So…what are you up to? part one

One of the crucial conditions for the existence of the words which appear on this screen is the fact that my beautiful girlfriend Belén is out of town visiting family down south. A circumstance which leaves me alone at home with a lot of time on my hands and well, there you have it.

So what am I doing here flying solo on a Tuesday night? Out with the boys carousing, trying to pull chicks? Standing in the line for the bathroom of the after-hours bar? Breaking it down on the dance-floors of Barcelona’s shittiest and most exclusive dance clubs? Hell no. Actually, I’m doing the same thing I’d be doing if she were here: watching the penultimate gala of the 2008 edition of Operación fuckin’ Triunfo, baby.

For the benefit of anyone on the other side of the pond who may be reading this, OT is more or less the Spanish equivalent of American Idol. Not really being 100% familiar with the exact format of the latter program, I can’t say exactly to what extent the format is the same, but I imagine it’s more or less the same. The idea is this: they choose a bunch of young kids who wanna be singers, coop them up in an “academy” where they have professors who teach them how to suck less at singing, show them corny dance moves, how to “make love to the camera”, etc. Then on Tuesday, they do a big show and some judges tell them how shitty (or not) their performance was, and people vote by phone or text message. Pretty standard stuff.

Plus, there are cameras all over the school so that every afternoon, if you’re so inclined, not only can you see footage of them learning whatever shitty (or not) song they are assigned for that week [it should be noted that the repertoire has included some pretty decent stuff (Gnarls Barkley, AC/DC, Queen (twice: “The Show Must Go On”, “Don’t Stop Me Now”)) along with the normal lameness you might expect], you’re also privy to all the little spats and cat-fights and goofy dinner-table conversation they have, giving it a distinct Big Brother vibe. In the current edition, this has led to levels of behind-the-scenes manipulation and suspicious goings-on unseen in previous editions. (A long story, I won’t go into it now.)

Ahem. Before I go on, I’d like to make it clear that I’ve never seen the American version of Big Brother and that the Spanish version I only saw a tiny bit of it over Christmas holidays at my girlfriend’s parents’ house and suffice it to say that I don’t recommend it; as for American Idol, the only time I ever saw it was when they showed it on the TV at the Kanki Japanese Steakhouse on US 15-501 when I was working there; I think it was the year that Jennifer Hudson was on, and it was pretty fucking wack if I recall. Which makes it all the more weird that I’ve somehow managed to get hooked on this shit like it was freebase.

If anyone who has started reading this is still with me, allow me to introduce you to the contestants who have stood out the most this year (both of whom, as I type, have just been informed that they will advance to the final round (next Tuesday). First, Chipper: his main selling point is that he is black, gay, and American, and that he doesn’t hardly speak Spanish worth a damn. In other words, the novelty value is off the charts. Plus he sings pretty damn good, but, the main knock against him came up when one of the judges (Risto Mejide, see below) suggested that our friend Chipper probably would never have made it past the first audition in America. Ruben Studdard, he’s not, but anyway, I think this was his best performance, much better than his “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Boy”(not so good) or his “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (pretty terrible, he just kind of mutilated that joint earlier tonight):

Then there’s Virginia, a cute girl from Sevilla with cool blue eyes and a tiny voice that reminds me of like, Dolly Parton or Tammy Wynette or something like that, whose principal virtue is that, while the other kids were singing shit like (just to cite a couple examples) the Spanish language version of Roxette’s “It Must Have Been Love” (you might think it would actually improve in the translation, but you’d be wrong), the Celine Dion version of “I Drove All Night”, and the usual shit Spanish pop music (Alejandro Sanz, La Oreja de Van Gogh, etc.), your homegirl Virginia was putting it down with everything from Nina Simone to Radiohead. For that reason, and for the sort of freaky-girl-sitting-the-back-of-the-class vibe she emanates, people here lost their fucking minds over this chick. A total cultural phenomenon. There has even been evidence of a conspiracy (as I briefly mentioned earlier) on the part of the producers of the program trying to manipulate footage from the academy to make her look bad in the eyes of the public, because she was just too damn popular. Then there are all the haters who argue that she can’t sing worth a damn because she doesn’t wail and holler like some of the others. Judge for yourselves. (From an English teacher’s perspective I will say that her pronunciation is stellar.)

However the real star is judge Risto Mejide, a cold and articulate ad exec who plays the bad guy, always talking mad shit. You know, telling dudes they got a hunchback, making cracks about their wardrobe (for example, one night he made a comment about one cat looking like he was ‘dressed up as a sofa’, which reminded me of that old Ghostface Killah skit, where he was like, “Your shirt look like a dishrag! Your shirt look like a curtain!” ) Or this one chick (Esther, the worst singer in the history of the show, it seems), who he told he saw bright future for her in centerfolds, and wouldn’t you know it, within a few weeks of her leaving the show, she came out showing her titties on the cover of Interviú. Now ain’t that some shit. For any Spanish speakers out there, here are some of his more infamous comments.

So…you’re probably asking yourself: And? What’s the punchline? Where’s the pay-off? Where’s the biting critique of the role of media in our society? What’s the point in all this? No point, really. Just a little slice-of-life type shit for y’all motherfuckers.

So next time you ask me “What are you up to?” and I say something like “Aw, not much,” now you know what I really mean. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go drink whisky and listen to Li’l Wayne or something.