Monday, January 6, 2014

2013, The Year That Jumped the Shark

I spent New Year's Eve watching the made-for-TV movie Sharknado. I could explain the 86 minute plot, but here's the two minute version:



I started writing this post 6 days ago, but then got lost watching Breaking Bad episodes. That's all that was deserved for 2013, the year that jumped the shark.

Gold jumped the shark in 2013:



That may not be a bad thing, if it cures us of the insufferable gold bugs. King corn is down too. But Wall Street is up, so there will be no crying about gold or corn.

Hillary Clinton jumped the "guys out for a walk one night" shark at the beginning of the year:



Barack Obama jumped the "I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me" shark at the end of the year.



But don't cry for them either, Gallup says that at the end of the year, Barack and Hillary were the most admired man and woman in America. Shark jumping is only fatal if you fail to jump the shark.

Even a partial list of 2013 shark jumpers is quite impressive:

Fiscal Cliff
Lance "The Doper" Armstrong
Domestics Drones
Bradley "Chelsea" Manning
Edward Snowden and the NSA
Anthony "Tweets His Junk" Weiner
Miley "Twerking" Cyrus
Federal Government Shutdown
Legalized Marijuana in Colorado and Washington
Toronto Mayor Rob "One of My Drunken Stupors" Ford
Nelson Mandela funeral sign language interpreter
Phil Robertson's Duck Dynasty anatomy lessons

Not all of these shark jumpers made it, some landed in the shark pool and were eaten, others are still in the air. More than a few of them did make it, and most of us got over 2013 unscathed too.

The original shark jumper was Fonzie in Happy Days season 5, episode 3:



That was 1977, and Happy Days ran for 7 more years. That will bring us up to the end of this decade. Sharknado 2 is already in the works.

1 comment:

buddeshepherd said...

My daughter and I just toured the Saladore Dali Museum in Tampa, FL. It was kind of amazing.
But,
I think Surrealism has become our new reality.