Coverage is so easy to get in 2009. There are outlets everywhere, with barriers to public distribution so low that anyone can get their name in some kind of media with minimal effort. Given that “normal” people have learned the tricks of the coverage trade, the time-tested celebrity accident has been rendered useless, because we’ve discovered that accidents happen and ultimately mean nothing.

Around 50 years ago we’d have believed that Frank Sinatra really did beat the snot out of someone pissing him off, because the guy was pissing him off. It’s how Frank rolled. He didn’t do it for notoriety, because he didn’t need to. These days, when we hear that Perez Hilton got into a “fight” with the Black Eyed Peas’ security guy (and then - get this - used his phone to Tweet out, asking followers to call 911) we chalk it up to “Haven’t seen either of those names in the news for a while. Something new to promote, boys?”

Society is rightfully skeptical of every bit of news that mentions a celebrity. Every time we hear some reporter breathlessly blab on about some big (forgive all the quotes here) “celebrity” “accident,” we roll our eyes collectively. Even strange outbursts and appearances (remember Joaquin Phoenix a few months back, when he looked like a tweaker on national television?) can be explained away as “coverage grabs.”

Today, there is truly only one way to become famous: be authentic. Whether celebrity fame, like Michael, or the new Fame for the rest of us, consistency and being yourself are what turns you into a known commodity.

With the current state of our economy, people are less and less tolerant of vapid Hollywood celebrity. Thankfully. That means the daily exploits of Paris & Company mean virtually nothing to us now, because we have bigger fish to fry. If you want to be known, be known for the right reasons. Becoming the go-to person on areas of your expertise is worth far more than becoming known because you yelled at some photographer in Beverly Hills or are some movie star’s progeny.

The new Fame is not just notoriety for notoriety’s sake. It is useful, abundant and pragmatic notoriety.

Dearly departed megastar Jackson was loved because he was a glorious performer long before the multiple cosmetic surgeries and strange bed-sharing arrangements. Little Michael rockin’ robin’d a room like no one before or since. He had it. Jackson possessed the intangible quality of being exactly what people wanted to see and hear–his timing in all respects was perfect. He was the consummate performer, rightly becoming one of the most beloved entertainers and famous guys in the world. He was, you know it: the real deal.

On the other side of the famegrab coin, we see one-acters like the monumentally forgettable Lady Gaga. Manufactured talent is not desirable, memorable, or good for us. Does anyone believe the brains behind Poker Face is going to be but a footnote a year from now? The difference: Authenticity is missing from Gag-a (sic).

Fame in the normal, uncelebrated but still important, world is similar. Fame is being known for being reliable and authentic – not for singing or acting, but for being yourself. Fame is not a race to be cool or a popularity contest. Fame is making it obvious that you are the Michael Jackson of your world, whatever world that is.

****
I’m tweeting @laermer

Gawker has been a pretty cool site for quite a number of years. As far as gossip rags go, it actually does maintain some level of credibility. The writing is crisp and witty, the commentary is spot on. It’s a fun and informative read. It’s delicious and sneaky and vicious. Vicarious fun.

Over the past several years, Gawker Media has extended the brand by creating blogs covering sports, cars, video games, fashion, gadgets, personal productivity, and others. Gawker has built quite a remarkable stable of reliable content.

Then, the powers-that-be in the advertising department almost ruined the whole thing.

Apparently, HBO broadcasts a television show about vampires. True Blood is entering its second season. The HBO people favor something they think is viral marketing for the show. Before season one, they introduced a beverage – Tru Blood – which characters on the show enjoy because it is synthetic human blood. (I’m told that in the fictional world, vampires drink so as not to have to kill people.) (Whatever.)

Either way, the success of season one prompted HBO to do one of the silliest things: It paid Gawker to create a new blog about vampires. Really it did. This blog – Bloodcopy (playonwords since“Blood Copy” is an old term for paying reporters to write your story.) – looked and felt like an actual Gawker property. For some reason Bloodcopy “posts” are interspersed on the Gawkblog as actual stories. But they are in fact written by a marketing dude at HBO posing as a vampire. (Again whatever.)

