage banter though — let's just say Clay's giving a better performance on Broadway than that attempt at seriously wooing the ladies.

Ryan, for his part, is more worried about little David passing out from shock and lack of oxygen after the judges' appraisal of his performance of "Stand by Me." He asks Davey why he's short of breath like it's a private joke and he had initiated a little asphyxiation fun before the show started (I half-expect a coy, giggly, "You know why, Ryan — you made me wear that plastic bag around my head while you sodomized me!"). Anyway, Ryan uses the moment to put his arm around David to keep him steady — as if thematically echoing the theme of David's song choice and feeling him up at the same time. When the second song is concluded and Simon announces that David didn't just beat the competition, he "crushed the competition," Ryan gets touchy-feely again and calls him crusher ... which is probably too much information. Who would have thought Ryan would still be the bottom even with D-Archie?

The night opened with the less appealing David, Monsieur Cook, who chose song "Hungry Like the Wolf" — which had me searching on the Net when Ryan said the night's theme was the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. Are Duran Duran really in the Hall? They aren't but the song (by far, their best — and that's saying something, though that something isn't particularly positive) is on the list of 500 songs that influenced rock. Um, 500 songs and he chose "Hungry Like the Wolf"? OK. At least, that ass clown won't butcher a good song. It's horrible as expected, though the real surprise is that he's not the worst of the night.

That honor belongs to Jason Castro — who seemed either high or apathetic, but quite possibly both. First, he confesses that he knows a "few songs" on the list of some of music's best tunes. He should know at least 400 of these songs, but he choses "I Shot the Sheriff" by Bob Marley (because they have the same hair!) and Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man." I like both these artists immensely, but why those songs? It's beyond bad karaoke — at least in karaoke he would have had a screen to remind him of the words. He wasn't so lucky with "Mr. Tambourine Man." Simon rightfully told him to pack his bags.

I have a feeling he'll hang around to make it an all-male threesome in the end — something I'm usually very much in favor of (though I really do what D-Archie to be the top in this configuration).

Jason will get enough sympathy votes to dislodge perennial bottom 2 Syesha Mercado. When Ryan mentioned at the beginning of the show that three of the four finalists had at one time received the week's top voting total, one had to feel for Syesha and her imminent demise. That said, she's escaped death more times than David Crosby. Her shrieky take on "Proud Mary" and overblown cover of "A Change is Gonna Come" — two immensely gorgeous songs — shows she's a wildly uneven artist. Even though I agreed with Randy's assessment on the latter performance, there was something touching to Syesha's emotional reaction to the performance.

That said, the episode did nothing to dissuade the opinion that an all-David finale is inevitable. And while it's a bit like serving an effervescently tasty red wine with a can of expired tuna fish, the reality is that both will have recording contracts and we can follow the David of our choice. Though I'd rather follow D-Archie into desperate male pornographic films instead, I'm ready to buy his albums — or at least always download them for free. ...

I'll be yours through all the years

until the end of time.

Here's the grade recap

David A. (appropriate last initial)

Stand By Me: A-

Love Me Tender: A

Syesha

Proud Mary: C

A Change is Gonna Come: C+

David C. (a hopeful last initial)

Hungry Like the Wolf: D

Baba O'Reilly: D+

Jason

I Shot the Sheriff: D

Mr. Tambourine Man: D-