Monday, January 03, 2005
2004: ONE GIANT WARDROBE MALFUNCTION
Ok, I know you're supposed to put this kind of shit out before the New Year, but cut me some slack, I'm new. So, how to sum up 2004? In an acronymn: WTF?! Personally, I'm glad 2004 is over as it didn't quite turn out how I had hoped, primarily due to the fact that what's-his-face is still in the White House. But I wasn't the only one who had a disappointing year. 2004 wasn't a very good to domestic divas, pedophilic pop stars, celebrity boobs or murderous fertilizer salesmen. Neither was it a very good year if you were gay, unemployed, or, thanks to one failed policy and misjudgment after another from the civilian 'leadership', a US soldier. Nope, it seemed as though the only people who had good years were those horribly dressed, rich, white people who invaded New York City at the end of August. But hey, at least we had Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Tara Reid to keep us entertained. Enough with the set-up, let's take one last spin through 2004... so we hopefully never have to think about it again.
JANUARY
POP DAYS: Britney's begins her descent into trashville with a drunken, early-morning, panty-less wedding in Vegas to childhood pal Jason Alexander. A mere 55 hours later, reality would smack Alexander in the face with anulment papers, and somewhere Kevin Federline jumped for joy ... Australian crocodile fetishist Steve Irwin sets the "WTF??" tone for 2004 by dangling his 1-month-old infant over the mouth of a hungry croc, and then not understanding why people were so shocked. Steve Irwin: Australian for stupid ... the King of Pop kicks off his circus, er, child molestation trial, with a rooftop moonwalk ... Bennifer (Affleck and J.Lo, not Affleck and Garner) call it quits; the lone Gigli fan mourns ... James Brown charged with domestic violence against his wife, vies for photo of the year.
LESS POPPY: As Iraq begins to spin out of control, President Bush sets his sights on loftier heights of conquer: Mars ... a Black Hawk helicopter crashes in Iraq, killing 9 US soldiers ... CIA chief weapons inspector David Kay steps down, proclaiming (for the first of several times in 2004) that there are no WMDs in Iraq ... former Bush treasury secretary Paul O'Neill becomes the first in a parade of former adminstration members to criticize the Bush team, bringing the phrase "like a the lexicon, whatever it means exactly ... the Bush administration revises the cost of its Medicare plan from $395 billion to $534 billion after it had been passed by congress. Oops! ... Senator John Kerry surprises the pundits by taking the first two Democratic primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire. Howard Dean implodes: Arrrgghhhhh!
FEBRUARY
POP DAYS: Janet Jackson's tit ruins the country forever ... but just in the nick of time, Mel Gibson gives us the Passion of the Christ to absolve all our tit-related sins; millions of end-of-days disciples worldwide flock to theatres to catch a glimpse of Gibson's 2-hour-and-six-minute snuff film ... the great culture of war of 2004 rages on when Clear Channel drops lesbian midget-loving Howard Stern ... the Massachusettes Supreme Court rules in support of gay marriage, playing right into the evil, pudgy hands of one Karl Rove; the mayor of San Francisco reinforces the city's sassy reputation, just in case you'd forgotten ... in unison, the entire country gets tired of Outkast's grammy-winning 'Hey Ya'; the group forces yet another apology from CBS ... a bunch of hairy-footed, ring obsessed trolls sweep the Oscars.
LESS POPPY: Protests and revolt rock the island nation of Haiti, forcing President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to be kidnapping by the US military ... Bush waves a finger at the homos, threatening to constutionally send them back into the closet ... meanwhile, in Baghdad, twin suicide bombings kill 104 Iraqis in two days ... Halliburton, formerly run by Dick Cheney, is accused of over-charging the US government, which Cheney pretty much runs, for gas in the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns, which Cheney pretty much orchestrated, after being awarded no-bid contracts for the work in those countries by none other than Dick Cheney. Wait, what? ... Someone tries to poison Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Darn! Foiled again!
