Last night we headed to America's most dynamic city, Milwaukee. Home of beer and delicious cheese curds, Milwaukee, Algonquin for "the good land," proved a fertile ground for teenage talents. Indeed it seems we're ceding our country to the young.

Teenagers! Everywhere there are teenagers! Teenagers hiding behind lampposts, popping zits. Teenagers curled up in your work boots so when you to put them on in the morning the teenagers bite you with their braced teeth. Teenagers up in trees, teenagers peeking through the eye holes of portraits, teenagers forever dancing in the corners of your eyes like shadow people. The world is lousy with teenagers these days, and there is nothing we can do to stop them. American Idol for one welcomes its new teenage overlords, and has even lowered their age minimum to 15. Meaning all the boys and girls of this sorry, soppy old land who fancy themselves the next Jussfrin Briars or Tyler Swissfits showed up to the audition orgy with big rosy smiles on their kewpie faces and we were forced to watch.

Milwaukee has certainly had its share of visitors, but none quite so manic and giggly 'n' wiggly than these yelping kids. Some were good, some were bad, but all made it through, apparently. Yes, every 15-year-old who showed up to audition was given a golden 8x11 that gives them access to Hell Week in Hollyweird. Every single one! That means a good number of dumpy 28-year-olds who showed up to audition the last year they were eligible were possibly bumped out by some shine-faced weirdo in a baby jumper. That is unfair! Unfair I tells ya! But what can you do. Jennifer Lopez, Randy Jackson, and the weird old bog witch they work with all think that 15-year-olds are worthy of competing in this confetti-fart of a series, so that's what's going to happen. Compete they will. And they will win.

One such victorious teen was the unsettlingly deep-voiced kid who went first last night, Scotty Something. I need your help in deciding if he's going to be a funny oddity who flounders in Hollywood Week or if he's maybe going to be the funny oddity that makes it through to when America votes, and then the girlies of the worldies will vote for him because he's cute and plays baseball and sings about kissin' gals in pickup trucks and whatnut. I can't decide! I know it's foolish to try to shape these people's narratives so early in the game, but that is, after all, the game, isn't it? He seems like a charming kid, though I don't really trust anyone who actually describes themselves as "an all-American kid." There is something untrustworthy there! It's kind of something a secret agent from another country would say, isn't it? "Yes. I am all-American kid. My great hope in life is to win baseball and, of course, visit the beautiful world city Pyongyang. How enriched my life would be to lay my forehead on its soil and kiss its ground. Pyongyang forever. Ha ha, I am typical all-Americans teen kid. Cheeseburgers and Chevrolets." Something's not quite right about it...

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Who else! Oh, there was a groupie girl, who was not a teenager, and who was a big fan of the ancient gnarl-witch sitting on J.Lo's right. Apparently the groupie girl knew all of the gnarl-witch's old songs, you know, the ones she would sing to her crooked little Baba Yaga shack to make it sprout its chicken legs and run through the forest. The witch had never heard anyone sing her own songs to her, and she was impressed. The groupie was indeed good, the first kind of "rocking" type person we've met this year. She went through. The witch tamped her long knobbly pipe and hummed her chicken leg song to herself, planning a day in the future when she would take the groupie and cook her in an afternoon stew.

Back to the teens! There was a girl who drove up from Littleton, CO with her family and she was really excited, because she had been "working so hard" for this for so long. She is fifteen years old. What has she been working so hard on? "You know, just eighteen months ago, Kaylee [or whatever] was actually nine-years-old. But she worked really hard, and now she is 15 and eligible. Just goes to show you what a little determination can do." I don't really get when kids show up and warble a few notes and say they've worked really hard for this. I get it if you're like some 15-year-old figure skater whose only friends are two middle-aged coaches and a Zamboni driver, and you go to the Hotlympics and you say "I worked really hard for this!" Because you did! You could have been out there with the other kids, playing Jerk the Jerk and sneaking into the Saw movies. But you weren't. You worked hard at something. Girl driving up from Littleton because she likes to sing once in a while? Not the same thing! Wanting hard is not working hard, young lady. Anyway, I thought she had an interesting quality to her voice. It wasn't terribly strong, but she sounded like goils you hear on the radio these days (she sounded like Nina Totenberg, is what I'm saying) so I was ready to give her all the yeses. But the judges were not! They hemmed and hawed and mewed and mawed and finally, after many teary seconds of hand-clutching and whinebegging, they gave her the big Aight and she was sent zooming off to Hollywoodtowne. Well, no, first she had to take her learner's permit and drive her family back to Littleton. Unfortunately, only a short way into the drive she got distracted by the sight of Scotty driving home and took a wrong turn and drove her family deep into the woods. Stuck in the woods and in search of help, the family came upon an old shack with chicken legs underneath it and that's the last anyone saw of them.

