As you may remember, Eddy Glazener -- a.k.a., "D.J. Glaze" -- won Notre Dame's "Irish Idol" this year, the program's tradition of having freshman stand in front of the team bus to belt out karaoke tunes. What didn't occur to me at the time was that if Glazener won, that means that a bunch of freshman must have lost. And based on Glazener's effort -- a solid attempt in the overall as the only way to screw up Gangnam Style is to, I don't know, have a seizure in the middle of it -- what could these less-than-winning attempts sound like?
If you answered that question with "I sort of want to know but don't want to know but if you happen to find it on the Internet, post it," then you're in luck, Internet best friend: Notre Dame has unlocked the vault and unleashed Adam Goins' effort, a . . . unique . . . cover of John Denver's mega-hit, "Country Roads." Let's break this all down.
0:28: "I'm going to sing 'Country Roads'." Well, this shouldn't be too bad. I mean, during Saturdays in the fall, thousands of West Virginia fans scream the tune at the top of their lungs during Mountaineer football games and it doesn't sound that bad. And they're filled to the gills with moonshine, so with Goins doing this stone-sober, this should be, at least, 10-times better than what Mountaineer Nation accomplishes, right?
0:49: Noooooooooooooooooooooooooope.
0:53: "Oh, wow!" Me too, disembodied voice. I never knew that monotone slam-poetry meeting one of John Denver's most beloved songs would sound quite like this.
1:03: This is where the clown from the Apollo Theater grabs a broom and sweeps him off the bus, right?
1:10: The feedback is a nice touch. It adds an extra layer of pain, which is always nice.
1:14: Did a pack of stray cattle start singing along with Goins? What, exactly, is this bus transporting? And is the destination a slaughterhouse? Are these cries for help? ARE THEY?
1:23: NO MAS! NO MAS! NO MAS!
1:51: "OH MY GOD!" Me too, disembodied voice. At times like these, all you can rely on is the power of prayer, mostly because the windows in the bus probably aren't removable, thereby eliminating the option of throwing yourself from the bus into bustling traffic in order to find sweet relief.
2:00: There's another 1:14 seconds of this. You're welcome.
2:19: Everyone on the bus looks surprisingly happy for enduring the exact same torture technique the United States government used at Guantanamo to interrogate terrorists.
3:12: Goins is a good sport for doing that. Please don't ever do it again, though.