MARCH
POP DAYS: The Diva of Domesticity, Martha Stewart, is convicted of obstruction of justice and lying to investigators about her Imclone stock deals, begins fashioning shiv cozies for her upcoming stay in the clink ... legendary folk rocker Bob Dylan sells out, shills for panties. But really, have you seen Adriana Lima? I'd do it too. In fact, I'd wear panties if Lima asked me to ... Courtney Love loses her mind, flashes her breasts (six times!) on Letterman, beans a fan with a mike stand during a suprise show at a downtown NYC club, sends a photographer to the hospital at another show, and then, in the coup de grâce, Courtney lets a passerby suckle her boob in front of a Union Square Wendy's as the shutterbugs pop away ... my favorite movie of the year, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, released; everyone wonders if we can erase Courtney Love from our memories.
LESS POPPY: Simultaneous explosions on rush hour trains in Madrid kill 190 people ... the 9/11 Commission, which Bush never wanted in the first place, interviews Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and Richard Clarke, who tells the victim's families and the country he's sorry; Rumsfeld calls him a pussy ... US civilian contract workers in Iraq shot and dragged through the streets of Falluja ... John Kerry wins Super Tuesday, effectively clinching the Democratic nomination; everyone but Denis "The Kooch" Kucinich, who I think is still running to this day, concedes; Edwards begins to suck up to Big John ... Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia releases a 21-page memo explaining why it's ok for him to go duck-hunting with Dick Cheney one weekend and impartially oversee his energy task force case the next. Quack.
APRIL
POP DAYS: Sporting severe bruises, Kevin Spacey tells London police he was attacked at 4 am in Hyde Park, then says he tripped over his dog, then says he was chasing after someone who ran off with his cell phone. Better question: what was Kevin Spacey doing in Hyde Park at 4 am? Spacey indeed ... Billy Joel plays bumper cars on Long Island for the third time in less than two years, this time slamming through the front door of a 90-year-old woman's house. Don't worry, he sent flowers ... Usher and Lil' Jon take over where Outkast left off, keep the crunk going for pretty much the rest of the year ... Prince returns! ... Mean Girls released in theaters nationwide; Lindsay Lohan unleashed on the general population.
LESS POPPY: A chubby little Shiite cleric named Moqtada al Sadr tries to be the face of insurgency, making a name for himself by blowing things up, namely US soliders ... two fuel trains collide in North Korea, killing scores; nobody is sure of the death toll as North Korea explains that there's "nothing to see here, move along" ... former NFL linebacker Pat Tillman is killed in Iraq, bringing the war home to fratboys everywhere .... hostage taking fast becomes Iraq's favorite pastime ... the Bush administration hated April: Condy's 9/11 testimony battle, an admission of withholding documents from that commission, the PDB, and the locked-behind-closed-doors, Bush/Cheney 9/11 Commission puppet show ... and then there was that press conference, the one that made you really wonder if the president might actually be retarded ... to top it all off, at month's end, the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal enters into the public consciousness, shaming the country and destroying any hope for progressive relations with the Muslim world for decades. Rush Limbaugh defends the actions as nothing worse than a fraternity prank. Yep, Big Fat Idiot.
MAY
POP DAYS: After more than a decade on the air, Friends finally puts us out of our misery. Oh, and Frasier ends too; wait, Frasier was still on? ... Gwyneth Paltrow gives birth to a fruit, or perhaps it was an iMac ... Prime Minister Tony Blair gets pelted by a purple powder pillow while addressing the House of Commons; Fathers for Justice (and Pranks!) strikes again! ... the Sopranos gets good again, RIP Adriana ... NYC beats out powerhouses Havana, Istanbul, Leipzig and Rio de Janeiro to make it to the final round in the Let-The-Olympics-Ruin-Your-City contest; if the city wins the games, I plan to move.
