I'll be writing in next week's Daily News about the whole live "Idol" experience, but here are a few tidbits (and if you haven't read my colleague Jonathan Takiff's running commentary on the show, check it out in the comments section under "Going to the Source"):

-- I couldn't figure out why I kept seeing Ace Young everywhere -- outside the "artist's entrance" an hour before the show, running back and forth through the audience 20 minutes later, then exchanging hugs with people seated in the VIP section moments before the show started. But then I also couldn't figure out why he looked so much like Ace, but sort of didn't. More facial hair, for one thing. He even seemed as if he might be taller than I'd expected.

And then I remembered Ace has at least one lookalike among his four older brothers. I'd say this one is working the resemblance. Hard. Didn't see Bucky's twin, Rocky, though.

-- Fantasia was in the house, and she and Simon seemed chummy, exchanging more than a half-dozen cheek kisses -- and one long kiss on the lips -- shortly before the show began. Of course, a moment later, he was hugging Paula as if he really meant it. And right after that, he was rubbing both cheeks hard, as if worried that he might go on air with lipstick there.

-- Fantasia was introduced to the studio audience, but last season's Scott Savol, escorted to the VIP section just before the judges entered, wasn't. Shouldn't he have returned to obscurity in Ohio by now?

-- Ran into Northeast Philly's own Mike Darnell, Fox's "reality" guru, who was there with his wife and young daughter -- "Idol's" easily the most child-friendly ticket in this town -- shortly before the show began.

"You picked a great night!" he told me, which, let's face it, wasn't what most people said when they heard I'd be in the "American Idol" audience on the night the eight finalists attempted songs made famous by Queen.

("Train wreck" was the phrase I'd heard most, even before word broke that Kellie Pickler had chosen "Bohemian Rhapsody.")

Kellie, Darnell insisted, "will surprise you."

I reminded him that shortly before "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire" aired, he'd told me the mismatched pair we came to know as Rick Rockwell and Darva Conger were a very sweet couple.

"And they were," he said, grinning. "For about a minute and a half."

-- The least-exciting job at "American Idol" has to belong to the CBS pages -- it's a Fox production, but it's filmed these days at CBS' Television City studios -- who walk around before the show starts with foam coffee cups, looking for audience members who might want to deposit their gum before they're caught on camera, chewing away like idiots. It probably doesn't help that they have to wear bright red jackets.