Our old housemate Tom had a subscription to Sports Illustrated when he lived with us. I'm sure he still does, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, there was a feature called "This Week's Sign of the Apocalypse" It was usually a slightly humorous view on some minor sports happening that was twisted around til it seemed way more important than it actually was. If tonight's game falls in favor of the Ducks and they sweep, I'm sure that would be a sign of the apocalypse. Now after all that rambling I'm sure you're wondering why I actually brought this up...or I lost you several sentences ago and you never actually cared. Either way, I saw, and in this case heard, a sign of the apocalypse. My wife and other seemingly bright people that I know are obsessed with this reality crap that is American Idol. From the small examples that I've been forced to see and hear, I call it Bad American Karaoke or Small Town American High School Musical Tryouts. Either way it was that show that is going to bring about the end of the world. Every week apparently they have some sort of theme that the "contestants" pick their songs from to slaughter that week. This week's theme was Billy Joel songs.

Billy Joel has long since been one of my favorite artists and one I've been particularly envious of, simply because of his piano abilities. (of course, there was Christie Brinkley, but that's another story). I can't actually blame Billy. He ran into the same situation that landed Richard Harris into the world of Harry Potter. However, I don't know if he knew just how badly his songs were going to be mangled. Beautifully arranged piano songs were turned into synthesized pieces of pop crap. Detractors of Joel have claimed for years that he just churned out whatever bubble gum pop music was popular at the moment, but even they would have to give the edge to American Idol for single handedly ruining most people's sense of tone and pitch. And if Randy Jackson says "Dog" one more time I'm going to...do absolutely nothing because taking action would mean that I gave a rat's ass about what actually happened on that show. In fact, the space I've given them here is already too much.