But I know I'll live.
Want to know how I know?
Not because I'm a doctor or even have any sort of gut feeling, as my gut is indecently filled with coffee and snot, and frankly the word 'nauseous' comes to mind when I think of my gut. I'm no psychic either. If I were, I would have bought that new MacBook Pro while I was in the States back in August, and wouldn't have to wait another year while I fear for my CD drive's life every time I insert. I haven't gotten a visit from Z either. Granted, I don't think I'm on his itinerary, as I'm pretty sure he's more alive in our minds than anywhere else. And why would he visit someone who thinks he's a figment of a cultural consciousness. He wouldn't, I tell you that.
How then?
Well, I know I'll be alright, since I was lucid enough yesterday to write that serpent post (although I realize now not all of my feverish references are entirely clear to someone who doesn't live in my brain, and I forgot to mention that both the biter and the bitee survived the ordeal), and I was way lucid enough to turn on the television and watch the entire length (Okay, half. I'm a zapper) of SA's Got (has? has got? hasn't got? is plagued by the lack of?) Talent.
Now, that signifies BOREDOM (the capital, screaming kind if it's not otherwise clear) like nothing else. And boredom I can only achieve if I'm not afraid of one or both of my lungs collapsing. Or my heart stopping. Or me sprouting a snout. Or Z being real after all, and me needing to do a quick confessing and repenting thing before we ride into the sunset together.
I was bored enough to understand that whoever hung up those words above the stage - SA's Got Talent - was an unfortunate pawn in the machinations of SABC to confuse the citizens of this here rainbow nation (and all innocent foreigners accidentally tuned onto the channel) into thinking that the only talent needed to get on television in South Africa (although, I must admit, based on various SA programming I've seen, I already had an inkling of this) is one's ability to ignore reality and have that unshakeable faith in one's own capabilities, and fool the country's unsuspecting inhabitants into thinking that what was displayed on that stage was something that could in some circles be referred to as talent.
It wasn't. Really, it wasn't.
It was embarrassing, horrible, mundane, boring, lackluster, mediocre, dull, tedious, run-of-the-mill, unfortunate, and ho-hum. To describe it in a few words. Granted, some of it was less bad than the other stuff, and some of it had that annoying car-crash quality to it, which made it impossible for me to look away, but that is as much as anyone can say about any of it.
And the judges went along with the scam too. They praised the performers who in all truth should have been laughed off the stage, except for the children who really just should have been escorted back to their schools to actually learn something instead of being allowed to make weird faces at the audience or sound like I do in the shower when I belt out the chorus to Europe's The Final Countdown. On a bad day and if I'm simultaneously falling or possibly being bitten by a rat or some other smallish rodent.
Last night was exactly like being back in front of a Finnish or a Danish channel. But in our defense there are only about 5 million Finns, so the concentration of any kind of talent in that population cannot conceivably be very high, especially since a lot of it seems to be found in our ice-hockey players and our formula 1 drivers. And, well, Denmark contains more pigs than people, and if that piece of statistics doesn't scream significance in your face, I don't know what will.
So, really? A boy who can do a backflip followed by a split and some 80s jazz-hands while sticking his tongue out, a guy who plays the guitar like it's a banjo only not as well, a beatboxer who sounds like the Hubs does in his sleep on a bad-sinus night, a bendy but very uninteresting dancer, two brothers who have taken one too many drives with Il Divo playing on the stereo (in all honesty, throughout their performance I was going, "Really? They're brothers? Really?"), and a little girl who one day might be a decent singer but until she learns the meaning of 'key' she's nowhere near that, are the creme de la creme of South Africa's talent pool?
Huh?
I guess Mandela, Coetzee, and Charlize Theron decided to keep it all to themselves and not share with anyone else.
Guys, it shows. Shame on you.
If this guy was South African he could totally be in the top 6 of the show. His talent? Accessorizing of course! Or possibly wearing pink with an attitude. I bet he would have won too.
