I am sad to admit this, but I am still stuck in high school.  I go to a small public school in Bellevue, WA, and I participate in our school's jazz choir. I must say, in my defense, that we are a pretty decent choir; we have consistently placed 3^rd place or higher in our division at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival for the last 6 years or so, I don't know for sure. 

What?  You haven't heard of the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival?  Well, it's this....  You know what?  Doesn't matter.  Accept that we are decent, but not the best, and you'll get the point.   

This year is my senior year.  I am lucky to be escaping with a few shreds of sanity, but the Bellevue School District is hell-bent on making this the most difficult period of schooling possible: extra homework, a handful of ‘optional' AP tests, and a dastardly assignment known as "Senior Project".  In short, everyone in the jazz choir is exhausted, both mentally and physically, with barely enough time to make everything come together.   

For some reason, our choir teacher thought this would be a perfect time to treat us to a fantastic experience.  One of the other seniors, who wasn't in choir, suggested  that we sing the National Anthem for a Storm game.  The Seattle Storm is one of the best women's basketball teams in the nation, but that did little to entice us.  The idea was met with little excitement.  Nothing more then a ‘Meh, why not" could be mustered from the choir, half asleep, as always.  We recorded our performance of the national anthem, and sent it to the Storm for review.  

A week later, we were told that our recording was good enough to land us a spot opening the first game of the season!  We were...not really excited, because we didn't really care much.  It was only women's basketball, after all.  Our main concern was getting our work done in order to graduate.  Despite our apathy, he handed us each five tickets, and told us that we needed to sell them, so we could make try to a profit on the performance. 
 
Yesterday, the student responsible for this event came into our classroom.  We needed to fill out waivers in order to continue.  Apparently they were sued once by a kid who fell off the platform they were performing on, and wanted to prevent another such disaster.  Then came the most unexpected news I have received in a long time.

"Guess what guys!  I got some funny news for you!"
"Really?  What, more forms?"
"No!  It turns out that Sanjaya, you know, that American Idol guy, was supposed to perform at the opening night, but you guys took his spot!"
"What, you mean we stole his spot from him?"
"No!  They'd rather have you guys perform at the opening game than Sanjaya!"

That's right.  My moderately good jazz choir is better at the national anthem than a televised celebrity.  Mock all you want, but I can rest easily knowing that the Seattle Storm prefers a high school choir to an American Idol finalist. Wow. 

He really does suck, doesn't he?