How to be Hot: A Rock & Roll Fable
January
Mel Dorkum, a communications major at California’s Fresno City College, auditions at a local club called the Pitz. Dressed in black leather, he sings off key to a small Casio keyboard. The owner, who’s short on acts, offers him the Tuesday-nights-at-10:30 slot. Asked how he wants to be billed, Dorkum says, “God, I don’t know.” He arrives at the Pitz the next Tuesday and sees he’s listed in the schedule as “god.” Thus inspired, he winds a strand of Christmas lights into a blinking crown of thorns and ties two canoe paddles together to make a cross.
On the same night, British pop impresario Nigel MacAdamia – a.k.a. Nutty M. – gets extremely lost on his way to the San Francisco International Airport. He goes into the Pitz to ask directions just in time to see a performer billed as god crucified on canoe paddles by two waitresses. Amazed that he didn’t think of the idea first, Nutty signs god immediately. He faxes his London office: “I have seen the future of rock & roll, and it is god.”
February
god flies to London and records ten songs, which Nutty then rewrites, remixes and re-records using studio keyboardists and vocalists. Nutty plays god’s first single, “i Wanna god U,” continuously during acid-lambada night at his disco, the No Parking Zone. “i Wanna god U” soon tops the U.K. dance charts and then hits Number One on the pop charts.
Nutty gets god booked as the opening act for U2 on the band’s American tour. “It’s kinda weird coming home a star,” god tells People magazine. “When I left, no one even knew who I was.” From the first tour date, at Madison Square Garden, god steals the show. The finale of his set is his crucifixion, during which he is hydraulically lifted out over the audience to pulsing synth beats and clouds of smoke. No one seems to mind that he lip-syncs the entire set to a prerecorded track.
In a feud that Nutty eagerly publicizes, U2’s Bono asserts that “god doesn’t really believe in God.” The feud creates more confusion than excitement, however, when newspaper copy editors across the country capitalize the g in both Gods.
March
“i Wanna god U” reaches Number One in the U.S. The video for god’s second single, “Girls R All Foxes in god’s i’s,” which features big-breasted models dressed in skimpy nuns’ habits dancing around god and hitting him with leaky feather pillows, moves into heavy rotation on MTV.
god’s first album, Meet god!, is released and immediately wins the Los Angeles Times critics’ poll. GOD’S GENIAL GENIUS, reads the headline of Rolling Stone‘s review, which is followed by two and a half stars. “Mr.god may not yet have met the considerable expectations set for him,” writes the New York Times, “but in chirpy, synth-pop renderings such as ‘On the 8th Day (god Rocked),’ as well as in the haunting, mellifluous vocal stylings of the ballad ‘Peter (i Can See Your House From Here),’ he more than shows potential.”
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