If there’s one thing I fear more than being exposed as an utter failure at life after I prove myself to be unsuccessful in the realm of New Years resolutions, it’s the compounding idea that on top of all of that, I’m going to get stuck watching eleventy-gajillion hours of American Idol between now and kingdom come.
I know I’m not the only one out there who finds themselves getting sucked into watching this epic embarrassment of talent across our fair nation, and it no doubt usually starts for each of us in roughly the same way. A girlfriend, boyfriend, BFF, or HTMLFF has a borderline obsession with the show, which results in our being coerced into watching an episode or three so as to not wind up sleeping on the couch or removed from our BFF’s MySpace Top-8 or something even more treacherous. And it all seems so innocent at the time – we moan beforehand, slip in plenty of sighs during the various lulls, and are sure to groan “Thank God that’s finally over!” as the credits finally put an end to Seacrest’s inane chatter, but deep in our subconscious – in places of the mind normally reserved for remembering advertising jingles (“N-E-S-T-L-E-S … Nestle’s makes the very best choc-late!”) and all the birthdays of The Three Stooges (October 5th, June 19th, October 22nd) – an unheralded addiction is already beginning to develop…
It’s easy enough not to pick up on at first, as you randomly catch yourself reminding the other person about Idol Night where you’ll both sit and stuff your faces full of pizza and nachos and laugh about how amazingly talented these people think that they are, even when it’s plain to everyone but their mothers that they have the vocal talents of a rabid wombat who’s been locked in a closet with William Hung. And you know that it’s gone south when you don’t even find yourself feeling the least bit guilty about relentlessly mocking these hopeless failures for being so darned clueless to their ineptitude anymore – it’s like watching a freak show with sporadic, but thankfully infrequent interruptions by a select few who actually do have talents outside of chiseling gum off of the bottoms of desks at the local high school for the rest of their days.
Of course, the trouble is that while it may very well be the freak show that gets us subconsciously hooked, but in only a few seemingly short weeks those hilarious audition shows are behind us and now we’re in for the long haul. You know, when it seems like there are more hours of Idol on in a given week than actual hours in a day, and heaven forbid you dare to take a week off or get yourself sidetracked because catching up is pretty much unpossible without dedicating entire days to Idol catch-up and just as an FYI, most employers don’t exactly consider Idol catch-up to be an acceptable use of sick time.
And I guess the worst part of it is that despite all of the moaning and groaning and attempts to render ourselves deaf in order to reclaim roughly 87 hours of productive time a week while American Idol is on the air, deep down we know all too well that at the end of the day there’s really no escaping this TV show. We’ll watch, we’ll watch some more, we’ll even text our votes each week to the number on the screen, and when it’s all over we’ll gather around the water cooler at work the next day to whine about how Vanessa was robbed or how dreamy Jake looked during his hypnotic trance rendition of Love Me Tender. It’s really all we can do during the 19 weeks that this Simon Fuller creation dominates the airwaves, our brainwaves, and ultimately our lives. Well played, you magnificent bastard…
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a few things that I’d like to get done while I still have control of my own destiny. Sevener out!