Dear Celine Dion,

You suck. Your music sucks. Your lyrics suck. Your musicians suck. Your choreographer sucks. Your set designer, producer husband, record label, touring entourage, and publicists all suck. Your parents suck for having you; your fans suck for liking you. There’s nothing you have done, are doing or will ever do that will serve as reparation for how much you suck. Your sucking, quite unlike your singing, is timeless and will never fade. You will suck as much a hundred days and a hundred years from now as you do today. “Jesus fucking Mary,” the historians will say. “Did that woman ever suck.”

I’m not writing to let you know you suck. You know you suck. That was just the context for this story. It serves as the overture for the suck opera about to unfold.

My mom adores you; she always has. Whenever one of your sucky records comes out, she has it the week it is released. Whenever some event takes place where she has a hand in the soundtrack, you are on it. You are her absolute favorite celebrity – even more important to her than Oprah.

I love my mom and would do anything for her. Despite my repeated assessment of you vis a vis the sucking, seeing you in concert had been one of her lifelong ambitions. So when I bought tickets for her to go see you in Las Vegas, you should know how great a sacrifice that represented. That were it not for the wishes a mother, this son would sooner swallow shattered glass with sugarcoated ebola before seeing you live in concert. Indeed, this son would first ask for seconds.

We were going to Vegas with a full crew of family friends – three dudes, two ladies. My plan to make it through the mess hinged on gender segregation. In charge of the ticket purchasing for the expedition (the sole purpose of which was to see you suck live), I picked up five spectacularly overpriced to witness your sucking firsthand. In a fit of filiality and moderate lunacy, I then traded two of the tickets on StubHub for an additional sum so large I remain too embarrassed to admit to another living soul.

The gentlemen would watch your banal performance from the second balcony. My mom, who wished for nothing like seeing you sing, would watch with her friend from a lot closer. My ma had never seen such a large production in her life would be watching you from the 8th row, dead center.

For months I sat on the tickets. Unwilling to disappoint her should something prevent her from attending at the last minute, I kept the position in the crowd a secret. She would ring every week and ask occasionally where we were sitting. I would always fib and say I couldn’t remember, to spare her hopes from getting too elevated.

Finally the trip came and we assembled at last that night in the Monte Carlo, smartly dressed with my mom percolating enough enthusiasm for the entire crew. On the floor before we went to the cab stand, I broke the news.

“Well mom, I’m sorry,” I explained. “Thursday nights are in high demand and I wasn’t able to seat us all together.” She tried to assure me it was alright, but I quickly butted in.

“The guys will have to sit together, I guess. But with the ticket I got a little something to keep us company,” I said, as I handed each of my soon to be suffering brothers-in-arms an engraved flask of their favorite hard liquor.

“How far are we going to be from you guys?” ma asked, slightly disappointed.

“I think it’s pretty far,” I stretched, pulling the tickets out of my coat pocket. “Row HH. I’m not good with the alphabet, but I think that’s 1… 2… 3… yeah.” I paused. “Eight rows from the stage.”

My mom freaked the fuck out. So ecstatic was she to hear this news, she went into an instant joyful shock. Her eyes began to water up. She began to gasp for air. She couldn’t even take the tickets from my hands. She was so blown away she just cradled the tickets in her palms, kissing them delicately as if they might disappear. It took a few minutes before I could even hug her, such was the hysteria surrounding this news.

She wanted to see you so bad just the idea of being a few feet away quite nearly broke her brain. On our way to the theatre she was talking to people we didn’t know. She was babbling to the cab driver, repeating “We’re going to see Celine. We got five rows!” while he politely nodded and pretended to know what the hell she was on about. I had finally let go of the apprehension – my ma was finally going to see this woman and would see her in a style never before experienced in her life.

She literally floated from the taxi through Caesar’s Palace. We came up to the theatre – some hideous architectural abomination I was told was designed specifically to make you suck more – but the doors were closed. In front of the doors was a man from the casino, handing out sheets of paper. He handed one to both me and my ma, standing stunned by my side.

