Yet Another Pointless List About the Year 2000

Everyone loves a good list, but at this time of the year, one can get pretty sick of them all. Inevitably, you will see every columnist/reporter/news anchor worth his or her salt (incidentally, what exactly does that mean, worth his salt?) will compile a list of the noteworthy things that happened in the past year, from the stupidest things people did to of course the major world and national events of the year. I will warn you now, I'm about to do it too, but mainly because it's my duty as a columnist to do so, and I think it's in the contract we all have to sign to get into this biz, right after the part about coffee breaks: "Around New Year's, you MUST write a column with a list of stuff that happened in the past year." And so without any further ado (or don't)...

Biggest Event Of The Year: No, not the election and the endless recounts. Not even the launch of this fairly successful column (by successful of course I mean the fact that more people read this than just me as I'm writing it). Nope, biggest event of the year was the fact that for the first time ever, I got through an entire calendar year without getting in a car accident. Although considering there are still 2 days left in the year, I may have just jinxed myself...

Best CD I Bought This Year: Although technically the new live Pink Floyd and Roger Waters CDs came out this year, it's 99% old stuff, so those don't count. Besides, thanks to that accidental scratch I put in one of the Waters CDs, that may go down as the Best CD I Had To Buy A New Copy Of This Year. Anyhoo, as far as this year goes, gotta go with Green Day's newest, "Warning". It's not typical Green Day, where it's 15 tracks with the same 3 chords, a lot of feedback and not much variation. They actually evolved into a sort of new millennium bar band, that's what the songs sound like to me, and the melody on some of them are excellent (melody's key for me).

This Cookie's For You, John: Whoever that St. Bonaventure fan was that threw the cookie on the Reilly Center floor during the Temple game has probably become the most famous hoop junkie in these parts since the guy who threw the orange against the backboard at the Dome during the Georgetown game a few years back. This particular Bonnie fan may have single-handedly put his team in the NCAA Tournament, as without the upset that followed, they may not have made it.

Best Disappearing Act: Has anyone even heard the name "Lou Bega" in the past 12 months? Furthermore, does anyone care that they haven't?

On Survivor: Didn't watch more than five minutes of the first one, won't watch any of the future ones? I'm not in a big hurry to see people eating rats or Rich going for that "all-over tan". And speaking of "Survivor"...

Dumbest Protest Of The Year: Hands down, has to go to PETA and their rats-on-a-stick as they picketed outside the CBS headquarters in NYC to protest the fact that the Survivor contestants ate rats, instead of going vegan in order to sustain themselves. First of all, your protests didn't do a damn thing, because the whole run of the series had already been shot, and second of all, if it hadn't been shot yet, how do you think the contestants could have possibly found out about your displeasure out there on that remote island? Runners-up: Gee, PETA had a great year for dumb protests-- encouraging college students to drink beer instead of milk because of the supposed unhealthy things in milk, the Rudy Giuliani "Got prostate cancer?" ad with the same premise, and asking the Green Bay Packers to change their name because of the "violence" involved in meat packing. I would think it's a pretty safe bet these people will contend for this (dis)honor next year as well.

Survivor Of A Different Kind: If I had to pick which of the current crop of teen pop starlets will be around after this whole trend passes, my money's on two of them for different reasons. Christina Aguilera will last because (sorry, Britney) she's the far better singer of the bunch and has racked up more #1 singles already than Britney, Jessica, Mandy, 'N Sync, the Backstreet Boys, and 98 Degrees COMBINED. Speaking of Mandy, she'll be around too, but for a far different reason. If you were like me and spent those bored-out-of-your-mind summer mornings watching her MTV show, you've got to admit, she's a natural in front of the camera. My prediction: the singing career will fade off, and she will become America's next sitcom sweetheart, kinda like "Moesha" but with ratings. Either that or she'll wind up as a VJ.

Who Will We Talk About In The Next Year In Music: Dave Matthews Band, Moby, Stone Temple Pilots, Dream, Destiny's Child, Christina Aguilera, Nelly, David Gray, and Tool

Who Will (Hopefully) Just Go Away In 2001: 98 Degrees, Jessica Simpson, Pink, Baha Men, O-Town, Papa Roach and all the other rap-metal bands that all sound like bad copies of Rage Against the Machine.

