2020 - The End

It's New Year's Eve, and even though I want to be optimistic about 2021, all I have to do is look at the first three weeks - Trump trying to hold on to power, rioting in the streets over his defeat, the worst part of the COVID pandemic yet to come . . ..  I'm not ready to say that 2021 will even be a marginally better year than 2020.

I'm still pissed off at how, having recovered from an appendectomy at the end of 2019, I was planning to make 2020 a great year (I won't repeat what I had planned for this year), and reality came along and not only bit, it slashed.  All I did was spend time at home trying to avoid getting COVID and going through nine attempts to have our refrigerator repaired.  And hoping and praying a hurricane wouldn't hit the Northeast (and one just might this coming summer).

Do I have any plans for 2021?  Yes.  All I want to do is get a COVID vaccine.

It's getting to the point where the whole century is sucking.  The year 2001 was pretty bad even before the World Trade Center was blown to kingdom come, and the media called first decade of this century the "decade from hell."  Than came the second decade of the century, with the Tea Party, Trump, COVID and thirty named tropical cyclones in one year.  Maybe I'm wrong, maybe the 203rd decade of the Christian calendar will be a better era.  And as for 2020 . . .

2020: Losers and More Losers

You didn't believe me, did you?

Admit it.  You checked my blog on the day before New Year's Eve to see if I really was going to make a list of winners and losers for 2020 after I vowed not to.  You didn't think I was serious, did you?  You though I was kidding you all (anyone you says "y'all" out to get locked up for life, especially if they're not from the American South) when I said I wasn't going to do it.

Well, I didn't.  It was simply the worst year ever.  No one won and everyone lost.  There are local businesses where I live that didn't survive COVID.  There are also people where I live that didn't survive COVID.  There are black people all over America that didn't survive the police.  There are a lot of people, places and things that didn't survive the California wildfires or the Atlantic basin storms (all thirty of them) that had to be dealt with.  

Who won?  There's just one thing I got to know, can you tell me please, who would ask who won?  David Crosby, who came up with a song lyric like that, won't be asking. He's still trying to keep a roof over his head now that he can't make money of his records and all of his concert dates got canceled.  

No one won. Everyone lost.  It's over, COVID dropped the big one.  The end.

Guess I'll set a course and go . . . 😢

Christmas 2020

No Record Reviews For 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic pretty much made it impossible for me to compile a list of winners and losers for this year because, as I explained back in October, everyone's a loser in a pandemic.  (That includes Joe Biden, who won the Presidency but who now bears the unenviable task of getting us out of the pandemic at a time of political polarization.)  Now the pandemic has led me to cancel something else for 2020 - my reviews of classic record albums, which I'm sure you all love and look forward to.  I just haven't found the time this year to listen to any classic albums often enough to find the time to formulate opinions of them that I can express in in clear, coherent sentences, because of this damn virus.   

Back in 2019, I had a rough time for personal reasons, which distracted me from writing about classic records for most of the year, but I managed to conjure up some reviews for December 2019.  This December, I won't even attempt to do that because so much is going on with all of us.  Hopefully I'll be able to get back to writing about classic record albums in 2021, and I may even write about records from current bands.  Review Greta Van Fleet? That would be nice!  But not now.  Now is definitely not the time. 

Although, I will be commenting on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees for 2020, in full.  The induction ceremony took place the day the presidential election was called for Biden, so no one noticed it.  (To respond to the inevitable insistence that no one cares about rock and roll anymore - so why even talk about Greta Van Fleet? - the Hall of Fame's Class of 2020 does include a rapper and a pop diva.)  So stay tuned for that.

Thanksgiving 2020

Election Day 2020

It's finally here.

I've said all I want to about the Trump-Biden presidential campaign that I want to, and I hope you all voted.  If you didn't, vote in person today.  Because, as Samuel L. Jackson might say, the stakes are too high for you to stay the fuck home.

There, I said it . . .

Let's see what happens.

Halloween 2020

Why?

Why are we celebrating Halloween in this year, of all years? 

Consider where we are in 2020.  Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have to wear masks everywhere we go.  Everywhere we go feels scary, and people look scary.  Especially people who wear sunglasses with their face coverings, because they look like outlaw bikers.  Donald Trump doesn't wear a mask, but he does wear the mark of the beast.  People who have survived severe COVID-19 cases, like Chris Cuomo, look like they've seen a ghost.  We're spending more time in funeral homes and cemeteries.

