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Friday, June 03, 2005

Decline of the West





When I first got whiff of American Idol, I thought -- you know, this is almost it, we've almost reached the nadir of western culture. But I bet if we try, we can go a little lower.

We tried. And low and behold, just when I thought we'd pretty much hit bottom with Dancing With the Stars (all the camp of Strictly Ballroom with none of the irony, and celebrities nobody's ever heard of), along comes the search for a new lead singer for a band nobody cared about before the death of Michael Hutchence, RockStar: INXS.

At first I was going to go with Dancing With the Stars, but it looks like its sheer awfulness might turn the corner into John Waters kitsch. And while I have yet to see RockStar: INXS, it gets extra demerits not only for dancing over a cold corpse, but also for squandering the talents of someone who is genuinely gifted like Dave Navarro, who must have big gambling debts or something to take this gig. Plus we're going to have to hear all that shitty music again.

There are two things the dogs will not tolerate in the house: reality TV or The Factor, so please feel perfectly free to express your opinion and judge the sewage factor of either of these creative endeavors without ever having seen them. And if anyone else's viewing habits are not dictated by a presumptuous dog pack and you think there is something I'm missing that more clearly represents the complete and utter creative and moral bankruptcy of western culture, please feel free to let us know.

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