Here he is! Your new American Idol!!!

Let’s say you got onto American Idol. What would you do? We are gonna have to make a few assumptions, and here they are: 1) you can sing well enough that you got on the show and 2) you enjoy singing. That’s all. Essentially, you’re just like you now, only instead of being untalented and full of spite and bile, you’re a good singer with an enjoyment of something, dig? Okay. Oh, we need to make one more assumption and that’s that this new season of American Idol, the one you’re on, is somehow still relevant and if you win, you WILL become a very successful recording artist, albeit one that works with Coca Cola and Ford and all that shit, but hey, you’re gonna be singing for a living and that’s better than the shitty job you have now.

Yes, the whole thing is perhaps a little unsavory. While getting onto American Idol is a great opportunity, there’s no doubt that it’s pretty brutal in a lot of ways. You’ll be scrutinized by the world, your appearance will be ridiculed (probably, look at yourself for fucks sake!), your singing will be criticized harshly, you’ll be forced to sing dorky songs with horrendous arrangements and you’ll be constantly judged by three complete dipshits. You’ll have to publically beg America to like you and you’ll be forced into the indentured servitude of doing shitty commercials for the aforementioned Ford Scion and various Coke products. People will speculate that you’re gay, or a little bit too fat. They will, if you proceed onwards, interview your horribly embarrassing parents and your friends and they’ll take a camera crew to the house where you grew up and they’ll exploit every inch of everything that you feel is true and good and genuine about yourself all in the name of revenue. You’ll have to talk to Ryan Seacrest. You’ll watch as the person you’ve always prided yourself on being is reduced to an archetype with questionable (at best) taste in music as you belt out shit like Heard It Through The Grapevine or The Lady In Red. It will not be entirely pleasant.

BUT! You’ll be in LA living in a nice hotel. You’ll be famous. People will want to do nice things for you. Your selection of dicks/vaginas on demand will greatly increase. You’ll have the chance to show the world your talent. You’ll get shit for free. You’ll potentially step ever closer to living the dream of just doing something you like, seeing the world and getting paid for doing nothing more than you’d already do in the shower every day. If you win, or even just do well, you’ll be able to tell everyone in your life that you don’t like to go fuck themselves. You can make as much or as little of your fame as you want once the show is over, meaning that if you decide the limelight’s not for you, you can just not do any touring or recording and you’ll eventually fade back into obscurity. OR you can tour and make records and wind up in crazy hot tub parties with Diddy and Ke$ha and piles and piles of strawberry cocaine. It’s your choice.

So what do you do? Do you try as hard as you can? Do you play the game? Do you show people a really palatable version of yourself and do the interviews and jump through the hoops? Do you really take the criticism to heart and go for it with everything you’ve got? Do you forego sleep and leisure to do everything you can to insure that you’re gonna move forward and give it the best possible try you can?

Or do you just act like yourself, wear the clothes you normally wear, show up, sing the songs you want to sing, not putting any more effort into it than you do with your regular day to day life in the hopes that your “realness” will win over the hearts and minds of America, and generally treat the whole thing like a game?

Or perhaps you actively try to subvert the entire thing, doing things so outrageous, picking such bizarre songs, acting like such a maniac that the show has no choice but to deal with your shenanigans, perhaps forcibly removing you or asking the audience to vote you off? What’s your move? Do you squander the chance of a lifetime because it’s not ideal or do you bust your dick/clam to make the most of it because the ultimate result would be better than right now?

Because when you consider the amount of eggs in your mom’s uterus and the zillions of loads in your dad’s balls (eeew), just getting here, getting born, is like winning the lottery and this place that we all occupy does, indeed feature avenues by which, if you bust your ass, can end in mind boggling success and a life of doing exactly what you want to do. There’s essentially no difference between getting born and going to LA with American Idol. Both offer the chance of insane success and morbid embarrassment and both can be subverted, ignored or squeezed for every precious opportunity. Just being here is pretty fucking exciting. Sure, it’s scary and it sucks a lot of the time and people are cruel and confusion and shittiness abounds on a massive scale. Dickheads like Ryan Seacrest are around every corner being vapidly awesome at collecting money for nothing discernable and self doubt is pervasive and there’s always someone younger, better looking and more talented than you doing exactly what you’re trying to do but just so much better.

But man, what the fuck is the point if you don’t try to give it every single bit of energy you have? This is the only chance you’re ever gonna get at this, this one life, right here that you’re living in. While you sit there in the dark, slowly whacking off over the course of 4 straight hours, you’re literally the youngest and most dynamic that you’ll EVER be again. You’ll be dead soon, and you can definitely subvert existence or ignore it and look back on a life full of bong hits, internet porn, texting and a zillion endless days feeling like a useless shithead. You can. A lot of us will. But that’s gonna be depressing. When you die, wouldn’t it be nice to remember that even if you fucked it all up, at least you did your best to do SOMETHING?

Of course there’s also the argument that if you’re just destined to be a shithead failure, it’s much nicer to just let the current carry you. Fighting only gets you tired, and makes your meat tough and stringy.

Eh, I dunno. I just thought maybe you’d like a little motivation on a blue Monday.

Or not. Fuck it. Who cares?