Paula Abdul

Great, now who’s going to make Nicole Scherzinger squash little kids’ dreams? Oh right, Nicole’s off the show, too.

Simon Cowell must have had a really bad day on the ‘X-Factor’, because from the looks of it, he went storming around the set, saying ‘You’re fired!’ to everyone who crossed his path.

Reports surfaced this morning that Paula Abdul was out, and she responded to them in a statement.

“Yes, it’s true; I won’t be returning to The X-Factor next season.”

I wish they would, and just get it over with. This has been the longest foreplay ever.

After nine years of working next to each other, Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul were almost working on top of each other.

"I mean, the truth was, on the first two seasons, we couldn't travel on the same plane together. We really disliked each other that much," Cowell told Barbara Walters, in her Most Fascinating People interview. Simon said that he and Abdul butted heads due to "sexual tension…on her part."

X-Factor, better known as the "other American Idol show", will have its premiere Wednesday night on Fox. Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell will rekindle their weird friendship, and L.A. Reid will judge alongside ex Pussycat Doll, Nicole Sherzinger.

So in a nutshell, the show mentors some people who want to be famous, and then whoever wins gets a bunch of money and a recording contract with Syco/Sony Music. How is this different from Idol? Well, the prize is $5 million—five times as much as the American Idol prize. Oh, okay. I get it now.

Abdul says the performances are "Grammy-caliber." Does that mean someone's going to be rapping while half the song is bleeped out by censors? Or is someone going to announce their pregnancy during a performance?