Why I idolize American Idol

Another season of American Idol has come to a close, and I was thoroughly satisfied with this season’s winner, Taylor Hicks. It came as no shock to regular viewers of the show that he would win (he’s the first Idol never to have been in the bottom three), but it was a little surprising that Kat was his finale partner, barely edging out the more talented (in my opinion) but less polished Elliott Yamin.

I’ve been a regular junkie since Season One, and unlike with other shows, where my interest may wane after the first season or two, I’ve been hooked from the start. I’ve always been a fan of talent shows—like Star Search, back in the day—but this is different. So I started to breakdown the reasons for why the show seems to appeal to so many people. In a very big nutshell, here’s my top five reasons for why American Idol rules:

1) Karaoke is getting more popular. And what is Idol but glorified karaoke, except with a your own makeover and more Burt Bacharach songs than you can shake a stick at?

2) It appeals to old fogies and young fogies. It’s one of the few remaining wholesome family shows that both a crotchety old Grandpa and his punk, snot-nosed grandkids can watch together, and they can engage in family debate over whom to root for. The contestants, for the most part, are on the young side, but they sing those classics that your parents like.

3) Whether you love or hate the show, you still watch it. Even people who claim to hate the show still know the contestants and watch it to see how craptastic it can get. I know it’s really their guilty pleasure. And even the biggest of the big stars admit to being fans, as judged by their appearances in the audience, while the snottiest of anti-sellout stars must kowtow to the marketing muscle of Idol. (Where else would you find David Hasselhoff and Prince in the same building, ever?)

4) The show doesn’t take itself seriously. This is especially apparent in the opening rounds, when they show those first-round, tone-deaf hopefuls who are only one nervous breakdown away from a mental hospital. And I know an evil genius is behind making the Idols sing and dance on stage to cheesy 80s songs with fake plastic smiles plastered on their faces. Those bad song-and-dance numbers, cheesy Ford commercials, and vomit-inducing Idol power ballads are all proof that the show never puts forward the pretense of trying to nurture “artists who just want to express themselves.” It’s as if the producers are saying:

“If you want that hippie, commie pinko crap go to the Coachella music festival or cavort in the mosh pit with the ‘I’m not a lesbian or a gypsy, I just look like one,’ Vagina-Monologued, Lillith fair fans. This is American Idol, with the emphasis on Idol. We aren’t afraid of mass commercialization and the commoditization of society. Just look at the freakin’ Ford logos and Coca-Cola signs branded on the hides of our poor singers’ souls.”

And finally, the fifth reason, and the main reason why I like AI:

5) America, in the end, likes a good underdog story. And really, Idol is the epitome of the American Dream, a land where the impossible seems possible. Even when a polished, refined, and trained-from-birth star gets into the finals, America usually roots for the underdog, who is still talented but just rough around the edges. They see the diamond in the rough. In season one, they turned a cocktail waitress with bad skin into the most successful Idol ever (Kelly Clarkson is my hero. She survived the atrocious “From Justin to Kelly,” after all). In season two, the final two were a soul singer on the verge of a heart attack and a closeted Mad magazine character look-alike. In season three, the winner was a near-illiterate teenage mother. In season four, the cute but never-left-the-farm country girl got her Nashville dream. And this year, America chose not the porcelain-skinned, voluptuous, vocally trained, stage-mothered Kat—but the whiskey-tenored, prematurely greying, slightly paunched, spastically dancing, criminally record-ed (for pot possession), Tourette’s-like “Soul Patrol” screaming, and aging (by Idol standards) Taylor. A single tear is falling from my eye.

On top of all that, where else can someone like William Hung get a record contract? Nowhere but on American Idol!

So, American Idol, the New York Times may call you a “monster-size celebration of mediocrity,” (as far as I could tell, the Idols were outsinging all the “real” stars on the show, i.e, the heaving Meatloaf, the breathy Toni Braxton, and the warbly Dionne Warwick—even Mary J. Blige seemed to think screaming could pass for singing), and the Washington Post may call your contestants “Captain Kangaroo,” but I, for one, pledge my allegiance to your hidden brilliance.

Bear-y scary

What's up with bears these days? They are on a secret rampage or something. I feel like they are slowly plotting to take over the world — or at least New Jersey.

Well, not all bear news of late has been in Jersey. Take this disturbing story.

First of all, aren’t zoos supposed to protect animals? Isn’t that their point? And don’t the zookeepers feed the bears enough that they won’t go trolling for monkey meat?

