Do you remember how it was last year?

All the anticipation, all the worries, all the preparation for the biggest non-event in recent history? Y'know, we were stocking up on soup and Spam, hoarding bottled water and champagne like it was the last days of the civilized world and still trying to remain upbeat about the whole thing. But at least it was entertaining to an extent. At least we seemed to have a purpose.

And then nothing happened. The lights stayed on, everyone shot their guns in the air, poured champagne on everyone's heads and fell down into drunken stupors, figuring that we'd passed the big hump. We'd survived.

What was the reward for what we went through last year? Not much.

We have the closest presidential election in years, but mostly because no one cares. Usually if an election was this close, one would expect record turnout, but this year most politicos expect another year of decline in voting numbers. Neither of the two big party guys are worth a mouth of spit and the nation yawns. We'll all go through the day on November 7th, deciding and redeciding if we're really gonna vote, skip the whole thing, go home and see if anyone else around the country deemed it necessary to go to the polls.

While revolution, terrorism and political change happens elsewhere in the world, the U.S. is in a state of doldrums.

And it's not just politics--although I have a feeling this has something to do with it.

I can count the number of good movies on one hand, and I'm not sure if I'm using all my fingers. And for some reason, movies that should have been rated R movies by nature became PG-13 because they were so dumb only a teenager would go to see them (see Gone In 60 Seconds and Coyote Ugly).

The glut of boy bands and Lolita posturing in the music business has not slacked off, and Eminem gets grief for actually having a reaction to this plastic stupidity.

We are in entertainment purgatory, where nothing is really good or bad, just the same old shit. Of course, because it is an election year, politicians have gleaned on to the few instances of extreme. I guess that's their job, but can they ever admit that the problem isn't a pop song with questionable lyrics, but really that many teenagers throughout history have had alienation issues. And if you add guns to alienation, you've suddenly got a lethal weapon with specific targets in mind.

It wouldn't matter if the kid listened to Black Sabbath, Guns N' Roses, N.W.A., Marilyn Manson or Eminem, he's still gonna feel this way. But if he didn't have a gun in his hand, no one would get killed.

But it's not guns is it--nope, it's information.

And now they've got me off subject (although, really, this isn't hard). My real question is this: why has the year 2000 sucked so bad? Why has it been this huge mass of mediocre? Are we really so content that nothing outrages us anymore? Nothing breaks us out of the normal enough to cause some kind of reaction--good or bad?

Okay, the Superbowl was pretty good this year, but that should really be looked at as an extension of 1999. Name something that happened this year that was stupendous and out of the ordinary. Clinton jokes are passé now that he's used 2000 to polish his legacy. And the funny thing is, even with all the stupid crap Clinton did while in office, he's gonna be remembered as one of the greatest presidents of recent history (with along with FDR, Truman, Kennedy, and Reagan). His successor, no matter which one, will be a one term joke.

And maybe we can blame the centrist state of today's politics. Everyone rushes to the center so fast, nothing unusual gets through the cracks. And, possibly realizing that in every presidential election year entertainment gets hammered for any plausible target, the industry has decided to keep things rather stagnant so they don't upset the balance.

I want to be enlightened. I want to be challenged. I want something to happen--something special, something wonderful or something horrific. Just something. Give me a bone here, I'm desperate.

Matt Worley walks in circles a lot, mumbling incoherently at the spiders as they wrap up the roaches and prepare for a long winter of discontent.