Yes I was one of the first true fans of American Idol. I started watching Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman (with a name like that we all knew he didn't have a shot) try to make it in the reality show rat race. And as the years of Idol rolled by, I really thought Ryan was a great host, which I still do. He was poised, rarely stumbled, and of course attractive to the eye. But I had never heard his radio show before. Never seen or heard anything where he solely was the star. When I ended up moving back to California six years ago, I got my chance to witness him in his true element. I discovered he was hosting a morning radio show here in LA and boy did he shine. He knew everybody in Hollywood and everybody knew him. He was a publicist's dream, interviewing everybody from Robert Downey Jr. to Snookie, even rubbing elbows with Larry King and Dick Clark. He was quick witted, smooth, and simply a people pleaser. So I started listening to him each morning on my way to work. At the time, I only worked five minutes from home so I would only experience his show in quick doses, always leaving me wanting more. Then a few years after, our offices moved almost thirty minutes away. Although the commute was longer, I was excited to finally have the opportunity to listen to his show all the way to work, until that is, I realized his station's signal would annoyingly cut off at the same point (in between canyons) every morning and very weakly come back when I reached the bottom. So instead of listening to static, I began switching around at that same point everyday, one day landing on the local radio station KROQ. I had listened to this very station a decade before in high school, liking it, but never experiencing their morning show. As I began listening to its stars, Kevin and Bean, what I heard was a raw mix of humor, bashing, and to be honest, the utter truth. At first I was appalled. These guys were making fun of the very people who Ryan hung out with! They didn't tweet like Ryan, didn't tell every person who called the show that they loved them. They didn't even have a tacky radio sign out, "Seacrest out". They were just two guys who told it like it was while making you laugh. They had much grittier guests compared to Seacrest's typical "famous for being famous" daily lineup. The show was literally poking fun at everything that embodied Ryan Seacrest's world, from the stupidity of the Kardashians to Mel's audio tapes. As the weeks went by, I started paying attention to them more and more until my entire morning car ride was engulfed by them, Seacrest becoming just an afterthought during one of KROQ's commercial breaks. And that's when it became clear to me. I had outgrown Ryan Seacrest and everything he stood for. He had for a time, forced me into his fluffy material world that would almost always be successful in curing my shallow curiosities but would in turn, never make me think. He would absolutely never question anything around him, instead, deciding to hug and kiss the world's problems away with uninspiring and simple two-dimensional words, almost identically resembling a puppet on a string. It's sad to think it took a canyon filled piece of highway and a bad radio signal to make me see things differently. Problem is, the truths in life aren't always easy. Sometimes turning to people with hollow voices serves as a well needed escape. We all need our guilty pleasures...our doses of superficiality. The key though, is to know how to find your way out of the dark cave of tabloids and yes mans and into the brighter light of productivity and impact before you've merely become a shell of the person who had such potential to change this world for the better.
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