Take eight bands that should play at your show and determine their set lists:
• The first one plays 5 songs.
• The second one plays 5 songs.
• The third one plays 5 songs.
• The fourth one plays 7 songs.
• The fifth one plays 7 songs.
• The sixth one plays 10 songs.
• The seventh one plays 10 songs.
• The eighth one plays 14 songs, with a 2 song encore

Opening Act: Katharine McPhee
Not Ur Girl
Dangerous
Over It

Second Act: Taylor Swift
Picture To Burn
Should've Said No
Cold As You
Tim McGraw
Teardrops On My Guitar

Third Act: Jordin Sparks
Tattoo
One Step at a Time
Just for the Record
Now You Tell Me
No Air

Fourth Act: Elliott Yamin
Movin' On
Alright
I'm The Man
One Word
Free
Find A Way
Wait For You

Fifth Act: Jason Castro
Daydream
If I Fell
Over the Rainbow
Mr. Tambourine Man
Travelin' Through
Forever in Blue Jeans
Hallelujah

Sixth Act: Clay Aiken
This Is the Night
I Will Carry You
Perfect Day
Run to Me
I Survived You
No More Sad Song
Ashes
Everything I Don't Need
Bridge Over Troubled Water
When Doves Cry

Seventh Act: Carrie Underwood
Wasted
Flat On The Floor
Get Out of This Town
Crazy Dreams
Twisted
Wheel Of The World
Starts With Goodbye
Sometimes You Leave
Last Name
Before He Cheats

Eighth Act: Kelly Clarkson
Miss Independent
Low
What's Up Lonely?
Hear Me
Haunted
Hole
Can I Have a Kiss
Don't
Yeah
Maybe
How I Feel
Don't Waste Your Time
Judas
Sober

Encore:
Behind These Hazel Eyes
Since U Been Gone

Take your top 25 artists, and find out how many listeners they have.

1. Kelly Clarkson - 571, 979
2. Carrie Underwood - 115,988
3. Clay Aiken - 31,925
4. Jonathan Larson - 74,992
5. Hilary Duff - 256,783
6. Katharine McPhee - 52,152
7. Elliott Yamin - 38,789
8. Diana DeGarmo - 7,985
9. Martina McBride - 68,376
10. Jordin Sparks - 56,503
11. Anna Nalick - 184,454
12. Kimberley Locke - 17,870
13. Christina Aguilera - 615,571
14. Carmen Rasmusen - 964
15. Kimberly Caldwell - 877
16. Britney Spears - 636,027
17. Jason Castro - 5,201
18. Alexz Johnson - 29,009
19. Paris Bennett - 3,987
20. Bo Bice - 14,726
21. Relient K - 231,435
22. *NSYNC - 217,000
23. Michelle Branch - 298,402
24. John Stevens - 2,293
25. Lindsay Lohan - 177,349

Total Listeners: 3710637
Divide by 25: 148425.48
Divide by the number of Radiohead listeners: .1008326
Multiply by 100: 10.08326% mainstream

Worldwide google searches (artists, songs, and categories), including resulting web content + last.fm content and Top Artists on last.fm for May 08:

80s afghanistan argentina austria beatles colombia czech republic denmark egypt emo folk france germany ghana guitar india iraq israel italy jungle korea mexico netherlands pakistan peru poland puerto rico reggaeton rock sfo singapore south africa sri lanka tribal turkey wedding

1. The Beatles
2. Radiohead
3. (+4) System of a Down
4. (-1) Red Hot Chili Peppers
5. Muse
6. Iron Maiden
7. Michael Jackson
8. Justin Timberlake
9. Amy Winehouse
10. (-2) Pink Floyd
11. (-2) Coldplay
12. (-2) Linkin Park
13. (-1) Death Cab for Cutie
14. (-3) Metallica
15. (-2) Nine Inch Nails
16. (-2) Arctic Monkeys
17. (-2) The Killers
18. (-1) Nirvana
19. (-3) Green Day
20. ABBA
21. (-2) Foo Fighters
22. (-2) Led Zeppelin
23. Lenny Kravitz
24. (-3) The White Stripes
25. Elton John
26. Nickelback
27. (-4) Queen
28. James Blunt
29. 2Pac
30. Kelly Clarkson
31. (-5) Daft Punk
32. (-4) Madonna
33. Johnny Depp
34. Bryan Adams
35. Will Smith
36. Sex Pistols
37. Pantera
38. Flo Rida
39. Sarah Jessica Parker
40. Keanu Reeves
41. Basshunter
42. Kate Winslet
43. The Game
44. (-3) Nicole Scherzinger
45. Amanda Bynes
46. Camila
47. 김동률
48. Heidi Montag
49. Jason Castro
50. Sürpriz
51. Ville Valo
52. Michael Johns
53. Thalía
54. 安以轩
55. (+1) كاظم الساهر
56. Isis Gee
57. Umm Kulthum
58. (+3) حسام الرسام
59. Aracely Arámbula
60. folk
61. Dewi Persik
62. (-10) emo
63. שוטי הנבואה
64. Peggy Zina
65. guitar
66. argentina
67. germany
68. reggaeton
69. Haze over Haarum
70. mexico
71. (+2) israel
72. egypt
73. puerto rico

No need to preface it, other than to say it's the finale of American Idol. Let's get to it!