How can we celebrate Halloween when, ever since the pandemic began, it's been Halloween every damn day? 😬

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.)

Auto Show Blues, Part Four

Forget the 2020 New York International Auto Show.

After postponing it from Easter Week to the week before Labor Day due to COVID-19, the organizers of the auto show have decided to just plain cancel it altogether, saying that they could not guarantee people's safety by holding the show in the middle of the pandemic despite the fact that New York and neighboring New Jersey have the virus under control.  Because who knows what it will be like at the end of August. Also, many people at the show would be from Michigan, a state that's still trying to slow the spread of the virus.  It's amazing that, apart from Hitler, nothing could stop the New York Auto Show before.  The Persian Gulf War didn't stop it.  The aftermath of 9/11 didn't stop it.  But a microscopic spiked ball of pathogen matter did.

Even without the pandemic, the 2020 New York Auto Show was still going to be a bummer.  Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen's Audi luxury brand both pulled out of the show even before the virus made the jump from China to the Western world, and BMW, having skipped the 2019 New York Auto Show, was planning to eschew the 2020 show as well.  True, Volkswagen was committed to the show, and it even planned to debut the ID.4 electric crossover in New York this year, but with Volkswagen Americanizing its lineup to cater to the ongoing monster wagon craze, I am certain that VW's display would have sucked, especially given the lack of attention given to anyone still interested in the Golf and given the fact that an all-new GTI (the base model appears to be on the chopping block for American VW dealers, a decision I'm still protesting against on my Mark 8 Golf blog) won't come out until September 2021.   

And because of the monster wagon craze, that's pretty much all you'd see at the displays from most of the domestic brands, except for pickup trucks.  The Asian brands still have hatchbacks and sedans - real cars.  And even though some of the vehicles that come out of Detroit are cars in the strictest sense of the word, let's face it.  After everything I've just said, is it really worth going to an auto show if all you're interested in is the new mid-engine Corvette?

The 2021 New York Auto Show is still on for Easter Week of next year, the same time it's always been since it moved in 1987 to the Jacob Javits Convention Center (which was turned into a COVID field hospital this past April, when the auto show would have taken place), but if going there means keeping six feet apart from people and wearing a face covering and not seeing the big German marques, I want nothing to do with it.  The pullout by Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and BMW are an indication that the auto show isn't what it used to be, as more auto manufacturers find new, more technologically savvy ways to market their products, and big exhibitions don't matter so much, so why bother with any of that?  The pandemic accelerated an already ongoing trend against the traditional auto show, which means I'd better not look forward to going to an auto show in Geneva or Munich - both of which were on my bucket list - after the pandemic is over.  But then, so what?  The old days and old ways of international auto shows are gone.

Independence Day 2020

Happy Fourth.  Stay safe.

The End Of the First Half

At the beginning of 2020 I was hoping for a much better year than 2019, a year in which I lost a job, dealt with a persistent stalling in my car, and had unexpected health problems, the details of either I won't get into here.  I got a new job reporting local news, and I was looking forward to many special events I hoped to attend.  I was going bowling again, and I made a New Year's resolution to go to the gym more often, which I did.  I even hoped to get closer to a woman I've known for years.  Yes - romance!  As for this new virus in China, I mostly expected it to stay in China or at the most affect only a couple of other countries, as was the case with SARS and H1N1.

Things went well at first, for about the first two months. But the past four months, thanks to the explosion of COVID-19, have humbled me to the point where I am about to collapse onto my knees and ask - beg, even - for the mistress of fate to give me a break.  As a result of the pandemic, I lost a second job I'd had for eight years.  The unemployment office has given me a hassle.  All of the events I'd been looking forward to were obviously canceled, and not only did the gym I belong to close, it isn't scheduled to reopen until New Year's Day and, because it is a public and not a privately owned facility - and a facility that happened to be in deep financial trouble before the pandemic - it may not reopen at all.  And that woman I mentioned?  Well, I'm glad I had lunch with her in February before all the restaurants closed, because she's been out of reach for much of the past four months.     