What's My Record On Such Predictions?: Last year, I successfully predicted the demise of LFO and Lou Bega (gee, twice in one column, what's with me today?), not to mention the crash-and-burn years that Whitney Houston and Puff Daddy had, and Celine Dion's continuing (thank god) retirement from the pop scene. I also correctly stated that Eminem would have a big year, Everlast and No Doubt would come out with solid follow-up albums, and Christina Aguilera would continue to have success. However, I also said that the boy groups would also be gone by now, as well as Kid Rock and Ricky Martin. Oops.

The End Of The Millennium: Was last year. Don't give me any of this "there was no year zero, so therefore it has now been 1000 years" crap, the threat of global panic from Y2K and the fact that I was accidentally writing "19..." on my checks for months afterward is all the proof I need to tell you that 2000 was the millennium. Period.

Don't Let The Door To The Gas Chamber Hit You On The Way In: Timothy McVeigh, Rae Carruth, Osama Bin Laden, and whoever the hell it was that let the dogs out.

And Finally: Happy New Year and let's all hope that they do not make "Dude, Where's My Car 2" next year.

Do Not Open Until Christmas, Part 2: The Shopper Menace

You know how it always goes. As soon as you start to think about Christmas shopping, at some point in November, you swear that you will get all the shopping done early. That's right, this year I know I will have the money to get presents early on, I'll get all the Christmas shopping out of the way right away. Maybe I'll get it all done before Black Friday, then I won't have to deal with finding parking spaces and crowds and the general madness. Then it becomes early December and unexpected bills crept up on you, and now you swear that you WILL NOT do all the shopping at the last minute. No way, I'll go during the week and avoid the crowds and get it all done. Then, you suddenly decide to throw a Christmas party or get invited to a Christmas party or two or three, and you plunk a few bucks down here and there to get ready; gotta look nice, get all the necessary supplies...

And now it's the week before Christmas, and you have less money than you had hoped for, and you realize you've only bought a grand total of ONE OR TWO presents and that once again you have failed in your original quest to "get it all out of the way early on". Then you find out that despite the sales, everything costs more than you somehow thought it would, and then the credit cards come out, and then it REALLY gets fun.

How do I know this scenario? Naturally not just the fact that I'll admit it once again happened to me this year, but let's face it, it's happened to the majority of all of you this year, and we all made the same pledge in November to get it all done early, and yet here we are the last week before Christmas and we haven't gotten it done. Now considering the parking spaces have been full at the malls every weekend since Halloween (see column #17), these people must have been doing something, and obviously they were doing the same thing that I will admit I am somewhat guilty of myself. What happened is we got to the mall, saw all the big early season sales and realized that this was the best time of year to get all the stuff WE wanted and not what others had asked you to get for them for Christmas. And so, forsaking the list of things we had ourselves asked for from others, we go out and get all those things ourselves, and the best justification we can come up with was, hey, it's on sale!

Another reason I know that this has happened to all of us is because I've had to fight you all for parking spots this week, and I know why you're all there. I thought that shopping during the week was to some advantage to myself; after all, I work afternoons, so I can get out to the malls at that low-traffic hour of 10 or 11 in the morning, when the morning rush is over because those people had to go to work, and we're still well before the late afternoon rush of shoppers stopping at the mall during rush hour on their way home from work. This week, there has been nothing low-traffic about that time period. And don't we all know why.

And so, knowing full well what the situation is, that we're all headed for the malls in the mid-morning hours of every day this week, Old Man Winter (who apparently has some sort of racket going with the owners of the shopping malls) chooses that exact time to hit us with a barrage of daily snow showers and lake-effect snow storms. Thus punishing those of us who couldn't get a good parking spot. I normally don't care where I park; hell, probably a good excuse for me to get a good walk, get some exercise. However, when I have to trudge for what feels like about two miles through blowing snow, zero visibility, and below-zero windchills, as cold-hearted and not in keeping with the holiday spirit as it may seem, I really have the urge to yell, "Screw Christmas, they can all get the damn stuff themselves!!!"

