Nothing creates a boom like the milking of a current event. Y2K invaded our lives and held a knife of propaganda to our throats. So, of course people who call their natural talents "work" latched onto the hype like a barnacle to the hull of a sunken ship.

One of the aspects of the entertainment industry that seemed to warm up to the millennium idea was music, as I mentioned before with one of my favorite bands. Will Smith released Willennium a few months ago. "Let's party like it's 1999...hold up, it is!" Q2K is also a play on this entire year change. Anyone else want to cash in on this whole thing? Don't forget all those concerts that the big performers held New Year's Eve, charging $500 and up for the nosebleed section seats.

Movies were not too bad in this aspect. The only two films of note here would be "Ahnode's" End of Days and the made-for-TV movie...take a gander at this really original title...Y2K. The first example is not too bad. End of Days looks at the Christian fundamentalist view of the Apocalypse. The devil is kind of a wimp, and of course Ahnode's brawn takes any acting skills he may have and crushes them. Y2K was a horrible NBC movie with Ken Olin (CBS' now defunct L.A. Doctors) involving the worst case scenario with a nuclear power plant meltdown. There are corrupt soldiers in Hummers driving around suburbia telling residents to get out of their houses, the end is near.

Television in the episodical sense had some scary moments. Take ER for instance. Dr. Weaver is trying to access medical records for a patient, and the computer tells her there are "No records posted for January 1, 1900." Wonderful. I bet some sad person somewhere went into a catatonic state when that happened. Have you ever noticed how people gravitate towards that screen? We look at the TV even when it's off. What we don't notice is that we can see our reflections in the screen.

I used to work at Books-A-Million in Roanoke. I had to stock some hilarious books on New Year's Day, when I was unlucky enough to work with a raging attack of allergies. Even with the pulsating mucus inside my airways, I managed to laugh my head off at this book I was stocking. I won't mention the exact title and author, because I might face a slander suit if I do. There was a subtitle that said, "Buy this book to save yourself from the chaos that WILL ensue!" Perhaps there should have been a book published called Y2K for Dummies. It would have had one sentence. "Since you bought this book, you truly are a dummy!"