Well, what do you do with your barely-established television commentary site after the TV season is over? That is the question. A quick scan over Entertainment Weekly's list of summer series reveals nothing of particular interest until August. I did TiVo the first couple episodes of "Traveler," but after all the time I wasted on "Drive" I don't know why I would bother expending any mental energy on a replacement series doomed before it even premiered. A certain part of me wants to dedicate at least a week's writing time to breaking down the various outfits of the RGX Body Spray girl, but that happens to be the same voice that I endeavour quite strenuously to keep out of my music and television writing.

What summer does bring for the serious TV watcher these days is DVD sets, in all shapes and sizes and aspect ratios. As a freelance writer I face the same barriers to entry with regards to reviewing TV on DVD sets as I do video games; in brief, they cost money and I don't have any. Conveniently though the TV on DVD market has seemingly become supersaturated; between the steady drumbeat of archival releases and the rushed release of sets to help promote current series, there is way more out there on the market than any one reasonable human can ever hope to absorb. And Target sells stuff like the first season of "Bones" or the second season of "Veronica Mars" for less than $20 if you happen to catch them on sale. I don't have very much money, but I do have tons of free time and a Target right near my apartment. And I also have a pretty immense collection as it stands. To keep things relevant I think I'll largely be taking on either stuff that's fairly new to the market or older seasons of ongoing shows. But if you would be interested in other stuff, that's what the comments section is for. I'm going to get the random "Star Trek" episode flashbacks relaunched for sure, as they seem to be something to which a wide cross-section of readers respond. I'm about due for a "Deep Space Nine," it seems. Well, that's good, now I have an idea for what to write about tomorrow.

Today, though, we're going to wrap up our well-received "American Idol" coverage with a really fun little exercise I first conceived of way back in the semifinals. It didn't take very long at all for this virgin "Idol" viewer to realize that technical singing ability was about the last thing the voters at home responded to when it came to the "Idol" contestants. Surviving in the competition is all about finding an image or niche and working against the often-constraining weekly themes to keep that image prominent in voters' minds. (And it's also about not forgetting the words to the songs.) So, given my immense knowledge of popular music history, modest personal magnetism, and surprisingly supple falsetto, what song choices would I have made as a season six "Idol" competitor?

Semifinal Week One (Boys, Girls) Of course the real trick is getting invited to L.A. from the regional auditions and then getting through the brutal Hollywood week cuts to the semis. I have no idea whether the spectacle of an emaciated, sepulchral white-boy rock critic who looks like an elongated Bill Gates and sings like a young Curtis Mayfield would be a winning package or not, but Sundance Head came one week short of the Final 12. Clearly there is no accounting for taste. Anyway, for my imaginary first performance in front of the "Idol" house band, I'd do Smokey Robinson's "I Second That Emotion," partly because I can sing the hell out of it and partly because years of experience suggest to me that everybody in America likes that song.

Semifinal Week Two (Boys, Girls) During the semifinals, contestants have a lot more freedom to pick the songs that suit them. Even after five seasons of "Idol," this is an advantage that seemingly few singers have the savvy to exploit. My recollection of this period during this season was a lot of people either doing songs they felt fell in the same range as their successful performances during the auditions and Hollywood round, or doing songs they really loved without necessarily any consideration to whether they suited them as singers or not. Having already decided that my niche is the wacky falsetto guy, I need to pick a tune for the second week of the semis that will firm up my identity in the minds of the viewers while avoiding being pigeonholed the way Chris Richardson or Gina Glocksen did at this point. It's also never too early to start thinking about who my voting constituency is going to be. I can see a rather unusual coalition between younger kids who don't know a ton about music but respond to my enthusiasm and goofy, nonthreatening physical appearance and more mature adults who (like me) really take music seriously and can spot a fellow true believer from a mile off. For now, I want to concentrate on making sure every viewer knows who I am whether they're going to vote for me or not. So I'm going to do another song that highlights my falsetto while showing a very different part of my musical personality: Radiohead's "High and Dry."

Semifinal Week Three (Boys, Girls) By this point in the real semifinals, I had my mind pretty much made up as to whom the contenders would be, and I wasn't wrong but for one or two exceptions. If I'm any good at all, I should be safely in the finals by this time, so this is the week where I want to step out from behind my image a bit by singing a song in my normal vocal range rather than using my solid (though gimmicky) falsetto. Starting next week I'm not going to have anywhere near as much latitude in song selection so I want to pick one I'm 100% certain I can sell like nobody's business. My choice is Elvis Costello's "Alison," which is simply one of the prettiest melodies ever written and one that my modest baritone can really inhabit after years and years of practice. It's also worth noting that all of the songs I have picked so far have had lyrics selected to subliminally play on my vulnerable qualities. I'm self-aware enough to know I'm not going to win over voters with my sex appeal, so instead I'll court the female vote by playing on their maternal instincts.

