Things I don't understand #27...

...What I'm supposed to do when "American Idol" and "Dancing With the Stars" comes on at the same time on the same night.

I know, right! This is ridiculous. Who's in charge of scheduling in TV Land*? Obviously, I'm not. Because if I were, tragedies such as this would never occur. I just thank God that "The Bachelor" and "Big Brother" weren't on, too (Although, with this injustice, I'm starting to wonder if God is still paying attention.) How is one expected to choose between the elegance of deaf girls and 400lb magicians or the magical (yet, obviously necessary) re-workings of Beatles tunes by twelve people I've never heard of...still. How could I possibly be prepared to pick between watching scantily clad women twirl around or guys with questionable sexual orientation belt out the hits (Ok admittedly, that's really kind of a no-brainer).

Sure, in some ways the shows are the same. The mysterious back-up band lurking in the shadows. The over-the-top pageantry for each contestant. The faux-suspense-building delays orchestrated by hosts of questionable relevance (really, where do they find these guys?). But in other ways, they're so very different. For instance, one has a panel of three judges. One is guy who sometimes likes the performance, sometimes doesn't. Another is a girl of mysterious ethnic origin who likes everything. And the third is a crotchety dude who hates everything and delivers his critiques with a British accent. Oh wait...uh...well one of them has professional athletes. And I'm sure there's other stuff that's different about them, too. But how can I be expected to find those if they're both on at the same time? I can't. So that's why I watched the Mav's game instead.

++Disclaimer++
Some might think that because I was able to include some random details about these shows that I actually watch them, even if my public persona demands that I deny such. This is not the case. I have seen approximately 20 minutes of A.I. (short for "American Idol") since it's inception and about 7 minutes of D.W.t.S. (uh...yeah, I think you got it) since it's birth. In both cases, most of that was me suffering through 30 seconds waiting for the show I actually wanted to watch start. I will admit there was one time where I thought I could watch a whole 10 minutes of DWTS while I waited, but after about three minutes I was so ashamed of myself I was sure my neighbors would hear and report me to the authorities. At which point, they would have no choice but to castrate me for my crimes against manhood. I would have had to relent, for I could not think of any reasonable defense. I then dived for the remote. Instead, what this should do is go on to prove that these catastrophes of pop culture are so pervasive that one cannot somehow be collaterally ingrained with such useless knowledge without finding a large whole, climbing in it, and covering it with a slightly larger rock. I am not that fond of rocks, so instead I carry this needless info inside my skull.

(*This in no way refers to the Nickelodeon run network)