'They're gonna make a big star out of me!'

Coming out of that dirty Depression in the late 1930s a skinny kid from Hoboken, NJ took a trip to the Big Apple to appear on a popular radio show known as Major Bowes Amateur Hour. “Hey, this kid is good,” was the opinion of the good Major and others. “Voice like crushed velvet, he has, he has.” Thus was born, after a few glitches along the way to stardom, Mr. Francis Albert Sinatra as a major legend in the music and acting biz. It might be added that Frankie, for all his flaws (and they were legendary) was also the possessor of a massive talent.

Some have suggested that a thing called American Idol is the natural successor to the old Major Bowes gig. Maybe it is. Likely it’s not. I am in no position to judge since I have never actually watched it. I have no intention of altering that impulse to avoid it with gritty determination. Even the name is offensive. These are not 'idols'. It's an insult to the word idol much in the same manner that the term icon is regular defiled and cheapened when applied to some bozo or bozette who is the farthest thing from either an idol or an icon.

I am wary of fads. I am especially wary of fads that exploit a bunch of either moderately talented, or not-talented-at all kids in the name of offering them vain hope that they will become another Sinatra or, (gag) Celine Dion. Actually, I think it’s more (double-gag) Michael Bolton than Sinatra, with the odd bit of rap fakery thrown in.

So, as I say, I have never seen AI in its entirely, but you can’t miss the %$#&* thing even if you wanted to. It clutters up TV scheduling; it runs promo trailers every 10 minutes, or it comes in at the tail end of the hour immediately before something I actually want to watch, so I catch a bit of it despite my resolve to commitedly stay away.

What I do see is a so-called panel of really, really obnoxious pseudo-celebrities who have no particular acumen to judge ability in a performer, making smarmy, nasty, or downright cruel (who is this Simon Cowell prick, anyway?) judgmental cracks to kids with stars in their eyes and hope in their hearts that they are gonna be ‘big stars.’ One might ask, considering the pathetic natures of Britney and Lindsay, do you really, really wanna be a star?

So, do I blame the kids who appear on AI? Not a bit of it. Some of them might be quite good. Who knows, there might even appear a genuine talent some day. By the way, if you want to see ‘real’ talent, just watch a tape of early James Brown in performance and you’ll feel the hairs rise up on the back of your neck. And maybe there will be another James Brown to come down the pike. Maybe there will be another Aretha or Streisand. Probably not.

But, what a process to get there. And what a crass and vulgar bit of exploitation is visited on us all in the name of hideous commercialism and maybe some scanty reward for a few, rare, circus performers in this mix.

Say – that felt good. I haven’t indulged in a blogging rant for a long time. Now I can face my day. Say, maybe I want to be a star, too. Maybe I want to be Lewis Black.