"It is people's opinions," he believes. "People have a right to have their opinion. You can't let it get to you. You've got to let it roll off your back, and that's what I did."

As for the comments that Jennifer made last week when questioned about John telling her, "It should have been me," he explains, "One of the things I did every week before Wednesday's show was tell myself, 'This is my week. I am going home.' It prepared me for the worst, so if I didn't get voted off, I was shocked. That was part of my look that Wednesday. When Jennifer got voted off, I felt she deserved to still be there, so I felt guilty that I was still there. I guess America felt different."

John will be joining the rest of the "Idols" when they head out on tour this June, but before that he returns to school, and his junior prom, but probably not his normal life.

"I will get a lot of attention, I assume, especially from females, but I am prepared to handle that," he says with a smile. [ETonline] I found John to be nearly unlistenable most of the time (his best was "King of the Road") - his voice is pleasant enough, but he was often off-key and has very little power, projection or sustain, and he rarely looked convincing or confortable with his material. BUT, he's a flipping 16 year-old kid and as Simon said, he handled himself with remarkable poise and stoicism, taking a vast amount of abuse from the judges and even the guest judges: Quentin Tarantino stated flatly that he wasn't a fan, the others damned with faint praise.

It is also ironic as hell that he'll miss big band week, but seriously, the kid had to go.

Tonight there will be a special Idol focusing on the five remaining finalists, and after that the list of dumpy, frumpy, insecure, sad sack women in America will be reduced by two on The Swan, which posits the notion that ANYONE can look good with a few-hundred-thousand dollars worth of cosmetic surgery, dental work, physical and psychological training and the luxury of doing nothing but working on oneself for three months. No kidding.

But while the show is practically eugenic in its mechanical pursuit of perfection, at least there are no losers: the women get to keep their new selves regardless, and the nation is made more attractive with each and every episode. And a few of the transformations have been truly stunning. Yeay.