LESS POPPY: The violence gets worse in civil war-torn Chechnya as a bomb planted underneath a grandstand at Grozny's Dynamo stadium kills President Akhmad Kadyrov ... Bush speaks out on that Abu Ghraib thing, properly pronounces "abhorrent" ... Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld becomes the lightning rod for the Abu Ghraib scandal, but Days is there to defend him; or rather, defend leading to a raid on his Baghdad compound. Chalabi, who only four months earlier had sat alongside Laura Bush at W's State of the Union speech and was being given $350k a month by the US government, boasted that he "played" BushCo. into ousting Saddam so he himself could make a power-grab in Iraq. Bush feigns ignorance; people believe him ('Bush? Ignorant? Yeah, I'll buy that') ... 20-year civil war in the Darfur region of Sudan rages on, world sorta starts to take notice ... kidnapped American Nick Berg's body is found, decapitated, in Baghdad. Berg's grisly death is one of the first in a disturbing pattern of beheadings, many of them recorded and released to the world via the Internet.
JUNE
POP DAYS: In a brilliant move to publicize the release of her and her sister's forthcoming movie "New York Minute," Mary-Kate Olsen checks herself into a Utah clinic for an eating disorder; Ashley now dubbed "the fat Olsen" ... Bill Clinton releases his 937-page autobiography "My Life"; millions of Americans get new doorstops, briefly forget who John Kerry is. Clinton recaptures the spotlight he craves so much, hoping to parlay his regenerated celebrity into a date with the "fat" Olsen twin ... J.Lo finds her soul-mate, again, marrying the just-divorced Latin pop star Marc Anthony in a private ceremony at her LA mansion; Ben Affleck, P.Diddy and Cris Judd laugh their asses off, shouting "Sucka!" in unison ... Michael Moore's Bush-bashing documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" debuts; Rove grins again ... in lighter fare, sequels abound, including Shrek 2, Harry Potter and Spider Man 2; all sacrifice plot logic for kick-ass special effects ... hip-hop artist and dog lover DMX arrested at JFK airport for impersonating FBI agents, carjacking, crashing a security gate and possessing crack; nobody bats an eye.
LESS POPPY: CIA Director George Tenet 'receive a medal for his failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks and his reliance on faulty information in the run-up to the Iraq war ... Republican icon Ronald Reagan finally succumbs to Alzheimer's, prompting a seemingly Paul Johnson and South Korean translator Kim Sun Il the latest victims ... in a secret ceremony, to avoid being blown up, the US hands over sovereignty (and a lethal insurgency) to Iraq's interim government, prompting Bush to scribble "Let Freedom Reign" (or is it "ring"?) at a NATO summit in Turkey. US civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer sneaks out of Baghdad under cover of darkness, also on his way to a medal ... to celebrate the handover, Iraqi insurgents kill more than 100 in coordianted attacks in Falluja, Ramadi, Baquba, Mosul, and Baghdad ... Saddam Hussein makes his first court appearance to hear preliminary charges against him; Saddam calls the proceedings "theater" designed by Bush, insists he is still president of Iraq, and tells people in the court to please stop snickering at him.
- end, part 1 -
Stay tuned for part 2... coming soon.
Meanwhile, here's some other crap to keep you busy.
MORE
Getty Images: 2004 in Pictures
Wikipedia: Everything 2004
CNN: 2004 in Review
Gawker: 2005, What a Year!
Ok, I know you're supposed to put this kind of shit out before the New Year, but cut me some slack, I'm new. So, how to sum up 2004? In an acronymn: WTF?! Personally, I'm glad 2004 is over as it didn't quite turn out how I had hoped, primarily due to the fact that what's-his-face is still in the White House. But I wasn't the only one who had a disappointing year. 2004 wasn't a very good to domestic divas, pedophilic pop stars, celebrity boobs or murderous fertilizer salesmen. Neither was it a very good year if you were gay, unemployed, or, thanks to one failed policy and misjudgment after another from the civilian 'leadership', a US soldier. Nope, it seemed as though the only people who had good years were those horribly dressed, rich, white people who invaded New York City at the end of August. But hey, at least we had Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Tara Reid to keep us entertained. Enough with the set-up, let's take one last spin through 2004... so we hopefully never have to think about it again.
