© 2004 Brian Hodges - Please do not remove the copyright from this essay

suppose I could look back on this year with fondness for my road trip or the birth of my daughter.  I could remember it for fun pop culture items like country song, “Redneck Woman” or Jeopardy genius, Ken Jennings.  Unfortunately, I mark time by the things that make me shake my head, roll my eyes and grapple for words negative enough to describe them – things that make my wife say, “Just shut up about it already!”  So after much painful consideration (for both of us), the year 2004 came down to two people: Aiken and Atkins.  One, a spiky-haired pretty-boy who blurred the lines between pop-rock and pansy-ass minstrel music; the other, a fad diet guru who sold a bazillion books by informing us that everything we’ve been told about good diet for the last thousand years has been wrong. 

Mind you, this isn’t the year that either of these two sycophants came onto the scene.  This is simply the year that my wife could spot them on TV and beg, “Please just don’t look at it honey.”

Dr. Atkins died early last year after slipping and hitting his head.  I personally buy into the conspiracy theory that he was about to die of advanced heart disease as a result of his own diet, and his kids, the heirs to his carb-free empire pushed him down the stairs.  With dad out of the way, the marketing blitz could begin.  Everywhere you looked this year there were giant red A’s proclaiming “Atkins Friendly” on everything from pasta to beer to Subway Sandwiches. 

Now I’ve never subscribed to the theories behind Atkins (I mean, any diet where you choose bacon over the fruit cup and think that’s a good thing…?), but I understood the concept:  “Carbs are BAD.”  So, how exactly does one make pasta “Atkins Friendly”?  Show me one part of a linguini that isn’t a carb. 

It made me want to yell at all those creampuffs, “Unless you’re feeding it to the birds, that chocolate cake is not Atkins Friendly!”  It’s bad enough that they started with a flawed theory, but now through ad nauseum product tie-ins the Atkins heirs have managed to sell the American public on something with NO redeeming value.  Dear old dad must be spinning in his grave… made easier, no doubt, by the grease of undigested cow fat in his intestines. 

Now, Clay Aiken.  I hated this kid from the beginning.  For starters, he looks just like I did in high school and it reminds me of what a pansy I used to be.  But I’ve never approved of American Idol.  I forget how many times I’ve shouted, “Just because someone can sing doesn’t make them a rock star!!!”  And don’t even get me started on that infuriating little guy who somebody should have She-Banged on the head a long time ago.  In fact, judging by my wife’s reactions, Reality TV was how I marked my 2003.   Still, I tap my foot as much as the next guy when Kelly Clarkson rocks out.  I’ll concede, her music is fun, peppy and you can dance to it.  But am I the only person in America who realizes that this Aiken kid is a Dolly-the-sheep clone of Barry Manilow? 

How did the Madison Avenue and Hollywood types pull that fast one on an entire generation of teenagers?  Don’t these teenyboppers realize that they’re supposed to listen to music that pisses their parents off, by artists they’d be afraid to let into the house?  Wake up kids!  You’re listening to music your parents would approve of – by a guy they would set you up with!  And it’s not enough that he released an album and a wrist-slashingly sappy single that they play over and over.  He’s got a Christmas album, a TV special, he’s been on the Today Show, the Tonight Show and God knows how many others like it.  It’s time to kill Clay Aiken before he and Barry go on tour together.

I guess this year really boiled down to the stupidity of the American public for buying into what the overlords in the media said was good for us.  Between paying money for a fad diet that wasn’t even its own fad anymore, and making a pop star who has no business this side of the adult contemporary station go platinum, it was a sad year for the American consumer.  And my poor wife had to bear the brunt of it.