Badmovies.org Forum

Just 25 things you remember from either a specific year or a decade you lived through, like world events, tv show debuts, things you did, people you met, places you went, etc.

I'll start with 1989:
1. Batman debuted in theaters and I went SEVERAL times.  Loved it!  Even collected trading cards with the hard-ass stick of gum, and almost collected the whole series.  Remembered much of the film's dialogue, even!
2. Graduated high school.
3. The seriously awesome games IVAN IRONMAN STEWART'S SUPER OFF ROAD, FINAL FIGHT and STRIDER came out in arcades.  The graphics of the latter two blew my mind to bits!
4. Laughed like crazy at the scene in SKIN DEEP where John Ritter and the boyfriend of the girl he was seeing have a fight in the dark with glow-in-the-dark condoms on.  The WHEN HARRY MET SALLY fake orgasm scene wasn't nearly as funny.
5. The Berlin Wall fell.
6. Ted Bundy was fried by electric chair.
7. GHOSTBUSTERS returns with GHOSTBUSTERS II!  Liked the first one better.
8. The Exxon-Valdez spill in Alaska!  When I accidentally spilled a little pan oil on the floor at work I would make a joke about this incident.
9. Tiananmen Square protests.
10. Calgary won their only Stanley Cup.
11. George H.W. Bush was officially sworn in as the 41st president.
12. Cute actress Rebecca Schaeffer from the Pam Dawber show MY SISTER SAM was murdered by a crazed fan.
13. The Game Boy was released in the US!  I think I got mine the following year.  Brought it to work for when business got slow.
14. The Menendez brothers killed their parents.
15. Hurricane Hugo hit the SE United States.
16. The San Francisco Earthquake caused the World Series to be postponed for 10 days.
17. Communist regimes fell all over the world.
18. My Blazers fired Mike Schuler, despite his good record, due to not getting along with players.  This was the start of a very successful career for Rick Adelman as the new head coach (though he didn't win either of his Finals appearances).
19. The awesome 3D polygon pioneer game HARD DRIVIN' was released, as was the great GOLDEN AXE, MIDNIGHT RESISTANCE and TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES in arcades.
20. The last good Indiana Jones movie INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE was released.
21. The awful BACK TO THE FUTURE II and LOOK WHO'S TALKING were released.
22. I remember going to see LICENSE TO KILL and thinking it was a very good Bond movie-- up until the fish float winked at the end.  God, that was stupid!
23. I thought FIELD OF DREAMS wasn't nearly as good as everybody else said.
24. Went to see-- and enjoyed-- THE LITTLE MERMAID and PARENTHOOD.   Just about died laughing at the "diarrhea song" parts in the latter film.
25. Saw BILL AND TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE at the theater.  Very dumb, but enjoyable.  Napoleon cracked me up in it.

Whew!  That was a fun little trip back to 1989.
Anyone else got a year or decade they want to take a trip back to?

25 Things I Remember About 1995

1.   OJ got away with murder.
2.   I finished tenth grade in the spring of 1995, and began eleventh that fall.
3.   Toy Story came out.
4.   Because my father worked in a federal building, the Oklahoma City bombing particularly terrified me….
5.   I got my driver’s license, and a car!
6.   Star Trek Voyager debuted, but I didn’t get into it immediately.
7.   Newt Gingrich kept acting like a fat little betch every time I turned on the news.
8.   I first read The Sandman series, and it re-wired my mind.
9.   Mellon Collie and the infinite Sadness released on October 24th, a year to the day after I nearly died, and became the soundtrack for my life that year.
10.   Pete Sampras won his third Wimbledon singles title.
11.   People at my school kept going around saying: “No soup for you!’" which I did not get because I didn’t watch Seinfeld.
12.   Poor Christopher Reeve became paralyzed.
13.   My dad came home from DC and told me a hilarious story about Boris Yeltsin walking around town drunk and half-dressed.
14.   I twice broke up with the same guy by phone, too young and dumb to realize that wasn’t nice.
15.   Windows 95 hit shelves.
16.   PS1 went on sale.
17.   All those infomercials for the George Foreman Grill!
18.   Jagged! Little!! Pill!!!
19.   For the first time in my life, I had too much to drink, thanks to my cousin basically tricking me.
20.   Ireland removed the ban on Playboy magazine being sold there.
21.   The Tokyo subway gas attack.
22.   I may have just possibly seen the devil.
23.   All the guys I knew seemed to be obsessed with a new show called Xena: Warrior Princess, and all the nerdy ones lost their mind over another new show called Sailor Moon. I don’t know why.
24.   I drove my boyfriend to the hospital one night after he accidentally slashed his hand open. (That man had the most profound combination of great and horrible luck of anyone I have ever known…)
25.   Prime Minister Rabin was murdered; bloody are the peacemakers.

1995 was a huge year.

1970
 I bought my first issue of Famous Monsters Magazine . # 81

(https://i.imgur.com/Ozfqtwp.jpg) (https://lunapic.com)

I bought a copy of that on my way home to Zimbabwe in (I think) 1982: it had a picture of Ronald Lacey melting on the cover.

1986

1. Had my first sexual experience with a real live girl.
2. Graduated high school when my Physics professor graciously gave me a D- instead of the F I deserved.
3. My high school girlfriend broke up with me.
4. Had my first experience with depression.
5. Smoked marijuana for the first time.
6. Heard my first Tom Waits song ("Hang on St. Christopher").
7. Tried LSD for the first time.
8. Heard a former teacher's husband and a man I had met, Dick Scobee, died in the Challenger explosion.
9. Saw "Blue Velvet" in the theater, having no idea what I was in for.
10. Nearly flunked out of my first semester of college.
11. Saw Rush and Arlo Guthrie perform live.
12. Heard original radio broadcasts of "the Church of the Subgenius Hour of Slack."
13. Requested a radio station play a song for the first and only time ("Sister Golden Hair.")
14. Skipped work to go to the beach.
15. Got sunburn so bad I was nauseous and formed blisters.
16. Was bitten by a brown recluse.
17. Went to Orlando alone with no one to meet me and no place to stay. Was picked up and driven around by a gay hairdresser who eventually tried to hit on me and was sorely disappointed.
18. Refused to go see "Top Gun."
19. Got to the finals in intramural bowling league.
20. Scored the winning points (free throws) in the only game our intramural basketball team won all season.
21. Got a subscription to "The National Lampoon."
22. Read "Thus Spake Zarathustra" instead of my assigned reading.
23. Was the only male in a group of students who went to see "Peggy Sue Got Married."
24. Got the college nickname "Hung."
25. Ate calamari for the first time, and liked it.

RESPECT!!  :thumbup:

1968

I remember hearing about the death of Martin Luther king on the car radio.

1976

I went to visit the Freedom Train in Kalamazoo.

1968

I saw PLANET OF THE APES in a theater.

1978

I hitch hiked to NY from Michigan, and saw my Ma for the first time since 1969.

Nice work, folks!  Love those trips down memory lane.

1990:
1. The NEO GEO arcade machine came out-- blew everything else out of the water at the time, and most cabinets had slots for games you could switch back and forth between.  I now have one in my living room!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhrKkg6BYu4#)
2. My Blazers lost in the Finals to Detroit.  5 game series and most games were close.  I hated Bill Laimbeer.  It looked like we sent game 4 to OT but after replay Danny Young's 3 was ruled too late.  Watched it from my friend's house down the street.
3. My first job, working for Pizza Hut.  Mostly I made the dough in the morning, but sometimes I worked late till close if we ran out of dough or needed extra cooks/box folders/dishwashers.  My pants would sometimes get wet with dishwater.
4. I think this was the year we moved to a couple miles away from our old house in Federal Way/Auburn, WA.  Very nice, big house!  I think my stepdad still lives there. 
5. I think I bought a Sega Genesis that year-- great game system!  Played plenty of Altered Beast and Revenge of Shinobi.  Sometimes I lost my cool with a game and punched at the wall.. I put up a poster over the hole.
6. Nelson Mandela was released from prison.
7. Tornadoes ripped through central US in March.
8. Northern Iran was devastated by an earthquake that claimed several tens of thousands of lives.
9. Martina Navratilova and Stefan Edberg win their Wimbledon Singles Championships.
10. My Buffalo Bills were getting really good, and on their way to their first Super Bowl.
11. Rosanne Barr's awful, insulting rendition of the Star Spangled Banner:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMzIk2pUuNU#)
12. The Gulf War began with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
13. Reporter Lisa Olsen was sexually harassed in the New England Patriots' locker room.
14. East and West Germany were united into a single Germany.
15. Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the Cold War.
16. Serial killer Andrei Chikatilo is caught.
17. Some celebrity deaths: Jim Henson, Alan Hale Jr., Sammy Davis Jr., Ava Gardner, Greta Garbo, Rocky Graziano, Jill Ireland, Rex Harrison, Pearl Bailey, Leonard Bernstein, Roald Dahl.
18. Great arcade games SMASH TV, TROG, MAGICIAN LORD, MAGIC SWORD, COLUMNS, GOLDEN TEE GOLF, COMBATRIBES
19. Top films: GHOST, DANCES WITH WOLVES, PRETTY WOMAN, TOTAL RECALL, HOME ALONE, BACK TO THE FUTURE III, DIE HARD 2, TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES.
20. Some popular songs: Nothing Compares 2U, Hold On (Wilson Phillips), It Must Have Been Love, Unskinny Bop, Enjoy The Silence, All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You, Thunderstruck, etc.
21. MC Hammer pants and his song/ripoff U CAN'T TOUCH THIS (which stole the rhythm from Super Freak):
(https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/00/77/22/17036430/3/rawImage.jpg)
22. And this guy:
(https://dqnd2s53vp2ic.cloudfront.net/crop/3e/74/600x600/Vanilla-Ice_145632.jpg)
23. My brother was crazy about the YOUNG GUNS movies, including the sequel and its hit song.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylvuRp2IG-g#)
24. Mariah Carey takes the music world by storm with the #1 songs VISION OF LOVE and LOVE TAKES TIME.
25. Some bad films included KARATE KID PART III, PROBLEM CHILD, TROLL II, MADHOUSE, LOOSE CANNONS, HEART CONDITION, GHOST DAD, BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES, NAVY SEALS, ROCKY V, and I was really not a fan of ADVENTURES OF FORD FAIRLANE.

Memories of 1999

1.   Y2K scared billions, while I cheerfully maintained faith that capitalistic greed would put things right.
2.   The Euro became legal tender in eleven EU nations.
3.   I turned twenty-one in the last week of the year/decade/century/millennium.
4.   Ricky Martin’s energetic but irritating Livin’ La Vita Loca was heard EVERYWHERE.
5.   The debut episode of The Sopranos serial-cussed its way onto HBO, while SpongeBob SquarePants began its inexplicable 23-years and counting run on Nickelodeon.
6.   Somewhere the 6,000,000,000th resident of Earth slid out an unsuspecting birth canal.
7.   My friends and I went to see Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and we loved it, darnit, we loved it!
8.   Two screwed-up teens thought it’d be cool to undertake spree-murder at Colorado’s Columbine High School.
9.   Lance Armstrong, cancer survivor and later poster person for burning pants, won his first Tour de France. (Hey, I made a rhyme!)
10.   Impeached President Clinton was acquitted in his Senate trial.
11.   On the last day of 1999. Vladimir Putin took over Russia. Sigh.
12.   Napster went online, and I admit, I used the heck out of it. Sorrrrry, music industry. (Well, maybe a little bit.)
13.   That September my cousin named her baby son Tyler, after a character from Fight Club. Fun fact: as a teenager Tyler would have sex with more men in an average week than I have in my lifetime, and that’s spotting me twenty years.
14.   Scotland got its first Parliament in 300 years; I won’t mention Northern Ireland’s parliamentary debacle that began that same year.
15.   The Sixth Sense had a great tagline. “I see dead people…” Seriously great.
16.   My university roommate converted to Catholicism and asked me to sponsor her, so I made my first confession in years, and the poor priest likely needed therapy after hearing everything I told him.
17.   The eternal, unkillable, now surely undead, Family Guy debuted on FOX.
18.   Much of Oklahoma City went aloft in a tornado with record-breaking 309 MPH winds.
19.   Did a huge road trip that summer with my visiting college friends; showed them Jerry Springer’s house down from my aunt’s, and a cop told us we were trespassing. I told him, “None of us even like the guy.” The cop said, “Then think how embarrassing it’ll be to get arrested over him. Get moving.” Ha….
20.   An early internet rumor had us wondering if Wendy the Snapple Lady was truly doing girl-on-girl porn.
21.   My roommate’s brother and I climbed Mount Katahdin and that morning saw the sunrise before possibly anyone else in the US.
22.   Talk of the Kennedy Curse was revived when JFK Jr. took an ill-fated flight with his wife and her sister.
23.   The Blair Witch Project….was what it was. Personally I liked it.
24.   SNL did a big 25th anniversary broadcast, and someone forced me to stay and watch it by hiding my car keys. Yep, forced me to stay by hiding my car keys. Wasn’t that like non-sexual date rape or something?  #MeToo, where were you when I needed you?
25.   On December 27th, I saw someone I love for the last time, and his final words haunt me.

1970.

Vietnam and the Manson trial was all over the news- which for my Dad was Walter Cronkite.

1977

Saw STAR WARS at the Strand. I was not impressed.

retrorussell, you do know this is like giving a pyromaniac matches, don't you?



Memories of 1997

1.   The Heavens Gate crowd committed mass suicide, in part because of the approach of Hale-Bopp comet.
2.   I saw Smashing Pumpkins in concert but felt cheated because I had to go home after the show---school night---when others I was with stayed out and ran into Billy Corgan and  D’arcy Wretzky at a club!
3.   IBM’s Deep Blue beat Chess Grand Master Gary Kasparov….take that, fleshy beings!
4.   The notoriously divisive The English Patient won nine Oscars.
5.   In a great year for TV, Buffy the Vampire Slayer made staking the undead cool; we first went down to South Park; and Hank Hill let us know he sold propane and propane accessories.
6.   Weeks before graduating from high school, I ditched the famed eastern university into which I’d been accepted. My lawyer aunt didn’t speak to me for a year, and my academic advisor sat on his office floor and cried about the impending fallout on his job.
7.   Amid the rainiest June in local history, I got engaged.
8.   With a psychologist I did a bunch of past life hypnotic regressions and one session of future life progression. The former were fun, the latter was horrifying.
9.   It was a sad year, with the losses of Jeff Buckley, Chris Farley, Jimmy Stewart, John Denver, and of course Princess Diana and Mother Theresa, who passed within days of one another.
10.   The United Kingdom returned control of Hong Kong to China.
11.   I “ran away” and spent most of the summer homeless and sleeping in my car, but eventually hiked the Hundred-Mile Wilderness on the A.T. and got into college, so happy ending there.
12.   Bill Clinton began his second term on MLK Day.
13.   Most folks agreed Dolly, the famous sheep, looked just like her mother.
14.   Uber-narcissist Andrew Cunanan ventilated his head in Miami.
15.   The first Harry Potter novel The Philosopher’s Stone, saw release.
16.   Mike Tyson bobbed Evander Holyfield’s ear.
17.   An astute jury found OJ Simpson civilly liable for wrongful deaths.
18.   Steve Jobs returned to Apple.
19.   I minored in PE, just me and a buncha blue state lesbians who kept inviting me to play dodgeball.
20.   The intrusive employer I began working for at age seventeen told me I had amoral tendencies, handled physical pain well, emotional pain poorly, and was prone to be polyandrous. I disagreed til life made me wiser.
21.   Chumbawamba repeatedly vowed that if they got knocked down, they’d get up again, that nothing was gonna keep them down.
22.   Brad Pitt sued Playgirl for unauthorized pictures of his pee-pee.
23.   Eddie Murphy gave a transsexual prostitute a ride home from the Sunset Strip. What a nice guy!
24.   British nanny Louise Woodward went on trial for allegedly shaking a baby to death.
25.   I rang New Year’s Eve with my grandpa and his friends, and it was sweet.

I don't have anything like ER's gift of near-total recall, but here is what I remember from my senior year, 1982:

1.  I pulled the grandest practical joke of my long career on a co-worker at the Dairy Queen where I was employed, and she didn't speak to me for six weeks.  It was TOTALLY worth it!
2.  I made what may be the most awkward marriage proposal in history to my childhood sweetheart, and to my eternal wonder, she accepted.  Remind me to tell you the story sometime.
3.  The marriage of Lady Diana Spencer to Prince Charles yielded a new heir to the throne.
4.  I went stag to our High School prom with several other friends after our school decided that only enrolled students in our district would be allowed to attend.
5.  I went on a 3-day campout with two of my classmates on a local lake the week before graduation and got the worst sunburn of my life!
6.  I graduated high school with my back still glowing infrared, wearing the lightest cotton T-shirt I owned under my cap and gown.
7.  When my fiancée hugged me after I received my diploma, I screamed in pain.  It wasn't the reaction she expected.
8.  We crammed 9 people into my two-door, 1977 Dodge Aspen and drove 60 miles to Six Flags Over Texas to celebrate graduation.
9.  After the six fastest weeks of my entire life sped by, I reported to Navy Boot Camp on July 15, 1982.
10.  I heard more profanity during the next eight weeks than I had in my entire previous life, growing up as a preacher's son.
11.  After graduating from basic training, I was assigned to Radioman "A" school in San Diego, California.
12.  At Thanksgiving, I came home on four days' leave and was met at the parents by a dozen of my friends and my fiancée.
13.  We showed up at my parents' home around 1 AM, and my best friend and his girlfriend knocked on the door and asked if my Dad could please give them some emergency counseling.  As Dad sat down in his usual recliner to find out what on earth was happening with them, I snuck in the door behind them and gave him and Mom the surprise of their lives!
14.  I returned to San Diego, finished "A" school, and was ordered to report to IMCO (International Morse Code Operator) School in January.  But, having used up all my leave, I could not go home for Christmas.
15.  I spent most of New Year's Eve moping around the barracks, called Mom and Dad and my fiancée, and wished that I had more leave time on the books.

That was my 1982.

1976
I saw MURDER BY DEATH with my sister-in-law in a theater that summer.  I saw a bit of it last night on TCM. 
It was the Bicentennial.  Most towns had weeks of fireworks displays, parades and picnics.  I remember the tall ships in NY Harbor. 
That fall I started at the High School as a Sophomore.  JIMMY CARTER was elected President.  After NIXON and FORD, he was a ray of hope.

1980:
1. My mom got divorced from my dad.  I still lived with her at the house for that year and visited my dad and stepmom in NE Portland on weekends (they got married this year).
2. FRIDAY THE 13TH was such a big deal!  I remember not understanding that the poster had a silhouette of a person with a bloody knife-- I thought it was just weird-shaped woods or something.  I was a dumb kid, what can I say.  The image of the bloody knife haunted my dreams.
(https://hollywoodposters.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fri13OS.jpg)
3. Queen's THE GAME was a great album.  We had ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST on 45.  We loved listening to weird B-sides and DON'T TRY SUICIDE cracked us up.
4. Also, Queen gained acclaim for their score for FLASH GORDON.  I saw it at the Westgate Theater in Beaverton, OR (now defunct) near Christmas and loved it.  Nowadays.. I love it less due to the terrible acting of Flash and Dale.  Still goofy fun.
5. ORDINARY PEOPLE would go on to win several Oscars.
6. THE ROSE was a big hit for Bette Midler.   Great song, awful person.
7. Didn't get to see XANADU when it was out and it got destroyed by critics-- later on, I found out they were absolutely right.  But Olivia Newton-John was ROWR hot and the ELO soundtrack was terrific.  Loved the title song and ALL OVER THE WORLD.  Her song MAGIC always made me think of the ventriloquist horror film from 2 years prior. 
8. FAME, TAKE YOUR TIME (DO IT RIGHT) and UPSIDE DOWN were great entries in the final days of disco.
9. Operation Eagle Claw was a failed attempt to rescue hostages in Iran-- 2 US military choppers collided.
10. The US boycotted the Olympic games in Moscow due to Russia invading Afghanistan the previous year.  Russia would boycott the 1984 games in L.A.
11. John Lennon is shot to death outside his New York apartment.  A saddened Howard Cosell, who had the former Beatle on Monday Night Football as a guest years prior, broke the news during a broadcast of a New England/Miami game.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n73GFvAyIjs#)
12. Mr. Lennon's last album during his life: DOUBLE FANTASY, with massive hit (JUST LIKE) STARTING OVER, and radio staple WOMAN, as well as plenty other good songs.  Never cared much for Yoko.
13. Got kind of grossed out in the theater when Han Solo guts a dead creature to put Luke inside and keep him warm in EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.
14. Movies that didn't put gays in a particularly positive light: CRUISING and WINDOWS.
15. Some weird movies I'd see in the papers that people kind of forgot: THE GONG SHOW MOVIE, TIMES SQUARE, THE FINAL COUNTDOWN, SIMON, FATSO, O HEAVELY DOG, THE LAST FLIGHT OF NOAH'S ARK, SATURN 3, SOMEWHERE IN TIME, THE CHILDREN, and WITHOUT WARNING.
16. Good comedies: AIRPLANE!, CADDYSHACK, MY BODYGUARD, THE BLUES BROTHERS, USED CARS, STIR CRAZY, 9 TO 5.  Also the Showtime staple ANIMALYMPICS.
17. DeNiro catapults into stardom with the vulgar RAGING BULL.
18. Slasher films  start to come out of the woodwork to cash in on FRIDAY THE 13TH's success: PROM NIGHT, HE KNOWS YOU'RE ALONE, TERROR TRAIN, and MANIAC.
19. Good horror films: DRESSED TO KILL and THE FOG.  Wasn't as crazy about THE SHINING as some.
20. Whew, that was a lot of movies-- how about some tv show debuts?  MAGNUM P.I., BOSOM BUDDIES, TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT, 3-2-1 CONTACT, FRIDAYS, IT'S A LIVING, MYSTERY, SOLID GOLD, THAT'S INCREDIBLE, cartoons RICHIE RICH, THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN, the awful Filmation TOM AND JERRY COMEDY SHOW, FONZ AND THE HAPPY DAYS GANG, DRAK PACK, and game shows PLAY THE PERCENTAGES, BLOCKBUSTERS, FACE THE MUSIC, CHAIN REACTION and BULLSEYE.
21. Started going to a "special" school (ugh) because I was (mis) diagnosed with Asperger's.  Only for about a year thankfully.
22. Mt. St. Helens blew her top!  Ash was strewn for miles and miles.  We saw it on cars in the streets.  There was a movie released the following year starring Art Carney called ST. HELENS!, in which he played a man named Harry Truman (!) who owned a lodge near the mountain; he refused to leave and was killed in the eruption.
23. I remember when I'd visit my dad/stepmom's house if we did enough chores we'd all get to go to the awesome entertainment center MALIBU GRAN PRIX and play video games, foosball and pinball and drive the Road Runner cars on the track.  Fun place, unfortunately defunct.
24. PAC-MAN is born from a missing slice of pizza.  Yep, designer Toru Iwatani saw an open mouth in that image and created the seminal "eat the dots" maze game for Namco.  I first saw it at my dad's bowling alley when he bowled league nights at Kellogg Bowl in Milwaukee.  I loved going there and getting soda and candy from the machines, and playing the arcade games there.  GALAXIAN (released the previous year in Japan) also got a lot of play from me there.  Sweet Tarts and Boston Baked Beans were my favorite candies to get from the nickel/dime candy machines there.
25. One-legged Canadian marathon runner Terry Fox begins his Marathon Of Hope, but dies of cancer the following year before he can complete it.

1969

My Ma went to Woodstock. Us kids watched Chiller in Marlboro, NY.

http://youtu.be/9bcIGSaPnqc (http://youtu.be/9bcIGSaPnqc)

Memories of 1996

1.   New product Red Bull became liquid speed for millions of ‘90s kids!
2.   An X-Files episode called Home inspired calls for censorship due to its graphic content, which actually was kinda gruesome….
3.   Seeking an exertion high, I rode my mountain bike on a thirty-one mile wilderness trail, then back home had such bad leg cramps I was on the floor immobile with agony. My dad threatened to take my bike away “Til you get better sense.” Ha.
4.   Bob Dole reminded Hillary Clinton it doesn’t take a village to raise a child, it takes a family. Then he fell off a doggone stage.
5.   I spent weeks thinking No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak” was “Don’t Sleep.”
6.   Twister made tornadoes into celebrities, though no one ever asked for their autographs.
7.   Tupac p**sed off one gansta too many. Or did he….?
8.   For the first time the FAA required a photo ID to board a plane.
9.   I thought I was being stalked, but turned out it was my boss seeing how I’d handle it.
10.   Otherwise staid suburban parents trampled and gouged each other to get their kids a Tickle Me Elmo.
11.   Braveheart was Best Picture, making drawing-and-quartering cool again.
12.   On the ceiling over my bed I calligraphied: "To die, to sleep, to sleep, perchance to dream..." And: “In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthullul waits dreaming….” Oddly, I didn’t sense a theme til it was pointed out to me when someone else laid there and read it.
13.   Gene Kelly, the greatest straight white dancer who ever drew breath, quit drawing breath.
14.   One of the biggest blizzards in US history buried much of the country under several feet of snow. No school for two weeks!
15.   I saw an umpire drop dead at home plate at the opening day of major league baseball. My grandpa said look away, but it was like I couldn’t. That poor, poor fellow.
16.   To show how much he stood for human life, a man set off bombs during the Olympic games in Atlanta.
17.   At a D-Day commemoration at a former WWII army base, I met a number of Overlord veterans and heard their stories. One man still had shrapnel in his arm from that day.
18.   My friends and I were driving in the middle of nowhere one summer night when a station wagon hearse piloted by a strange 1970s-looking man pulled up beside us with a casket in the rear. I guess you had to be there but trust me it felt trippy-weird.
19.   Hilfiger seemed to be everywhere your eyes traveled.
20.   Wearing a swimsuit and no shoes I played Magic the Gathering for the first time, at like two in the morning. Oddly the boys playing there seemed distracted.
21.   Carl Sagan died, and my left brain went into mourning. I tell myself Sagan wouldn’t like the state of our world today, but I still miss him.
22.   Amber Alerts became a thing, but couldn’t do much for poor JonBenet Ramsey.
23.   Though I was only in eleventh grade, I lied about my age and said I was 21, so I could become a literacy tutor at the library. There I met a nice Appalachian woman named Tammy, and was proud I helped her to read.
24.   Pete Sampras lost his first Wimbledon singles match since 1993; he would not lose another until 2000. Yeah, Pete was good.
25.   My boyfriend’s Yuppie father, then a drug and sex addict, took him to Morocco for a college graduation trip, and tried to talk him into going to a freakin’ whorehouse!!!! When I found out, I was furious, though I did save the man’s life later in the year after I discovered him unconscious from a bad prescription drug interaction. He would go on to reform and turn his life around in admirable ways, but for many reasons I stayed angry at him for years, though for a long time now he’s been a friend I value and love. (The jerk.)

1992.

1. I don't remember my 18th birthday, but I do remember going to a concert the week after to celebrate it. The band was terrible though (Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine). I was the only person in the group able to legally drink and I had my first legal pint in a pub called The Griffon in Glasgow.
2. With the fall of the Communist bloc, the world seemed a brighter place with such potential for a bright new start.
3. I left school with no more idea about what I wanted to do after it than I had the first day I arrived.
4. The Maastricht Treaty was signed making the prospect of a united Europe seem inevitable.
5. Yugoslavia slid into dissolution and war.
6. Other bands I went to see live this year included Motorhead, The Almighty and The Wildhearts. I'd see these three bands frequently around this time, although the latter two were more often support acts.
7. I was disappointed not to get a job working at Monsters of Rock this year having worked it the previous one.
8. Rodney King was all over the news. In sympathy, someone smashed up one of the local phone boxes.
9. The Italian mafia took out a big anti-corruption judge with a car bomb, taking out not just him but a large number of his police escort.
10. Sinead O'Conner sang a song about child abuse being covered up in the Catholic church and then ripped up a photo of the pope. People seemed more upset about this than the actual child abuse.
11. Bill Clinton won the US election. The end of his time in office would also seem to mark the beginning of a decline in the perceived soft power of the US which continues to this day. I keep hoping they will vote for someone who can reverse this, but all empires decline and fall eventually.
12. Women are allowed to become priests (priestesses?) in the Anglican Church. This was very quickly followed by one of the first female priests being posted near to where I lived and promptly having an affair with a married parishioner.
13. A house I did deliveries to made the local news when it turned out to be a brothel. I had no idea.
14. Charles & Diana announced they were getting divorced. I tried to care.
15. The UK was forced out of the European Exchange Mechanism when the value of the £ plunged after John Major's government proved unable to halt its decline.
16. I went to the leaving party for my year at school. I didn't care for anyone there though and made no attempt to keep in touch with any of them.
17. Def Leopard released their weakest album to date.
18. I went on holiday to visit some friends in England. It was the start of a chain of events that would cause me to be kicked out of my religion, although this was some years in the future.
19. Iron Maiden also released a fairly weak album and rumours started circulating long before it was announced that Bruce Dickenson was going to leave the band.
20. KISS would release their best album in a long time. I used the title track for a while as my entrance music for mine and my friends wrestling league (my character was the Underheighter).
21. Since I hadn't been allowed to paint my room black, I finished my project of covering the walls, door and ceiling in posters. The walls were painted a colour referred to on the tin of paint as being "Mushroom Brown" and I hated it.
22. Spinal Tap released a new album.
23. I watched the Freddy Mercury tribute concert. It still didn't seem real that he was dead.
24. My drink was spiked at a local bands gig. I couldn't stop my teeth from chattering.
25. Batman Returns & Army of Darkness would be my favourite movies released this year. I went to a special showing of Alien 3 where they showed the first two movies first. Alien 3 would not join my list of favourites.

