Just about every day now for the past month, the Richmond Times-Dispatch has kept up with the continuing saga of what would appear to be by far the most important issue of our age. Page after page has been devoted to it. Color photos and professional speculation abound. Indeed, to read this incessant coverage, one could be forgiven for thinking that the very future of the Republic hangs in the balance. What then, is it’s subject? The war in Iraq? The latest shenanigans of the City Council? The continuing list of all the people, animals, historical figures, and desserts that Dick Cheney has shot in the face? Alas, it is in fact about two local guys who are both on American Idol. First off, let me admit that, owing to the fact that I have a life (as well as a Level 73 Barbarian with 18 points invested in Dual Wield), I know virtually nothing about American Idol, save that it appears to feature a bunch of people singing Ricky Martin songs for a panel judges, who, over the course of some weeks decide which of them will receive a recording contract and the privilege of being sacrificed to Meltoroth, Guardian of the Seven Hells, Reaver of Betrayal, and Eater of the Thousand Blintzes of Nabru.
Anyway, two of the guys in the present competition happen to be from Virginia, and since the tongues of humans cannot pronounce their names, I’m just going to call them Chia Head Dude and Death Metal Goatee Guy, in honor of their most salient characteristics. And of course, to whoever is in charge of the Times-Dispatch these days (one fears that it may well be Spanky, Lord of the Mole People, who has recently grown wroth indeed after learning that the Arthur Ashe monument is meant to depict the great tennis star to be honing his Whack-a-Mole skills on all the children of the world) seems to be under the impression that furnishing the people of Richmond with nigh daily updates on the progress of these two guys is the most important thing in the world. Never mind, of course, that anyone who actually cares about this would already have learned it by watching the show. Of course, it may just be the case that they’re doing this out of consideration to all the millions of people who live in caves without decent TV reception and rely wholly upon the Times-Dispatch to furnish them with the latest news concerning the adventures of Chia Head Dude and Death Metal Goatee Guy. In any case, it appears that their progress is a matter of supreme importance.
Now, clearly if a newspaper of such great importance and record is taking the time to give mind-numbing detail to this subject, then much like Transformers and Willard Scott (who also, in case you didn’t know, can transform into a giant robot), there is more here than meets the eye. How much more, of course, remains to be discovered.
Perhaps this is not merely a matter of TV ratings and amateur music talent after all, but rather, unbeknownst to the world, an epic battle of titans, where what ever state’s prime time champion loses shall be sucked into the underworld of pop music Tartarus, where Justin Timberlake sits upon his ebon throne gibbering blasphemously and gnashing his many teeth. If this is true, then it is all well and good that the paper keep us so well informed, not only so that we may know we remain free of such a doom, but so that speculators here in Virginia can rush Northward to Nova and buy up all the land there so that after Maryland loses and sinks beneath the roiling waves we’ll have some serious waterfront property going on.
Or maybe the popularity of the show has something to do with it being far more interesting than most of us know, because in fact all these musical champions have been chosen by the evil Emperor Shang Tsung to fight to the death in his home dimension. That would be kind of cool too, especially if Death Metal Goatee Guy does that finishing move where he pulls of his face and does that flamey skull firebreathing thing on Baraka.
And of course, it could be that the reason for the paper’s interest has nothing to do with the contestants themselves, but rather is related to the fact that the home state of the winner will be awarded a life-sized model of Mount Rushmore composed entirely of corned beef. Which does not sound at all important until one learns that Virginia has now, for some years, been in the grip of a terrible corned beef drought, and with the recent collapse of the Midlothian beef mines and the beef embargo against Iran, the price of submarine sandwiches has threatened to rise to an altogether unacceptable degree.
Or, quite possibly, both Chia Head Dude and Death Metal Goatee Guy are simply the two eldest sons of Spanky, Lord of the Mole People, and having them be contestants of American Idol is merely his way of seeing which one shall prove himself worthy of inheriting Spanky’s vast subterrene empire of eternal shadow in a few years when Spanky retires and goes to live at the Old Underlords Home, where he’ll sit around all day with Sss’kanesh, High Priest of the Lizard Men, Maladon, Last of the Lemurians, and Jimmy Carter.
