American Idol Season 14 Changes

As you may have seen on television (that thing that kills time while your phone is charging), American Idol is about to enter its FOURTEENTH season (another year and it can get its learners driving permit), and like any show that has been on for so long, the team at Idol is implementing some changes to help attract new viewers and keep the old ones. Using my top-secret entertainment industry connections I was able to obtain a list of these changes for you, my loyal readers.

American Idol Season 14 Changes:

• American Idol’s infamously rotating cast of celebrity judges will bump up from rotating every season to now rotating every 15 minutes. Things get especially dramatic when Mark McGrath gives the approving vote to put a contestant through to Hollywood only to have the “rotate judge” alarm go off, with replacement judge Kevin Federline voting the other way for the unlucky contestant.

• In addition to searching for talent in New Orleans, Nashville, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and New York City; the show will also be holding its trademark ten-thousand-person auditions in Metropolis, Atlantis, The Emerald City, Mount Olympus, The Alternate 1985 timeline from Back to the Future 2, and The Negaverse from Sailor Moon.

• In an effort to boost ratings, American Idol will declare every show day also Opposite Day, turning their 1.7 into a 7.1 and “a 25% decrease” into “a 25% increase” and “beating a dead horse” into “entertainment.”

• Keith Urban has agreed to a cross-promotion with a hip, young clothing store, legally changing his name to Keith Urban Outfitters.

• Going to just start referring to itself in all graphics, conversations, and materials as “The Voice” and see if anyone notices.

• Taking its well-known list of mentors like Randy Jackson and Scott Borchetta and adding other legendary mentors such as The P90X Guy, Mister Miyagi, Mother Teresa, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Professor Dumbledore, Your High School English Teacher, Dina Lohan, Rafiki from Lion King, and Gandalf the Grey.

• End every show with one uncut five-minute block of lemmings mindlessly walking to their demise by the ton and see if even a single viewer picks up on the irony.

• Putting Carrie Underwood, Clay Aiken, and Taylor Hicks in fake Groucho disguise mustache-glasses and sneaking them back into the competition.

• Following up all eliminations with on-air, real-time executions of whoever is voted off that week.

• Brian Dunkleman.

• Do a Mythbusters-style special on whether or not Ryan Seacrest has ever said anything sincere with all that feigned enthusiasm in the past 13 years.

• Airing all episodes at once, Netflix style, to help induce binge watching like the kiddies enjoy so much these days.

• Regardless of what the votes say, just declaring Ruben Studdard the winner anyway.

…Should be a fun season!

Play on,
Dustin

casual pic of Brian Dunkleman, Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul, and Randy Jackson

…Want more Mind Bullets? New posts go up every Wednesday at noon PST (or as close to that as I feel like), and you can subscribe if you want them delivered right to your inbox! …Or if you’re too impatient to wait that long you can follow me on twitter, instagram, youtube (new videos every Monday), and my boring personal website. Whew, that’s a lot of self promotion…even I don’t like me enough to keep up with all that.

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Dustin Heveron’s: Less Good Versions of Well-Known Songs — Something

Hello, chum! If the colder autumn weather and constant threat of the zombie apocalypse (trust me, it’s closer than you think) have you feeling down, then allow me to recommend a solution that’s even better than anything your local apothecary could whip up with their entire vault of sundries! That’s right, I’m talking about the dulcet tones and delightful rhythms of Dustin Heveron’s Less Good Versions of Well-Known Songs™ (patent pending). On the butcher’s block in this inaugural episode is a legendary song by the Fab Four from Frankfurt, The Beatles! If you’ve ever heard The Beatles’ song, “Something” and thought to yourself, “Hm, I wonder what that song would sound like without all the instruments and other band members and musical ability?” than THIS is the version for you! If you enjoy it, share it with your friends so they can enjoy it too! Or if you hate it, still share it with your friends and you can all bond with one another by mocking it mercilessly as a group! It’s 2014, and hatred is every bit as valuable as positivity when it comes to the internet.

Play on,
Dustin

…Want more Mind Bullets? New posts go up every Wednesday at noon PST (or as close to that as I feel like), and you can subscribe if you want them delivered right to your inbox! …Or if you’re too impatient to wait that long you can follow me on twitter, instagram, youtube (new videos every Monday), and my boring personal website. Whew, that’s a lot of self promotion…even I don’t like me enough to keep up with all that.

Open Letter to Sinead O’Connor’s Open Letter to Miley Cyrus

Sinead,

First of all, know that I’m saying this with a motherly love, and that however biting the sarcasm/satire might get in the next few paragraphs, I genuinely do not wish you any negativity or duress.

Much and more has been made of the open letter that you recently wrote to Miley Cyrus, advising her on her twerking, her increasingly weird public persona, her perceived exploitation at the hands of the music/media industries, and her overall downward spiral from sanity.

“Much and more” is an expression I stole from the Game of Thrones series of books, I started using it as a subtle way to find out if people have read them. Like a verbal secret handshake. If you don’t get the reference, that’s okay, it just means you haven’t spent thousands of pages reading overly detailed descriptions of surcoats and morning meals.

Sinead (for some reason I always read that for a nanosecond as Sinbad, which, not as a diss to you, would be significantly cooler in terms of name badassery. Sinbad makes me think of a garish pirate adventurer and scoundrel, Sinead makes me think of those animal commercials where they do slow zooms on cute puppy pics and play sad music until you promise to adopt an entire wagon of dogs), in true glutton-for-punishment form, you couldn’t be happy with one open letter, so after Miley blew off your original writing with a couple snarky tweets, you wrote her THREE MORE sort of half-sane, increasingly defensive open letters and now the media is calling it a “feud” and Miley’s legions of disciples are dousing you with barrels full of haterade like you’re a coach that just won the Super Bowl. You feel hurt, attacked, betrayed…and you were only trying to help! Woe is you! …Well, not exactly.

