Another year bites the dust, and man this one sure did bite! All things considered, though, 2009 was a fairly run-of-the-mill year. In the past 5 decades, I saw some fantastic years and some horrific years. For me, 2009 rates somewhere in the middle.

People died, as usual. I will miss Michael (the unreal) Jackson, Ted (the last brother) Kennedy, Farrah (the poster) Fawcett, Patrick (defying the odds) Swayze, Natasha (third generation Redgrave) Richardson, David (grasshopper) Carradine, Ed (America’s sidekick) McMahon, and Walter (and that’s the way it is) Cronkite.

Susan Boyle’s amazing voice still has the resonance of fraud to my ears. I believe she is 100% genuine, but I’m sure that Simon Cowell and cronies manufactured the hype with extreme skill.

I still have no idea who Jon and Kate Gosselin are. Are they the Balloon Boy’s parents? Octomom’s inlaws? Ashton Kutcher’s Twitter followers? Former Tiger Woods bedmates? What a freak show!

In politics – ah, who cares? The American people have shot themselves in the head too many times in the past to reverse the damage any time soon. It’ll be close to forever before W’s horrendous legacies can be bandaged. At least Sarah Palin is a civilian again and forevermore, and now Alaska can try to recover along with the rest of the world.

Maybe it’s just me, but I was off movies this year. Too much Disney and 20-something vampires. Okay, there’s “Avatar,” but calm down folks; it’s just a movie.

TV wasn’t much better. I’ll mention my faves: Although “House” is falling, “Bones” is wobbling, and “CSI” is in dire straits, “NCIS” still kicks butt, “Stargate Universe” is refreshingly bleak, and “Flash Forward” is waaaaaay cool. I siphoned the latest season of “Doc Martin” and “Midsomer Murders” off the Internet, so I got my Brit fix. But it’s been far too long a wait for the third season of the best of them all, “Breaking Bad.”

The economy was still bad, I hear, but since I live in British Columbia, it had no real effect on me. H1N1 didn’t get to me either, although some people swear it was the End of Days.

Better luck next year.

Jim Lawter

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