IF I KNEW THE TUNES I MIGHT JOIN IN:  It's Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Elton John night on Idol (last done in season three), and I would be remiss if I did not quickly offer some half-assed predictions and advice.

SMURF VILLAGE:  In preparation for tonight's finale, Nerve.com ranks the eight Top Chef seasons.

added: Linda Holmes, "'Top Chef': How Did Such A Great Season Lead To Such An Uninspiring Finale?" My answer, which I posted over there:

The constraints on too many of the challenges have prevented the contestants from demonstrating greatness. Instead it's been more a matter of surviving from week to week in cooking stuff at Target, with mediocre equipment, or from other chef's favorites (among others). When given the freedom to just do what they do well -- the Restaurant Wars and Family History episodes in particular -- the show has been great. There just hasn't been enough of it.

ATTACK IT IN THE FRONT SEAT, ATTACK IT IN THE BACK SEAT: Rebecca Black Swan.

ALOTT5MA SHAMELESS COMMERCE DIVISION: Frequent commenter (and occasional subway busker) Paul Tabachneck's new album, Here Goes Nothing, is now for sale on iTunes and Amazon.com.

MEAT CANDY: CNBC's Darren Rovell reports on the sizzling popularity of bacon in the video clip you'll see below the fold. While Rovell somehow misses the remarkable bacon grease popcorn now served at Philadelphia's Khyber Pass Pub, he does make sure to mention the new Maple Bacon Sundae at Denny's ("layers of vanilla ice cream, topped with maple-flavored syrup and diced hickory-smoked bacon") as part of their Baconalia celebration, which I guess they'll even serve to black people now because of all the court orders:

OF COURSE, IF THIS WERE RUN LIKE THE BCS THEN BUTLER WOULD BE CELEBRATING ITS MEINEKE CAR CARE BOWL WIN: Deadspin's Barry Petchesky has a point here:

No postseason is perfect, but try explaining March Madness to an alien: the NCAA Champion is the team that wins six games in a row (seven for VCU). That's it.

The regular season is, in essence, meaningless beyond giving the high seeds an easier path. (And that doesn't always work out either, as VCU got in with wins over fellow low seed FSU, as well as mercurial Georgetown and Purdue — a path that any team would gladly have.) All of the 68 teams start over in March, even ones that might have struggled in the regular season. Like, say, losing five out of their last seven, and drawing the scorn of Vitale, Bilas and Lunardi on national TV. VCU's a hot team, but one of the best four teams of 2010-11?

It's sacrilege to say, but in point of fact, college football does a better job than college basketball of crowning the best team in the sport. You can't slip up, not at any time. That old BCS talking point is actually true: the regular season matters.

The problem is that I don't know any way to fix this without shrinking the tournament to 48 teams (or fewer), the idea being to give at least some subset of elite teams a first-round bye. But we know the NCAA isn't foregoing the revenue from those games, so that's a non-starter. The real problem is deeper, and it's structural.

BEYOND THE (NYLON) CURTAIN: In which Eric Teplitz continues and then concludes his yarn about interviewing Billy Joel in 1996.