Deadspin. Gizmodo. Jezebel. Lifehacker. Jalopnik. Bloodcopy.

Almost immediately, commenters and even the staffers of the blogs themselves were outraged. Gawker had sold its cred for a stupid TV show about vampires. Lifehacker’s editor even went so far as to apologize for Gawker’s marketing failure.

Backlash among readers was instant. Comments across all blogs were pointed. HBO’s marketing backfired, TSLT. If anything the ads made people less likely to watch True Blood because of its invasion into their communities. One commenter said it very well:

“I have a special contempt for ads that are made to look like real posts or otherwise try to fool people into thinking they’re anything but ads.”

Earlier this week, Gawker finally got rid of this Bloodcopy albatross, which continues to solider on in its own bizarre webspace. The money was probably more than Gawker could turn down - not now - but the true cost was in lost readership and a lot of people wondering about sharks jumping!

A moral? Don’t trust vampires. Even the fake ones.

Twitter @laermer

Neil Young once famously sang it’s “better to burn out than fade away.” Kurt Cobain later infamously quoted this in his suicide note.

While this sentiment may be popular among rock stars, for the other 99% of us, isn’t it a little better to spread out your 14.5 minutes across your entire life? Isn’t getting remembered worth far more than being a supernova?

Take the vapid kid from that MTV show – you know. A year ago he was on Letterman, explaining how he was commanding upwards of $200,000 just to show up at parties. These days, he’s getting raked over the coals by Al Roker (the weatherman) for being a twit and for failing at being a reality TV star. Hey man, was the money worth it? You’re the laughingstock of the media world. One hit wonderful.

We see the same phenomenon in sports, too. A couple of weeks ago, college pitcher Stephen Strasburg, so hyped that you would think he’s the Second Coming of Sandy Koufax, was drafted out of San Diego State U by the Washington Nationals. Strasburg has never had competition and is expected to sign a contract worth more than $50 million. Again, he has never played a professional baseball game in his life, and something like 10% of all players drafted ever even play in the majors. The odds seem high that this kid will flame-out. At least he’ll have some cash when it is done.

Every day the idea is to be consistent, memorable, and authentic. I’m looking to stick around for a while. It’s a slow burn and I intend to go for a long ride.

Live long and prosper.

Twitter @laermer

Many corporations believe the downward trajectory in consumer spending means they better become something they are not–and quickly. Instead of sticking to their knitting, selling what they are known for, many have inexplicably started trying to be a mercantile of all things.

Is this a sign that sellers are simply trying to be better corporate citizens by providing more solutions to the consumers? No, no no. It is, though, a clear indication that recessionary panic has bamboozled some of the powers-that-be into believing that expanding their businesses beyond what they are known for is actually good business. Example:

Best Buy is the only big-box consumer electronics retailer left standing, except PC Richard but that’s only east coast. (Circuit City is back as an online store, but has no plans to reemerge as a brick and mortar business.) Best Buy is a good place to pick up consumer gear, especially television sets and digital photography equipment. Bought something at Best Buy lately? As you are checking out, the cashier will inevitably attempt to sell you — ready — magazine subscriptions. Yes, magazine subscriptions.

You go to Best Buy to get a deal on headphones, not to be sold Entertainment Weekly or Car & Driver. Is the company really so desperate for sales that it risks pissing off all of its consumers by trying to upsell them on monthly rags AFTER they’ve already gone through the sales spiel on the floor? Sure, magazines are somewhat high-margin products, but is it really worth changing your brand identity to sell a few? Not when it leaves a bad taste in your consumers’ mouthes.

Another strange strategic example: Subway, the sandwich hawker. This chain has a reputation for making decent sandwiches. (They must be good, considering the franchise flourishes in the City of New York, which as you know is the deli capital of the world.) You roll in, get your footlong turkey on wheat for $5, it comes to you in that specially-shaped sandwich bag, and BOOM! back in the office.

