It
was really down to the wire for Spaghetti and the Meatball. Onstage, Clay
Aiken and Ruben Studdard stood nervously side by side in a battle of the
sexes: the two remaining vocalists on Fox's American Idol II.
And what a fantastical competition it had been! All season long, audiences were
subjected to all manner of disjointed sounds, strangled groans, high-sonic stilettos
and trivial screeches with little or no actual weight. Flat, inflectionless dry-heaves,
car alarms and repetitive dog barks warped by whiskey competed against squawky,
would-be divas smothering even the simplest of lyrics with overarching
vocal gymnastics in a desperate attempt to curry the favor of skeptical judges.
People who watched the show at full volume regularly ran the risk of blindness
and severe hearing impairment, and one by one only the "lesser" candidates
were summarily dispatched without further opportunity to clear their clotted throats
of rumbling phlegm. That is, if you suspended your disbelief long enough to pretend
there was ever an actual gradation among the dwindling talent pool.
Journalists
and fans had been fawning over Aiken's likeable awkwardness and aw-shucks-gee-whiz
candor for weeks. Entertainment reporters gushed about Aiken's lily-white appearance,
his breezy approachability, and his modestly charming (yet humorously self-effacing)
personality in such glowing terms that he seemed the only logical choice
for a pop music franchise.
Also in his favor was a spontaneous mid-season makeover: a cliched transformation
from "geek to chic," performed with the laser precision of a battery
of metrosexual stylists. His dirty brown tips were frosted bronzy-reddish-blonde
and given a sharp, gelatinous spike. They took away his faggy collared shirts
and replaced them with cotton crew necks and a pearly white Don Johnson blazer.
Two colored contact lenses later, he was good to go.
His
opponent, Ruben "Sumo of Soul" Studdard, was a 350-pound African-American
from Alabama. His health and well-being were constantly called into question,
and the "fat factor" became an increasing priority with recording
executive Clive Davis. "He sometimes can be terribly lethargic," one
insider remarked. "He moves slow." Clive knew the dangers Ruben faced
if he didn't get his weight in order. Throughout nearly every performance, Ruben
mopped the flop sweat from his streaked cheeks and let loose with flying spit
during a particularly wheezy rendition of Baby I Need Your Lovin'. Talk
about your American Idle. You could put a red shirt on this guy and holler HEY,
KOOL-AID. Let's get the inside scoop on Ruben from the scintillating interview
available on his Web site.
Q: Do you have a job?
A: No.
Q: What was your most embarrassing moment?
A: None.
Q: What would people be surprised to learn about you?
A: Nothing.
Needless to say, when Ruben actually won the show, whitey-white folks
from coast to coast just plain froze in disbelief, aghast and agog with
palpable racism. B-but Clay's so skinny! He's fresh-faced and cute! He belts
them out like a poor man's Rick Astley! Little girls sobbed. Clay's own
family screamed and cringed. Meanwhile, black folks reacted like they did to
the Simpson verdict: cheering, hugging one another, jumping up and down and
crying because they were just so happy. Fans flooded the FCC with clamoring
cries to investigate. So what happened?
What caused this tremendous upset? Jury rigging? Phone-vote tampering?
Not exactly. Ruben plugged directly into that time-honored hybrid: his look
and feel invoked traditional, huggable thug-life daydreams often contemplated
by sanitized, suburban wiggers. His sound was clearly inspired by the soulful,
I-promise-to-never-hit-you-again-baby strains of MoTown.
Plus he's obese, for Christ's sake. If that doesn't get win a sympathy
vote from the one-in-three overweight Americans parked in front of their
plasma screens, what will? Fat's where it's at, ladies and germs. Thin's a sin.
As long as a linebacker like Ruben remained an economically viable option, there
was no way in hell Americans would ever select a mincing, prancing little
nelly like Clay Aiken to be their idol.
Clay poked through the hole of glory on the ever popular asexual leprechaun
ticket. He's a My Pretty Pony whose devout southern Baptist beliefs masquerade
as mainstream pop music, and his album Measure of a Man suggests little
more than a thumb and forefinger held two inches apart. People are too busy
marveling at the wonders of a pint-sized pretty boy with an impossibly resonant
singing voice to remember that Jim Neighbors (aka Gomer Pyle) falls well
within the same category. Whenever either one opens his mouth to sing, stand
back¡ªhe's probably after your lucky charms.
Aiken has tapped into an audience by and large ignored by the music industry:
middle class, Pilates-loving Christian moms who can't handle references to sex,
drugs or explicit content. On the cover of Rolling Stone, Aiken wore
his trademarked, impish smirk and a What Would Jesus Do bracelet. Time
magazine reports of Clay's ongoing struggle with RCA to keep his videos and
music squeaky clean.
But
such a lad isn't completely impervious to scandal. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) wants Aiken to apologize for disparaging remarks he
made about kitty cats during an interview with Rolling Stone.
"I think cats are Satan," Aiken said. "There's nothing worse
to me than a house cat. When I was about sixteen, I had a kitten and ran over
it. Seeing that cat die, I actually think that its spirit has haunted me. I
wasn't afraid of cats before. But now they scare me to death."