JANUARY
POP DAYS: Britney's begins her descent into trashville with a drunken, early-morning, panty-less wedding in Vegas to childhood pal Jason Alexander. A mere 55 hours later, reality would smack Alexander in the face with anulment papers, and somewhere Kevin Federline jumped for joy ... Australian crocodile fetishist Steve Irwin sets the "WTF??" tone for 2004 by dangling his 1-month-old infant over the mouth of a hungry croc, and then not understanding why people were so shocked. Steve Irwin: Australian for stupid ... the King of Pop kicks off his circus, er, child molestation trial, with a rooftop moonwalk ... Bennifer (Affleck and J.Lo, not Affleck and Garner) call it quits; the lone Gigli fan mourns ... James Brown charged with domestic violence against his wife, vies for photo of the year.
LESS POPPY: As Iraq begins to spin out of control, President Bush sets his sights on loftier heights of conquer: Mars ... a Black Hawk helicopter crashes in Iraq, killing 9 US soldiers ... CIA chief weapons inspector David Kay steps down, proclaiming (for the first of several times in 2004) that there are no WMDs in Iraq ... former Bush treasury secretary Paul O'Neill becomes the first in a parade of former adminstration members to criticize the Bush team, bringing the phrase "like a the lexicon, whatever it means exactly ... the Bush administration revises the cost of its Medicare plan from $395 billion to $534 billion after it had been passed by congress. Oops! ... Senator John Kerry surprises the pundits by taking the first two Democratic primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire. Howard Dean implodes: Arrrgghhhhh!
FEBRUARY
POP DAYS: Janet Jackson's tit ruins the country forever ... but just in the nick of time, Mel Gibson gives us the Passion of the Christ to absolve all our tit-related sins; millions of end-of-days disciples worldwide flock to theatres to catch a glimpse of Gibson's 2-hour-and-six-minute snuff film ... the great culture of war of 2004 rages on when Clear Channel drops lesbian midget-loving Howard Stern ... the Massachusettes Supreme Court rules in support of gay marriage, playing right into the evil, pudgy hands of one Karl Rove; the mayor of San Francisco reinforces the city's sassy reputation, just in case you'd forgotten ... in unison, the entire country gets tired of Outkast's grammy-winning 'Hey Ya'; the group forces yet another apology from CBS ... a bunch of hairy-footed, ring obsessed trolls sweep the Oscars.
LESS POPPY: Protests and revolt rock the island nation of Haiti, forcing President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to be kidnapping by the US military ... Bush waves a finger at the homos, threatening to constutionally send them back into the closet ... meanwhile, in Baghdad, twin suicide bombings kill 104 Iraqis in two days ... Halliburton, formerly run by Dick Cheney, is accused of over-charging the US government, which Cheney pretty much runs, for gas in the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns, which Cheney pretty much orchestrated, after being awarded no-bid contracts for the work in those countries by none other than Dick Cheney. Wait, what? ... Someone tries to poison Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Darn! Foiled again!
MARCH
POP DAYS: The Diva of Domesticity, Martha Stewart, is convicted of obstruction of justice and lying to investigators about her Imclone stock deals, begins fashioning shiv cozies for her upcoming stay in the clink ... legendary folk rocker Bob Dylan sells out, shills for panties. But really, have you seen Adriana Lima? I'd do it too. In fact, I'd wear panties if Lima asked me to ... Courtney Love loses her mind, flashes her breasts (six times!) on Letterman, beans a fan with a mike stand during a suprise show at a downtown NYC club, sends a photographer to the hospital at another show, and then, in the coup de grâce, Courtney lets a passerby suckle her boob in front of a Union Square Wendy's as the shutterbugs pop away ... my favorite movie of the year, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, released; everyone wonders if we can erase Courtney Love from our memories.