1983 (I was 12 and finishing up grade school):
1. One of the great game shows, PRESS YOUR LUCK, debuts!  I remember thinking the whammies were cavemen or something.
(https://i.gifer.com/1Pfe.gif)
2. ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS returns!  Other cartoons: INSPECTOR GADGET, GI JOE, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, HE-MAN, THE LITTLES, MR. T, and SATURDAY SUPERCADE.
3. Started regularly seeing my mom at her place in Vancouver, WA on weekends.  She had cable!  I'd watch lots of MTV, Nickelodeon, USA Network, Showtime and HBO.  She took me to the massive VANCOUVER MALL and upstairs to the Aladdin's Castle arcade.  We'd get great hot dogs at Orange Julius when she got done shopping.
4. US invades Grenada to help overthrow the current government.
5. Some celebrity deaths: Carolyn Jones, David Niven, Slim Pickens, Robert Aldrich, Buster Crabbe, Gloria Swanson, Michael Conrad (Hill Street Blues), Christopher George, Luis Bunuel, George Cukor, William Demarest, Raymond Massey, Sir Ralph Richardson, Doodles Weaver, Karen Carpenter, Tennessee Williams.
6. One of Christopher Walken's best performances was in THE DEAD ZONE.
7. Big movies: TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, SCARFACE, THE OUTSIDERS, RISKY BUSINESS, WARGAMES, THE BIG CHILL, MONTY PYTHON'S MEANING OF LIFE, FLASHDANCE, OCTOp***y, VACATION, THE RIGHT STUFF, the expensive dud KRULL, TRADING PLACES, RETURN OF THE JEDI (God I hated the Ewoks), A CHRISTMAS STORY and MR. MOM.
8. Dud movies: SUPERMAN III, YELLOWBEARD, AMITYVILLE 3D (yeah, 3D was big around that time), EDDIE AND THE CRUISERS, JAWS 3D, and SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT 3.
9. Popular TV shows: A*TEAM, MAMA'S FAMILY, TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE, READING RAINBOW, the return of WHEEL OF FORTUNE now with Pat and Vanna, WEBSTER, SCARECROW AND MRS. KING, HARDCASTLE AND MCCORMICK, THE HITCHHIKER, the series V and HOTEL
10. The Soviets shoot down a S. Korean airliner, killing all aboard.
11. TV disaster movie THE DAY AFTER airs.
12. Sally Ride was the first US woman astronaut in space.
13. The Baltimore Orioles, who have been mostly garbage since, won the World Series.
14. The New York Islanders won their 4th straight Stanley Cup!
15. The Washington Redskins (I REFUSE to call them "Commanders") behind Joe Theismann and stellar MVP John Riggins beat the Miami Dolphins in the Super Bowl for their first trophy, at the end of a strike-shortened 1982 season.
16. Dr. J and the Philadelphia 76ers make a historic run through the playoffs-- only losing one game-- to win the NBA title.
17. John McEnroe and Martina Navratilova win the men's and women's Wimbledon championships.
18. Michael Jordan's NC State Wolfpack win the NCAA basketball championship.
19. Hit songs: MANIAC- Michael Sembello, AFRICA- Toto, TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEART- Bonnie Tyler (I always called it "Totally Ripped A Big Fart"), SEPARATE WAYS- Journey, OVERKILL- Men At Work, DOWN UNDER- Men At Work, MR. ROBOTO- Styx, DON'T LET IT END- Styx, FLASHDANCE- Irene Cara, TRUE- Spandau Ballet, TONIGHT I CELEBRATE MY LOVE- Robert Flack/Peabo Bryson, ALWAYS SOMETHING THERE TO REMIND ME- Naked Eyes, EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE- Police, BILLIE JEAN- Michael Jackson, BEAT IT-Michael Jackson, COME ON EILEEN-Dexy's Midnight Runners, HUNGRY LIKE THE WOLF- Duran Duran, SWEET DREAMS- Eurythmics, MANEATER- Hall & Oates, SHE WORKS HARD FOR THE MONEY- Donna Summer, LET'S DANCE- David Bowie, SHE BLINDED ME WITH SCIENE- Thomas Dolby, TELL HER ABOUT IT- Billy Joel
20. GANDHI nabs Best Picture at the Oscars.
21. INCHON wins Worst Picture at the Razzies.  BUTTERFLY gets the event's most nominations.
22. Odd/bad movie debuts: THE HUNGER, THE KEEP, MAUSOLEUM, STRANGE INVADERS, BRAINSTORM, NIGHTMARES, SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN, VIDEODROME, STAYING ALIVE.
23. Crack cocaine is developed in the Bahamas.
24. Great album PYROMANIA by Def Leppard!  Loved Rock Of Ages and Photograph, especially.
25. Arcade hits included MARIO BROS., TRACK & FIELD, ELEVATOR ACTION, MR. DO'S CASTLE, CROSSBOW, STAR WARS, SPY HUNTER, and the laserdisc game DRAGON'S LAIR.

Bonus: Forgot one for 1990: Milli Vanilli's grammy for 1989 Best New Artist award is stripped when it was revealed they did not actually sing on their debut album.

Memories of 1994

I have insomnia and am still home alone, it’s quiet, it’s late, it’s a little bit lonely and dreary here tonight with my family away for the holiday week, so I am going to look back, make this recollection slightly personal, and say a lot. Consider that fair warning, if you want to tune out now.

1.   1994 was a year of personal highs and lows I thought at the time would never be equaled: then 1995 came and taught me otherwise. I had some of my best moments in ‘94, but I also got my first true jolt of teenage angst and gave it free rein after a life of conformity. Plus an accident in October kept me out of school til New Year’s, which was a recipe for further abnormality in a life that had never exactly been strictly normal to begin with.

2.   One January day it went down to minus fifty, the National Guard was called out, and we got off school. My neighbor’s greyhound, Mercury, went out to pee and urine froze in an icicle on his member, which I thought was hilarious, but my neighbor, a year older and slightly snooty, got mad at me for laughing. I said to her, “I thought you Jews had a sense of humor.” She called me an anti-Semite and got even madder at me. Life was very confusing, because my attempts at deliberately making people mad via rebellion went nowhere, but when I didn’t intend offense, people often flipped out.

3.   On January 17th Los Angeles had what was called the worst earthquake in a century, which made for amazing TV viewing, seeing all the special effect-level damage in real time. We didn’t have cable, so I hung with my friend at her house and drank Mountain Dew and watched CNN while we sent her little brother, Mark, to the kitchen to make pizza rolls. Her brother used to be a brat and a bane of our lives, but by age twelve he was crushing on me and would do almost anything I asked. Oh, the power…

4.   On January 20th I mailed a card to the White House congratulating President Clinton on his first year in office. You believe he didn’t write me back?

5.   There was a solar eclipse that May and we got to go outside at school and watch it with shadowboxes we’d made in class. Off the top of his head this ultra-genius kid told me the date of every coming eclipse for decades, and I remember thinking no matter how gross he was, it was a rip that serial killer John Wayne Gacy met his end that morning and missed the astronomical event.

6.   That June, as an end of school present (the first summer I was able to say no to three-weeks of summer college-prep classes) I went to a shelter and got my dog Charlotte Sometimes, and I loved her so, so, so much.

7.   There was a slip-up when my parents went out of town and thought my aunt was going to pick me up, and instead I was on my own, and it turned into the most special weekend of my life, being free and happy and in love. When I think about those days, all the feeling can still back to me, wonderful and poignant and painful.

8.   The baseball strike made my grandpa vocally livid, because apparently the local team had been in first place til the season got canceled. He talked about this travesty a lot in 1994, and predicted baseball, once semi-sacred in America, would begin to decline from that point on, and from where we are today I don’t think he was wrong.

9.   When I walked in on April 8th to hear the news about Kurt Cobain being found dead in Seattle, I thought for one insane second they were talking about Kirk Cameron from Growing Pains. Maybe my brain didn’t take in the shock of the news, because for a moment that’s what I heard, Kirk Cameron, suicide.

10.   I was fifteen until the last week of the year, and hanging out with a college guy in his twenties with whom I was completely in love. Technically I could have also said the same thing about the same person when I was fourteen if I really want to raise eyebrows. But he had this girlfriend, Paige, who looked like a Hawaiian Tropic model, was in a band, and had an incredible singing voice. (Much later she’d date an NFL player.) Paige was so unbelievably nice to me that I felt guilty for wishing a satellite would fall on her. Sure my college guy told me only I was his soul mate, but I was also big-time underage, he wasn’t a fool, and so I knew Paige had him instead, and no amount of wishing I was older changed that maddening situation in 1994.

11.   And of course, for the second half of the year it was all OJ, on all media, all the time.


12.   I was introduced to John Fowles’ The Collector, and it made me forget all about the story I had been obsessed with for almost a year, Joyce Carol Oates’ Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been, which had a serial killer in the 1950s come stalk a doomed girl about my own age. As for The Collector, it was like finding the perfect key to fit in the lock of my mind, it being this novel about a peculiar young man who worshipfully abducts a girl and keeps her imprisoned in a secret room in his house in the country, giving her anything she might desire except her freedom. It was the strangest combination of literary prose and sheer mind-f**k storytelling my young self had ever encountered or imagined existed, and I remained captivated with that book throughout the year.

13.   Everyone I knew at school claimed to hate ABC’s My So-Called Life, starring a young Claire Danes, yet no one ever missed watching it, or recounting every detail of it the next day. 90210 was slightly older than us, Dawson’s Creek slightly younger, but for a season we mid-90s Gen-X-ers had My So-Called Life.

14.   A boy one state over shot his family and took his class hostage like a scene from Stephen King’s novella Rage brought to life, so at my school they went zero tolerance on any hint of violence right when I did the only violent thing in my entire school career and shoved this girl named Andrea, leader of a clique called The b***h Posse, onto her back for saying something about my mom when I was putting stuff in my locker one morning and already upset as it was. In the scholastic zeitgeist of 1994 I got in more trouble than the situation deserved, my first academic black mark, but it also taught me that the school must’ve needed me as one of its shining stars in AP Group, since I didn’t get expelled. They made me come in and see a counselor though (what a joke) who asked why I went after Andrea when I’d been so good to that point, with my 4.0 and as a National Catholic Schools Honors candidate, etc. and I said, “She insulted my mom.” I never apologized or regretted knocking Andrea down, and it was  an early instance of a pattern I have come to recognize in my life, which is I usually let things done to me go without a response, but I react when it concerns those I love.

15.   I used to have talks about deep topics with the college guy I mentioned, especially about God, with him believing and me not, and one night he joked, “Let’s do an experiment and judge whose life is going better in ten years, mine as a believer or yours as an agnostic, and then we’ll see if we can identify the workings of God and call it evidence.” Waiting ten years turned out not to be a great litmus test for settling the matter of God’s existence.

16.   Nancy Kerrigan got kneecapped, and Skatergate resulted, which until OJ mania was the big deal of the moment, showing the seedy underbelly of a graceful sport. Everyone I knew watched the Winter Olympics in ’94, and when it was all done most thought Nancy Kerrigan was an even bigger hypocrite than Tonya Harding.

17.   I listened to The Cure A LOT in 1994 but I don’t know if I was sort of a musical purist, or just uninformed, because for a long time I had no idea they were a band anchored in Goth culture, and when it was explained to me I didn’t care and kept listening, though as a tennis-playing Catholic school student with a limited black wardrobe, I was about as non-Goth as they came.

18.   In the news, I remember the Chunnel opened, Rwandans started slaughtering each other, and so did former Yugoslavians. John Candy died in his sleep, Jeffrey Dahmer got beaten to death, and after watching their awkward kiss I was sure Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley’s marriage was a sham. Was I right, or just cynical?

19.   I saw more movies that year than I usually did. The Lion King was infinitely better than I was expecting, Speed was moronic, and Reality Bites was too whiny even for me, a teenage girl with an incipient undercurrent of self-pity. I rejected the appeal of Forrest Gump, and thought Interview with the Vampire butchered the source material, but that fall I wanted to see R-rated Pulp Fiction so badly I tried to sneak in, got busted for being too young, and even though I offered the usher ten bucks to let me stay, he said no. As he escorted me to the lobby like it was some walk of shame, I told him he was on a power trip, though in hindsight I admire his stance as a guardian of multiplex morals.

20.   The IRA got tons of praise in the media in 1994 for declaring a cease fire in its twisted campaign of murder and misery, then used proxies to do its dirty work, and outside of Ireland no one much reported that ugly fact.

21.   When Time made the Pope its Person of the Year, my devout maternal grandma groused: “Why’d it take them so long?” Sure, she thought the Pope was a little lax in his theology, but she still liked him.

22.   PBS bravely aired Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, even in the face of death threats. I was allowed to watch it and thought its depiction of the merry world of pre-AIDS 1970s San Francisco was intriguing. Was it really that way, I still wonder, so fun, so accepting, so much the epitome of the Second Turning?

23.   This girl named Verity, whose dad worked with my dad and who for years was put in the orbit of my life because adults wrongly assumed we had something in common, spent the night at my house and tried to get me to show her my breasts because: “It’s seriously no big deal.” I told her I’d rather not, and she said I was stuck up and insecure about my body. Whatever.

24.   About a week after Verity’s attempted girl-girl experimentation, I went to Lollapalooza with my cousin Dana and her friends from college, and ended up staying with her for a few days in her WAY cool apartment. This was a big deal to me since the place was everything anyone could have wanted a mid-90s college flat to be, complete with philosophical debates late into the night leading to people sleeping over on the living room floor.

I was feeling upset about various things that summer (refer back to item 10 above) and since Dana had said for years, “I’m going to get you stoned sometime.” I, who’d never touched drugs in my goodie two-shoes life, said, “Hey, you finally want to get me stoned while I’m here?”

She looked at me and said, “That’s the second to last thing you need in your life, the first being that guy you’re moping over.”

So, insulted, I sat on her roof and pretended to be oh-so-sophisticated by reading Sylvia Plath’s poem Edge and hoping the college crowd would see me doing that and think me intellectually mature. (None did.)

Dana came up onto the roof and shook her head and said, “Just stop this and be yourself, will you please? I miss you.”

Thing was, at that point I think it had honestly been about four days since I’d eaten anything, I was mad at the world, my blood sugar was low, and I was beginning my slide toward the pseudo eating disorder I strenuously denied I had, and eventually narrowly avoided.

I then went home and almost immediately turned around and went to Ireland for the summer to see my family, my annual vacation instead of Disney World or wherever others went if they were lucky, and my aunt, who was just three years older than me, picked me up and took me to her place, where her two English roommates, all college students, also lived, and I spent the first day there so sick and light-headed from not eating for a week that they stood over me as I trembled on the living room futon staring up at them through unfocused vision while they debated whether to call me an ambulance.

I guess I got scared too because I started eating, told my aunt and her friends it was a dumb thing to have done, and in fact I never did anything like that again. (Man I’m making myself sound a mess!)

It was actually a great summer over there among my mother’s people, and I came home happy and myself once more, a pretty good kid who really did seem to learn from her mistakes.

25.   In 1994 Grunge hit its post-Nirvana height and Alternative made its first inroads into replacing it as the sound most associated with the remainder of the ‘90s, ultimately leading to a number of great female artists gathering for Lilith Faire, and setting up the ‘90s to be the last era when top-40 type music was almost universally good.

OK, there you have it, my time in the year 1994!

I know 1995 has already been "flashbacked" but I just wanted to add some personal experiences (and hopefully I don't copy anything):
1995
1. I also remember Windows 95 being huge-- One of the first things about 1995 I think of is the 3D maze screensaver:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRL5durPleI&t=62s#)
This was an absolutely LANDMARK year for internet availability.
2. My (now late) friend and I got SUPER BAD SUNBURNS in Reno.  I had one or two weeks off of work around my birthday, and we flew down to Reno as part of the birthday vacation.  We had suntanned on a roof by a pool, and the elevation can fool you in Reno (it didn't feel hot but we ended up getting "delayed" burns).  That evening we were DARK RED and in utter pain.  It hurt to move at all until like a couple days later.  Toward the end of our stay I watched one game of the Stanley Cup to see my Devils play the Red Wings at the Comstock Hotel bar.  When we got back to Portland OR we hung out at my folks' house and they had fireman aloe to drape over our shoulders.  We had deli sandwiches catered.  After that we went to the beach and stayed at the Sea Gypsy hotel (a very nice hotel with a terrific view right over the ocean).  We peeled big sheets of skin off during our stay!  When we got back to my friend's house I watched game 4 of my Devils sweeping Detroit for their first Stanley Cup!
3. Mexico undergoes extreme financial collapse and President Clinton loans them $20 billion.
4. Mike Tyson was let out of prison after serving nearly 3 years for rape.
5. Singer "Selena" is murdered by her fan club president.
6. Russian troops kill hundreds of Chechnyan civilians.
7. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols bomb a federal building in OKC.  I remember after the Sonics moved to OKC and were looking for a new name I figured "Bombers" would not be an ideal name.
8. Cult leader Shoko Asahara is arrested.
9. The collapse of a department store in Seoul, S. Korea kills over 500.
10. Genocide occurs in Srebrenika, Bosnia, by the Army of Republika Srpska, who rape and kill thousands of civilians.
11. It saddened me to see my Bills not reach a Super Bowl after 4 straight.  Glad to see San Diego finally make one, though (even if they got destroyed by the 49ers and their relatively new QB Steve Young).  As per usual I watched the Big Game at my friends' house-- he lived downstairs from his Dad and Mom.
12. I was happy to see my hometown hero Clyde Drexler finally win a championship-- unfortunately not with the Blazers, but with the Houston Rockets after he was traded.  They won their 2nd straight, topping Shaquille O'Neal/Penny Hardaway and the Orlando Magic in a sweep.
13. I was getting tired of working for jerk bosses-- this was my 2nd straight foreman I hated, this time working at Burlingame Fred Meyer.  Still living with my dad and stepmom for one more year at the old house in Portland.
14. I remember a big buzz around the Mariners that this could be the year they make the World Series-- and they got all the way to the AL Championship after the Division Tiebreaker game against the Angels and the playoff win over the Yankees.  But they came up short against the Indians, who lost to the Braves in the World Series.  What a team-- Griffey, Randy Johnson, Buhner, Tino and Edgar Martinez, Joey Cora.. great offense, meh bullpen.  This was a great baseball season, one year after the season was cancelled.
15. eBay is founded.
16. OJ Simpson is declared not guilty for the murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman.
17. Typhoon Angela levels the Philippines and Vietnam.
18. TOY STORY is the first full-length computer animated film.
19. Desert Storm ends.
20. While at the beach my friend and I stopped at an arcade and I played the graphically awesome FATAL FURY 3 on a NEO GEO cabinet!  What a cool game.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2xcsd-2oaA#)
21 Other great arcade games of the time: 2 On 2 Open Ice Challenge, Soul Edge, Die Hard, Area 51, WWF Wrestlemania, MK3, King Of Fighters 95, Street Fighter Alpha, Virtua Cop 2, Marvel Super Heroes, Aero Fighters 3, Gunblade NY, Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge, and Space Invaders 95.
22. I was really getting into collecting "best of" and yearly compilation CDs.  Especially the series "Have A Nice Day: Super Hits of the 70s".  I'd record songs off them onto tape for my friend because CD players in cars weren't in vogue yet.
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51NEND4FD4L.jpg)
23. I think this was the first year I played in a bowling league.  A guy from the store I worked at in Tigard and a bunch of other guys, pretty nice guys.  I did okay my first year, then kind of lost interest.  I think we won our league the first year.  We'd celebrate at the Pizza Caboose next door to our lanes-- blah pizza IMHO.
24. I remember SHOWGIRLS coming out and how it was crapped all over-- understandably so.  Also crappy was MORTAL KOMBAT, which I went to see with my brothers.. ugh!  Same with BILLY MADISON.  I left that one early because I had to pee and also because it was terrible.
25. Music was mostly crappy this year but some songs were okay-- DECEMBER- Collective Soul, ROLL TO ME- Del Amitri, and the silly COTTON EYE JOE- Rednex.  ONE SWEET DAY held the record for most weeks at #1-- SIXTEEN!  And.. it sounded like pretty much every other R&B song.

PS: My game systems of choice were still Sega Genesis and Sega CD.  I may have moved my bedroom back over the garage around this year.  My brother would sometimes get in my room and make a big mess, so I had a lock put on it.  Though the Playstation was out I waited a couple more years to get mine.

Looking forward to more memories!

Definitely enjoying these!

My 1996 memories:
1. My first taste of total freedom!  Morbidly, it came right after my grandma died and I ended up staying at her house afterwards.  But I was generally on my own there while still commuting to work (a couple miles or so away).  If my folks needed to come over to paint or clean for future owners, they wouldn't even call me-- they'd just come over.  Lame!  Other than that I was on my own-- felt great!
2. I really started getting on a personal fitness routine and had a pretty fit bod back then-- total six-pack abs and though I was skinny I was quite healthy.  No weight set but just did lots of push ups, stretches and sit ups. 
3. Started renting plenty of anime around this time-- was starting to ride the wave of US interest in Anime with DRAGON BALL Z and SAILOR MOON gaining steam in the States-- I even watched them at work!  I'd go down the hill from my house and rent plenty of movies from Hollywood Video.  Had plenty of stuff to do within walking distance; movie theater, WinCo store, Fred Meyer store, video store, bars, restaurants, etc.
4. I went to the Olympics in Atlanta!  My stepmom's friend was from Atlanta and she had a daughter that still lived there.  We stayed at their house with her brat kids and took a bus down to the Olympics every day.  We saw Judo, Baseball, Triathlon, and my favorite event, Weightlifting.  The weather was overbearingly hot and humid.  Even at 5 in the morning when we stepped out of the Atlanta airport.  Yuck!
5. Our bowling team went over to the team captain's house (which doubled as a convenience store and barbershop owned by him and his wife) to watch the Super Bowl.  In a rather blah mistake-filled game the Cowboys beat the Steelers.  The team captain was an old frenemy of my dad's but we got along okay.
6. This might have been the year I moved into my first apartment-- this was in Tigard OR not far from my previous residence.  This was the closest I'd ever be to city surroundings as I was RIGHT off the highway and had everything you could want within a few blocks.  GREAT location, but the apartment was 2nd story and DISGUSTINGLY hot in the summer.  Plus, I had big ants..  I think it was $385 a month to start with.  My, times have changed..
7. This may have also been the year I bought my Playstation.  I got Soul Blade as my first game and boy was I busy with that one!  I got Namco Museum games for it not long after.
8. The first boob-bouncing fighter in the DEAD OR ALIVE series debuts.  As does the awesome SAN FRANCISCO RUSH, SCUD RACE, CRUISIN' WORLD, WAKU WAKU 7 and PROP CYCLE.
9. Decent enough hits: NO DIGGITY- Blackstreet/Dr. Dre, FOLLOW YOU DOWN- Gin Blossoms, WHERE DO YOU GO- No Mercy, DON'T SPEAK- No Doubt
10. Notable flims: FARGO, TRAINSPOTTING, INDEPENDENCE DAY, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, SCREAM, JEREMY MCGUIRE, ENGLISH PATIENT, STAR TREK FIRST CONTACT, SLING BLADE, THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT, SHINE, MARS ATTACKS, SPACE JAM, BEAVIS & BUTTHEAD DO AMERICA
11. Tv debuts: EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND, SUDDENLY SUSAN, SPIN CITY, DAILY SHOW, SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH, TRANSFORMERS BEAST WARS, 3RD ROCK FROM THE SUN, THE CROCODILE HUNTER, ARTHUR
12. The former Quebec Nordiques, now the Colorado Avalanche, win their first Stanley Cup.
13. The Yankees would mostly dominate the mid to late 90s and early 2000s, starting with a World Series victory over the Braves.  I remember watching one of the games at my bowling alley and thinking the Braves had it wrapped up, going up 2 games to 0.  Nope..
14. This was the last year Jim Kelly played for my Bills.  We made the postseason the following January but bowed out to Mark Brunell and Jacksonville, who had a terrific team overall.
15. Michael Jordan's first full season back in the NBA results in another Championship-- and a (then) NBA record 72 wins-- over the Seattle Supersonics.
16. This may have been the year that I changed department store jobs to the location in Aloha, OR.  Much longer commute unfortunately but I got along well with the supervisor, who seemed to really like me.  Unfortunately she had a heavy drinking problem and was taking pills for physical ailments (NEVER a good combination) and went stone bonking crazy on a few occasions, one of which I had to actually SIT on her because she was belligerent.  The rest of the custodial staff was Hispanic and one spoke ZERO English.  Fun..
17. Michael Jackson divorces Lisa Marie Presley.
18. Bosnia ends their siege on Sarajevo.
19. A Scotsman, Thomas Hamilton, walks into a primary school and shoots and kills 17, all but one were children.
20. 8 climbers die when sudden winds hit Mt. Everest.
21. Iraq continues to refuse US inspectors looking for WMDs.
22. The Nintendo 64 is released; I remember it debuting at our store and gamers got to play a short demo before Mario said "It's a-me!  Mario!  Thank you for playing Nintendo 64!  Who's next?".
23. 8,000-9,000 year old remains of a man are found in Kennewick, WA-- he is known as the "Kennewick Man".
24.  The Taliban capture Kabul, Afghanistan.
25. Saudi and Kazhakstan airlines collide over New Delhi, killing almost 350.

Brother Russell, the 1980s as a whole stand out in my life, mostly good (especially the movies and the music), some OK and some bad.

I'll make a list for you and the others soon  :smile:

2006.

1) I got out of a relationship I had never felt sure about, but stupidly comitted to. It lasted 6 weeks, but took 6 weeks more to get the person out of my physical life.  It would take 6 years to get the person out of my online life.

2) After two years of hardcore gaming, I took a big step backwards and cut down the amount I was gaming, having seen how much damage the lifestyle had done to the relationship between a hardcore gaming mother and her pre-teen children.

3) Lordi won the Eurovision song contest with Hard Rock Hallelujah. For a short time they would be national heroes in Finland, but this would not last long and it would take the band a long time to recover.

4) Pluto was declared to not be a planet. If this p**sed off the god of death, it would explain much of world events since.

5) Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging.

6) Wii is released. Almost everyone I knew bought one, although I decided not to

7)  The UK paid the last of its WW2 loan debt back to the US.

8) Twitter was born.

9) A scramjet engine was successfully tested in Australia.

10) 300 was released and I thought was fun if silly.  The Fountain also came out and it wasn't fun or silly.

11) Steve Irwin died.

12) The Monday after he died I was surprised when I saw the flag flying at half-mast. This confused me as I hadn't heard of anything on the news that morning that would be associated with the flag. I wondered if Irwin had served in the Australian airforce or something. When I got into work I heard a Nimrod has crashed in Afghanistan with the loss of all 14 crew members and the Taliban were claiming to have taken it out with a heat-seeking missile. As it was my job to maintain the anti-missile defences on the Nimrod (I was one of a team of 3 doing that job at the time, the only people in the entire world qualified to do it), this hit me pretty hard. It would later transpire that it was an on board fire. The crash investigation would reveal a decades long chain of events leadibg to this crash, including a decision made by Maggie Thatcher during the Falklands War.

13) The most enjoyable period in my working life would come to an end with the promotion of my best friend and him having to move jobs, combined with the moving of our boss to a multi-tasking role. I would spend 14 months in an acting higher rank, before returning to my previous rank for a short period and then a full promotion. But all that lay in the future of 2008 .

14) Being unable to understand why despite my excellent annual reports I hadn't been offered my full promotion I resolved to leave when my current contact expired at the 9 year point. It would come as a big surprise to me when I learned I had been promoted much quicker than the majority of my peers.

15) I got involved with a Swedish nurse. She was fun, but the relationship was short-lived. More friends with benefits than anything serious.

16) I accepted an invite to play a game from a friend in order for him to get a boost although I didn't start playing the gane itself. This would start a chain of events that led to me getting a German girlfriend though. She was even more fun that the Swedish and we'd have a will they won't they on and off relationship that would run for many years and cold have went much further. I do not regret how things turned out though.

17) Me and Scott spent an entire day at the cinema watching Superman Returns and Pirates 2. His wife later asked him if we were having an affair. We weren't.

18)I have the funny feeling this year was where my battle with depression started, although it wouldn't be diagnosed for over a decade, mostly because it crept in so slowly and insidiously that I didn't realise anything was wrong.

19) After a few years living in the wilds up north,  my friend Garry returned to the area. He had a bad split with his then-girlfriend and I and another mutual friend had to drive up and rescue him. The other friend, Dave was suffering fron the flu and would collapse during the unloading part of the day. We carried him inside and used him as a doorstop. At one point during the moving Garry out part, I had to intervene to prevent a fight between Garry and his ex's dad.

20) Garry started dating his ex-wives sister. They would later get married (and remain so today).

21) At a house party a random drunk women came over and twisted my nipple so hard that it bled. In the morning I let her know how close I'd came to punching her.

22) I moved out of a house I'd been renting for 6 months, just to get off camp for a bit. I had, had people visiting almost constantly and going back into the barracks felt like something of a relief.

23) I bought myself a Lego Star Destroyer. It had an important piece missing.

24) After moving back into the block, I then had to pack up and move into a new block. Since it took 2 weeks to get internet access back each time I moved, this was a huge pain. I had a shouting match over the phone with an AOL customer service rep who said I was lying and then didn't apologise when they discovered I was right. AOL lost my custom that day.

25) My DVD collection outgrew my room.

Very well done, you guys!

Memories of 2006

1.   Nintendo’s Wii looked like fun, if you could find one.

2.   Two famous men died in the week after Christmas: Gerald Ford, mostly remembered as a good person, and Saddam Hussein, one of the great monsters of our time. Be a good person, if you can….


3.   George W. Bush announced the CIA made use of detention centers around the world that were outside American jurisdiction, a pragmatic practice of decades’ standing. Shocked that a Commander in Chief would break confidentiality, the CIA collectively face-palmed, and from then on the relationship between Mr. Bush and the rank and file of the CIA was extremely strained.


4.   A stampede during the “stone the devil” rite in Mecca killed almost 400 people. “Guess I won,” commented the devil.

5.   Disney, which if you read the fine print now owns your very soul, acquired Pixar.

6.   David Bowie performed onstage for the last time in the UK.

7.   Twilight was published; it would go on to sell 100 million copies to teenage girls who pretended to hate it each of the ten times they read it.

8.   WikiLeaks was launched. (With more inside help than “they” want you to know….)

9.   New-ish songs I liked that year included The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance; When You Were Young, by The Killers; Crazy, by Gnarls Barkley; Knights of Cydonia, by Muse; Dani California, by RHCP. I’d list popular songs I didn’t like, but we’d be here through tomorrow.

10.   My eventual husband met this Russian named Andrei, and suddenly it was like Andrei was everywhere in our lives in 2006. Andrei was a combination of charming and somehow insecurely boy-ish, with this unruly blond hair and a ready grin, and women were all over him despite the fact he had a jaw tooth capped with a steel crown, the fruit of Soviet-era dentistry. At first I enjoyed hearing Andrei’s stories of growing up in Leningrad during the ‘70s and ‘80s, and how he learned English because his mother bought a black market antenna so he could watch Sesame Street broadcasts from Finland, but I got tired of him always being around. Then he started trying to work his magic on me. Thing is, I learned Andrei would befriend a man and then go after his wife or girlfriend, that was his thing, and he did this with a few couples I knew, and considering how my future husband befriended him was downright cruel in this case, and I never told him how much uncool behavior Andrei used to try to pull behind his back.