Well, do you know that Subway now serves pizza? Seriously. You can order hand-held pizzas from the king of sandwiches. Why on Earth did the braintrust at Subway think this is a good idea? (And wait a minute: why is my favorite diner in suburban CT selling — tortillas?) There is literally no way your Subway Personal Pizza is going to measure up to the quality of your sandwiches, especially when the retail pizza business has been captured by the boys and girls of Pizza Hut and Domino.

Subway, stop it. You are dilluting a good thing. You make footlongs. If people want crummy pizza, they will go to a crummy pizza place! Yes, oh and besides being the deli sandwich capital of the world, New York is the crummy pizza capital of the world. For every good pizzeria, there are at least four baddies. All named Ray Something.)

The point is that if you are known for selling what it sells, be remembered in these putrid retail days for selling what you sell. That is, after all, what your consumers want. They come to you for your product, the one they once and still love(d). They don’t want you to imitate someone else’s. People don’t appreciate that. Just remember. Say it twice.

I’m at www.twitter.com/laermer a lot.

For months, and maybe years, before the Y2K New Year’s celebration, companies and citizens alike were tensed and readying themselves. As the ball dropped, a collective breath was held, and then . . . nothing happened. There were no explosions, no power outages that engulfed the entire northern hemisphere; the utilities didn’t shut off, and the human race was not annihilated because of faulty coding attached to nuclear weapons. The best that anyone got was Grandma snoring on the couch and a few corporate execs pissed because they had spent countless hours and reams of cash hoping to “fix” the Y2K bug that had everyone terrified.

Maybe Grandma had it right. The relevance of Y2K—or rather, the fear that accompanied its arrival (and then passing)—had more to do with a superconscious dependence on the computers that we allow to run our lives and maintain our survival. Those who were less reliant on computers for their daily existence could sleep easily . . . but who, in today’s world, could snore soundly through another such episode?

The potential for crisis is always there, perhaps at the boundaries of our vision, whether it be a computer crash that angers patrons at a DMV in New Jersey (and if there is one state where you do not want angry drivers . . .) or a glitch on a system at your local hospital where you depend on the computer system to get patients’ health history—not to mention run the machines that keep them alive on a minute-to-minute basis.

Fine, computers are important—you win—Uncle! And perhaps you’re not worried about the DMV (you live in New York, where drivers are rational) and you’re not planning on checking into the hospital any time soon—but the very idea of trying to log onto Facebook to check out what Ted has replied to your “Your date is a skank” wall post, only to be turned away by a downed server? Now you know what real terror is.

We’ve all been there, whether it’s continually hitting the “refresh” button on our LiveJournal page or screaming at our screen when Vimeo takes too long to load. Seriously, don’t they know that you have a social life to take part in? What would happen if you had to go to bed tonight without checking in with your 1,393 friends?

The thought of our beloved Internet and computers not being there for us in the future is horrifying, true, but the thought of living for even a moment without our social networking sites? That’s death to the common man: how many others are having fun out there on the Net, without you, right now? Freelance graphic artist Nathan Lewis describes it as “The feeling is kind of akin to getting dumped by a chick. And then you get jealous thinking about all the people having fun with your ex.”

A joint Yahoo!/OMD (the media agency)-sponsored study innocuously entitled “Internet Deprivation Study” reminded us how dependent we are on being online to get our daily intake of socializing: nearly half of the respondents couldn’t go without the Net for more than two weeks, and the median time the subjects could go without being online was five days. This paragraph and the next two are brought to you by a very long, reasonably unwell-written press release by Yahoo! on September 22, 2004, about OMD and Yahoo! examining consumers’ media habits “and their emotional connection towards the Internet (whatever).” Its findings were in line to be discussed that day at the Harvard Club as part of Advertising Week, a yearly venture sponsored by Ad Agemagazine.

Again and again, respondents without access to the Internet complained of feeling “out of the loop”; irrespective of their demographic background, the subjects of Yahoo!/OMD’s study described feeling a sense “of loss, frustration and disconnectedness” when they had absolutely zip-o access. This not only demonstrates our reliance on computers for the, you know, life-threatening stuff, but once and for all demonstrates power the Internet has over our social lives.

