Well, it’s that time of year again. Boy, how time flies; it seems like only 12 months or so ago that a different year was ending. I began writing a ’10, Top-10 column, but something happened only moments ago that rocked my world, compelling me to abort and begin anew. “Tragic” is an oft-overused word, but in this case, it’s the only word that fits.

It’s been a tumultuous, troublesome year for me, but when life throws you lemons, you just have to make Gatorade. But what just transpired makes that little more than a sappy, cocktail napkin cliché. It’s something I always assumed could only happen to “the other guy.” It came upon me suddenly, without warning. From this day forward, my life will be changed in ways I don’t even want to imagine.

It was a column deadline night just like any other. I was tapping away on my keyboard when I took a midnight break to go downstairs for more coffee. Once there, I immediately sensed something was terribly wrong, but couldn’t put my finger on it. It was eerily quiet, with both dogs sitting straight up staring at me as if trying to alert me to some danger.

I checked the bottom of my slippers to make sure I hadn’t stepped in anything. I peeked out the window to make sure no one was breaking into my car. And then I glanced at the TV. There was no color, no light, no sound … only a thin horizontal line across the screen.

I feverishly pushed every button on every remote. I unplugged, then re-inserted every TV/DVR connection. Now even that thin line — the only vague sign of some kind of life — had vanished, leaving nothing but cold, empty darkness. Monday, Dec. 28, 2010 will go down around here as “… the day the music died.” And we weren’t singing “Bye, bye Miss American Pie.”

So for now, there will be no Top-10 stories of ’10 list. Instead, I mourn my top-10 favorite shows I’ll miss as the year whimpers to its end.

No. 10: COLLEGE BOWL GAMES: So many games; several each evening, culminating with six of them on New Year’s Day, back-to-back without interruption. Oh the humanity!

No. 9: NFL PLAYOFFS. After watching scores of TV games all season — each a stepping stone to the exciting, nail-bite finishes of the playoffs — my season has prematurely, tragically ended. Oh no! It just occurred to me … the SUPER BOWL! I could quite possibly miss the Super Bowl! A chill just ran down my spine.

I won’t continue the numerical rundown, since I love all my shows too equally to assign importance. To name a few though, I’ll miss nightly “Seinfeld” reruns, daily Judge Judys, all the true-life crime shows like “Forensic Files,” “Fatal Attraction,” “Snapped,” “I Survived,” “America’s Most Wanted.” No more “The Simpsons,” “The Office” or “The O’Reilly Factor.” It’s the pits!

Oh geez; I just remembered all the New Year’s Eve and Day marathons. Lots of channels run them each holiday. If I find out CMT ran a Hee Haw marathon, I’ll be sick! Instead of Roy, Buck and Grandpa, it’ll be me singing,

“Gloom, despair, agony on me; deep dark depression, excessive misery; if it weren’t for bad (‘Doug’) luck I’d have no luck at all. Gloom, despair, agony on me …”

Nothing will ever be the same again. What will mealtime be like? What’s the sense in sitting at the coffee table, chewing laboriously while staring at a black, dusty screen? Where am I supposed to eat? The kitchen table, for crying out loud? That’s where I stack things and where two of my cats like to sit.

With no TV for background sound, where will I sleep? My bedroom? Yeah, right! Heck, I even had a Charles Stanley sermon taped on my DVR I hadn’t watched yet. (Wouldn’t it be ironic if his topic was “Why do bad things happen to good people?”) Without the Sunday televangelists, where am I supposed to go now for spiritual nourishment? Church? Puleeze!

I may never know what “American Idol” will be like without Simon, nor ever again watch the leggy Chelsea Hightower kicking it on “Dancing With the Stars.” There’s no way I can afford a new TV, so short of a belated Christmas miracle, I’m screwed!

Michael Bolton expressed how I’m feeling so eloquently when he sang, “Tell me, how am I supposed to live without you, now that I’ve been loving you so long? How am I supposed to live without you; how am I supposed to carry on … when all that I’ve been living for is gone.”

It’s all so tragic. “Happy New Year” ya say? Ah, blow it out your noisemaker.