Oops! They did it again!

They let another stupid pop tart lip-synch on SNL. Last night, when Ashlee Simpson went up to sing her second and final song of the evening, there was dissonance on the stage. Her band was playing live whatever her second song was supposed to be, but the speakers were feeding in the "Pieces of Me" vocal track, which she had previously "sung." Ashlee didn't realize what was going on at first and started her set with a sexy little body roll, which quickly degenerated into a retarded jig of despair as soon as she heard the lyrics to her previous song. She instantly shoved the microphone into her face and tried to pretend it was okay, but it was too late. All of America knew she was lip-synching. They immediately cut to commercial, and that was the end of Ashlee's set.

During the final credits, Jude Law thanked her and said "Live TV!," (as if to say "Oops! We f*cked up!") to which Ashlee replied, "I know, I am so sorry! My band started playing the WRONG SONG and I didn't know what to do!" To be fair, I wouldn't know what to do either if that meant the guy in the booth hit play on the wrong tape. I mean, there you are, all ready to fake your way through a song you didn't write when another song you didn't write comes on, and you don't recognize it at first because you didn't write it and you're not all that musical to begin with. That's a tough situation. I guess maybe what I would do is START SINGING LIVE INTO THE MICROPHONE TO COVER UP THE FACT THAT SOMEONE WAS PLAYING MY CD?... But of course you can't do that if you don't know how to sing.

Note to SNL: You cannot be a show that makes fun of celebrities and then allow a celebrity to come on and do what you should be making fun of them for. This is the kind of act you should be lambasting next week on your show. I want to see Maya Rudolph in a long black wig trying to sing 5 different songs being fed thru the speaker at the same time while doing a ridiculous mix of jigging and trying to be sexy. But I won't. Because then SNL would have to admit that they allow people to come on their show and lip-synch. And that's not exactly "live," is it?

Not that I don't feel bad for Ashlee. After all, she is just a puppet in all of this. It's her father and her record company and the entertainment industry at large that should be blamed for building the careers of talentless people who don't even have the skills to do a 2-song live performance. Do you know how many musical theatre kids are out there that want to kick her ass? "I played Evita when I was 12 years old and I sang the entire show with a 102 degree fever and a broken left ankle but you can bet your sweet ass I was still dazzling - I was Rainbow High!"

I could go on and on about this...how it's a slap in the face to those of us who have trained for years to perform, how it's an affront to those of us who think you shouldn't be able to build a career on cute clothes and a good marketing scheme. But, unfortunately, most of the products that succeed in America are hollow, shabby and devoid of any soul. Ashlee Simpson is to music as Wonder Bread is to baked goods - soft, fluffy, unsatisfying, and in this age of anti-carb sentiment, soon to be obsolete. Or at least I hope.

I'm with Elton John on this one. If you don't sing live, you suck. I'm gonna go listen to "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," drink some more coffee and grumble things like, "That bloody lip-synching, red string bracelet wearing, children's book authoring, pseudo-British, faux-Jew MadEsther better send me a f*cking Christmas Card this year! Wanker." And while I dance around my living room, I'm going to revel in the fact that even though I'm a decade older and 5 pant sizes larger than these virgin-whores who sell millions of records, I can actually sing an entire song all by myself.