But of course, I don't. For as long as we keep the sacred traditions of Christmas alive and the spirit of peace on earth and goodwill toward everyone, we will continue to go through the cycle every year. And no I don't mean buying a Christmas tree, going to Midnight Mass, singing Christmas carols, and all of the good and wonderful holiday traditions. I of course mean starting every November, swearing, "This year, I've got the money, I'll get all of the Christmas shopping out of the way early, so I don't have to deal with the parking hassles and the crowds, and..."

Ask Me Anything

As you no doubt can tell by now, I profess to know the answers to all the world's problems, or I believe that I can easily solve them. It's not really a matter of everyone taking my point of view and agreeing with me (although that would help); we all of course are entitled to our own opinions. I, however, am allowing this time here today to be used by attempting to show how I would fix the things that are wrong in our world today. And so, with obvious apologies to Dave Barry for swiping his often-used Q-A column format, I shall try my best to answer the following:

Q: How would you have solved the election debacle?

A: I sure as hell wouldn't have gotten any lawyers involved. Is there anything more boring than listening to a bunch of lawyers jabbering on all day about things you can only understand if you went to law school as long as they did? No, no, no lawyers. I would have counted the ballots with obvious punched chads (and by the way, do you think anyone's going to remember what a chad is five years from now) and there's your winner. And after that, I would have let Gore and Bush take turns smacking the network anchors who called Florida for both of them before all the votes were counted.

Q: What would you do to fix the problem of dealing with all the snow we get?

A: More snowplow drivers. They don't get enough respect, they are forced to work tons of overtime, and they are underbudgeted. More money for snow removal. Then I would find a way to salt or sand the roads without rusting out all the cars up here. Not that I don't like the way the Ziebart guy says "rrrrrrrust" on the radio, but $100 to keep your car from rusting over the winter? Not bloody likely. Then I would not allow snowblowers to be bought by anyone who likes snow because they love to go skiing and because shoveling snow is "good for your heart". You think that's the case? Fine, then all you get is a shovel, have fun! And if all of that doesn't work, I would take up a collection to move us all to Texas or Florida every winter (mind you, it's a DRY heat).

Q: How do you remove very tough stains from carpets?

A: Simple, by using Resolve(TM) brand carpet cleaner, it's been proven in scientific tests to get even the toughest ground-in stains and traffic patterns off your carpets. And if that doesn't work, burn it.

Q: Everything costs too much these days for underpaid working shlubs like myself. What would you do about raising the minimum wage?

A: First of all, I would like to thank myself for writing such a well-thought out question and that I have such an interest in helping all of the grossly underpaid people who do so much for society like myself. Now then, what was the question? Oh, right, minimum wage. Well, $5.15 is way too little for any person to make per hour, and so I would make sure that the minimum wage is such that after taxes, you could afford one McDonald's extra value meal per hour that you work. After all, if you can't afford to eat well, why bother working? For all the people who earn the minimum wage working at McDonald's, well, I know you don't want to see any more fast food, so you get a large pizza from a major pizza chain of your choice for every two hours you work. Bingo, food problem solved. Now as for the rent and the bills, well, I don't really know how to solve all that, but I sure have made myself hungry with all this talk of fast food.

Q: My husband is cheating on me, and I fear getting a divorce because I know he might find a way to get custody of the kids, what do I do?

A: Uh, you punched in the wrong Web address. You're looking for the Dr. Laura forum.

Q: There is so much negativity in the world today, people always fighting with each other, disagreeing about everything, what would you do about all of the disharmony everywhere?

A: Well, first of all, I respectfully disagree with you on everything you just said, so there. Now, as for how I would fix all of that, I would tell people to at least try and find some common ground. If there is nothing that people can agree on, then we are hopeless as a society and condemned to nothing more than listening to a bunch of uninformed drones yelling at each other everyday about silly political points over our nation's airwaves, and... oh yeah, that's what already goes on today. Never mind.

Q: What do you think is the biggest problem in the world today and how would you solve it?

A; The biggest problem? Easy: plastic wrap. The stuff is supposed to cling to your microwave-safe bowls/dishes/what-have-you so as to protect the food from something or other, and the only thing it ever seems to cling to is itself. You would think the people that invented this would actually do something so that it would serve its purpose. I would make sure that one side of it was coated with some kind of adhesive so it would definitely stick to its intended surface. OK, so it might make your food taste a little funny, but you can relax safe in the knowledge that your food is protected from whatever the hell it is that plastic wrap protects food from in the microwave.

