Awesome! It was every bit as horrible I dreamed it would be!

Every generation or so, a major televised disaster unites the globe. Where were you? What were you doing? Who were you with when Hit Me Baby One More Time seared through the airwaves and the all the world clasped hands and said:

"Is Tiffany pregnant?"

I was watching this show in Florida, preparing lecture notes, and I called my sister--my NephewMama--who, eight hundred miles away, was sitting with Country the Brother In Law, and when she picked up the phone she said, in place of "Hello":

"Is Tiffany pregnant?"

They should have called this show "'Oh Yeeeeeeeeaaaaaah, Hiiiiiiiim!': Parade Of the Most Unnecessary Celebrities Ever." You felt two things while watching Hit Me Baby One More Time. You felt old, and you felt superior, for although you may have never been famous, at least you weren't once famous, and then no longer famous, and now appearing on summer primetime television looking like that against the cable premiere of Crocodile Dundee In Los Angeles.

I also experienced, as a bonus, a distinct sense of mental and bodily filth, and had to run and find the eye bleach in a vain attempt to wash away the horror that was a 2005-model Mike Score.

Because there's nothing more enjoyable than listening to pop artists who can't sing than listening to pop artists who can't sing and now have twenty years of groupie mileage on them, NBC actually made this thing a contest. The network reached its arm down into the sewage of D-list celebritydom, scraped aside Kathie Lee Gifford and Dave Coulier, and raised up from the ooze of forgetfulness the remnants of Flock of Seagulls, Arrested Development, Loverboy, and, bless her flabby little heart, Tiffany.

Nothing bespeaks class like a thirty-four-year-old who does her professional shopping at Rave, and Tiffany enhanced her look by ensuring, via a highly unfortunate choice of camisole top, that the folks at home could ascertain that she could have suckled the entire orchestra pit. "I Think We're Alone Now" used to wake me for the fourth grade from my pink plastic Panasonic alarm clock, memories that shall forevermore be accompanied by a desperate need to let Tiffany know that her fifteen-year-old body just rang, and it didn't leave a callback number.

My NephewMama and Country the Brother-In-Law, in their infinite wisdom, put Jim the Baby Nephew to bed before the show began to avoid potential scarring, which was good, for had he been exposed to the rupture in the space-time continuum that Loverboy created with their two-minute Oldness Crapfest ("Everybody's workin' hackhack for the wheeeeeeezespit weekend..."), for the rest of his life he would never believe us when we tell him that the '80's were, in fact, the apex of Western civilization.

Arrested Development "won" the night, if by an acceptable definition of "won" you mean that they emerged victorious by sucking maybe .000000000001% less than the other Acts of Suckage.

Boy, have I missed Arrested Development and their ongoing dismissal of the fact that there may, somewhere in the universe, exist viable notions other than their own. NBC flashed a "Which Fryolator Are They Working Now"? segment on each act, and Arrested Development affirmed they had finalized their Self-Righteous "Artist" Status by retaining a frontman who still insists upon going by one name. It turns out that the entire group all lives in the same house, where they apparently spend their days sitting on a brick wall singing their, um, hit, busting on Dan Quayle and watching that great new show Quantum Leap. Indeed, Arrested Development continues to feel so oppressed by their two Grammys that as they were introduced they found it necessary to fight The Man with the black power salute, the political whallop of which was only slightly mitigated by the fact that this took place as they rose up out of the floor on a pneumatic lift to a stage just vacated by Flock of Seagulls.

And what of The Flock? They're breathing my air, for one thing. Mike Score and his retired-groupie "I'M WITH THE BAND!" wife live in Cocoa Beach. I LOVE me some Space Coast, but this provides further confirmation of my theory that Cocoa Beach is some sort of intergalactic vector of musical atrocities. I also now understand our recent hurricane overages: God was attempting to cast Mike into the sea before he revealed himself to the world in his current incarnation.

Next week! That magnificent arbiter of all things timeless: Vanilla Ice.

collaborate and listen at: mb@blondechampagne.com