Diana Ross Week While my favorite Diana Ross songs are the ones the Afghan Whigs have covered ("I Hear a Symphony" and "Come See About Me"), my strength isn't my sexy low-register croon like Greg Dulli but how high I can go (think Gene Ween). With that in mind I would have rocked Ms. Ross's world with a gender-bending version of "Baby Love" that with any luck would reach Sanjaya levels of watercooler relevance, but in a good way. If the "Idol" producers would allow me to perform in full gigantic-haired, ballroom-gown Supremes drag, I would totally do that, but somehow I doubt it.

British Invasion Week There is only one song I would even consider: "Twist and Shout." I have been singing it whenever I get dragged out to karaoke since my voice changed. I would definitely want to mount a Taylor Hicks-like performance where tons of movement on stage and bursting veins on my forehead made up for a few blue notes here and there. "Twist and Shout" isn't really a song you sing so much as howl, but I think it suits my good-time, music-loving, high-energy persona perfectly.

Gwen Stefani Week I'm not privy to the list of Stefani "influences" from which the Idols were forced to select back in March, but I think I can venture a few guesses from the body of work the real contestants put out that week. Most of the non-No Doubt songs people played were wishy-washy 80's rock things, like the Police and Cyndi Lauper. I don't know if Aimee Mann's 'Til Tuesday made Stefani's list, but they should have, and I need a week to cram in my absolute barnburner rendition of Mann and Elvis Costello's "The Other End of the Telescope," which is a bit of a curiosity I know but one of the few songs I can sing that makes me feel like a real musician if I survive to the end. With edits necessary to fit the tight "Idol" time constraints, I'd be in good shape. I don't know if Gwen would like it or not, but frankly, I can't think of very many people living or dead whose musical opinion matters less to me than Gwen Stefani's.

American Classics Week This is kind of a vague category, but the guest host was Tony Bennett, so that ought to give you an idea. I have to be careful here not to let my Costello obsession get in my way, since most of the songs I know well from the first half of the last century I know from E.C. covers. I've already done two of his songs and I expect to do a few more before it's all said and done. The nice thing about the style of crooners like Bennett is you don't necessarily have to have the pedal to the floor on every note, which means this is really a week I could surprise people. I'm picking "The Way You Look Tonight," since it was so beautifully sung by Jimmy Darren on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" and I actually know the words. I'd have to transpose it to a key I could actually sing it in, but with Tony Bennett's assistance, how could I go wrong? Who am I kidding, I would totally have wasted all of my face time with Bennett trying to get him to sing the "Capitol City" song from "The Simpsons."

Latin Week Without a doubt, the most arbitrary and annoying category on the whole show. The real "Idol" Latin Week featured everything from genuine old Spanish-language standards ("Besame Mucho," butchered by Sanjaya) to regular Top 40 songs originated by swarthier-than-average vocalists (Blake's "I Need to Know"). And lots of Gloria Estefan. So what's a well-thinking music snob to do? Throw out really fantastic Manu Chao and David Byrne songs that are genuinely inspired by Latin rhythms because Chao (French) and Byrne (Scottish) aren't technically Hispanic? Or do a great Los Lobos tune like "When the Circus Comes" that has nothing specifically to do with Latin music but happened to have been originally performed by Mexican guys? Turning to a musician who has been both a genuine inspiration to myself and a pioneer in mixing south-of-the-border folk traditions with good ol' American indie rock, I'm nominating Alejandro Escovedo's "I Was Drunk." Of course, I'm sure the "Idol" producers would shoehorn me into something way less genuine and way less suitable for my individual style. I might as well suggest Ween's "Buenas Tardes Amigo" for all the good it would do me.

Country Week Now this is more like it. Nothing is more aggravating to me than people who categorically dismiss country music, which I love with a fervor, from Hank Williams to Uncle Tupelo. If anything I'd have too many great choices in a week where most of the other contestants would be shooting themselves in the foot with dire Nashville pop songs instead of genuine country. I've always had a special connection to Patsy Cline's "I Fall to Pieces," for example. Or there's all of those wonderful tunes from Costello's Almost Blue album, maybe "Good Year for the Roses" or "Psycho." It would really turn the "Idol" world upside-down if I did something by Will Oldham ("Gulf Shores") or Jay Farrar ("Whiskey Bottle"). Overall I think a good compromise between the "Idol" definition of country and my own would be the Gram Parsons song "She," which is another one of my favorite all-time melodies and is perfectly suited for my range, with a golden opportunity to open up into falsetto on the bridge.

