No Winners and Losers List For 2020

This December, don't expect me to compile a list of winners and losers for this year.  Because as far as I'm concerned, everyone on this planet is a loser due to COVID-19, and for Americans also dealing with racial injustice, firestorms, hurricanes, and a buffoonish President on top of that, that goes double.

Who won?  Who won what?  What does it matter if a TV series that premiered in the previous television season got renewed for the 2020-21 season when it's become difficult if not impossible to produce a new season's worth of series episodes?  How can I call the year's most successful movie a winner when most people had to see it online because their local theater was closed and may never reopen?  Why should it matter that the Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup when no one was actually there in person to see it?  And since I'm not a football fan, do you think I really care that the Kansas City Chiefs won their first Super Bowl in half a century this past February?  

And I haven't even mentioned the Olympics. 😢 

I'm not even going to herald the victor in the 2020 presidential election as a winner, even if it's Joe Biden.  Given the way the pandemic is going, I wouldn't even wish the Presidency on my worst enemy.  Ironically, he already holds it.

We're all big losers for plans we had back on New Year's Day that we had to cancel or, at best, postpone until not 2021 but more likely 2022.  I was looking forward to seeing my fashion-model friends at another annual spring party that was going to be held in a venue far more accommodating than the ones where the parties have been held before.  That's outski!   I was eagerly awaiting the annual local film festival in a town near where I live where a new hotel had just opened, which looked to make it the biggest festival ever.  Instead, there's a virtual festival taking place (along with drive-in screenings, a fifties fad that should have stayed in that decade), and the last movie theater in that town closed permanently.  A town with no theaters hosting an annual film festival?  It's like having a seafood festival in Wichita.   And the people involved with this festival and the hotel are bigger losers than I am. 

And it you left open the possibility of going to Europe this year, like I did, you're a loser.  If you've never been to Europe before, like me, that so goes double.

So no, there won't be a winners-and-losers list on my blog this year, just like there wasn't an annual New York Auto Show, an annual South By Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, an annual Beatles convention in New Jersey, or so many other yearly events that had to be canceled due to the pandemic.  And take note - many of these annual events may never come back after the pandemic ends because people might realize there's no real reason to keep them going.  Indeed . . . I may never bring back my winners-and-losers list because 2021 isn't looking much better, and by 2022 I may just forget about doing the list.  Or even doing this blog.

So, again - we are all losers this year.  And we still have three months to go. 

The presidential debate?  Please, one disaster at a time . . . 😢

(Note the professional-looking emoticons.  I'll be using these from now on instead of typed-in ones.)