There was a young guy who went up there, college age or something, and the old witch made a really weird comment about the color of his lips. The witch wanted to know if that was their natural color. The kid said it was, and then the witch did a weird dance and sang a strange little song about lips, throwing various things into a cauldron and she danced and sang, and Lips McGee got very nervous. But not too nervous that he couldn't sing. He did sing, and he sounded good! He was kind of hitting on J.Lo or she was hitting on him, and that was an interesting dynamic to watch. Ryan, of course, watched jealously from the shadows, watching the kid's lips with the same intensity as the witch, but for very different reasons. Eventually he stopped himself, took a deep breath, sent a quick text to Tim. He was going to make this work. This time. It was going to work.

Other people went! Some people got mad, cursed out the camera, that kind of thing. One poor kid who wants to be a radio announcer was asked by Randy if he was wearing Tevas, and he did not know the answer to that. Why, Randy? Is Randy sponsored by the Teva corporation? That actually wouldn't be that surprising. In a weird way, Randy is sort of a giant Teva come to life. A couple other teens went and got in. A couple adults went and did not get in.

There was one Civil War reenactor guy who was so crazy and weird and talking about hippies and sex and stuff. Oh man!! Oh lordy lumpkins was that a kid a crazeball. Talking about sex and hippies and hippie sex and his dad and everything. Who let this dingdong out of the house? Louise Fletcher called, she wants her work project back. Look at the way he says "sex"! Oh god! Isn't that terrible and wonderful at once? Wicked sex! Awful sex. Sexy sex... Oh man he wants to have sex so bad! Yiiiiiikes. Horny nerds are one thing, but horny Civil War nerds? Watch your petticoats and hoop skirts, ladies. At least we know that his dad was not a hippie. We know that now. Thank you, Nathaniel.

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Let's see. There was a girl whose sad story was that she works as a janitor at a big music festival instead of singing at the big music festival, so isn't that hard. She sang fine and it was whatever. I think she was Rastafarian or something? She was wearing the colors as was the bulk of her entourage. Interesting. Oh! There was a tall giantess who went to the Stansbury of the East, Harvard, and now works for president Barqman Adama at the White House in Washington. Yeah. There was this funny moment of J.Lo saying "You went to Harvard... And you work at the White House..." and she said it in a "Well your shit stinks too, missy" way that was so telling! Isn't it interesting to know that world famous movie star/pop sensations can be jealous of people. Of 22-year-olds who don't even work in their field! Oh, J.Lo. You can go back to school now if you want. I hear Phoenix University has a wonderful taxidermy program. The world always needs taxidermists. Even at the White House! When Dick Cheney shot that guy in the face, he had to taxidermy the guy's head all by himself. It's a little messy, but it's still just where Dick left it, in a decorative basket filled with balls of yarn on a table in the Lincoln Bedroom. So you could do that, J.Lo! Or anything! Don't be jealous of Madame Maxine over there. It's OK. It's OK. Despite Jennifer's obvious insecurity, Harvard was sent through. So nice to see a pretty blonde girl from Harvard who works at the White House finally get what she wants out of life. Very satisfying.

Um, I think that's about it! A sad thing happened and it was sad. I don't really have anything to say about that. Someone emailed me this morning and asked if I'd post a link to a foundation for the girl who was injured, so here that is. I know you've all already dedicated most of your charity budget to the Tim Urban Entirely Pantsless in 2011 Foundation this year, but if you have anything left over, there's that.

So Milwaukee! What'd we think? Teen invasion aside, I think it went well. I liked the people we saw. There were a couple of nondescript guys and girls who also went through — a wedding singer, a singing waitress — but I suppose we'll sort them out further down the road.

For now we'll just sit here and stare out across Milwaukee Bay, a glimmer of sun smooth but dancing on the lake. Summer here in a Midwest city, here in the middle of things. All them teens! All them teens. Singing their notes, scrunching their faces, feeling their hearts swell to planet size as they peek around corners and see whole parts of the world they never knew were there. Never knew they loved an all-American boy named Scotty. Didn't know stories could be so sad. Never knew witches were real. All the teens in Milwaukee. Standing there in the middle, but very much at the beginning.