Q: Are you at all concerned that all you have really done here is given a bunch of ridiculous and nonsensical answers to important questions and wasted what would otherwise have been a useful and relevant column for this week?

A: Whoa, look at the time! Looks like I gotta go, lots of important stuff to do, places to go, etc. See ya next week!

I Wish I Could Have Met the Man

It started, as many things at that time did, in the hallway at Aikens Hall back in my Susquehanna days, a year ago (way back when). Aikens 1 was the center of our end of the hallway, where we gathered on the weekends to play PlayStation, BS about things, watch MTV, etc. Almost all of us being underage at the time, it was also naturally where we got our beer. The night of December 8 last year found one of the inhabitants of that room, the one we called "Load", winding up at my door, because he knew I was a big Beatles fan; he had just recently sold me his CD copy of "Sgt. Pepper" for 5 bucks (what was he thinking?) After following along to the room, he reminded me of the significance of the hour and day, it was 10:00 on December 8. It took me a second to figure it out; I had my last finals coming up and a final radio show to prepare for. When I figured it out, though, it made all the sense in the world. It was time to drop all the anxiety of preparing for "the real world" and the exams that preceded it, if only for a little while, because it was that hour on that day 19 years previous that the world lost an icon, a dreamer, a "Working Class Hero" if you will. We wound up on the couch, listening to the Blue Album for the balance of the evening until the night grew late and it was time to crash. An appropriate way, I believe to mark the unfortunate loss so long ago of a man I have truly come to idolize.

I suppose there are more controversial people to idolize in the world than the one I choose to. After all, some people are twisted enough to idolize Hitler or Charles Manson or Marilyn Manson. Me, though, I choose to identify with those who were never understood. They never understood Andy Kaufman. They never understood Roger Waters (unless they were high, supposedly). There are many who didn't understand the Don Imuses and Robert W. Morgans of the radio world.

And then there was John Lennon.

You wanna talk about misunderstood? There were people who couldn't understand why he got together with Yoko Ono (you know, "the woman who broke up the Beatles"). They couldn't understand the bed-ins and the acorns for peace and having a press conference in a bag. They were stunned when he would basically tell people to get over the Beatles and move on. People didn't understand why he suddenly up and left the business for 5 years to take care of his son. Unfortunately, in the end, we all will never understand what would drive a man to kill this person. Misunderstood? Yes, but we all mourned him nonetheless.

I was barely two years old on this day twenty years ago when we lost John Lennon, but after absorbing all of the films and the music and the TV appearances, I feel like I understand him now better than most did when he was alive. There's a lot in common. We're both from blue collar towns, our fathers weren't there for most of our respective childhoods, we strove to break out of the drab blandness of our hometowns by entertaining the masses. At age 22, he was still in Liverpool, playing the Cavern, just getting started on the road to stardom. At age 22, I'm still in Syracuse, working in radio, getting started down that road. I could appreciate the sarcastic tone he adopted, and while humorous he was often stinging. I find myself to be quite that way as well (as you could no doubt tell from my past columns to this point), perhaps that's the way we view the world when your childhood isn't part of the fast track to Wall Street or Madison Avenue or Sunset Boulevard. He was honest and forthright and even if you didn't want to hear it, he was gonna say it, or sing it in some cases. Maybe you laughed, maybe you got angry, but it always made you think. A lot of that comes from me in this column, my aim here is to maybe make you laugh or maybe make you outraged but always to make you think. Thinking is good, maybe if we stopped and thought for a while, messes could be avoided. Maybe not war, maybe not this whole presidential election hooey, but perhaps even down to the personal level of the things that bug us day in and day out.

Around this time every year, we choose to think back on all of this for even just a moment. I know Yoko would prefer that we remember John Lennon's birthday rather than the day he died, but unfortunately, more people are drawn to death dates than birth dates. Consider that nobody observes the day Elvis was born, but some tens of thousands migrate to Memphis every year to mark the day he checked out belly up on the toilet at Graceland. On a more serious note, nobody remembers the day John F. Kennedy was born, but every November 22, we are reminded of that fateful motorcade in Dallas. A sad commentary about our society, I suppose, but if at least through these rather dark observances we still remember these people, then so be it.

