Meet the ‘meh’ generation

What was the biggest thing to happen in L.A. this year?

I’ll bet you a Manny Ramirez bobblehead that you thought of those busted water mains spraying up through the streets, making like an urban Yellowstone. They looked spectacular on TV and they confirmed every snarky stereotype of government shortcomings.

The Lakers’ championship -- what, again? That’s so old hat that the city balked over paying to police a victory parade for pro basketball’s richest franchise. Michael Jackson’s memorial service? A one-hit wonder. Chief Bill Bratton worked so hard to make his departure seamless that it . . . was. Even the fact that the fate of the Dodgers may hang on the outcome of Frank and Jamie McCourt’s venomous divorce pretty much only served to give gossip a topcoat of civic significance.

So what’s the matter with L.A.? Not much makes us happy, and maybe even worse, not much gets us really mad. In 2009, L.A. felt like it was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, ebullient as always, told my Daily News buddy Rick Orlov: “I think this is one of the best years we’ve had.” For him, I expect it is. His city has more cops and fewer crimes, more youth programs, more “green” initiatives. He’s snagged federal bailout dough, and he’s bagged the bucks for more public transit. And he got reelected, albeit unenthusiastically. That was a pinnacle for him, as for any elected official, but it feels to a lot of regular Angelenos more like an indifferent midway point in an eight-year slog.

In his first inaugural speech, Villaraigosa invited Angelenos to “come dream with me.”

Dream? Nowadays many of us can’t even sleep, for all the worrying. L.A.’s grown used to being buffered from many economic whacks, but this time around, we’ve taken more than our share. Still, the public anomie makes us feel gloomier than even a hugely bad economy. Our biorhythms, to get all ‘80s about it, have tanked.

Angelenos are pretty much strangers to the workings of our own city and county governments. Most of us have heard of the mayor’s trips to South Africa and Iceland and Copenhagen but precious little about the city’s anti-pollution pact at that faraway place called the Port of Los Angeles, or the new hospital that could rise up at that other faraway place, the site of the disgraced old King/Drew Medical Center in Willowbrook.

The decoupling of our civic and civilian life means we don’t always register momentous official events, good or bad. A half-billion-dollar city budget deficit? You don’t say. My, my. The ravages to public service won’t hit home to us until we hit a pothole.

If local politics isn’t the enthralling cage match that it is in cities like San Francisco or Chicago, what does that leave to rile us up, or to cheer us up?

The stuff everyone in uber-L.A. can reliably gripe or gossip about is getting shopworn. Hollywood. The weather. The traffic. Earthquakes, heaven forfend. Real estate prices. On top of it, L.A., like everyplace else in California, is riding on the state’s misery coattails. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just ranked California 46th out of 50 states on a happy-meter. At least we’re happier than No. 50, New York.

So L.A.’s “me” generation becomes the “meh” generation. Maybe it’s an improvement. I dunno. Whatever.

patt.morrison@latimes.com