Why Tuesday means everything

C'mon--you know you want it.

Admit it. You're already looking forward to getting dressed in your favorite summer concert gear, picking up a few of your most fun loving, up-for-anything friends, and doing something you've never, ever done before--buying tickets for an American Idols Live! show, just to see how Bucky Covington rocks it live on stage without cameras and judges and overeager stylists to hold him back. Oh yes.

Well, if you want that--and I think you do--then Tuesday means everything. Only the Top Ten finalists get to tour.

A lot of people watch the show regularly without ever picking up the phone to vote. This week, you (and anyone you know, but we'll get to that later) can't afford to be among them. And yes, we've heard all the objections: the voting might not be on the up and up, the producers pick the ones they want anyway, the tech-savvy kids skew the results, yadda yadda yadda. We don't care. There are very few things in the contest that we viewer-types have any control over. Themes, song choice, judges' comments, performance order--we can do nothing but watch helplessly. But we might be able to do something about the vote totals, and might is worth a two-hour effort tomorrow.

Here are a few standard voting tips culled from the boards--please feel free to add your suggestions in the comments section below...

• Use your cell and your landline phones, and make sure everything is charged up and ready by Tuesday afternoon.
• Are you recruiting friends to call and vote? Prepaid cell phones make a great gift! (Hey, we're not averse to gifts-with-conditions and/or calling in favors. Chances are, your buddies will feel amused, rather than nagged, if a freebie is in the offing.) Throw in an extra minutes-card and suggest that they give the phone to their favorite charity/kid/elderly neighbor after Idol is over.
• Cingular Wireless text messaged votes (which are, alas, not free) are actually more likely to be recorded than call-in votes, according to Broadcasting and Cable magazine in 2004:

...Text messaging is digital (unlike phone lines, which are analog) and simply doesn't have the same traffic jams. A text message is also time-coded, meaning that all of the votes messaged during the two-hour period can be lined up like jets on a runway and eventually recorded. "Manual phones have a very limited capacity because the voice takes up so much of the phone line," says Kurt Knutsson, a high-tech expert on TV's Cyberguy, syndicated in 114 markets. "Text takes up so little: It's like a whisper versus a presidential inauguration." (Please note--only Cingular Wireless text votes count!)

• Not willing or able to invest the money for texting or extra phones? No worries. Politely asking a good friend (or two, or more) to spend even part of their Tuesday night voting for Bucky is free. Putting on a pot of coffee--or offering whatever your favorite beverage might be (ahem!)--and inviting them over for a viewing-and-voting party costs nearly nothing.
• If you're overseas, recruit a friend in the US to vote in your honor, even if you're not sure whether he or she follows Idol or not. (This blog gets an impressive number of hits from Japan, the UK, Europe and South America--Bucky might want to consider a world tour after all this is over.)
• Try to begin voting as soon as Ryan Seacrest starts the recap, and don't stop trying until the two hours are up or the lines are shut down, whichever comes last.

Sure, you're going to lose a little sleep. Treat yourself to a larger size of heavily sugared caffeine at Starbucks on Wednesday morning, and spend a slightly groggy day knowing you did all you can to make Bucky's dream of making the tour--and your dream of going to a terrifically fun show this summer--come true.

See you at the arena...