popular thinking

PAGING RYAN SEACREST

When your cell phone rings on a Saturday afternoon and the first words you hear are, "Hello, this is Ryan Seacrest," you're never quite fully prepared for whatever comes next. Especially if you just left the house and are walking down the sidewalk without pen, paper or recording device. So you tell him to call you back. You'd call him, but, darn it all, his number comes up as RESTRICTED on your cell. Figures. But he does call you back. And then you talk for a while. And then your stories are more interesting as a result.

On Monday, I broke down Ryan Seacrest's increasingly busy schedule.

The highlights:
4:10 a.m. Pacific (7:10 a.m. Eastern) - Seacrest: Up.
5 a.m. - On the air, Monday-Friday, broadcasting on KIIS-FM in Los Angeles.
10 a.m. - Radio show ends. “I will jump into my car and be making that commute (to E!) that takes 40 minutes or so, but I’ll be able to work from the car.”
Lunch? “Lunch is delivered. I eat standing up.”
1 p.m. - Seacrest tapes E! News (airs 7 p.m. Eastern/Pacific), except Tuesday and Wednesday, when he’s at “Idol” rehearsal.
5 p.m. (8 a.m. Eastern) Tuesday - American Idol airs live.
6 p.m. (9 a.m. Eastern) Wednesday - “Idol” results live.
After “Idol” wraps, Seacrest is back in the car with a DVD of the show and running down the next morning’s radio setlist.
Thursday or Friday, he’ll record “AT40” (American Top 40), which airs locally 8 a.m. to noon Sundays on WXKS-FM (Kiss 108).
8:30 p.m. - Seacrest: Out.

Seacrest told me he has become very comfortable with having no downtime. "I'm mastering multi-tasking," he said. "I certainly have goals to do a lot of different things simultaneously for no other reason than I have a fear of failure."

Then today, I broke down Idol's Top 12 and some (conspiracy) theories. Among them:

What about Seacrest no longer saying, ‘‘Seacrest: Out” to close the show? Should we read something into that?
His reply: ‘‘I didn’t realize I wasn’t saying that anymore.”

The best singers don’t win.
Cowell has acknowledged in prior interviews that ‘‘Idol” doesn’t hold open auditions so much as carefully constructed casting sessions. Vote for the Worst, an online group promoting lesser-qualified contestants since season three, attempts to mock that process. This week, Vote for the Worst (votefortheworst.com) supports Kevin Covais.
Andy Dehnart, realityblurred.com and MSNBC.com contributor, said, ‘‘The biggest scandal is the lack of transparency about the exact vote totals. I don’t think producers manipulate votes, but I wish they’d just reveal the exact numbers.”

Kellie Pickler isn’t a naive country bumpkin.
Pickler competed in the 2004 Miss North Carolina pageant. Last summer, right before her ‘‘Idol” audition, she was the runner-up in a Charlotte TV station’s singing contest, ‘‘Gimme the Mike!”

‘‘Idol” doesn’t mind a scandal or two, but not from its winner.
Evidence: Twins Terrell and Derrell Brittenum, who left the show, came back, were kicked off for identity-theft charges and then invited back to last week’s live studio audience. Bo Bice lost last season’s finale to Carrie Underwood by 134 votes, according to a past interview. Bice had a criminal record. Underwood is squeaky clean.

Your next ‘‘Idol” finale will feature someone from North Carolina or Birmingham, Ala.
North Carolina has produced Clay Aiken, Fantasia Barrino, and three finalists this season: Pickler, Bucky Covington and Chris Daughtry. Birmingham has given ‘‘Idol” Bice, Ruben Studdard and Taylor Hicks.