They want you as a new recruit ... Bearforce1
Every now and then the pop god coughs up something so perfectly conceived - the Spice Girls, Daphne and Celeste, 2 Unlimited, the Sex Pistols - that the only sane response is to drop to one's knees and worship.
I give you Dutch band Bearforce1. They're a pop group. Comprised of bears. Not real bears, obviously. That would be stupid. Bearforce1 are gay bears, meaning men who are older, rougher, bigger and hairier than, say, the average boyband member.
Not only do Bearforce1 have the best band name since Take That, they also posit the question: Why hasn't anyone thought of this before? Duh! It seems so obvious every svengali in Christendom must be slapping his forehead before rushing off to his nearest bear pit with a sheaf of blank contracts.
The buzz is already building. Perez Hilton - America's snarkiest celeb blogger - did his pop nut. YouTube is already awash with grinning, laughing heterosexuals doing the Bearforce1 dance. How do we know they're heterosexuals? Because they're doing the Bearforce1 dance on YouTube. You shout "Bear!" And cross your wrists. "Force!" And salute. "One!" Hold up a finger. Then repeat steps one and two, replacing three with a double hip thrust. It's so simple your dad could do it. And he probably will. The bear dance is the new Hokey Cokey. Soon no wedding will be complete without champagne-tiddly old folks doing the bear. Not since the Chicken Dance has a dance so tickled the reptile brain stem. Not since the Village People's YMCA dance - still regularly performed by hordes of drunks at sporting events all over America - has a bop so successfully demolished barriers of sexuality and gender.
But of course there are those who carp.
"Those aren't real bears," sneered a co-worker as the rest of my office fell about laughing as they did the bear. "They aren't nearly fat or hairy enough." He might have a point. Even Chubby Bear (he's the chubby one) looks kinda slim'n'hunky with his XL polo shirt off. But that's like saying Take That weren't a real boy band. Because real boys are spotty, ugly and think dancing is gay. It's missing the point entirely.
Although they claim to be the first ever bear band, the Force are actually the disco tip of a massive bear music iceberg. There's even a Bearapalooza featuring very serious bear rock acts, like political homo-hop bear rapper BiggNugg. But no Bear combo has had the mainstream impact of Bearforce1. The viral hype is ferocious. Yet - in what is either a stroke of marketing genius or a sign that the Bears were themselves taken by surprise - the band's website is teasingly devoid of Bear facts.
All we know is that "Robert from Belfast" met "Ian, Peter and Yuri from Amsterdam" on holiday in New York last summer." And they thought it would be fun to form a boyband "that didn't consist of smooth, polished 18 year-old boys with 'X- factor'".
It's like when Paul met John. Or when Ginger met Scary. From such accidental encounters are pop legends born.
Does the inevitable mega-success of Bearforce1 spell the end of bear culture? Hardcore, old-school bears will claim it was over yonks ago anyway, shortly after the first Guardian journalist casually slung the term into a column to show how down he was with the whole big cuddly gay chap scene.
But this is elitist foolishness. Older, larger, hairier gay men have had the bear scene to themselves for long enough. Now it's time for the rest of the world to join in. In the same way that the Spice Girls made feminists of us all, Bearforce1 are going to make us all bears.
Who says so? Bearforce1 say so. All together now: Bear! And cross your wrists. Force! And salute. One! Double thrust. Grrrr!
