Everyone’s a music critic

You can sell millions of records. You can even win a Grammy. But if the avian world doesn’t like you, the best thing to do is just keep your mouth shut.

The Kings of Leon now know this after a non-too-impressed pigeon reportedly defecated into the mouth of bassist Jarred Followill during a Friday performance in St. Louis.

The Kings cancelled their show after the incident, which has me mixed. I would definitely consider it a showstopper if it happened to me, but then I’m not a bigtime rocker. If a pigeon had pooped in Ozzy Osbourne’s mouth, he would’ve snatched the offending fowl from the air, ripped its head off with his teeth, crapped down its neck and swallowed it whole.

I apologize to anyone who is feeling sickened by this topic, but sometimes even the most modest of us writers must, now and then, talk about The Kings of Leon.

Honestly, though, I can’t say this was handled poorly. Fans have been offered a refund and band members have apologized on Twitter. If anyone, the pigeon is the one who’s going to lose the most face on this. Every bird groupie knows pooping in the mouth of the bassist is only, like, half a notch above nailing a roadie. Also, any bird can claim to be a music critic, really. It’s the ones who show their displeasure to male models and airplanes that are truly dedicated.

Time-traveling bird delays opening of Hadron Collider’s hellgates

GENEVA, Switzerland — The few remaining scientists of a horrifyingly dystopian future have once again sabotaged the efforts of their misguided, present-day brethren to initiate the Large Hadron Collider and unleash unspeakable evil upon the world.

This time, the likely dwindling yet determined group of future saviors appeared to have only enough power to transport a trained bird back to our day. The feathered freedom fighter, however, succeeded in a strategical baguette strike against the collider’s cooling system. The setback caused by the strike would have been greater had the subsequent changes in temperature not been spotted online by fans of the collider and — many surmise — demon worshipers.

While press releases from European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) deny any potential of foul play—their seriousness underlined by the refusal to employ an obvious pun—other groups have not been convinced.

“It could open a gate to hell, it could summon Cthulu, it could create those crabby headgrabbing thingies from Half-Life,” said Connie Frankfurt, director of the anti-collider organization Con-CERN. “Do you really want any of them emerging out of the pits of Switzerland and swarming the earth in a dark, potentially tentacled cloud? Someone’s obviously trying to tell us something big here and we’re still hopped up on appeasing the curiosity of the nerdosphere. We have to stop this madness!”

Unfortunately, pleas from Frankfurt’s organization, among others, continue to fall upon deaf ears within the scientific community.

“This isn’t an attack; this isn’t an omen,” said Felix Haley, senior developer for CERN. “It’s just a hapless little bird who was enjoying a tasty little piece of bread just a little too closely to our underground $4.4 billion God Machine. It’s true we’ve had some setbacks, but it’s all part of constructing a project of this magnitude; of such… glorious scale… with the potential to learn so much… learn and change—excuse me, I need to wipe my mouth.”

CERN reports that the delay caused by the baguette bombing will not be as long as previous setbacks/attempts to avert calamity; news that has not been received well by Frankfurt and her followers.

“They’re just not going to listen, are they,” she said. “Their arrogance will prove to be their ultimate mistake! They could’ve just shut down now and their ultimate mistake would’ve been giving that thing a name that turns it into a porno flick with just a tiny typo, but apparently that’s was never scientific enough for them.”

“Look,” Haley said. “Maybe Con-CERN could be right. Maybe there really are people from the future trying to stop us. But unless those people try harder—send back a Terminator bot or some pieces of Cthulu as calamari or something—we’re not really impressed.”

The bird could not be captured for comment and was last seen flying toward Sweden.