Celine Dion is suffering from an upper respiratory infection. We apologize but this evening’s performance is canceled.

My brain reeled with the meta implied by the announcement; you failed to do the very thing you are known for being terrible at doing. The man just told my mom that you suck at sucking.

—

What could be worse than arriving at Disney World to find it closed? Glad you asked.

Celine’s further trespasses against my mom will continue tomorrow!

The news was devastating. You should know, my mother is as tough as they come. She’s endured worse from better. But still, her hopes were stratospheric and you brought them crashing down because you got a wittle case of the sniffles. It was the moment of truth in National Lampoon’s Vacation; the kind of thing that jolts a son to immediate, irrational action.

I got in line dutifully and joined the throng of other fans disappointed at the missed chance to hear you suck. I dropped another sum so ghastly ridiculously I wouldn’t repeat it in confessional on pain of damnation. But the next morning came and you got the unique distinction of being able to break the heart of your biggest fan twice in two days. The supposed infection persisted as did your absence.

Her flight home was the following morning.

Two years passed and she remained a loyal fan. She still listened to your records. She refused to spite your name, even in the face of the universal revile in which the rest of her companions now hold you. She never once held it against you. Even though that night she was disappointed, she continued to be faithfully your biggest fan.

Last week – on my birthday no less – she finally got another chance. You were coming to Kansas City for the first time. A nine and a half hour trek for her home but in her eyes you were still worth the time and expense of another weekend trip to a faraway place. Despite your previous failure, she was willing to cross whatever amount of country was necessary just to see you suck.

She called me two days before the event was to happen, sadness in her voice. I couldn’t figure out what she was saying at first. “What happened last time?” she said, disappointed and obliquely referring to the incident years before. She had to say it explicitly before it even registered. Excited but gunshy from her previous attempt, she was doing a quick check online to make sure you were still going to suck on Saturday night. What she found was predictable:

AEG Live, the promoter of Celine Dion’s Taking Chances World Tour, has rescheduled the artist’s Kansas City concert at Sprint Center, originally scheduled for this Saturday, November 15, 2008, while Celine recuperates from a recurrent naso-pharyngeal infection which was further complicated by inflamed vocal chords.

“Naso-pharyngeal!” I exclaimed! “Surely that must be serious.” So concerned was I for your sucky well-being that I went ahead and looked it up on eMedicine. Turns out the condition is something rather familiar. “Naso-pharyngeal” is medicalese for “upper respiratory infection” which is also apparently French-Canadian for “I just fucked over your mom.”

“Again.”

Celine, what you need to be asking yourself right now is this: if that spiky-haired asshole thought I sucked before I fucked over his mom in Las Vegas, then what must he think after I fucked over his mom in Las Vegas? And if he thought I really sucked after I fucked over his mom in Las Vegas, what hitherto unprecedented level of base and carnal loathing must he feel now that I’ve fucked over his mom once again.

I can’t even begin to enumerate it. I’ve spent half a week trying to shape the prose. I am now dedicating a full half-hour of each day inventing new language to describe the degree to which I hate you. I will engineer English to represent with accuracy how much I hate you.

I expect it is going to take a while.

Until then, I am going to tell every last person I know how you fucked over my mom. I am going to tell them to tell every last person they know. I am going to post this letter on every fan site, blog and message board on this wretched Internet and advise everyone who reads it to tell everyone they know.

I am going to become rich and famous so I can 1) buy an infomercial Obama-style and tell the world how you fucked over my mom and then 2) book every taping of The Tonight Show; Late Night; The Late Show; The Late, Late Show; Good Morning, America; Today; Meet the Press; Face the Nation; and every public access talk show in the states of California, Massachusetts, Florida, and New York for six solid weeks just in case there is anyone I missed.

