This American Idol Thing, Right?

Alright, as a last ditch effort to save some small part of my dignity before I get really into this, let me just point out that I have never watched a season of American Idol, and have kept myself chaste from Ryan's cold dirty stare.

But see, now I have a DVR.
Also, look, I know I've got my reality show sins. Top Chef. Tool Academy. America's Next Top Model. Which by the way starts next week (thank fucking god), so I've been thinking of this Idol thing as just a pre-game show, you know. The warm up to the apocalypse.

So I started watching Idol this year when they hit the top 24. There is no point to watching anything before the actual performances start, at least unless you really enjoy feeling superior to the rest of the country and watching people cry in pathetic and heartbreaking ways. Which I DO, but two hours straight of it, and at that point you either hate yourself, or you're getting off on it in an inappropriate way. It's deliberate I bet, a way to get your ego pumped enough so that you'll feel completely okay judging these people when voting hits, even though the worst of them is still more talented than you. Except for...well we'll get to that. C'mon America, you OWN these people, separate the wheat from the chaff you fat couch bound motherfuckers. Remember, you saw her during the auditions before they picked her! It's like you discovered her yourself! You are prescient, honestly. Your contestant's fate is completely dependent on your support, you god blessed children of the sweet green flatland.

How does anyone watch this show without DVR? First of all, it's on three nights a week. And each show is like, two hours long. And 1 hour 15 minutes of that is commercials. This is not the fucking Olympics guys. There are 12 people each show, they sing like a minute thirty worth of song and then boom, commercial break again, between EACH ONE. They are just fucking with you. Or they think you have a real bladder control problem. Maybe you are drunk enough that you do. Maybe they figure all the drinking you would have to do to get through 2 hours of this shit, for the past nine years, has fucked with your soft insides enough that they are willing to be a little merciful. Or Kara has to take a break every ten minutes to refresh her spray tan. Who is this Kara creature and why is she on here? Every time she opens her gaping maw, she looks around for approval, like an Italian aunt. "I like you!" "You're dirt, but I like you!" "I hated this, but I like YOU." Over and over again, like Paula's soul was implanted in her and looped. She is every girl you have ever met in a bar downtown that you hated.


Oh I criticize but shit, I think total? I've watched about 4 hours of this show. The Boy usually calls me just as it's finishing, and then I feel even more dirty because he wants to talk about other things, and I just seriously want to talk about song selection. I wonder if he's going to be okay when Top Chef starts and I no longer have shame holding my tongue.

I have opinions about this show, guys. And here they are.
First, the boys. There are only two boys I like, and I don't really like either of them much, but they are the only ones who don't make me want to never touch a dick again. Wait no, there's three. But the third one is David Cassidy, so I don't think it counts. Everyone else is a) flat b) trying to be Josh Groban or c) has a mullet. To be fair, Mullet Guy sorta has a Marty McFly vibe going on, and I'd like to believe it's deliberate, but I don't think it's as deliberate as it should be. There's some guy from Atlanta who wore tails last week, and needs to be a senate page, really it's his true calling. There's Egghead Latino, as he's being referred to on the interwebs. Everyone's a big fan of him, but he smacks of Wannabe Fallout Boy to me, and I think if there's any justice in the world, he will fall. He sang "Sugar We're Going Down" the first week, and I thought to myself, if the Barenaked Ladies singer ever dies in a fiery not at all intentional plane crash, this guy has a job for life. Also I just looked it up and the Barenaked Ladies singer just quit the band last year, so hello?

But here is my top pick guy: Lee. I have nothing deep to say about him. He does songs I hate, but he's adorable, and not singing old R&B songs, so win.



There a rumor that this year the producers really want a girl to win, presumably because Clay and Adam really burned them. And I think they have stacked the deck accordingly, because the guys are generally exactly what you find if you searched youtube for "High school band doing cover of John Legend." The girls aren't much better. There's a stylish Cuban mami church singer who sang Creed, so GOODBYE I don't care how awesome your little outfit was. There's that blonde girl from One Tree Hill who played the piano this week, though she played it so slow, it made me think maybe she also learned to play the piano this week. Some sixteen year old lounge singer named Katie, who is like, the new Rickie Lake.

Oh, but there are three girls I love. LOVE.

