Kazaa Poker Game Upstages Britney in the New Year

With the New Year well underway, the troubles of Kazaa are well documented, amounting to a legal poker game overshadowing longstanding pop culture icons such as Britney Spears and Pamela Anderson. Here at Eisengeiste, of course, our sights have been set on the NFL, as our beloved Seahawks are destined to run the table, making their opponents look like Pokemon or Paris Hilton.

You know, since Christmas I've been thinking about what we'll do for an encore. I used to love the NBA, but now it looks more like the WWE or Dragonball, a ghastly parody of its former self, and a wonderful moral lesson in allowing your product to be corrupted by appealing to the lowest common denominator. I guess that's why so many kids today sit in front of the computer screen playing with their Neopets and listening to Lindsay Lohan tunes instead of seriously pursuing liberal arts educations. But if is Kazaa is dead, long-live file sharing, you know? Before the last bars of "Auld Lang Syne" have faded from our memories, it's time to wake up to the opportunity presented by Limewire, the fastest P2P file sharing program on the planet. Now you have no excuse to not download every song Jennifer Lopez has ever recorded!

I guess the other alternative is hockey - it's back, but will anyone notice? If nothing else, the strike saved the stars some bucks with the IRS. But even with the players back on the ice, it's not what it used to be. It is sobering indeed to realize that Hilary Duff was born after Mike Bossy retired. I suppose there will be some entertainment value to hearing Clay Aiken sing "O Canada", but is that really worth the price of admission?

So I really don't know. For many years tennis was my good secret, the sport I truly enjoyed watching. McEnroe-Borg at Wimbledon was one of the high points of that long, sleep-deprived summer of 1980. And like every other sport, tennis has turned to crap. With trick rackets (excuse me, racquets) and superfast surfaces, the men's game no longer rewards the attentive viewer. The women's game, however, has come into its own, and not just because of Anna Kournikova. A host of young players have brought both talent and sex appeal to the sport, and it's my pick for the next big media sport of the decade.

Of course tennis's appeal is limited by demographics. It sells in Greenwich or Phoenix, but not to the Eminem crowd, to kids more interested in anime (Naruto rules!), or even to young working class women whose attention Mariah Carey has so effectively recaptured.

Baseball? No. Can't get past the flagrant drug use. These guys look like primordial gorillas. Come on people, it's not their diet. Harry Potter didn't cast a spell. It's phony, and baseball's dead, as dead as Tupac, or Angelina Jolie's virginity.

There are so many stars and trends today, but nothing captures the attention. Shakira, Freecycle.org, taxes, Madonna, Trish Stratus (you couldn't search for Stacy Keibler you fucking undiscriminating peasants?), Beyonce, Jessica Simpson, Inuyasha, the iPod, 50 Cent, Patrick Crenshaw, Carmen Electra, Final Fantasy, The Sims, Barbie, Louis Braille, Ciara, FAFSA, Emma Watson, and Christina Aguilera bore me, and they're not nearly as good as their equivalents were at some prior time in my life.

I could go on, but I guess you get my drift. We stand at a crossroads. And as Irving R. Levine used to say, "what the future holds, nobody knows for sure."