I have yet to watch a single episode of Idol.
That's where it started for me, lo, what seems like so many years ago, now, when the show that put the names Randy, Paula and Simon front and center in our daily water cooler conversations first came along and put the names Randy, Paula and Simon front and center in our daily water cooler conversations.
And even though my radio work makes keeping up with what's going on in the pop culture an inevitability, I still wasn't particularly attracted, or addicted as the case may be, to the weekly coronations disguised as competition.
For pretty much the same reason that I have lost all interest after a few seasons, a few seasons ago, of actually tuning in, paying attention and, in the privacy of my own flat screened flat, doing the occasional, clandestine, rooting for this Lambert or that Archuleta, sprinkled, now and then, with the begrudging acknowledgment that Bowersox had some game, even if that game, when scratched, revealed more love child of Joplin and Etheridge than it did legitimate heir to any throne of originality....
...I've never had much use for being a spectator at popularity contests.
Put a sing off between two stunning singing talents in front of me and I can be as enraptured as the next guy.
Put twenty four people in front of me and ask me to watch the weekly whittling away as they "interpret", depending on week and producer's whims, the collected works of Green Day, Motown and/or John, Paul, George and Ringo and my remote finger is automatically going to move me from the premises in search of yet another viewing of Ziva trying to keep McGee, DiNozzo and Leroy Jethro from killing Ari in retribution for his sniper snuffing of Kate.
Add to that the knowledge that while the fate of any one or all of the aforementioned "interpreters", in theory, is in the hands of two "judges' du jour...and Randy...but, is, in fact, in the hands of feverish pre pubescent females who would likely overwhelmingly endorse Bieber for the Kennedy Center Honors and I find myself less interested in the outcome than I am yet another viewing of Gibbs and company avenging Agent Todd.
Judges, in any legitimate competition, usually possess some expertise in the category of activity, product, et al they are being charged with reviewing and rewarding or rejecting.
Judges, in popularity contests, on the other hand, need possess nothing more than an opinion and/or obsession and the means to register their opinion and/or obsession on the tally sheet.
The means, in this case, of course, being the letter keys of cell phones being played with indescribable virtuosity by the aforementioned feverish pre pubescent females who would likely overwhelmingly endorse Bieber for the Kennedy Center Honors.
Like I said, I've returned to keeping a minimal eye on what's going on for the purposes of being able to talk about it on the air couple of times a week.
Other than that, I'm way more N.C.I.S than A.I.
That said, no doubt about it, to each his own.
It's a free country and we're all free to enjoy our chosen cup of tea.
What I do still enjoy, though, is the surprise.
More to the point, the surprise of being surprised that people are still surprised.
As they apparently were this past week when Pia was sent packing.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/SHOWBIZ/TV/04/08/pia.eliminated.american.idol/index.html?hpt=T2
Being good at what you do is, undeniably, a quality to be admired, even rewarded.
Idol long ago stopped being about kids being rewarded for being good at what they do, if, in fact, it was ever really about that in the first place.
And if my two cents isn't currency you recognize, just ask Bowersox...or Adam Lambert...or whoever that Taylor Hicks beat that season.
Or any really smart, bright, talented youngster who didn't get to sit at the cool kids table.
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