SCANDALS, VAMPIRES, AND ME

Our number one obsession is violence, according to Newsweek's study of bestsellers, block- buster movies, and most watched TV shows. Number two is money. Sex is in third place. Then, youth, vampires, politics and God.

I don't agree.

I think sex is number one, and number two is scandal. Here's my list of the best, worst, annoying, overly publicized, stuff and nonsense that -- whew -- riveted me, bugged me during the year.

I enjoyed Governor Sanford's babble about his affair with the Argentinean lady -- his moral dilemma was amusing because he seemed to be a fool -- though in between the revelations, I wondered, still wonder why in the world did North Carolinians elect this guy? (See my post "Striptease," 11/14.)

Letterman confessing that he slept with some of his employees -- I found myself watching the show for a few nights after that, till the "Top Ten," and his repartee with bandleader, Paul Shaffer, started boring me again. (It's probably why I rarely watch Letterman.)

Octomom -- she makes me sigh, close off all sympathy -- she seems like a selfish, wrong-thinking woman that the media has created.

Balloon boy -- his dad and mom -- like Octomom, I feel their selfish, wrong-thinking has been created by us, as the offspring of the media. (See my post "Balloon Boy," 10/28.)

Yes, I've been moaning and groaning about the media brainwashing us -- with repetition, sometimes for days, I hate the way the media blows up a small story into a big deal crisis!

That mystery about the pilots who didn't land the plane has never been explained. (See my post "Two Guys in the Cockpit," 10/29.) I can't help thinking the two men were busy doing something sexual.

Tiger -- people are still celebrating his disaster, and I still find the celebrants, who are eating-up this scandal -- pitiable , and wrong. (See my post "Tiger" 12/9, and "Stop Crucifying Tiger Woods," 12/17.)

Susan Boyle wowed me. (See my post "Event of the day," 4/14.) But the over-exposure of her talent diminishes her -- makes her more like an older, lumpy woman who needs a lot of fixing up before we can accept her wonderful voice for what it is. Also, the too-too beautiful Miss California -- that she's one of those sprayed, pouffed-up, overly-beautified beauties, makes her political opinions (whether you agree or not), hard-to take.

The White House gate crashers -- I'm looking forward to hearing that they never did get the shows and contracts, they were hoping for. (Though my looking forward to that puts me right smack-dab into being just another media-created dumb-bunny.)

Palin's woes with her daughter's lover, her grandson's dad -- I've got to admit I enjoy it, and hope she's suffering a little. (See my post "Sarah Palin Worries Me," 11/21.)

Serena William's outburst and the unreasonable fine pleased me. I don't trust the Williams sisters when they're nice. I think a lot of what they do is out of a passion to win in every way a woman can -- be in movies, create fashion, be bigger, better, stronger than everyone, including men.

Kate and Jon Gosselin -- a media created pair -- whatever they were -- they never interested me, and I won't miss them. Or the commentator, Lou Dobbs. I stopped watching him during the presidential campaign -- didn't trust him, found him promoting his own personal politics. I'm glad Dobbs stepped down from CNN..

Mel and Robyn Gibson ... well ... What he's been in the movies stays with me, beyond the religious and political and moralistic opinions he's expressed -- the look of him in many movies, his acting -- though I can't erase the "oh dear, what's he saying/doing now" stuff he's been doing, when I re-watched "Air America" the other day, I loved him in it. And I loved him in "The Year of Living Dangerously."

Sexting, texting -- younger generation fads -- they bother me, they seem ridiculous and that makes me older, not wiser, so ... no further comment.

And VAMPIRES ... the whole category of art, history, movies, literature... ugh -- I've felt ugh since the early nineties when the vampire books started getting big money, big contracts from publishers while I was getting turned down.

Okay -- this is the time for privately and publicly summing up the year, so I'm doing both -- feeling again what crossed my mind during some of the headlines of the past three-hundred-and-sixty-one days -- before I take on day one of the next three-hundred-sixty-five.