11.   Fresh from a broken engagement out of the country, my best friend from high school moved in with me for most of the year to the house I inherited from my grandparents, and got us a black lab puppy named Chocolate. Such good times we had.


12.   It was locally called “The Year Without A Winter” because we had no snow and basically few to no temperatures below freezing, just a long pre-spring that saw April flowers bloom in January.

13.   Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahoney gave my close friend Clare’s dad a humanitarian award for his work among the poor in East Los Angeles, and she went to see him get this at a presentation dinner, and asked if I’d go with her. I declined, cited responsibilities at home, and she said, “That’s OK but will you call and tell my Dad congratulations? It’d mean a lot to him to hear from you. He really loves you, you know.”

I said I would, which was a lie, I had no intentions of doing this, then when I didn’t, she called me that night and asked me would I tell her dad congratulations NOW, and I said I would, then pretended the call got dropped, which I was aware was sheer rudeness and I figured she’d come home so mad at me that it’d be the end of our friendship, but she walked up and hugged me and said she was sorry for asking, which was the last reaction I’d expected.

She’d concluded talking to her dad brought up sad memories about loss, and I let her think that, but the truth was no matter how much I loved Clare, I pathologically disliked her father more than any person I knew in the entire world, and the very idea of talking to him made me sick.

14.   I went on a week-long Caribbean cruise with my college roommate, and late one night she brought a guy back to our room, to her bed, and…. awkward. She could have at least given me enough warning to get dressed and sexile myself.

15.   In movies, I thought Brokeback Mountain was the lamest film ever proclaimed a cultural masterpiece. I did like Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto, and thought The Prestige was fun. The Last King of Scotland less so. Pan’s Labyrinth was a masterpiece of  the imagination, and The Painted Veill an underappreciated classic. Clint Eastwood’s twin films about WWII in the Pacific were cornerstone achievements in his long career.

16.   I bought a two-story scale lighthouse for my side yard. You could climb up into it, it had working lights and a foghorn, and it lasted into the 2010s, when, ironically, a storm finally did it in.

17.   I talked almost every day to my sixteen-year-old maternal cousin Celia, and made plans to help her move to the US when she was eighteen, not knowing that Celia was a sociopath who was supremely skilled in both manipulation and concealing the horrible person she was. She wrapped me around her finger and in the future used me in almost every way you can take advantage of someone’s love. She even stabbed me in 2014, but in 2006 I thought she was the little sister I never had.


18.   My friend in Austin and I e-collaborated on a screenplay for a Poe-themed zombie flick called Cannibelle Lee. It wasn’t bad!

19.    I ended 2006 as an Amazon Top 300 reviewer. Sometimes my reviews said more than they seemed to on the surface, a curious theme in my life.

20.   I took my cousin Dana’s tweenage daughter and her friend to a Cheetah Girls’ concert. It was pre-fab lip-syncing Disney style, but the girls loved it.

21.   NPR had a contest asking listeners to describe the voices of four celebrities, Morgan Freeman, Marilyn Monroe, Truman Capote, and Patsy Cline, and my submission got mentioned on-air. I said: “Morgan Freeman's incomparably rich voice sounds like fine old leather; Marilyn Monroe sounds to me like pink cotton candy on a hot summer night; The sound of Truman Capote puts me in mind of boiling coffee at three AM; And the voice of Patsy Cline sounds smooth as clear, flowing water.”

22.   Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, which I discovered in 2006, was a work that greatly influenced my own writing, and still does. Her motto was “ATM” which meant “Always Trust Magic.” She put her phone number in one of her books and if you texted her “hi!” she’d text you back “hi!” I loved Amy. She was a wonderful person. She’s gone now.

23.   My eventual husband and I were at an entertainment district by the river on the last night of March when some men started firing pistols above the crowd, and it sounded like light bulbs popping. I’m proud I reacted as trained and pulled him down behind a concrete planter with me and got low while people screamed, people ran, people got knocked down, there were no cops anywhere, and it was pandemonium for several minutes. When arrested the men claimed it was a prank.

24.   We went to the Hyatt in Chicago for Valentine; Day, a tradition we continued til we had kids.

25.    Though I was just twenty-seven, for the first time in my life I felt other than very young when I noticed I looked down on younger women who went around in low riders showing whale tails and tramp stamps, which I thought was a lame fashion trend of 2006 (that alas hung around).



I keep doing these year list things, don't I? Dear goodness, I think I have a problem.

1981:
1. I was 10 and in 4th/5th grade.  I think the following year I had to move to a different school just a couple miles away.
2. Several monster hits on the radio if not at the top of the charts yet, quickly moving in that direction.  Like BETTE DAVIS EYES, CENTERFOLD, ENDLESS LOVE, PHYSICAL, ARTHUR'S THEME.
3. Some popular albums included the awesome ESCAPE- Journey, HIGH AND DRY- Def Leppard, TATTOO YOU- Rolling Stones, MOVING PICTURES- Rush, FACE VALUE- Phil Collins, BELLA DONNA- Stevie Nicks, GHOST IN THE MACHINE- Police, BEAUTY AND THE BEAT- Go-Gos, PARADISE THEATER- Styx, FREEZE FRAME, J. Geils Band, DIARY OF A MADMAN- Ozzy Osbourne, 4- Foreigner.
4. The arcade scene was really starting to explode-- DONKEY KONG, FROGGER, SCRAMBLE, SUPER COBRA, MOUSE TRAP, VENTURE, ASTRO BLASTER, QIX, MS. PAC-MAN, GALAGA, LOCK 'N CHASE and many others would resonate beeps, boops, and pew-pews across the world.
5. My mom moved out of the house and to various apartments over the next couple years.  My dad and stepmom moved back in.  Me and my sisters stayed with them.
6. We got our first ATARI 2600/VCS that year around Christmas time.  We started to tire of the pack-in game COMBAT so we purchased ADVENTURE and ASTEROIDS shortly after and were very happy.
7. Some TV debuts: GREATEST AMERICAN HERO, HILL STREET BLUES, DYNASTY, GIMME A BREAK, FALCON CREST, THE FALL GUY, SIMON & SIMON, CAGNEY & LACEY, HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT, SMURFS, SPIDER-MAN/AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS, DANGER MOUSE, SCTV, ELVIRA'S MOVIE MACABRE, LOVE, SYDNEY.
8. REDS was a big box-office draw but lasted FOREVER.  It required two VHS tapes when renting!  Also, Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn win Oscars for ON GOLDEN POND.  Other movies: RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, PORKY'S, EVIL DEAD, THE HOWLING, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, ARTHUR, ROAD WARRIOR, HALLOWEEN II, HEAVY METAL, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, CHARIOTS OF FIRE, EXCALIBUR, TIME BANDITS, SCANNERS, GHOST STORY
9. Reagan got shot by some nutso who wanted to impress Jodie Foster.  Despite taking a bullet in the chest Reagan survives!
10. Some more flicks jumping on the slasher craze: MY BLOODY VALENTINE, GRADUATION DAY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME, MADMAN, EYES OF A STRANGER, THE BURNING, THE PROWLER, FRIDAY THE 13TH PART II and also monster movies THE BOOGENS and WOLFEN.
11. Pope John Paull II is shot in Vatican City but survives.
12. British serial killer The Yorkshire Ripper (Peter Sutcliffe) is caught.
13. Much-watched episode of GENERAL HOSPITAL featuring the characters Luke and Laura marrying airs.
14. Drug dealer friends of porn actor John Holmes (the Wonderland gang) are murdered in L.A.
15. Sandra Day O'Connor is the first woman inducted to the Supreme Court.
16. Israel bombs Beirut.
17. MTV debuts!  Its first video is VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR by The Buggles.
18. Iran's president and PM are killed by a terrorist bomb.
19. The CIA first recruits Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
20. Muhammad Ali's last fight ends in a loss to Trevor Berbick.
21. First American test-tube baby, Elizabeth Jordan Carr.
22. A strange phenom starts in Portland OR when a highly difficult and near-hypnotic arcade game POLYBIUS is said to be released, which the government was said to have created for data-collecting purposes.  No evidence has ever surfaced of this game and it is an urban legend.
23. Other arcade games I remember: KICK, OMEGA RACE, SOLAR FOX, SATAN'S HOLLOW, FANTASY
24. Another hit song that peaked in 1981 (and became a jock jam):
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeTgx_pj6m8#)
25. 2 For the state of California!  Dodgers and Raiders win their sports' championships.

1968
I saw 2001 at a drive in. My brother Glenn spilled a soda pop in the rear speaker of the car.

I was in a foster home and a teenager who was there had a collection of Famous Monsters magazines. I fell in love.

Memories of 2000

1.   The year 2000 began with such giddy optimism I stayed up late watching celebrations, sometimes wearing a pair of glasses that said 2000, with the ‘00s being eyeholes, and then answered a bunch of time capsule questions I’d written myself back on January 1, 1990. Finally I wrote some questions to be answered on 1-1-10. We’d made it to the new millennium, and things would be wonderful, wouldn’t they?

2.   While home on spring break I added more calligraphy to my bedroom ceiling with Byron’s: “If I should meet thee after long years/ How shall I greet thee/ With silence and tears.” Later I painted over it but by 2000 my ceiling was speckled with quotes.

3.   In 2000 I saw Gladiator, The Virgin Suicides, and American Beauty almost back to back at a multiplex. The Virgin Suicides has a moody soundtrack, by the way, perfect for when your spirit sinks with the amethyst clouds of inner gloaming.

4.   I lost my grandpa to lung cancer, and was the last person from the family he let see him that spring, a few months before the end, since he was a vain, good-looking man who did not want us to remember him as he was at the end. He said, “Be young and live your life, and don’t let what’s happening to me take away the good days you got coming to you, Ellie-Bean.” (His nickname for me, which I heard so often growing up it seemed eternal, but no one calls me that now.) Right before Grandpa’s funeral my often caustic lawyer aunt told me the black dress I was wearing was for someone “trying to look like a babe.” She was wrong, but I still changed. Later she told her daughter she was trying to make me mad to help me not be sad, but she had grudges against me and I think she was just being cruel. When I first heard Grandpa was dying, I didn’t imagine anything in 2000 would hurt more, but a worse loss was coming.

5.   In this year I first read a Harry Potter book, but it was my serial reads of American Psycho that really captivated me in 2000.

6.   A Concorde crashed, ending a perfect safety record. I had a friend in Austin who flew on a Concorde years before and he said you could look out and see the curve of the planet, so I always wondered why British Airways couldn’t have just donated seats to the leaders of the Flat Earth Society, to shut them up.


7.   NYPD officers were acquitted in the shooting of Amadou Diallo. Al Sharpton campaigned against rioting in the wake of the verdict, and things mostly stayed quiet, but my university, far from New York, imposed a curfew that night after a tip to police claimed someone was going to set fire to the library.


8.   My roommate’s brother, who I’d latched onto three years earlier in my pathetic quest for sibling figures (before I came to have more complicated feelings for him) was mint-condition divorced in 2000 after five years of wedlock, and at the apartment alone with me when his sister was out, he invited me to join him in his first roll in the sheets as a free man. Well, I didn’t, but I’d be lying if I said a little bitty corner of my brain did not think about the offer.

9.   I know it was petty to exult in a foe’s embarrassment, but one evening this know-it-all I disliked was loudly telling everyone Walt Disney was on acid when he made Fantasia, and I brought up the fact Fantasia came out in 1940, and LSD wasn’t around until 1943, then said to her, “Maybe you’re thinking of Lady and the Tramp?” Sorry, it was a fun moment.

10.   I seemed to be doing a lot of designated driving for drunk friends that year, and twice my back seat suffered for it. In high school my boyfriend told me drunk girls were either interesting or tedious, and I think I saw a lot more of the second part of that he did, because none seemed that interesting wasted and staggering.


11.   If you lived in Florida, you had to wonder if your chad was hanging. Nobody wanted his chad to hang. It was embarrassing.

12.   In the news, the last new Peanuts cartoon appeared in print; the Olympics were in Sydney; shark attacks made headlines like it was the post-Jaws ‘70s; Cats closed on Broadway; Elian went back to Cuba; new PS2s flew off the shelves; and Bill Gates stepped down at Microsoft. Fact: there was zero other news the entire year.


13.   I went home for Thanksgiving and my dad offered money to charity if I’d ditch vegetarianism and eat turkey. I said no. That same weekend I was walking by a 2,000 year old Hopewell mound and encountered some LDS people who believed Book of Mormon events took place in the area, and that the mound was a misidentified sacred relic from those times.

14.   I was offered a promotion to Rotterdam that paid a lot more, but I decided to stay in college. Right choice? The person who took the job ended up going a lot farther career-wise than I did, but then again she also got hit by a train under suspicious circumstances.

15.   In 2000 eyebrow sculpting went way too far, with people somehow thinking Christina Aguilera’s tadpole ’brows were stylish. Brazilian waxes also started replacing ‘90s landing strips about this time too, and I guess there was a “new century/new look” zeitgeist, because women in 2000 seemed to be looking for new ways to change everything about their appearance, openly and privately.

16.   Among new TV shows, Malcolm in the Middle was great, everyone was unified in a desire to stone the host of The Weakest Link, but Survivor was such a sensation that its finale made newspaper headlines like a real world event. My hometown paper’s front page the day after the winner was revealed screamed THE SURVIVOR IS RICH!!!! A simpler time, indeed.

17.   OK, there was other news, like the USS Cole being attacked in Yemen; the Pope going to Israel to pray for Holocaust victims; Mad Cow disease being seen as a threat; AOL merging with Time-Warner; Hillary Clinton going to the Senate; India’s population passing a billion; Venus Williams winning singles titles at Wimbledon and the US Open; and the orbiting ISS getting its first crews, unless conspiracy theorists are right about it being faked on a Hollywood set.

18.   I signed up to be a bone marrow donor. Stayed tuned to find out how that led to me having a permanent dimple on my hip.

19.   A suicidal woman jumped off the tallest building in my home town, and the fact her leap left her in three pieces was talked about on local news during the six ‘o clock dinner hour.

20.   When David Letterman took a leave for heart surgery, rumors that Johnny Carson would be a guest host proved unfounded, but at least John McEnroe sat in for Letterman one night.

21.   Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP was heard everywhere seemingly all the time. We embraced it because there was no escaping it.

22.   My roommate of three years moved out to live with her fiancé, and I dwelled alone for the first time in my life. I mostly liked it, but for weeks I left closet doors pushed open when I went anyplace, lest some perv be hiding in one.

23.   I wrote a paper in a 100-level debate class that argued terrorists should be treated as criminals along the lines of the British model, rather than as POWs, as was US policy. In 2021, during exit interviews on my job, I was asked to explain why I wrote that in the paper. Talk about the long-ago past coming back at you…

24.   We spent weeks not knowing who the next President would be. I still think Al Gore probably won Florida unless a lot of Miami-area Jews suddenly turned into Pat Buchanan fans, but everyone’s got an opinion there on what is now a footnote in history. On the bright side, at least Gore was left with time to pursue the ravenous ManBearPig.

25.   OK, can’t put it off any longer. The man I loved more than I have ever loved any man died, and for months I’d wake up sobbing, realizing even sleep wasn’t an escape. I barely spoke for the first weeks, I pulled back from everything around me, my weight fell to 113 pounds, and the stress of the months that followed showed up in my nails and hair for the next year. I was away at college but going home only amplified things, and I don’t know who had it worse, me as an agnostic believing he had probably ceased to exist, or his Catholic family, terrified he was conscious but in Hell for dying out of Grace: a cruel concept.

His dad used to call me day or night asking me to come over to his house to help him deal with the tragedy of his only son dying, and it was like the blind leading the blind since I wasn’t in a position to help anyone, including myself. Sometimes we’d sit there for hours and neither of us would say a word, just stare into space, barely noticing the sun had set. I’d known his son since I was thirteen, and his dad was so young when he was born he and his son were closer in age than a lot of brothers. I kept expecting him to start drinking and using again but he didn’t. Still, what a mess.

There was no light anywhere in life then, and some things you never quite escape, since in 2015 I had a weeks'-long grief-recursion over his death, as I found out such things are called. (Sylvia Plath thought of it in her own life as the re-descent of a bell jar). I had children by then, I had a husband I loved, my life was in a very different place, I had long been happy, but one day I woke up and it was like the pain was all new again, a decade and a half of healing swept away.

Some events are dividing lines between before and after, and that loss in 2000 was one.

Oy  :buggedout: :wink:

2003:
1. I'd only rented 2 apartments in my life, and this was the year I got my second.  It was okay-- good location with a store and Papa Murphy's next door, bar down the street, Wendy's close by (took full advantage of 2 for $3 double cheeseburgers).  Landlord at the time was a friend of my friend.  Nice old guy but heavy drinker.
2. I was unemployed-- trying in vain to find work for a year in a terrible job market.  During a few months or so in my new digs I ran out of money and had to borrow probably a few hundred from my folks (they owed me a LOT more than that years later) to pay the rent.
3. Eventually went to a temp office and got a couple menial labor jobs-- one for a few days, one for a few months.  But that led to a more steady job working at a Nike warehouse.  Learned lots of skills there, including getting a forklift license.
4. Still was in pretty decent shape thru calisthenics.  Had an old turntable in the living room to play all my collected 45s over the years and would plop on disco records to work out to!
5. My bed had a really weak frame and it buckled.  I continued to sleep on it and was eventually sleeping at a noticeable angle.  FINALLY got a new one a few years later.
6. The US invades Iraq.  Saddam's rule ends with the siege of Baghdad.
7. The Human Genome Project is completed.
8. My Portland Trailblazers nearly became the first NBA team to come all the way back from a 3-0 deficit to win a playoff series.  Playing Dirk Nowitzki and the Mavs, it looked hopeless.  But there was plenty of talent on our roster, and the sharpshooting Nick Van Exel and rising star Zach Randolph helped carry the team.  Perhaps more memorable even than the comeback was head coach Maurice Cheeks helping out the nervous girl who was trying to deliver the anthem:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sin9M9boANo#)
9. Eerily reminiscent of the Challenger explosion 17 years prior, the shuttle Columbia disintegrates over Texas upon re-entry.  All 7 astronauts die.
10. US troops in Saudi Arabia withdraw.
11. Dewey is the first cloned deer.  Prometea is the first cloned horse.
12. The bloody Second Congo War ends via peace treaty.
13. A major blackout knocks out power through much of the NE U.S. and parts of Canada.
14. Mars makes its closest approach to Earth in 60,000 years.
15. The US Army captures Saddam Hussein in Ad-Dawr.  Head of US Occupation of Iraq Paul Bremer's statement begins with: "We got him."
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d24ZpzoZkQE#)
16. An earthquake in Iran kills several tens of thousands.
17. Some famous deaths: Maurice Gibb, Richard Crenna, Nell Carter, Fred Rogers, Johnny Paycheck, Edwin Starr, Nina Simone, Dave DeBusschere, Robert Stack, June Carter Cash, Gregory Peck, Hume Cronyn, Leon Uris, Katharine Hepburn, Buddy Hackett, Herbie Mann, Barry White, Buddy Ebsen, John Schlesinger, Bob Hope, Gregory Hines, Charles Bronson, Warren Zevon, John Ritter, Johnny Cash, Sheb Wooley, Gordon Jump, Elia Kazan, Robert Palmer, Road Warrior Hawk, Jack Elam, Rod Roddy, Bobby Hatfield (Righteous Brothers), Art Carney, Don Gibson, Warren Spahn, David Hemmings, Hope Lange, Alan Bates, Earl Hindman (unseen neighbor on HOME IMPROVEMENT)
18. Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay are killed by US forces.
19. Hit films: THE LORD OF THE RINGS: RETURN OF THE KING, FINDING NEMO, BRUCE ALMIGHTY, TERMINATOR 3, BAD BOYS II, THE PIANIST, MYSTIC RIVER, MONSTER, COLD MOUNTAIN, LOST IN TRANSLATION, A MIGHTY WIND, DAREDEVIL, THE HUNTED (filmed near me!), WILLARD, HOLES, 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS, THE TRIPLETS OF BELLVILLE, 28 DAYS LATER, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, SEABISCUIT, SCHOOL OF ROCK, BAD SANTA, HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG, FREDDY VS. JASON, KILL BILL, MATRIX REVOLUTIONS and the awful THE ROOM, BOAT TRIP, KANGAROO JACK, GIGLI, CAT IN THE HAT, HOUSE OF THE DEAD, and LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER: CRADLE OF LIFE
20. Actually decent songs from 2003: BRING ME TO LIFE- Evanescence, STACEY'S MOM- Fountains Of Wayne, SEVEN NATION ARMY- White Stripes, and..
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWgvGjAhvIw#)
21. Watched the Super Bowl at my friend's house.  Tampa Bay won their first Super Bowl over the Raiders-- the first matchup of a #1 offense vs. a #1 defense.  I called it the "Pirate Bowl".  It was also known as The Gruden Bowl due to John Gruden-- a former Raiders coach-- now coaching the Bucs.
22. The Florida Marlins won their 2nd World Series, over the Yankees.  I remember the Cubs being up 3-1 in the NL Championship series and p**sing it away.  Cub fans would have to wait another 13 years for a title.
23. I think I went to see my brother while he was going to college near Chico.  Hated his girlfriend; glad they split up shortly after.
24. My New Jersey Devils won their 3rd Stanley Cup!  A 7-game thriller over the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.  Goaltender Martin Brodeur (I have a poster of him in my bedroom saying DEUR DIE) won the last game 3-0.
25. Steve Kerr and David Robinson's last NBA year as players.  Jason Kidd and the Nets made back to back finals trips but didn't win this one either.  MVP Tim Duncan and the Spurs win in 6.

"He tried to kill me with a............" oh, never mind  :wink:

1988.

1) The Piper Alpha disaster struck. Everyone in Scotland knew someone who lost someone it seemed.
2) The bombing of flight 103 and the crash of its wreckage into Locharbie. I remember exactly how I heard about it. I was on a hillwalking trip to Arran with my school. My favourite art teacher, Mr McNure came into the boy's room and told us about it. These two along with Dunblane would be the biggest disasters to hit Scotland so far in my lifetime, in terms of the cost of lives. The sea was rough when we tried to come home at the end of the week and we ended up spending 8 hours on a ferry circling around Ardrossan harbour waiting for the conditions to be right for it to dock.
3) Me and a friend went on a camping trip to the isle of Arran with no adults. We walked from Brodick to Corrie and camped just up from a landmark called the Cat Stone. I regularly visited the area going hillwalking in the winter and canoeing in the summer.
4) I got to choose the subjects I would study at school for the next two years. I took history but refused to do Modern Studies because I hated the teacher that took that class, even though she thought highly of me and I got high marks in the subject. I then got her as my history teacher. The subjects we get taught in history turned out to be the boring parts in between interesting events (like the UK between WW1 and WW2, or Britain from the end of the Napoleonic War through to the Great Exhibition which failed to mention anything about the empire at the time, or any of the wars we were involved in).
5) I got my first job. I delivered milk, getting up at 4 am, worked until 8 am, and then going to school. Afterwards, I'd be collecting money until 9 or 10 at night. Combined with my alcoholic next-door neighbours having a habit of falling asleep with their music blaring out at full volume all night long, this left me frequently tired to the point where I'd see red polka dot spots floating in front of my eyes and fall asleep in class. Pretty sure this influenced my final grades and not in a good way.
6) I started studying Shakespeare and came to the conclusion that he was very overrated.
7) I bought my first vinyl album with Guns N' Roses 'Appetite For Destruction', then followed it up with Iron Maidens 'Number of the Beast' and 'Powerslave'.
8) I also started my VHS collection. The first one I bought was 'Creepshow'. Unlike my albums, I don't have any of my old VHS tapes today alas.
9) Having my own money meant I could go out independently for the first time. I'd regularly go shopping in Glasgow with my circle of friends.
10) You know when you get a year in your childhood when the friends you had were the best ones you ever had in your life and one that just really stands out for you? This was one of 3 such years for me.
11) I went to Games Day for the first time. It was held in Donington. Me and a friend, William Cumming travelled down from Glasgow on an overnight bus to attend.  Years later I'd find child porn on his computer and get him arrested.
12) Maggie Thatcher became the longest-serving PM. This was not a source of celebration where I lived as her policies had seen the area go from almost 100% employment to being an unemployment black spot, a state it remains in to this day.
13) The prince of Wales narrowly avoids death in an avalanche.
14) Two soldiers are beaten to death when they make a wrong turn and end up at the funeral of an IRA member by accident. A lot of soldiers died this year in IRA attacks, mostly funded by donations from the US. The allowing of fundraising for terrorist organisations is a bone of contention in relations between the two nations but will continue until the September the 11th attacks.
15) The Poll Tax is announced. It came in force in Scotland a year before it did in England & Wales. A protest against it was the first political rally I attended. The introduction of the Poll Tax would lead to the end of Thatcher's time in office.
16) Warnings of an imminent recession about to strike the world start coming from economists.
17) Roy Kinnear dies after falling off a horse during the filming of a follow-up to The Three Muskateers.
18) Civilian ownership of semi-automatic weapons by private citizens is banned (although the law doesn't come into effect until Jan of 1989), following the Hungerford Massacre where Michael Ryan shot 16 people the previous year.
19) A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking is published.
20) Kenneth Williams of Carry On... fame dies.
21) Perestroika marks the end for the Soviet Union. It will collapse shortly after.
22) The SAS guns down 3 members of the IRA planning a bombing campaign. The IRA would complain this was unfair, but despite years of court cases, no one really listened to them until the families of the dead took the case to the European Court of Human Rights who ruled against the UK. The government of the day said they would ignore the judgement and refuse to pay the fines. This would be a rare case of me agreeing with John Major (Maggie Thatchers replacement).
23) Oliver North becomes world-famous leading to Ronald Reagan being unable to remember anything.
24) The Soviet Union announces it is withdrawing from Afghanistan. The withdrawal took place shortly after the release of Rambo 3 leading to many a wry comment during reviews.
25) Scientists start to warn of the climate change brought on by global warming. To this day idiots continue to believe this just means the planet getting warmer. Climate change would have been a better name, but they'd have still found ways to pretend it isn't happening.

You mentioned the depressing saga of the IRA in the eighties, and you know what surprised me on my most recent trip to Ireland is how the young generation in the Republic are beginning to idolize the IRA (again?) after about a generation of it being on the outs amid a stronger economy and a sense it failed after doing evil things. I think right now economic conditions among some classes in Ireland, combined with some deep resentment of immigration, is making the idea of asserting some form of dominance attractive, and that's scary. In fact, I have a cousin over there I really do not like who has a group of friends (I resist calling it what it is...a gang) who openly wear '70s and '80s IRA tattoos and symbols and come right out and advocate the group's tired old rhetoric, and that's dismal and scary. I don't think the Republic will ever quite be what Northern Ireland has been, but the fantasy brewing there about the IRA being freedom fighters sticking up for the way the nation should be....that's like watching neo-Nazism come back.

Sadly, Brexit has created the conditions where rather than just being romanticised, the IRA or something like it could arise again.

I started mine: a heads up as some of these memories are not good ones and I rarely if ever talk about them but it helps to at least write them down. Thank you, Brother Russell.  :smile:


1980s

The 1980s were ten years of change for me, most good, some OK and a few devastating to me personally.

1980: My birth country’s devastating civil war came to an end, Robert Mugabe became the Prime Monster (no spelling mistake) and the once proud country of Rhodesia started a slow but steady decline into the chaos ridden, s**t filled hovel it is today, known as Zimbabwe.

1980: My first year of high school: I went to an English Public School in my home town of Gwelo (now Gweru). This is why people who don’t know me think I’m British if they hear me talk and the time at that school was both a good and bad time: bad in that I was and remain an unusual person (which some people don’t like but others embrace) and good because of the education I received. Too much education, says I.

1980: In school, I was usually called on to operate a 16mm projector as I was shown how to use one at church of all places: I remember getting a laugh from my classmates when I screened a film about the building of Kariba Dam and I showed it in reverse for a few seconds: the scene shown was a huge boulder rolling down a hill.

1980: On holiday in South Africa, I was almost abducted by a pedophile posing as a school inspector at a holiday games area until Dad intervened almost immediately: this is not something I talk about a lot if ever. This dumb ass was lucky that Dad did not lay hands on him because he would have killed the “inspector”. I still see that figure all in black in my nightmares sometimes. I was twelve years old when this happened and it led me not to trust anyone easily ever again and if people I know betray that trust, they are dead to me.

1980: That same year, I was sexually abused by a female member of my family: I have never spoken about that to anyone, even my parents.

1981: I fell in love with Lady Diana Spencer and remain so to this day: I am a blood donor and an organ donor because of her. I still see this gorgeous person in a black evening gown with her smile, her blonde hair glistening in the lights of the cameras and buildings, I still remember swallowing hard and forgetting to breathe for a few minutes until my lungs said “Er, Trevor? We need to speak.”

1981: I came close to killing someone at high school: the school bully who wound up in hospital after bragging to his friends that “he would sort this nerdy guy out” and I nearly kicked him to death. I only stopped kicking him after he quit moving and his shocked friends pulled me off him: I was told later that I was incoherent with rage and that I almost assaulted a teacher which would have gotten me expelled. The scary thing about this is after I did what I did, I went home, did my homework, ate, bathed and went to sleep.

1982: After seeing Raiders of The Lost Ark, I started to believe that a career in movies could be possible for me. I also started to have an interest in the Oscars that year and was really p**sed when John Williams didn’t win an Oscar for Raiders.

1982: My sports house at school won the inter-house sports for the first time in forty years: I will never forget that day when my house – MacDonald – realized that if we just pushed ourselves a little harder, we could win and then the unthinkable happened: we won.

1982: I saw First Blood in my local cinema and remember getting seriously angry when a veteran was treated so badly: my father was a veteran and he was treated well. Then I read David Morrell’s book and went “Whoa”.

1983: I was sent to boarding school in South Africa for a year where I was badly abused by other students as “I was different and not like them at all.” Another dark period in my life which I almost never talk about: that year was terrible but at least the music was nice. I am relieved to say three of my abusers died: one of them in a gruesome car accident where this person was ejected from the car after the initial crash and was crushed by it.