Opening number with the Top 12, and it was actually a decent number. The fact that they had dancers to distract from the choreography was probably part of it. I'm surprised there wasn't a "So You Think You Can Dance" plug in there.

Performance #2 is a duet with David Squared, doing Hero, and it's definitely meant as a David Cook track. David Archuleta is so out of his element on the track that it's hard to understand the logic in putting them together.

What's an American Idol finale without a truly shameless plug for a movie? They sure got it out of the way quickly, with Mike Myers and his upcoming "The Love Guru". It was actually a funny bit, with the shaving attempt on Cook, and the "boom boom" comment that seemed to fly over Archuleta's head, at least initially.

Oh, look...Syesha Mercado gets a duet with Seal! On paper, I'm sure that the two of them singing Waiting for You seemed like a good idea. But Syesha just got lost in the mix, and it wasn't that great.

Up next, Jason Castro revisits his strongest moment of his time on Idol, Hallelujah. Nice job with the track, but I was distracted by his playing to the audience, rather than just focusing on the song.

David Squared get cars, and then the ladies of Idol do Donna Summer. Well, not literally, but her songs. How about if we just bring Donna out to sing her new single Stamp Your Feet? I'm loving this track already, so it was really cool for her to get to sing it on national TV, along with a Last Dance duet with Syesha, who she graciously gave her sequined microphone. Lady Summer can still belt it out!

Alright...how bout this? Vocal duos are the norm in Country music, but you really don't see many in pop or rock music. How about Carly Smithson and Michael Johns? They were terrific together, with a great chemistry. What an amazing version of The Letter!

Jimmy Kimmel, who practically stole the show at "Idol Gives Back", wasn't quite as funny tonight, although the Paula Abdul joke was inevitably funny.

If the ladies get a medley, then the men must be getting one, too. In their case, Bryan Adams gets to be the muse and the singing partner, and it's a fun time. Bryan continues to be a hot looking guy from a distance, but not so much on those intense close-ups. I hadn't heard it before tonight, but I really like his new song I Thought I'd Seen Everything.

I'd heard about it prior to the show, but the pairing of Cook with ZZ Top doing Sharp Dressed Man was pretty cool to hear. Cook held his own, although him playing guitar with ZZ Top is like someone putting on boxing gloves to take a picture with Mike Tyson. There's no chance of measuring up.

Brooke White and Graham Nash...who knew? Whoever put this show together did an AWESOME job! That was a terrific pairing. Why can't Idol be this entertaining all the time?

[Holy side note! While I normally fast-forward through the commercials, I've let a few of them play so far this evening. Imagine my surprise when what looks like a flashback to "Risky Business" turns into David Cook playing the Tom Cruise role for a Guitar Hero commercial. He even did the feet in the air part of the scene!]

Okay...The Jonas Brothers are okay, but I just don't get into them all that much. The oldest of the three, though, is kinda hot. Nothing else to say about that.

Just like there isn't anything more to say about the worst performance segment. Beyond words.

One Republic takes the stage to sing Apologize, which seems a little odd, considering they're two singles ahead of that, until you hear the cheers from the audience, and realize that Archuleta is taking the stage to sing. If Archuleta doesn't record at least one song with Ryan Tedder, it will be a wasted opportunity. That was the perfect contemporary sound for Archuleta, and he needs to embrace it.

I've heard several commentators recently say that Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson are the only two Idol champs who have really succeeded, but I think you really have to give it to Jordin Sparks. Two top 10 hits, a gold album on its way to platinum, and the third single sounds like a hit to me. She did a nice job with One Step at a Time.

[Side note...I am really loving the new Coldplay track, Viva la Vida, from the new iTunes commercials.]

Okay...was the Gladys Knight & The Pips parody really necessary? Scratch that...is another Ben Stiller really necessary? Jack Black just cracked me up big time.

Speaking of Ms Underwood, it's her usual strong performance of
Last Name, but is anyone already getting a little bit of Underwood burnout yet?

[Holy HOLY side note! Guitar Hero redux, with Archuleta this time, with boxer shorts this time, and no legs in the air. I mean, he is 17, after all.]

