TV IS EVIL: SUPERSTAR USA

they may have to create a new concentric circle of hell for this

I admit. I watched WB's Superstar USA. For those of you who've avoided the WB (and for good reason, Angel excepted), here's the deal: this is American Idol inverted. They are out to find to worst singers but they're fooling people into thinking they're good. Just like AI, they audition thousands and whittle down through the ranks until they end up with a squad of truly, terrible singers who all think they're the next La Toya Fantasia.

Give WB credit for shamelessly boosting every detail from Idol they could milk. They don't only find a Ryan Seacrest look/sound-alike with host Brian McFayden; they don't only duplicate the gender/racial mix of judges with Briggs, Vitamin C and Tone Loc; they also copy down every production detail they can find. The dialogue is straight scripted from Idol, to the point where they're practically indistinguishable. All you needed was to give Briggs a British accent to complete the cloning process.

The audition process was hilarious though not necessarily any more outrageous that what we saw in the early weeks of Idol. One exception (besides the woman who took off her clothes) was Ros, the most androngynous person on TV since SNL's Pat. I hate to do this to a fellow Asian, but Ros had me cross-eyed trying to ascertain his gender. Crazy bizarre.

It's a little early to determine if this show is going to prove more enjoyable than the cruel hoax it is premised on but strangely, what makes the show compelling at this early point is not the joke about how bad the singers are but how long it will take people to figure out they're the butt of this all. After all, it's one thing to think that you've got the touch but even bad singers should be able to notice how truly horrible everyone around them is. Or so you'd think.

Eh...forget Superstar USA. The realness is right here. Will Hung refuses to die.

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ELSEWHERE

Chris Ryan is a force of fucking nature right now. He cannot be stopped with his b-ball blog. This is from his latest missive:

" I hope Kobe averages 47 a game and breaks up Doug Christie's marriage. I hope Shaq and Mailman play ping pong with Brad Miller's head and feed his remains to Malone's pet cougar. I hope Gary Payton rediscovers his early-90's mojo and starts tossing Spiderman alley-oop's to Devan George who will be mimicking the Skinny-yet-Muscular-era Shawn Kemp."

Chris, you killing 'em!

More Kings hate is coming from Fitted Sweats:

"The Maloof Brothers -- Which one of you is the fat one who has the bad Wham! haircut? Oh, never mind, I will just pull out my stack of men's magazines, in which, every other issue has a great 3700-word piece on you crazy nuts. "Oh, it's the wacky Maloof show." From New Mexico to Vegas to Sacto. Three shittier parts of the U.S. would be difficult to find. P.S. you guys have never won shit. Your life is a Farrelly movie minus the humor. P.S. The Farrelly Brothers have fallen the fuck off."

Damn, and all this time, I thought I was on the wrong side of history for disliking the Kings too. Ha ha, everyone hates them!

Anyone want to explain WTF this week's Sopranos' dream sequence was about, please let me know. For a moment, I was expecting Dale Cooper to drop in, talking about black coffee and cherry pie.

These dudes update their site every once in a blue moon but when they do, the Gossiping Bitches kill it. This time, it's Fake Thug Court, aka Evaluating the new Tupacs.
(credit: Catchdubs.com)

American Idol: do your votes even count?
(credit: Different Kitchen)