This has been a crazy year. Truth be told, I’ve been so caught up with non-media stuff that a lot of the things I’d normally focus on got ignored. Still, it was an eventful year. Here are the highlights.
Show death – Several of the shows we regularly watched ran their final episodes this year. Oddly, none of them got the rug yanked out from under them. So at least they got the chance to wrap things up in tidy, story-arc-friendly ways. Lost was the most notable casualty, Abrams and company running out of weirdness and calling it quits even though they probably could have kept drawing audiences for another season or two. Likewise The Tudors concluded with Henry VIII’s death, a natural enough place to stop even though they could have continued to follow the Tudor monarchies with additional episodes if they’d been inclined.
More show death – On the other hand, 24 met a more traditional slipping-ratings death. In its heyday it drew a ton of attention and more than a little controversy, but by the end it passed on not with a bang but a whimper. They could have killed it more dramatically, but honestly it wouldn’t have mattered. Too bad, too. When it was going strong it was actually fairly entertaining.
The Lawrence Welk Easter show – Easter weekend was a strange time for me. That Saturday the strangeness was compounded when I found myself in a waiting room while a nearby television screened KCPT’s broadcast of an old Lawrence Welk Easter show. His cadre of abnormally cheerful regulars all dressed as giant, brightly-colored, fuzzy bunnies, ducklings and chicks singing about Peter Cottontail and Abbot the Rabbit … well, it was all just a little much.
My semi-triumphant return to the movie theater – For the past few years I’ve been avoiding movie theaters. Though this change in my media habits was completely justified, I admit I did miss the big screen experience a bit. So with the assistance of some fellow filmgoers I managed to make it to a few more theater-screened movies this year. Though it wasn’t exactly a “thank goodness I decided to come back” experience, it was at least a little nice to be back.
The death of the printed version of the Advocate – I’m a big fan of dead tree newspapers. Thus it was with great pain that I helped the staff of the student newspaper I advise to make the transition from print to web-only. Though it saddened me greatly to make the change, the time for change had come.
The Tea Party on the dance show – For some reason Sarah Palin’s daughter’s appearance on Dancing with the Stars seemed to cause quite a stir. Sure, she was talentless. Yes, the Tea Partiers out there kept calling in and voting for her. That’s America. If nothing else, it should serve as a sobering reminder that “Palin should run in 2012 because Obama will beat her easily” could be famous last words.
Midterm elections nonsense – And speaking of elections, we sat through another one. They just seem to get more and more vicious each time. It makes me shudder to think about what we’ll be “treated” to the next time around.
The phone, the phone – For the longest time the Lens household resisted any kind of Internet presence in the house. It just seemed too much like work creeping into our personal lives. But in June the time came to replace our old cell phones, and we made the jump to smart phones. That got the ball rolling, and by the end of the year we had a WiFi hub in the house. Time and tide.
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