LESS POPPY: Simultaneous explosions on rush hour trains in Madrid kill 190 people ... the 9/11 Commission, which Bush never wanted in the first place, interviews Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and Richard Clarke, who tells the victim's families and the country he's sorry; Rumsfeld calls him a pussy ... US civilian contract workers in Iraq shot and dragged through the streets of Falluja ... John Kerry wins Super Tuesday, effectively clinching the Democratic nomination; everyone but Denis "The Kooch" Kucinich, who I think is still running to this day, concedes; Edwards begins to suck up to Big John ... Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia releases a 21-page memo explaining why it's ok for him to go duck-hunting with Dick Cheney one weekend and impartially oversee his energy task force case the next. Quack.
APRIL
POP DAYS: Sporting severe bruises, Kevin Spacey tells London police he was attacked at 4 am in Hyde Park, then says he tripped over his dog, then says he was chasing after someone who ran off with his cell phone. Better question: what was Kevin Spacey doing in Hyde Park at 4 am? Spacey indeed ... Billy Joel plays bumper cars on Long Island for the third time in less than two years, this time slamming through the front door of a 90-year-old woman's house. Don't worry, he sent flowers ... Usher and Lil' Jon take over where Outkast left off, keep the crunk going for pretty much the rest of the year ... Prince returns! ... Mean Girls released in theaters nationwide; Lindsay Lohan unleashed on the general population.
LESS POPPY: A chubby little Shiite cleric named Moqtada al Sadr tries to be the face of insurgency, making a name for himself by blowing things up, namely US soliders ... two fuel trains collide in North Korea, killing scores; nobody is sure of the death toll as North Korea explains that there's "nothing to see here, move along" ... former NFL linebacker Pat Tillman is killed in Iraq, bringing the war home to fratboys everywhere .... hostage taking fast becomes Iraq's favorite pastime ... the Bush administration hated April: Condy's 9/11 testimony battle, an admission of withholding documents from that commission, the PDB, and the locked-behind-closed-doors, Bush/Cheney 9/11 Commission puppet show ... and then there was that press conference, the one that made you really wonder if the president might actually be retarded ... to top it all off, at month's end, the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal enters into the public consciousness, shaming the country and destroying any hope for progressive relations with the Muslim world for decades. Rush Limbaugh defends the actions as nothing worse than a fraternity prank. Yep, Big Fat Idiot.
MAY
POP DAYS: After more than a decade on the air, Friends finally puts us out of our misery. Oh, and Frasier ends too; wait, Frasier was still on? ... Gwyneth Paltrow gives birth to a fruit, or perhaps it was an iMac ... Prime Minister Tony Blair gets pelted by a purple powder pillow while addressing the House of Commons; Fathers for Justice (and Pranks!) strikes again! ... the Sopranos gets good again, RIP Adriana ... NYC beats out powerhouses Havana, Istanbul, Leipzig and Rio de Janeiro to make it to the final round in the Let-The-Olympics-Ruin-Your-City contest; if the city wins the games, I plan to move.
LESS POPPY: The violence gets worse in civil war-torn Chechnya as a bomb planted underneath a grandstand at Grozny's Dynamo stadium kills President Akhmad Kadyrov ... Bush speaks out on that Abu Ghraib thing, properly pronounces "abhorrent" ... Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld becomes the lightning rod for the Abu Ghraib scandal, but Days is there to defend him; or rather, defend leading to a raid on his Baghdad compound. Chalabi, who only four months earlier had sat alongside Laura Bush at W's State of the Union speech and was being given $350k a month by the US government, boasted that he "played" BushCo. into ousting Saddam so he himself could make a power-grab in Iraq. Bush feigns ignorance; people believe him ('Bush? Ignorant? Yeah, I'll buy that') ... 20-year civil war in the Darfur region of Sudan rages on, world sorta starts to take notice ... kidnapped American Nick Berg's body is found, decapitated, in Baghdad. Berg's grisly death is one of the first in a disturbing pattern of beheadings, many of them recorded and released to the world via the Internet.
