FOR ALMOST 10 YEARS NOW, we?ve vetted the results of the ?American Idol? talent tilt with a heartening level of success. We correctly ?predicted? Fantasia Barino?s victory, for one thing. Ditto for Carrie Underwood, Jordin Sparks and David Cook.

This year, however, we?re finally throwing in the towel and getting rid of our fortune teller?s ball at a fire sale. Quite frankly, the willy-nilly way that the ninth edition of ?AI? has been progressing?or retrogressing?has got us stumped!

Male counterparts

Early on, we saw that the current tilt?s female finalists were more musically gifted than their male counterparts?by a mile! Very quickly, we correctly guessed that the talented likes of Crystal Bowersox and Siobhan Magnus would survive at least until the competition?s final seven. Other outstanding female finalists like Katie Stevens and Didi Benami also proved to be standouts?and survivors?in the competition.

Alas, Didi soon got axed?and, more surprisingly, so did Katie. At the same time, male bets like Aaron Kelly and Lee Dewyze held on for dear life from week to week.

The biggest shocker came two weeks ago, when frontrunner Siobhan Magnus much too soon bit the dust and sang her swan song?in her characteristically bravura fashion.

We fully expected Siobhan to end up right up there among the top three?and even top two?in the tilt?s ?final-finals.? So, for her to be peremptorily shot down so early was a rude awakening to the fact that, without our quite knowing it, the parameters of the competition have changed.

Fans and viewer-voters are no longer as consistent in their decisions as they used to be, and second-guessing their collective ?wisdom? has become a field fraught with musical landmines and other dispiriting shockeroos.

This now being the lay of the land, we?re quitting while we?re behind?and switching off, resigned to simply chronicling the sequential car wrecks as they continue to pile up, one on top of the addled other.

The big seismic shifts may have been initially perceivable three years ago, when the salt-and-

pepper-topped Taylor Hicks unexpectedly romped off with the tilt?s title. True enough, his ?stellar? career soon got nowhere?fast. So much for the popular vote singling out the potential star from a field of dimmer lights.

Explanation

And, what about last year?s results? Kris Allen won over the obviously more floridly gifted Adam Lambert. Expectedly, Lambert?s post-?AI? career is flying higher than Allen?s. This contradicts the standard ?logical? explanation that Allen won because he was younger and straight, so he appealed more to the target audience?s young demographic.

Still, that?s not too bad, compared to the current spectacle of Bowersox now inexplicably the only female survivor among the tilt?s remaining finalists. It isn?t even certain at this point that she?ll end up among the last two or even three survivors?that?s how unpredictable the ?AI? competition has become.

So, we?ll continue to watch how it unfolds?or unravels, as the case may be?up to its final-final round. ?But, with much less of the excitement and involvement that we have invested in the musical show?s past editions.