Tonight's "American Idol" live-blog is dedicated to Allison Iraheta, my personal Idol. In honor of the recent oustee, I expect all of you to refuse to give me any credit I might deserve in this live-blog. Your comments should be comprised of backhanded compliments, faint praise and "that ones" while you over-praise other bloggers who are lazy and aren't deserving of their unstoppable success. Deal?

Check out Jim Cantiello's video recap of the show below!

We now resume with our regularly scheduled live-blog.

And then there were two...with a third wheel.

Yes, in a season that's felt as endless as "The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons", the finale is approaching faster than Kara can say "Here's the thing..."

The three remaining contestants had their hometown visits last week, which I imagine was a great morale booster. Although we all know one contestant doesn't need any more help in the ego department. (I'm refraining from typing His name tonight unless I absolutely positively have to. Still bitter about His inexplicable survival despite squawking one of the worst, insultingly dismissive performances in "Idol" history last week. But I'm glad He thought it was SO FUNNY!)

Don't worry, His fans. I'm taking a chill pill. This isn't the Bash The Guy Who Delivered A Subpar Performance For His Hometown Fans Live-blog. This is the "American Idol" Live-blog. And if He performs well tonight, I'll be a big boy and give him props. He will, after all, probably win this thing next week. (His fanbase is more rabid than Old Yeller. Pun intended.)

So let's get right to it! The live-blogging begins...now.

7:51 pm - Miss last week's Rockfest? Check out the latest "Idol in 60 Seconds" here.

7:58 pm - Almost there... Why do I get so nervous before every "Idol" episode? I need a life.

7:59 pm - Sigh. Paula just tweeted about Danny Gokey's song choices tonight. She didn't tweet any of the other contestants' song choices. FAVORITISM ALERT!

8:00 pm - 15 seconds in and Seacrest already spouts a grammar error. "These are your bottom 3!" Shouldn't it be "This is your bottom 3?"

8:01 pm - Groan. Seacrest just called the top three "The Three Amigos." Adam is definitely Steve Martin, the genius. Kris the teacup is definitely Martin Short. And Voldemort is DEFINITELY Chevy Chase.

8:03 pm - Danny Gokey is up first - in the death spot! Paula picked Terence Trent Darby's "Dance Little Sister." I have newfound respect for Paula. Terence Trent D'Arby is a guy who ruined his career by his massive ego. (Dude actually said his debut album was better than "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Uh-huh.)

8:04 pm - Oof. This is rough. He is shouting, and he keeps going sharp.

8:05 pm - Stanley from "The Office" is now on stage laying out a saxophone solo. Remember when pop music featured saxophone solos? Ah, the good old days.

8:06 pm - This song sucks. I feel bad that Paula saddled Gokey with this clunker.
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MTV News "American Idol" expert Jim Cantiello reports:

If you, like me, have watched every frame of this season's "American Idol," your eyeballs have endured 50-plus hours of highs, lows and hell-to-the-no's. After Tuesday night's boxing-metaphor-filled showdown (check out our live blog from last night) the big night is finally here, "Idol" fans! That's right. Break out the champagne, load up the confetti cannons and — if you're Randy Jackson — dust off your military jacket, because it's "Idol" finale time, baby!

Last night, even David Cook admitted that David Archuleta was the better singer. "You know, everybody's got an opinion, and tonight was Archuleta's night," Cook reportedly told Us Weekly. "I have to concede it: The kid came out all three songs and nailed it. But I walk away from this with my head held high." He seems prepared — even ready — to take second place. But according to various online polls today, he was still holding strong.

Tonight, all the weeks of speculation will come to an end, and the decision will be made. Will Archadorable's ballads win the hearts of America, or will it be Cook's rock-out-ability? Will Seacrest make the proceedings seem more important than November's election? And who will the mysterious "special guest" be? We don't know. But we do know that tonight's two-hour results show is sure to be a star-studded WTF-filled epic ender.

