Thou shalt not worship false American Idols...

I was forced to watch the American Idol finale the other night by my best friends who are complete junkies. I fear for their IQ's having subjected themselves to an entire season of bad singing and cheesy performances and memorizing every detail of these performers' lives. But as someone who knows his share of random trivia and can tell you everything about the history of comic books, I won't pass judgment on them. I understand the appeal.

People like pop music. People like competition. But who knew that people liked to vote? 65 million votes were cast for the finale and while plenty were probably repeat voters, the number is still very shocking. It turns out America will vote as long as it's on television and they don't need to leave the house. This lazy democracy is frustrating considering only about 33 million people voted for the last president. But that was before American Idol.

Now this glorified talent contest has given America the voting bug. We need to gather up the American Idols and get them to do some PSA's about the importance of voting. While I know many of the Idol voters are probably 13 year old girls, those who are allowed to vote just might do so because Kelly Clarkson, or that fat guy who lost to Clay Aitken but didn't, told them to.

The evolution of the American Idol these last few years bodes well for the country in my eyes. I've read plenty of articles decrying this last season as a waste, that the votes went to America's favorite personality or cutest dreamy boy while true talented is voted off (what little talent they were able to dig up for this season). I watched the first episode of the competition (nothing else was on, even Law and Order was pre-empted for some sporting event or something) and I marveled at how extraordinarily awful all but a few seemed.

But after seeing the end result, Fantasia, the newest American Idol who won Wednesday night, might be the most deserving of idolatry. First we have Kelly Clarkson, a perfectly sweet white girl with slightly big hips, win. Next year a heavy-set African American guy takes the competition, though America has warmed up more to his big, gayish white runner-up. And this year we have a 19-year old African American single mother.

Unlike the others who got their dreams of making it big in the music biz (in a sense), she got her dream of being able to give her daughter all the things she deserves, like good schools and a decent future. That's what this contest is about now: opportunity. Fantasia is as a true a representation of America as we could have voted for, someone these kids should be idolizing. And just think of the juicy tell-all book her daughter will undoubtedly publish. Ah, democracy! How you satiate both my pride and voyeurism!

Who needs a Zen garden, I've got a desktop fountain...

My artistic director and boss at The Pearl recently went on a trip tp Arizona to visit family and he came back with gifts for everyone in the office. Well, "gift" is more descriptive because we all received the same thing. A desktop tranquility fountain. I received the sort pictured on the left, pompously entitled "Steps," as if it were a long-forgotten work of the masters. The polyresin plastic of the fountain tries its best to simulate a craggy rock in the shape of a staircase.

I like to pretend the stairs were formed from a million years of trickling water flowing down the hardened face of a majestic cliff, depositing it's cargo of minerals and silt into the freshwater oasis in the middle of a steamy, desolate Arizona desert. It's a very tranquil picture.

But there is a small problem with this picture- it doesn't truly trickle, that is to say that I can't hear it. Instead I hear the faint hum of the fountains motor, a quiet hum in the back of my mind throughout the day. And yet I find this buzz even more peaceful than the make-believe picture in my head. What does that say about me? I find comfort in the constant frequency of the man-made. Flowing water is all well and good to look at, but the sound gives it life. It's the same reason why I keep the TV humming away when I'm alone without any intention of watching it or why the eerie quiet of a rural nighttime campout makes me feel uneasy. I think living with the incessant background music of electricity helps me to relax, knowing I'm connected to a million others all around me at any given moment in the city. I would go crazy living with pygmies or, even worse, those terrible Survivor contestants.

A friend once told me that if you asked a random sample of people to hum a single note and hold it, they would all fall within a very small area of the musical scale. That musical constant in everyone's head is exactly the same as the hum produced by the flow electricity. It's everywhere and it connects us all. I find that thought to be very tranquil indeed.

And to think, all that from a small plastic tchotchke found only in the Arizona desert or one small factory in China.

I spent all evening staring at a uni-brow for nothing...

Last night, Stephen and I tried to do something we very rarely can find the strength to do- watch a movie. It isn't the staring at the TV for an extended period that we have trouble with. We never have a problem watching that lovable scamp Aaron Brown or the whimsical antics of Tony Soprano. And it isn't that we don't have access to quality DVD material. We are currently on a quest to watch every Buffy episode in order and making slow but steady progress at it too.

The real problem is Netflix. Netflix is a great idea for many people. Fixed monthly rate for as many movies you can watch, three at a time, with no shipping cost. Ingenious!

But what they don't tell you about it the darkside of Netflix. The pressure to watch enough movies each month to get your money's worth. The agony you experience each and every night you tell yourself "I'll finally get around to watching Love Story tomorrow night" only to realize you've deluded yourself again. The guilt felt when you realize that you've sent and received 6 movies and still haven't touched Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. The anxiety over how to predict that you'll have Soapdish when you are in the mood to watch Soapdish, rather than Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It's an emotional rollercoaster every time I glance at the DVD player. How can such an unassuming thin red sleeve bring such strife?