1984: After escaping from that horrible school, I found myself back in my hometown and back at my old school: buried myself in work and managed to pass my exams and helped my house win the interhouse quiz: I still remember walking home from school that night and the night was cold and windy: the song Ghost Town was playing in my memory.

2008:
1. Got my current job working for the Veterans Hospital (VA) in Portland.  Things were more than a bit overwhelming for me as I'd never worked in a building with so many floors!  Once I got used to things it was far more relaxed than my last job, that I left in February-- pulling orders at a beverage warehouse on Swan Island.  We didn't have time to take much of breaks or lunches due to how fast we were expected to finish our orders so we had to put snacks on a little basket on our electric pallet jacks and race to complete our orders.  Absolutely brutal.  Much better with this job.  The bus got me near it quickly but if I didn't want to wait for another connection I had to walk up a VERY steep hill to get there.  I was fit enough to do it but it was still exhausting.  Not gonna do that anymore.
2. Still at my apartment, and I had bought a pull-out futon couch for the guest bedroom.  I think this was the year I bought my NEO GEO arcade machine, maybe also my DIG DUG.  I had bought my PHOENIX a year or two prior.  My brother's girlfriend came over and was super-impressed!
3. Cyclone Nargis devastates Nyanmar, killing over 100,000.
4. A fire at Universal Studios Hollywood burns tons of recording material made from over 7 decades.
5. 11 climbers die on K2 (the 2nd highest mountain on Earth).
6. The 2008 Smmer Olympics are in Beijing.  Usian Bolt sets a record in the 100M.
7. The Dow Jones plummets to its largest single day loss in history after bankruptcies of Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual (later Chase).
8. President Bush creates a 700 billion treasury fund to purchase failing bank assets.
9. Spotify is launched.
10. Bitcoin is invented.
11. Barack Hussein Obama is the first black person to be elected President of the United States.
12. Israel invades the Gaza Strip after Hamas fired rockets into Israel territory.
13. Famous deaths: Sir Edmund Hillary, Suzanne Pleshette, Heath Ledger, Suharto (Indonesian President), Roy Scheider, Kon Ichikawa, William F. Buckley, Jeff Healey, Anthony Minghella, Paul Scofield, Richard Widmark, Charlton Heston, Eddy Arnold, John Phillip Law, Sydney Pollack, Harvey Korman, Yves Saint Laurent, Bo Diddley, Mel Ferrer, Tim Russert, Stan Winston, George Carlin, Bernie Mac, Isaac Hayes, Don Lafontaine, Bill Melendez, Paul Newman, Earl Palmer, Edie Adams, Studs Terkel, Michael Crichton, Yma Sumac, Paul Benedict, Beverly Garland, Bettie Page, Robert Mulligan, Harold Pinter, Eartha Kitt.
14. THE DARK KNIGHT.  What a great film!  Saw this by myself at the Pioneer Plaza theater downtown.
 Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker was unbelievable.  He got a posthumous Oscar the following year, after his sudden death from accidental medication overdose.  One of my favorite scenes:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jane6C4rIwc#)
15. Rain storms delay 2 games of the World Series between the Phillies and Rays (Philadelphia wins the series in 5 games).
16. I remember cleaning the T-51 building at work while the Celtics were BLOWING OUT the Lakers in game 6 of the Finals.  I was quite happy.  I hate the Lakers.
17. Other big films of 2008: Cloverfield, Twilight, Mamma Mia!, Pineapple Express, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (ugh), Wall E, Sex And The City, Zach And Miri Make A Porno, Tropic Thunder, In Brouges, Choke, Saw V
18. WOW!!!  The New England Patriots had equaled the Miami Dolphins' feat of a PERFECT season at 16-0.  They got all the way to the Super Bowl against the New York Giants.. and LOST??!!  Are you kidding me??  Not the only time Eli Manning and the Giants would get the better of the Patriots...
19. The Detroit Red Wings beat the Pittsburgh Penguins in the Stanley Cup 4 games to 2.  I remember not wanting either team in it, so I didn't pay much attention.
20. I remember the Western Conference in the NBA being very competitive in 2007-08; Golden State had 48 wins and still didn't make the playoffs!  My Trail Blazers were a mere .500 and their #1 pick in the 2007 draft, Greg Oden (a colossal bust) didn't even play this year.
21. Any good song debuts of 2008?  I'm Yours- Jason Mraz, Use Somebody- Kings Of Leon.  Other hits (meh): I Kissed A Girl- Katy Perry, Viva La Vida- Coldplay, Single Ladies- Beyonce, So What- Pink
22. I remember going to a tavern in Portland with my mom to watch the NFL season opener between my Bills and her Seahawks.  I loved it-- we beat the pants off them!  She was bummed.  The season started off well at 5-1.. and then the wheels came COMPLETELY off as the team went on to miss the playoffs at 7-9.  Such a great start for QB Trent Edwards, but he suffered a gruesome injury after the hot start and was never the same.  That marked 8 straight years without playoffs, which would continue well into the next decade..
23. The awesome BREAKING BAD debuts!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m07slv7BP6o#)
24. Other debuts: SONS OF ANARCHY, STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS (animated), TRUE BLOOD, THE MENTALIST, GHOST ADVENTURES, STRANGER THINGS, REAL HOUSEWIVES, CHILDRENS HOSPITAL, BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, BEN 10
25. The Detroit Lions are the first team to go 0-16.  The 2017 Cleveland Browns would match this.

1975
I saw JAWS at the Strand in Paw Paw.
I almost s**t myself.

Memories of 1998

1.   Although it’s not a memory, I understand Google came to exist this year. So did Paris Jackson, iMacs, and Viagra, as advertised by none other than actual user Bob Dole.

2.   Bill Clinton denied having “sexual relations with that woman” and I actually believed him, though mostly on the basis that sooner or later, by probability alone, one of the many sordid allegations made against that wily man HAD to eventually be untrue. It became trendy for a while to debate the meaning of “sexual relations” as he defined it, and if he’d have said he didn’t have “sex” with Monica Lewinsky, I’d have agreed with him, but “sexual relations” can cover a lot and most people agreed he did the deed.

3.   A huge ice storm hit New England, and I was supposed to be there, but my roommate said come fast or stay home, so I stayed home. Ice covered anything it could touch and brought down power lines, closing EVERYTHING and sending many students at my university into makeshift shelters for a week. Sadly people died after trying to get warm by running their cars in iced-in garages.

4.   I hated the design of the new twenty dollar bills, because Andrew Jackson looked like he had a blow-dried ‘70s hairdo. I did however dearly love the things that twenties could buy me.

5.   I remember where I was in ’98 when I saw that in Japan, the Yakuza sponsored a suicide help line.


6.   Quebec sought to break off from Canada, and Americans failed to notice how having a large regional concentration of citizens who don’t speak the majority language can be a threat to national cohesion. But then again the whole theory behind diversity is that differences unite, isn’t it?


7.   Typhoon Babs made a mess in the Pacific that year but was such a wussy name I cringed when I heard it, and told my friends if ever I was going to be in one, I’d want it to have a butchy name, like Hurricane Frau Brunhilde.

8.   Big tobacco got smacked with a record fine, and while giving a speech in Kentucky, President Clinton was confronted with a sign that read: “Keep Your Hands Off Are Tobacco.” That’s tellin’ him!


9.   Someone sawed the head off the Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen!

10.   I went to Mardi Gras. T’was horrid.


11.   Oprah won a nuisance lawsuit brought on by Texas cattle ranchers who accused her of defaming beef. Exactly how it doesn’t defame beef to subject it to digestion I don’t know.

12.   The Good Friday Agreement let the IRA pretend it was being magnanimous, when it was actually on its last legs, but hey, long may the peace continue.


13.   My grandpa surprised me by driving a third of the way across the country to come visit me in college, and I had a great time showing him everything and everyone. We saw Titanic, and promised to see Saving Private Ryan together that summer, which we did, with him staring at the screen during the D-Day sequence and whispering, “I wish I’d been there.” I know he meant it.

14.   Akira Kurosawa, Flo-Jo, Tammy Wynette, Sonny Bono, Frank Sinatra, Bob Kane, Alan Shepherd, and Phil Hartman died. But on the plus side, so did Pol Pot, and James Earl Ray. Alas Linda McCartney passed as well, which launched a mean joke that had Linda meeting John in the afterlife, and him asking her how with all the women he and Paul had to choose from, they ended up with her and Yoko.


15.   My quiet, gentle friend Karen told me that at age fourteen she’d been abducted at her brother’s baseball game, and raped by men in a van, then thrown out along the side of a gravel road in the woods. It was made worse by the fact one of the men told her he’d “see her again” and none were ever caught. It was probably the worst thing I’d ever heard.

16.   After months of its death throes making headlines, Seinfeld finally went off the air in 1998, while Doctor Quinn Medicine Woman’s cancellation that spring was declared as sexist. However nerds worldwide agreed that when Highlander’s last TV episode aired, it was by then a beheading borne of mercy.


17.   Probably the nicest boy I ever knew fell in love with me at college. He followed me everywhere in a purely non-stalky way, and had the good-natured patience of a saint. He was a virgin. He was sweet. He had the brightest blue eyes. We were the same age but he made me feel older than I was. A person can come to love being loved, even when she’s already in love.

18.   In January a police officer back home tried to jump across an opening on an expressway bridge and fell to his death in the river a couple hundred feet below. Multiple agencies spent five months searching the water for him, before finally locating his remains thirty miles downriver.


19.   A pollster with the university newspaper asked what my favorite movie ever was, and without thinking I said LA Confidential, which surprised me, though it is a masterpiece.

20.   My roommate’s high school friend Ronna admitted she’d been stealing from us and basically all her friends, and blamed her drug addiction. In the future, while part of a gypsy gang that traveled the country stealing and getting high, Ronna overdosed near Virginia Beach.


21.   I was supposed to get a free Windows 98 upgrade when I bought a late-generation Windows 95 laptop, but it never happened, so on a goof I sent Bill Gates a pleading email, and was surprised when I got a reply from customer service at Microsoft, promising to send me a Windows 98 disc, which they did.

22.   I called my high school advisor, a cool semi-closeted gay man I got along with even though I was known to give him the occasional hard time, and he made me laugh by telling me right after I graduated there had been a meeting to figure out what went wrong with me and how they could prevent future (ahem “gifted”) students from letting the school down like I did. I reminded him I was still in the upper 5% of the class, and he said yeah but you were in the running for top honors and they were going to put you in their recruitment pamphlets, showing parents  of perspective students that you got accepted into (a particularly good college), and then you bailed on everything. I enjoyed hearing I messed up the school’s formula, because by senior year I hated that pressure-cooker of a place so much I almost told them that on my eighteenth birthday I moved in with a man, which under Archdiocesan morals and ethics would have gotten me gloriously expelled.

23.   The sweet boy I mentioned took me whale watching in Bar Harbor, Maine, and we saw minke whales and dolphins and hundreds of puffins, and what the guide said may have been a mako shark. The whales came maybe forty feet from the boat and didn’t seem spooked at all. They were amazing to see but I found out that day that the decaying krill caught in a whale’s baleen stinks so bad it’ll make your nose run.


24.   My roommate and I lived a floor above a chain-smoking post-middle-age telemarketer named Ray, who would time coming out of his place to match when we were going down the stairs, so he could “accidentally” brush against us and say excuse me. He pulled it so often we called it “getting Raylested” (i.e. molested) but none of us ever really griped at him for it, he was such a loser, and it was almost funny to watch his less than slick machinations, so we got so we’d mess with him, pretending we were coming downstairs to see if he’d come out to intercept us, which often he would. He was a sleaze, sure, but such were the ‘90s that somehow we laughed off the old pervert’s chutzpah and halfway liked the man.

25.   When I left for several months to do a scary job in another country, my dad told me something that made all the difference in the face of my nervousness: “Remember, you’re a predator.” I know how that sounds, but him telling me that registered and the job went well.

1969

I lived in a a catholic orphange. A nun named Sister Nina used to take me to her room after hours so I could watch Night Gallery .

At the same orphanage my group of kids walked along the rail road tracks to town an see the YELLOW SUBMARINE. On the way back we ran trough a forest fire.

Well, I've now done 1994-2000, plus 2006, indulging my parahyperthymesia while going back through my memories, and you know what stuns me most? How recent old times can seem, and how uneventful my life is these days in comparison.

Thanks again for an excuse to time travel, retrorussell....

You're quite welcome!  This was fun.

I wonder if I stringed all these together it could count as an autobiography?  :wink:

^ that no one reads. I mean, c'mon, when somebody says their going to write a story of " my life," no one but you will read it, and family members will pretend they did.

And stalkers.

Memories of 2001

1.   I was atop a replica of the Eiffel Tower when I remarked that terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center tried to make people fall to their deaths, and from up in the air like that I thought of how terrible that’d be. The date was September 9, 2001.

2.   September 11, 2001 left a jagged psychic scar in everyone. A day as shocking as it was horrible.

3.   I graduated from college with degrees in history and biology that have never been much use to me. My last year on campus felt like an anachronism and I was glad to get out.

4.   After graduation I moved into an 1890s house where other post-students lived, and slept next to a bricked-up fireplace that gave me the creeps. I wasn’t a good fit for the place and didn’t stay long. I guess its nickname “Animal House” should have been a clue.

5.   Wikipedia came into existence, and without it we’d never have known Michael Jackson was born in 1906.

6.   At a party during a weekend festival and fireworks show, I met the man I would marry eight and half years and one toddler later.

7.   George W. Bush was sworn in as President, and in my diary I wrote: “God-help-us-one-and-all!”

8.   Having a job that took me away half the time, I couldn’t see having an apartment that sat empty so often, so I asked my dad if I could use my old bedroom when I was in town. Sometimes when I was home I’d watch my cousin Dana’s two-year-old, Tyler, who made me happy, except the time he threw up in my hair at a Bob Evans restaurant.


9.   A friend’s friend died of a heart defect, and when I went with a group to leave things on his grave, someone said we should try to contact his spirit. I declined to take part but was there when a sort of semi-séance was held in a basement. I don’t have reason to think séances can reach the dead, but I do believe in mass hysteria, and I saw something like that happen when all but one of the participants lost their composure and started wailing like they were on a bad acid trip. It was more disturbing than eerie.


10.   A police shooting set off days of rioting in the county where I lived, but failed to make me understand how burning down your own neighborhood punishes police.

11.   That Halloween my friend Rob dressed up as Charles Manson, and tried to talk me into going with him as Sharon Tate. I quit talking to him for a while over that.

12.   I did not have sex in 2001, the only year between 1995 and 2022 in which this was true, though I wouldn’t either for nearly all of 2002. When you have a brain-condition that makes you focus on your past---um, like I’m doing here---moving beyond loss is particularly difficult.

13.   My buddy Mandy, who was also the person who took me to the séance, introduced me to her nurse friend Melody, who was involved with a doctor and had keys to his office. She asked if we wanted to see something sick-cool left over from a previous medical practice decades ago, then showed us this big sealed jar with what I thought were hundreds of tiny fish floating in it, but it was neonatal foreskins in formaldehyde. I thought it was ghastly, while Mandy and Melody found it funny.

14.   Anthrax was mailed to high-profile targets. Five people died.

15.   The disappearance of Chandra Levy burned across tabloids and ruined the career of Congressman Gary Condit, with whom Levy had been involved.

16.   A Labour victory saw Tony Blair stay on as Prime Minister, but his support of George W. Bush led to him being nicknamed “B-liar.”

17.   Samurai Jack and Star Trek Enterprise were my must-see new shows, while except for Shrek and The Fellowship of the Ring, very little appealed to me on the big screen.

18.   PlayStation fans derided the new Xbox as the Jar Jar of consoles…then came Halo.

19.   Music started into a downward spiral in 2001. Some said my tastes were stuck in the ‘90s, but I enjoyed music from many decades, it’s just that new music sucked.

20.   Rudy Giuliani was Time’s Man of the Year, proving 2001 was a long time ago.

21.   AOL was the most popular site on the world wide web, and I never used it. Friends was the most popular show on TV, and I never watched it. Ashanti’s Foolish was voted best song by a new artist, and I never heard it.

22.   Weekly World News jumped the gun and printed cover photos of Timothy McVeigh’s corpse a month before he died, but redeemed itself when it broke the Bat Boy saga.

23.    The first generation of iPod played songs and that was it, but that was enough to thrill us in tech-lite 2001.

24.   The Taliban blew up the Buddhas of Bamiyan, outraging westerners who somehow didn’t seem to mind the stoning of women and other s**t the Taliban got up to.

25.   Science got some rare good press when a team of international researchers revealed a long-anticipated map of the human genome. Among the DNA they’d studied for the project was that of a woman in my city who died in 2001 at age 112. She was born in 1888, meaning she’d lived in three different centuries!

1967- I was running out the backdoor and put my hand threw the glass. I still have a faint scar from it.

It was picture day at school. My Ma had greased back me and my brothers hair. At the bus stop we mussed it all up.

My brother Glenn got kicked in the head by our neighbors horse.

1967... no kindergarten for me...the year I started school in 1st grade at St. Peter's in Point Pleasant Beach, NJ.  I was 5.   :teddyr:

^ I was in kindergarten at the time.

1969- I was in a foster home with my brother Mike and we watched the BLOB on TV.

At the same place me and Mike played FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN in the backyard. Mike always was the Wolfman.

2001.

1). A girl who was cheating on her boyfriend with me just suddenly vanished from everyone's lives. I did enough work to find out she was still alive but didn't really pursue the matter any further. She'd made my life complicated in many, many ways and being rid of her was a relief. Her boyfriend was a muslim student from Bahrain. I wonder if she converted and moved there with him?

2). I aced my test to join the RAF and could choose any role I wanted. I went with an aircraft electrician.

3). It was a very hot summer that year. During my basic training in the south of England, we'd forego sleeping in sheets and just slept on top of our beds. Every morning we were supposed to make up a bed pack by folding our sheets a certain way into a box. I made this up on the first day, picked up some spare sheets that night and then never unfolded my bed pack again. I passed every morning inspection (except one, but even that one I got a freebie. I'd forgotten to padlock my wardrobe. Normally this meant all your uniforms would be scattered over the floor, however, I'd left a packet of sweets inside my wardrobe for just such an emergency and our drill instructor took them as a bribe to leave my kit alone).

4). When I went for my initial interview to join up, the man interviewing me asked where I was from. When I told him the name of the town I'd grown up in, he asked what criminal convictions I had. When I told him none, he informed me his brother-in-law was from the same place and asked if he could shake my hand as I was the only person he'd ever met from there who hadn't done jail time.

5). A woman stopped me in the street in Glasgow and handed me a note. It said she didn't speak any english but was an illegal refugee looking for someone to marry her so she could remain in the country. She promised to be a good wife. I did not take her up on the offer. Five minutes later a beggar recognised me and said he was from the same town as me. He said would I be willing to give him some money to help out an old Stevenston man. I said I didn't recognise him and walked off. I figured he was one of the guys who used to hang about on the street corner just down from us, selling drugs and I wasn't going to waste my time or money trying to help him now.

6). George W visited Tony Blair at Halton while I was in training. This meant we spent 2 days unable to leave our rooms or do any lessons. We were told that if someone tried to shoot him from the building we were in, aircraft were in the sky 24/7 and would blow up the barracks blocks regardless of us being in there or not. I did not feel this was a worthwhile trade. Whenever you made a phone call for several days prior to and after his visit, it would take longer to connect the normal during this time and you could hear a recording device start-up. We could tell the place was crawling with special forces guys because we didn't see any of them.

7). I went to see Motorhead alone. Most of my friends disapproved of me joining the military. To the best of my knowledge, they are still hanging around in the dead-end town they grew up in, doing menial, minimum-wage jobs. I've made no effort to get back in touch with them over the years. I bumped into people I knew (one of whom I am still in touch with and meet up with on a semi-regular basis) from previous concerts I'd been to though (as I expected I would) and had a really good time. After this I got my hair cut short prior to joining up. I knew I wasn't going to let them cut it for me.

8). Our first weekend of freedom we went to the cinema. Shrek and Tomb Raider were both showing and we picked the wrong one to go see.

9). I had my first trip in a helicopter. It was a Chinook. The pilots took it up into the air and did all the anti-rocket manoeuvres. I loved it. The guy sitting across from me who claimed to be a bare-knuckle fighter (but yet who had perfectly unscarred knuckles), sat with his eyes clenched tightly shut the whole time. He'd panic after being interviewed about witnessing something by the police because the police had side arms and he just wasn't used to that kind of thing. He'd also claim his daughter got leukaemia to get extra time off (but she got cured the same weekend and she was diagnosed, so that was alright then). I got really disgusted when he was allowed to pass basic training despite never having been able to pass the fitness test. He viewed me and him and being enemies, but I didn't rate him highly enough to consider him worthy of that title. He was just someone who existed (Andy Fell).

10). I joined up on July the 4th. Six of us flew down from Glasgow. Military transport was supposed to meet us at the airport but didn't turn up for 6 hours or so. Me and another recruit (Johnny McAleny), being the oldest amongst the group went off to the pub for a last pint of freedom. One turned into six before they finally turned up.

11). I shared a room with 2 other recruits. One was a red-haired guy called Steve Brown who was going for the same trade as me. The other was a guy whose name I can't remember but who we nicknamed Mike (his hair looked like a mic boom). He decided he was the toughest man on the course because his friends had been shot on a drug deal gone wrong or something, quite a feat for a dental nurse really, although I took no real notice of his boasts. He did come from a rough town, but I'd heard the same claims from everyone I'd known who came from there and it didn't interest me.

12). I did 4 weeks of basic training, then had a 2 week summer holiday before returning for the final two weeks of training. After we had our pass-out parade, we headed off from our phase one training camp, to our various phase two training camps. I arrived at mine (Cosford) on the afternoon of September the 10th. We all had hangovers from our pass-out party the night before and attending a full dress parade was not fun.

13). The next day we arrived in our best number 2 uniform to start training. We walked into our crew room where they had a big projection screen TV and as we walked in through the door a jumbo jet smacked into the side of a building on it. My best friend during training, a guy whose real name was Mike would later be really freaked out by this not upsetting me. Our camp immediately had its alert state raised to Amber, where it would stay for the next 3 months in case of copycat attacks.

14). I contacted an old friend who I hadn't heard from for years. It would turn out he was staying where I was doing my training and we'd get together most weekends to go drinking. He introduced me to several of his friends including a girl (Tricia), who was a lesbian. Towards the end of the next year, she'd seduce me and we'd have a fairly epic 6-hour-long sex marathon that still makes me smile this day to think back on.

15). My gran passed away.

16). I finished college in the May of this year, convinced that I had just wasted the previous two years I'd spent studying at it.

17). My ex-best friend had to attend Ayr Sherrif Court to answer charges of possessing child pornography following me discovering it on his PC the previous year. I was asked to give a statement in his defence and refused.

18). I met the single most irritating human being I have ever encountered. He was a South African ex-pat called Bill Gates. I wouldn't see him again after I completed training for another decade. By that time he was leaving the RAF in disgrace having been caught having an affair with his workmate's wife. I cannot imagine the type of woman who would sleep with this guy while having the choice of anyone else. He asked if he could add me on Facebook and I told him sure, although I forgot to mention that my privacy setting were such that you couldn't just find me unless you were a friend of a friend.

19). I really came to hate the automated announcements system at Birmingham New Street Train Station (Birmingham New Street, this is Birmingham New Street. The train now departing...). I always wondered if it was this tannoy that got it chosen for one of the last IRA bomb attacks?

20). I bought myself a 14-inch knife that I really like the look of. This got me the nickname, 'Jockodile Dundee'. Once I got used to the weight, I used to do tricks with it.

21). I fired a rifle for the first time. My shooting skills were not anything special but were good enough to get me through. I would come to hate using guns though, considering them too noisy and dirty. It definitely did not feel like a penis extension for me (which was the reason I'd been told so many people liked guns. Fair enough if you are underendowed in that department I guess, but there are better substitutes out there).

22). One Friday night when he was feeling down, my friend Jamie came up to see me. I'd already had four beers by this point and he asked if we could go to the local bar to chat. He'd been finding his course hard-going and was stressed out. After switching to shots and having a few of them I decided I had the perfect solution to cheering him up and we jumped on the last train to Birmingham where I took him to a lap-dancing place. It was our payday weekend, and we went through a month's wages in one night. I had a pair of women giving me a lap dance at one point that I remember absolutely nothing about, but Jamie told me was the hottest thing he'd ever seen. The night cheered him up enough to get him through the rest of his course. It was my first time ever going into a strip joint. I discovered a friend I'd been introduced to via number 14 above, fiancee worked in this club as a dancer, but decided that it was none of my business and I shouldn't say anything. I didn't go for a dance from her either as I felt this would be awkward for her. A stripper would offer me the chance to snort cocaine off a particular part of her anatomy, which I politely declined due to the random drug testing policy at work, plus my innate distrust of drug dealers and whether or not they will supply you with quality goods or something cut with dog worming tablets or whatever. I've had cocaine once, but it was medical grade stuff (and was administered by a doctor as an anaesthetic).

23). I bought myself my first PC and would play Civilisation 3 on it a lot instead of studying.

24). We had a 5-man room in phase 2 training. One of the guys in our room broke his arm and was supposed to spend the night in hospital. I woke up in the middle of the night and went to the toilet and noticed as I passed that his bed was occupied. After I'd gotten back in my own bed, I heard someone exclaim "Oh f**k" and run out the door.

It turned out one of the guys in our room (Jes), had been woken up by a man demanding he moved over in his bed and let him in. Jes jumped out of bed to ask the guy what the f**k, but the other guy simply jumped in Jes's bed. Since Barry's bed was empty, Jes just got in that one and went to sleep. Presumably the oh f**k I heard, was the guy realising he'd wandered into the wrong room.

25). After having been in the one job for a whole year, I'd start to get itchy feet and wanting to move on to something else. This feeling really wouldn't leave me for the rest of my career.

That was a great read, Alex! As I said to Trevor the other day, you've lived an interesting life.  :thumbup:

Memories of 2002

1.   American Idol debuted, and fans took to message boards to furiously debate whether Simon delivered his first unscripted insult in episode six, or episode ten.

2.   My friend Mandy took me to a supposed psychic, who said I was under strong spiritual attack. I asked if this was the same as being possessed, and was told, “Think of yourself more as a house that’s being haunted.” Whatever, Mandy was the one paying. That same summer my neighbor had a faith healer from her church over at for a grillout, and somehow I got to talking with him, and my jaw dropped when he said, “I sense you are like a house under siege from malevolent spirits who’d love to move in and haunt it.” Getting told the same thing twice in the same summer? Weird.


3.   Kmart filed for bankruptcy, something that would’ve seemed impossible a decade earlier. Rumor had it high electric bills from all the blue light specials contributed.

4.   The DC snipers, two mediocre marksmen, began their dickish spree. I was in the city during some of those days, and while life went on, it was unnerving to imagine that somewhere distant crosshairs might have been focusing on you.

5.   My future husband had this poem published: The old man with the brown cane/ Sat under the courthouse tree/ On a bench that bore his widow’s name/ And dozed while awake,/ Remembering his youth,/ And being in love with a girl/ With strawberry hair/ And a smile like summer starlight.


6.   George W. Bush created the Department of Homeland Security, a mongrel organization that dealt in paranoia and was much scoffed at by more pureblooded agencies, whose members liked to tell this joke: “How many DHS agents does it take to change a light bulb?” “Why are you asking!????”

7.   Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her golden jubilee; John Gotti went to that big cannoli shop in the sky; and Enron collapsed. Guess they weren’t the smartest guys in the room after all.


8.   I stayed for several recurring non-consecutive weeks with my co-worker friend and his wife in Austin---more on them another time?---and more than once ended up being their designated driver coming back from Sixth Street clubs. I sometimes think I must wear a sign offering that service, visible only to the inebriated. Austin was fun back then. I spent a lot of time in Austin and in 2004 almost moved to the city, but you’d have to pay me to dwell there now.

9.   Bowie’s surreal All Saints CD, featuring Crystal Japan, spent weeks in my stereo.


10.   In one of his last public appearances, Billy Graham came to my city. It hailed on him.

11.   Second movies in a series were a big thing in ’02. There was Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones; The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the second Potter film. Appropriate considering we were in ’02.

12.   I went to my five-year high school reunion on behalf of my former best friend, Gina, who was in Honduras volunteering at a free dental clinic. There I saw the creepy/cool genius boy who’d abruptly kissed me in my front yard at Christmastime 1995, when he knew my boyfriend was visiting his sister and mom in Florida. His were the second pair of lips ever to lock with my own, and though he’d been surprisingly good at it, I still stood there startled that he did it at all. Anyway, at the reunion he and I ended up sipping rums and Cokes and talking about old times through much of the event. We promised to stay in touch, but I haven’t heard from him in twenty years and figure by now he’s probably a super-villain with his own secret island somewhere. I went home and looked in the mirror and noticed that the whole time I was at the reunion I’d had dried shampoo foam in my right ear.

13.   Jimmy Carter was awarded a Nobel Prize, making him one of three US Presidents who earned the legendary honor, and one of four who received it.

14.   My dad called me, in agony, so I drove him to the hospital, where the doctor told him he’d passed a kidney stone, and advised he avoid dairy and citrus for a while. On the way back Dad got a large orange freeze from DQ, and I told him it was the sort of self-destructive stubbornness I could relate to. He high-fived me.

15.   The Kurt Cobain Diaries were published, with the best entry being about Kurt’s fling with a retarded girl. No, not the one he married.

16.   One day in London I wore a shirt that said "Strangers Have The Best Candy!” which caught the notice of a particular man who asked me about it, opening a doorway to months of interaction with him, a literal psychopath with connections to bad people. He was later murdered in prison.

17.   Lennox Lewis KO’d Mike Tyson, and Tyson emerged a nicer person. Sometimes an ass-kicking works wonders, huh?

18.   My future husband and I saw a cool play near Ohio State called Power Blesses, about a woman who could live a minute from the life of anyone she ever met, at the cost of two minutes of her own life every time she did so. The concept intrigued me, as I wondered if I would I use that gift (?) if I had it.

19.   I must admit, The Ring was spooky. Like sleeping with the lights on spooky. Like, I’d-never-seen-any-movie-so-spooky, spooky.


20.   I finally felt enough at peace to have sex again for the first time in two and a half years, and it was like what they say about riding a bike. Though…maybe “riding a bike” is not the best analogy here.

