Maybe Next Time YOU'LL Think Before He Cheats.

The Academy of Country Music (not to be confused with the Country Music Association, Country Music Television, or the National Aeronautics and Space Association) will present their awards tonight (not to be confused with the Nobel Prize), live from Las Vegas.

My wife is all about the country music, specifically the brand being celebrated tonight.^[1] So, being a great husband with an impeccable sense of timing, I'm picking today as the day to ridicule my wife's preferred musical entertainment.

American Idol champ Carrie Underwood might leave the ceremony tonight with five statues (or plaques or medals or live badgers--how the hell would I know?), primarily for her huge hit "Before He Cheats". If you know me, or have read my posts here and elsewhere, that's your cue that I'm about to rip this song a new one. And you'll think to yourself, "but Tim, it's a country song about cheating, which you must know is one of the six acceptable topics in a country song^[2]. How can you find fault with "Before He Cheats"?" To you, hypothetical nay-sayer, I ask: "Have you actually listened to the song?"

The premise of "Cheats" is appealing enough: a bar-hopping, pool-playing, no-goodnik has two-timed our heroine, and now he's about to face the consequences. Fine. I'm on board so far. I'm no fan of cheaters, and I appreciate any cheatee that confronts theirs. Too bad the lyrics don't actually strive for anything resembling that kind of satisfaction. Basically, it just sounds like Carrie's following/stalking her boyfriend around, but rather than exposing the scoundrel to The Other Woman, she just stays outside and imagines who this floozy is and what her fella's doing with her inside^[3]. Oh, and this is after she vandalizes his "souped up 4-wheel drive" by keying it, carving her name into his leather seats, busting out both headlights and slashing the tires. Yep, that's what any Dixie Chick would've done.

But I guess I should tip my hat to the two authors of this disaster, Chris Tompkins and Josh Kear. They've managed to camouflage an ironclad alibi for snaky dudes everywhere as some kind of sympathetic ode to wronged girlfriends and wives everywhere. Imagine the scene outside Temptation Island when Dirty Bastard walks out to his truck with Gullible Floozy:

"Oh my god! What happened to your truck?! And who's Carrie?"

"My crazy ex-girlfriend. I can't believe she did all this instead of just talking to me face to face. I guess you can see why I'm going to break up with... I mean, why I broke up with her tonight, huh?"

"Wow, you must really be special if she's that nuts because she doesn't have you anymore. Let's just take my car back to my place. I'll screw her name right out of your head and then make you pancakes."

Aw, hell. I take it all back. "Before He Cheats" is genius!
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[1]Her idea of good country music: Toby Keith, Sugarland, Bon Jovi with the singer from Sugarland, Willie Nelson with Toby Keith, and various one-hit males. My idea of good country music: Not that, and Dwight Yoakam, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Waylon with Willie.

[2]Cheating, Drinking, Prison, Trains, Trucks, and Living in the Country. Feel free to submit your own. I'm not a card-carrying member of the Academy or the Association anyway.

[3]And what comes next totally derails all the momentum of the narrator's fantastic guess that "right now, he's probably dabbing on three dollars' worth of that bathroom Polo."