Myself, I wonder what he would think of today's world, and that of the past 20 years. Would John Lennon have been a staunch opponent of Reagan's policies toward the Soviets? Would he have outbid Michael Jackson to get his old songs back (and if he failed, could he have smacked Paul on behalf of all of us who think that maybe Paul never should've told Jacko about making money off other people's music?) Would Bill Clinton have invited him to play the first inaugural, along with Fleetwood Mac? What would John have said about Kurt Cobain? About grunge? About corporate sponsorship of big name concert tours? About Woodstock '99? Hell, what would he have said about the Backstreet Boys and all of their ilk?

Most of all, I wish I would have had the opportunity to meet him. Perhaps his downfall was that he was so accessible. Walking through Central Park or crossing 72nd Street, you could have bumped into him and it would be like you ran into an old friend. He was one of us at the end, a Joe Average on the streets of New York who just happened to sell lots of albums and be one of the most recognizable people in the world. I appreciate that, never becoming part of the high and mighty set. He said once he wondered during his "househusband days" why he wasn't down at Studio 54 with Mick Jagger and the glitterati, but he oddly enough would have seemed out of place. That's a good goal to set for yourself if you're like me, a young professional making his way up through the ranks, entertainment or otherwise. Always be true to yourself and if you feel most comfortable being one of the guys, then just be that. If you're comfortable by yourself with a few close friends, then just be that. As for me, it looks like around 10:00 tonight I'll be comfortable throwing a cassette of John Lennon in the stereo and remembering that there's more to the world than the button I forgot to press or the shift I need to get filled.

I need to do more thinking. We all do. Miss ya, John.

You Don't Deserve Anything

Our instant gratification society seems to be getting too demanding of the "instant" part these days, especially in the sports world. Consider if you will:

Norv Turner, head coach of the Washington Redskins, 7-6 so far this season: fired

Jim Donnan, head football coach at Georgia, 7-4 this year with a bowl invite: fired

Paul Pasqualoni, head football coach at Syracuse, 10 straight winning seasons: the locals want him fired

Jerry Wilcox, head basketball coach at West Genesee High School, 121-56 in eight seasons at WG coming into this year: some of the locals want him fired

To bring you up to speed on why in God's name this quartet of coaches is either under fire or seeking employment, it's because simply they didn't win it all fast enough or recent enough. Turner unfortunately saw his employer get bought by a dot-com zillionaire and apparent Steinbrenner wannabe, Daniel Snyder. Snyder bought a ton of high-priced free agents (Deion Sanders, Bruce Smith, Jeff George, and Adrian Murrell to name just a few). However, Snyder also has a habit of cutting kickers every time they miss a field goal, a trend that left the Redskins with the venerable Eddie Murray (estimated age: 74) as the kicker, and Murray then proceeded to miss game-winning field goals two weeks in a row, leaving the Skins in their current 7-6 predicament. Well, considering Mr. Dot-Com bought this team to win a Super Bowl, that just wasn't good enough, so poor Norv got his pink slip today. Patience is not a virtue in the NFL, not when a Jacksonville or a Carolina can go from expansion to the conference title game in two years.

This immediacy has spread down to the college ranks if for no other reason than the fact that when you look at it, major college football is nothing more than the minor leagues for the NFL. They draft kids out of high school in hockey, baseball, and even basketball now, but thankfully that practice is not done in football, thus leaving the only real alternative. No, not the CFL (how do you adjust to NFL-caliber play when the field is 110 yards long and you can score points on something called a rouge). Not the arena league (Kurt Warner notwithstanding), and not NFL Europe. College football, my friends; how otherwise can you explain the multi-million dollar paydays for the major bowl games? Get that win-now-and-get-money attitude in them early. As such, Georgia and coach Jim Donnan was expected to contend for the SEC title and a Bowl Championship Series berth, and more importantly perhaps, a lot of moolah for the conference and the school. Donnan even got the dreaded "vote of confidence" from AD Vince Dooley, a guy who in his long career as Georgia's head coach learned a few things about muddling through disappointing 7-4 seasons. The Dawgs go 7-4, miss the big bucks, and Donnan also got his walking papers today. This is the same business where John Cooper can go 8-3, 9-2, or even 10-1 at Ohio State, but if the one loss is to Michigan, the callers flood the talk radio lines calling for his head. I understand Cooper is something like 2-10-1 against Michigan, but I don't exactly see the recruits or the fans streaming toward the exits over things like this. It's simple: most people are happy when their team wins 8,9,10 games consistently. Even a winning season and a bowl bid every year should be enough to please most people.