21.   The once bullish stock market went full-on grizzly, and we dipped into recession. If you had money, prices were conveniently cheap. If you didn’t, you struggled. Yup, any lingering post-‘90s good times were officially over.

22.   Avril Levigne kept assuring us she was a punk, but most people decided she was at best punk-lite. Her shouted song Complicated was the reigning she-pop ditty of 2002.

23.   The great Williams sisters faced off in the Wimbledon singles final, proving truth is way stranger than fiction.

24.   I met my future in-laws for the first time, and got along smashingly with my someday father in law. As for my eventual MIL, she was polite in an oh-please-don’t-let-her-be-the-one-he-marries way. Funny though, in the future she’d do a 180 and beg me to marry her son, though that was in 2008 when our first child was due.  (She'd have to wait til 2010 for the walking down the aisles part.) Happily these days she and I are as close as scratchy wool and bare skin.

25.   On a sizzling July day, my friend Gina and I did a twenty-mile walk-a-thon for the Pediatric AIDS Foundation. An A-list star and his locally-rooted father were on stage at the finish line, and I don’t know if the star was confused about what event he was barnstorming in flyover country or just had a cause nearer to his heart, but when he spoke it was not about pediatric AIDS. He asked how many of us could find Sudan on a map, then didn’t wait to see how many could, just started making fun of red state education. Then he talked about how we were failing Africa’s democracies and asked us to raise our hand if we promised we’d write our representatives on behalf of Sudan. Sure, many hands went up, the guy had been on the cover of People, after all, but when he finished, applause was light. Movie stars are just mere mortals, folks.

So there's 2002....

2016.

1) I spent half the year being in the windiest place in the world, the Falkland Isles.

2) Famous people would not stop dying around this time. Lemmy, being the consummate rule-breaker than he was decided to check out early, dying on the 28th of December the previous year. Bowie and Prince were two of the biggest names to go. For the previous year, I had lost a family member every two months, with the last one dying on the day of the previous one's funeral (which was also the day I had to fly out). This was a tough year to get through. By the time I left the UK, I was feeling punch drunk.

3) The UK decided it was going to do the stupidest thing possible and vote to leave the EU. This was widely expected to be the most idiotic thing people could vote for.

4) The US however said, "Hold my beer" and played its trump card.

5) I went on the longest holiday I have ever been on. A whole two months and got paid for it. I spent most of that time visiting Kristi's family in the US, most of whom I really like, one I tolerate, and one the local police gave me permission to punch out with the promise that if they were called out, they would just laugh at him. This isn't the first time that a police force has asked me if I could just sort out a problem for them with my fists.

6) I swam in 2 oceans and 2 seas this year (Atlantic and Pacific oceans, North and Baltic seas). I doubt I will ever beat this record.

7) I came to the conclusion that Falkland Islanders hate Argentinians even more than Israelis hate Germans.

8) People started to panic that Betty White might not survive the year. When she did, people then started wondering what kind of world they were going to leave behind for her when they died.

9) Sausage Party came out in the cinema. I found it amusing, but forgettable.

10) The games shop where I had bought my first ever proper roleplaying game closed down. I miss Tom and the Dragon & George to this day.

11) A song which every time I heard it put me mentally right back in the hospital room where Lilly-Beth was born. Every time I heard it, I couldn't help thinking of how I felt that night and how I thought I was going to lose Kristi too when she had a bad reaction to the medication they gave her. To this day I have an unreasoning hatred towards that song and its singer.

12) My brother took a job working on aircraft in the middle east for a short-term contract of a few months. His family were to remain in the UK. He is still out there, and they are still back here.

13) At one point of the year, having cheese on toast seemed like the most decadent luxary imaginable.

14) I made a fair bit of money by moving all my savings into dollars just before the Brexit vote. When the £ then crashed my savings remained high.

15) The Zika virus was all over the news, causing babies to be born with deformed heads. I had to have a chat with a doctor as I was travelling to South America since we were trying for a baby. I was told to avoid stagnant water. I am not sure anyone ever deliberately wants to seek that out to be fair.

16) I was in a raid in World of Warcraft, when our tank (an Italian), found he was in the middle of an earthquake. He dived beneath his kitchen table, pulled his laptop down and kept playing. 299 other people were less lucky.

17) An investigation concludes that Malaysian Flight 17 was shot down by Russian forces. By this time I had made a mental promise never to fly Malaysian airlines due to a number of incidents.

18) 5 children die in Pakistan after eating deliberately poisoned sweets. 33 people would die in total. The reason behind it was the owner had an argument with his brother (and co-owner of the shop).

19) I continually forget to check which way the water would run down a plughole while in the southern hemisphere.

20) Ozzy Osbourne failed to get a slice of my pizza. He can stick to bat and dove heads.

21) My roommate down the Falklands managed to puke and p**s in his bed while drunk. To the best of my knowledge, he didn't s**t in it, which I guess is a small mercy.

22) My favourite Star Wars film came out, Rogue One. We went to see this in the cinema three times (Moana twice and the first Fantastic Beasts and Sing movies once each) I eagerly await the release of the sequel said to be called 'A New Hope'.

23) I started thinking about running an online D&D game.

24) I took 6 months off Badmovies.org mostly because of the terrible internet connection I was stuck with.

25) I spent a very troubled night alone battling some kind of inner demon. To this day I have no idea what was behind what happened that night, but I am very glad I emerged victorious. Part of me was very aware the next day that I should have talked to someone about it, but I also felt that since I had dealt with it successfully, that I did not now need anyones help.

Memories of 2003

1.   The Return of the King wrapped up the greatest film trilogy of all time.

2.   The space shuttle Columbia was lost. The shuttle program resulted in one deadly incident per every sixty-seven launches, making it by far the world’s most unsafe vehicle.


3.   The Iraq War began, largely as a result of President Bush’s disregard for his intelligence agencies telling him what he did not want to hear, with Bush preferring to put his trust in a sense of instinct he termed “Mr. Gut.” As a result 300,000 people died.

4.   The nationwide Do Not Call list went into effect. A side effect was that telemarketing jobs were lost, creating hardship among the working poor.


5.   I reconnected with a retired nun who’d been my teacher, and started taking her out to lunch and the park and the symphony, once to a ball game, and to her amusement kept up our old grade school nickname: “Sssster.” She took my hand one day and “out of love” told me the way I was living my life was going to send me to Hell. I respected her saying that, because it can be hard to tell someone something unwelcome, especially when that person’s buying lunch.

6.   Pete Townsend had legal troubles after a police sting connected him to child pornography. Also Michael Jackson was charged with child molestation, though he would be acquitted. Was he guilty? I hope not.


7.   Dawson’s Creek concluded by flashing forward to a death in 2008, while Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s finale left us cheering. FOX’s Joe Millionaire, meanwhile, showed how easy it was to turn ordinary ladies into would-be gold diggers. It was not womankind’s finest televised moment.

8.   My cousin Alison spent a year in a treatment facility in North Carolina. Yes, she needed help because she was an emotionally fragile addict and abuse survivor, but the main reason she was sent away was so her incredibly evil father could gain custody and sue me, trying to overturn our grandpa’s will, that to my shock had left his house and property to me. Allie’s father, already a rich man, part owner of a lobbying firm, wanted to subdivide our land and sell it to builders, getting posthumous revenge on my grandpa, who’d once punched him out for beating up my aunt. After a multi-year legal battle the will was upheld and our beautiful woods remain preserved as my grandpa wanted. I never held my cousin responsible for what her father did.

9.   The foggiest morning since 1977 overtook my city, reducing visibility to forty feet, and being outside that magical, almost silent sunrise was like walking in the clouds.

10.   A fire at a Great White concert marked the first time since 9-11 that so many people cringed in collective horror. However, Elizabeth Smart’s safe return from her abductors was a happy ending few dared to think possible.

11.   I became mentor to a high school girl named Sharon. Alas, her dumbass dad got the stupid idea I was into him, and when she found out her mom told me not to come near Sharon anymore. At eighteen Sharon got in touch with me and we know each other to this day.

12.   A co-worker and friend of mine who was involved on the ground in Iraq, called me and asked if I could guess where he was, then said he was in Najaf, in one of Saddam’s mansions. We only talked a minute but how cool was getting a call like that? He made it home fine, by the way.


13.   Country music fans seemed ready to drive their cars over the Dixie Chicks, after the group’s singer was critical of President Bush. I never understood the outrage.

14.   Gina, for many years my best friend, a girl who looked like Snow White and who believed true love was out there, celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday a virgin. I felt like someone owed her a trophy or parade, but got her a Blockbuster gift card instead.

15.   A serial rapist assaulted women in one local community on the same night, three years in a row. DNA tests in 2003 linked the rapes to the fire chief in the town where my future husband grew up.


16.   I knew a colorful woman who believed her son died on the Titanic in a past life, because even before he could talk he hummed “Nearer My God To Thee.” I met her while watching my cousin Dana’s son Tyler, who played with her daughter Melissabeth, and she clued me in to the fact that because I spent so much time with Tyler, many people thought I’d secretly had a baby away in college, and Dana was raising him.
 
17.   Mars was closer to Earth than it had been in 60,000 years, and was like a beautifully bright amber jewel in the night skies. I remember just staring at it….


18.   A friendship with a married co-worker, while platonic, had by 2003 become incredibly intimate, since we each dealt with professional stress of a sort that most people couldn’t have related to. His wife had known about us since 2000 and said she “wasn’t threatened,” but when their marriage fell apart, she promised to make use of our relationship in court, knowing it would probably cost us our careers. As a result he had to let her take him to the cleaners over what was almost blackmail. Funny, she hired a lawyer who was also one of the rabbis at her family’s temple in Connecticut, a vicious fellow for a man of G-d. I also found out in one of her rages she tried to hire someone to throw acid in my face. Fun girl!

19.   About the same time Martha Stewart was indicted for securities fraud and obstruction of justice, magician Roy Horn was almost fatally injured when one of his white tigers dragged him offstage.

20.   Though he was only three, that summer I taught Tyler how to swim. I also had him speaking French until his mom said that was going to confuse his language development. Being with Tyler kept me grounded during tough times. No, he wasn’t my son, but I couldn’t have loved him any more if he were.


21.   Mother Theresa was beatified in near-record time, leading cynics to say the Vatican needed good press after a report showed six times as many Catholic priests had contracted AIDS as had males in secular life, with most of the deaths covered up as cancer. If you think about it, Rome’s requirement that priests somehow be 100% straight, and yet want nothing to do with women, wasn’t the best formula.

22.   Johnny Cash, the Man in Black, died, yet news of John Ritter’s sudden demise overshadowed the passing of this American legend.


23.   A local radio station ran a contest that let the winner push the plunger for the implosion of the baseball stadium downtown. My grandpa took my cousin Jared and me to a World Series in the old stadium, and I was sad they blew it up.

24.   Apple launched iTunes; MySpace became a thing; Android was founded; and One Night in Paris briefly became the most downloaded file on the net.

25.   Magda, the only cousin on my mom’s side older than me (I’m youngest on my dad’s side) moved to Brixton, in London, the sole white person for blocks. Within weeks she picked up the accent, sounding like a Jamaican version of Bert in Mary Poppins, and she’d also take on the local disdain for the United States, yet say she couldn’t wait to come back over. She got mugged twice in Brixton and her flat got robbed, but would stay there the rest of her life. I miss her.

2010:
1. Bought my first (and current) house!  I was the first of my siblings to purchase my own.  Got a ridiculous steal for an Oregon house (property value is b.s. high) and it is now worth 3 times that, with all I've done for it (new pipes, new toilets, new bathtub, new fenceboards, new windows, new lawn, new deck, lava rocks, hot tub).  Pretty good location, easy access to bus/trains but not as much coming home from work.  Came close to buying a couple other houses; glad I went with this one instead.
2. Working the "POPS" unit (post surgery) at work at this time; man-- some of the nurses here are utterly stupid, lazy and entitled.  The "give them an inch.." type.  A few years later I'd work the Dialysis/Chemo run where I'm at now.  Always staying super busy.
3. One of the deadliest earthquakes ever hits Haiti, killing several hundreds of thousands.
4. The last CRT television set was released.  I was still hanging on to one for a couple more years.
5. The Winter Olympics are held in Vancouver/Whistler, Canada.  Host Canada would break the record for most Winter Olympics gold medals in one year.
6. IPad debuts.
7. The President of Poland Lech Kaczynski dies in a plane crash.
8. Not to be outdone by the Exxon-Valdez crisis decades ago, the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico explodes, killing a dozen workers and spilling oil into the waters.
9. Stock markets and the Euro value plummet.
10. The Chicago Blackhawks win their first Stanley Cup in almost 40 years!
11. Instagram debuts.
12. Wikileaks releases info on civilian casualties in the Iraq War.
13. North Korea fires upon South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island, prompting military response.
14. Comet Hale-Bopp is visible again.
15. The Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, is erected in Dubai, UAE.
16. A ridiculous 8.8 earthquake hits Chile, fortunately only 500-some die.
17. Steve Harvey becomes the new host of FAMILY FEUD.
18. Conan O'Brien ends his run as The Tonight Show host, after a bitter feud with NBC.
19. The New Orleans Saints, one of the NFL teams mired in mediocrity (or worse) for much of their franchise's existence, wins the Super Bowl over Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts.  I remember watching this at my brother's (then) apartment.  I was happy for QB Drew Brees.  I remember my brother made some great pulled pork sandwiches that day.  My dad was there too.
20. Roger Ebert is interviewed for the first time since thyroid cancer robbed him of his ability to speak.
21. The long-running animated series ADVENTURE TIME debuts!
22. South Park's episode featuring a depiction of the Islamic prophet Muhammad receives major backlash from Muslims who threaten creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
23. Barack Obama is the first sitting US President to appear on a daytime talk show (The View).
24. As The World Turns airs its final episode.
25. The baseball Giants (New York/San Francisco) win their first World Series in 56 years.

I didn't know Hale-Bopp was visible then. Was it in only part of the world, or not seeable with the naked eye? I loved that comet in '97. It looked like a glowing willow broom.

That's a very good list and it taught me some things.  :smile:

I'm not sure how powerful a telescope you'd have needed to see it.  It came within 30.7 astronomical units from the sun.  We're all making some great time capsule lists!

Memories of the 1970s:

1. Drive-in theaters. We had 2 within about 5 miles of my house and probably 10 within a 30 minute drive. Now I need to drive about 45 minutes to get to the closest one and there are only 3 left in my area that I know of.

2. Small cinemas. The cinema in my town had only 2 screens. It was a big event checking the listings in the newspaper or calling the cinema to see if the movies had changed from the previous week. A big treat was going several towns away to a 4 or 6 screen cinema.

3. Cap guns. I had a cap pistol and a cap rifle. I loved the smell of the caps when you fired them. Sometimes all the neighborhood kids would buy rolls of caps and smash them with rocks rather than using cap guns to fire them off.

4. Junky candy. Wax lips, tiny wax bottles full of sugary syrup, pixie sticks full of flavored sugar.

5. Collectible card sets in bubble gum packages. I had cards from the Kung Fu TV series and probably other shows.

6. Buying comic books at the local newspaper store.

7. Building model kits. I had all the Aurora monster models and other things like planes and tanks.

8. Mail order. Sending away for things from comic books, catalogues, brochures or TV commercials. You'd mail a check and then wait 4 - 8 weeks for delivery with no way to track it. Once I even sent cash through the mail for paperback books.

9. McDonald's before they had drive-throughs.

10. Saturday morning cartoons and Sid & Marty Krofft shows.

11. ABC, NBC and CBS prime-time movies.

12. Having a very limited number of TV channels to watch . . . and getting excited when you could get a clear picture on the UHF channels.

13. Watching concerts on PBS that were simulcast in stereo (you needed to turn down the volume on the TV and tune into a specific radio station).

14. TV channels that ended their broadcasting day around 2:00 a.m. - then you needed to wait until about 6:00 a.m. the next day before they resumed broadcasting.

15. Watching movies on TV that had nudity, profanity or violence edited out - - when the movie started there would be a caption on the bottom of the screen: "Edited for Television."

16. Family parties where most of the adults were drinking and smoking. Then before people went home they had "one for the road," which meant a final drink before driving home. Sometimes they even took the drink with them in the car.

17. Riding my bicycle (with a banana seat and high handle bars) around the neighborhood.

18. The smell of charcoal and lighter fluid during barbecue season (before gas grills became popular).

19. Going to amusement parks and smelling fried clams from the food stands while "Sugar, Sugar" by The Archies played over the loudspeakers.

20. Spending summers with my cousin in Cape Cod.

21. "Dinner time" at home when the entire family ate together at the kitchen or dining room table.

22. Seeing a lot of Corvette Stingrays driving around.

23. Viewmasters

24. Christmas variety specials on TV. Andy Williams, Perry Como, Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell, The King Family, Bing Crosby . . . I have a lot of these on DVD now.

25. Staying up all night with my cousins watching the Jerry Lewis telethon.

Memories of 1993

1.   Reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time was an unprecedented escape into another world, but it did raise the question as to why none of Aragorn’s ancestors had claimed the throne of Gondor over the preceding thousand years.

2.   Brandon Lee’s ghastly death on the set of The Crow had people talking about a family curse.

3.   Bill Clinton was sworn in as the 42nd US President, and my uber-Democratic family was universally glad. I think history will show he was a good President, but probably a bad person.

4.   I was awed when I went to see Jurassic Park with my cousin Dana, who proclaimed it the greatest movie ever. (Since I’ve mentioned her so often, let me say she’s been more like my big sister in a lot of ways; being 4 ½ years older, sometimes she’s bullied me, true, but she’s always been there for me.) Coming home she and I got caught in a storm that blew her car all over the expressway, pounded us with hail, and sent dangling black finger-clouds toward the horizon, like sky-fjords. Even Dana the Fearless was scared and we dashed adrenaline-jangled into my basement, completely soaked in our run between car and house. When we came up again the wind had blown things all over, but the first thing Dana asked was, “Wanna go see Jurassic Park again?”


5.   Eighty people died in events surrounding the Branch Davidian siege in Waco, which partially motivated uber-dick Timothy McVeigh’s mass murders in 1995.  Being p**sed off at the government didn’t give you leave to kill children, Tim.

6.   I graduated from middle school and got to invite people over for a graduation pool party. My upstreet neighbor, Rachel, owner of an infamous greyhound called Mercury, held it against me for having the party on Saturday, when, being Jewish, she couldn’t come. She was so petty she not only invited almost every girl on the street but me to her next birthday party, but later made a point of showing me camcorder video of the event, to rub it in.

7.   The Brady Bill became law. Did it save lives?

8.   Hoping to tumble the buildings across half of lower Manhattan, terrorists set off a bomb in the parking garage of the World Trade Center, killing six. I remember thinking that if the twin towers could survive that, they could survive anything.

9.   In tennis, Monica Seles was stabbed on the court, never to return to top form. Jimmy Connors and Bjorn Borg were supposed to play downtown, but canceled. As for me, I had a twenty-seven match winning streak going and was offered a chance to try out for a spot at the Bollettieri Tennis Academy, but instead stayed in school. I’m glad I did. I guess.

10.   In addition to seeing Jurassic Park four times, in’93 I saw The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Age of Innocence, Schindler’s List, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, In the Name of the Father, Tombstone, Dazed and Confused, and Hocus Pocus, but ever-annoying Rachel made fun of me for not knowing what Indecent Proposal was about. (I should’ve asked if she knew what calculus was about.)


11.   We did an end of school year day-trip to a Trappist monastery in Kentucky, and visited the grave of the famous writer and monk Thomas Merton. It was the sort of “fun” they lined up for you in Catholic school.

12.   While he was in college in Michigan, I started calling the boy I knew the year before when he was a senior and I was in seventh grade, and talked to him for hours and hours over months and months. That summer we went eclectic places together like uptown coffee shops and poetry readings, and flea markets and book and record stores, and all over downtown, places fourteen-year-old me figured must be cool or the college crowd wouldn’t congregate there. I’d never so much as kissed anyone, but the emotion of him leaving that August built up til we had an unplanned, heart slamming in your chest moment on the last day that almost tipped too far. It didn’t, though it easily could have, I wouldn’t have stopped things, but, like almost always, he had better judgment. Still, he seemed shocked at himself and asked in this truly puzzled way, “What IS it about you?” Back home I walked into my house weak like I was coming down off a drug high, and wondered if from the look on my face my parents would know what I’d done. Then I thought of how awful if my grandma, who called me Dollbaby, found out. He and I wouldn’t hang out again til the next year, and for the first time in my life, I felt depressed, which eventually led to ever-wise Dana telling me it’s all right to lose your heart over a guy, but never lose your mind. I started high school that week but was too focused on my own melancholy to care about that legendary life event, and went through most of the first week like a high-functioning robot. When still waters flood, they really flood.

13.   Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell was the best deal President Clinton could get for gays in the military in a year when most Americans were still afraid of AIDS, and in fact one in six gay men (and one in three gay black men) in the US was indeed HIV positive. I was worried for my dad’s intern, Jonathan, who was both gay and black, but he hugged me and said, “Don’t worry about it, sweet thing, I have a charmed life.” Thankfully he never got sick.

14.   Sixteen years after his death on a throne, the King of Rock and Roll appeared on a US postage stamp. Bet he was thrilled.

15.   After an almost totally storm-free spring, June erupted with twenty severe weather days, including the one I’ve already mentioned. One afternoon a microburst with 120 MPH winds destroyed almost every tree in a beautiful urban forest I’d visited all my life, where some of the trees had been 200 years old. To this day their weathered trunks lie there, returning to the ground, reminding me every time I see them of that tempestuous month.

16.   Late Night With Conan O’ Brien, The X-Files, Doctor Quinn Medicine Woman, Star Trek Deep Space Nine, and The Late Show with David Letterman, all debuted on TV in ’93, as did the infamous Chevy Chase Show. Still what really made headlines was NYPD Blue, with its shamelessly bare butts.

17.   My mom’s youngest sister, three years my elder, visited from Ireland, and we had THEE most awesome summer together. Our unusually bad weather scared her though, so I told her Viking descendants scoffed in the face of Thor’s death threats from on high, which made her laugh. Being beautiful and blonde with an Irish lilt, Aunt Sarah turned heads everywhere we went, and even ultra-cool Dana was jealous of her fey charm. In 2009 she and her two children would move in with us, and I’d develop some suspicions about her, but that’s maybe a story for another time.

18.   Trying to be sufficiently well-read to impress college students, I pored over books by modern-day writers like Jay McInerney and Jeffrey Eugenides and Brett Easton Ellis, and finally Joyce Carol Oates, whose short story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been, dazzled the dark places inside me. My thirteen-year-old daughter read it the other day and said, “I don’t see why it’s a big deal.” How did I raise such an earthbound kid?

19.   Two tears before they’d inform me the world is a vampire, Smashing Pumpkin’s second-best album, Siamese Dream, stayed in my stereo for months til it gave way to Nirvana’s In Utero, then I suddenly started listening to nothing but classical, til I discovered The Cure. I think ’93 was the year the teenage “get obsessed with music” gene activated in me.

20.   After three years of reading almost every Stephen King book, I thought that fall’s Nightmares & Dreamscapes was such a dud I cooled off on him, and because I’d just gotten my own TV/VCR combo, curtailed my reading in order to explore movies. I really liked Drugstore Cowboy, felt a frisson watching My Own Private Idaho later in the year, and was deeply smitten with two Winona Ryder films Heathers, and Mermaids, viewing them a lot.

21.   I really loved my elderly neighbor, Mrs. Glenn, who was country and kind and told excellent stories about life in long-ago Appalachia, but who had two flaws: her dramatic obesity, and the fact she was such a fundamentalist she’d tell me all Catholics were damned, so wouldn’t I please accept true Christianity before it was too late? Still, we developed a ritual in 1993 of watching Doctor Quinn together, and during commercials I’d brush her waist-length hair, which she had never cut in her life. (At the tips were tiny little baby-curls.) When she passed away in 2011 I went to her funeral in this miniscule church in rural West Virginia. During the service people there literally rolled on the floor and shouted things across her open casket like, “No, Devil, you cain’t have our sleeping sister!” I was pregnant and wore a little silver crucifix, and people there got almost hostile when they saw a Papist symbol in their sanctuary. I refused to take it off, but then again I did get out of town before sunset.

22.   The Black Hawk Down incident took place in Somalia, and in response the CIA was tasked with overseeing reprisal assassinations of roughly ninety individuals around Mogadishu over the next seven months, mostly by setting bounties. It marked one of the last times the CIA was assigned the role of taking out military targets on that scale, now mostly done with drones. Hollywood likes to pretend the CIA is this mass killing machine, but the fact is, dead people can’t give you ongoing information, so sources of intelligence are better left alive, even protected.

23.   I had my first Snapple and was told before I opened it that I had to hold it down in front of me and vigorously shake it up, which was called “Snapple Swirling” so I did and the boys who told me to do that promptly cracked up laughing. Sigh, low-hanging fruit, guys. Anyway, Snapple was so hip, so ‘90s, so mandatory.

24.   In October, when Depeche Mode canceled its concert in my city an hour before it was supposed to start, already-assembled fans rushed the stage and trashed a dressing area and a trailer used by roadies. I wasn’t there but Dana was, and she came back with a Union Jack around her shoulders, telling me, “You like it? Keep it.” Thus did I come to have what was just possibly David Gahan’s stolen flag.

25.   River Phoenix died on the same Halloween that marked the last time my bestie Gina and I trick or treated. It was an abysmal night that spat snow and the wind roared, and we came in half-frozen and heard River had OD’d at Johnny Depp’s LA club, The Viper Room. Until Kurt Cobain’s suicide the next spring made us forget all about River Phoenix, Gina and I were even more morbidly fascinated by him than we’d been by Brandon Lee that spring, seeing his movies over and over and daring one another to peek at the picture of him in his casket a tabloid published. I guess for a bit of 1993 he was to our generation what James Dean had been to his long before.

That was the year that was 1993.

from Burgo-


"6. Buying comic books at the local newspaper store."

They used to be every where. Long gone.  :bluesad:

1992:
1. I moved back in with my folks in Portland, OR after living with my mom/stepdad in Federal Way/Auburn WA for a handful of years.  My brothers were still pre-teens. 
2. Got a job at my dad's old department store doing all sorts of odds and ends-- pushing baskarts, bagging groceries, opening the cigarette case for customers, getting stamps for the checkers, loading groceries for pick-up, etc.  Had to iron my own tie/dress shirt and start my shift early in the morning (so glad I don't do that shift anymore!).
3. My Blazers went to the NBA Finals!  The whole town was buzzing, with signs on people's windows, billboards, store signs all saying "Rip City" or "Go Blazers" or whatnot.  I remember my boss let me watch the Conference Finals against the Jazz on the tv's in the Electronics department.  It hurt that my brother was totally in love with Michael Jordan as he and the Bulls knocked us off in 6 games-- especially when we were up 15 points in the 4th quarter of the last game and crapped it away (with a number of Bulls starters getting a lengthy rest!).
4. I also had another favorite sports team get to a championship-- my Bills in the Super Bowl-- but they also didn't win it.  They were 0 for 2, and would go on to 0 for 4..
5. However.. my favorite baseball team, the Toronto Blue Jays, DID win the World Series!  Their first, in fact, and the first for a team outside the US!   I watched them topple the Braves in 6 games in a thrilling extra-inning game 6, at my sister's apartment.  She had cats that were driving my allergies haywire.  Sweet little guys, though.  Her husband was a POS drug abuser-- not mean, but stupid and spongey. 
6. Saw UNFORGIVEN at the Tigard Cinema-- enjoyed it but didn't understand the universal acclaim.
7. The SEGA CD came out in the US!  I used to dream about some sort of game system that would play out a cartoon or live-action movie.. well, dream no more!  Some hated it for its many Full Motion Video games, but I personally loved SEWER SHARK and NIGHT TRAP.  I think I purchased mine the following year.  I would visit our store's video game department to see what newest games came in.
8. Also, the epic sequel to SONIC THE HEDGEHOG was released!  SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2 kicked my @$$ into the stratosphere!  So much fun.
9. And of course, MORTAL KOMBAT.  Parents were understandably mortified to see Sub-Zero rip out his opponent's spine but their outraged cries weren't nearly enough to prevent it from being a worldwide colossal hit.  New dialogue entered kids' lexicons in the form of "Test Your Might!", "FINISH HIM/HER!", "Flawless Victory!", "Fatality!", etc.
10. Not to be outdone in the fighting genre, SNK releases the awesome FATAL FURY 2.  I remember when it came out at my department store, I was dumbstruck how cool it was.  It gave me goosebumps when the announcer intoned, "AGAIN...  LEGENDARY MEN...    RETURN!", leading to the title screen.  "FATAL FURY 2!!!"
11. I think this was the year my sister introduced me to the guy that would be my friend for decades.  We got along great but he was an alcoholic and had insecurities up the wazoo.  Can't believe he's been gone for 8 years!
12. THE DREAM TEAM!  The USA basketball team is comprised of all NBA players for the first time!  Mostly legends like Bird, Jordan, Magic, Malone, Barkley, Stockton, Drexler, and more-- the rest of the world DID NOT STAND A CHANCE.  Blowouts in every single game.  The team even admitted it was hard to "get up for a game" due to the talent disparity.  This qualifying game-- held IN PORTLAND-- was the epitome of embarrassment for the opponent Cuba.. a 79 point drubbing!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPVYENv7FFs#)
13. The Salvadorian Civil War ends with peace accords in Mexico City.
14. Bush and Yeltsin meet to officially declare the Cold War is over.
15. Cannibal/serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is sentenced to 15 life terms in prison. 
16. Massive unrest in Bosnia and Herzegovena after their declaration of independence from Yugoslavia.
17. 4 officers acquitted in the Rodney King beating leads to rioting in the Watts district.  I remember one of my Blazers' playoff games vs. the Lakers had to be moved to Vegas!
18. Sinead O'Connor causes major controversy on Saturday Night Live when she rips up a picture of Pope John Paul II and says "Fight the real enemy!".
19. Texas billionaire Ross Perot runs an independent Presidential campaign.
20. One of Al Pacino's better-remembered quotes was simply "Hoo-wah!" from SCENT OF A WOMAN.
21. The highly controversial BAD LIEUTENANT is released.
22. Didn't like MY COUSIN VINNY nearly as much as everyone else seemed to.  At least most people seemed to think Marisa Tomei's Oscar was not well-deserved.
23. Went to see ALIEN3 at the Washington Square Cinemas.  The projector wasn't working properly (an ongoing problem at that facility) and we finally had to leave the theater.  When I went to the booth to ask for my refund they tried to not give it to me!  I was ticked and finally they gave me my money back and a ticket for a future show (I had to work that day, so no).  When I finally saw it years later on VHS it seemed I didn't miss anything.
24. Also went that year on my own to see DR. GIGGLES, which was largely filmed around Portland!  My sister had gotten married right where some of the scenes were shot.  I walked through some heavy snow to see this rather stupid movie.
25. The Pittsburgh Penguins win their 2nd straight Stanley Cup!

