LAST EDITED ON 07-03-12 AT 12:02 PM (EST)

Owing to a thunderstorm hitting early in the evening, which brought with it some much needed rain, a lot of wind knocking down treelimbs, and a lot of relatively unneeded hail except it helped cool things down a few more degrees, I was much too busy with other things last night to watch TV. So I couldn't vote.

All things being whatever all things may be, when I finally got a chance to zip through the recording to watch the performances, it was a truly horrible show. The new stage is awful, too much tech getting in the way. The good news is that NBC has finally found a way to even the playing field for the visual acts. No, the directors and camera-critters haven't improved, if anything they've gotten worse. But the sound quality this year is the pits, tinney and obnoxious. And the audience just won't STFU, in fact the audience took over the whole show last night drowning out all the competition.

01. The Distinguished Men of Brass, band. Love these guys, they dressed up nice, gave a rousing D-Mo Brass performance. How good they actually played is anyone's guess but the audience was very fired up and very vocal throughout.

02. Edon, singer. Also played the piano, not that you could hear any of it. Seemed to do okay.

03. Jarrett & Raja, magician & musician. Cheesy flop.

04. Lil Starr, juvenile dancer. Great stage presence, unfortunately it was more tapping, though she did manage to shine a bit despite the glaring lights flashing and strobing and so on.

05. Todd Oliver and Irving and Lucy, ventriloquist and dogs. Silly but a bit amusing, for once the audience kept quiet enough for the mundane comedy to prove itself mundane.

06. American BMX Stunt Team. Didn't make any glaring big mistakes, just several little ones, nothing you can't see kids doing in the parks on any given summer day with their bikes.

07. Nikki Jensen, singer. Held back too much, so-so singing.

08. The Scott Brothers, dancers. More of the same sort of dancing from them but they stepped it up with a few new tricks that actually worked out.

09. Michael Nejad, musician. 3 X's! Has left the building. Flat performance, but good for him for finishing with the sweeper.

10. 787 Crew, dancers. At least they didn't make any big mistakes this time, otherwise we've seen it before.

11. Shanice & Maurice Hayes, singers. Great song choice from what I could hear, and she took it big enough in a few spots to get the audience to sit back a bit.

12. David Garibaldi and His CMYK's, speed painter with dance crew. Stepped it up a bit from before, seemed headed for a mundane fail but pulled it out in the end for a great finish.

13. Judge Howard. Thanks for telling me how I should vote, Mr. Ego. Too bad I couldn't get around to it in time. But he left out the audience which took over the whole show to ruin everything anyway. Well, everything the professional stage crew and idiot directors and cheap equipment hadn't ruined already.