Normally you read our "Idol" ramblings the morning after, but this week you're getting it up-to-the-minute! Something this potentially explosive deserves a live blog, dangit, and a live blog is what you shall get!

(Plus, see what David Cook and David Archuleta had to say backstage after the show!) Read more...

Today, on Malaria Awareness Day, MTV News producer Garth Bardsley thinks back on his recent visit to Houston, and the boatload of important info he picked up along the way:

Apparently I’m an idiot. Wasn’t malaria essentially eradicated from the planet way back in the 50’s? Or even if it didn’t completely disappear, wasn’t it highly contained, and the few people who caught it were just given a few pills and sent on their way?

Uh, well, nope. While malaria has been contained in the US since the 1950’s and Panama even earlier, in sub-Saharan Africa a child dies from the disease every 30 seconds -- that’s over 1 million deaths a year -- from a disease that’s both treatable and preventable! Ridiculous. And there’s even evidence that links global warming to an increase in the endemic zones.

In anticipation of Malaria Awareness Day, I went to Houston last week -- along with Chamillionaire -- to visit with a bunch of kids at YES Prep, a fantastically amazing charter school dedicated to educating economically disadvantaged youth. While there’s no doubt some of these kids could choose to spend their time bellyaching about what life has handed them, the students at this school -- which has a 100% acceptance rate to four-year colleges -- instead dedicate themselves to serving others.

Through raffle-ticket sales at two different dances in the last few months, the YES Prep students have raised $1,250 to buy mosquito-protecting bed nets to send to Africa. That dough will fun 125 nets, preventing 250 people from ever getting malaria. The organization behind the dances, Malaria No More (recently featured on "Idol Gives Back"), has set a completely attainable(!) goal of getting a bed net to everyone who needs one by the year 2010. They estimate needing 250 million nets. So far, they have enough money to fund 131 million -- over half of the way there.

Obviously, the goal of events like Malaria Awareness Day is to raise awareness, so morons like me know what’s going on. Consider me schooled.

I just spent the last half-hour or so talking to Fergie because someone had to do it. And the woman's life without the Peas (as you know) has been way busy.

She's releasing a deluxe version of The Dutchess on May 27th, and she talked to us about the five new tracks that will be on the album. I can't spill my guts about everything I heard, but I can tease you a little bit...

Tracks include a cover of Heart's "Barracuda" (if you saw Idol Gives Back, you know how excited Fergie is about this one). There's also a slower track called "Pick It Up," a Soulja Boy remix of "Clumsy," and, finally, "Labels or Love," which is going to be the Sex and the City movie theme song. Fergie, a huge fan of that show, told me that she relates to a mix of Samantha, Carrie, and Miranda…leaving out headband-sporting Charlotte. Guess that makes sense.

So now that she's become a flamin' hitmaker, what does Fergie do in her downtime? She watches reruns of "I Love New York," "Rock of Love," and "Flavor of Love" -- and she said she wasn’t just saying that because she was on MTV turf. (What's with the fascination with Brett Michaels...??)

We also talked about what's on her iPod, future movie plans, being a child star, and -- on another level -- the throes of addiction. For more on all that, keep checking back with MTVNews.com...

As you probably already know, last night’s “Idol Gives Back” telethon -- which, by the time the credits started rolling, had raised nearly $22 million -- was pre-taped Sunday night, and later edited for air. And despite running close to (cough) three hours, there just wasn’t enough time to squeeze everything that happened into the final broadcast. This meant that a lot of moments -- including, absurdly, charitable video messages from all three leading presidential candidates -- never reached the kids at home.

So for the record, Obama, whose message scored the loudest applause from the studio audience, pleaded with Americans to “help make this place a more just, more equal, and more hopeful place to live.” And Clinton asked that viewers “help our neighbors, whether next door or in another state or country.”

But those were just the more high-minded moments. From the cheesy to the sanctimonious, what else did you miss? For the diehard "Idol"-heads out there, a rundown of what ended up on the cutting room floor after the jump. Read more...