No mention of you in any conversation will go without including this story. No writer will ever write about you without writing about this story. And when you finally pass on, your estate will be sucked dry by the expense the undertakers who are tasked with cleaning the never ending string of graffiti on your gravestone referring to this story.

It’s now my life’s mission. Everyone in this life and the next will know about Celine Dion. In a world millennia from now after the ice caps have already melted and Hell has already frozen over, two kids will be on a see-saw and one will ask the other, “Hey man, have you ever heard of Celine Dion?”

“Yes,” the boy will reply. “She’s that lady who fucked over Rob’s mom.”

Eat a bag of dicks,

Rob

p.s. Your face is my prescription for poorly timed erections. It never fails.

Making good on my earlier vow to tell everyone on Planet Earth that Celine Dion fucked over my mom, I posted the open letter published earlier on (d)N0t in every forum, Facebook group and mailing list I could find. Unsurprisingly, online communities dedicated to this black-hearted, no talent hack are few and far between. Despite diligent research, there appears to be no Celine Dion “blog” and her official site requires a $25 to participate on in their community.

Right. Like money is something you can trust Celine Dion with and expect to get back access.

I remain undaunted. In the week that has passed I have joined both English language Celine Dion fan forums, every Celine Dion Facebook, MySpace and Yahoo group, and sent snail mail copies of the open letter to each office of her promoter AEG Live. By the recommendation of a few (d)N0t readers, I also created our own Celine Dion Facebook group titled I Hate Celine Dion (Because She Hosed Rob’s Mom).

So far, we’ve raised a medium-sized stink. The response to our open letter even at this early stage is nothing short of epic.

Celine Dion is a biatch to the max!!! WOW! I’m going to spread your wrath over here in New York and make sure that everyone knows how badly she “fucked over Rob’s mom!” Sheesh! Great writing by the way.

- Sophia, New York

I knew Celine Dion was (is) a pompous asshole prior to reading your delightful (yet saddening) piece……..Now I simply detest her with every fiber of my very being……Words cannot quantify the utter dislike I harbor for her! Great piece.

- Sami, San Francisco

Well said, Rob. She’s never fucked my mum over but I think she’s a horse-faced turd all the same!

- Paul, Bristol UK

I would like to say that I did not like Celine Dion before she hosed Rob’s mom, but this has just given me justified cause to not like her where as it was strictly based on taste prior.

- MJ, San Jose

You’ve converted me Rob, i am now an official hater of Celine. She sucks!!!!

- Shakira, Johannesburg SA

i always hated the stupid bitch – her crimes against music deserve their own unique punishment devised by a brain infinitely cruel and inventive.

halfway thro’ your post i knew what was going to happen and my heart sank for your mum. and im angry that you had to pay for this horse face millionaire to disappoint your mum twice.

READ THIS CELINE YOU SHIT MUNCHER!

- Mark, Unknown

You mess with Rob’s mom, you mess with all of us!

- Jason, Silicon Valley

—

Clearly there is a strong anti-Celine sentiment just beneath the surface of our society’s fabric, requiring only the slightest poke to cause it to spill out. The comments of support (and better yet promises to retell the story) were welcome additions to the cause, but I was looking for something more. Casting the trolling net deep and wide, I was trying to connect with some less sympathetic voices, some hearts not yet converted.

I found our winner at celinecommunity.com, “the biggest and original Celine Dion online community.” The open letter has been the top forum topic for four days now and without continued provocation has produced these indicative gems.

And the point is? That YOU suck even bigger!

- Bumble

You are a very pathetic person. The reality is that YOU SUCK THE MOST!

- celine1985

So far, this one is my personal favorite. Note that in the profane litany of my original post, the forum software never censored any language. This lady censored herself:

RobSpectre :CENSORED. You’re the one who sucks and you’re a pathetic CENSORED who needs to get a life

- ShadowBleed

I am sorry that this happened to your Mother. That really sucks. But it’s hard to have sympathy for you, when you express yourself so rudely. What do you hope to achieve by posting a message like that? Celine’s not going to read it, she doesn’t come here. So all you’ve done is insult her fans. Which is a pretty pathetic waste of everybody’s time.

