My Daughter's First Official Crush

She's 11 years old and still doesn't like any of the boys her age. Who can blame her? They're still smelly and weird. But rock stars are excempt from smelly and weird status...in spite of the fact that they probably are. She has chosen her first rock star to love.


Some of you may have heard of a little show called Canadian Idol. It's much lower-budget than its American and British counterparts, and I have to say, much more fun than the American version. We have four judges instead of three! We have a recurring comedian. Of course. It's Canada, there must be a comedian. And, we don't just have any old blow-dried, moussed, fake tanned host. Ours is the actual son of a former Prime Minister. He's like, royalty. Kind of.




Two years ago, a very odd young man took a crack at the competition. Jacob Hoggard got to the top 3 before cryptically asking his fans, through his band's website, to not vote for him anymore. Smart. He's got a major label record now, and his fellow "singers" are still doing the mall tour. And in the meantime, the strange, hyper, crazy eyed kid with the nasally voice and uncanny ability to sing anything, and sing it well, stole some hearts. He was the most entertaining contestant I've ever seen on any of these shows.

So my daughter, herself having big eyes and freakily good pitch, is crazy about Jacob. I'm going to approve. It could be worse. I'm not crazy about the faux hawk hairdo but it could be worse. He could have the Ben Mulroney hair. (I love that red shirt.)

I'm not super crazy about his band either, to be honest. They're decent, I'm just not into the whole skate-punk-pop thing. I suspect that this isn't even the same band anymore. I'm not saying the big record label prevailed over the young fella and pressured him to dump his hometown buddies in favour of more experienced session players...I wouldn't say such a thing. Because my kids like this band, and besides a couple of swear words, there's nothing I don't want them to hear, and that's why I'm taking my two plus my best friend's 3 daughters to see Hedley in a club next week. That, and I want my kids to like me. I'm shamelessly buying their affection with concert tickets.

Here's some pure solid gold rich pix of our boy doing his thing.

He got very heavily into the themes each week.

Really into it.


This was my favourite. David Bowie's Space Oddity. What kind of a freak has the guts to do this? I mean, people actually watched this show.

I am reminded of Red Green's nephew Harold here.






























As much as I love silliness it would all be very sucky if the kid couldn't sing. I have a funny feeling this will be an ongoing criteria for all of her future boyfriends. I can see Jethro on the porch, glaring at the guy, "You sing? Play an instrument?"




And a final note: these judges? I want Sass Jordan's job. I could go to Toronto once or twice a week, pretend to sip coffee out of a mug that's really full of rum, and grin lecherously at 20 year old cute guys.