The Fall Of David Archuleta

Writing these ridiculous things is a stop and go process. Most nights, it's a mad scramble to try and find something remotely interesting to talk about, then typing it as quickly as possible before you good people wake up and carry on with your day. On other nights, I can whip out multiple things in a matter of hours, and be covered for days at a time.

This was the case last week, where I managed to have all of the week's posts generated in a single day. Nothing left to do but edit and publish, leaving the rest of the day for me to squander away with good music, bad TV, and tolerable food.

Naturally, this means that I can't always get the jump on any late breaking news. Sometimes topics that are hot and ripe for the picking don't get mishandled by me until the following week. And, I suppose I could just swap out posts to stay on top of things, but I'm a lazy man, and you should accept that.

So, I've been left with a weekend to muse and ponder over Mr. David Archuleta. Potential candidate for American Idol, and a hometown hero if there ever was one. I'm right up the road from Murray, David's neighborhood. And between my proximity and the 12 or so random minutes of local news that I take in during a regular week, it's hard to not hear about the kid. There was no doubt in anyone's mind, including mine, that the kid would win it all. He had the sympathy vote with all the "daddy issues," and seemed far more marketable than the other kid. He was destined to win.

But he didn't, and I am so relieved.

For those unfamiliar with Utah, let me give you a little precursor on this place. This is a state loaded with very nice, very decent people. And while I don't agree with a lot of the religious views of this place, I can say that I don't bed down at night with a shotgun for fear of persecution. But this is also a place that has something to prove to the rest of the country. The state secretly wants to be known for something more than tired polygamy jokes. I can't blame them really. Having been no stranger to negative stereotypes, I know what drives people to prove to others that they're different.

Utah spends a lot of time trying to squeeze itself into the general ecology of the rest of the nation. Watch a little bit of news, and you'll see how badly it wants to be recognized as one of the boys. Anything that has any kind of impact somewhere else, must have it's day here in Utah. When the conflicts in Iraq started, every news report had to hear about how the Utah soldiers felt about it. And when Hurricane Katrina wrecked New Orleans, Utah interviewed Utahans about what they were doing to help the cause. Our perspective about what's going on in the rest of the world is paramount.

When things do actually happen here, you'd need to be living in the middle of the fucking desert not to hear about it. Our claims to fame have been a couple of instances of gang violence, one kidnapped girl, and a shooting. Serious stuff of course, but compared to places like New York or Los Angeles, it's not even breaking news. But the local media will play the living shit out of stories like this for months. So much so that if you tune into one news program every few weeks, you'll pretty much be completely caught up on what's going on. To this day, having the Olympics has been such a profound deal, that people still wear the volunteer coats they were given, some six years later.

This town isn't ready for the kind of publicity a hometown American Idol winner can bring. This is still a far too excitable bunch, in desperate need of contemporary press. And reliance on the success of an individual as means of defining a space in geography is suicide. We'll become more one-note than we were when we were a bunch of polygamists.

But admittedly, my motives for enjoying his failure are a bit more selfish. Despite the type of songs Mr. Archuleta sings, and how he's gone about finding success, he and I are still in the same business. And I don't know if I'll have any kind of real success in this industry, but I do know for damn sure that I might as well hang up my instruments and retire if David Archuleta was the American Idol. The Boogie Man and the BGO are plenty underground right now, But with his face representing Utah music, I would never even break the surface. No matter what I did, it would always be "How it compares to Utah's American Idol." Probably the only way I could establish myself would be by producing something heartfelt, yet generic for him. I would forever live in the shadow of that pre-pubescent face. And frankly, I think I have enough competition by the latest and greatest coming out of MTV's and Disney's ass without having it happen in my own town.

And yet, it was not meant to be. And after the cheers and toasts of relief to the young man's failure, I do feel bad for this town of mine. It seems like the current legacy of this place is only pulling second best. We've never seen the Jazz go all the way, and we've never gotten our own American Idol. But I know that somewhere, someday, Utah will get past the imagery the rest of the world has of it. This will no longer be a place where pioneering, salt water, and old religious ideals of banging several women and being in the clear with the lord is what we're all about. There will be something new defining it. I don't know what that is yet, but I know it will be more than a single person or group's success. It'll be bigger, something that speaks about every person that resides here.

Of course, it's possible I'm just being too optimistic. Second stringer American Idols can be very successful. It's possible that the evil of David has yet to truly come to fruition. Be wary my fellow artists and craftsmen. It may not be long before his shadow overtakes you.