Memories of 2013

1.   Bombs went off during the Boston marathon, set by two brothers in sympathy with Al Qaeda, who then continued their killing spree into the night. One murderous brother did fatally drive a car over the other, though, showing every dark cloud has a silver lining.

2.   Lance Armstrong finally admitted he used banned substances throughout his career; testimony would show him to have been an abusive bully, but also really at peace with getting stuck with needles every day.

3.   In summer 2013, my children were twice one another’s ages: 1, 2, and 4. T’will never happen again.

4.   The Ocean at the End of the Lane was Gaiman at his most poignant. After nine years it also remains the last time he published a novel without collaboration. I blame Amanda Palmer.

5.   Sarin gas was used in Syria, and there was outrage at this deviation from the more accepted forms of war nice folks preferred, like shooting people, blowing them up, burning them alive, burying them under rubble, starving them during sieges, stabbing them, garroting them, drowning them at sea, blasting them from the sky, and lacerating them with shrapnel while they cowered in foxholes screaming for their mothers. International outrage made it clear to those barbarians to fight nice!

6.   Being a canon lawyer, Benedict XVI found a precedent for papal retirement, said ciao, and with a puff of white smoke, there was soon a new Pope in town.

7.   Edward Snowden….nah, nevermind him. Instead let me say the Borg-like Google Glass flopped; President Obama began his second term; the Harlem Shake was funny for fifteen minutes; and Nelson Mandela and Hugo Chavez both died, leading to Chavez’ less than April-fresh remains being paraded in all their bloated glory.

8.   On TV, Orphan Black was darned cool; Breaking Bad called it a wrap; the Red Wedding blew the minds of the uninitiated; The Office went away two seasons after its natural conclusion; and in my diary I described Arsenio Hall’s comeback attempt as “like him waking the cold bellies of the living dead.” I’m not sure what I meant.

9.   Around the time of his fourteenth birthday, Tyler, mon fils qui n'est pas mon fils, told his mom, Dana, he’d been butt-bumping with other boys for months. He also said he didn’t care to be called gay, because he wanted to be an individual, and didn’t like labels. I found out there exists a backlash among some homosexuals against the gay community, with many saying that identifying as gay can come with too many controlling expectations. Pardon the pun but isn’t anything straightforward anymore?

10.   I first played Dishonored, and about 360 hours of my life were eventually “invested” among the rooftops and sewers of plague-stricken Dunwall. Sure, I pulled myself away to join in the mass slaughter of Diablo III, but my heart was soon back in that steampunk city with its diseased rats and murderous counter-coups. That autumn my husband pre-ordered a PS4, but it wasn’t til Bloodborne in 2016 that I drifted away from PS3.

11.   A friend of mine wrote his debut book and I was the first person to read it as a work in progress. When I was first given this honor, I thought yeah, well, good or bad I’ll be polite about it, but the fact was I got into it and enjoyed every page.

12.   We did a weekend trip to our lakeside cabin, and our dog, Chocolate, trotted from the van to the shore to get a drink, inspiring my almost five-year-old to follow her to the water, get down on all fours, stick out her tongue, and prepare to join in hydration. I barely scooped her up in time and said, “Don’t do that, it’ll make you sick.” To which she told me, “It didn’t when I drank like a doggie from the river.” Say whu-uuut???

13.   For an April Fool’s Day prank, that same daughter and my husband had me take a bite of what I thought was cherry jello, which it was, only it was cherry jello made with unadulterated lemon juice instead of water. Pucker city!

14.   I called a man about tilling ground for a new garden, and he asked, “Is it virgin earth?” I said, “I haven’t inquired into its personal life, sir.” Sometimes I don’t know what gets into me when it comes to things I’ll say. Like my friend Clare and I were talking that May on the anniversary of her brother’s death, and out of nowhere I said, “He’s still dead after thirteen years? That’s just lazy.” I had no idea she could draw such a long breath, or knew so many cuss words.

15.   I ran into a girl named Peri, a waxer of my one-time acquaintance, who told me she’d left that profession and was in art school. Then she bragged “I don’t work right now, I got a sugar daddy.” Uh, okay, good for her, thought I, never having heard anyone else actually use that term in real life. Flash forward a bit and I re-encountered Peri at a gallery opening, and she introduced me to her sugar daddy who was none other than (drum roll, please) the dad of a girl named Sharon whom I used to mentor in 2003 when she was in high school, a man who’d once made me a similar offer. Small world!

16.   The Weather Channel’s Mike Bettis and his crew were miraculously unhurt when a vicious storm in Moore, Oklahoma rolled their car two hundred feet while they were storm chasing live on the air. There was poignant courage in Bettis’ last words before the wind hit: “Hold on, brothers!” I’m glad they walked away from that.

17.   Not everyone was so lucky. At an air show we saw the beautiful, smiling, gregarious woman who’d milled among the crowd moments before, do her performance as a wing walker. Minutes later the plane stalled, did a nosedive into the runway, and exploded. We were near enough to see her mouth open in a scream and see her instinctively throw her arms in front of her before the impact. I was glad my four-year-old, who nearly came, decided to stay with her grandma, and was spared witnessing that horror.

18.   At our house in August we had Dog Day’s Night, a dusk to dawn hangout event that had us watching as the Perseids meteor shower peaked in the heavens. Friends came over and we swam in the dark and gazed at the skies and saw many shooting stars. For the survivor’s breakfast the next morning we had coffee, donuts…and haggis.

19.   My goddaughter, Courtney, my friend Gina’s oldest, informed me her imaginary friend, Mrs. Blind, did not like me. This was chilling news, since I had read enough Stephen King to know 100% of childhood “imaginary friends” were malevolent entities.


20.   At age thirty-seven my Aunt Sarah, who’d moved to the US four years earlier following her divorce, got engaged to a Jewish man with great taste in women. I still do not know how my rosary-devoted grandma across the ocean failed to implode with shock at her youngest wedding a member of the twelve tribes, but she remained healthy as a miller’s cat.

21.   During a government shutdown, razor wire was put up around DC’s WWII memorial, preventing aged vets from visiting. One member of that fabled generation died days after being denied access on the only trip to the capital he ever made.

22.   We did our annual twin Halloween parties, the first in the day for kids, the one at night…not for kids. As always we went all out, with a dry ice machine, and theatrical gel that tinted the glow of our two-story lighthouse blood-red in the night. Our theme was Egypt, and I was a Nile vampire. Someone else came as a were-skunk. Fun time!

23.   Incredible as it may sound, in 2013, India, birthplace of the Kama Sutra, banned homosexuality. Yup, a nation with too many people banned the one kind of sex guaranteed not to make even more people.

24.   Tired of having a birthday on Christmas Eve, I vowed to begin celebrating on January 24th instead….which still hasn’t quite happened. That year I did get a nice 1904 edition of Walter Scott’s works, which included this eerie, thirty-second prophecy-poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45070/proud-maisie (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45070/proud-maisie)

25.   Finally, in an announcement, actor Michael Douglas attributed his throat cancer to a lifelong fondness for giving women oral pleasure. It sucks that I licked my urge to insert a cunning joke into the creases here, but going down the list didn’t leave me anything juicy to come upon, so with this fold must I part.

And that was 2013!

2014.

1) After a hiccup over the past few years job-wise (having been thrown a curve ball 3 years previously by being given a series of jobs I did not want), I managed to get my career back on track to where I wanted it to be, rather than where the job wanted me to be. I would manage to continue on this course until I got to the point the current day with my end goal very much in sight.

2) Malaysia Flight 370 vanished. Bits of it have since been found, but not the whole thing and only guesses can be made as to what actually happened to it. This combined with the later on shooting down of Malaysian Flight 17 would be enough to convince me that it was an unlucky company to fly with (as well as seeing examples of what passes for safe practice on many east Asian airlines, wtf

3) My new job had me frequently underemployed, leaving me nothing to do for long periods at work. I'd start idly browsing the net, which led me to reading a bunch of bad movie reviews, which would then lead to me actually posting on here once I'd run out of reviews to read and not because of any of the other reasons people have asked why I ended up here (which include looking for places to advertise my services as a freelance hitman, working in intelligence and a few other random reasons. Nope, I came here purely for the bad movies).

4) An Ebola outbreak kills nearly 30,000 people. Only the sheer lethality of the disease prevents it from spreading further. I had some friends in Zimbabwe who when anyone asked if they were safe would reply that we were closer to the disease outbreak than they were. Other people pointed out we had a lot of water between us and it, while they had land.

5) I spent a lot of time being amazed that I had actually gotten married. Much of the first year was spent with both of us being ill as we constantly traded European and American virus variants.

6) Having not wargamed for a decade, I got back into the hobby, playing WW2 games instead of the sci-fi and fantasy games I'd played previously.

7) The previous year had an incredible summer. This one however was much damper. The long walks we'd had in 2013 were not as common as we'd managed previously. The first few months of the year were just filled with storms. We'd get a day or two between them if we were lucky.

8) Speaking of walks, I discovered myself and Kristi had gained a level of fame locally for always being out on walks together. This took me by surprise.

9) Microsoft stopped supporting, what was for me, the least worst version of Windows.

10) Boko Haram were being right pains in the arses, kidnapping and murdering through bits of Africa. The French wanted to help out, which surprised me a lot. Less surprising was that they lacked the transport capabilities to get there, and the RAF had to ferry them into position.

11)  George W Bush's decision to disband the Iraqi military (and leave lots of militarily trained men suddenly unemployed with no way to support their families, gee who could ever have foreseen that would cause major problems) bore fruit when ISIL seized large parts of Syria and Iraq, meaning we had to go back there, and are still involved to this day. In just one action, they would slaughter almost 1,600 Iraqi airforce recruits. A campaign against the Yazidis saw 4,000 of them killed in a single region. I wonder if this caused them to cast any doubt on their claim to be gods chosen people when he/she/it did not choose to intervene and save them? Any religion whose adherents claim to be the only chosen ones should have a look at what has happened in their history and what divine interventions have taken place to justify this claim.

12) This year marked 100 years since the start of the Great War. We had a few events to mark this, some of which were organised by my wife. I always wondered if and how this was marked in Germany?

13) Scotland narrowly voted against independence. I had a massive internal struggle over which side to support. While I wanted always wanted independence, at that particular point in time it would have made things difficult. I started off planning to vote against it (reluctantly), but the arguments of people on the remain side convinced me we could leave and make it as they kept claiming various things I knew were wrong. Had I not voted that way, I'd forever have felt ashamed about it.

14) Rik Mayell died. I considered this to be a very selfish prick-type move, worthy of many of the characters he played. Eli Wallach also died, but he at least made it to a good age. The night after me and Kristi were having a conversation where we asked each other what is the Ultimate Warrior doing these days, it was announced he had died. This was not the first time we'd wondered what had happened to a once famous wrestler, and not the first time they'd died either. We stopped this being a topic of conversation after this one though and to this day we have never asked it again. The death I'd mourn the most for the celebrity world though would be Robin Williams.

Besides, mostly these days the answer seems to be in AEW.

15) Someone I potentially could have married confessed to being in love with me. Had they said this more than two years previously, they would have had a good chance but as it was, they were a bit late.

16) I got my first credit card. I still consider this to have been a bad idea. If I could, I'd still pay for everything in cash. It had certainly made it harder for the government to track me, something that I miss.                                                                      

17) I started looking at posts working on the Lightning II, as this would have meant a year living and working in the states and I figured Kristi would like that. She surprised me by telling me hell no, as she felt things were much better over here than over there, although there were a few things she missed. In the years following I'd increasingly meet people who were leaving the US for Europe, feeling it was a freer society with more civil rights and protections, or appreciating the lower student debt or whatever. For a while, I'd wonder if there was a brain drain going on from the US to elsewhere, in reverse of what had been the case for years previously, but I'd never bother looking up the relative emigration rates and the education levels of those moving.

18) I decided to make an effort to listen to newer music, rather than just cling to stuff from the 80s and 90s.

19) While in general married life agreed with me, I found it mentally exhausting being someone's sole emotional support. Always being there for someone else left me drained, but given she was now an ocean away from her nearest family, I could hardly not be supportive.

20) I used up my entire year's worth of leave, taking time off to spend with visitors, or going to see family (both mine and Kristi's). While I had enjoyed our guests, I also vowed that in future I'd take one to three days off to spend with them, rather than matching their entire holiday. This may have been kept better some years than others.

21) The wife of a friend would get drunk and tell me she wanted to have an affair with me. I turned her down as politely as I could as I neither wanted to risk my friendship nor my marriage. When I told Kristi about it, I got told I was in trouble for not making it clear enough that I was already taken.

So much for honesty.

22) I decided to watch all the Batman movies in order and came to the conclusion that Batman Forever had aged worse than Batman & Robin and was in fact a terrible movie, overacted by Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones.

23) A friend got me a signed picture from my childhood crush, Erin Gray. It remains a treasured possession.

24) We went on a holiday to the US and visited Disneyland. I also managed to persuade my American family that we should do more than just drive to Disneyland, so we visited Universal, one of the Californian beaches and took a trip to Rainbow Bar and Grill for my 40th birthday. I had the best pizza I have ever tasted in my life and refused to make eye contact with Ozzy Osborne when he entered the room in case he asked for a slice. I also made sure I had a Jack Daniels & Coke. Alas, Lemmy wasn't there when we were in as I'd have liked to have had a drink with him. We also visited the Hoover Dam. It felt like walking along the edge of a piece of paper put on its side. There were a lot of middle eastern tourists also visiting the dam, but it only has a narrow sidewalk. They all expected Kristi to move out of their way. I stood in front of her and made it clear that she would not be moving onto the road for them.

25) I lost my temper with Kristi for the first and only time. When we first got married she had a habit of slapping me on the back of the head, which I found immensely irritating and asked her to stop. She continued. She'd also often grab my hand and twist my arm up my back pulling me in for a kiss. This normally would only have been irksome, but I had tennis elbow not only in my elbow but also in my shoulder (caused by having to shift 22 tonnes of paperwork in two weeks) and this would send bolts of agony down my arm. Asking her nicely, begging, talking to her, and warning her not to do this were all tried over that summer and ignored.

One night she thought it would be funny to punch me in the shoulder. This was a full-force punch, not some little love tap, and on my sore shoulder to boot. I leapt out of my seat and roared that I never hit her and I didn't expect to be hit, but if she ever did that to me again I'd get up, do the same right back and see how she liked it and it wouldn't even violate my promise never to hit a woman first. She scrambled back to her seat and left me alone. Later on, she'd say that she was disappointed because she never thought I would get that angry at her. I said I was disappointed she would ever think it was ok to hit me. Regardless, she has never tried hitting me again and while we've had arguments, we've never gone anywhere near that far again.

It is sadly something I've noticed with women though. Asking them not to do something in a relationship is a sure-fire way to get them to do it. I wonder if this is the same with men?

That's a deep, introspective list of memories.

And I can't say I've especially noticed men doing things I've ever seriously asked them not to do, so maybe it is a woman thing. Now you got me thinking....

Guys, start asking women to never, ever give you oral sex.

2004: the Year of the Austin Soap Opera

1.   That February a little site called Facebook was founded, that would eventually waste more of people’s time than all other social media combined.

2.   Hosting the Olympics that summer was partly responsible for the ruination of Greece’s already crumbling economy, though internet gossip would also blame mysterious super-villain George Soros.

3.   The Red Sox broke the Bambino’s curse and won the World Series, making my northeastern college friends happier than a wino with a whisky bottle. Sooo many babies nine months later!

4.   Some members of the FBI formally apologized for not sharing germane domestic intelligence in the months leading up to 9-11, revealing the freakin’ stuck-up frat boy, game-playing, nose in the air, strutting-around  “let’s make this job a rivalry” derelict jerks so many of them got away with being coming out of the late Clinton years.

5.   Coverage of the murders of Laci Peterson and her unborn son shoved aside stories about the Super Bowl’s Nipplegate, a perilous event that threatened to erode our national morals. The most amusing media feeding frenzy of all, however, came after Britney Spears and a high school chum jumped over the broom for two glorious days as man and wife.


6.   Ronald Reagan joined the unseen majority in ’04, and his funeral would be the biggest post-mortem event since coverage of Princess Diana’s passing seven years earlier. When I was little it felt like Reagan had always been President and always would be.


7.   Lost was just what the world needed, but it was TV finales that were bigger news, as Friends and Frazier both left the air. I’d never watched an episode of either and still don’t know if I missed something good; to me Kelsey Grammer will always be Sideshow Bob. TV seemed boring in 2004, except for CBS’ Cold Case, and VH1’s I Love The (‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s).

8.   The Da Vinci Code, basically lawn fertilizer in printed form, rode the best seller lists all year. A certain man in Texas---more on him in a minute---bade me read it, so I did. Sigh, I admired almost everything about him but his taste in books.

9.   Right after Christmas a devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean would kill possibly as many as a quarter-million people. Sorry but God sometimes you just don’t come through.

10.   The Passion of the Christ made Mel Gibson the darling of evangelicals, who called it a masterpiece and praised his attention to detail, like doing the entire film in ancient languages. Cynics meanwhile dubbed it artsy torture porn. Me, I wondered what was wrong with it being a little of both?


11.   Poor Ashlee Simpson got busted for doing what half the pop stars did, and became a lip-syncing punch line. The next March I’d escort my cousin’s daughter McKenna to her concert, and actually liked her kinky song Lala, which far as I could tell was about an insatiably abuse-seeking girl fantasizing about getting rogered on a kitchen floor.
 
12.   For a few weeks my longtime pagan-nerd friend Rob asked everyone to start calling him Rio, though if I remind him of that today he’ll throw a hissy fit, even though he remains fond of unusual names, having called his oldest son Draven, after The Crow, and his younger son Tolkien, after an obscure South African writer.

13.   Right before her thirtieth birthday, Dana asked me to go downtown with her, to a bar in the palm court of a historic art deco hotel, where she tied a few on while equally lamenting and embracing her impending thirties. Eventually she told me, “Watch this….” then proceeded to cutely explain to the hotel’s manager: “I’m getting ready to turn thirty, I’m a little depressed and I had a whole lot too much to drink, which your bartender served me, and which my mom, who is a bulldog lawyer, would say makes you just possibly responsible for the fact I am in no fit state to drive. So because you got me drunk and because you’re nice, I want you to comp me a suite with a good view of the city.” I don’t know where the BS-ing left off and actual liability on the hotel’s part kicked in, but to my astonishment the amused queen-ish manager did exactly what she asked and gave  us this $500.00 a night suite, free! We ordered room service, jumped on the bed, and laughed through years of shared memories while gazing out a huge window at the glowing streets twenty floors below. Before she sobered up she even gave me a long, lingering, un-cousinly kiss. It was the most amazing thing! Not the kiss, I mean her getting us a suite like that.

14.   For the second time in my life, the polyandrous quality my employers had identified in me was in evidence. One of the men I had feelings for was someone I’d worked with since 2000 and had unexpectedly gotten extremely close to; the other I’d been involved with since late 2001 (for the first year sexlessly) but we took a break around New Year’s ‘04, and that’s when the guy in Texas leaped in, wanting us to be together. Eventually I’d marry the other man, and as for the one in Texas, he would bitterly tell me that he’d left his wife in part because he was in love with me, and in return I’d ruined his life by not giving what we could have had a fair chance. “Do you know how many women I could have had in the time I waited on you?” he demanded, and it was true, as he soon proved by pillowing about one percent of the women in Austin. We’re still (shrug) friends but on his part it’s more an “I forgive you but I haven’t forgotten” deal, and considering my conduct toward him, I don’t see how it could be anything else.


15.   Around this time I refused an assignment on the military base near Austin where I’d been working, and even if you are not in the military, as I wasn’t, employment on a base comes with strict rules and serious consequences if those rules are broken. I had to appear at an intimidatingly formal hearing presided over by people from Washington DC, and right before we went in I asked my lawyer what the odds were I’d serve time. He said, “Only one in five. They respect some of your past contributions and regard you as made.” In the end I was not charged, but I could have not only been fired from the job I’d worked since my teens, but gotten 180 days in jail. As I said in the hearing, I was wrong for what I did, since a person should never be the weak link in a chain. What I did not say was my refusal of the assignment had come because I wanted away from Texas and the man I’d loved and hurt there.

16.   Some lines from a popular song spoke to me: “….how to mistrust the ones you supposedly love the most/How to pretend you're fine and don't need help from anyone…” In the midst of sturm und drang so profound I was hearing messages in Alanis Morrisette songs, I made a middle of the night call to Los Angeles and talked for hours to that man I considered practically the devil, but who knew all about coming back after completely f**king up; someone with whom I had a begrudgingly deep history. I felt better after our talk, teaching me that sometimes the only way back to the light is through darkness.

17.   Also in Austin I worked with a Russia Jewish émigré named Menahim, who’d been a translator for the governments of both Israel and the United States. He was supposed to marry a young woman named Emily, who’d converted to Judaism during their engagement. About two weeks before the ceremony, Emily was having a pre-bridal shower party, and took ecstasy and did vodka shots. At some point after all but a couple friends had left, and those who remained were inside, Emily somehow fell into the pool off the patio, and her friends found her body in only about three feet of water in the shallow end. Menahim resigned his position in Austin and moved to Israel. The last time I saw him he stared vacantly like he wasn’t even seeing me. The transformative power of grief was something I understood.

18.   John Titor, a supposed visitor from the mid-21st century, who claimed he came back in a time machine made by GE, got attention online when he warned not to be in Washington DC on March 15, 2015, because WWIII was to begin on that day with the nuking of the city. When that did not happen his apologists claimed he was telling of events in a different timeline than ours.

19.   Home that summer I took Tyler, who was almost six, to a park, and when we got back in the car I smelled gasoline, and the car wouldn’t start. I got down on the ground and looked and someone had punched holes in my gas tank, and police would say an “Eco-Warrior” had been doing that all summer in a protest against fossil fuels.

20.   George W. Bush’s reelection left me angry. A friend in another state had tried to talk me into voting for Mr. Bush when I was back in politically-purple Ohio, telling me my vote could count as his could not in his deep-red state. I respected him and his request but after going to three military funerals in the last six weeks, truthfully I would rather have marked my ballot for any third-party candidate than contribute a vote that helped return Rumsfeld’s boss to office.

21.   Long wanting a grandchild and not getting any from her children, Aunt Christie, my dad’s oldest sibling, went to China and returned with my baby cousin Alba, a sweet little girl we all quickly came to love. Later my aunt would tell me that being a twice-divorced woman of late middle-age, she had to pay over a hundred thousand dollars in bribes to get the adoption through.


22.   “The Man in Austin” and I did a road trip to San Antonio, and while touring the Alamo I asked where Ozzy Osborne had urinated. He said, “Against the chapel wall.” I asked if a red-blooded local had shot Ozzy in mid-pee, would a Texas jury have convicted him? He said, “Maybe not if the shooter had pleaded he was so outraged by Ozzy’s actions that he was temporarily insane.” He was serious. Don’t mess with Texas.

23.   In my time in Austin I would encounter Lance Armstrong, Jewel, Colin Farrell, Billy Bob Thornton, Colby Donaldson, Andy Roddick, Sheryl Crow, some of the cast and crew of The Real World: Austin, and Paul Walker, among other celebs milling around town. Compared to the staid environs of back home it was like Hollywood-lite, and famous people were all around.

24.   Proving how weird life is, within weeks of almost getting charged with dereliction, I received a commendation from my employers relating to “meritorious activities” from earlier in the year, and got a pay-raise. One thing about the people I worked for was they were remarkably tolerant of quirks and flaws, as long as you did not mess up on the job itself, which I hadn’t, I’d only refused an assignment. They’d keep me around in various capacities til 2021, when I took twenty-five year retirement.


25.   And yet days later, having finished a long-term project for my bosses, I requested and was granted a leave from my job, left behind the US and its entangling problems, and went to live in Ireland, where I also have citizenship, not sure when or if I’d be coming back. (Um, spoiler, I did.)

And that was 2004, probably the craziest year of my life.

1984.

Mostly what I recall from this year, was what was big on the news.

1) This was the first new year that I have vivid memories of sitting up for, although I know I had been awake for several previously. I eagerly awaited Billy Connolly doing some jokes. This would be a highlight for several years of TV shows. I had heard of the book '1984', but hadn't read it (or seen the movie. Indeed, I still haven't), but I recall people talking about it at this time.

2) I saw pictures at school of the first untethered spacewalk. Cannot remember the names of the people involved though.

3) Iran would accuse Iraq of using chemical weapons. This did not lead to an outcry from the rest of the world, especially not from the countries funding the war or supplying those chemical weapons... It would surprise me a lot when this wouldn't come up some years later though.

4) Having moved from Cumbernauld, I would end up living in the town I'd spend the rest of my childhood in. I would continue living there until I was 27. Sometimes I disliked living there, sometimes I hated it, but my feelings about it were never positive. Several attempts to move away from it would be defeated by outside circumstances, but I would maintain a determination not to ever move back.

5) I recall the Soviet Union announcing it would boycott the Olympic Games that year. The whole tit-for-tat boycotting thing seemed pointless and childish to me.

6) The IRA attempted to kill Margaret Thatcher and failed. They did manage to kill several other people when they blew up the hotel she was in. This would lead to a wide-changing review of how the security services checked these places in advance and vetted people.

7) Speaking of assassinations, the Prime Minister of India was the victim of a successful attempt. It seemed like assassinating leaders you didn't like was a popular theme in Indian politics to a young me. She was killed by her Sikh bodyguards which lead to many anti-Sikh riots that left tens of thousands of them dead. Still, at least it didn't start a world war.

8) The new school I started this year was not a bad one. It sat near the shore, and often on nice days when school finished we'd meet up with the rest of my family and go spend the evening by the sea. I could spend hours just staring at the sea, although I have always been an indifferent swimmer. I would later become a proficient canoeist though.

9) The Ethiopian famine started to be shown on the news. The news constantly showed pictures of starving children, their stomachs strangely bloated and lacking the strength to swat the flies crawling over them. Irishman Bob Geldof and Scotsman Midge Ure (lead singers with The Boomtown Rats & Ultravox would be so shocked by this, that they would first gather up lots of UK musicians to first record 'Do They Know Its Christmas' and then go on to organise Live Aid, and many years later Live 8. Other countries jumped on the bandwagon and for a while, it seemed like the first world might actually do something about the third world.

10) Ronald Reagan won the election in the US. It is the first election outside of the UK that I can recall hearing about. That they would pick a former actor as their leader was a subject of much mirth in comedy shows for the next several years, it being the equivalent of hitting a gold mine of jokes. Schoolyard talk started to be more and more about nuclear war. Generally, viewpoints were divided up into three separate camps. The first (one person), was that no one would ever be stupid enough to press the button, the second (majority) was that the USA was the country most likely to fire its nuclear arsenal first and the third was the Soviet Union starting it.

11) The Bhopal disaster struck. The final death toll from this would be over 23,000.

12) I watched my first pirated VHS tapes (Raiders of the Lost Arc, Return of the Jedi and The Terminator). Depending on how you'd view watching a tape of Wrestlemania the following year, these would also be the only pirated VHS tapes I'd ever watch.

13) My best friends at this time were Richard Stirrit, a guy who I never saw win a single fight although he also didn't know when he'd been defeated and would end up taking several severe beatings. One especially, from a boy called Lewis Campbell left him so badly beaten up that the police had to get involved and Lewis would end up in court over it. Every time Lewis went to walk away from him lying, sobbing on the ground, he'd start shouting abuse at him and Lewis would turn around and give him another kicking. I couldn't help but feel it was his own fault for just not shutting up). William Brownlee, who was a fantastically talented artist and the best fighter in our class (he'd also end up in trouble with the police when he accidentally cost a girl an eye when he threw a stick at her) and Jim Rilley who the last I heard had joined the army and became a signaller.

14) I got into roleplaying games when I bought a book called The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. I didn't know anyone else who was interested in playing them though and it would take a few years before I'd find a group of people to play.

15) I tried playing football but found it stupid (that is the real football for any Americans out there, you know the one that is played by having your foot kick a ball, not running with an egg-shaped thing).

16) I played on my first computer (rather than a console), a Spectrum 48K. Initially, I'd play a lot of platform games, but I quickly found them boring and would look for games that were more tactical.

17) The Quickshot II became my favourite joystick. When I heard about a new interface for computers I couldn't imagine it ever replacing them. Besides who would be stupid enough to buy something called a mouse?

18) I asked for and got a really good fishing rod for my birthday. I would get to use it twice. My father would however use it many more times than I would ever get to.

19) For Christmas I asked for a toy called Jetspace. You'd build up a network of tubes and some futuristic buildings that all connected together, then use pumps to propel little vehicles around them (including firing them across an open-air dome. I accidentally found where my parents had hidden it (underneath my brother's bed, not shoved to the rear or with anything in front of it. I spotted it when it was my turn to hoover up the rooms. Owning up to discovering it got me in trouble. I wouldn't quite learn my lesson about honesty and the bother it would get you into quite yet though.

20) I'd get a lot more toys than this that year, including Go-Bots (a Harley Davidson bike and a race car), Transformers (Bumblebee) and a lot of Star Wars figures (mostly revolving around the characters from Jabba's palace). I'd never get into the transforming vehicles much though. I did like the gun I got though that could be built up into multiple configurations including as I remember, pistol, machine gun and rifle.

21) I kissed my first girl. Jacqueline Robertson (or possibly Robinson?). It was at William Brownlee's birthday party and we snogged behind a pillow. I didn't really fancy her or anything though. There really was only one girl in the class that I was attracted to. She would leave the school though over an Easter break when her parents moved to Ireland. I wonder what ever happened to her after that?

22) A girl called Libby-Anne Munn (who was Jacqueline's best friend. I guess Libby was short for Elizabeth. For some reason adding Anne or Ann on to the end of a name was incredibly popular in 1974 in this part of Scotland, there was from what I can remember there was a Margaret-Ann and a Libby-Anne. There were others, but their names have been lost to time and a lack of care) who would start doing handstands with no knickers on at school. She'd do this every day at lunch for a couple of weeks, at least until word of it reached the parents).

