Did ya’ll watch Celebrity Duets last night? Welcome to the Fall television season folks, where Wayne Brady is the new Tom Bergeron, Little Richard is the new Drunk Paula, and Fox introduces me to Michelle Williams. When they announced her name, I expected to see a blonde flanked by a baby and Heath Ledger, with maybe the theme from Dawson’s Creek playing in the background. I had always heard Destiny’s Child had three members, but didn’t really believe it until last night.

Seriously though, I think Queer Eye’s Jai Rodriguez was just added in as the ringer. Seriously, with the exception of Alfonso “If I make it to the finals, I’ll do the Carlton dance!” Ribiero, Hal Sparks (if he can liven up his flatness) and Lea Thompson (”That’s LIFE!!!”) - there’s not much else going on and I will root for anyone who can make a duet with Gladys Knight hot.

I’m sure my house will be set ablaze should I dare say anything negative about local girl gold-medal gymnast and American sweetheart Carly Patterson, but there’s a reason she won the Olympics and not American Idol. And, the tan lines! Oh, the humanity! I would like to personally thank Carly though, for inspiring me to re-evaluate my vacation clothing choices to ensure I don’t wear a strapless dress with unintentional straps next week.

Obviously trying to Keibler things up a bit, Celebrity Duets found its own eye-candy (or at least, that’s what Marie said) in WWE wrestler Chris Jericho who sadly, reminded me of a former coworker I had, wearing a leather jacket and performing at the company talent show. {shudder} The performance sort of reminded me of John Travolta’s solo attempt with “Let Her In” back in the 70s. Anyone out there know what I’m talking about?

When Chris finished his forced duet with Lee Ann Womack, she literally tripped trying to get off the stage and away from the guy as quickly as possible. Wayne Brady shames her (took a couple of tries) into sticking around though, then asks the loaded question, “Do you think Chris has what it takes to be a country singer?” Her response, surely crafted from years of experience and the little headphone in her ear was, “Chris can do whatever he wants to do,” which, CU translated to, “He’s equally good at all positions.” Ouch.

Then, she really did run off the stage.

I think the most compelling duet of the night though, was the one Little Richard was having with the celebrity guest voices in his head. After Lucy Lawless’s first performance I figured Marie would be The New Paula what with the poufy hair and questionable choice of floral-patterned attire but noooooooo. It took about 45 minutes, but Little Richard went from canned response (”You’ve got the mustard, now it’s time to KETCH-UP!) to left-to-right cue card-speak (”I liked your first bit better.”) to sexual harrassment (”You just made my big toe shoot up in my boot!”) to my personal favorite, unintelligible blather (”A B C D E F G, shammalammadingdong, wocka wocka BOOyah!”).

I told CU that the Amazing Quote of the Week was going to be quickly replaced by the Little Richard Quote of the Week if he keeps this breakneck pace up.

I was laughing so hard, I called my mom to make sure she was watching and came to the realization that what Little Richard was lacking last night was…verbs. No verbs. At one point I swear I saw him facing the audience during the performance and then when he swung around to “judge” he was wearing sunglasses, but he wasn’t wearing them all the time…ah Hell, what a train wreck.

When I was talking to Mom, she seemed disturbed that not only did I not really know the show was on last night, but that I hadn’t already committed to memory the voting and elimination processes. I had to confess our internet had been out since about 11 a.m. yesterday (didn’t come back on until this morning) so I wasn’t totally on my game. With work, my impending vacation and the shock of having new programming beginning in August, I fell behind.

Interns. Apologies.