Friday, October 12, 2007

sing us a song, you're the piano man

Hi. My name is J and I'm a lyrical snob. Whilst waiting for the rerun of Wed. night's South Park, I flipped over to Fox at 9:30 to catch the end of "Don't Forget The Lyrics!" which is similar to the show that the Fat One from NSync hosts on some other channel. This one, however, has Wayne "I sure miss riding Drew Carey's coattails" Brady on it and apparently has a Who Wants To Be A Millionaire twist to it. Crap. Double Crap. Shit. That means the people get up there and instead of just answering the question or singing along or whatever in the hell it is that they do, they also give you incessant babbling about how they know this or have seen that or blah blah blah-kill me now. Last night, this dude comes out in a yellow shirt with a welcome back Kotter moustache and YELLOW ALLIGATOR SHOES and proceeds to ham it up through about 3 songs talking all the while about how he's a musical aficionado and everything. Uber annoying. Yes, I just said uber. It's really the only word to describe it. Anyway, after blowing through 2 out of 3 of his "lifelines" or "backups" on some song I've never even heard of (yet he managed to try to hit all the falsetto/female parts of), he finally gets to the safe point of $25K. That's a lot of money. Well, to me anyway. Of course, the r&b song previously mentioned would've blown me out of the water. Of course, I'd never have chosen that category, but anyway. His $25K lock category? Billy Joel. BILLY. JOEL. The question? PIANO MAN. Yeah, Piano Man. 3 missing words were all he needed to fill in. 3. Mr. Macho Music sang along and he was doing really well until he got to the part where it mattered. The line was "We're all in the mood for a melody and you've got __ _________ _________." Well, every drunk out there that's ever been in a bar or at karaoke or anywhere remotely associated with a beer and good times knows that line. Or, if you've ever listened to oh, I don't know, any classic rock radio station. It's so obvious. Let's break it down into context, shall we? Mr. MM got the last two words right. "feeling alright". Pretty good right? His first word? ME. Ok, read the sentence back. WE are in the mood for a melody. WE. As in all of US...more than one, etc. Context clues people...they teach it in elementary schools (or used to, anyway). I almost fell off of the couch when I heard him say ME. He didn't even think about it. He went on about being originally from Long Island like Billy and how he's heard this song millions of times and all this shit and locked in his answer without hesitation. Of course, Wayne goes backwards through the answer because even Wayne knows it's wrong. The guy's all pumped up and bragging and smiling...and BLAMMO. Nada. Wrong Answer. Off the show with $0 and an assload of humiliation for messing up one of the most popular songs probably ever. I would chalk it up to nervousness had he not been overly cocky from the beginning. Now I'm just going it being too damn funny. It's a shame too, because $25K would've bought a lot more of those butt-ugly shoes. Laughing and self-satisfied, I promptly switched to South Park where they designated Bono as a piece of crap (literally). Ah, good times. Thank you tv, for making me feel good about myself. I may not have $25K, but at least Billy Joel knows that I know his songs. Billy if you're reading this, call me.

3 comments:

JDizzle said...

I hate those shows. They are so bad. And the contestants have ZERO shame. It's unbearable to watch.

Anonymous said...

not knowing billy joel lyrics should be a crime.

Nicole said...

These shows actually depress me! Instead of making me feel smart, they make me want to weep at the state of our nation.