Wenda Harris Millard, then Yahoo! Chief! Sales! Officer!, said: “Deep ethnographic research like this enables us to do much more than look at consumer trends, it allows a rare glimpse into the reasons consumers make the choices they do and how they are emotionally impacted. We can then help marketers apply these insights to reach their target audiences.”

We recognize that our target audience goes through withdrawal after a short period of time offline—in a way that they perhaps never felt about watching their television or attending a sports game in a highly sponsored arena. This recognition should serve as a conduit for establishing and maintaining a relationship with our target audience.

At the very least, we should know what makes our audience tick, and if six hours of Friendster will make them tear up like they are chopping onions, perhaps that emotional connection is something marketers should be aware of. If nothing else, a marketer’s job is to make buying and using its product/service an emotional venture—what can we learn (and take away) from how people engage one another on the Internet?

Today there are computers that are programmed to see and hear and react to other sensory stimuli. Nowadays, physical interaction with your computer is less than common. No more entering appointments into your calendar; you do it via a virtual assistant (call it BlackBerry), and information is checked for conflicts and entered in for you. Through all this syncing, it automatically notifies you that you have “something to do.” What it is is better management of life’s little annoyances like work and other frictions in life.

The phone is about to become a wand, thanks to a new acronym that you will be seeing everywhere. The near field communication system, or NFC, is a short-range wireless technology that enables communication between devices over a short distance (hand’s width). The technology is primarily aimed at usage in mobile phones, and it’s in test already, working by magnetic field induction and operating on an unlicensed radio-frequency band. You can use it for public transportation in several cities already—buses, baby.

Just like America (and so can you, Colbert!), there is no standard protocol in the world’s superpower for tech. In a funny, ironic, and just-deserts digression, the new entertainment format, the high-definition version of DVDs, also supported by no standard, was called a “yawn” (quotes mine) in a recent survey of consumers, who couldn’t be bothered deciding.

A patent licensing program for NFC is currently under development by Via Licensing Corp., part of Dolby Laboratories, which means unfortunately that there won’t be a standard, and it will be fought over by The New Cingular and an Asian mobile firm that owns the rights to a single “type” of NFC.

A firm with the too-subtle moniker Research Frontiers introduced SPD-Smart Glass Panes that really do eliminate the need, digitally, for blinds and drapes because, face it, the home has to be more easily managed and save you money rather than eat up the cash.

What’s amazing is that for 5,000 years, glass has remained prettymuch the same. Safety, sure, bulletproof glass I got, but glass was it until now. Much like the liquid crystal display of your digital watch, the product is really “electrochromic” glass. A thin layer of electric circuitry suspended underneath a glass layer enables you to control the characteristics of the window, making it either opaque or completely clear with the turn of a dial or through a sensor that adjusts it to changes in the weather or the number of people in a room. Your window, because it will have circuitry in it, could be turned into a computer monitor or an entertainment center for TVs and iPods. Wizardry, for real.

Food and household items ordered from kiosks—that’s happening thanks to everything being connected. In dozens of interviews, perky no kids, double-income family members (the lowly, über-admired DINKs) said that outside of work, 50 percent of their time was spent hanging in the kitchen area. To answer this, smart companies like Whirlpool have developed kitchen computers that absolutely divide the labor—between you and your device. Your S.O. (significant-o) may not be the one who does the shopping, but he sure will happily do the ordering of groceries on the kitchen appliance with you. It’s easier than changing diapers, for sure, and you get to do something… totally together.

Instead of taking a pill, such as an antidepressant, to alter your mood, microchip implantation has earnestly begun! Many things that were being handled chemically are now administered electronically. Instead of drinking coffee, we are now synthetically sending the desired sensation to the brain. And in the next few years, a person’s movement or sensory manipulation will lay the foundation for sending and receiving, yep, signals from brain to brain. Let’s call that mind reading via implant!

