{"id":26,"date":"2010-08-03T10:22:42","date_gmt":"2010-08-03T10:22:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/popcultureroadtrip\/2010\/08\/having-my-american-idol-cake-and-eating-it-too.html"},"modified":"2010-08-03T10:22:42","modified_gmt":"2010-08-03T10:22:42","slug":"having-my-american-idol-cake-and-eating-it-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/2010\/08\/having-my-american-idol-cake-and-eating-it-too.html","title":{"rendered":"Having my American Idol cake and eating it, too."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So the country is falling apart and it seems like the most important thing on many people&#8217;s minds is who will will occupy the 1-2 judge seats on American Idol next season. If anything illustrates the low-level quality of our nation&#8217;s popular culture today, I think this may be it.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Sweating out the details of who will judge a talent contest? This is the best we&#8217;ve got? Are you kidding me? It seems the celebrity obsession is trumping all; blacking out all other life forms until one day, stories like this will lead the evening news, with the wars, oil spills etc. pushed to the back of the show.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Okay, that outrage said and accounted for, who do you think will get seats(s)? \ud83d\ude42<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So the country is falling apart and it seems like the most important thing on many people&#8217;s minds is who will will occupy the 1-2 judge seats on American Idol next season. If anything illustrates the low-level quality of our nation&#8217;s popular culture today, I think this may be it. Sweating out the details of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":228,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Having my American Idol cake and eating it, too. - The Pop Culture Road Trip<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/2010\/08\/having-my-american-idol-cake-and-eating-it-too.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Having my American Idol cake and eating it, too. - The Pop Culture Road Trip\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"So the country is falling apart and it seems like the most important thing on many people&#8217;s minds is who will will occupy the 1-2 judge seats on American Idol next season. If anything illustrates the low-level quality of our nation&#8217;s popular culture today, I think this may be it. Sweating out the details of&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/2010\/08\/having-my-american-idol-cake-and-eating-it-too.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Pop Culture Road Trip\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-08-03T10:22:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Chris Epting\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Having my American Idol cake and eating it, too. - The Pop Culture Road Trip","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/2010\/08\/having-my-american-idol-cake-and-eating-it-too.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Having my American Idol cake and eating it, too. - The Pop Culture Road Trip","og_description":"So the country is falling apart and it seems like the most important thing on many people&#8217;s minds is who will will occupy the 1-2 judge seats on American Idol next season. 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As an author, Epting has found that unearthing and chronicling \"\"hidden\"\" locations offers him a challenge. What began as an inquisitive hobby soon developed into the writing and photographing of 18 books based on his discoveries, including \"\"James Dean Died Here\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6The Locations of America's Pop Culture Landmarks,\"\" \"\"Elvis Presley Passed Here, Even More Locations of America's Pop Culture Landmarks,\"\" \"\"Roadside Baseball,\"\" and \"\"The Ruby Slippers, Madonna's Bra, and Einstein's Brain: The Locations of America's Pop Culture.\"\" As an extension of his efforts to chronicle the unique, Epting joined Hampton Hotels for a sixth exciting year as national spokesperson and consultant for the Hidden Landmarks program in support of the brand's national \"\"Explore the Highway with Hampton Save-A-Landmark\u00c3\u201d\"\" campaign (the program recently won the President's award). Chris is a frequent featured guest on numerous radio and television programs such as National Public Radio's \"\"All Things Considered,\"\" \"\"The Savvy Traveler,\"\" \"\"Access Hollywood\"\" and FOX TV's the \"\"Best Damn Sports Show Period,\"\" plus radio and TV programs around the world. He has contributed articles for such publications as the \"\"Los Angeles Times,\"\" \"\"Westways,\"\" \"\"Travel + Leisure\"\" and \"\"Preservation\"\" magazine, and hosts the weekly syndicated radio show, \"\"The Pop Culture Road Trip.\"\" Chris's latest book, \"\"Hello It's Me\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6Dispatches from a Pop Culture Junkie\"\" will be released in July, 2010. Chris lives in Huntington Beach, CA with his wife and their two children.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/author\/cepting"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/228"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}