You have to hand it to Kristy Lee Cook.

The 24-year-old country girl and latest “American Idol” casualty hung on to her slot on the show, apparently by the skin of her teeth, week after week after week. Despite seemingly endless attacks from the acid-tongued Simon Cowell, who predicted early in the competition that she would not make it past tenth place, Cook repeatedly appeared to defy the odds.

As Cook herself noted before her offing on Wednesday night, she sure proved Cowell wrong, coming in seventh place this season. Heck, she even lasted longer than that Aussie hunk Michael Johns. Who could have predicted that after sitting through her gruelling “Eight Days a Week” performance all those weeks ago?

So, it’s back to Oregon for Cook, where she already has her next challenge cut out for her. Forced to sell her beloved horse to pay for the trip to the “Idol” audition in Philadelphia, Cook told a fan who dialed into the show on Wednesday night that she wants to buy him back. The problem is, the man she sold it to doesn’t want to sell it back to her.

After delivering the news that Cook would no longer be part of the show, host Ryan Seacrest asked the man, on live television, to sell the horse back to her. A teary-eyed Cook also appealed to him for sympathy.

“Can I go ride my horse now?” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

Call us crazy, but something tells us that the woman who not only proved Simon Cowell wrong, but also survived the show’s “bottom 3″ three times before finally getting the axe isn’t going to let one little person get between her and her horse. But maybe that’s just us.

It must have been conceived as some sort of cruel joke.

For seven seasons now, the judges of “American Idol” have repeatedly told contestants to steer clear of singing songs by Mariah Carey, ostensibly because the singing competition’s up-and-coming star wannabes could never hope to measure up to one of the great voices of pop music.

So, let’s just say it was a little strange to find Carey as the guest judge on Tuesday night’s show. Because you know what that means: the contestants were allowed to perform an old Mariah song, a new Mariah song, or any other Mariah song of their choosing.

As judge Simon Cowell predicted at the beginning of the show, the night indeed turned out to be lackluster one for the girls because of the unavoidable comparisons between them and the great Carey herself. That didn’t stop Cowell from delivering his usual barbs, however.

“It was a bit like ordering a hamburger and only getting the bun,” Cowell told Brooke White after her performance of “Hero.” “In other words the vital ingredient, the bit in the middle, was missing.”

Ouch.

The other girls — Syesha Mercado, Kristy Lee Cook, and Carly Smithson — emerged without being compared to fast food, but they didn’t get any overwhelming love from the judges.

The remaining three boys, however, put the judges in a festive mood. A leather pants-clad David Archuleta’s performance of “When You Believe” was declared the evening’s benchmark by Cowell, and David Cook’s rock take on “Always Be My Baby” received a standing ovation from judge Randy Jackson.

Later, Jackson likened Jason Castro’s take on “I Don’t Wanna Cry” to “a weird beach luau,” but Paula Abdul said it was a luau that she would “love to be at.” Cowell agreed with Abdul, saying that “the guys completely won the night.”

Boy, was he surprised.

“American Idol” delivered its first major shock of the season on Thursday with the ousting of Aussie hunk Michael Johns. The studio audience gasped when host Ryan Seacrest said Johns was being sent packing, and even Simon Cowell said he would miss Johns, who he called “a very very nice guy.” The remaining contestants, who should have been celebrating their own guarantee of another week on the show, appeared positively grief-stricken.

Carly Smithson, the Irish singer whose rendition of Queen’s “The Show Must Go On” bombed on Tuesday night, broke down in tears. Seems she thought it would be her to get the axe this week, not Johns, particularly after raising her hand when the camera focused on her, Johns and Syesha Mercado — the show’s bottom three vote-getters — and Seacrest said one of them would be going home.

But no one was as taken aback as Johns himself, who after struggling to regain his composure told Seacrest he was “definitely surprised” and had enjoyed singing Aerosmith’s “Dream On.” He had never even landed in the bottom three before. Mercado and Smithson both had.

Perhaps the biggest blow, though, was not the elimination itself, but the way it was done. After telling Johns that he received the lowest number of votes, Seacrest made the point that during the same week last year — the week of the show’s charity event, “Idol Gives Back” — the show opted not to send any of the contestants home. Then, he delivered the news that regardless of that fact, Johns would indeed be leaving the show and would have to summon the will to perform one last time.

Seacrest must be drinking the Cowell Kool-Aid lately, because that stunt was just plain mean.

At the same time, though, the brutal offing of the boy from Down Under served as a reminder to fans of just how ugly and ruthless the competition gets in its final weeks.

But isn’t that what we watch it for?

Richie Sambora is back, and apparently sober.

