Holy Moses, so many songs. So much happening.

So this is the one where the children pick a song they want to sing, and that's always interesting because you see them figuring out sort of their market platform and how best they can service it. Like, Scotty will probably sing a song about his grandma getting forced to wear a burqini and then at the last second she'll be like, "No!" But on the other hand, this category could be the best one because based on Haley's understanding of the judges, America and herself, she will probably be treating us to a smooth jazz rendition of "Straight Outta Compton" or "Sodomy" from the Broadway musical spectacular Hair.

And then some irrelevant old bitch picks a song for them, like Clive Davis or whoever, and I bet this year it will be Jimmy Iovine, because even though I still haven't figured out his purpose, on this show or on this earth, it seems like part of his shadowy undefined role would be involving himself in this round.

Generally these songs are well-intentioned telegrams from a far-gone era, but as Jacob from the future can tell you, they are also a way to pretend that the old irrelevant person has a personality. Like this year, this is actually a way for Jimmy Iovine to show us his indie cred, or what he thinks is his indie cred and is in fact his wrinkled old ass. A sort of thumbed nose to Steve Albini, the rest of the little Muppet Babies crew I made up and always imagine getting into scrapes and whatnot together, a message saying, "Don't you worry about that old boxing bet, I got Idol money now."

See, it's fun to pretend that music producers run around having stock footage run-ins and that they are so poor and need more money. But can you imagine it? Phil Spector and his ten tons of crazy stabbing on people and Rick Rubin's always sneering and throwing hand signals and they're like "Rick Rubin, stop with that fake British accent, you're not fooling anybody," and Butch Vig is like, "I invented that," whatever it is he thinks he invented it, and nobody wants to talk to Brian Eno so he just hangs out in the corner picking his nose and talking to black-and-white photographs. Right? Only they're babies.

When I was little, long before Dawson Leery, I was fairly certain that my marital options were limited to either Scooter from Muppet Babies or Father Mulcahy from M*A*S*H, basically anybody like that. Anybody fitting into the old Scooter/Mulcahy bracket. The puppet thing didn't every really represent a huge-like hurdle, which it just occurs to me now is kind of weird, but I had picked up on the fact that Korea was really far away. What I have learned in the last thirty years, through a sort of Eat Pray Love process of elimination, is that I'm worth Kermit. You don't settle for Scooter, who is like the Radar, whom I liked but never would have married because he had no gumption. Kermit: Loads of gumption, TCB on the reg, no time for your bullshit. And I think that's most of the reason I'm so obsessed with Ryan Seacrest, is that he is basically the Kermit the Frog of our reality.