First - Jewel. Totally the best singer. Charmingly reticent to the whole Idol thing. Looks at Ryan like he's on crack. Only pays attention to Simon's criticism, which oh my god, the stereotype about him was completely correct. It's like I've been hearing about this mythical Simon creature for years, and only now I can admit that yes, he is the only real person in this whole show. Everyone else is a hologram. Even Ellen. Ellen looks like she fought a little before they took her, like she was hiding out in the Costa Rican jungle, which is my explanation for her safari outfit this week.



Next - Jewel. But Jewel after she got rich. I like the Gray Haired Wonder, cause at least she's trying to actually have a sound, even if it is the same sound coming out of every British recording studio right now. I suspect she's a good front woman. She's going to get a recording contract out of this either way.



And finally: Siobhan. The girl everyone knew in high school who had the lead in every play ever done in that cold creaking auditorium. Rachel from Glee. Did I mention I love that show? It was only a matter of time before the Idol got me I guess. This is her performance from the week before, cause she did Aretha this week, which was okay, but she looked like a complete tool doing it and you knew she did it only so she could hit a high note. I think I just like her because I like the idea that not all those high school drama club stars end up getting fat and married in Illinois somewhere. Though the mere fact that no one bothered to make a youtube video of her actual performance is disconcerting. All of you East coast fat cat liberals need to get off your high horses and vote for her so everyone's dreams everywhere stay marginally intact.



So there are my honest favorites. And then there is Haley. Haley is not a girl or a boy. It is a Haley, the first completely self powering self propelled karaoke machine/wii. It got eliminated this week, I just found out while searching for this video. I wonder if they will repurpose it to make lattes.



If you want to waste an hour of your time looking at the disintegration of our gene pool, here are the other performances.
I'm sorry I did this to you. To all of you.

Yay! Questions! (More to come, don't get your panties in a bunch)

why didn't you read/enjoy the oz books as a child? how has that shaped your adulthood? (--cath)

First of all, I totally read the Oz books when I was a kid, CATH. I read them all. Even when it become all about the gnomes and got kinda freaky and weird and was obviously not a really tight economic allegory anymore, which 9 yr old me was pretty disappointed in. Although, I maintain that 20 years from now, you'll be able to go back and find examples of all the real world revolutions in those books. Because Baum was prophetic. Also he was the real Princess Ozma. Right Tip?

Sidenote: when I googled the titles of the first 14 books, it also came up "His Majesty: The Scarecrow of Oz" which came out in 1914. Let's talk about how NOT SEEING THAT YET has shaped my adulthood. As in, I will not think about anything else for at least a week.

Can I have that chick's phone number? The one who asked you to do her taxes?

You have not given me the best question. You are not even trying apparently. You think I'll respond best to directness, or some bullshit like that. But hey, nice to meet you, my name's Bridget, and I need to be MANIPULATED.

Did you write the same awesomeness you write now into books in high school? I always wondered what you wrote (besides that awesome poetry on the wall). I'm serious when I say awesome. I laugh AND love out loud when I read your stuff.

I assume from the tone of this question that we went to high school together, in which case I'm going to ask you to remember that pentacle I wore around my neck and then you tell me if you think I wrote "awesome" stuff.

I did bother to try and find some old Scriptas (the "literary" magazine). I found the one from our Junior Year, which HELLO did every fucking Junior get a poem in that year? Cath, you've got like 5. And there's a few from Fiordalis and Chu and Moon and Hermann. And let me take this opportunity to say, when I was actually in prep school with you guys, I've never got the last name thing. Now I totally get it and wish I was part of it. Anyway, I couldn't find the Scripta with my awesome "Higher Education is like the Odyssey" poem. Instead I found one I wrote called "III New Age-Celtic Joni Mitchell" which I obviously wrote while fucking high and while madly in love with Chris Berkey. I am not giving you the whole thing, but here's a few lines to quench your curiosity...

"When clouds travel in on Atlantic winds
And congregations of bats hover above
menacing pine trees, then there is an hour of silence.
No words are allowed to break the air
And everything is melted like candle wax"

If I could, I would go back and beat the crap out of high school me. Fucking what the fuck is that? You know what else was melted like candle wax? Everything in my goddamn bedroom.

Let's never talk about this again.

Dial Idol -- what's that all about?!

It's about getting Siobhan Magnus to the finals, asshole.

Ask me anything

Why Can't I be a Pundit too, huh?

The political media landscape is littered with ex-beauty queens, skinny PR crack whores, body language readers, 14 yr old preachers, stand up comedians, desperate attention seeking born-agains, and pill popping addicts.

I qualify as at least 3 of those. Maybe 4.