Imagine the next decade as we begin to monitor the better-operating workforce in less expensive countries: an implant in an employee transmits knowledge of the person’s heart rate, how many breaks the person takes, and what part of the office the person is really in! “Oh, what a world my parents gave me,” according to Rufus Wainright’s restless wink. “Life Is Beautiful” [splat] on the New York Times.

I am a-Twitter @laermerand also @howtofame, for the secretive details on the next project about to unleash.

The City of New York is full of parks – in fact, there are 1700! We have enormous parks (Central, Prospect, Flushing) and medium-sized offerings (Bryant, Madison Square), plus there are little pocket parks everywhere like Stuyvesant and Washington Market. And now, today, the borough I love opened what may be its most forward-thinking park space – it’s called the High Line.

Many years ago, High Line was the name for an elevated freight railroad that traversed the meatpacking district on the west side of lower Manhattan that has no more remnants of packing meat. It’s all Prada and Varvados and fancy-shmancy restaurants! Abandoned for nearly 80 years, all of a sudden a citizens group, with – GASP, imagine – help City Government got the High Line “renewal” funded and a huge construction project began in 2004. The first phase opened today.

This, lovers of all things trend, should be the wave of the future in these infrastructure-messy recession era. Although the High Line is a major urban renewal effort, the park’s construction is emblematic of a core value that I hope will stick around once Wall Street bulls come out of hiding: We should reuse resources to create value for our audience and our customers. Here, a town with many (other) problems turned an eyesore into what New Yorkers value most – a public space that cost us nothing out of pocket.

Seeking a trend? In the future, and right now, people resent the cheap, they want true value–and not the hardware chain! We want to feel part of something amazing. We wish to be inspired. People want to be provided with a sense they are valued. Consumers want a service - or a product - provided out of care.

A little over 80 years ago, the High Line was filled with trains that brough cattle to the Meatpacking District. Today, lo and behold, it is bringing New Yorkers what they love most: another reason to brag about New York. All it took was some effort.

I’m proud. Come see us high up.

****Twittering at www.twitter.com/laermer. A lot.

Newspapers strive to be seen as the defenders of society – holding government and industry accountable for their actions in instances where the everyman may not have the opportunity to speak for himself. The power wielded by the American press is mighty.

For what seems like eons, select newspapers have been lionized – mostly by themselves – as “papers of record.” These are the cornerstones of journalism in America, and today include New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Wash Post. There may be others, depending on who you ask. (The San Jose Mercury-News has become very prominent of late by the tech set.)

The point is there are newspapers, and then there are newspapers. We have to wonder now – just 18 months short of 2011 – whether the distinction even matters.

An old guard employs talented journalists (old definition), because they are well trained and paid for it. The newer guard – found in the great blogs and online [more accessible] publications – are beloved because they are the most admired writers, and are able to convey thoughts about what’s in the news are saying without sounding like a typical reporter.

This is the Daily Show analysis: You don’t get your news from Jon Stewart, you get your news in a form that makes sense to you, cutting through any and all pretext. You have to know something about the latest obscure news from earlier that morning in order to get the joke at 11:00 pm.

Sometimes I think the big newspapers are more concerned with their style–and less with the messages they get across. Each time a paper of record says “This reporter was…” instead of “I was,” I cringe. In the news about the MTV Movie Awards, they avoided the words dick and fuck. I get it: it’s a familiy newspaper. Then don’t write about awards on a crass teen network!

When papers like the NYT start being less worried about being keystones of very old bridges, and more concerned with being servants of the people they, well, serve, then again they will be seen as remarkable products. Until then, a newpaper is worth a scan in the morning, since my news is being served to me just the way I like it…all day long and with a few good belly laughs in the late evening.

I am Twittering at www.twitter.com/laermer

Since Congress passed the Lanham Act (15 U.S.C. §§1051-1141n) in 1946, it has been a violation of federal law to infringe on a trademark that is owned by another party. The idea is that in a capitalist stream of commerce, a business entity should be able to distinguish its marks and slogans without fear of their usurpation by others looking to piggyback on their successes and without fear of damage to the company’s brands from third parties.