- CelineFanJacqui

Well, Jacqui, I disagree. There is absolutely something I can do. Namely, tell every last person breathing about what Celine Dion did to my mom. In some respects, I’m grateful this happened. Previously, my dislike – like many music lovers – was passive and unfocused. She could go on sucking all she wanted so long as her sucking didn’t have to be around me.

But now that’s all over. She messed with my mom and that is something one does not get to do.

Stay tuned for more fun with Celine Dion and her fans.

It’s been a week since last we checked in with the Internet and how it was taking to the story of how Celine Dion fucked over my mom. The story continues to spread and the reactions continue to achieve ever higher levels of win. This week Brad from Memphis was compelled to set his convictions in poetry:

I wrote a semi-haiku about your predicament.

Celine sucks.
Sorry for your mom.
I joined your group
I think you can get 10,000 easily.

Ahmad from Silicon Valley offers a salient observation:

If my craps could write songs they would still be better than her music.

From behind enemy lines, a lurker in the batshit Celine Dion fan forums we into which we waded also weighed in:

they locked the topic so i couldn’t reply to it.
but i loved it !
it’s refreshing to read someone who knows how to write,
as opposed to someone who just sucks ass like these people.
even though i am a fan and question my sanity at times,
at least 79% of these forum reader have no life outside celine dion.
you should encourage you mom to see celine for who she is–a selfish person, not a perfect celebrity.

cheers and good luck spreading the story!
!
[p.s. you should sell the movie right to "lifetime"--i.m sure they'd make a movie about it!]

And finally, Lando from Hartford submits this protocol for your consideration:

You’re in a life raft with only one empty spot. You must choice between a poor, starving child, an old woman, a nun, and Celine Dion. Who do you choose?

Celine Dion. As soon as she boards you rupture the raft, sinking it, just to see the look on her face. The starving child, old woman, and nun all approve. Everyone dies happy.

Except for Celine Dion, of course.

—

But not all reception to the Celine-inflicted plight of my dear mom has been met with such sympathy. The vile horde of Dion fans came to the quick defense of their Horseface-in-Chief. I gave the idolators in their largest fan forum some time to mount a critical mass, patiently waiting for an opportune moment to strike. Soon basic hierarchy began to form, leaving me with the prime (d)N0t target – the Celine Dion Alpha Fanatic.

The decimating reaction to the Celine fan’s diatribe with her comments in quotations (assuming of course the fan is a her and not some tragic, emasculated dude):

Giving this nonsense a little time to coalesce, I guess you’re the leader of this little goat rodeo. Let’s get started.

It’s really unfortunate that you went to such lengths to write that statement because clearly you know nothing about Celine and haven’t even made the slightest attempt to understand her condition.

I understand exactly as much about Celine Dion’s condition as you do. Actually, perhaps more because my mom has gotten the same excuse three different times.

Celine is severely ill and your mother is not the only person on earth who was subjected to these cancellations.

Very true, but I can assure you she is the only one subjected to these cancellations that I care about.

Unfortunately for you, out of almost 720 shows that Celine performed in Las Vegas, you were subject to one of the very few that were canceled.

I’m going to introduce you to something that might be scary at first, but over time I think you will come to appreciate. It is a little thing called math.

Dion’s run in Vegas started 25 March 2003 and ended 15 December 2007. That is a total of 1,726 days. Let’s be supergenerous and give our dear Celine a month off every year because of the hard work she does. That brings our total to 1,606. Let’s also assume that the 10 federally recognized holidays in the United States were not part of that vacation time and give them to Dion as well. We are now at 1,566 calendar days or two days shy of 224 weeks. Assuming she would only do five nights a week as her contract originally stipulated, Celine has 1,120 days to fulfill her 600 show contract.