JUNE
POP DAYS: In a brilliant move to publicize the release of her and her sister's forthcoming movie "New York Minute," Mary-Kate Olsen checks herself into a Utah clinic for an eating disorder; Ashley now dubbed "the fat Olsen" ... Bill Clinton releases his 937-page autobiography "My Life"; millions of Americans get new doorstops, briefly forget who John Kerry is. Clinton recaptures the spotlight he craves so much, hoping to parlay his regenerated celebrity into a date with the "fat" Olsen twin ... J.Lo finds her soul-mate, again, marrying the just-divorced Latin pop star Marc Anthony in a private ceremony at her LA mansion; Ben Affleck, P.Diddy and Cris Judd laugh their asses off, shouting "Sucka!" in unison ... Michael Moore's Bush-bashing documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" debuts; Rove grins again ... in lighter fare, sequels abound, including Shrek 2, Harry Potter and Spider Man 2; all sacrifice plot logic for kick-ass special effects ... hip-hop artist and dog lover DMX arrested at JFK airport for impersonating FBI agents, carjacking, crashing a security gate and possessing crack; nobody bats an eye.
LESS POPPY: CIA Director George Tenet 'receive a medal for his failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks and his reliance on faulty information in the run-up to the Iraq war ... Republican icon Ronald Reagan finally succumbs to Alzheimer's, prompting a seemingly Paul Johnson and South Korean translator Kim Sun Il the latest victims ... in a secret ceremony, to avoid being blown up, the US hands over sovereignty (and a lethal insurgency) to Iraq's interim government, prompting Bush to scribble "Let Freedom Reign" (or is it "ring"?) at a NATO summit in Turkey. US civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer sneaks out of Baghdad under cover of darkness, also on his way to a medal ... to celebrate the handover, Iraqi insurgents kill more than 100 in coordianted attacks in Falluja, Ramadi, Baquba, Mosul, and Baghdad ... Saddam Hussein makes his first court appearance to hear preliminary charges against him; Saddam calls the proceedings "theater" designed by Bush, insists he is still president of Iraq, and tells people in the court to please stop snickering at him.
- end, part 1 -
Stay tuned for part 2... coming soon.
Meanwhile, here's some other crap to keep you busy.
MORE
Getty Images: 2004 in Pictures
Wikipedia: Everything 2004
CNN: 2004 in Review
Gawker: 2005, What a Year!
Comments:
Jed - This is awesome. You forgot one crucial event though.
March 16, John Kerry flies into West Virginia, considered at the time to be a crucial battleground state. Already under fire over his remarks claiming that unnamed foreign leaders were rooting for him, he enters a state in which the Bush campaign has inundated the airwaves with commercials blasting him for voting against $87 billion dollars funding for the war (over 2400 times more than Bush's original $35 million tsunami aid). Tired and cranky, and harrassed by a heckler, Kerry defends the vote by saying:
"I actually voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it."
Karl Rove would later call this "the gift that kept on giving."
Post a Comment
March 16, John Kerry flies into West Virginia, considered at the time to be a crucial battleground state. Already under fire over his remarks claiming that unnamed foreign leaders were rooting for him, he enters a state in which the Bush campaign has inundated the airwaves with commercials blasting him for voting against $87 billion dollars funding for the war (over 2400 times more than Bush's original $35 million tsunami aid). Tired and cranky, and harrassed by a heckler, Kerry defends the vote by saying:
"I actually voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it."
Karl Rove would later call this "the gift that kept on giving."
"