"Idol" Gives Back Week You'd think this would be another trap week for my imagined "Idol" campaign, but I have an ace in the hole. Amidst all of the schmaltzy garbage the other contestants would be piping out, how could I fail to completely destroy the competition with a soulful take on Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler)"? After downplaying it since the Diana Ross show the falsetto would be back in force, the "Idol" band would be all about that ridiculous James Jamerson bass groove, and I genuinely find the song inspirational so it wouldn't be that difficult to channel the great Gaye's pleas for peace and understanding.

Bon Jovi Week Uh... pass? Bon Jovi sucks really hard, and his brainless bombast is a poor fit indeed for my more subtle approach. When you run into a stumbling block like this one, I think the Sanjaya approach is the correct one. Just be as over-the-top awful as you can muster, and hope sympathy and good hair (I have great hair) carry you for the week. It's difficult to pick the single dumbest Bon Jovi song, but I have a good feeling about "Bad Medicine." I think I could do that one justice.

Barry Gibb Week It was a really bad decision by the producers, in terms of keeping "Idol" watchable, making Gibb the guest coach for the first week when each remaining contestant had to perform two songs instead of one. Gibb has had a long, successful career and no one can take that away from him, but range isn't exactly one of his strong suits. LaKisha Jones, as you may recall, was completely adrift on her way to what was really the only surprise early ejection of the whole sixth season. That's why I don't feel too bad about stealing one of her song choices for the first time so far in this exercise. C'mon, I'm falsetto guy, I have to do "Stayin' Alive." If I had been one the contestants on the show this season, or another guy with a really good falsetto, I imagine the conversation after the Gibb show would have been all about how unfair it was picking a guy with a matching schtick to one of the contestants. For my other song? "Night Fever," probably. I don't know. Most Bee Gees songs sound pretty much the same to me.

The Final Three There's no way of guessing what the judges and producers might throw at me (although the safe bet is the tunes would be hideously inappropriate in both cases), but I know what I'm doing for my first free choice since the semifinals. I'm doing Beck's "Debra," in as lascivious and inappropriate a manner possible, very probably with leather pants. Even if it gets me voted off, the allure of doing that song, with the horn stings, the ad-libbed come ons, the insane Mayfield high notes (every one of which I can hit with aplomb) in front of the full "Idol" band with strings and horns and the kitchen sink is completely irresistible. This would be the climax of my whole "Idol" run, for good or for bad; if people don't like it, at least I went out my way.

The Finale I have to say, the format for the "Idol" finale as presently constructed is anticlimactic and lame. The contest-winning "hit single" that both finalists have to sing is almost guaranteed to be horrible, you know how I feel about reprises of past performances, and on the whole everyone has made up their minds about whom they favor well in advance of the actual last sing-off. So in the same way I passed on writing much about the real finale, I pass on theorizing about what my own choices as a contestant would have been. Honestly, I feel like I'm probably not good enough of a singer to make it that far, although qualitatively I'm just about as good as Blake Lewis (maybe even a little better, with the falsetto). The more pertinent question is how a delicate, solitary personality like myself would hold up after months under constant public scrutiny. There are definitely some people from the "Idol" field last season (Chris Sligh leaps immediately to mind) who appeared diminished as the contest went on perhaps for that very reason. I like to think that I would be able to overcome my distaste for being made the subject of public spectacle by taking full advantage of my complete indifference as to my showing in the overall competition. Blake took this to the bank, outlasting a lot of much better male singers by seemingly growing more confident and distinct with each passing week while most other contestants got boring. And with any luck I would be able to make the whole experience about something greater than myself. If there's anything that bugs me about the average "American Idol" finalist and semifinalist, it's their complete and utter lack of perspective. Here you are, biggest TV show in America, and the most interesting thing you have to say in an interview is that "MMMBop" is your favorite song? It would be tough sledding balancing a bit of an advocacy campaign (for myself, it would be mental health awareness) with efforts to remain lighthearted and likable, but I think it's a huge waste of a tremendous break going on "Idol" with nothing in your heart besides the first-week sales figures for your huge 19 Entertainment debut.