In theory, this is a great idea, very handy and fine. Companies are protected, and consumers can be sure that they are patronizing their trusted brands. Trademark owners, once they have successfully registered a trademark must append every instance of that mark with ® or “Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office” or “Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.” If a mark is not appended by one of these designations, the trademark holder has no recourse in an infringement suit. Got it?

One more fun fact: ™ is the designation for a mark that is in the process of being registered. It is kind of like saying “We used this first. Back off.” Once the ™ is registered formally by the government, it becomes ®.

Now I’ve given you some food for thought. This fabulous system has worked. We all know that seeing ™ or ® on something means that the company believes in that mark and is confident in using it as part of its brand. Unfortunately, companies have subscribed to some really silly non-uses of these laws.

Take United Airlines. The company has registered “It’s time to fly.” ® Somebody wasn’t thinking very clearly. Air travel today is notoriously untimely. In fact, United’s most operated route – LAX to SFO – is on time just 76% of the time, with an average delay of over 35 minutes. Imagine a boarding lobby full of people like me, who waited yesterday for two hours for a “premium service” (their term) flight.

We passengers waiting to board a delayed plane don’t want to stare at a placard that yells “time to fly.”

Enforcing trademarks can be just as absurd. Timbuk2, purveyor of fine messenger bags, tried in 2008 to contract with a manufacturer to make bags out of reclaimed materials, such as plastic grocery bags. Target, the big box store, happens to give out Target branded grocery bags with purchases. A few Target logos (the red and white “bullseye”) ended up on the Timbuk2 bags. Target – apparently very scared of a little ole bag man — told Timbuk2 to immediately destroy all of the offending bags. Timbuk2 complied.

The kicker? Target’s trademarked logo is also the national insignia of Peru! Timbuk2 could have challenged the enforcement, but taking on a huge national corporation is an expensive proposition for a “little guy.” And plus- Peru?

Point is that even though our law provides extensive trademark protection to pretty much everything you can imagine, — Do you ever wonder why you see (TM) following lines that no one would ever dream of stealing? – companies (and their marketers) need to realize that trademarks are part of your brand, and so is their enforcement. You are not - sorry - going to get very far trademarking ridiculous things, and you certainly will not create an iota of good will by bullying the Mom And Pop surviving on the corner.

Go trademark yourself!

* * * *

I’m twittering @laermer. (TM)

Man’s favorite subject is man himself. A woman’s favorite subject happens to be how men talk—and men too. The written and spoken language is a most remarkable phenomenon of individual and human language and isn’t solely the ability to stand erect and use our thumbs that makes us distinctive. Most importantly it is our ability to express with clarity, preciseness and control exactly what occupies our hearts and overburdened minds.

When ancient Sumerians developed the Cuneiform (3000 B.C.) did they marvel at the impudence of their own creation? Somewhere along the way man developed not only an ability to express his thoughts to his bros and sisters, but also the ability to leave behind a record of his successes and failures now called “recorded history.” No other life form on Earth has been able to mark its rise, fall or daily struggle for generations to come; the T-Rex whimpered its last breaths in quiet (it was not quiet, but I like to think it was) solitude.

Fast forward a couple of thousand years later and what we have is an incredible, social transformation of the tool of language. Language is now used to discuss, write and exchange ideas and thoughts of the luxury of the upper-class as well as the petite bourgeoisie, the Revolution has been democratized. The same minds that study John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government across campuses scuttles back to dorms to read the latest, satirical pop culture bashings by Perez and me! More and more we’re using our ability to communicate through words to not only protest and exchange ideas but also to celebrate the activities we once deemed shameful, such as expressing our perverse obsessions with the lives of rich & famous, popularization of pornographic ideas in mainstream culture, and a hell of a lot more.

Our language has morphed into an arbitrary form of establishing meanings – that is to say, words have lost their bark. Strange but relevant example: If you used the word nigger in ‘62 America you’d immediately be associated with a segregationist ideology. Today, finding a hip-hop song WITHOUT use of abbreviated, hybridized and arguably desensitized term nigga would be a particular challenge.

