We started off the new millennium with lots of hopes. The whole “Year 2000″ thing sounded so exciting and futuristic, and we were all expecting great things to come. Instead, this decade has been an awful start that hopefully won’t set the stage for the next 90. While some areas had wild amounts of success and made our lives better (like all these fancy new cell phones), just about every part of our lives has suffered some kind of step backwards in the 2000s.
Here’s why I can’t wait for the month to end and will be welcoming 2010 with open arms.
The Music of the 00’s
It all started off with this and has just gone downhill.
Linkin Park: Pure awful on a disc
In 2000 the #1 album was “The Beatles: 1″, and by 2005 it was a 50 Cent album. That’s how fast things went downhill. The rest is history. Year after year we are treated to another piece of repetitive trash, a new Britney comeback album, or something else that just makes you dumber every time you hear it. It’s gotten so bad that we now consider a song who’se only lyrics are “Tonight’s gunna be a good night” to be perfectly acceptable. Excuse me while I go barf.
It’s ridiculous how much 90’s music I listen to now just because today’s “artists” have driven me in another direction so rapidly.
The music industry as a whole became something we all hated. Nothing like hearing record labels cry poor from piracy only to find out now that they use unauthorized recordings in compilations all the time.
Vermin Supreme giving an interview during the 2008 primaries
I can’t believe this went so long without me noticing it. Being involved in politics for as long as I have, I’ve seen some really screwball candidates. But at long last, I think I may have found a candidate who is even more absurd than the infamous Vermin Supreme.
Now, to Mr. Supreme’s credit, he can form coherent sentences in the manner in which the average Joe would say such things…he just says stuff that we would never say. But hey, he was running for president of the United States (and one of the few people I’ve ever met who was also a fan of Imperial Emperor Norton I). Livonia City Council Candidate Glenn Moon on the other hand, not only says things that no mentally competent person would ever say, but he says them in a manner in which prepositions are completely optional and has invented his own nomenclature. Continue Reading
All the talk of the moon landing last week really got me thinking about how little things have changed since then. So many of our economic, social, political, etc. problems are just as bad if not worse.
We can marvel at the achievement of sending man into space, but we simply do not know what to do about Detroit. In 1967, the people rioted, and the city burned. Two years later, we were on the moon. It’s astounding when you see where the focus is and where it isn’t.
This all reminded me of a song by the Drive-by Truckers, called Puttin’ People on the Moon off their Dirty South album (support the artist and buy it here). The story is about how the people outside of Huntsville, Alabama were hurt by the depression caused by the Marshall Space Flight Center. But it could very well be the story of Detroit: Misfortune befalls a man on so many levels, and to make it worse not only does nobody care, but people close-bye are accomplishing great things.
So I made a video, featuring the song Puttin’ People on the Moon and gave it a little Detroit twist. Enjoy