23) I was forced to start going to Judo on Saturdays (which I enjoyed), and church of Sundays (which I didn't enjoy). I felt like I had no weekends anymore though. If I sat up late at night to watch horror movies at the weekend now, I'd be tired in the mornings now. The church attendance would last for 3 years and would include sitting through the adult services and then Sunday school and left me with a determination that not only would I not go to church when I had the option, but also that any children of mine would equally never be forced to attend it.

23) Everyone at school was raving over The Young Ones. It would be years before I would get to see it though.

24) I wasn't allowed to see Evil Dead, but I was allowed to watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The Satanic panic was a strange and random thing. Even at that age, I knew that it had more to do with distracting people from other things going on than any real connection to the devil. Combined with being forced to go to church, I really was gaining a very low opinion of religion. If I knew then what I know about it now, I'd have been disgusted by it and refuse to even pretend to sing the hymns or say the prayers (I used to change the words in the hope that if I didn't say them, it wouldn't count as worshipping. Shame I hadn't found out that all I had to do was not really mean it, but never mind).

25) I got lines for the first time as a punishment from school. I can't remember what they were for (I suspect it was for fighting though), but I do remember I had to write something out 50 times. I cheated and only wrote it out 43 times, but it wasn't noticed. This would come in handy the second time I got lines. I only ever got detention once. Anyway, I didn't want to admit I'd gotten them to my parents, so I got my friend's mum to sign them for me. My older brother would tell on me to our parents though. He always was a creep that way and trying to suck up to people.

Memories of 2005

1.   I lived part of ’05 in Ireland, and spent new year’s detained by police in Dublin following a dumb but innocent bit of accidental B&E undertaken by a group I was with, guided by one of our number who believed his friend still lived in a particular flat, and wouldn’t mind us dropping by in his absence, even if it mean gaining access via the window. Turns out it, um, wasn’t still his flat…
 
2.   Since my internal clock remained on US central time, I kept strange hours, and one night wrote an unpleasant tale called Notes From January 2005, that became my first story published outside the United States. I’d be asked to read parts of it to a UCG creative writing class.


3.   I hung out with a friend of my cousin Eonne’s, this bisexual man named Orlando, who was born in Ireland, raised to his teens in Canada, and who came back to Ireland and took up the same profession as his mother: prostitution. He said it was in his past, but Eonne said don’t believe him, it’s not. He was a cool soul but a near constant liar who burned through friends like flame through a cigarette.

4.   YouTube launched (how-DID-we-exist-without-it?); Hurricane Katrina left 4/5ths of The Big Easy under water; Martha Stewart was released from prison; Tom Cruise jumped on Oprah’s couch; and Charles and Camilla got hitched.


5.   Straight Texan males lost their minds over Vince Young, who quarterbacked the Longhorns to an undefeated season. One I knew gushed to me: “He has the body of a Greek god!!!” Hmmm.

6.   John Paul II completed a papacy that began the same year I did. After white smoke went up, I was watching the reveal of the next Pope when I was asked who I thought the mystery person would be. I said, “75% it’ll be Ratzinger who comes out wearing the ruby slippers.” It was, and he became Benedict XVI.


7.   I came home and started things up again with my eventual husband, which I think was our… third….time of getting back together in 3 ½ years. I figure I must have something going for me because I know I am not always easy to be in a relationship with.

8.   Still, The Man in Austin told me he and I would be together in the end. He said this even as he was plowing a lot of women in ’05, and making sure I knew all the details. Every time he added someone new to his conquests he’d count from one up to whatever number his latest bedmate happened to fall at, a figure that quickly rose deep into double digits. A couple of the women really grated me to know about, plus he managed to bring his ex-wife back into his life as well, a miracle considering the animosity of their divorce, and she made sure I heard about it, figuring revenge was a dish best served horizontal. Why tell me about his women? Partly he and I were confidants, but I think mostly it was out of a degree of anger. You see, there’s something his pride didn’t want anyone to know, but despite everything this man and I felt for each other, we never had sex. Truly. So he spitefully enjoyed trying to make me jealous almost as much as he did sleeping with all those women.


9.   George W. Bush returned to office boasting he had political capital and intended to spend it. No one, including probably Bush, knew what the hell he was talking about.

10.   I went to an Israeli film festival and saw 2 Minutes From Faradis. I also saw A Christmas Story on stage. Revenge of the Sith wrapped the prequels that year, but on small screens, The Office failed to gain much notice its first season. I’ll also note The Rocky Horror Picture Show found a place in the National Film Registry.


11.   John Mayer’s song Daughters, constantly on the radio in 2005, struck me as yucky. Fathers should be good to their daughters be-cause someday they’ll be some man’s lover? Really? That’s why?

12.   Since my new work position was only one city distant from where I grew up, I was able to get an apartment near my family. One of my neighbors was Tilda, who worked for an airline and grew marijuana in her apartment, using her trucker boyfriend to sell it. Tilda, a hundred-ten pounds soaking wet, wore wigs and kept her head almost shaved, and owned a collection of strange pets with physical deformities, which she called her “life forms.” These included an eyeless skink, a misshapen hermit crab, a songbird born with only one wing, and an albino ball python. Tilda was unabashedly omni-sexual: a word I don’t think I knew in 2005. One night I was at her place while she was smoking a particularly potent indica, and she started kissing and groping me. She stopped when I pulled back and she said, “I just wanted to make sure you really didn’t want to.” She also later tried to fix me up with her trucker boyfriend.


13.   Another neighbor was Katie, a curly-haired, pear-shaped born-again Christian of indeterminate age, 35-50, who’d escaped from a cult, and who was the nosiest and gossipiest person I knew. She rarely left her flat where she resided with several housecats, and spent her days spying on the complex. She had solemnly warned me away from Tilda, though, so maybe I should give her some credit.

14.   The death of newsman Peter Jennings seemed oddly shocking to me, and I think it was because all my life he had been there, on TV. Now there isn’t a lot left in pop culture I can say has been around all my life.


15.   Conan O’Brien discovered he resembled the President of Finland, a woman named Tarja Halonen, and went so far as to film ads supporting her re-election.

16.   If 2004 had sometimes been like living in a hailstorm, 2005 was the rainbow after the clouds cleared, although it was also the year I paid a thousand dollars to a man who accidentally killed someone I loved, to get him to tell me every detail of that day, because not knowing was worse. I listened to him, prodded his memory, showed little emotion, then went home and sat in the dark til morning, when I felt better.


17.   While Dana was off having twins, her first three children stayed with me, and her daughter McKenna put a whole granola bar in her mouth, and when I made her take it out, she called her dad AT the birthing center, DURING Dana’s labor, WITH TWINS, to get him to tell me it was OK for her to do that! That girl is a type-A person.

18.   My sixteen-year-old maternal cousin Celia visited me that summer. We did things locally and then did a few days in Chicago; she got a Brazilian wax, ha. It was such a wonderful visit it’s hard to reconcile those good times with the cruel person she went on to be, even in the future plotting to have a fellow addict abduct my baby and hold her for the money she needed to pay for opioids. In 2005, though, hosting this girl I’d loved ever since I was ten and held as a newborn, made me happy.


19.   A woman whom my Don Draper-ish grandpa had once “kept” in the 1960s came to me and asked for financial help. She wasn’t trying to extort money, and had truly loved my grandfather, so I helped her. I was a teenager before I was clued in by all-knowing Dana that the grandpa I was so close to had not been faithful to my grandma during their long marriage, and it broke my heart, though it was only after his death that I was confronted with how much cheating there had actually been. Lessons learned? The people we love are not perfect. Try to love them anyway. Also: try not to leave messes behind your family will have to clean up.

20.   I was on a flight to Virginia when a man woke up in the midst of a night terror and flung himself all over the plane’s interior thrashing and howling in multiple languages for maybe twenty seconds before his colleagues settled him down. He had severe PTSD but because of stigma back then it took years before he sought help with it. I saw him a few months ago and he’s doing well.


21.   Because I’d learned American Sign Language, I joined an ASL conversation group at a community center, and it was fun to “talk” to people that way and also learn ASL swear words so lurid they’d make Yiddish blush.

22.   For the first time in years I inked something on my bedroom ceiling, the Victorian writer Mathew Arnold’s: “Wandering between two worlds, one dead/The other powerless to be born…” If ever I were to get a tattoo, and I am not going to even though in retirement I am finally allowed them, I think I’d go for words over illustrations.


23.   In one busy weekend, my dear friend Clare got married, my future husband and I went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and while there saw Bright Eyes in concert. By Monday I was operating on sheer adrenaline.

24.   I got a bloody nose in a work-related self-defense class sparring with a USAF instructor named Tyrone, who wasn’t supposed to make that kind of contact, but who had a chip on his shoulder about the pecking order there. When the admittedly light jab landed my inner child thought, "Hey, boys can’t hit girls!" There is zero doubt he did it on purpose. No one would hit me again for a decade and a half, til Clare’s mom slammed her ringed fist into my face in a parking lot one morning and almost calmly said, “You know what that’s for.” I didn’t, actually, though if she’d have specified a decade, ’90, ‘00s, ‘10s, or a family member, son, daughter, husband, godson, herself, it might’ve helped narrow it down. I swear, if there is such a thing as karma, it is mine to be connected to her family, and I’m not sure I could escape if I tried.


25.   2005 was mostly great, but nothing is perfect, and I saved the worst for last. Late in the year I moved into the house my grandpa left me, the house I still live in today, and also persuaded Gina, my longtime best friend, to move in with me. However, Gina discovered she was pregnant after breaking off an engagement. Poor soul went in a few weeks from virgin to engaged to this. She said she could not have this child, that it would entangle her forever with the controlling man she’d gotten away from. She told me she was going to have an abortion, and asked me to go with her to a clinic upstate, where no one would know her. I lived in dread every day, begging her please don’t do this. I did my best to be there for her, I didn’t love my friend any less, other women I knew had terminated pregnancies, but the fact Gina of all people went through with an abortion was a shock like few I have ever known, and to the last minute I thought she’d change her mind. She wouldn’t tell her family for years.

And that was 2005.

1979:
1. I remember hearing about the big DISCO DEMOLITION NIGHT or "DISCO SUCKS!" event.  It was a destruction of disco records/albums that had been put into a large crate in the middle of the field at Comiskey Park during a White Sox/Tigers doubleheader.  The 2nd game is forfeited due to the mess/ensuing chaos.
2. Disco was still going strong but it would crash and burn in a couple years or so.  I WILL SURVIVE and MAKIN' IT was huge around our house.
3. I remember getting a MR. MICROPHONE for Christmas '79.  It was a popular toy around that time but I don't know if I ever really used it.  I would go on decades later to enjoy karaoke even to this day.
4. Blondie had their breakthrough hit (their first #1) HEART OF GLASS debut.  Debbie Harry was a hot little thing but man was she stoned out of the stratosphere.
5. The US hostages at the assembly in Tehran was ALL over the news.  They were of course released unharmed in 1981.
6. There was a total solar eclipse, very rarely visible in the US.
7. Eventual NBA titans Larry Bird and Magic Johnson meet in the NCAA Championship game.  Johnson's Michigan State Spartans prevail.
8. Margaret Thatcher is elected as the first female UK Prime Minister.
9. The city of Seattle gets national recognition as the Sonics win their first, and only, NBA title.
10. Game shows in the 70s were huge, and I remember some new ones debuting that year-- WHEW!, PASSWORD PLUS, and MAKE ME LAUGH.
The rest to come when this computer finishes re-booting.

11. I remember seeing news breaks concerning the fall of Pol Pot's regime in Vietnam, and he and his Khmer Rouge exiled to the Thai border.
12. In animation news, I remember a crappy special of THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE.. also, the much-maligned character "Scrappy Doo" made his debut.  THE BUGS BUNNY/ROAD RUNNER MOVIE would go on to appear on cable approximately a hundred billion times.
13. The cool INTELLIVISION debuts, and gives the mighty Atari 2600 a bit of a competitive scare, though its sales still end up well short of Atari's.
14. I went to the Tanasbourne Mall near Hillsboro OR to see KRAMER VS. KRAMER.  Though it was long and not really for an 8-year old kid, I cracked up when the kid tells Dustin Hoffman (the dad), "I hate you!", to which Hoffman retorts, "I hate you back, you little sh*t!".
15. We went several times to see the cool TIME AFTER TIME.  I got freaked out by the severed hand scene.
16. My mom told me how badly ALIEN scared the bejeezus out of her in the theater.  No way was I going to get to see it!  I thought it was odd that it played on a double bill with STAR TREK THE MOTION PICTURE (which was rated G!).
17. Had a lot of fun watching THE MUPPET MOVIE; still love that "Moving Right Along" song/scene with Fozzie and Kermit.  "A bear in his natural habitat.. a Studebaker."
18. ASTEROIDS was such a big deal!  That kind of "Jaws" theme playing as the space rocks close in on you got me all kinds of excited!
19. We freaked out over the Bond villain Jaws (Richard Kiel) actually speaking in MOONRAKER!  "Well.. here's to us."
20. THE JERK was Steve Martin's big breakthrough in the movies.  I still quote it to this day.  "He hates these cans!" XD
21. Oh man.. the old Valley Theater that never got properly fixed up.. went to see MEATBALLS there and loved it!  "Spazz!  Spazz!  Spazz!", "It just doesn't matter!" and the song "Are you ready for the summer?" I still fondly remember.
22. I remember the great tagline when PHANTASM came out: "If this one doesn't scare you.. you're already dead."  Kind of dumb movie though.
23. The Ramones really took off when they got their movie exposure with ROCK 'N ROLL HIGH SCHOOL.
24. Great opening to WHEN A STRANGER CALLS, with "Have you checked the children?" and "The call is coming from inside your house!  GET OUT!".  Too bad the rest of it sucked.
25. I remember seeing CALIGULA in the papers and hearing about major controversy surrounding its sex and nudity.  It's.. not a good movie.
There's plenty of other things I could mention that struck a chord with me back then (or things that were popular at the time that I was not aware of at all at the time) but I think I've covered a nice medley of personal experiences and some memorable events for others.

I saw that at a theater in Queens, NYC!

I often come across people who have no greater possible use than as a doorstop.

I remember one of my aunts being really freaked out by When A Stranger Calls.

And the rest of it still sucked! 

Memories of 1991

1.   Operation Desert Shield---which sixth-grade boys were known to call Operation Panty Shield---turned into Desert Storm that January. It used to irk me to see those omnipresent stickers that barked out: “Support Our Troops!’ Why not: “I Support Our Troops”?

2.   Gina’s nine-year-old brother, Mark, was scheduled to get braces, something he opposed so much that one night I watched him trying to straighten his teeth with pliers.


3.   Kentucky Fried Chicken switched its name to KFC, and while sitting in traffic, I was watching a crew change  the sign at one, when I saw sparks start coming out of the lighting area behind  the sign. We had to drive on, but the news that night showed the restaurant minutes after we’d passed, with its brand new KFC sign engulfed in flames.

4.   In entertainment, it seemed like T-2 ruled the multiplexes, while Northern Exposure became my new favorite TV show.


5.   Muscovites bravely stood up to would-be oppression when old-guard Communists rolled the dice, and Gorbachev survived the coup attempt that made Boris Yeltsin a hero.

6.   At twelve I played in my first tennis tournament, and considering my late start in the sport, was surprised to make it to the semis, though I wouldn’t advance that far again til ’92.


7.   My mom made me take piano lessons after tennis on Saturdays, proving that whatever other talents I possessed, I had NO musical aptitude whatsoever.

8.   It was like all at once almost everyone at my school started eating this thing called Fruit By The Foot. It was beyond explicable how quickly it took over a generation’s snacking agenda, so I suspected mind control.


9.   My parents used to let me take a bus alone downtown. Mostly I went to the huge main library, then sat on the Square and fed pigeons scraps of bagels. Occasionally I’d go down to the river and watch barges pass by, or go up on the observation deck of the tallest building in the city and see three states. It gives me pause to think I was allowed to do this, since even “the most livable city in North America three years running” had dangers.

10.   I was downtown by myself one Saturday when a Scientologist handing out pamphlets for a free personality test approached. He asked my name and what I liked to do with my time, and I said play tennis. He said, “Uh-huh, well let me ask you something, do you think you might like to invest your life in something vitally important to humankind, or do you want to spend it playing tennis?” I said, “Playing tennis.” But I took his pamphlet.


11.   I was obsessed with Jim Morrison for a few months, but when the Oliver Stone bio-pic came out and lots of people got into The Doors, I was afraid everyone would think I was only into them because I’d jumped on the bandwagon, so I pretended I hated the band. I will say the first time I heard The End that spring, I got goose bumps, and I can’t think of another song that ever did that to me, including Smashing Pumpkins’ magnum opus, Tonight, Tonight.

12.   I finished sixth grade ranked fourth in my year, which you’d think would’ve gotten me some praise at school, right? No, I had to see my advisor to discuss why I didn’t do better, and then go over suggestions for how I could move up higher next fall in seventh grade.


13.   The hero of Saturday mornings during my ‘80s childhood, Pee-Wee Herman, got caught….enjoying himself in a public place. A joke that followed was: “Hey, kids, the secret word is, ‘exposure!’”

14.   That summer my maternal grandfather, a learned and kind-souled man who ran his parish’s outreach to shut-ins and the poor, took me to The Dublin Museum of Natural History, which had none of that modern interactive stuff, just awesome displays of cool things to see. My grandfather was a serious, soft-spoken sort of man who liked almost everyone, and was liked by almost everyone in return. He was never rich, never poor, and he read a non-fiction book a week for fifty-some years, making him well-informed about a great many things, despite his formal educating ending at fifteen. The older I become, the more respect I find I have for him in memory.


15.   Same summer, my cousin Magda, who was a year older than me, taught me how to read Tarot cards, something delightfully illicit, since our rosary-rattling grandmother would have thrown them away if she saw. We sat out in a pasture beside a centuries-old stone wall, and she showed me each card and told me the meaning, then beguilingly informed me my future would contain many loves and many secrets. I got my own deck when I came home. Still have it too.

16.   We had a bulldog old nun subbing for us on the first day of seventh grade, and as I passed her desk at the start of class, she grabbed my arm like a vice and pointed to a faint patch of blue ink on my hand, where I’d been stamped to get onto a tennis court the day before, and chewed me out in front of the other students, then made me go scrub my hand twice, coming over each time to inspect it. I hope these days she’s the only nun in Heaven without a McMansion.


17.   I used to come home from school and watch Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, even though it was lame. It featured middle-school kids willing to spend half an hour running full-tilt around a floor map, in order to win a mail-in coupon for an atlas. I think I was soon watching it to laugh at the stupidity of contestants, but I seldom missed it.

18.   Nirvana’s Nevermind debuted in the fall, and was the first CD in my life that I remember taking over my stereo that completely. I played and re-played Nevermind for weeks, then the album got popular, and in rebellious disgust at myself for liking something so many others did, I shelved it for around six months, missing the fact that as with The Doors earlier in the year, I was vicariously letting other people control me. Needless to say Nevermind remains one of the decade’s cultural milestones.


19.   That fall, in the middle of my hometown, the most conservative city in America, there was a massive pro-marijuana rally. The state had decriminalized possession of up to 100 grams back in the ‘70s, but local cops found creative ways to bust people for something bigger when caught smoking. It was outrage over this which drew NORML to come, and it all unfolded twenty-five minutes from my house. Needless to say, Dana went, and when she came back I asked how it was. She disgustedly said, “Wasted people wasting time talking about hemp for oil when everybody really wants it for smoking.” Dana was always giving me mixed messages about drugs, saying she was going to get me stoned someday (not that I exactly wanted her to) yet also saying that me doing drugs would be like tearing the wings off a butterfly. She was confusing.

20.   My mom was taking evening art classes, and I’d go with her and roam the university campus, where I struck up acquaintances with a few students. I remember one extremely weird boy called Carl was sitting outside reading a new novel entitled American Psycho, which I didn’t know much about, so I asked Carl how it was. He got this faraway look and said, “I get Patrick Bateman. I really do.” A couple years in the future when I read American Psycho, I remembered Carl and wondered how could he “get” someone as shallow and materialistic as Patrick Bateman.


21.   Anita Hill accused SCOTUS-nominee Clarence Thomas of lewd behavior while she worked under him at the EEOC. Not since Iran-Contra were federal hearings so broadly watched by the public, and I was gladder than ever I didn’t drink Coke in a can.

22.   At school, everyone was yanked out of class and abruptly assembled to find out who glued a Playboy centerfold to a classroom door. When ID’d, the culprit, an eighth-grade boy, got expelled. If you haven’t figured it out, those running my school were cut-throat. For example, a couple times a month I and all participants in a special group taking advanced classes had to see a psychologist named Dr. Nora, who told us she held anything we ever talked about in confidence, but the truth was she recorded our sessions and gave them to administrators, who kept notes on them.


23.   I turned thirteen on Christmas Eve, and as we drove home in the middle of the night after midnight mass at the 19th century cathedral downtown, it started snowing beautifully, and by the time I woke up there was two inches on the ground for our White Christmas!

24.   In the last week of the year, I was finally allowed to go to the mall and get my ears pierced, practically the last girl my age I knew to do it. That night my right earlobe burned, so I got out of bed and went downstairs for an ice cube to hold to the piercing, and fell asleep with it there. The cold fluid filled my ear canal, and I spent the rest of 1991 with an ear ache. Feel free to laugh.


25.   Sick as I was, on December 31, 1991, I was glad to see the Soviet Union come to a well-deserved end, when on live TV the red flag descended at the Kremlin. It was probably the biggest historical event since the end of WWII.

And that was 1991.

1977
1. No doubt the biggest bit of news of the year: Elvis Aron Presley buys the farm at only 42.  Years of letting his body just go to waste (and prescription drug abuse) did the King in.  This was one of those important announcements that would interrupt a show, where something like a word saying NEWSBREAK would appear onscreen and you'd hear typing going on in the background.  You'd be like, "Uh oh.. what happened?"
2. My first year of grade school, at Garden Home School.  I was a cute kid but very shy and insecure.. girls in my classes would totally take advantage of me and treat me like dirt.
3. The Bee Gees' little brother Andy charts his first of 3 #1's: "I Just Want To Be Your Everything".
4. I remember being sad that THE JOKER'S WILD ended in 1975.  That is, until it was brought back in syndication 2 years later!  I loved the show so much I dreamed multiple times that I owned a lever and the 3 slides in my bedroom.  I always loved Jack Barry, despite the scandals of the '50s.
5. SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER is not surprisingly a smashing success at the box office-- it made a major star out of John Travolta (moreso than his initial exposure on WELCOME BACK KOTTER)-- due to the disco craze being in full swing.  Its soundtrack is just as much a hit if not more.  Even as little kids we laughed at how ridiculous the "point" dance was.  I always nicknamed him "John Revolta".
6. BLAZERMANIA!  RIP CITY!  Etc.  The Portland Trailblazers win their only championship.  Big redhead Bill Walton has a series to remember as they storm back from a 2-0 deficit to knock off Dr. J and Daryl Dawkins and the Philadelphia 76ers in the title game.  I was too young to really grasp the importance this had on my city but I did read the papers.  A parade went near Pioneer Square downtown with fashion nightmare Jack Ramsey grinning ear to ear.  My dad's rusty old Suburban had one of those stick-on wagging fingers that said RIP CITY on the back.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W785m6afU4g#)
7. Beloved comic Groucho Marx died.  It was sad to see him interviewed on talk shows like The Mike Douglas Show and others where he was clearly winding down.
8. A ton of smash hits debuted this year: THE LOVE BOAT, CHIPS, FANTASY ISLAND, INCREDIBLE HULK, SOAP, EIGHT IS ENOUGH, HARDY BOYS/NANCY DREW MYSTERIES, LOU GRANT, LIFE AND TIMES OF GRIZZLY ADAMS, FISH, JAMES AT 16/17, SHA NA NA, etc.
9. We watched the hell out of THE NEW ADVENTURES OF BATMAN.  Good to hear old Adam West and Burt Ward voicing their characters.  Not a big fan of Batmite.  Batgirl was quite the hottie!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZx370aHVR8#)
10. Oh man.. LOVED the LAFF-A-LYMPICS!  A Hanna-Barbera all-star extravaganza up the wazoo-- with an Olympics theme!  All the classic characters including the famous 70s ones (Jabberjaw, Captain Caveman, Hong Kong Phooey, etc.).
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxJyazDGLsc#)
11. The prototype for the awesome PRESS YOUR LUCK (1983-86) is the rather cool and technically impressive SECOND CHANCE.  I was freaked out by the "wank" noise by the devil when a player landed on one (yes, devils and not whammies, but they did the same thing).
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBiRFNXVyzg&t=1304s#)
12. I remember watching the rather dumb SKATEBIRDS (a cartoon variety show with some live-action sequences) and C.B. BEARS (another cartoon variety show).  I actually kind of liked THE ROBONIC STOOGES cartoon on the Skatebirds show.
13. 2 commercial jets collide over the Tenerife, Canary Islands; over 500 die.
14. Led Zeppelin sets a then-record for indoor stadium attendance for a concert at the Pontiac Silverdome.
15. STAR WARS!  We saw this at the Family Drive-in.  I remember we drank Fresca and I got freaked out by the severed hand that Obi Wan cut off.
16. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS was also really big-- we saw that at the same drive in.  Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo...
17. A coup attempt in Angola leads to thousands of deaths.
18. Apple II computers go on sale.
19. The US Department Of Energy is created.
20. The Atari 2600/VCS is released!
21. 3 members of band Lynyrd Skynyrd die in a plane crash, including lead singer Ronnie Van Zant.
22. The Sex Pistols' awesome album NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS, HERE'S THE SEX PISTOLS is released.
23. Peter Finch receives a posthumous Oscar for NETWORK.
24. Oscar winner Joan Crawford dies.
25. Marc Bolan of the band T-REX dies in a car crash.  It's said that his tires were improperly inflated by a gas station that led to his accident.

Memories of 1992

1.   Talk about lucky, in 1992 mob boss John Gotti got room and board for life---plus round the clock security----all for free!

2.   The HAL 9000 was said to have come into existence on January 12, 1992, and NPR marked the event with a segment I heard on the way to church. When I got there the line for confession was so long I just went back to my mother, who was kneeling at her pew with her eyes closed. I recall all this because I have a tormenting condition called parahyperthymesia, which was first suspected in me that same month in 1992. When I was eighteen I would almost marry a man who had synesthesia, which left him hearing colors and smelling noises. Imagine if we’d had kids.

3.   The Cartoon Network began, and The Cosby Show went off the air, though true to form, I’d never watched a single episode. Besides, The Simpsons came on opposite Cosby for a while, so it was no contest there. I did used to watch Unsolved Mysteries with my best friend, Gina, which her ten-year-old brother, Mark, always called “Uncircumcised Mysteries” just to bug her. I thought it was funny.


4.   Silicone breast implants were deemed unsafe by the FDA, though my cousin still got them right after she turned eighteen that year. When she came around and showed them off poolside, I told her, “I think you looked better before, Dee.” (Which I think is true of most women who get bust enhancements.) This remark made me have to duck a chlorine tablet tossed at my forehead. Later she’d have the silicone removed and get (even larger) saline implants.


5.   During her “annus horribilis” the Queen’s home, Windsor Castle, caught fire and took extensive damage. What’s more, her sons’ marriages fell apart, and Scott Thompson quit impersonating her. Poor Queen.

6.   I was alone in my basement while my parents had a party, and a man named Dane, some guest’s date she barely knew, came down and said grossly inappropriate things to me. I finally told him I was thirteen and he backed off and said he thought I was seventeen. (What?) After my embarrassment died down, I told my parents, though Dane denied everything to the police. My grandpa offered to go shoot him, which was a kind gesture.


7.   Around this time the heavyweight boxing champion who was the future star of Mike Tyson Mysteries---sorry, I’m drawing a blank on his name---went to prison for raping a beauty contestant.

8.   Because my mom was always a half-hour late to pick me up from school (no buses) I was standing in the lobby one day in seventh grade while an after-hours faculty party was being prepared in the cafeteria, and that twelfth-grade intern who’d bedazzled my hormones was helping set it up. He asked if I wanted a piece of cake while I waited, but cautioned: “This is Catholic school, so of course it’ll be plain white cake with plain white icing and be very, very plain tasting. The plainest cake ever baked in the ovens of mankind.” I took the slice he cut for me home carefully wrapped in cellophane and let it sit on my desk all summer, sometimes staring at it like a holy relic, wondering what parts of the plastic his fingers had rested upon. I don’t think it ever occurred to me to eat the darn thing.


9.   Dan Quayle’s “Murphy Brown” speech created buzz for all the wrong reasons, but did virally blur lines between fiction and reality in ways that were ahead of its time.

10.   A bunch of doves got engulfed in the fires of the Olympic torch on live TV in the opening ceremony in Barcelona. I was watching as the flames erupted all over the birds roosting there, and turned and said to my mom, “Uh, they all flew away, right?” She said quickly, “Of course.” Yeah, right, those doves got crisped. (Correction: I think what I saw was a replay of doves getting fried at the Seoul Olympics in 1988, since I can't find a reference to it happening in Barcelona, just Seoul, but I do remember watching doves burn up during the Olympics that year.)


11.   During riots following the acquittal of LAPD officers, whom all but the blind could see had criminally beaten Rodney King, Korean store owners proved looters could be deterred with guns. I remember one of those nights Sean Penn was on Arsenio, in an otherwise empty studio, while outside the city was burning.

12.   My dad’s job took him away for five weeks that fall, and though it had happened fairly often as I grew up, sometimes for much longer times, I never got used to it. We couldn’t know where he was going, we couldn’t know when he’d be back, we couldn’t communicate with him for any reason, and I not only missed him, I worried about him. In my childhood when my brother Daniel died as a newborn, we couldn’t reach my dad to tell him, and he was not at the funeral, where my mom, burying her second baby in three years, barely held together. I got mad at my mom when she left my dad and went “home” when I was sixteen, and it took years to realize that the question wasn’t why she left, but how she lasted as long as she did.


13.   While visiting my overseas grandparents that summer, I first read The Haunting of Hill House still a favorite. It was Stephen King in Danse Macabre who pointed me toward it at a time when King had been the author I was into more than any other, and who spoke with the voice of God when it came to book recommendations.

