Kill Hannah

I realize that the last few posts have been brimming with a pretty excessive amount of venom, and that it's just not the kind of thing folks are looking for around the holidays. So with that in mind, in the coming days I'll try my best to get into the Christmas spirit and refrain from advocating anyone's murder.

Right after I get something out of the way.

A couple of weeks back, I ripped heavily into the incomprehensible Hannah Montana craze that's galloping across our nation's youth culture like one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Montana Über Alles/11.20.07).

Well, maybe it's because I'm fortunate enough not to be the father of a borderline-retarded 10-year-old girl and as such don't have to live under the constant specter of this crap, but it seemed as if the national headlines (and by proxy the rest of us) had been mercifully Montana-free over the past few weeks.

Then came this syrupy drivel:

COLUMBUS, OHIO (FOX) -- Tuesday night's Hannah Montana concert at Nationwide Arena in Columbus was a dream come true for thousands of young fans, but for one 9-year-old girl, that dream was nearly a nightmare.

Just 40 minutes before Miley Cyrus was to take the stage, Toledo natives Rachel Dennis and her daughter, Elizabeth, were stuck outside.

"My fiance bought two tickets off Ebay for 260 dollars...and we went to the door to get in and they're not valid," Rachel says.

The man who sold Rachel the tickets seemed legit, but it turns out he refunded the tickets before the sold-out concert,

"They seemed fine, valid...this guy's sold thousands of tickets before."

Just when they'd about given up hope, Rob Bastian came along. He'd planned on going to the concert with his daughter and several others, but after a ticket mix-up at the box office, he decided not to go in after all.

"When we walked by the mom was crying, the little girl was crying, because they needed tickets so I ran back to the lady at the ticket booth," says Rob.

He came back with two floor seat tickets, willing to sell them for much less than scalpers, an offer Rachel couldn't pass up.

Rob says not going to the concert was well worth seeing the huge smile on Elizabeth's face,

"My little girl wanted to go and I couldn't see that little girl not being able to go."

I'd like to think that by unloading the tickets, Rob Bastian -- the Good Samaritan of this heartwarming story -- screwed his own kid out of seeing Hannah Montana, thus ensuring that she'll go on to spend her teen years cutting herself, writing emo poetry, cultivating an eating disorder and finally hanging herself in the basement, but I'm sure that wasn't the case.

One thing I can guarantee is that Mr. Bastian walked away from that arena with a big-ass smile on his face because not only would he not have to sit through the waking nightmare of "Hannah Montana Live!" but he even wound up making a few bucks he could then use trying to drown the knowledge of his failure as a father at the bar across the street.

This whole ridiculous phenomenon is like some kind of running South Park gag. If I told you ten years ago that parents would one day be mortgaging their homes and selling their blood so that their desperate, crying kids wouldn't miss the chance to see Billy Ray Cyrus's daughter, you'd have wisely had me committed.

I mean, seriously, read Monday's issue of the Kansas City Star -- a newspaper which inexplicably allows teenagers to write for it -- and tell me the world hasn't gone fucking mad.

Jeff Buckley dies at 30.

Billy Ray Cyrus meanwhile is not only still alive, but his worthless spawn is a goddamned multi-media sensation -- one that's metastasized inside the collective consciousness of an entire generation of kids.

Tell me there isn't something wrong with that.