And to add insult to injury, my household has been dealing with problems unrelated to the pandemic.  Our refrigerator broke at the beginning of June and we lost a lot of food.  We got it repaired two weeks later, but the the relief was short-lived and it broke again a week after; we were able to save most of the food this time, but we could be looking forward to a situation where multiple repair efforts are needed before the problem is fixed for good - that is, like my car stall repair all over again.  And this week, a significant water main break has required every one in my town to boil water until further notice - meaning, they don't know when the water will be safe to drink again.

Looking ahead on June 30, I fear that the second half of the year is bound to be more difficult.  Although I may get my old job back in September, I have to deal with the unemployment office beforehand regarding my claim beforehand, I have to renew my driver's license in early November during a possible second wave of the pandemic, and, of course, the weather almanacs predict a hurricane hitting some part of the Northeast this fall.  I'm already looking forward to 2021, although I have a feeling that next year isn't going to be much better. 

And who knows who's going to be sitting in the White House by then.

Two thousand twenty is my year, all right - my hard luck year. :-(   

Earth Day - Fifty Years

After fifty years of Earth Day and trying to take care of the planet for that long, we seem to have mixed results.  Rivers don't catch fire anymore and air is easier to breathe, but a lot of the progress we've made since 1970 has been undermined by our carbon footprint, which has resulted in riding sea levels, snowless winters, monster hurricanes, and Paris being hotter than Kinshasa in June.  Efforts to curb pollution have been stymied by business leaders and government leaders around the world who have great difficulty admitting that we have a problem - and for American leaders, that goes double. 

We have so much disrespect for our leaders that those of us who actually care about doing anything to save the planet try to do what we can ourselves, like walking a mile to the store instead of driving (many of us don't live close enough to stores to that, of course) and taking part in cleanup activities in early spring that, alas, have been canceled this year because of COVID-19, which could last into '22.  We so distrust the politicians that we forget that it was a politician who started Earth Day in the first place - Gaylord Nelson, a Democratic senator from Wisconsin.  (Underscoring our disdain for politicians is that the new U.S. Earth Day postage stamp issue this month neither pictures nor mentions Nelson, who died in 2005.  Back in the fifties, commemorative stamps for U.S. senators were quire common.) 

Ironically, the pandemic has done more for the environment than we humans could have ever done by keeping us from going out in our cars and powering our places of business, thus dramatically lowering our carbon footprint.  (It won't be enough to mitigate the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, alas, which is till expected to be fierce.  And severe storms in America are already wreaking havoc on the South and the Northeast.)  To those of you who hoped that 2020 would be your year - myself included - sorry, this year belongs only to Mother Nature, and God's bratty kid sister is getting her sweet revenge. Earth Day now seems sadly quaint.

And in that spirit, here's a song from the year of the first Earth Day that still fits the times, fifty years later.

Happy Easter!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

No parades this year, but there's this . . .

Auto Show Blues, Part Two

I don't really want to stop the show, but I thought you might like to know . . . that the Geneva International Motor Show, cancelled due to coronavirus fears, was supposed to start today.  And even though German automakers introduced the eagerly awaited new generations of the Mercedes-Benz E-Class, the Audi A3 Sportback, and the Volkswagen Golf GTI (below) in online forums, I'm sure that it wasn't the same as introductions of the cars in Geneva would have been.  I can only say I'm sure, because I've never been to the Geneva auto show, though I would like to attend it eventually.  Maybe next year . . . or better yet, Frankfurt in September 2021.  I have been led to believe that European auto shows are much cooler than the ones here in the New World.

Yeah, about that . . ..  I, of course, live in the greater New York area, and the New York International Auto Show is the biggest car show in the American Northeast.  And until this week, New York State had no cases to report.  Since then, eleven cases have been reported there.  Suddenly, the New York show looks dicey.

Bloomberg News reports that show organizers are planning to disinfect commonly touched surfaces over and over and over and over throughout the show's duration, with paramedics on site to respond to any emergency cases.  Right now, I'm not that easily assured.  Whether or not I attend - the show takes place during Easter Week, opening to the public on Good Friday, April 10 - depends on how bad the coronavirus is in New York by then and how thorough the disinfectant task force is.  I usually go in the latter days of the show, so I'll get an idea of how effective they are in the first few days of the show.  Whether or not the Detroit show, being held in June for the first time this year, can ward off the coronavirus scare remains to be seen.  

