American Idol: My Conclusions

So I'm sitting in the chair, and this girl is shaving the sides of my head, and... oh yeah before I go any further and you get the wrong idea, I was getting my hair cut.

I'm sitting there, she's shaving away, there's buzzing in my ears, but I hear this faint familiar melody on the radio. I listen closer, and... Could it be? Yes, they have already released Kelly Clarkson's single for rotation at the radio stations. Now, what does this mean? It means, somewhere in hell, in the same place where they keep the seven trillion lame ass Rams 2002 Super Bowl Champion hats and sweatshirts there are 246 million cd's that contain a single track: Justin Guarini singing the newest addition to the Wedding Singer's Repertoire: Moment Like This. Sucker!

So I've listened to some other people, I read what Dawn had to say, and overall I'm happy with the way things turned out. I'm glad Kelly won, glad Justin lost (he took it so well because he knew she was better than him and in what I hope doesn't become a trend, dealt with the fact that women are better than men at some things [like having babies and baking pie kidding]), and glad I watched. I don't know what sucked me in. The only other reality TV I watched regularly was the Osbournes, and that's cause Ozzie rocks. "Mrurrurrurrrrfuckinbastardrrrrmmr," says the Oz Man.

It's hard to make it in the music industry. I did college radio for a while and I saw the trash that came in, and I helped throw it out by the dumpster full. I admit some of it never even got listened too, but who can listen to all that music anyway? The point is that Kelly Clarkson and a bunch of other kids who never would have seen the inside of the Kodak Theater if not for this show got a chance. It's the American Way. You may not like the show, you may not think the talent was that good, you might have hated the writing and the songs, but in the end it was a painless way to spend your Tuesday and Wednesday nights without having to think about all the messed up shit going on in the world. We were taken to a place where we could argue about who dressed better, who was hotter, and which contestant should have their vocal chords ripped out and replaced with a tape recorder playing nothing but the Hansen’s on repeat until they had to slit their own throat for relief. Well, maybe not that last one, but you know what I mean. We got to watch as some run of the mill average Americans made their mark on the world. The terrorists may hate us for our cultural hegemony, the kitsch we spread throughout the world, but hey, give me a break. This one came from England; we just made it better. And at least we didn't kill anyone.

Oh well. In the end, it's all subjective. I enjoyed it, you may not have. All I have to say is: Kelly Clarkson, email me!