Greetings, Pub Quiz Year Enders…

Overwhelmed by Year In Reviews?  Best Of?  Worst Of? 
Even worse, the prognostications for the coming year?  And worst of
all, the coming year's predicted Year In Review for stuff that hasn't
happened yet — more Shecky Green than Nostradamus.

Even worse, we get a double-dose: Year in Review and Decade in Review.

This ain't no disco, and it ain't my call to make.  The best of the year, best of the decade, is whatever you say it is.

This little summation is just stuff that makes me smile or sticks in my craw — sometimes at the same time.

And what, exactly, is a craw?  It's the crop of a bird or an
animal, or an animal's stomach.  And, idiomatically, the place where
really annoying stuff goes and sticks.  And doesn't come out — not
with the wash, not with scholastic remediation, and not with the
healing qualities Time is supposed to be so good at.

2009…the last year of this terrible decade.  We should've known
it would be bad — any decade that lends itself to the spectacle known
as New Year's Eve Spectacles was bound to go off the rails.

yes, yes…it's a new year AND you can see us!

And it did.  Spectacularly at the outset and grindingly for the rest of the way.  The '00s were mostly the dark days of the Bush era.  Really, really dark.  At the end, the disappointment (thus far) of the Obama administration's
hold-hands-circle.  Dude, you were elected with a huge mandate — end
wars and give everyone health coverage and encourage queer rights and
all the other stuff we talked about!

Also, people now say "dude" more than ever.

Hard to believe this is the same decade as 9/11 and the big tsunami and the end of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

Since he's still in office, it's sadly not hard at all to believe Michael Bloomberg
is mayor.  It's cruel to wake from the nightmare of W and still be in
Bloomy's New York — like a sci-fi plot where the character opens her
eyes only to discover by the next ad break that she's still in a
terrifying dream.

Assuming he doesn't buy his way into a fourth term, we'll
discover that we can't even afford to leave the Bloomberg's frightful
nightmare — sky-high rents, box-stores, wrecked subway and school
systems, deference to the wealthy, trite initiatives that ignore the
city's real problems.

If Bloomberg's such a "good businessman," how come the city's in
such bad shape financially?  And no, you can't give his alleged
business acumen credit when times were good but, now that times are
bad, blame events somehow beyond the mayor's control.

There were bright spots — political movements and new politicians
that could bend the steel bar enough to make a difference, bands and
movies and t.v. shows we loved, medical advances (though, good luck
paying for them), and technology that has us at the crossroads — this
way, radical new possibilities to improve our quality of life; that
way, a planet so self-absorbedly addicted to Twitter and celebritydom that when we finally look up and see the giant asteroid about to destroy Earth, we won't have time to use all 140 characters to scream.

Of course, humans being humans, it'll be somewhere in the middle. 
It always is.  We somehow always recover from doing terrible things to
one-another.  The worst things possible — genocide, torture, t.v. shows about the Kardashian sibblings — and still we continue.

What we do to each other is one thing.  What we're doing to the
planet…that's another story.  There's a desperate push to name the
'00s.  Could be hard, because we can't even agree on the prosaic
numerical nickname — Zeroes? Aughts? Pre-Teens?.  Still, I nominate
this clunker: The We've Known We're Killing Our Planet And
Destroying Humanity One Hummer Meat-Cattle-Raising Acre Rampant Western
Consumer Thirst Slaked But Not Enough By Emerging Factory States At A
Time And We Can't Get Our Shit Together To Save The Only Home We've Got
Decade.  It's not as catchy as the Me Decade, but at least it's too long for a tweet — and that's a start.

Upon further review, how about the Toxic Decade.  "A lie
told often enough becomes the truth," so the insidious insist.  These
last ten years, lies didn't even have to be said that often before we
caved in and took them at face value.

Michael Bloomberg, China's quest to satisfy Western urges, the Kardashians, Bruce Ratner and Jay-Z, W & His Number 1, Enron — the forefront of the Toxic Decade.  An incomplete list.

We've fought our way through the Toxic Decade.  That says a lot.  We allowed it to become this toxic.  That says a lot more.

The obvious retort here is "Dude, every
decade's been toxic."  True — nuclear proliferation, world wars,
depressions greater than this one, bubonic plagues (that's a lot of
decades ago, but still…).  What makes this last one so toxic is that
by now, we should know better.  Know better than to wage stupid wars,
pollute the planet, build superblock projects and give wealthy
developers public money to destroy neighborhoods, allow fiscal
corruption to run rampant, piss off the world with hubris and
arrogance, and pull cover after cover over our head instead of letting
the warm sunshine of resistance heat us up.

Fact — fighting the power is more fun than DVDing another season of America's Next Top Model.

So onward to 2010.  My one moment of Nostradamual prognostication:

Things are gonna change…

* * * * * * * *

…starting with the best way to celebrate New Year's Eve this Thursday evening:

The Rocky Sullivan's Pub Quiz Quizzin' New Year's Eve Extravaganza!