PETA deals with dozens of cases of cruelty to cats every week, and claims to
know firsthand how damaging statements like Aiken's can be to impressionable
kids eager to mimic what their idols do. The organization promptly mounted a
neuter-your-pets campaign, in which Triumph the Insult Comic Dog references
a castrated, eunuched Clay Aiken.
If Aiken posts a message on his Web site urging pet owners to spay or neuter
their animals, and he grants PETA an exclusive interview, the campaign
tagline will be substituted with Cut 'em off. They don't taste that great
anyway.
Aiken's attorney Roger Widynowski, refused to comment. A representative from
the Virginia-based Dog Balls Coalition (DBC) declined to offer a statement,
but in response to the "outrageous" ad campaign directed at Clay Aiken,
a bean bag manufacturer in Annandale, Virginia has staged a protest by taking
down a web page featuring photos of dogs in overstuffed bean bag chairs.
He interrupted her. Close at hand is a stable where two beautiful ponies are kept. They are snowy white, and are consecrated to the goddess Ku-wanon, the deity of mercy, who is the presiding genius of the temple. They are in the care of a young girl, and it is considered a pious duty to feed them. Pease and beans are for sale outside, and many devotees contribute a few cash for the benefit of the sacred animals. If the poor beasts should eat a quarter of what is offered to them, or, rather, of what is paid for, they would soon die of overfeeding. It is shrewdly suspected that the grain is sold many times over, in consequence of a collusion between the dealers and the keeper of the horses. At all events, the health of the animals is regarded, and it would never do to give them all that is presented. On their return from the garden they stopped at a place where eggs are hatched by artificial heat. They are placed over brick ovens or furnaces, where a gentle heat is kept up, and a man is constantly on watch to see that the fire neither burns too rapidly nor too slowly. A great heat would kill the vitality of the egg by baking it, while if the temperature falls below a certain point, the hatching process does not go on. When the little chicks appear, they are placed under the care of an artificial mother, which consists of a bed of soft down and feathers, with a cover three or four inches above it. This cover has strips of down hanging from it, and touching the bed below, and the chickens nestle there quite safe from outside cold. The Chinese have practised this artificial hatching and rearing for thousands of years, and relieved the hens of a great deal of the monotony of life. He would not have it in the scabbard, and when I laid it naked in his hand he kissed the hilt. Charlotte sent Gholson for Ned Ferry. Glancing from the window, I noticed that for some better convenience our scouts had left the grove, and the prisoners had been marched in and huddled close to the veranda-steps, under their heavy marching-guard of Louisianians. One of the blue-coats called up to me softly: "Dying--really?" He turned to his fellows--"Boys, Captain's dying." Assuming an air of having forgotten all about Dick¡¯s rhyme, he went to his place in the seat behind Jeff and the instant his safety belt was snapped Jeff signaled to a farmer who had come over to investigate and satisfy himself that the airplane had legitimate business there; the farmer kicked the stones used as chocks from under the landing tires and Jeff opened up the throttle. ¡°Yes,¡± Dick supplemented Larry¡¯s new point. ¡°Another thing, Sandy, that doesn¡¯t explain why he¡¯d take three boys and fly a ship he could never use on water¡ªwith an amphibian right here.¡± Should you leave me too, O my faithless ladie? And years of remorse and despair been your fate, That night was a purging. From thenceforward Reuben was to press on straight to his goal, with no more slackenings or diversions. "Is that you, Robin?" said a soft voice; and a female face was seen peeping half way down the stairs. HoMElãñÔóÂÜÀ³ó
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It
was really down to the wire for Spaghetti and the Meatball. Onstage, Clay
Aiken and Ruben Studdard stood nervously side by side in a battle of the
sexes: the two remaining vocalists on Fox's American Idol II.
Journalists
and fans had been fawning over Aiken's likeable awkwardness and aw-shucks-gee-whiz
candor for weeks. Entertainment reporters gushed about Aiken's lily-white appearance,
his breezy approachability, and his modestly charming (yet humorously self-effacing)
personality in such glowing terms that he seemed the only logical choice
for a pop music franchise.
His
opponent, Ruben "Sumo of Soul" Studdard, was a 350-pound African-American
from Alabama. His health and well-being were constantly called into question,
and the "fat factor" became an increasing priority with recording
executive Clive Davis. "He sometimes can be terribly lethargic," one
insider remarked. "He moves slow." Clive knew the dangers Ruben faced
if he didn't get his weight in order. Throughout nearly every performance, Ruben
mopped the flop sweat from his streaked cheeks and let loose with flying spit
during a particularly wheezy rendition of Baby I Need Your Lovin'. Talk
about your American Idle. You could put a red shirt on this guy and holler HEY,
KOOL-AID. Let's get the inside scoop on Ruben from the scintillating interview
available on his Web site.
happened?
What caused this tremendous upset? Jury rigging? Phone-vote tampering?
But
such a lad isn't completely impervious to scandal.