KIMYE
The union of two of the biggest attention whores on the face of the Earth, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, was monumental for exposing just how superficial and tacky pop culture could truly be. I have yet to figure out exactly why anyone pays any attention to Kim Kardashian and Kanye West has not produced any music worth listening to since Graduation in 2007. And the onslaught on the public consciousness shows no signs of abating with the news that these two have created a future attention whore that is due to be delivered sometime in 2013. And that mashed up couple’s name everyone is calling them is moronic.

50 Shades of Grey
If someone could properly explain to me how the awkward sexual fantasies of a middle-aged British mother of two could go from poorly written Twilight fan fiction to a major best seller I would love to know. Are people really that repressed in their their own sex lives that the amateurish drivel E.L. James used to get herself off was seen as so shockingly lurid that they just couldn’t put the book down? C’mon people…the book began it’s life as Twilight fan fiction! I repeat: Twilight fan fiction! Those tawdry beginnings should result in nothing but harsh critiques and public scorn.

Really Bad Pop Music
I am no music snob. I enjoy a well produced pop song just as much as the next guy but 2012 was not a good year for pop music and the reasons can be boiled down to three things: Gangnam Style, Carly Ray Jepsen, and the re-emergence of the boy band. Jepsen’s breakout hit was ubiquitous but also trite and cloying and it seemed intent on burrowing into your brain and taking up residence for the entire summer. If there is a hell I am quite sure that “Call Me Maybe” is on a constant rotation as a form of torture. Korean pop star Psy’s Gangnam Style was an amusing oddity on the first listen but by the second go round it wore out it’s welcome and became the most annoying song of the year. The only way it is even halfway listenable is if it is the song that troop of attractive Korean girls are dancing to. And finally the return of the boy bands, namely in the form of One Direction and to a lesser extent The Wanted. These two bands were formed on UK talent shows and they break the cardinal rule of boy bands, namely they are boring as a motherfucker. At the very least the old boy bands from New Edition on through to NSYNC all realized that a bunch of mildly attractive young boys with marginal singing voices need to do more than just stand around caterwauling. You need to move and dance as a way to distract from your appalling lack of talent but tho current crop of boy bands just stand there screeching into their microphones and make douchetastic faces that create a blinding urge to ant to dropkick them. I suggest they either take dance classes or go away. Preferably go away.

HBO’s Overhyped New Shows
If one never watched second of the two new HBO shows from last year, Girls and The Newsroom, one would still feel like they had been beat upside the head by them. Never have two shows been so overhyped yet so underwhelming. Girls is a smug, abrasive supposed shock filled comedy that only proved itself to be shocking by not being funny in the least. Yet the world at large seems intent on pushing the show and it’s creator, Lena Dunham, down the throats of the world. The strategy seems to be to wear the public down until we are too tired and weak to resist this show. And in Newsroom we were treated to every close-minded uber-liberal opinion that has ever bounced around in Aron Sorkin’s head which would not have bothered me as much (I was a huge fan of Boston Legal) if Sorkin had created characters that had more depth than a puddle. That was the one thing these two horrible shows had in common…they featured characters that made the viewer want to immediately turn the channel. Its too bad HBO wasted all of it’s promotional budget on these two monstrosities instead of giving some of that shine to the vastly underrated Veep starring Julia Louis Dreyfuss. Now that is a show worth manufacturing some buzz around.

The Presidential Election
I don’t think I have ever felt as much disgust for a political campaign as I did for last year’s presidential race. Disregarding the fact that the two men running for the highest office in the land were both jerk wads, the race itself was an embarrassing tragedy. Nothing of substance was given a tenth of the attention it deserved, instead were deluged with nonsense about dogs on top of cars, ads accusing people of killing women, attacks on Big Bird, claims of putting black people “back in chains”…nothing was too low or too absurd to become the hot topic of the moment. The only positive was that it can’t happen again for another four years.