Paula Abdul bypasses airport security shortly before going crazy on the results show

Paula Abdul was back to her old form last night on American Idol 5. Succinctly and brilliantly summarizing her behavior–and even working in an awesome reference to an Idol alum–the Boston Herald’s Lauren Beckham Falcone writes, She wrote, “The ‘American Idol’ judge was incoherent on last night’s live telecast, bumbling lines and giggling like she’d just emerged from a Grateful Dead concert, leaving audiences, contestants and host Ryan Seacrest more confused than a homophobic Clay Aiken fan.

With Heather Cox and Brenna Gethers standing on stage, Ryan Seacrest asked Paula why they were there, and Paula replied, “Simon said because one of them ate pizza and the other ate salad.” Then she started giggling crazily. (Defamer has a shaky video of this moment.) Later, Paula, “slurring her words” according to the Herald, said,

“What did you tell me Simon? What did you tell me? Simon gave me advice and said on ‘The X Factor’ he always refers to a fortune cookie and says the moth who finds the melon — (laugher) — finds the corn flake always finds the melon and one of you didn’t pick the right fortune.”

Yeah. The Baltimore Sun’s Sarah Kickler Kelber says Paula should “shut up” and “should have reined it in last night.” PhillyBurbs.com’s Bob Bankard is more direct, saying “Paula is having some issues that Betty Ford needs to look at.” He writes that “it looks like most of America saw her apparently intoxicated act on live TV,” but also suggests she may have been high, writing, “It’s the munchies, baby — it’s all good.”

This may or may not be related to another incident involving Paula that took place earlier yesterday. As TMZ.com just reported, Paula in Las Vegas about to return to LA, and she “was running late for the Southwest Airlines flight, and it went from bad to worse when fans mobbed her as she tried to board the jet.” Then, an “airport skycap breached security by escorting Abdul and a companion to the plane, without going through security.”

Perhaps the biggest news here is that Paula flies Southwest, but as a result, “all the passengers had to be ‘reverse screened’ when they arrived at Burbank,” TMZ reports.