Dear 2010:
I am glad you are gone. You were an abomination, a horror and a bunion on the foot of progress.
I have been racking my brain to figure out some good things about you. The things that came to mind were Janelle Monae, Cee-Lo Green, Arcade Fire, The National, True Grit, The King’s Speech, Inception, meeting Fred Schneider, George Clinton and Kevin Spacey. Plus The Walking Dead, Sherlock, Luther and all the great Indian food I had this year. I am also lucky to have had a good radio show and done some decent work (I hope) on some podcasts.
I shouldn’t bitch too much because I have a roof over my head and have more then most people in my situation, but sadly Mr. 2010, the general consensus is that you suck!
[ad#longpost]I had friends die, broke my foot, lost my job, had surgery, and couldn’t find a job, which of course made me desperate and living in squalor. Plus none of my sports teams won and the elections were an unmitigated disaster because none of them really are any good anyway. Beyond that the weather was awful and I still haven’t found a comfortable pair of combat boots.
All the time off with my foot made me read a lot more and watch a lot more television. I got addicted to reruns of Three’s Company, MASH and Sanford & Son. I also got really tired of not doing anything. But I did get to read a lot of nice books, mostly the classics. I tried to knit, that was a bad idea.
Unemployment is not much fun either. There are loads of red tape involved and people never really help. No one is hiring unless you want to sell insurance, funerals or be a bill collector. Christ, 2010, you were like the early 1980s all over again.
I had a chance to go to Russia but the visa process to go to and from there is such a pain in the ass I had no time to do everything needed to enter the country. I would have needed a speed dial on my passport, plus gotten eight visas in like a week. Next time I am going to Moscow, Idaho instead.
You let me down time and again, 2010. Tron: Legacy looked great but was so–so. Lost was just a mess and I invested so much frakkin’ time watching it. MTV continued to be a train wreck of vacuous dreadfulness. Iron Man 2 was nowhere as great as the first movie. Plus, The Event was anything but.
The there was all that Eat Pray Love business. Really. The book is Crap. The movie is extra crap with cheese. But sadly people loved it and live by it, which is another sign that the world is ending. Everyone who likes that crap should be sent to a big playroom with one of those pits filled with rubber balls for people to crawl around in.
And don’t get me going on Justin Bieber, 2010. Really? The 50s and 60s child pop stars at least grew up into something with a fraction of talent and some actually had careers. But this kid, I just don’t get it. He is horrible.
I still hate most reality TV and think that we’ve had our brains and senses of curiosity as a culture destroyed by it. Although I think that the VH1 series High School Reunion is probably the worst of all of them.
I am not sure what was in the water wherever the Kardashians were each conceived but it was not good–because they are a collective of stupid and annoying beings. What rocket scientist decided to let them out of the Wal-Mart and onto the red carpet?
Your news was generally bad, 2010. I won’t get to heavy into the BP spill because almost everyone involved has a standby ticket to Hell for what they did to the planet. The economy is still in the tank and not even the financial wizardry of Yogi Bear could save it.
Oh yeah, and we lost the gold medal to frakkin’ Canada.
But I digress…
2010: you were also a year of poverty, war and fighting. And that was just the Grammys. It also was a year when we lost the genius of Solomon Burke, Jack Horkheimer and Dennis Hopper.
Tom Bosley and Barbara Billingsley, who made everyone feel like a parent or grandparent, died. Losing Leslie Nielsen was like a hard kick to the nuts.
Everyone was caught up in looks this year. Any year that sees Joan Rivers and Cher with really awful facelifts sucks. More people were interested in TMZ than the recession. Duh?
The year also saw Conan get screwed but emerge with some of the most inventive TV ever. Too bad he had to go down swinging.
The Keith Richards book was high art compared to most of the crap people read. I still can’t believe how many people don’t frakkin’ read anything other than the aforementioned Eat Pray or whatever crap Dan Brown has shoveled out.
I guess the biggest reason why I am glad to see you go, 2010, is because you were like a bad rugby moment where one guy gets piled on over and over again by a relentless barrage of brutes. You were an unmerciless and uncaring year loaded with attitude, swagger and callousness. You were a schoolyard bully, a savage, a really messed up bastard. We didn’t need Wikileaks to tell us that you sucked. All we had to do was talk to friends, neighbors or colleagues.
I hated you, 2010. I am glad you are gone. Wherever you are now, don’t send a postcard.