Which brings me to our good buddy Coach P. The fans want him gone because they are convinced that the team has consistently underachieved with him as coach. Yup, a .700 winning percentage is now underachieving, especially when the Florida States, Nebraskas, and Kansas States of the world are putting up .900-plus year after year. With Donovan McNabb, Syracuse won three Big East titles in a row, but could never do better than 9-3 and lost twice in the BCS, both games rather sordid affairs to say the least. Now with a quarterback situation that changes hourly depending on the fans' mood that day, those in the know in the media pegged SU as a 6-5 team in 2000. Now, there were those yay-hoos who said Syracuse, would go, oh, let's say, 8-3 (see column #4), but it's normal for fans' expectations to be higher than those of the media (more on that later). Thusly, when SU hit the mark and went 6-5, the media said I told you so, and the fans got up and left. Literally. As in before halftime of the Miami game, with the 'Canes up 23-0 and the Orange offense doing less than nothing. The crowd got up and left. Before halftime. Of a game on national television. Well, perhaps they have a point. Vote with your feet, that's an acceptable way of getting people's attention, probably more effective than the daily letter I see in the Sub-Standard, errr, Post-Standard calling for Coach P's imminent dismissal or banishment to Outer Mongolia, whichever comes first. OK, the fact that they didn't beat anyone with better than a 6-5 record and missed a bowl in an age when merely fielding a college football program might be enough to get you in a WhoCares.com bowl game is probably good reason to be upset. However, these people now have a problem with us normal people who just shrug off a 6-5 year and look forward to the next with optimism yet again. Since it's all about the money, they say, our continued presence at the Dome will never get them to their ultimate goal of getting P fired.

What we have is the "what have you done for me lately" syndrome, but it's really bad when it happens at the HIGH SCHOOL level. Consider the curious case of Jerry Wilcox. The guy is a Hall of Famer, one of the best high school basketball coaches Central New York has ever seen. And yet, and YET, I had the displeasure of reading post after post online from disgruntled fans/students/parents suggesting that it was time to toss the bear out with the bathwater. You see, after a 92-23 stretch in his first five years as coach, which included three Section 3 finals, two titles, and a state finals appearance, he's only managed to win 6, 12, and 11 games the last three years. It apparently only took two years of mediocrity for people to assume that's the way it would be every year. Remember when I said it was normal for fans' expectations to be higher than those of the media? The P-S says this edition of the WG basketball team has a genuine shot at a league title, and from what I saw in the opener last Friday I would have to agree. And yet, those posting online are pessimistic as anything, and they don't bother showing up at the games because they are so certain of the mediocrity they are predicting. There is one line that was repeated in those posts that just killed me, and yet the line may also sum up the attitude of Mr. Snyder, Mr. Dooley, and SU football fans everywhere: "We deserve better."

And so I issue the following responses to each respective person/group:

Daniel Snyder, you paid all that money for the team and for the free agents, and they can't put up more than 7 points in a must-win game. You DON'T deserve better, at least not until the end of the season, and while you're at it, get a kicker who isn't a member of AARP.

Vince Dooley, college football is about love of your school and tailgate parties and marching bands, not million-dollar paydays for winning big games. You DON'T deserve better. If that attitude were around when YOU were coaching, you would not have been around long enough to become a legend.

Disgruntled Orangemen Fans, see above. If you don't want to plunk down the money to go to a game as your way of protest, it's certainly justified and acceptable, but don't go getting upset at us Joe Normals who will buy the tickets because we want to go see a game regardless of how good they are.

Disgruntled West Genny Fans/Students/Parents, high school sports are not about winning championships, they are about building character and having fun. You DON'T deserve better; in fact, you DON'T DESERVE ANYTHING at this level. This is where you actually have to (gasp!) WORK HARD to get what you want. If it's true in the classroom, then it's true on the field or court.

Thank you very much, and for God's sake, just go root for your team.