One more group performance, and this time it's George Michael time. It's a rough stretch of songs, but Uncle George comes out and makes the pain worthwhile. Now THIS is how Praying for Time SHOULD be sung, although for such a high-energy show, it really is a momentum-buster. Still, hopefully Archuleta is taking some notes on how to sing a power ballad. And the guy had a cold, too!

Okay...the big moment. As I mentioned to someone earlier this evening, Simon retracts his "knockout" comment from last night, and we go to the result. Your American Idol for Season 7 is David...COOK!

And then the DVR cuts out. Did he actually sing? With how bad the songs were last night, I sure hope not. All in all, while I do think that Archuleta was the better singer last night, Cook won the country over with his total body of work, and the show maintains a bit of legitimacy.

That's it for this season. And I now have Tuesday and Wednesday nights back to myself again. Have a great summer, y'all.

being the total failure in computer science that i am, i shall instead attempt to piece together a few words of thought regarding the evolution of software complexity in relation to storage size.

before the advent of multigigabyte (terabyte nowadays) end-user systems program design often took the utilitarian view, evidenced by lackluster UIs of olde and cumbersome circumlocutions when issuing commands. programmers then had to make do with working in cramped quarters, squeezing in everything of import (the primary functions for their specific tasks) while sacrificing others (all other code for human aesthetic tastes and conveniences - examples of which are status messages, prompt design, the various methods of depicting currently running processes, etc). all within 640-kilobyte machines and even less.

those were the only things computers then can store and operate.

a few decades later give or take a year or so as advances had been made in both hardware and software left, right and center programs, while significantly larger than those used long ago, basically hadn't strayed far from their original building principles. all of them today, still mostly built on top of another. simple general routines and subroutines clumped together for use by more specialized programs: the keyboard/mouse/monitor interface drivers for use by anything ranging from games to porn viewing for instance. human-friendly software environments gradually developed as the number of ignoramuses with money who can't even tell cd-drive trays from coffee trays increased.

all the while focus changed from you making the computer work to making the computer work for you. end of story.

or maybe not. storage capacity increased to such an extent that most of it will, for all intents and purposes, be left unused by all but the most demanding applications. so all sorts of "filler", one might say, popped up to fill the void. images, videos, documents, music, anything else that can be digitized.

compare the average device driver to your havittety mp3s. a few kilobytes on average, one or two pushing one or two-megabyte size, compared to at least 55 megabytes for a tolerable copy of the album. a few kilobytes for directing the hardware-software interfaces, a crapload of megabytes for representations of audio signals in digital form. funny, really, in that while one was handcoded at some point the other was merely compiled from some type of converter or another which was, of course, handcoded as well in the beginning.

morals of the story:
1. nothing. i ranted.
2. simplicity builds complexity builds simplicity. why did the chicken cross the road? to get to the other side. how? an overly complicated plan involving spoons, a pile driver and a ball of twine. high ideals arise from convenient assumptions by the time of their devising. art, as such, should be given more value for its end results, not its means. a fact still lost on most kiddies who make/listen to mediocrity due to some hackneyed ideas of "self-expression" and "creativity".

now, some appropriate links.
Mindless Self Indulgence
Art Brut
Deathspell Omega
Moonsorrow - V: Hävitetty (it doesn't say 'viides luku' [yes, i know it means 'chapter 5'] on the cover dumbshits, the hell with last.fm's version)
Winds

First off, I have not seen ONE positive thing written about Jason Castro over the past 24 hours. I can't imagine that there wouldn't be a mutiny of this show if he doesn't go home this week.

To start things off, the less said about the group performance, the recap of the trip to see Cirque du Soleil, and the Ford commercial, the better. Maroon 5 was great performing If I Never See Your Face Again, and Bo Bice proved that Idol can produce Southern rockers, although they might not really sell records while they're rocking out.

No shocker this week, with David Archuleta and David Cook automatically sent to the couch. In the lead up to the final elimination, Jason gets the best one-liner of the night in, quoting someone who said that he "shot Mr. Tambourine Man". So America ends up getting it right, and Syesha Mercado gets to stay. And, as predicted, we have Season 2 Part 2, with the role of Kimberley Locke played by Syesha.

So next week is the final 3. It really seems like the season has flown by. We know each contestant will perform three songs next week, and that usually includes a judge's choice and, I believe, a Clive Davis choice.

Idol goes to CLEVELAND!

*crickets*

Not sure what to expect from tonight, but the R'n'R Hall of Fame should give them a long list to choose from. Should be a HELL of a lot better than the Bee Gees week from this time last year. I hope...

- David Cook singing Hungry Like the Wolf - It's great to watch the David C persona on-stage, because you can see the modest dork interacting with the other contestants, and then he hits the stage and becomes Mr Rock Star. While I'm not sure how Duran Duran got on the list (did they get inducted and I missed it?), David definitely put his rocker spin on it, and it worked. Definitely not my favorite performance of his, but still praise-worthy.

