Down the Rabbit Hole… The Dark Side of Oz(zfest)

For those of you who read the fourth Harry Potter, “Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire”, you are familiar with Harry’s plight as he is somehow thrust into the Tri-Wizard Tournament against all odds. We at Baseball For Dinner have read all 7 books as well as Rowling’s “Tales of Beedle the Bard” and several online lexicons, and we are not new to discovering patterns in nature. Thus, we are compelled to bring you this BFD Special Investigative Report.

As those privy will recall, [spoiler alert] Harry wins the tournament, despite being unqualified to compete. We learn later that it was the work of Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge’s demented son impersonating Mad Eye Moody with a strict regiment of polyjuice potion, but we know from the start that evil is afoot.

In the fall of 2003, Ruben Studdard emerged champion of American Idol Season 2. What would happen to Ruben in the following years, we neither know nor care. What’s important is that Clay Aiken, AI S2’s measly runner up, became an overnight teeny bopper sensation.

American Idol is a well oiled machine, perfectly calibrated to pump out one pop culture icon per season, package it nicely in a box, and release it into the wild. There is only room for one a year. The public would simply not tolerate this phenomenon in any greater abundance. This method is tried and true in television. Only one man can win. The Running Man and the obsessive whammy-counting maniac on Press Your Luck validate this theory. Audiences do not react well to multiple champions from a slew of contestants. It lowers the stakes, which lowers ratings.

Furthermore, we all know the results of game shows are rigged based on a complex algorithm that determines what will sell the most Oreos. Begging the inevitable question: How the hell did Clay Aiken pervade American pop culture?

While BFD will not speculate the reasons for this beyond inferring that it is no doubt Satanic, there is one thing for sure – Clay Aiken is invading the minds of America’s youth subliminally.

Baseball For Dinner’s Conspiracy Investigation Unit recently discovered unsettling connections in Aiken’s music video for his single, “Invisible”, the likes of which have not been seen since Pink Floyd was convicted of composing The Dark Side of the Moon to sync with The Wizard of Oz (one of the greatest contributions to the downfall of society, the Counterculture Revolution).

It seems that, in like manner, Clay Aiken’s “Invisible” was actually composed to be synced with System Of A Down’s “Chop Suey”.

The date is now September 13th or 14th, 2001. What is crashing in at No. 1 on the Billboard Charts? System Of A Down’s “Chop Suey”. Concerned Americans are up in arms about the song’s lyric, “I don’t think you trust in my self-righteous suicide”, and SOAD is immediately demonized, prompting the video to be pulled from MTV and forcing the group into a lengthy hiatus. Everyone knows that you don’t apologize when you’re not wrong, proving once and for all that “System Of A Down” and “Osama bin Laden” are interchangeable terms. Case closed. Until now.

Seven months prior to Studdard’s American Idol win and Aiken’s subsequent rise to fame, Clay was a nobody, a squirrely-faced boob auditioning for the hugest opportunity in the nation. At the very same moment, America was about to invade Iraq.

This leaves Baseball For Dinner wondering, how deep does the rabbit hole go? Well shiver me timbers; it goes pretty deep. Further investigation has revealed that Hanson’s MMM Bop is the true soundtrack to Marilyn Manson’s The Dope Show, and that Oliver! and Slayer’s Reign In Blood are a pretty decent match.

With the world holding their breath waiting to see the bigger picture, Baseball For Dinner works tirelessly to provide more information on this horrifying phenomenon as it develops.