YOU know the silly season has begun in earnest when this newspaper features a unicyclist on its front page. It's true that the gentleman in question, the Australian Space Cowboy, was plugging a performance at yet another summer festival. But his appearance also marked the official start of the seasonal stupidity.
The season runs from now until mid-September. Then, a government minister such as Martin Cullen or Michael McDowell will engage in a random departmental stunt and normality will return.
During the stupid season, stories that would never normally see the light of publication will receive grammatical care, a thorough spell-checking and a snappy headline. Punctuation standards need to be maintained even during the stupid season.
The story, if it's a bona-fide silly season piece, should contain enough angles to provoke a follow-up report, a few flimsy girly features, and even an opinion column from some august commentator who has temporarily run out of serious things to be riled about. There may even be a rake of mildly amusing silly season stories about the silly season. You probably think you're reading one right now, but, er, you're not.
Most silly season stories are repeated from year to year. How many times have you read, for instance, selections from the cuisine scoffed by diners and donors at Fianna Fail's Galway Races tent? Can we get over it, please? Think of it as Bertie's Electric Picnic or Hi:Fi. Still, it's amazing how quickly you forget that you read the exact same story 12 months ago detailing all those seafood starters and plates of pan-fried liver.
The stupid season also applies to pop music. Some readers may shake their papers at this stage and harrumph that all pop music stories are stupid anyway, but we'll ignore them and wonder just what they're doing with The Ticket in their hands.
For the next few weeks, the pop music industry is in something of a seasonal bind. We need stories, but the usual suspects are not around to oblige. PR people are on holidays, so ridiculous photo opportunities are few. All eyes are firmly on September and October for the next helping of blockbuster releases and the beginning of the end-of-year dash. Even TV3's entertainment news is forced to take emergency measures.
Such an industrywide malaise means we in the pop punditry business take pot-shots at targets we wouldn't normally even point our guns at. Sure, there are all manner of festival stories to write about, but campsite shenanigans and muddy puns will only get you to the next paragraph.
It's at times like this that you wish someone would set up a bespoke consultancy to help pop types take advantage of the media world's seasonal ebbs and flows. For instance, someone should have told Ronan Keating to stall his perfume launch for another week or two and then watch the stories roll in by the dozen. Ro's new line of smelly stuff is a perfect stupid season yarn, yet it came and went before anyone really had time to get a couple of digs in.
For any pop star who has recently moved out of the limelight and is already missing his or her invitations to receptions and ligs, the stupid season is a perfect time for a spot of relaunching and rebranding. Simply make one or two phone-calls hawking some story which has just the vaguest relationship with the truth and you're back in the game.
Times like this should be boom times for, say, those Irish Eurovision entrants of recent years who were cruelly over- looked by the people of Europe, especially those in the eastern states. (Is this the thanks we get for giving them jobs in Spar?)
The stupid season is yours, people. "Mickey Down Under - Mickey J. Harte joins Aussie football team!" "The McCauls bash Charity You're a Star contestants - 'sure, they can't dance'!" "Chris Doran to run as Fianna Fail candidate in next general election!"
During these dog days, most of us wouldn't even bat an eyelid at these yarns. Worse, we'd probably believe them.