- Syesha Mercado singing Proud Mary - So Syesha starts off saying how often this song has been covered, which should be a bad sign to begin with. I mean, Syesha can sing, and she can shake her groove thang, but I don't know if I liked it as much as Randy and Paula did. Simon hit it right on the head that it was a poor Tina Turner impression.

- Jason Castro singing I Shot the Sheriff - What is this...Impersonation Night? Jason seems like he pulled up Bob Marley on YouTube, and tried to cop some of the moves with no success. This may go down as the worst Idol performance this far along in the competition ever.

- David Archuleta singing Stand by Me - You know, even in a week with a lot of competition, that would have been a great performance, but compared to the two songs before it, it was a masterpiece. I DO agree with Simon that it seemed a little strained, but all in all, a great interpretation. [Side note: someone's got it in their head that this kid needs to wear black every week. What's up with that?]

- David Cook singing Baba O'Reilley - You know, I always thought that song was called "Teenage Wasteland". No matter what you call it, that was a great performance. He strained just a little bit on the way to the chorus, but that was a truly great rock performance, and the boy is definitely safe this week.

- Syesha Mercado singing A Change Is Gonna Come - Um, Syesha looks GOOD! And she sure doesn't sound bad, either. Truthfully, there were a couple of spots where I felt like she shouldn't have pushed as hard as she did, but all in all, it was a great performance. Once you figure in the ensuing debate and Syesha's breakdown, she may have bought herself a ticket to the Top 3.

- Jason Castro singing Mr. Tambourine Man - When they went to show his intro, I had a physical reaction. He offended my senses THAT much with the first song, and there was no redemption with song #2. If I didn't know better, I would say that Idol got punked tonight. It's as if he intentionally forgetting the lyrics.

- David Archuleta singing Love Me Tender - Another great performance from David A, and despite a a falsetto that disappeared into the abyss for a second, that was the vocal of the night. This might be the right moment for David A to get that momentum rolling.

So it wasn't as bad as last year, but it wasn't stellar, either. I'd like to say the final three is clear, but you never know what a dedicated fanbase will do to prop up a lousy performance (or two, in the case of Jason).

Bottom two: Jason and Syesha

Who should go home: Jason should just not even show up for the results show

Who will go home: It's possible that the shock this week will be that America will actually get it right, and I'll get my season two repeat

Hang on, folks...I have a feeling that tonight's gonna be a bumpy ride! "Paulagate" from last night is turning out to be the most controversial thing associated with "Idol" since Corey Clark accused Paula Abdul of having an affair. I'm sure they'll address it this evening, so let the spin begin!

First off, probably the worst group number of the season. The music just didn't fit these folks, and Jason has completely given up on even trying to be a part of this. The setup definitely gave an advantage to David A, but it was pretty weak all around.

Ooooh...we're acknowledging alumni tonight, with Constantine Maroulis and Gina Glocksen in the audience. Nice how Ryan then glides right past Ace Young. We get the recap, and notice how they throw the order off of who performed in what order? The Davids were at the end of the order, and Syesha and Brooke were at the beginning. I'm smelling some foreshadowing, but who knows.

First half of recaps, and Jason Castro avoids the bottom 2, which boggles my mind, but there's a fan base for you. So maybe there's a shocker with David Archuleta? Nope...he's safe as well.

I'm actually looking forward to "So You Think You Can Dance", and I've never seen the show before. Some of that dancing was really impressive. They're sure not going to let us forget when it starts.

Round two of the recaps...David Cook is safe, and surprisingly, Syesha Mercado is in the bottom two again. Okay...not surprising, but sad. She has been SO consistent over the past month, and it's just not right. Especially considering how Castro has already moved on from the show. But as I need to keep reminding myself, it's a popularity contest as much as a talent show (as Carly Smithson and David Hernandez have both found out). Brooke White, however, was not a surprise at all.

I love me some Natasha Bedingfield, y'all! She's been such a ray of sunshine over the past few years, and I couldn't be happier for her. Pocketful of Sunshine isn't my FAVORITE song of hers, but she can do no wrong in my book. That fact that she went back over and hung out with the contestants just endears her to me that much more.

Neil Diamond, on the other hand, I could take or leave. The mosh pit had NO idea what was going on, and they were pretty flimsy waves of amber grain to his Pretty Amazing Grace. Someone from the label must have paid them to put this on, because there's no way the producers would have put this song in of their own accord. Not a bad song, but a big momentum-killer on a show like this.

Well, at least America got it right with sending Brooke home. I don't dislike her at all, and I was rooting for her early on in the competition, but she just fell apart as the season went on. I'll be looking forward to whatever record she makes, but it wouldn't surprise me if she walks away from it, too. Only time will tell.