'Oh, to be a boy' on 'American Idol'

"He just said, 'Whenever you get around to it.' So, I'll be the one cutting it, but I'm just not sure when that's going to happen," White said with a laugh. "We'll have to pencil it in somewhere. It'll probably have to be at 3 o'clock in the morning sometime."

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On TV this morning: White is scheduled to be a guest on today's installment of "The Morning Show With Mike and Juliet" (9 a.m., Ch. 13).

The ex-"Idol" finalist is slated to both perform and be interviewed.

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When White's obituary is written — many decades from now — it will probably make mention of the fact that she was the "American Idol" contestant who forgot the lyrics and had to start over.

But before that night two weeks ago when she struggled, lyrics had not been difficult for her.

"No, actually, I have not had any problem with the lyrics up until 'You Must Love Me,"' White said. "And, all of a sudden, it freaked me out. And I started thinking, 'Oh my gosh, what if this happens again?' It just kind of plays head games."

Which is why she wrote the word "palm" on her palm last week before singing "I Am ... I Said" — to remind her of the part of the song where she sings, "palm trees grow."

(She didn't actually have "lyrics" on her hand, as indicated by host Ryan Seacrest. Does one word even qualify as "lyric"?)

"When I was singing the song in my rehearsal, I kind of felt as if 'palm tree' was not sticking in my brain. So even just the practice of writing it down on my hand helped me remember it," she said. "I didn't even look at it because it was on the underneath side of my hand, but whatever you can use.

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Is Cook original? My 17-year-old daughter — to whom I must defer on matters of what the kids think is cool these days — finds it amusing/annoying that the "Idol" judges keep telling David Cook he's original.

"To me, he just seems like a guy who's in any of the groups I like," she said. "He's just a poser."

Apparently, "poser" is a really, really bad thing to be. And I'm not sure that "cool" is a cool term anymore.

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com