Every year I get sucked into a netherworld, a vacuous void where all life is distilled into various levels of human liquid shit, each one more noxious and vile than the other. This normally happens around the June/July mark and finishes just before Christmas.
I am of course talking about the return of the TV show, The X Factor.
It’s like some form of unholy prison sentence that I have to serve at the end of each year. In retrospect, I would actually probably prefer to do physical time, being vigorously bummed up the arse by a tattooed skinhead (as long as he held me afterwards) than sit through this festering pile of bat droppings that sums up everything that is wrong about human civilisation in these worrying times.
As I have many non Uk readers, I will sum up what the show is about, so we are all up to speed. Simon Cowell picks 16 mentally unstable people with delusions of fame, gets them to perform in front of a baying crowd like those performing bears in Russia, and then periodicity dispatches them one by one whilst rubbing great fistfuls of cash all over his leathery genitals.
This year I have avoided all the build up, the selection process, and most importantly, the horrendous faux tear inducing back stories that make me want to flay off my own face so I can actually feel something that resembles a form of human emotion, all in the aim of hoping to avoid all aspects of this blight on the form of human culture.
Sadly Kates wasn’t having any of it.
“I’m so excited the X Factor starts tonight,” she told me when she came round yesterday. “Do you mind if we watch it?”
Of course, me naturally being the kind and sacrificing kind of boyfriend that I am, I immediately relented.
“Of course we can my darling; you know I would do anything for you. More canopies?”
“You know I don’t like Wotsits. A whole two and a half hours of The X Factor, how exciting!”
Hang on........
“Two and a half fucking hours? Are you kidding me?? That’s almost as long as Titanic but without the funny bits with the people falling off and hitting the propellers at the end.”
She gave me a look that made me knew I wasn’t going to win.
“Brilliant,” I replied, putting on a fake smile. “I honestly, literally, can’t wait. This is going to be so good. I’m excited to be a part of it.”
The minutes to when it started counted down like the timer on a nuclear device, and in many ways, the complete and utter oblivion that a 16 megaton nuclear blast would have provided was in some ways more preferable to the hell that was coming.
Aural Armageddon.
I didn’t even know the line-up of the constants this year, but as the show started in a blaze of pyrotechnics and flashing lights that subliminally spelt out: give us all your money, they flashed across my screen in a parade of head turns and hair spray. And like Pavlov’s Dogs, I was conditioned to bark out every time one appeared.
Girl group.
“Slags”
Skinny hip hop girl.
“Chav”
Perma tanned duo.
“Gay”
Androgynous weird bloke.
“Cunt”
“Top lad”
This year they the show was going for the subtle, less is more approach. So with “O Fortuna” screaming out with almost ear splitting volume, and the stage suddenly exploding like the birth of a new solar system through 4 bazillion lights, all over the nation, hundreds of kids suddenly pitched to the floor in epileptic shock, legs twitching and faces dribbling like they had just stared into the face of God.
Less is more, remember?
And then the entertainment started.
To be honest, I think I blacked out after the 25 minute mark. If I try and think back to last night, it just remains a swirl of colours, screeching and bongos. Yes, bongos. That does stick in my head for some reason.
I know there was a boy band that looked terminally ill. I know there was a skinny hip hop girl who apparently has a habit of making her own rap sections in the middle of songs (I also know I released a stream of expletives at this point that flew across the room and hit my TV like warm dog shit). I know that the aforementioned camp duo was racing around inside my TV in a blur of day-glo colours that actually seared my retinas. I know there was an awful girl dressed up like a space whore whilst wearing 12 multicoloured sun visors on her head.
But getting back to the bongos.
The one overriding image that I still can’t shake is of the hairy bloke with the prono tash standing on a podium, banging away on a set of bongos screaming “SHE BANGS! SHE BANGS!” while explosions roared beside him and half naked dancers groped and rubbed their breasts. I think if you were going to run a holiday advert for one of Dante’s seventh levels of hell, then this is surely the image that you want running on a continuous loop. I was expecting a pair of horns to burst out of hairy porno tash guys head, and for him to lean back and cackle manically whilst stamping cloven hoofs.
Eventually the two and a half hours was over and I emerged from it shaking and teary eyed. Even Kates looked a bit stunned, like she had just witnessed a bad traffic accident. We both looked like we had just come back from a tour of ‘Nam.
“Same time next week?” I asked meekly.
“I need an aspirin,” she replied, holding her forehead. “Or vodka. Do you have any vodka?”
I keep thinking to how long it is until Christmas and my sentence will be up.
Man’s got a choice.
Either get busy living, or get busy dying.
3 comments:
What a great description! Love it. Quite accurate, as well!
Do you often wonder if Simon Cowell sold his soul to the Devil...or if perhaps he is Devil's spawn?
I understand. Which is why I don't watch the American version, "America's Got Talent." Yes, begun by Satan's little boy, Simon. Sigh.
Don't lose hope - a contestant who moons at the panel may come along.
Post a Comment