Year In Review (Apocalypse Now Version)

 Man, it's been a crazy year.... two years.... whatever. Time is a construct and means nothing anymore.  

January 2021. Humanity peeks its head out from underneath a crusty blanket and wonders if the time has come to try and sort out all those refunds from the fifty concerts and sporting events that have repeatedly gotten canceled, or is there hope of a rescheduled date in the future...

February 2021. This isn't too bad! *Goes and screams in the woods* One or two performers are doing small venues! Our favorite restaurants are allowing us to eat outside in the frigid arctic air with a space heater and we don't even mind the cold because we are seeing other humans and practicing our Wim Hof extreme endurance skills. Framing Britney Spears is released and within days the Buccaneers win the Super Bowl.  We all decide to re-read Cormac McCarthy's The Road and immediately regret it. 

March 2021. A guy who forgot the most basic principles of a k-turn gets stuck in the Suez Canal and we all collectively wonder if he's going to get fired for basically snarling the supply chain and causing a huge big boat back up. This is our life now.  Godzilla vs. Kong is released on the final day of March and we put on our hazmat gear and go to the movies. IT IS EPIC.

April 2021. Someone promises us that Rage Against The Machine is touring. They've been saying that since last year and we don't believe them anymore.  We are no longer incensed when movies clearly meant for the big screen start popping up on HBO Max but somewhere deep inside we know this can't last forever.....right? Christopher Nolan will not allow this. 

May 2021. Things are looking up! People are getting out of the house! It's getting warmer and everyone is getting on flights to destinations previously unavailable to them. The Friends Reunion show is released on HBO Max ( we are all becoming vaguely suspicious of HBO Max ). A Quiet Place II knocks it out of the box office park while we root for that Top Gun Maverick premiere that Tom Cruise has been promising us for months. Mare of Easttown reminds us why Kate Winslet is an international treasure. 

June 2021.  Disney + proves to be a must-see-tv hitmaker after WandaVision, The Mandalorian, and now this month's binge-worthy series featuring the God of Mischief, Loki. We're enjoying shrimp cocktails and mojitos on the beach when we overhear some killjoy talking about "delta". Whatever sir, stop using the Greek alphabet to appear smarter than you are. This is the (almost) pandemic-free, summer of YES.

July 2021. AAAAHHHHHHHH. We all brace for impact and find out that the zombie movies we've been watching since the early 80s have equipped us with the skills to pivot and find the bright spot in any disaster. Life goes on. Enjoying giant pyrotechnic displays in the sky has never felt so liberating and someone in public relations coins the term "summer of freedom".  We're eating INDOORS. 

August 2021. Damn it's hot. Hurricane Ida cuts a swath through the gulf. That promised Bikini Kill tour is rescheduled for 2022 and we all invest in some K 95 masks because Gen X knows that unless you completely destroy any villain by setting them on fire and throwing them off a hundred story building, they're going to pop back up to wreak havoc in the final scene. *Keeps wary eye on pandemic*

September 2021. The Foo Fighters play the 9:30 Club in Washington DC as a "surprise artist" and the world begins to right itself after over a year of being completely off-kilter.  We say goodbye to funnyman Norm Macdonald and watch as our kids head out the door and back to school. Billionaires Elon and Jeff duke it out in front of federal regulators over space-based internet and we listen as projects like Starlink and Kuiper get discussed and remind us that Star Wars showcased why capitalism in space leads to the building of the Death Star.

October 2021. Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch and Denis Villeneuve's Dune help kick off the fall box office excitement. Tori Amos reappears and drops her sixteenth album, Ocean to Ocean- and we all love it. Colin Powell shuffles off the mortal coil and for Halloween we all prepare to dress up in our tracksuits emulating player 456 (Seong Gi-hun) from the terrifyingly addictictive Squid Game. Red light, green light will never be the same. 

November 2021. On November 12, 2021, Britney Jean Spears wins her long legal battle to end her thirteen year conservatorship. VIVA BRITNEY.  Meghan Markle sits down with Oprah Winfrey and spills the royal tea. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez get back together, leaving the public scratching their heads. They Might Be Giants release BOOK. Which at first is confusing, because it has photographs and lyrics but no music and then you realize there's a CD, or you can download it digitally, and you're suddenly in need of your kids to enjoy a collectors item from one of your favorite 80s bands, so now you're just sad. A conspiracy theorist claims a rise in turkey prices is part of a plot to ruin Thanksgiving and we all buy extra stuffing and mashed potatoes just in case. 

December 2021. Keanu helps us through the last month of the year with The Matrix Resurrections. The Christmas Spectacular starring the Radio City Rockettes looks like it's going to happen....and then.... no. A malicious variant that sounds like a particularly vengeful Transformer villain starts shutting everything down. *breathes into bag*. Our neighbors build a greenhouse and begin homesteading and I now have a book on trading and the barter system because apparently society is going to collapse. But hey, Netflix has seasons 1-4 of the original Knight Rider and a new Tiger King spinoff installment- The Doc Antle Story. And as a final kick in the gut, 2021waited until New Years Eve to take everyones favorite iconic Golden Girl, Betty White, from us. Thank you for being a friend!

So, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times but , *looks around* living on the brink of the apocalypse has sharpened our senses and given us a keen appreciation for all good things. Here's to an eventful (the good kind) 2022.

Leave Britney Alone

It's hard to be a Britney Spears fan these days. But I guess that's nothing new, she has almost made it her mission in recent years to get people to stop being interested in her so she can get off the pop star merry-go-round.

What do I mean by that you say? My mind first goes to a performance she did at the American Music Awards a few years ago where she blatantly waited for the CD to start, before performing "Till The World Ends." Or how about her use of a dance doubles in two music videos only for the dancing to still end up not being all that great. Or how about on the Femme Fatale Tour when the epic dance break begins for "Hold It Against Me," and she actually has the nerve to SIT DOWN on a shiny metal throne until it was over.

Ms. Spears added further salt in the wound this week with the release of her eight studio album, Britney Jean. I was counting the days till this CD dropped, especially because it was advertised as a sequel of sorts to Blackout. However, the tea leaves started reading death and despair when key songwriters/producers like Danja and Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins announced ahead of its release that they didn't make the cut.

Another dark omen was the near lack of promotion, especially in comparison to Katy Perry and Lady Gaga, who were on anything and everything except cereal boxes ahead of their CDs' release dates. She didn't do a single live performance this promo cycle if you can believe it. When Britney Jean dropped, I waited until I was on the treadmill before I pushed play, expecting a dance masterpiece with some hard beats. What I got was a whole bunch of mid-tempo songs that were auto-tuned to the point where Britney's already thin voice sounded worse, not better.

There was even some random track with her long-forgotten younger sister Jamie Lynn. I guess she is trying to be a singer now or something. I couldn't tell you if she sounded good or not because the NASA level technology used on the track made their voices near indistinguishable. But I believe she did the second verse, and if that's the case, she should stick to whatever she was doing before she jumped on this CD.

The elder Spears also claimed this would be her "most personal" album ever, and you could tell from the tracklist alone that was a down right lie. A truly revealing CD from Ms. Spears would likely include such tracks as "True Life: I'm Under Conservatorship" or "I Need To Ask My Dad Before I Buy A $50 Pair Of Jeans."

Was it a surprise that the CD was terrible? I guess not. Both Lady Gaga and Katy Perry were also stricken with "the listen once and never again" disease this fall. However, I will say "Swine" and "Donatella," and "Applause" are pretty decent songs on Artpop, so, it wasn't a total loss. Miley Cyrus also had some catchy tunes on her CD this fall including "Wrecking Ball" and "Rooting For My Baby."

But back to Britney. While it wasn't a surprise the album was a letdown, it was a disappointment. As a singer, she is no Whitney Houston. As a dancer, she is no Janet Jackson, at least not anymore, but I was rooting for her. Her Onyx Hotel tour was my first ever concert. Our one-sided history runs long and deep.

These days being a Britney Spears fan is about waiting, waiting for the pre-breakdown, singing/dancing machine of 1998-2004 to come back. I see signs of this all the time. Before the release of every video there are promises of strong dancing, only for the final clip to feature uncoordinated granny-speed moving, or flat-out uninterested Britney. Or sometimes it's not even her at all, as I outlined earlier.

It's gotten so bad that when a video appeared online recently of a drag queen performing "Work Bitch," the responding comments to the clip were filled with remarks like the lighting in the video was dark enough where they could fantasize Spears was performing. Some in an extremely desperate emotional state even said they would show the video to friends and lie and say it was Britney and exclaim she had "it" again, that je ne sais quoi that made her outsell much more vocally talented artists like Christiania Aguilera in the late '90s.

Maybe that girl is gone for good. I remember when I purchased my ticket for Onyx Hotel I had a sense, even then, that this was her at her peak and it would only be downhill from here, and that appears to be true.

So maybe I, and the fans she still has left, should let her go. She has already hinted at retiring after her upcoming Vegas residency ends in 2015. So let's let her go back to her Cheetos and running around after her kids, because that appears to be what she wants to be doing anyway.

On the bright side, I hear Beyonce has a CD coming out next year. I wonder if that will be any good…

It's Britney, Witch!: Britney Spears Covers Vincent Price

Here's something to get you in the holiday spirit!

New Video: Britney Spears, "Til The World Ends"

Great. All those people are right. The world really is going to end in 2012. Britney said so, y'all.

But not before we have an epic Mad Max-style dance party in the sewers. Rock!



What do you think of the video?

First Look: Britney Spears, "Hold It Against Me"

I particularly liked watching the two Britneys go at it.



Thoughts?

BREAKING BRITNEY SPEARS NEWS!!!

The Internet's been buzzing about the five-second video that Britney Spears posted on her YouTube channel today:



Most people believe it's a countdown to the launch of the video for "Hold It Against Me."

They're wrong. Apparently, I'm the only person actually paying attention to the five-second video.

Allow me to break it down like the Zapruder flim!