The fact a mass audience has begun to take language and mold it to their liking is not that big a deal considering that even those “untouchables” in 19th century India had some form of communicating. What is, to me, remarkable is that modern technological advances like Twitter and YouTube allow anyone to come along and transform and shape language as we know it; meaning is a constantly negotiated concept in modern languages. That funny word, “ho,” a term once reserved for ladies of the night, is now a compliment of high degree in Fat Joe videos; not to be confused with a “crack ho,” which requires one to obtain Whitney status. And terms like “LOL” are appearing in Oxford dictionaries in a bookstore near your computer.

So what’s this sensitive of language mean? Meanings of words are pretty arbitrary - “be arbitrary, dude”? -and that is a fact, Jack! No matter what you say or do or become, the words will mean how they are perceived. This fresh blood will bring a darn fresh outlook on the ultimate value of words. It’s remarkable that the collective awe we once reserved for Ben Franklin and JFK is doled out to the likes of Hilton (both) and Coulter, all of whom are poster kids for the power of biting, near-vitriolic dumbness masquerading as intelligence. As a die-hard defender of proletariat struggle, that’s aite by me!

For more like this see 2011: Trendspotting- my book.
Twitter @laermer

I am sick of all this idle chatter. And then….

Last night millions (100? 50? Does it matter?) watched the annual crowning of their Idol on FOX. Yeah, it was the least-watched finale in the history of the show, but lots were watching. (Again, does it matter?) The show was laborious at best & dead boring if we are being honest with ourselves.

Did you notice how nearly every musician who’s ever charted in the U.S.–save the reincarnated Elvis, and don’t think FOX didn’t try – showed up to croon during the bloated 120-minute extravafuckingganza? Latifah, Mraz, Fergie (!), Richie, Lauper (Cindy Lauper—CINDY? LAUPER?), KISS, and that zombified Rod Stewart were there and you can’t even remember what they did. The only act worth eyeball soreness was Brian May from Queen, who rocked the place mad.

[Gosh do I miss Freddie!]

Before the new Crack Daddy Idol was crowned, we were put through the paces of The Golden Idol Awards to showcase the kookiest from this season’s auditions. Somehow, a woman pretended to be mentally unstable and staged a freak out so as to be escorted offstage by Security and get what she was desperate for: more airtime. It was fraud-filled and made me nauseous.

I simply cannot think of a better word to describe the goings-on than stupid. Forgetting the vapid production and lack of anything we didn’t see coming, come on and get real: Choice between finalists was a non-starter. We were presented with an effeminate West Coast hipster with not a small amount of talent matched again a kid who proved to be a Taylor Hicks rehash with vanilla vocal skills. This was a fake-out trying to bring up the that aura from Idol’s early, new-to-you years. Not that I’d seen those years, but I sure read about them. “Different v. Same” was the high concept for Idol 2009. Yet despite the judges’ pronounced preference for distinctiveness, was the outcome even in doubt?

Now, one aside: Can anyone explain the judges’ role? Keeping stupid firmly in mind, riddle me this: Are they just there to tell the viewers what to think? Simon is hilarious but says nothing you can’t get from reading a Gladwell book.

The bottom line to this necessary rant is our country chose safe and I’d like it to be ashamed. “Go stand in the corner, America!” Kris Allen will get sucked into our memory pores faster than Jordin Sparks, whose new “Battleground” cut was ripped from Pat Benatar in hopes of a hyped lawsuit. Come on, there’s nothing memorable about Kris, whose name I had to look up today. What can he possibly have to keep us hooked! I doubt he has anything in the closet or even something quotable in that adorable brain.

America needed to smartly pick Adam Lambert, who name I recalled, then shout to the television: “Well, at least he tries to be different.” Damn it—it’s that late ‘90s problem with pop culture again: The risk is dead. Witness the myriad never-ending frat boy comedies that fill the many-plexes with ease.

Anyway, this Choose-A-Star routine is mind-numbing. Not to mention how dialing for rock stars is a cruddy use of our already-addled brains. Worse is it even sucked me in. Writing this, I’m feeling creepy. I got to go shower.

LAERMER OUT

…and twittering @laermer