VIVA CASTRO!!

That’s pretty much all I have to say about Brother Jason’s cover of Bruddah Iz’s version of Sister Judy’s classic “Over the Rainbow.” (Check out Chris Harris’s article on the story behind the song.) Just know that as long as JC keeps delivering the goods like he did last night he is gonna be hard to beat, and the ranks of pro-Castro demonstrators will continue to swell.

Hopefully they won’t have Jason wade too heavily into the cheese tonight, as we all know “Idol Gives Back” has a tendency to approach the line between tastefully touching and treacly…and then cross it. JC doesn’t seem to have much patience for the maudlin, unlike certain other "Idol’"hopefuls.

And one other JC defense: a couple weeks back, Simon suggested that the dreadlocked one didn’t seem to really "care" about the competition. I don’t get that. What I get is that he wants to win, but knows that at the end of the day only one person will. He’s gonna do what he feels, be true to himself, and let the chips fall.

El "Nuevo Comandante" -- Jason Castro. If he wins this thing, for bringing such honor to the Castro name, his namesakes Fidel and Raul should invite him to visit Havana -- one of those "cultural exchange" deals to bypass the long arm of the travel embargo-ing feds. GO, JC!

Democratic candidate Barack Obama will make an appearance on tonight’s “Idol Gives Back” telecast, and both Hilary Clinton and Republican John McCain are expected to join him.

They're not going to be covering the Beatles or whatever -- rather, according to CNN, they’ll be appearing in pre-taped pieces set to air throughout “Idol”'s second-annual charity show.

And while McCain has bizarrely become linked with another uber-popular TV show, "The Hills," Obama is now claiming that "Idol" is the winner in his household, saying that his daughters Sasha and Malia are both "big 'American Idol' fans."

Last year "Idol Gives Back" raised more than $76 million for charities in Africa and here in the U.S.

And if you missed last night's "Idol, check out Jim Cantiello's recap.

Hi. Tomorrow, "American Idol" dives into its conscious-redeeming special, "Idol Gives Back," which makes up for the fact that those judges can be so, so mean every year (hey, we know the feeling, yo). Personally, we love the philanthropic gesture, and love that folks like Oprah are making the idea of giving back, well, popular.

But even if that wasn't the theme of Wednesday's night "Idol," we'd be pretty curious about the show, especially given the list of folks scheduled to make an appearance, be involved or otherwise attach themselves to the show somehow, someway. Like presidential hopefuls Sen. John McCain, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama. We wish they would have a sing-off! OR EVEN BETTER, you know how they say that more people vote on "Idol" than in the presidential elections? Well, now we can find out FOR SURE. Seriously. Just put them up there, and let's settle this once and for all.

Others scheduled to appear on the show, after the jump.

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· The Game will have a chance to add another tattoo to his face. He began serving a two-month jail sentence on Sunday.

· We kind of stopped counting around the time all those news hounds got rope-a-doped by the Lez Zeppelin / Bonnaroo announcement, but the rumors of a Led Zeppelin reunion appear to have been deep-sixed for good due to singer Robert Plant's overwhelming desire to turn down $200 million in favor of playing bluegrass versions of “Black Dog.”

· How do 900 pissed off Lil’ Boosie fans protest a no show in Omaha? By wildin' out on a ticket booth.

· Can it really be that Radiohead and Jack Johnson are the only headliners available for every major U.S. festival this summer?

· Russell Simmons has officially endorsed Barack obama's presidential bid, feeling that at this “transcendent and historic moment in American politics...I am obligated not to remain on the sidelines.”

· Bono, Fergie, John Legend and Eli and Peyton Manning have been added to the list of performers and presenters for the second annual "Idol Gives Back" charity show on April 9. They join a previously announced roster that includes: Brad Pitt, Miley Cyrus, Reese Witherspoon, Mariah Carey, Snoop Dogg, Daughtry and Carrie Underwood, but, sadly, no Gary Busey.