Start singing the blues D.C., just don’t do it in front of a panel of judges hostile to you and a nation with their fingers literally on the button of your career. Last night Catholic University student Antonella Barba was dismissed from American Idol in a cut that chose the final 12 contestants. While the judges were shocked when voters gave Jason “Sundance” Head the boot, they seemed content to let Barba go. Much of…

Good news, Washington: our vicarious American Idol dreams live on! Despite a performance of “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” that prompted criticism even from Paula Abdul, D.C. resident Antonella Barba has made it through the show’s first round of voting. Nice as this is to hear, it’s not unexpected. DialIdol.com, a site that provides autodialing software and analyzes the incidence of busy signals to gauge voting volume, predicted that Barba would finish safely…

Though we can’t all claim to be following this season of American Idol ourselves, the show’s ratings tell us that at least a few of you probably are. So what do we care? Well, one of our own has made it to the top 24 this season, the show’s fifth. Antonella Barba isn’t a D.C. native — she’s originally from Point Pleasant, NJ, but she’s been calling this city home for the past few years….