The Meh Revolution

I’m back!  Did you miss me? I did. I get cranky when I don’t read my blogs. I lost me for a few of weeks of family, Christmas and reflection, in no particular order. That’s the nice thing about blogging: nobody pays me so I can take vacations any time that I want. I took the last dying gasps of 2012 for me, so I could be here for you in 2013.

2012. CNN and other news outlets are calling it “the Year of the Meh.” If I hadn’t gotten Married on the Queen freakin’ Mary and honeymooned in Hawaii during 2012, I’d have to agree with the their assessment.  And yet despite my highlights, I did note an overall meh theme last year.

Still, I do find it disheartening when the people who make up the news look at their creation and go, “meh.” I mean, they’re writing it. Trust me. I love my work a lot more than “meh.” Couldn’t they have at least put a better spin on things?

Gangnam News!

Ok, there’s no way to spin that that make’s it sound better, and yet Gangnam stylings were the YouTube sensation driving us over the soporific cliff. Catchy, but in a year we’ll be starving again. We won’t remember the chubby dude who sang that, something style song.

Gangnam Style!

Yeah…meh.

And that’s not even the sad part. The sad part is that we had to search foreign playlists to find a catchy song we could forget. American music couldn’t even give us a memorable meh-march.

2012: the year we screamed, “Call Me Maybe.”

Meh.

I hope in 2013 we won’t need to call you at all.

Maybe we will. TV gave us no hope. Honey Boo Boo and Hillbilly Island marshaled forces against pivotal dramas like Mob Doctor and Made in Jersey. Bad television: it’s revolutionary! Speaking of revolutions, that’s a show I had hope for, yet here we are at the mid season split, and I’ve stopped caring whether whiny girl saves the world from the evil repercussions from the actions of her mom, dad and self-loathing travel companion uncle. I got more apocalyptic family drama last Thanksgiving.

“My fingers are gnarled and useless because you made me weed the lawn when I was a kid!”

“Well at least you had electricity!”

“Wha?”

Don’t get me wrong.  There were highlights—in TV, not Thanksgiving. That just never played as scheduled. I liked Elementary, Vegas, and waited for my Zombies to shamble back as Walking Dead. But when thoughtless zombies are your entertainment highlight, something is missing.

I blame the Kardashians. 

Not really. I blame us, but the Kardashians are my focal point. 2012 is the beginning of the meh revolution. As long as we worship the irrelevant, we’ll sleep walk through the societal upheaval, yawning out our battle cry.  How can we find wonder, when we’ve moved the middle of the road off to the banal shoulder?

We follow Kardashian tweets, and concern ourselves with what Snooki’s likes.

Why?

No, seriously. I’m a blogger. Nobody follows me. At least I get that. I don’t have the credentials.  I’m not Tom Brokaw. I don’t follow the idiosyncratic maneuvering of the U.S. government. I’m a guy with a keyboard and an electronic billboard. So why the Kardashians? Snooki? What make’s them paragons of American society?

They are the marshals of meh. Let’s all stand in line.

I know I sound like a bitter old man. I am! Get off my lawn! I’m old and afraid. My idols were Jeff Spicoli and the Bee Gees and they’re all but gone. This is not the utopia they promised.

“Stayin’ Alive, Stayin’ Alive…”

“Dude! That’s my skull!”

This is not the Hell my parents forewarned either. This is none of that. This is worse.

This is meh.

In 2013 we need to try harder. We need to try. We must oppose the meh revolution.

We must be relevant. We must have battle cry!

Give me relevance or call me maybe!

No, we need to work on our battle cry.

But in the meantime, let’s try something new: let’s do something that matters.

Let’s do something!

Now get off my lawn!