WHY OUR SOCIETY IS DOOMED (Part Two of a Continuing Series)

In addition to the constant media presence of William “She Bangs, She Bangs” Hung, itself proof of a coming apocalypse, now I have to deal with the fact that Friends, Frasier, The Practice and Angel are ending. Enter The Simple Life 2, The Swan, I Want a Famous Face, Extreme Makeover and, my personal favorite, Superstar USA.

What’s Superstar USA, you might ask? This show is loosely inspired by American Idol: people audition to be America’s next big name in pop music, but here’s the twist—they send the good singers home, and keep the awful ones. Then, they tell the inescapably untalented ones that they’re amazing and then force them to compete against each other.

What is this, some real-life, adult version of Heathers? It reminds me of the time in camp when a girl in my bunk—let’s call her “Bitch,” because I did—told me that it was her voice on a tape of the song “Tom’s Diner” (since it was a cappella and I had never heard of Suzanne Vega, I had no reason to do anything other than take her at her word). Then she tricked me into singing for her (“Heaven” by Bryan Adams), told me I was really great, almost as good as she was, and then ran off giggling and pointing as she made fun of me in front of her friends. Someone eventually clued me in, but obviously, Bitch never apologized, and I entered a decade of having a complex about my singing voice that I only managed to overcome by embracing a karaoke lifestyle and competing in front of indie thespian Liev Schreiber at a bar on the Upper East Side. But I digress.

The ending of these stalwart shows can only mean that we should forget about companionship, mental health, law and ridding the world of evil, and focus instead on making ourselves over from the outside so we more closely resemble socialite thoroughbreds, and then we can all prey on the congenitally gullible—once we’ve given them our approval, we’ll yank it out from under them. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Coming right up…one apocalypse, with a side of Bitch.

WHY OUR SOCIETY IS DOOMED (Part Two of a Continuing Series)

In addition to the constant media presence of William “She Bangs, She Bangs” Hung, itself proof of a coming apocalypse, now I have to deal with the fact that Friends, Frasier, The Practice and Angel are ending. Enter The Simple Life 2, The Swan, I Want a Famous Face, Extreme Makeover and, my personal favorite, Superstar USA.

What’s Superstar USA, you might ask? This show is loosely inspired by American Idol: people audition to be America’s next big name in pop music, but here’s the twist—they send the good singers home, and keep the awful ones. Then, they tell the inescapably untalented ones that they’re amazing and then force them to compete against each other.

What is this, some real-life, adult version of Heathers? It reminds me of the time in camp when a girl in my bunk—let’s call her “Bitch,” because I did—told me that it was her voice on a tape of the song “Tom’s Diner” (since it was a cappella and I had never heard of Suzanne Vega, I had no reason to do anything other than take her at her word). Then she tricked me into singing for her (“Heaven” by Bryan Adams), told me I was really great, almost as good as she was, and then ran off giggling and pointing as she made fun of me in front of her friends. Someone eventually clued me in, but obviously, Bitch never apologized, and I entered a decade of having a complex about my singing voice that I only managed to overcome by embracing a karaoke lifestyle and competing in front of indie thespian Liev Schreiber at a bar on the Upper East Side. But I digress.

The ending of these stalwart shows can only mean that we should forget about companionship, mental health, law and ridding the world of evil, and focus instead on making ourselves over from the outside so we more closely resemble socialite thoroughbreds, and then we can all prey on the congenitally gullible—once we’ve given them our approval, we’ll yank it out from under them. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Coming right up…one apocalypse, with a side of Bitch.