The TV executives seemed to be getting trickier than ever, and I
thought it necessary to look up my previous college roommate and
math-whiz The Amazing Paul, currently double-majoring in computer
science & engineering and economics, for help. I figured if
there was anyone capable of connecting Pauly Shore’s cryptic
last words to Rupert Murdoch’s nefarious Inner Circle scheme,
it was him.
“What can you tell us about Mister Rogers and an
asteroid?” I asked The Amazing Paul, who was busying himself
with a game of StarCraft against his homemade supercomputer named
Data, which looked like the bastard son of IBM’s chess champ
Deep Blue and Hal from “2001.”
“Simple,” The Amazing Paul replied. “Fellow
brains at The Carnegie Science Center recently renamed Asteroid
26858 “˜Misterrogers’ because of Rogers’ work with
kids on public television and the astrological program he
initiated.”
“But what would that dastardly Murdoch want with
it?” Christy asked.
“Well, let’s have Data figure it out,” Paul
said, plugging in the information we’d gathered over the
weeks, plus a smattering of other factors worth considering: Roger
Moore got a pacemaker, Lionel Ritchie’s daughter was busted
for heroin possession, Tommy Lee finished his probation like a
model citizen, American Idol is down to it’s final two
players.
Data became silent after a definitive “PING.” Paul
tore off the dot matrix printout and looked at it quizzically.
“Oh, Mylanta,” he said. “This is worse than I
thought.”
Christy and I stood up with alarm. Somewhere, in the background,
ominous music played.
The Amazing Paul explained: “Murdoch owns FOX, right? And
FOX owns American Idol. And next week millions of people will phone
and text message their votes for quirky Clay and super-smooth
Ruben.”
“But what does this have to do with the asteroid,
man?” I was getting anxious.
“Well, it appears that Murdoch’s FOX satellite will
be aligned with “˜Misterrodgers’ next Tuesday night. All
the votes will be bouncing off the satellite before going to FOX
Central. But what if they didn’t end up at FOX Central? What
if their electro-magnetic energy was used to pull
“˜Misterrodgers’ toward Earth instead?”
“Do you mean”“?” Christy asked with emphatic
fervor.
“Yes,” The Amazing Paul said with final authority.
“Whoever wins “˜American Idol 2′ will determine
where “˜Misterrodgers’ will crash-land on
earth.”
“So if Ruben wins?” I asked.
Paul perused his printout.
“New York City,” he said, “will be
obliterated.”
“And Clay?” Christy asked.
“Right here,” he replied. “Los
Angeles.”
It had all come full circle, I could see then. Murdoch was
planning to use the name of the Patron Saint of public television
he assassinated in order to destroy the planet. This was not a
run-of-the-mill evil scheme. This was the Queen Mother; the perfect
commingling of pop culture, mass media and complete and total
megalomania.
But what could we do? Initiate a complete and total voting
blackout for “American Idol 2″? That was laughable;
there was no way we could stop the millions of people charging the
phone lines.
One thing was for sure. Forget “Survivor: Amazon”
and “The Bachelor” “American Idol” was well
on its way to bringing about the end of society as we knew it. Not
even the likes of Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay would be able
to handle this.
If you’d like a signed headshot of Cobb,
e-mail him at ccobb@media.ucla.edu.