Want to hear me read this post to you, baby?
I went to put the water on to boil and realized that pretty much every time I enter the kitchen I burst into song. And I blame American Idol. Every time I’m alone in a tiled space I have a new need to compulsively belt out heartwrenching, prize-winning, not quite forgotten eighties balands and stamp and clap anthems. It used to be kitchen ballet, but frankly that’s a dangerous sport.

I was one of those kids put into ballet to try and get them some grace, or at least to try and get them to stop walking into walls and under softballs. But I kind of bailed on ballet - too many skinny, stressed out girls and even more stressed and sad-eyed big girls- and the further I got from the time when I used to practice (or come to class and lie about practicing, actually) the more ridiculous my daily moves got. Dancing is all about doing stuff that looks harder then it is, and stuff that’s harder then it looks, and that’s confusing. I have, on two separate occassions, in the past five years, jumped or run straight into the ceiling. And not because I’m tall.

At least when I came-to the first time my best girlfriends were there (and laughing their asses off, I might add). The second time there was only a very sweet guy from Taiwan who’d been studying museums in Wales, who my friend had picked up like a stray dog at the airport and who I don’t think had ever seen a girl cry before. I don’t mean that as a cultural stereotype or anything, I just mean he sort of waived his hands wild eyed and lost his english-language faculty after i hit the (ridiculously low) ceiling and then hit the ground. Maybe he was just trying to find a polite way to tell be to stop being a big blubbery bouncey-into-ceilings baby.

Today I did an excellent kitchen rendition of Jim Croce’s “Operator” and nobody got hurt.

And it’s definitely American Idol’s influence, even if it’s Canadian Idol that’s all over the TV these days (and my heart.) Um, because it’s only really addictive because American’s do it and make it a huge thing. Seriously, their mass phenomenons make things slightly less cool - we prefer to be into things that fly below the radar - but they confirm what we suspected, that this is indeed worthwhile, since it seems to be worthwhile to seven trillion voters, or whatever. This whole franchise is so ridiculously successful. But I have two suggestions to take it to whole other level.

1: Make an Idol channel. There are lots of speciality channels out there that I don’t care about. Mostly they seem to have to do with fishing or being edgy edgy edgy!! I would care about all Idol all the time. I want to watch every episode from South Africa and Arab Idol and the zillion that have popped up like so many teenybopper zits in between. And if that’s not enough footage they could show all the auditions. Because what could be better for world peace and stuff then having a constant tv reminder that, even in Palestine, or Uruguay or wherever, a skinny sixteen year old will wait in the street all night to have his shot to sing “I can show you the world..shining shimmering splendor..tell me princess now ehn did you last let your heart decide..” and get lovingly torn apart by some middle range celeb. Sigh. Love.

2. Make Politics into an Idol show. Because, again, I sometimes have difficulty caring about what those airbrushed and cranky, power hungry, smarmy dudes and dudettes are on about, (even mild mannered Canadian polticians can’t escape that taint of competitive desperation- though American politics is worse, I can’t see how the two party system hasn’t devolved into wrestling matches what with all the hysteria and name calling). Wouldn’t it be better to accept the fact that what you’re competing for is air time? Air time for your issues and your ideas about how to solve them. Because air time is POWER. Paul Martin will never have the screaming legions of fans that Shania Twain gets. Never, that is, unless he agrees to compete against fellow polticians, and some dark horse, unknown contenders- preferably teenagers- in a series of speech competitions and diplomatic talks, and is followed by a camera crew who capture his nerves and passion and self-depracating wit and kindness toward animals. Because I have gone from kitchen ballet to kitchen idol, and kitchen poltician is kind of an appealing prospect- it certainly would be entertaining for whoever’s sitting listening in the next room, and, you know, public debate is good in a democracy, right? And the whole system with the multiple-voting-is-ok because everybody’s doing it seems to work out better then the ones Republican campaign supporters programmed (and reprogrammed) in Florida and Ohio.