Coronavirus or not, this era may be twilight time for auto shows.  They're expensive to set up, more people are checking out cars online, and even the most exciting shows in Europe seem to be resembling giant dealership showrooms more than a festive exhibition.  The auto industry itself is being diminished by a slowing global economy, expensive tech features as standard equipment, and fewer young people feeling the need to buy a car.  And foreign shows seem to be adopting bad American promotional tactics, such as sexily dressed women on the display platforms, even as American shows are getting away from all that.  Also, I find it increasingly hard to get excited by domestic brands as they push more SUVs (excuse me, monster wagons) even as the German brands, which I usually concentrate on at auto shows, seem to be pulling away from auto shows in the U.S. - BMW skipped the 2019 New York auto show for reasons having nothing to do with an infectious disease.  The firm simply didn't think it was worth it.   Audi will still be at New York in 2020.  Too bad the newly introduced A3 Sportback, below, won't be there (we're only getting the as-yet unintroduced A3 notchback sedan).

Despite all that, I still hope to make it to New York for this year.  There will be several new-car introductions there, not all of which will be monster wagons, and I love photographing the cars for my Flickr page and also video-recording presentations for my YouTube account.  And besides, it doesn't feel like Easter without the auto show to go to.  Its not Geneva or Paris, but it's still fun.  And I hope to attend the Frankfurt show in 2021 or 2023.  If it's the last thing I do.

I just hope that, given the coronavirus scare, attending the 2020 New York show isn't the last thing I do.      

America 2020 - The End

I expect the United States to receive the final, fatal blow to its very being this year.  There's no getting around it. Climate change is making the world uninhabitable, but for a country like this one, where civilized society is already impossible thanks to our tawdry, throwaway culture, that goes double.  And of course, this country is officially on record as refusing to do anything about it.  We certainly don't want to change our behavior to slow the pace of climate change.  If Africa was the mother of humankind, America is the child who went bad.  

An because of climate change, I am actually quite confident that the year 2020 will produce a storm that will literally hit home.  Two almanacs see a hurricane threat for the American Northeast; I am seriously expecting this prediction to come true and I expect this second storm in the past decade to be worse than Sandy.

Meanwhile, this country is full of racial strife and gender division, as hate crimes keep proliferating at an alarming rate.   Especially thanks to our gun laws, the only liberal things that the reactionaries who run this country with an iron fist in a lead glove will allow.

Expect Trump to be re-elected President.  The economy is doing too well for him to lose and, as I've noted before, American voters vote their pocketbooks and not their conscience.   Also, I increasingly fail to see any Democrat who has enough of a clue to defeat him this November.  Expect more Trump-appointed conservative judges to join the bench and make America a meaner and nastier place to live for the the next three or four decades, a period I call the rest of my life.

Everyone is telling me to stand up and fight what's wrong with America and make it right.  Yeah, sure.  Come on.  War's over.  We lost.  Deal with it.   

I'm not wishing anyone a happy new year.  I have no heart to lie. :-(   

Slouching Into the 2020s

Were they the twenty-tens or the twenty-teens?  Ah, who cares?  And even though the 202nd decade of the Christian calendar doesn't end until next December 31 (because there was no year zero to start the calendar), any ten years make a decade, so yeah, let's mark the turn of another ten-year period!

The 2010s, as I noted here before, were a disaster for America.  At the beginning of January 2010, I thought we were heading into a newer and better era, what with having a black President and all, especially a black President who was about to reform health care and give us high-speed rail, but now we have a Reagan-era celebrity who, like Reagan himself, wants to take us back to a less civilized and less advanced time and has a strong base eagerly supporting him for it.  The last four decades have been a disappointment for anyone in These States who believes in progress; even if Trump somehow loses his bid for a second term, chances are a fifth decade will be a disappointment for progress as well. 

I end 2019 and the twenty-teens (that's what I call them) on a sour note.  I've had some unexpected setbacks that are too personal to delve into here, but I'm sure I'll turn things around soon.  I have to.  Things have been off the rails for me for so long that they have to get back on track.

At least I still have my VW - all fixed up after constant stalling - and my satellite radio subscription.  Without either, I'd go crazy driving a Japanese car and listening to terrestrial radio.  Ring out the old.