the real thing

Aaaaand, I've officially come to the end of the "being amused at going downtown to 'work'" phase. I say 'work', because what I'm doing here in no way resembles work. For most of the day, I've had my bare feet propped on the desk, finishing the new Marian Keyes novel I started during our layover in Pittsburgh (I finished it a couple of hours ago, which has rendered me without reading material and therefore extremely bored). Idle work days are nothing new to me: nearly every temp job I've had included atleast 5 hours of "down-time" per day. I was thinking that maybe I should start a company where I'm a consultant who helps people realize that temps are completely unnecessary, and they are basically paying people to surf the Internet all day long. But I don't think my temp agency would like that very much, and since they've been so good to me, I'll keep my mouth shut over here and keep raking in $14 an hour for doing precisely nothing.
There's something I've been meaning to vent about on here. I've been seeing this dude non-stop on the news shows, and I hate to break it to you folks, but...he's NOT THAT GOOD. I know it's a precious little story about a down-on-his-luck cell phone salesman who became an overnight sensation but...did these people not hear him crack the high note in Nessun Dorma? There are a thousand tenors out there who could sing the shit out of that aria, who could sing this guy under the table, but the world is more interested in the British cell phone salesman who, as luck would have it, can make some vaguely "operatic noises" come out of him.
Opera singing is not something you just wake up one day and go, "hmmm, I think I'll make a hobby of singing opera." No, no, it takes years and years of formal training, not to mention the amount of memorization, in-depth study of atleast three languages, vocal stamina, and discipline that go into making a career in opera. Maybe this guy has some raw talent, and maybe if he'd started twenty years ago, he'd have had a shot at a career. But I took one look at that quivering jaw and knew that he hadn't a shot in hell of getting through an opera role, and probably not even a concert of arias.
But, Americans (and the rest of the world, I'm assuming) love a good rags to riches story, and Paul Potts is certainly that. He'll have a "fake opera" career, a la Andrea Boccelli and Charlotte Church (although, in their defense, they have pleasant voices to listen to. I didn't find PPs even remotely beautiful). He'll be rich, I'm sure. He'll sing that damn Nessun Dorma over and over and over again to screaming audiences. I doubt he'll grace the stage of any opera house, but then again, opera directors are becoming more and more shallow these days and doing just about anything to get butts in seats. But those of us who know, those of us who have put in the years and given our lives to this career, we will know that this guy is not the real thing. You dont' become an opera star overnight.
Rant finished. Thank you for listening.