Steven Tyler Drops the Hammer on ‘American Idol’ Jokester

Thursday means elimination night on ‘American Idol,’ when one contestant is put into a capsule and shot into space. Okay, that’s not what happens, but sometimes we like to pretend it is.

But first, Ryan Seacrest asked judge Steven Tyler about Aerosmith‘s upcoming tour. So what should we expect? Steven said that since Aerosmith has been lighting a fire under the world’s ass for 40 years, they plan to do the same thing on tour, yo. Also that he may dress up like a lion-tamer and “whip the front row into submission.” So keep that in mind when you’re buying your tickets.

Then it was time to focus on the nine remaining contestants. Jimmy Iovine gave his critiques of their performances, raining down praise on the previous night’s unofficial king and queen, Elise Testone and Phillip Phillips. Iovine’s harshest criticism went to perennial punching bag Heejun, whom he summed up with an economy of words: “There are eight other singers who are better than he is.”

We were also treated to the candy-colored psychedelic experiment known as Nicki Minaj, who took the stage to make a lot of auto-tuned noise and bounce her man-made boobies about. Whee!

Also performing on Thursday was last year’s ‘Idol’ winner, country phenom Scotty McCreery, who thankfully kept his boobies covered as Jimmy presented him with a commemoration of his debut album selling a million copies.

Aaaaand back to business. Once Ryan had finished announcing this week’s bottom vote-getters, two out of the three were surprises — belter Holly and country-rock spitfire Skylar — but one was not. Heejun’s luck finally ran out, and he was the one who “sang for his life” as the judges whispered among themselves about whether to use their only save of the season to keep him in the competition.

Well, that’s what we were supposed to think they were whispering about, anyway. There was clearly no way they were going to waste the save on Heejun, so maybe Steven and J. Lo were just swapping makeup tips or setting up dinner plans with Randy or something.

Regardless, Steven eventually gently broke the bad news to Heejun — pointing out that the young singer had to see this coming, after the lecture he received two weeks ago — and he was summarily dismissed. Great. Now who will we pick on. Guess we’ll find out next week when the Top 8 performs. See you then.