{"id":1818,"date":"2009-10-08T12:32:50","date_gmt":"2009-10-08T12:32:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=1818"},"modified":"2009-10-08T12:32:50","modified_gmt":"2009-10-08T12:32:50","slug":"a_tremor_in_the_force","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2009\/10\/08\/a_tremor_in_the_force\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tremor in the Force"},"content":{"rendered":"

Loyal Readers of this blog know that I think the musician Rick Springfield is one of the coolest guys in show business.
\nSomewhat less well-known (since I’ve never actually mentioned it) is the fact that I think exactly the opposite of David Archuleta, the young man who came in second on American Idol<\/i> a while back. (I don’t know exactly how far back… it seems to me like that damn show is always<\/i> running, and I don’t follow it closely enough to distinguish individual seasons.)
\nNow, L’il Davey, as I like to call him, just happens to be a hometown hero — he comes from Murray, Utah, a former industrial center located right smack in the middle of the Salt Lake Valley, not more than a 15-minute drive from my front door. Utahns are nothing if not savagely loyal to their own, especially one of their own who happens to have been on national television, so I am risking a lot of heat by dissing the kid in public like this. But I can’t help it. He’s just so… goofy<\/i>. Whenever I say things like that, my mother and The Girlfriend are quick to remind me that he’s just a kid, that he’s probably had a sheltered upbringing, that he seems to be a very sweet boy, and all of that is undeniably true. He is also — in my humble opinion — awkward on stage, shy to the point of seeming eternally dumbfounded, and too sickeningly wholesome to be any kind of genuine pop star. He is not merely not-cool; he is anti-cool<\/i>.<\/p>\n

So what then am I supposed to make of… this<\/i>:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Rick<\/a><\/p>\n

Did you flinch, too, awaiting the inevitable explosion that must surely result when opposing forces are brought into such close proximity? We’re lucky we didn’t lose the entire west coast, if you ask me…<\/p>\n

(Joking aside, this photo is actually an outtake from a session for this week’s People Magazine<\/i> anniversary issue, in which Rick and David appear together as “Teen Idols Then and Now.” I think that illustrates pretty clearly why nostalgia comes so easily for me. It isn’t just<\/i> the blandification of our iconic signage<\/a>, although that’s certainly another symptom of the problem.<\/p>\n

You can find several other outtakes from the People<\/i> shoot on Rick’s official site<\/a>, if you’re curious, and the actual magazine spread is on David’s site<\/a>. There’s also a video here<\/a> that includes a very funny moment when Rick tells David his mother is hot. To his credit, David actually comes up with an appropriate response…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Loyal Readers of this blog know that I think the musician Rick Springfield is one of the coolest guys in show business. Somewhat less well-known (since I’ve never actually mentioned it) is the fact that I think exactly the opposite of David Archuleta, the young man who came in second on American Idol a while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-and-pop-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1818\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}