I guess animals being animals, you could just say that this is part of the “ciirrccllleee of liiiiffeee…” but I can’t help but think of all those poor, traumatized children who thought they were going to see the cute teddy bears and monkeys play together in the safari park. Instead, they got a harsh reality check and a lesson in survival of the fittest. I’m just shocked a Fox camera crew wasn’t close by to film “When Animals Attack: Zoo Edition.”

The macaque in the photo looks like a defenseless stuffed animal being removed from a shelf by the bear. Aack. (How on earth did an AP photographer know to be at the zoo to take this photo? Maybe he has the Dutch zoo beat, and just waits for the day a story will break—and lo and behold, one finally did?)

Anyway, locally there have been several bear-human run ins, like this one in which a bear acts like a crazy crackhead and has to be taken down by the police. In this town, which I think is near Newark, a bear had to be gunned down because he assumed an aggressive stance even after getting tranquilized. And then in Seattle, a black bear roaming U of W's frat row was tranquilized and then tasered after he kept putting up a fight, leading to his death. (I actually wouldn't have minded if the bear had a few frat guys for lunch.)

Either we are on the road to Bear City or these poor bears are victims of social injustice (notice how all cases were black bears?? I'm sure there are brown, polar, and panda bears out there committing comparable crimes!!).

In any case, all you bears even thinking about attacking me, I'm no macaque. I'll run for my life, and if that doesn't work, I'll have my taser ready.

BEAR UPDATE: A 500-pound bear escapes from a breeding farm, barges its way into a woman's home, and nearly mauls her to death! WTF? It's a sign of the apocalypse people! Bears are rising up and won't take it anymore!

May 1902-December 1973 romance

Move over, Demi and Ashton. You’ve got nothing on Muhamad Noor Che Musa and Wook Kundor.

Old Wookie’s still got it after all these centuries. She’s like Liz Taylor times three. (Literally. She’s been married 21 total times.) And he’s not after her dowry. And I quote: “I am not after her money, as she is poor.”

So what does the geriatric hottie have that attracted the young buck? Their initial connection, Muhamad says, was that she was “childless, old and alone.” Hey, I’ve got those things going for me. Maybe I, too, can snag a younger man (who hasn't been born yet)!

Muhamad and Wook, I salute you. Age ain’t nuthin’ but three numbers.

Caution: hazmat boss ahead

As many of my friends know full well, my boss drives me CRAZY. He manages like his job is constantly on the line (it very well may be, for all I know), which results in bouts of micromanaging, last-minute decisions that make our deadlines tighter, and inducing feelings in me that waver between pity for him and wanting to scratch his eyeballs out. I think he may be the worst manager I’ve ever had, and that even includes my first boss, who used to curse people out with her office door open and make coworkers cry. (Okay, maybe they are tied. But because my current boss is passive-aggressive, he comes out slightly ahead. I’d prefer overtly aggressive over passive-aggressive. I think. Well, maybe not. I guess the grass is always greener.)

However, I didn’t feel so bad when I got my Monster e-mail and saw that they were having a “Who’s the Most Toxic Boss of All?” contest. The examples are almost too comedic/unbelievable to be true. They range from a boss who Lysol-ed a worker’s office to the point of saturation after she saw her cough into a tissue, to a boss who demanded a worker FedEx her mother’s dentures. Are these people for real?? They seem utterly and certifiably insane. I personally voted for the boss who stopped her employee from going on vacation because she said a lot of work was coming his way.

What the F??? That is so freaking messed up it’s not even funny. C’mon people, just for principle’s sake, wouldn’t you tell your boss to blow it up her ass if she pulled that shit? Do you even want to save a job like that? A friend of mine once told me that his boss asked him to come back early from a vacation because the boss couldn’t handle the workload by himself. That is total and utter bullshit, and the sad part is my friend (who is a very nice and agreeable guy) did it. GRRRRRR!!!!!!!

It really just seems like as people go higher up the corporate ladder, the more emotionally unintelligent they become. They become power-trippy assholes who forget how to interact with people below them, or simply don’t care to learn.

Am I going to start losing IQ points when I get to a level in my career where I’m managing people? I once heard that Eskimos, or some type of aboriginal people, used to send their old people off on an iceberg because they were no longer useful to society. It sounds ultra-cruel, but maybe there’s a way we can translate that to the corporate world. Once a manager is deemed incompetent, he or she should be sent off to exile to a cube at the other end of the floor where he is thrown “projects in the pipeline”—i.e, those projects that are basically the equivalent of pork barrel, which seem important but are really just meant to keep people looking busy without actually making any progress (like most of the projects the Pointy-Haired Boss assigns Dilbert).

Right now the only thing keeping me going is my trip to Hawaii. Six weeks and counting….

Who’s the most toxic boss you’ve ever had?