Preview: Why America is F--Ked

Chapter 1: You are all grossly uneducated, but that's not really your problem, because I am too. That's why you should listen to me. Overly educated people, who read books with facts, are out of touch with the American Reality, which is that You are Reality.

Chapter 2: Why You Are Fat. It is not your fault that you are fat, it is the fault of the Mega Evil Food Conspiracy. They have been basically lying to you about what's in their food, by putting it in fine print on the back of their products with a bunch of words you don't understand. No one should expect you to know those words, cause you're grossly uneducated. Also, if you were educated enough to know what dylomexodecylingen meant, you wouldn't be buying Doritos, you'd be eating the tumors of small locally farmed grass fed orphans. Rich people are trying to kill you.

Chapter 3: American Idol is awesome. Ryan Seacrest should run for president, but not Simon, cause he's mean, so he should be Secretary of Defense. Of course, even that show is going to the gutter cause they got rid of Paula, who was SO pretty and SO nice, and replaced her with a Gay. Also Ellen isn't really gay, she's just being paid to get white people to dance to R&B. Sort of like how the dorky little brother was on the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. But if she was Gay, she would still smack of "I'm better than you-ness". With her stupid canvas shoes and striped shirts. You know who wears striped shirts? The British Navy. The Brits are totally paying Ellen to corrupt your children. When people cry on American Idol, it proves God exists.

Chapter 4: Coffee is supposed to be thin like water and taste like fake creamer and Splenda. Anything else is unAmerican, and if you do drink fancy coffees, you obviously are a smug beret wearing dingbat who belongs in Vancouver carrying a Whole Foods bag and listening to goddamn Coldplay on your ipod. The French Press was invented by Muslims.

Chapter 5: The only person you can trust about politics is Matt Drudge. Because he doesn't pretend to discover stories on his own. You can never trust someone who says they discovered a story. It only becomes validated once someone else repeats it. For instance, a guy I worked with told me a story about how his friend wrote the entry for pierogis on Wikipedia, and it said that pierogis were created by a shoemaker in Parma. Wikipedia has since taken it down and replaced with a bullshit story about it meaning "pie" or something, and I know this is a false story because no one has bothered to tell me about it since. Nice try Wiki. Everyone knows Ukrainians only eat beets.

Chapter 6: When I was 20, I did a lot of drugs and whoring and cutting down of saguaro cactus in Arizona, which is totally illegal but I didn't care because I believed in Socialism. Socialism teaches you that everything should belong to everybody, which includes your teenage daughters hymen. Then I ended up being kidnapped and sold into forced labor in Russia where they made me press out the twistoff caps for those cheap bottles of vodka. 8 hours workdays, can you even imagine? I had to sit inside, I never got any sunshine, and I always smelled like fish because that's what Russians put in their vodka. You should always buy American Vodka, like Paramount, which is distilled from the healthy patriotic waters of Lake Erie. When I finally escaped, I went immediately to AA, where they told me they couldn't take me cause I wasn't technically an alcoholic. But I kept showing up, so eventually they had to let me speak, and I convinced everyone in the room to leave with me, and start a new Church, that doesn't discriminate against people because they aren't "technically" dying of liver disease. Cause America is an equal opportunity country, for everyone with a right to be here. Now I sell certificates online if you pass my "I Am An American" online exam, and I am rich. God Bless Arizona.

Chapter 7: Any book that is longer than 7 chapters doesn't respect you, and you don't have to take that shit. Buy a gun and build a well. I've included instructions.

My breath is an anti-griddle, its so freaking cold

bridgetphotos 125, originally uploaded by sharpshinyclaws.

Exciting morning.
Woke up early, took a preternaturally calm Rusty the Crazy Eyed Cat to have his manhood removed. Which seems like an apt climax to my last few days of "oh my god how does this person continue to function" posts. So no more mandated vasectomies. I'm feeling generous. From now on, only unmitigated hatred without threat of bodily harm.

Of course, my alternator died. Again. So it's at the shop now. Fun times.
And S. had to drive me to work and clean his apartment and pick up the cat and pick me up and go to work himself. So his day isn't so great either.

On the upside, last night while watching the American Idol auditions, a bikini clad bimbo, after gushing about their future children, forced Ryan Seacrest to kiss her, literally wrenching his little plastic lips to hers, and the Editors played Kate Perry's "I kissed a girl" in the background. Which was AWESOME.

Also, here is a long overdue picture of Rusty meeting a lobster.