Just two weeks after an arrest for drunk driving,the lead guitarist for Jersey rock band Bon Jovi was back to his old self Wednesday night during a concert in downtown Los Angeles.

About mid-way through the packed show, lead singer Jon Bon Jovi singled Sambora out to the crowd, calling him his dear friend as fans cheered wildly. Bon Jovi then left the stage while Sambora, sporting black leather pants and a black top hat, played guitar and sang lead vocals on one of the band’s best-known ballads, “I’ll Be There For You.”

While it wasn’t Sambora’s first show since his arrest, it was a sort of homecoming for the Jersey boy who has made the area his home. The guitarist, and ex-husband of Heather Locklear, was arrested in Laguna Beach on March 26, apparently with his 10-year-old daughter in the car.

All that seemed far away on Wednesday night, though, as the band plowed through three decades of hit songs to a crowd of thousands.

And Richie never missed a beat.

Oh no he didn’t.  Unfortunately, oh yes he did.

Rocker David Cook bombed on “American Idol” Tuesday night with an unfamiliar song and cocky performance that made it seem like he believed he had already wrapped up the competition.

Cook chose “Innocent,” a song by Canadian alternative rock band Our Lady Peace, to sing on a night when contestants were told to choose music that inspires them. The night’s theme was intended as a preview for “Idol Gives Back,” the show’s charity special that airs on Wednesday.

Cook, wearing a white military-style jacket, strutted around without his signature guitar, finally sauntering through the audience while he sang. But judges Randy Jackson and Simon Cowell were decidedly uninspired, with Cowell calling it “a teensy weensy bit pompous.” Only Paula Abdul liked it.

To make a bad performance even worse — cringe-worthy, in fact – Cook ended it by raising a palm scrawled with the words “give back” up to the cameras. The judges praised him for that move, but Cook already appeared completely deflated after their criticisms of the performance.

It was clearly a rude awakening for Cook, who has become a favorite with the show’s fans in the last few weeks.

Another weak performance was Irish diva Carly Smithson’s take on Queen’s “The Show Must Go On.”

Smithson, who had a stellar run on the show at the beginning of the season, is clearly struggling. Cowell, who called her performance “angry,” said she may even be vulnerable to elimination this week. If that does happen, Smithson would be going home before Kristy Lee Cook, the leggy blonde country singer who has narrowly escaped the hatchet for several weeks running.

Poor little Ramiele Malubay.

On Wednesday night’s “American Idol,” the diminutive diva finally got the chance to shed tears for herself after being summarily booted from the singing competition.

During the course of her run on “Idol,” 20-year-old Malubay was known as much for her uncontrollable weeping over the dismissal of rival contestants as for her powerful voice. Three weeks ago, the emotional Floridian even dedicated her performance of the Beatles’ “In My Life” to her friends who had already left the show.

On Wednesday, Malubay’s tears flowed again — but this time after host Ryan Seacrest delivered the news that her stint on “Idol” had come to a close. Even before news of her departure, Malubay seemed to be readying herself for the chopping block, barely cracking a smile during the hour-long show.

In the end, Malubay fought back her sobs and rallied for the final humiliation “Idol” demands of all its rejected contestants — one last performance of the song that lead to her ejection, Dolly Parton’s “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind.”

The night was also emotional for Malubay’s fans.

On the “Idol” forums, one wrote: “I just balled my eyes out”

Who knew that it would take Dolly Parton and an ascot scarf, or cravat, to finally break an Australian rocker out of his shell?

On Tuesday night’s episode of “American Idol,” hunky Michael Johns at long last delivered the star-quality performance many viewers had been expecting of him for weeks — and the boy from Down Under topped it off by wearing an ascot instead of a tie.

With country music icon Parton as the show’s guest mentor, Johns (at 29, the show’s oldest contestant) sang “It’s All Wrong But It’s All Right” — a choice that was met with rave reviews from the judges.

Randy Jackson called it a “blazing hot performance” and Simon Cowell said it was the best he had ever heard Johns sing.

Even Parton herself was impressed, saying she’d like to write songs for Johns one day.

“I’m hoping he does become a star,” she said in an interview recorded after Johns sang the song to her during a rehearsal.

Tuesday night marked the second straight week Johns received gushing praise from the judges. Previous performances by the Aussie, who has been compared to Michael Hutchence and Jim Morrison during the two Beatles weeks, left the judges unimpressed.

So is Johns, like David Cook, moving up in the “Idol” food chain?

Fans on the “Idol” message boards think so. Or maybe they just liked the scarf. As one fan wrote: “The ascot was like the icing on the cake tonight.”

So who really picked the song?