But hey, there was a contract extension and I’m clearly not a Celine Dion fan, so let’s go ahead and use your number of 720 shows as you are clearly the expert in these matters. If she could only do 720 shows in 1120 days, that gives her 400 sick days on top of the 160 vacation days over the length of her stint for a whopping 560 days of not working. That’s not just a year of calling in sick to work; for the little more than four years she was in Las Vegas, she was not performing for a year and a half of it. If one were to normalize that time over the run to maintain a constant clip without regard for holidays, her attendance constitutes the equivalent of working just a hair more than two days a week.

Let’s also remember that she was not touring and she was not recording during this period. She was in the same town singing the same songs for a fair week’s work, which at least my employer doesn’t think is too great a sacrifice to make for gainful employment. Evidently going back to one’s penthouse to sleep on huge sacks of cash money doesn’t provide the motivation to perform that fidelity to one’s fans should already deliver.

It’s not just my mom’s bad luck. Celine Dion is a goddamn slacker.

One thing the fans know about Celine is that she DOES NOT cancel shows unless she’s suffering a life/voice-threating illness.

If the math is any indication, her life must be in danger more frequently than a female character in a James Bond movie. It’s a wonder she isn’t destitute with the insurance premiums adjusted for such a hazardous lifestyle. Maybe we she have a benefit bake sale.

The fact that you want to ruin Celine for no clear apparent reason (other than that she hurt your mom’s feelings) is just pathetic; even making an account on here specifically to bash her (and get publicity for your site) is stupid.

Let’s be clear on the two points that brought me to drop this turd in your little punchbowl:

1. I am not ruining Celine Dion. I *am* telling every last person on this planet about how she fucked over my mom.
2. Hurting my mom’s feelings is a reason for wishing someone ill as apparent as the fucking *sun*. It is not something people get to do with impunity.

Put it this way, if Celine does not recover from this, there will be no more shows period.

I think my mom has already proven that most prayers go unanswered.

Since this tour began, Celine has been performing in thunderstorms, sandstorms, and the works…all while fans come from near and far to see her.

A lot of forces of nature make their way into Madison Square Garden, do they? You talk like the Taking Chances took her to Afghanistan instead of the ARCO Arena. Yes, when you go to Dubai it gets dusty. Yes, when you go to Dublin it rains. And yes, ever so often you get a little head cold that makes your voice a little scratchy. But with some antibiotics, Vitamin C, and some transposition, it is nothing that a professional singer can’t work through, say, 80% of the time. She is not strapping on a flak jacket to sing to troops in Fallujah; she is going to places where a million people have seemed to be able to sing a million times. It is not unreasonable for her to cancel; it is unreasonable for her to cancel with this level of frequency. What this woman is doing is not representative of the good faith effort of a working musician.

Let’s go ahead and try to make something productive out of this. All you folks seem so worked up and injured you totally missed the fundamental thesis:

Celine Dion fucked over my mom three times so I am going to tell everyone on this Earth about it.

That’s not even remotely a threat. As a matter of fact, I am doing it right now. This thread has been at the top of your English forum for nearly two weeks now. Each of you who took the time to respond to it only serve to escalate its popularity in this tiny pocket of Celine’s fanbase. The same thing is happening on MySpace and Facebook and Yahoo and the several dozen other places this letter has been released. You have probably told some other people this story yourselves. Thanks!

I’m going to tell everyone that lives this story. And with your help, I’m well on my way already.

We embedded a (d)N0t operative to make sure. After three consecutive fails, difficult weather, atrocious traffic and perhaps the least masculine male opener in popular music, we have independent confirmation.  At the makeup date on 3 January in Kansas City, the Celine Dion saga with Rob’s mom finds its coda.  The story has at last reached some sort of conclusion.

Rob’s mom is at a Celine Dion show at which Celine Dion did in fact show up.

The senseless act of musical terrorism is engaged currently with Rob’s mom ten rows from the front. I can’t imagine how disproportionate that horse face must seem at that distance.