You're awesome!

All right. Recently, I made a big mistake. Someone on a music forum posted a question that asked, "My music is really good and I'm a super talented musician. I can't get motivated to make music because I feel the music industry is evil."



Admiral Ackbar told me it was a trap, but sometimes you have to fire up the Falcon and zoom in. I listened to the guy's music and it was just as I feared: Horrible. Not horrible in the way that the guy couldn't play or hold a tune, horrible in the Huey Lewis and the News kind of bad, but not even that good... actually quite a bit less good. A lot lamer than Huey Lewis. That's bad.

My response was "The world is glutted with people like Aimee Mann doing exactly what you're doing but having a hard time selling albums. If commercial gain has to be a motivation for you you might want to consider dropping music. If you can do it for the love of doing it then maybe you'll find success and if not at least you'll have artistic fulfillment."

Of course I got attacked. I was obviously a "wet blanket" and pissing all over this guy's dream. Actually the response was about 50/50 with those yelling at me and those commending me. It did get me to thinking:

How the hell did this piece of crap get the idea that he was awesome?

It's a pandemic. Hoards of idiots with no self awareness line up to audition for American Idol. People walk around thinking they're special for no reason at all. It's like some zombie movie. NIGHT OF THE LIVING ENTITLED. "Put me on TV! I'm AWESOME!"

Where the hell did this all get started? One could blame Paris Hilton, someone famous for nothing, but I fear that she's a symptom of a bigger problem like a sore on your genitals. There's a deeper issue at hand.

When I was in high school, I started to see it happening. Teachers like Anita Dowd were openly telling students that they're horrible work was amazing. I was stunned that it seemed like no one could do any wrong. I got up and left a senior level English class after being handed a ditto (yeah, I'm that old) about the difference between "good" and "well." I got up, handed the teacher the ditto back and said, "If you're a senior in high school and you do not know the difference between good and well you should kill yourself." A few months later I dropped out of high school. (that teacher never sent a single cut slip down for me) I'm really glad I did. It got worse. My mom, a public school teacher has been reprimanded for raising her voice to students who would not quiet down in class. Now everyone gets a participation trophy. We're all special little snowflakes! Unique and beautiful in the world!

... and this is why the idiot in front of me at the grocery store is taking 15 minutes to decide what kind of cigarettes she should get, because she is super awesome and everyone should just wait in quiet reverence. She knows she's awesome because her mom told her so (probably to make up for the fact that her dad cut out on them before she was born) and her teachers continued to tell her that. She's also angry because employers can't see the blinding light of awesome she is. She will go home and tell her friends how she should be on American Idol and they'd all agree that they'd all win if they could figure out when the auditions were.

So here we are in America having our butts handed to us by countries like Korea and India who actually have standards. HERE YE HERE YE! When I am KING this shit's gonna CHANGE. School won't be mandatory, but if you attend you'll find yourself out on your ass if you're not school material. Until robot technology is up to par we could use to to pick crops and all the other jobs that we currently use imported slave labor to do. Think you're too good for menial labor? Think again. The king's got floors to clean so my message to people who do not know the difference between "good" and "well" is that those floors have your name on it so get ready to mop. Don't like the mop? Start hitting the books.

Oh yeah, and if I ever come across someone performing with less talent than Huey Lewis I shall force them to perform the entire Huey Lewis and the News catalog with kazoos.. out of their asses. On live national TV! Now that'll be an awesome show...