On Wednesday night’s episode of “American Idol”, 17-year-old David Archuleta insisted that he had chosen to sing John Farnham’s “You’re the Voice” on Tuesday night’s show himself.

Twice on the hour-long show, Archuleta questioned why judge Simon Cowell, on Tuesday’s episode, suggested the song must have been picked by someone else.

Cowell’s remark, to followers of “Idol” gossip, appeared to be a reference to Archuleta’s dad, Jeff, and recent reports that he’s more than a little tough on his talented son.

“It’s actually one of my favorite songs, so I’m kind of confused why they don’t believe I chose the song myself,” Archuleta said in a clip of him backstage after his performance on Tuesday.

Later during the live broadcast, an uncomfortable Archuleta again said he had made the song choice himself when he was asked about it by both a fan and host Ryan Seacrest.

So who really picked the song? We may never know. But Archuleta (and his dad) sailed through to the show’s next round on Wednesday, meaning we can all look forward to more speculation about his song choice next week.

Meanwhile, in the show’s main event, Chikezie was sent packing on Wednesday. No surprise there, after all three judges said his performance of “If Only For One Night” was dated and unoriginal.

Before he received the bad news, Chikezie was asked by a viewer during the question-and-answer segment if he was single. He replied: “I am currently very, very single.”

Indeed.

Never is “American Idol” better than when seemingly second-rate contestants emerge from the shadows to blow the annointed frontrunners out of the water.

Rocker David Cook has managed to pull that off a few times this season already, most memorably with his rock take on Lionel Richie’s “Hello” before he even made it into the Top 12. Still, the 25-year-old hasn’t garnered anywhere near the attention seen by babyfaced teen David Archuleta or Irish diva Carly Smithson.

But on Tuesday night, Cook may have shed the “dark horse” mantle once and for all. His gutsy transformation of “Billie Jean” into a rock ballad prompted judge Randy Jackson to call him “the most original, the most bold contestant we’ve ever had… dude, you might be the one to win the whole lot.”

Archuleta, on the other hand, got mixed reviews for his performance of “You’re the Voice,” with Simon Cowell telling him it reminded him of a theme park performance.

Still, on the “Idol” forums, Cook lags Archuleta in the number of posts viewers have written about him. After Tuesday’s show, hoever, at least one die-hard “Archie” came out to give Cook a hand:

“He’s showing that my second favorite (him) isn’t too far behind my first (David Archuleta, obviously)”

Keep going, David (Cook). One more week and you just might take over that other David once and for all.

Terrible. Indulgent. Predictable. Atrocious.

“American Idol” judge Simon Cowell pulled no punches on Tuesday night’s episode, berating most of the singing competition’s remaining 11 contestants for their poor song choices, lack of conviction, and predictable performances.

“This is a very weird show tonight,” Cowell quipped, saying it might have been a bad idea to ask the contestants to perform Beatles songs two weeks in a row. “This is all getting a bit strange.”

Cowell, who is known for being tough on the aspiring superstars coveting the title of “American Idol,” spared almost no one from his brutal barbs.

Carly Smithson, the Irish diva who Cowell compared to pop sensation and “Idol” winner Kelly Clarkson last week, was “indulgent” and not very smart for singing “Blackbird,” he said.

Meanwhile, perennial Cowell favorite Brooke White performed “Here Comes the Sun” but he deemed that ”terrible” and ”wet,” even taking aim at White’s “horrible dancing.”

Cowell then lambasted Chikezie for playing the harmonica during his performance of “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” calling it “literally atrocious” and “gimmicky.”

It didn’t end there. Amanda Overmyer’s “Back in the U.S.S.R.” and Michael Johns’ “A Day in the Life” were both “a mess,” while Ramiele Malubay’s “Should Have Known Better” was “amateurish,” Cowell said.

He reserved his harshest words, however, for Kristy Lee Cook, the blonde tomboy who grew up in a log cabin and who has narrowly escaped elimination for two weeks running.

“It’s like musical wallpaper. You notice it, but you can’t remember it,” Cowell said.

For much of the night, Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul were on the same page as Cowell, though they defended both Smithson and rocker David Cook, whose performance of “Day Tripper” Cowell said was not as good as Cook thought it was.

The few kudos Cowell doled out went to David Archuleta and Syesha Mercado. Archuleta, a fan favorite, rebounded from forgetting the lyrics during last week’s performance of “We Can Work It Out.” Cowell on Tuesday called 17-year-old Archuleta’s rendition of “The Long and Winding Road” “a master class.”

Mercado, meanwhile, impressed the judges with her version of “Yesterday” — a big turnaround for the Floridian who narrowly escaped being voted off last week.

“It wasn’t incredible, but you chose the best song,” Cowell said.

Coming from him, that means a lot.