American Idol is Usurping My Life

I’ve been waiting forever for someone I know to be on a Reality TV show. There were several near misses; Zora from Joe Millionaire was from Boulder, my friend Brooke knew someone on The Biggest Loser... but until this season of American Idol, there was no one I knew personally.

Then came Ace Young.

I’ve known Ace since he was a wee child. We’re not close friends, but I like to think he’d be able to pick me out of a crowd. His older brother Mark certainly could; we were in the same cooking class in high school, and he often entertained me while my cream puffs burned across the classroom. But Ace---about 6 years younger than I am---was always around at ward functions. His specialty was singing hip hop renditions of carols at the ward Christmas party with his mom and brothers.

My mother was the one to break the news; you’d have thought Ace was her son, she was so proud. I’ve never been a religious watcher of the program (I mean come on, it’s no Bachelor), but I could definitely identify Fantasia and Rueben for you, and I might even be able to hum a Clay Aiken song if tortured. Suddenly though, Idol has taken over my nights... with a vengeance.

I had no clue what a time commitment this show would be. They spent the first 5 weeks just showing the try outs. It was amusing at first, but after three nights at an hour per show, the whole mocking bad singers vs. the occasional jubilant success story was getting oooooooooooooooooold. So I skipped a few weeks but lucked out to see Ace’s try out. I could tell by the look on Paula’s face that he was “going to Hollywood!” She probably even owns several of these.

After tryouts came another few weeks of whittling down the massive group into 24 finalists. I tried watching some of these episodes; but frankly, it was just too much. How many sets of singing twins are there in the world? Finally the top 24 were announced; I was happy to hear that Ace had made it that far. I began watching in earnest again, but didn’t realize how often this freaking show is on. Again, three nights a week for hours and hours with about 20 million commercials packed in. They’ve ALMOST convinced me to buy a Ford.

Months after the premiere, they announced the top 12. This was a huge relief, as now the show would be condensed into two nights a week, but each Tuesday night show was a whopping two hours. What up Fox? How much time do you think we have to kill? We watched the first week of this and were almost as shocked as Ace when he appeared in the bottom three on results night. Mr. Supportive (Travis) softly muttered that he hoped Ace got kicked off the show, just so we could get our weeknights back. I half agreed with him.

So here I am now, sitting at my computer 45 minutes after the show has ended, frantically dialing so I can vote for Ace. The first few times my call failed and now I just get a busy signal. I should REALLY be loading the dishwasher and making lunches for tomorrow; it’s unbelievable how manipulated I’ve been by a TV show. Although I really can’t put all the blame on them; my mom has also pressured me to vote since Ace’s mom is her visiting teacher. My 5 year old daughter is pulling for Ace too, and has even picked out the song she wants to sing when she’s on American Idol... Puff the Magic Dragon.

All this, and I just found out the show goes until MAY. What’s a girl to do?