08:24 AM EST on Thursday, March 2, 2006

American Idol fans got another chance to hear Ayla Brown, the 17-year-old contestant from Wrentham, Mass., show her stuff Tuesday night as the enormously popular televised talent show continues to winnow down the list of contestants.

The 10 remaining females sang Tuesday night, the 10 men sang last night. Tonight, the two men and two women with the fewest number of votes -- the public gets to vote by phone or text messaging -- will go home.

Brown sang Celine Dion's I Want You to Need Me. Just as they did last week, the Idol judges appeared to praise her performance almost despite themselves.

"I actually liked it, man, I liked it," said Randy Jackson.

Designated bully Simon Cowell said Brown was probably working harder than anyone in the competition, and said Brown struck him as the kind of girl who always got A's.

No, said Brown, she started out in school -- she's a senior at Noble and Greenough School in Dedham, Mass. -- with C's. Now, though, she gets A's.

"Sometimes you want a bit of rawness to something. . . . it's still a little bit mechanical to me," Cowell said. "I think within your own comfort zone, you will do better than you could have hoped for. I still wonder whether that's going to be good enough."

Brown's mother, WCVB-TV reporter Gail Huff, was shown in the audience listening to her daughter sing. Her father, Mass. state Sen. Scott Brown, R-Wrentham, is considered a potential candidate for Massachusetts lieutenant governor.

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Two concert-hall ushers were shot during a Kanye West show, police said yesterday.

West Midlands Police said the men were wounded at the National Exhibition Center, near Birmingham in central England, on Tuesday as several people were being ejected from the venue for trying to get in without tickets.

"Their injuries are not believed to be life-threatening," police said in a statement.

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Grey's Anatomy star Patrick Dempsey says his childhood wasn't so McDreamy: He wasn't diagnosed as being dyslexic until he was 12 years old.

"I think it's made me who I am today," says Dempsey, 40, who plays neurosurgeon Dr. Derek Shepherd on the hit ABC series, in an interview on The Barbara Walters Special, that was scheduled to air last night.

"It's given me a perspective of -- you have to keep working," Dempsey tells Walters. "I have never given up."

Grey's Anatomy also stars Ellen Pompeo, Sandra Oh, Katherine Heigl, T.R. Knight, Chandra Wilson and Justin Chambers.

Walters also interviewed Matthew McConaughey, George Clooney, an Oscar nominee in multiple categories, and Mariah Carey, on the 25th edition of her Oscar special.

Compiled by Lifebeat editor Alexis Magner Miller from staff and wire reports.