You see, Sinead, it’s not that people hate you, it’s not that people love you. It’s that people don’t care about you. I don’t mean that in a mean way, like that nobody cares about you or that you don’t have value enough to be worth caring about, I mean People, the masses of asses (I just came up with that but you can use it if you want), generally do not have a stake or an interest in you or your life. Does that sound harsh? Well it may be, in light of what you’re used to, but keep in mind that for the 99.9999% of us in the world that aren’t world famous singers, that’s pretty much the norm. We don’t care about ourselves. We don’t care about you. I don’t care about you (or Miley for that matter). And that’s okay.

Sinead, I know exactly two facts about you: 1) you tore a picture of the Pope in half on SNL in the 90s, which was pretty controversial back before the FCC said “f*** it” and decided to allow shit, the F word, and nudity on television, and 2) you’re Irish. And to be honest I’m not even 100% sure about that second one, I just know (think?) you’re not American and your name is Sinead O’Connor, so call it a high-probability guess (read: racist stereotype). And that’s all right, because you don’t need my love, opinion, or approval to continue to be a functioning human being, a good mother, and whatever else you’re in to. You don’t need to engage in a one-way PR rivalry with a pop product whose entire existence can be traced back to a line dancing country song for your own validity. It’s nice that you wanted to help, and I don’t know you so I won’t imply that there was any ulterior motive of using someone else’s hype as a way to get a little attention for yourself (though that would certainly be the case if it were me in your shoes…in fact this very blog is meant to at least partly cash in on some of that attention floating around), but that’s the bitch of advising: it’s up to the advisee to decide if they actually want to follow your advice or not. And if you’re surprised that Miley retorted in a childish, unintelligent, and mean sort of way, well then that’s on you for not doing any research on your subject. I mean, this is a girl whose entire public relations strategy can essentially be summed up with:

;-P

…does that strike you as the sort of person looking to take thoughtful counsel from her elders, no matter how well intentioned or well known?

So hey, you took your best shot at helping someone you felt was in need, you gave us some classic Sinead anti-establishment zingers, and you got media attention without having to rip up any 8×10 glossies of the blessed father (do Catholics call him that or is that blasphemy?). Ideal outcome? No. But your fans still love and support you, you got your message out to a ton of little girls who are undoubtedly in need of more “your value isn’t a byproduct of how willing you are to undress and how good you look while undressing” than they get from the rest of society, and that’s got to count for something. And hey, it could be worse, you could be Eli Manning, who doesn’t have the pressures and exploitations of being a teen pop princess to use an excuse for his poor performance/breakdown. So there’s that. In the meantime, I hope you’re well and that this whole thing doesn’t ruin your morning meal of potato soup or make it any harder to keep the kids from getting your Lucky Charms. Buck up kid, you’re just an O, E, and Y away from being related to Sean Connery, and that’s pretty cool. (That’s how relations work, right? You’re automatically related to anyone with the same last name as you? My ancestry.com free trial expired before I could find out).

Play on,
Dustin

Why can’t they kiss and make up like Miley kissed that sledgehammer?

…Want more Mind Bullets? New posts go up every Wednesday at noon PST (or as close to that as I feel like), and you can subscribe if you want them delivered right to your inbox. Or if you’re too impatient to wait that long you can follow me on twitter, instagram, youtube (new videos every Monday), and my boring personal website. Whew, that’s a lot of self promotion…even I don’t like me enough to keep up with all that.

House of Heroes Undead Vlog

If you’re looking for relevant, fascinating, current, and well-shot video footage of the band House of Heroes…may I suggest looking elsewhere.

If, however, you are looking for shaky, distorted, outdated, boring footage of the band House of Heroes, then you hit the shaky, distorted, outdated, boring video footage jackpot!

It’s not a literal house.

This week on the blog, come play along with me as I dig up some footage from my band touring days, complete with the first time I met and hung out with one of my now-best-chums, Josh Dun! (And don’t forget to check out Josh’s new band, Twenty One Pilots).

…Or go watch Breaking Bad on DVR. That’s probably what I would do in your position.

But if you’re still interested, here ya go:

Play on,
Dustin

PS Hank dies.

 

…Want more Mind Bullets? New posts go up every Wednesday at noon PST (or as close to that as I feel like), and you can subscribe if you want them delivered right to your inbox. Or if you’re too impatient to wait that long you can follow me on twitter, instagram, youtube (new videos every Monday), and my boring personal website. Whew, that’s a lot of self promotion…even I don’t like me enough to keep up with all that.

Whose Blog is It Anyway?

So there are really only a handful of things from my childhood that are sacred to me: Bugs Bunny, the original Nintendo Entertainment System, Claussen pickles (always refrigerated, never frozen), and Whose Line is it Anyway (there are others, but four examples is plenty for you to get the idea: I wasn’t a particularly “cool” kid). Of those, Bugs Bunny is still on the air if you know where to look, I regrettably parted ways with the Nintendo (mostly due to a lapse in judgment and the fact that my brother and I had never seen $50 at once before), Claussen’s remain one of only five things (along with milk, salad, cereal, and alcohol) I feel comfortable buying from the grocery store, and Whose Line it Anyway had a nice run and then got cancelled.

Until NOW.

I never learned about capitalization for emphasis in writing school, I just kind of figured it out on my own…did somebody say savant?? I’m like the Bobby Fischer of capslock (google the reference, 90s kids).

Imagine how excited the kid in me got when he found out that Whose Line is it Anyway was coming back? More excited than when he found out ExoSquad was on Hulu Plus (…again, google it).