January 7, 2005

Times FeatureMurry Frymer

Building a bridge…or is it a tunnel?

By Murry Frymer
Times Columnist

What? New Year’s already? I have just gotten over the bridge to the 21st Century and suddenly I find myself 5 percent down the road to the 22nd. I have got to slow down.

So far the 21st Century has not proven very appealing to me. It began in peacetime and disintegrated into war.

The elections were grimy and antagonistic. Television gave up on drama and semi-literate comedy, turning to unreal reality shows. The warnings on carbohydrates destroyed my appetite. This century’s women suddenly seemed younger and my youthful trim figure began to look suspiciously older. I had metamorphed into my grandfather.

There were other things going on that felt alien. Like video games. Like millions of ears attached to cell phones. Like airport guards wanting to look inside my shoes.

Somebody started feeding steroids to cars, turning them into monsters on wheels. Why did a dainty little old housewife suddenly need a two-story truck behemoth to transport her junior to soccer practice? I felt small and fearful in the next lane looking up.

And speaking of steroids, there were doubts that the muscles on Barry Bonds’ arms were real. But was anything real in this century? People were being rebuilt by plastic surgeons. What could you trust?

We seemed to run into a glut of filthy language in this new century. The talk, the jokes and the cable TV shows brought language into the house that would have caused my Army platoon to blush. After an evening in front of the tube, you needed a shower. Though the nightly slasher homicides made you fear to be alone. When did human activity get reduced to such ugliness?

The 21st Century has not been kind to Silicon Valley, though the so-called downturn does not appear evident in the cornucopia of new tech devices that have overwhelmed the scene. My wife wants an I-Pod to listen to 10,000 songs. I never knew people needed that much music in their lives or that they needed to be plugged into it constantly.

But if there is any single symbol of the new century it is the cell phone. Shoppers walk up and down the aisles of the supermarkets talking all the way. Then they get in their tanks and gab all the way home. I hear that cell phones will now be allowed on airplane trips. Obviously that means I will hear too much. Private conversations have now been transformed into public address orations.

Ah, New Year ’s Eve. As a single man, I began searching for a date somewhere around the Fourth of July. To be alone on New Year ’s Eve was a cross no person could bear. But that too has changed. The kids get stoned and don’t know who they are with. And the optimism that the dropping ball in Times Square was supposed to herald has been replaced with searches for terrorists within the crowd.

Terrorists are definitely new century. Fear is what has come across that century bridge and it seems like a one-way street.

You want some optimism in this grumble? Well, Cal suddenly developed a pretty good football team this century though they were cheated out of the Rose Bowl. Lovely little movies like “Sideways” and “Before Sunset” got made. There was a tiny hint that the Israelis and Palestinians might find civilization in the Middle East.

At the moment, waiting for the clock to strike 12, I don’t know if I hear Hope on the way. Too much killing in Iraq tends to drown out the nicer sounds. I guess that more universal health care is not on the way and I am wondering about my kids’ Social Security. And what can you possibly say about a century that gave us 9/11 in its infancy?

I say goodbye to a grim 2004 and cross my fingers. The 21st Century has a long way to go and many promises to deliver. Maybe we are getting better, but keeping it under wraps.

Maybe, God willing, in 2005 that bridge will be worth crossing.

Contact Murry Frymer at murry@timesmediainc.com.