by West Coast Craig
LOS ANGELES, CA – Had enough of predictions, reviews, previews, and lists surrounding a completely symbolic unit of time? No? Well I’ve got another for you! Wow!
What an exciting and noteworthy year 2010 has been; one of ups and downs, heroes and villains, triumph & tragedy – and that’s just the first three days!
First off, the people have spoken: The kids today like to see their retrospectives instantly. Online, on their phone with an RSS feed and a link to Facebook. 2009 In Review? Please, this ain’t your old man’s retrospective! That baby boomer crap is so last year. This here’s the first review of 2010! It started with cold and snow, then as the seasons always go…in the first three days of a year… it still kinda stayed cold for a lot of people.
I used to have a theory that things were becoming “retro†a lot quicker than they used to be, that the time-line before something hip and cool turns old and uncool before morphing into kitsch and eventually becoming retro – to the point of t-shirts sold in Target – has been gradually tightening since the Happy Days of American Graffiti and Sha-Na-Na. As the theory went, the seventies had twenty years on the fifties, but the seventies retro fad happened about ten to fifteen years later in the early nineties. The early nineties were celebrated in the late nineties, and the innocence of the late nineties (big tech bubbles, real estate bubbles, easy plane travel, Monica Lewinski) became instantly the stuff of sweet nostalgia after 2001. 2009 fashions were obviously retreads of 2008, gussied up and made new again. Now it’s already January 4th, 2010, when most of us have to return to work and school and stuff, and I miss the early days of the year already. Let’s look back fondly and think about repackaging for the future:
Just minutes into the new year, Dick Clark returns to his meditation chambers.
Only half a day into 2010, and the NHL has a significant percentage of games played outdoors…100%. See, back in the day—three days ago—players and fans were tough enough to play out in the freezing cold…not like today’s wimps.
By that first night, Cincinnati’s 2010 record was an undefeated 0-0, and they put it on the line against tarnished bully Florida in the Sugar Bowl… but without their regular coach, they were turned into feel-good fodder for Tim Tebow and soon-to-be former regular coach Urban Meyer.
The next day, a Texas Tech team missing their coach won their game, making it a fifty-fifty chance that you’ll win your big game with or without your coach.
Gilbert Arenas’ 2010 got worse when he was revealed to be an avid ninja-throwing-star-collector, and often trades online with ‘tweens.
For a brief moment on Sunday, the Steelers had a three score lead while the Texans were losing to New England, and playoff hopes loomed briefly but brightly. They were quickly dashed, but when you’re talking important time periods in this three-day span, these few minutes felt like hours.
Now for the sad part of the show – the review of people we’ve lost in 2010:
The Giants haven’t won in 2010, and won’t have another chance to for a long time, but Jets are 1-0 and are getting ready to sell Jets/Giants Stadium retro t-shirts.
The Knicks are undefeated this year and only a couple back of a playoff spot…but so are the Clippers, who haven’t played yet.
The Colts are ice cold this year, playing their scrubs in the snow. The Patriots are cold, playing their starters in the snow and losing their most prolific receiver just in time to see the Ravens’ Defense in the first round. The Bengals split the difference, they played their starters, who only played like scrubs.
And… After that Bengals/Jets game, well, we can now turn the page on 2010. There’s just a few small things to play out, like the NFL playoffs, March Madness, baseball season, etc… But they’re more a dénouement to the intensity of these full three days’ footnotes, if you will. I tell you, it’s been some kind of ride!
Will the convergence of retro and present ever happen, spawning a rip in the space-time continuum? Or will it just keep halving itself until it comes close but never quite reaches? Still, need more proof that today’s style will feel awfully familiar in just a week? Next weekend’s games feature the Eagles versus the Cowboys, the Packers versus the Cardinals, and the Jets versus the Bengals.
Finally, click here to watch The Matts‘ newest video – it’s a winner.