But each month we try to overcome our own Netflix insecurities and get through the chore of home entertainment. So last night we committed to watching Frida, after having it in our house since the end of March. An hour and 45 minutes into the movie, the picture froze. All attempts to clean the disc failed because there was a crack in the DVD- our efforts to overcome the pressure thwarted by defective merchandise!

I felt too silly to call and complain about the disc. "You know that DVD you sent us two months ago? Well it turns out it was broken." Just too embarrassing. But the website made it easy; no questions asked, they're sending a replacement of Frida. Just told them it's broken and sent it back. No judgmental comments, no disappointed sighs. Maybe Mr. Netflix wasn't sitting in his giant movie library laughing at us between his viewings of Dunston Checks In and My Fair Lady: Special Edition. Perhaps we aren't wasting money by not using Netflix effectively; instead we should concentrate on paying for the convenience. Maybe we've placed unrealistic movie expectations on ourselves. Maybe we'll get around to watching the last half hour of Frida sometime in August. And that'll be okay.

The sky is green, yeah, that's the ticket...

The President fell off his bike this past weekend and suffered a few minor cuts at his Crawford ranch. Now I'm not going to make the obvious jokes about how he though being President was as easy as riding a bike or about how his training wheels must have just been taken off. I'll leave that to Kerry. What I did find interesting was the statement his White House spokesperson gave about the incident.

"It's been raining a lot and the topsoil is loose," the spokesman said. "You know this president. He likes to go all out. Suffice it to say he wasn't whistling show tunes."

As a person who is often found to be whistling showtunes, I found this a bit offensive, especially considering I have been known to do so when riding a bike, and I've never fallen off as a result of it.

Regardless, the important thing is that the statement is a lie. It has NOT been raining a lot! A quick search shows that it hasn't rained in weeks and it's been in the very high 80s to 90s every day last week. I don't care if the president is too much of a moron to ride a bike. And if he needs to make himself out to be a manly man (like me!) even when he fails to accomplish what a 5 year old can often do, then fine. But they can't leave it there. They have to lie about it.

They lie about the weather!!!

When you lie about the weather, it's a sure sign that you have a compulsive lying disorder. The president needs to take time off, not to go "all out" at Crawford, but to get professional help. Say about four years worth.

Hold my purse while I hammer this nail...

If any of you have ever been to our apartment building you know it's quite the fixer-upper. In the past two years that we've lived there, we have focused our (read: my boyfriend's) significant talents on improving the interior with painting walls, shalacking holes, and installing spice racks. We've made the apartment much more livable and will leave it in better condition than we found it for sure. But yesterday afternoon, we trained our (read: Stephen's) considerable aesthetic on the outside of the building with a little gardening.

We went to a nursery and picked out some purple and white petunias and a rubber plant (for inside). We also purchased some lovely window boxes that seemed easy enough to throw over our sills. Unfortunately, we arrived at home we found that there was going to have to be some intense drilling of screws through brick. And here we just wanted to plant some pretty flowers.

Now you might say to yourself, "Matthew gardening? No big stretch. I can picture the oversized straw hat and frilly apron already." That's where you would be wrong. In a shock to all of your gender-stereotyping, I left the planting and potting to little girlie Stephen. We can't get his delicate hands dirty. I took to the power tools! With a few massive drill bits, a hammer, a chisel and my ingenious technical skills I screwed the flower boxes right into the brick front of the apartment. It was difficult and sweaty work. Stephen remarked I was a regular Bob Villa, if Bob Villa wore Banana and sang the score to Gypsy while he worked.

Luckily, when I did try to assist in the potting of the flowers, the testosterone was still flowing (I can only produce so much per week). We had to use a neighbor's potting soil to fill a few supplemental pots as we had way too many petunias to plant. This half used bag of soil was a little old and dry, but we figured it was better than nothing. Being on my macho high, I grabbed the soil with my bare hands and filled the pot. A couple of fistfuls later, I reached into the bag and felt what seemed like a crinkly leaf. Good mulch, I guess, that'll do. And I pulled out a dirty, deflated mouse!

Did I scream like a little girl? Did I run and cry in my boyfriend's arms? No. Perhaps because this corpse was much more appealing than last week's rodent encounter, I was able to compose myself and shield Stephen from the horror. "Look away, this is no place for a person of your level of sensitivity," I demanded while I disposed of the body.

Power tools, dead creatures, protecting my better half. Very manly exercises for a very manly man. Grrr.

But tonight I think I'll bake a quiche.