I still like Ruben, I think its fine if he wins, but I really think Clay is a better pure singer.
Phew…I spent two whole hours voting for Ruben. Couldn’t get the first hour because my mom had the phone so she could vote for Clay. The Ruben line was busy as hell, but I managed to get quite a few votes in. Hope it’s enough because I know it’ll be close!
Anyway:
Ruben 1: Flawless as usual, but I agreed with Simon that it wasn’t quite his best.
Clay 1: Hmmm…this song sounded like something for a female performer. Get thee to Broadway, boy! That said, well done, but it did nothing for me. I’m with Simon.
Ruben 2: A nice, pleasant surprise. I honestly thought it would have been awful, but it wasn’t. An excellent job!
Clay 2: The light made him look a little demonic. He was kind of weak on the high notes, but an overall excellent performance. Again, I was with Simon.
Ruben 3: A very strong, solid and amazing performance! If there were any flaws, I didn’t notice them and I didn’t care. Neeener! Wonderful!
Clay 3: I thought he would have blown the building apart! He didn’t. The arrangement and the chorus killed what could have been a divine performance. If you’ve ever heard the original song, you’d understand why I would say that. I’m not saying that he should have been an imitation of Art Garfunkel, but he would have been a hundred times better without the overdone backup and music dilluting arrangement.
Who I want to win? That should be obvious. Who will win? Clay probably, but it’s VERY hard to say because it’s clear that this is a very close competition.
Another thought;
Here is a rare case where the sequel was a hell of a lot better than the original. You can’t deny the final 12 AI2 people were a lot more talented and a lot more interesting than the AI1 final ten.
And whoever loses tonight is still fifty times the singer that Sideshow Justin is.
Clay. Only Clay.
I was able to vote for Ruben three times and then apparently my “call could not be completed as dialed…” Hmmmm…
I loved Ruben’s rendition of Imagine and Clay’s rendition of Bridge Over Troubled Waters. I really don’t know who I want to win. I’ve been a Ruben gal all this time, but, as soon as I heard what Clay’s final song was, I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy choice for me.
BTW, I heard Frenchie on Howard Stern this morning. I think they through her off because, with her in the competition there would be no competition. She sings 100 times better than Clay or Ruben!
I tried a bunch during the last thirty minutes and didn’t stop until I got through twenty-five votes for Ruben. I didn’t even try to vote on any of the other episodes, but I figured Ruben really needs me now.
For what it’s worth, the hosts of a syndicated radio show originating from Birmingham, Alabama were talking about AI this morning. The callers who phoned in from Alabama today seemed to feel that Ruben could have won last night, but that he didn’t seem to exert himself. On the flip side, many felt that Clay just sang his socks off, and deserved to win the competition. (One guy likened it to the seventh game of the World Series. Sure, you might have won 140 games to reach that point, but if you don’t play your best in the last game of the season, you’re the runner-up.)
The radio show also took calls from different parts of the country (South Dakota, Michigan, Iowa, and one other state I can’t remember). Every single person who phoned from those areas said they voted for Ruben.
In short, I have no idea who’s gonna win.
The only thing I know is that both Paula and Randy were drunk this time. Seriously, I don’t think any minds were changed among those who’ve been watching all along.
Wow… 1330 votes? It WAS a statistical tie. closer than I ever even thought. Do I win for calling that?
Not until we’re sure they’re not making that “From Ruben to Clay” movie! 
Well, my guess is that all available lines were probably full throughout the entire voting period(three hours right?). So it would be a matter of who has the quicker callers or telecommunications artifacts more than everything else.
Well, the voters have voted. . . and they picked Ruben. Fine. And Clay will be fine, too. This show cannot ignore the closeness of the voting; they’ll have to promote Clay almost as much as they do Ruben. And everyone will win, except Clay won’t have the title.
And didn’t Kelly Clarkson suck?
I watched the whole two hours and about wanted to slash my wrists about 90 minutes into the thing. Waaaayyyyy too long, FOX. Next time, don’t be so piggy.
205! 205!
As a new AI watcher, I hav e to ask: why the fuck did they pick such uniformly rancidly cheesy music? I mean, I caught Clay singing “Mack the Knife” the first time I ever watched and thought, “Sweet! Cool song!”
Everything else has been horrible.
Apparently they’re BOTH already recording albums.
It’s great TV, no doubt about it.
I’m just glad Ruben won!
YAY!
OMG Kelly Clarkson DID totally suck! Both times she was out there, she just sucked more than a 2 dollar whore. Gag!
And I hate to bring this up, but OMG that kiss between Paula and Simon during the skit will NOT do much to alleviate the rumors that they’ve been boinking since season one. That was one big open mouthed kiss, baby!
Maybe you can win a job as a math guy on the show. 1330 votes is a half of a percent of 24 million votes. They’re either manipulating those numbers heavily, or just can’t divide.
Sunza biches… obviously (hopefully) I meant that 1330 votes is NOT half a percent of 24 million. If the division is what Seacrest mentioned, they’d be over 100,000 votes apart.
That close up of Paula was freaky. Has she had a lot of plastic surgery? Watching that scene was like a trainwreck, didn’t want to watch but couldn’t. quite. look. away. MY EYES!!
And yeah, Kelly Clarkson did suck. And I know that’s her single and everything, but doesn’t she have any other songs? Both times she’s performed, she performed the same damn song. I was kinda looking forward to hearing a different one.
That’s my one huge beef with AI: they keep repeating the same songs, over and over and OVER!
I didn’t care either way who won, I liked them both. If I had my choice, Trencye would’ve won. 
She was definately the most entertaining to watch out of all of them. Last night Ruben kept passing the mike from hand to hand like it was a goddamn hot potatoe. I kept screaming at the TV “stop DOING that!” The sad part was, it was the livliest part of his performance. He’s just kinda boring. And Clay really is better suited for broadway, it’s going to be hard for him to put out a song that isn’t way high on the cheese factor, just from the sound of his voice.
And “kids don’t grow up wanting to be critics”? The hell? And the Matrix comment the other night? Paula’s been hittin’ the pipe a little too hard before shows.