New Years Resolutions For Everyone Else: Some Things I Don't Want To See In 2002 (or: This Is The Year Al Officially Claims His Birthright and Becomes An Old Crank)

- Music with the tuba as the sole bass instrument blasting from the open windows of a car (it's a Tuba, for God's sake! It's what they made the fat paste-eating wierdos play in the high school band!)
- Offspring of famous actors/directors directing/starring in major motion pictures. Haven't the careers of Jakob Dylan and the Lennon brothers taught us anything?
- Any more bad Jack Nicholson impressions
- Any more bad Al Pacino impressions
- Any more bad Christopher Walken impressions
- Any more dying Beatles. We've only got two left; can they be declared a national resource?
- Bare midriffs on fat chicks
- And, to be fair: bare midriffs on fat guys
- Any more unnatural food coloring. I mean, soaking something in blue die and calling it "Blueberry" or (even worse) "Blue Raspberry" is bad enough; there's no blue food in nature, dammit! Now amoral food coloring scientists have starting adding bizarre green and orange colorings to food that make them glow. I mean, jeez, didn't we already put a ban on adding radium to watches et al.? The only item that really needs to be colored are hot dogs, and we shouldn't be eating those anyway...
- Whiner Metal (c.f. Staind and thier posuer ilk). Look, I know this all started with grunge (which I liked), but at least grunge a: had acceptably fast tempos, b: had a sense of humor and c: at least had the honesty to blame themselves or maybe society for most of thier problems. They didn't follow this chickenshit "my girlfriend and parents are to blame" bullshit. I know most metal has always been misogynistic and overly testosteronic, but this is a bad trend.
- Stupid teen comedies or self-reflexive supposedly post ironic parodies of teen comedies. These suck, they have always sucked, and they always will suck. The resonably sentient among us have relaized this ever since we were teens ourselves
- For that matter, popular culture itself. I'm checking out; it doesn't pay to be an armchair critic to anything which by definition is lowest common denominator and below the contempt of any thinking citizen. And that goes for nostalgia, too, dickwad. Fuck you, Scooby Doo! And you, H. R. Puff'n'Stuff! And even you, Brady Bunch (gasp!)! Just because something is old and served as a surrogate teat for a generation of masturbatory latchkey larvae doesn't mean it automatically has any value...
- Any more cheap'n'easy lists posted on my blog
- You and the rest of your creepy friends