Yeah, it's another year gone. Sure, you can say that doesn't happen until New Year's Day, but once you start seeing the after-Christmas sales, you know the year is pretty much shot. All the "Year in Review" cable and network shows have already aired, desk calendars are already being swapped,... you can call it quits for 2006.
And so, once again, it's time to look back on our mistakes and move forward with their painful lessons still fresh in our minds. What lessons did 2006 offer? Well, here's three things I think are worth noting.
1. Today, it only takes $1,400 and an iMac to make the next computer-animated children's movie.
Ant Bully, Cars, Over the Hedge, Ice Age 2, Madagascar, Barnyard, Happy Feet, Monster House, Open Season...Open Season!!! And, the list goes on.
This year, an Army of, well, "turd" animation films were released, continuing audience's growing apathy toward what used to be a fascinating movie medium. The days of Toy Story and taking years of production work to craft an animated film are long over.
These days, all you need to make an animated flick is one weekend in a sound studio with a half-dozen worn-out actors, a screenplay that can fit on the back of a Denny's lunch menu and about 3 art college graduates to make the next kids film bomb.
And getting back to Open Season for a moment, the thing that kills me about the movie is the casting. Somewhere in Hollywood (or nowadays, perhaps Calgary), someone thought, "Hey, you know, I just don't see enough of Martin Lawrence or Ashton Kutcher. Why don't we cast them both in a film targeting kids?!"
Even though I pose the question rhetorically, I'll answer it anyway. Because Martin Lawrence is the same vulgar idiot who couldn't make it through an entire Saturday Night Live monlogue without dropping 30 F-bombs over a rant about venereal diseases, and Ashton Kutcher's likeability and screen appeal are shorter than the half-life of a fart.
2. America can tolerate a war for three years before it has to understand what the war is about.
I never paid attention to a mid-term election before, and to be honest, I didn't even know what the hell one was. But, according to the razzle-dazzle meisters at the news networks, this "war" caused Republicans to lose Congress to the Democrats.
If you're not Capitol Hill savvy and don't know what this fully means, it's kind of like on Who's Line Is It Anyway when Wayne Brady gets a million points for one of his impromptu songs, and you're thinking, "boy, I hope Colin Mochrie can catch up." The points don't matter, and effectively, neither does Congress. Drew Carey is just gonna pick a winner at random in the end anyhow - it's in the Constitution.
What's important is that, finally, people (not just half the nation, but almost everyone outside of Texas) are asking a question that you'd think would be three years late: "So what's this whole war about now, and when do we win?" To find out, a crack team of Washington insiders formed the Iraqi study group (a self-titled crew of folks commissioned LONG after the need for an "Iraqi Study Group") to present a huge ist of "I told you so's" to the White House. This is what we're good at - watching a disaster occur, and then asking "who dropped the ball?"
They're startling conclusions? We're in a mess. Their report was tantamount to a weatherman telling you that the wet stuff outside is rain, and that it's falling from the sky. Great - we're all worked up, and we have no one to blame our mess on. Apparently Republicans were a good scapegoat this year, and no doubt the brilliant logic of partisan politics will prevail in 2008 as well.
So now that we've found out how long it takes before America wants to understand it's own war, the next question is how long it takes for America to extricate itself from the cluster-funk and somehow chalk up the mess as a "draw" on America's war scorebard.
3. This online crap has gone TOO damn far...
I was browsing YouTube.com the other day. You know YouTube - it's the web site built on video clips that capture the essence of American stupidity. Cats lighting farts, red necks on trampolines, sorority girls puking into kiddie pools,... you get the idea. The site showcases the most inane material bored teenagers can come up with and film.
What you don't fully grasp until to browse the site is how inane the material is. Seriously. I recommend visiting the site for it's educational value alone; you will lose some faith in humanity after a 10 minute visit.
Here's the part that really gets me doubting our survival as a species: there are people who film themselves commenting on other people's videos of inane crap. In other words, people have gone to the extent of taping themselves making passing comments on the films that other people have taped. And the worst part is, they're not saying anything at all!"Yeah, it was good", or "uh, I liked it" are easily captured in written prose - there is no need to bust out the camcorder to tell some shmuck in Idaho, "yeah, I kinda liked you film."
Harsh reality
Has anyone ever recommended World of Warcraft or Everquest to you? They're both examples of a new-age cult for chubby introverts who feel reality should require a $200 video card and a monthly subscription. Millions of people every moment of the day are playing these "MMORPG" games, satisfying their social interaction needs by trading magical swords for light-damage +1 hammers and mystical +3 armors, and even making long distance relationship connections - because nothing can highlights a person's character better than the way their level 14 Mage wields a flaming fireball of Mazaloos.
The concept of putting hundreds of hours a month into a fantasy online world boggles my mind. However, at least you can say there's a game to it. In Second Life, there is no game. It's a game where the developers said to themselves, "let's cut to the core of it: people just plainly do not like reality." And so, they built a free online world where you basically... live. There isn't a goal. There are no goblins, no mages, no fireballs of Mazaloos,... just you and a world of other online people.
This takes pathetic to the next level. Second Life has a fully blown economy. You can buy goods, services and even real estate using your actual Visa or Master Card. Why would you buy goods, services and real estate in Second Life using actual money? Typically, because you have too much money to begin with, and it's a way to reward the games developers for giving you an avatar with a slim build and clear skin.
There's no way to tie these all together...
...except to say that in that ultimately, we have a tendency to ruin things over time.
Other that these observations, hope your 2006 rocked like mine did. Remember, your resolutions for the year are just around the corner. A word of advice: go with the monthly gym membership. You're only kidding yourself if you don't.
See ya, `06.
This takes pathetic to the next level. Second Life has a