14.   Julia Child turned eighty, and PBS ran an all-day “birthday party” for her with a French Chef marathon. If you donated a hundred dollars you got your name added in calligraphy onto a three-foot tall card being sent to Julia Child on behalf of the station. Hearing that, I asked my mom if we could donate and she said we could, so I have always hoped when Julia Child opened the card at her house, she saw our names somewhere inside, wishing her happy birthday.

15.   It was Bush, Clinton, and Perot vying for the most dangerous job in America, and in ‘92 most news maps showed Democratic states in red and Republican ones in blue, which if you ponder it made more sense. I’d rarely seen my dad happier than when Bush lost Clinton won.

16.   To raise money for AIDS research, the Monday after Easter there was a Freddie Mercury tribute concert in London, watched by a billion people worldwide. It was the biggest concert ever, excepting Live Aid seven years earlier, where Queen had dazzled in the same stadium.

17.   On the subject of AIDS, Isaac Asimov fell victim to the disease in 1992, contracted following a blood transfusion, though the fact that this caused his death, initially explained as organ failure, would be hidden for another ten years.

18.   I had my cousin Allie over to swim, and she asked if I wanted to see something cool, then twisted open an ink pen and showed me that the inside was filled with cocaine. “Awesome, huh?” she said. But I didn’t think so. Eventually that s**t almost killed her. Me, my one drug experience in 1992 came when I chugged a two-liter of Crystal Pepsi and didn’t quit talking the rest of the day because of all the caffeine.

19.   A public school boy in my neighborhood got ahold of a copy of Madonna’s book Sex, the publication of which created a predictable media storm in ’92. He tried to get me to look at it with him while I was at his house watching him play Nintendo, but I wouldn’t. When he held the open book up to my face, revealing something lurid, I called him an “eye raper” and went home.

20.   Pearl Jam’s Jeremy video was a much-talked about and much-aired teenage cultural milestone of 1992. My mom told me she’d leave it up to me as to whether I watched it at my friend’s house (we didn’t have cable and only had one TV set), but said she hoped I didn’t. Well of course I did and failed to see why anyone would make a big deal about it, so I told my mom I thought it was way worse to watch a war movie where lots of people got shot, than a video about one kid shooting himself. She agreed but asked if I thought either made for nice subject matter. Well, no….


21.   In eighth-grade philosophy I had one of my favorite teachers, a genuine monk named Brother Smith, who was hilarious. He introduced me to G.K. Chesterton, and it was to him that I first came out at my school as an agnostic. (Administration cared less than I was hoping.) He said most people outgrew agnosticism and was sure I would too, which I thought was condescending, and told my favorite college student so during one of our many long distance talks. He looked the subject up at the University of Michigan’s library, and read where an encyclopedia said being an agnostic was more common in people under forty. Whatever. Anyway, Brother Smith and Brian were basically right, I came to believe in God, just would not always be God’s biggest fan.

22.   While we were in a strip-mall Korean nail parlor where I was told no one spoke English, Dana, who was always telling me I needed to develop “the art of not giving a goddamn” demonstrated as we got manicures by loudly saying that losing her virginity at thirteen back in 1987 had felt like ripping the quick off a fingernail, “only worse.” A fascinatingly disturbing topic to my young ears, but then she went into this rant about how she’d take any bet that despite what I thought I’d never get through high school a virgin, because: “You’re the type you have to watch.” I kept glancing around at the Korean ladies, wondering if they knew what she was saying, but Dana shook her head and waved my unspoken concerns away, so I huffed back this sanctimonious spiel about how I’d also take any bet that she cared to make that I would indeed finish high school a virgin no matter what she thought she knew about me, so there! After my speech the Korean ladies looked at me and started to laugh, and I found out Dana knew these women personally and all spoke English just fine.

23.   Johnny Carson retired after thirty years on The Tonight Show, and a girl from school named Kate taped the final show because she said it was “history.” This same Kate had a scar on her lower back that gossip said resulted from a vestigial tail being removed when she was a baby. I often heard that said but she hotly insisted she got it sliding into a rock on a creek bank, which Occam’s Razor suggests was probably the truth, darnit.


24.   I was having dinner with my grandparent one spooky autumn night down the road from where one of the most tragic nightclub fires in US history had happened in the ‘70s. By coincidence, I’d just watched Sightings, a paranormal show, about the location of the fire, which researchers claimed was overrun with demons drawn by the tragedy. In daytime that seemed silly, but it was night, the restaurant was almost empty, and when I walked alone down this long shadowy hall to the restroom, I started remembering that show, and ran back to our table. When I confessed to my grandma what had gotten into me, she said, “Oh, dollbaby, do you want me to walk with you?” The shame of my grandma escorting me to the loo overpowered my fear, I did go alone, but it was the most nervous pee I’d take for years.

25.   I got my first job, working at Blue Chip Cookies, where (overpriced) gourmet sweets were made and sold. All the manager said when she hired me was, “You’re obviously under eighteen, so you can only work certain hours.” Doing two hours after school three times a week for $4.50 an hour, around twenty bucks a week, was fine by me. It wasn’t a bad job, I weighed and boxed cookies for mostly nice customers, but after only being there about a fortnight the manager came to me holding my tax forms and said, “Are you seriously only thirteen?” I admitted I was, and she said, “If you were looking for a job I figured you were at least in high school, but I can’t have someone your age working here.” And just like that I was back among the unemployed. For the record, I think I looked a little older than my age, and had a way of speaking and presenting myself more maturely than most middle school kids did, so I guess she’d assumed I was two or three years older. Blue Chip Cookies soon went out of business anyway.

And that was 1992!

1978:
1. A promising start for the defending champs, my Portland Trailblazers, crashed when several key players, including Walton and Lucas, went down with injuries.  The 50-10 start that season (!) ended with a 58-24 finish and a playoff loss to the Sonics.  I remember yelling "DAMN IT!" as the Sonics won the final game and my mother was positively mortified.
2. HALLOWEEN becomes, at the time, the most successful independent film and makes Jamie Lee Curtis a star and John Carpenter's career takes off.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5ke9IPTIJQ#)
3. Because it was rated PG my mom dropped my sisters and I off at the Joy Theater in Tigard to watch INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS.  Holy crap were we traumatized!
4. We had a couple major ice storms in the late 70s, starting in 1978.  I remember waiting for the bus and getting pelted with marble-sized hail!  Also, power lines were hanging low with long icicles.  I remember walking with my mom once and she freaked when she saw me trying to break off one!
5. The final film with Bruce Lee is GAME OF DEATH, which he had started 5 years before, then died early in production.  Seeing Bruce fight 7'2 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was something else!
6. Other big flicks were UP IN SMOKE, LORD OF THE RINGS (which we also saw at the Joy Theater), SUPERMAN, DEATH ON THE NILE, EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE, JAWS 2, THE WIZ, THE DEER HUNTER, WATERSHIP DOWN, ANIMAL HOUSE, HEAVEN CAN WAIT, MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, DAMIEN: OMEN II, and of course..
7. GREASE is the word!  Olivia Newton-John (OMG was she hot) and hyena-grinning John Travolta star in a crazy 50s musical.  Hit singles released from the film included "Summer Nights", "Grease", "Hopelessly Devoted To You", "You're The One That I Want" and "Greased Lightnin'".
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA-xjRsY71w#)
8. Scumbag director Roman Polanski exiles to France after pleading guilty to sex with a 13-year old.
9. The Afghan War begins when the Afghanistan President and his family are murdered.
10. The first comic strip of GARFIELD is published.
11. Massive earthquake in Tabas, Iran kills around 15,000.
12. Pope John Paul's papacy only lasts 33 days when he is found dead at 65.
13. Jonestown: Reverend Jim Jones leads his People's Temple into a mass-suicide in Guyana; 918 die.
14. George Moscone, mayor of San Francisco, is assassinated.  His replacement, Dianne Feinstein, is the first woman to take that job.
15. Serial killer John Wayne Gacy is arrested.
16. SPACE INVADERS debuts; it is a worldwide smash and causes a yen shortage in its native Japan.
17. TV show debuts: DALLAS, TAXI, DIFF'RENT STROKES, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, WKRP IN CINCINNATI, MORK & MINDY, VEGAS, 20/20, THE INCREDIBLE HULK (the 1977 version was a pilot movie), KIDS ARE PEOPLE TOO, and THE WHITE SHADOW.
18. Plenty of game shows to make me happy: TIC TAC DOUGH returns with a very new look, a very mean dragon and really revitalized Wink Martindale's career.  Also loved the giant cards of CARD SHARKS and the fact that players could now roll the dice on their own on THE NEW HIGH ROLLERS.  And of course, MATCH GAME '78 and MATCH GAME PM.
19. Cartoons: THE ALL NEW POPEYE HOUR, BATTLE OF THE PLANETS, CHALLENGE OF THE SUPERFRIENDS, DINKY DOG (I remember that one!), BUFORD/THE GALLOPING GHOST, FANGFACE, GALAXY GOOF UPS, and YOGI'S SPACE RACE.
20. The Washington Bullets (now Wizards) win their only title thus far, in a close 7 game series against the Sonics.
21. The only Super Bowl to award 2 MVPs in one game: Harvey Martin and Randy White, both Defensive Linemen for Dallas as the Cowboys beat Denver 27-10.
22. Leon Spinks beats Muhammad Ali for the world heavyweight title, then loses it back to Ali later this year.  It's the first time a boxer has won the title a total of 3 times.
23. The Yankees win back-to-back World Series titles.
24. The Montreal Canadiens win their 3rd straight title! (they would make it a 4-peat in 1979)
25. Mini series/made for tv movies: DARK SECRET OF HARVEST HOME, A CHRISTMAS TO REMEMBER, DEVIL DOG: THE HOUND OF HELL, THE INITIATION OF SARAH, KISS MEETS THE PHANTOM OF THE PARK, RESCUE FROM GILLIGAN'S ISLAND, STRANGER IN OUR HOUSE, SOMEONE'S WATCHING ME!, and... THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL.

Hey, retrorussell, do years from past lives count?  Like:

Memories of 1102 AD

That darn knight I married went off to the crusades and left me stuck in the castle with the kids and his mother. Things were so much better last life in Babylon....

There could be a separate thread on that I suppose..
A little too "Shirley McClaine-y" for me, personally..
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/4c112152904c6cd3cfa1c9bcd8a19288/d72d5da65d904cde-8d/s500x750/9ac699246eb619e8330db2bb5c9c7178b90d5d73.png)

Memories of 1990

1.   On January 1, 1990, I wrote a list of questions to myself for me to answer on New Year’s day 2000, and kept it in safe place til I answered the questions ten years later. Lotta water passed under the bridge between those times.

2.   The ‘90s were fast out of the gate, and it was like they were determined to kill off the ‘80s as soon as possible. In January the Simpsons left their ‘80s home, The Tracey Ullman Show, and before 1990 was done, ‘80s hair metal had spun toward decline, Mike Tyson had lost his championship belt, Yuppie role model Donald Trump had gone broke, and the Cold War came to an end, really screwing up ‘80s action movie franchises.

3.   The Berlin Wall was brought down, and in the true spirit of capitalism, pieces of it were sold as souvenirs. Germany soon reunited, and things seemed to be going the right way.


4.   After promising that we could read his lips, no new taxes, President Bush raised taxes. He did give an anti-drug talk broadcast live in every school in America, and we were grateful it got us out of fifth grade class when they rebroadcast it to us in one of our DARE sessions about a year later. He compared saving one of our friends from drugs to a boy on the beach saving individual starfish lost at low tide. I thought it was a sweet comparison, but most kids I knew smirked.

5.   The Hubble telescope began its mission, and people never looked at the universe the same way again. A cosmonaut who went to space once said he didn’t see God there, but Hubble may have shown us God’s dazzling handiwork.

6.   During Lent my friend’s eight-year-old brother had to do a report about the Holy Roman Martyrs, and I gave him some help with it, so between us the paper went full-on blood and gore and had the martyrs death-rattling as they got their limbs chewed off by lions in the Coliseum. When his teacher gave him his paper back she reminded him of the word “Holy” in the assignment and graded it an F for all the upside-down crucifixions and pregnant saints being burned alive while their insides got torn out by elephants. He was so proud of that F…


7.   Margaret Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister, a job she’d held since 1979. Sometimes it seemed Thatcher was a little too enamored with being disliked, but today many say her far-right policies were a blueprint for stepping off a path that was leading the UK toward socialism.

8.   A long-planned tunnel linking Britain and France was completed, though the actual Chunnel would not open for traffic for four more years.


9.   Magic-Eye books were cool because they let you view 3-D images without glasses, and I spent several sessions with one trying to see the pictures supposedly hidden behind what looked like visual noise. Finally a pyramid and camels and palm trees leaped out at me from the gibberish, and I was hooked.

10.   MC Hammer’s Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em opened a door to Vanilla Ice’s song Ice, Ice, Baby, which had a riff that tried to piggyback on Queen/Bowie’s Under Pressure. EMI’s lawyers soon noticed. Thankfully Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares To U got lots of radio play and was a pretty song.


11.   That May, Jim Henson and Sammy Davis Junior died on the same day, and you could hear how that tragedy affected Kermit, because he never sounded the same after that.

12.   On Memorial Day, my parents and I heard Desmond Tutu give a speech downtown, then we went to a farm belonging to a friend of my dad’s where there was a pig roast, which I found a VERY disturbing sight and promptly became a vegetarian.


13.   The first time I saw Edward Scissorhands I was blasé, but it grew on me. Ghost I thought was boring except for the psychopomps that dragged the screaming dead away. Misery was one of my first experiences with seeing a movie based on a book I’d read. Home Alone was mega-popular in 1990, so I disdained it.

14.   Dana (yeah, gotta mention you and keep the streak going) went through a stage of worshipping Sylvia Plath and trying to get me to connect with her. She told me this long, dramatic, somber account of Plath gassing herself in her kitchen, and I asked, “Did her family keep cooking in that oven?” Dana F-bombed me and asked what that had to do with things, but you know, I still wonder if they did.


15.   My mom was still in her twenties for the first half of the year and had great taste in music. I was two years from teen rebellion and I liked music she liked, making her my introduction to some great bands, like Love and Rockets, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Kate Bush, Concrete Blonde, k.d. lang, Queen, and above all, U2. She and I would crank up the stereo downstairs and dance and dance.

16.   My Aunt Christie went to Italy and brought me back a stone picked up from Mount Vesuvius to add to my collection of rocks and soil from all around the planet. Also in ’90 she took me to a Democratic fundraising event where Tipper Gore and John Glenn spoke, and in general she seemed closer to me than to her daughter, my cousin Allie, who was awful to my aunt in so many ways. Aunt Christie would be a hugely influential presence in my life til I was thirty-six, and she was a great person.


17.   I started reading Stephen King in a big way that year and when ABC made a two-part movie out of IT, I taped it and rewatched it often. (I was SO GLAD the series left out “that one part.”)

18.   My grandpa took my cousin Jared and me to the World Series in October, where he bought fourteen-year-old Jared a beer that got him tipsy enough to stand up on his seat and cheer. I had more fun seeing normally reserved Jared be red-cheeked and goofy than I did watching what back then was still the biggest sporting event in America. Grandpa’s  team swept, by the way.


19.   I saw an episode of Twin Peaks, and it awed me. It was doing things like no other show I’d ever seen, and had the best music I’d ever heard on TV. I went home and raved about it, and my normally permissive dad said, “That show with the murdered girl wrapped up in plastic and the town full of weirdoes? I don’t think an eleven year old should be watching that.” I protested I was almost twelve, but no dice. Thus did Twin Peaks became forbidden fruit to me. When I finally did watch it in the future it didn’t seem as good, and many things are like that, letdowns from what you imagine they’ll be. (Except for fire and ice cheesecake, which I first had in 1990, and which remains awesome.)

20.   Ken Burns’ The Civil War, shown on PBS, seemed something almost everyone I knew watched, leaving me griping to my dad that seeing a TV show about 640,000 deaths was fine, but watching Twin Peaks about one dead girl was verboten? (He spoke German, so I slipped in that word, you see.) Comparing the body counts of war movies with those of other types of shows was an argument I’d use over and over in the near future, as I've mentioned, since I thought I was being original and was rather proud of my logic.


21.   An expert predicted the New Madrid fault near the Mississippi River would slip on December 3rd and cause a quake like the one in 1811 that’d knocked the President out of bed in the White House halfway across the country. Cities were forecast to collapse, millions to die, and we had to live with that hanging over us for months til December 3rd came and went and no quake happened, so to my crushing disappointment I had to take my mid-term exams after all.

22.   Once AGAIN, I didn’t see or talk to my dad for nearly all of the last six weeks of the year, and hated it, so I wrote him a long, sad, bitter letter, emptying my innermost soul and telling him I loathed his job and how much of his only child’s life he was irreplaceably missing. When he got back at Christmastime I was so glad to see him that I put the letter away and wouldn’t show him til I got a bright idea in 1995 when I was mad at him for (rightly) bringing me back to focus when I had gotten out of control. (Not with drink or drugs, just with the way I was being about a lot of things.) In 1995 he read this letter from the past that I hoped would break his heart, but with the maddening patience he was showing me even as he curtailed my life to the point of taking away almost everything, he said, “Honey, my mother is dying, my wife left me, my daughter is trying to go on a hunger strike, and I’m in a fight with my sister who wants to sue me down to the shirt on my back for something you did, so sorry but your emoting from 1990 doesn’t wound me like you want it to.” And he was right, teenaged me had really wanted to use the sadness of my sweet little eleven year old self to torture him into easing up on me in ’95, but the man was just too smart.


23.   That Christmas I was given the thing I wanted more than anything except selective invisibility, this composite Prince “sweet spot” tennis racquet like Martina Navratilova used, and I was SO happy! Ironically it would be a fall onto the handle of that same racquet during an overly-ambitious on-court dive four years later that would cause a freakish internal injury that’d nearly kill me. After that the once-worshipped racquet took on a malevolent aura so that I didn’t even like looking at it. I was also never as good a tennis player again.

24.   Two days after Christmas we got seven inches of snow, so Rachel and Gina and Mark and I made forts and had flung-snow battles into the late night, even tossing snowballs to Rachel’s dog, Mercury, who could catch anything. Then the day after that it was seventy degrees, leaving me sunburned. It was strange weather, even for where we lived, which lies below a shifting jet stream boundary.


25.   What could be bigger in a remembrance of 1990 than Operation Desert Shield? Even the East Bloc falling in on itself didn’t seem quite as intimately pressed into everyday life as the nation going to war for the first time in a generation. Newspapers were forecasting months of conflict and thousands of US deaths, maybe even a nuclear war if Saddam used chemical weapons on Israel like he vowed he would. As 1990 waned I remember everyone held their breath and hoped for the best, not knowing the greatest decade of modern times lay ahead.

And that was 1990.

2001-
I remember 9/11. I was at work and saw the Twin Towers get hit by an airplane on TV in the office, when I was going outside at break to have a smoke. I left for home and turned on the TV. My brother Richie was outside sitting on the back porch. I called my Ma to make sure she didn't go to Manhattan that morning. She could see the smoke from Long Island.

1982:
1. I think it was this Christmas that I got a Texas Instruments 99 (TI-99)!  Cool computer for its time with  BASIC programming and cassette memory.  Didn't have a printer, monitor or floppy drive but still had fun with it and had it hooked up to an old B&W tv.
(https://www.oldcomputr.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/texas_instruments_ti99_4a-7518.jpg)
2. Also got this cool handheld for that same Christmas: EPOCH-MAN!  It was a neat combination of Pac-Man type LCD game, stopwatch, calendar, clock and alarm!  I got one from a Gaming Convention in recent years!
(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRC5z8eq0JhDUuKhoeUsqvf69Yls8Iv6vhdXA&usqp=CAU)
3. Loved this album at the time, since I was big on video games:
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/80/Pacmanfeveralbum.jpg)
4. The Tylenol scare!  7 die in the Chicago area from cyanide poisoning in Tylenol capsules.
5. One of the most celebrated teen comedies of all time is FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH.  It sends multiple young actors' careers off and running (especially Sean Penn's) but Ray Walston's performance as Mr. Hand is what really drives the movie IMHO.  Also brought the Cars song MOVING IN STEREO into our conscience with the "emerging from the pool" scene.
6. Jason Voorhees gets his iconic hockey mask for the first time in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III- IN 3D.
7. My stepmom who I did not always get along with (and moved out years later because of this) I must admit did throw great birthday parties.  I had ALL the kids I knew from school over.  I remember my birthday cake saying PAC MAN FEVER on it!  Waka waka!
8. My stepmom  I also must credit for a great system of getting me to improve my schoolwork which started this year: a list of things to make sure I did for a whole month (like get A's, have zero missing assignments, get 100% on quizzes, etc.) and I would get rewarded with a new Atari game!
9. Falklands War: Argentine forces take over the Falkland Islands; they are retaken by the British later this year.
10. Big hits I remember enjoying at the time included MICKEY, CENTERFOLD, GLORIA, MANEATER, WHO CAN IT BE NOW, BACK ON THE CHAIN GANG, ROSANNA, and EYE OF THE TIGER.
11. Speaking of EYE OF THE TIGER, it's Rocky vs. Mr. T in ROCKY III!  Surprisingly decent flick.
12. Isreal invades Lebanon.
13. Beloved family sci-fi classic E.T. debuts.  I had to wait a while to see it after its release; the lines to the theater went on for BLOCKS.
14. A big musical celebrity event occurs in Central Park: The Nuclear Disarmament Rally.  Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt play for 750,000.
15. Korean religious leader The Reverend Sun Myung Moon is sentenced to 18 months in jail and $25,000 for tax evasion/conspiracy to obstruct justice.
16. Poor ol' Vic Morrow.. during the filming of TWILIGHT ZONE.. THE MOVIE a pyrotechnic effect causes a helicopter to malfunction and kill the veteran actor and 2 child actors.
17. Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemayel is assassinated in Beirut.  This leads to the Lebanese Civil War in which thousands of Palestinians are killed.
18. Princess Grace of Monaco (formerly Grace Kelly) is killed in a car crash in Monaco.
19. An NFL strike by the players cuts the regular season down to 9 games.
20. Crazy finish between California and Stanford:  Assuming Stanford has won, the Stanford marching band gets on the field during a kick return by Cal.  However, with 5 laterals, Cal pushes through the band and into the end zone to win!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfebpLfAt8g#)
21. THRILLER!  The epic album, and the video directed by John Landis!
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/55/Michael_Jackson_-_Thriller.png)
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOnqjkJTMaA#)
22. The first computer virus-- the ELK CLONER-- infects Apple II computers via floppy disk.
23. Some famous deaths: PAUL LYNDE, VICTOR BUONO, HANS CONREID, THELONIOUS MONK, LEE STRASBERG, JOHN BELUSHI, RANDY RHOADS, WARREN OATES, CARL ORFF, ROMY SCHNEIDER, RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER, SATCHEL PAIGE, KING KHALID OF SAUDI ARABIA, CURT JURGENS, HENRY FONDA, INGRID BERGMAN, KEN BOYER, CRISWELL, FERNANDO LAMAS, DOMINIQUE DUNNE, JACUES TATI, MARTY FELDMAN, MARTY ROBBINS, WILL LEE (Mr. Hooper on Sesame St.), JACK WEBB.
24. The San Francisco 49ers win their first Super Bowl!
25. Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini KOs Duk Koo Kim, who dies 4 days later from sustained injuries.

Memories of 2007

1.   Landon---my future husband/long-term partner in quaint mayhem---spent new year’s day wondering along with me what was up at the party we’d been to the night before in the gaslight district, at the 19th century house of a Russian man and his American wife who said they worshipped “all higher powers including Satan.” They did this bizarre rite at the stroke of midnight to ask that “the spirits” give all of us a good year.

2.   In the news, Bob Barker stepped down on The Price is Right; the iPhone became the latest must-have; Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair; for a while Lonelygirl15 had YouTubers thinking they were watching a girl raised by a death cult; Twilight was briefly bigger than Harry Potter; and MySpace was still top dog in social media, though not for much longer.


3.   The greatest headline in the history of mankind followed a would-be terrorist attack on the Glasgow, Scotland airport. It read: “I Kicked A Burning Terrorist So Hard In The Balls I Broke A Tendon In My Foot.” Truly a hero for our times, though as I said back then, just imagine if the order of the two body parts had been rearranged in that sentence.

4.   As for women in politics in ’07, Hillary Clinton was aiming for the Oval Office, and Nancy Pelosi was elected as first female Speaker of the House, but sadly former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto met a violent death. I always thought she had pretty eyes.

5.   GWB announced the “surge” in Iraq. It played well at home, while elsewhere lots of people died for short-term gains. I went to two funerals that winter of men who otherwise might have survived the conflict, but for the surge they were removed from their regular positions and reassigned with front line military units where they did not belong. Not everyone who deserves a star on the wall gets a star on the wall. Not by a longshot. The wall should be full of stars.

6.   Shifting gears, The Deathly Hallows finally revealed Harry Potter’s fate, while onscreen The Order of the Phoenix let us see ol’ Dumbledore was a badass!

7.   After video of a young man’s bad afternoon went viral, people went around merrily exclaiming: “Don’t taze me, bro!”


8.   Juno made anyone ever knocked up as a teenager wonder why her experience wasn’t as sweet as it looked onscreen. Hmph!

9.   I liked Borat on Da Ali G. Show, and laughed myself silly during the movie, but looking back the whole stunt seems like a mean-spirited betrayal of trust and hospitality. Eh, you live, you learn.


10.   Landon and I traveled a bunch in our last child-less year. We spent three weeks wandering New Zealand, and did another week in Los Angeles. We also went to Mackinac Island, Houston, Cleveland, Portland, Oregon, Milwaukee, Chicago, Memphis, Birmingham, and Mobile. Passing through New York on another trip I saw Annie Leibovitz.

11.   I was in a car with Clare, who pointed to a man in a Blink-182 shirt inside Taco Bell with his friends, and told me he’d once been a jerk to her, so I told her, wait here. I went in and said to the man, oh, hey, you’re Rich, right? Then started talking away while he tried to place how he knew me. (He didn’t.) Finally I said how mean some (non-existent) girl named Jill had been to him, having had no right to dump him and make fun of him to everybody just because he happened to have a small penis. Rich’s friends were suddenly all ears as I went on saying nobody even likes Jill, and it’s not his fault his penis is small. He started ranting at me, and I said, fine, look, I don’t blame you for still being sensitive about the way Jill treated you for your small penis, but you’re being rude to me, Rich. As I left I heard him telling his friends he didn’t know any Jill, and what I said about his anatomy wasn’t true. When I told Clare what I’d done, she was appalled but still laughed driving back. Hey, if I love you, I’ll do anything for you.

12.   I had a pass that got me into critics-only screenings of several movies that year, including The Good German. Funny to see people taking notes while watching a movie. With the pass I also saw 300 with all its oiled, shirtless men, and described it as a gay fantasy flick. For some reason straight guys didn’t seem to appreciate my insight.


13.   My buddy Rob married his girlfriend Tara in a Norse pagan wedding which included a fertility rite in the name of the goddess Freya; very soon they were endowed with a son. In fact babies dominated 2007. My best friend Gina got married and soon was expecting my goddaughter Courtney. Clare got pregnant with my future and badly-named godson Brian. Another friend of mine, Mandy, added a little girl to her big Mormon family. And Greg, a sweet boy who’d doted on me in college like no other guy ever doted on me, told me he and his wife were likewise expecting a little boy. Must’ve been something in the air that year, huh?

14.   The Sopranos finale was kinda messed-up; streaming on Netflix and Hulu became a thing; so did Amazon’s Kindle; Keith Richards bragged about snorting his dead dad’s ashes, setting the bar higher for grieving sons everywhere; and New England sports fans got championships by the Red Sox and the Celtics (who really should learn to pronounce that name right).


15.   I went to many plays that year, including taking Tyler, then age eight, to see The Lion King on stage. He spent a lot of that summer with me, and it was the first time I ever really let myself think Dana might have been onto something in picking up signs that Tyler was not going to grow up arrow-straight.

16.   A writer’s strike paralyzed scripted TV and led to such bizarre programming as Conan O’Brien spinning his wedding ring on a desk.


17.   Boris Yeltsin died, as did Anna Nicole Smith and writer David Halberstam, whose three-inch thick cultural history of the 1950s I’d been reading all year. Another sad death in 2007 was Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro, who had millions pulling for him after he broke his leg. Outrageous internet rumors of Elmer’s releasing a commemorative Barbaro glue turned out to be fake news.

18.   A mid-air collision between two small planes resulted in wreckage…and pieces of the pilots...falling partly onto my Mom’s co-worker’s roof and lawn. It was so bad he proclaimed he couldn’t live there anymore, moved in with his boyfriend, and put the house up for sale.


19.   A twenty-year-old Wisconsin man received probation and counseling after he was arrested for having sex with a dead horse (not Barbaro!) and later a dead whitetail deer.

20.    I did a DNA test to see where my ancestors came from and along with the expected bits it showed up traces from the Indus Valley, from Berbers of North Africa, Basques from Iberia, a marker in Syria, and another in Tuscany, revealing how much humans in the past moved around and got to know one another.

21.   At forty-seven my mom had a mammogram for the first time, which not only found zero cancer, but the technician, an English lady who reminded Mom of Sharon Osborne, told her she had the breast firmness of a twenty-five year old. I was not only relieved for my mom’s healthy result but took the nurse’s firmness comment as a hopeful forecast for my own future.

22.   I didn’t care for The Hills, but credit where it’s due, Lauren Conrad definitely knew how to rock some cool braids. I tried to duplicate a few around this time, and usually failed. Another failure in 2007 was when I took a class in Sufi dancing and was told if you did it right, you never get dizzy. I did not do it right and had to call Landon to give me a ride back because I was too motion sick to drive.


23.   While Landon was restoring a 19th century inner city house---always trying to get into Architectural Digest---a methed-out Appalachian walked in and asked him for money. When told no, the crazy-eyed, sweat-dipping addict produced a pistol and said he was going to kill him for thinking he was better than him. After a tense minute the man left. I could tell something had happened when Landon called me, because he had this giddy, shaken-up tone to his voice. I drove straight down and got there as the police were leaving and we went and had beers, then I told Landon he was an idiot for being in that neighborhood unarmed. He found out something that day I already knew: it is amazing how fast a brush with sudden death can translate into arousal.


24.   Most everyone I knew in 2007 agreed it was almost pathetic for charismatic Illinois Senator Barack Obama to try to run for the Presidency during what we all were sure would be Hillary’s easy ride to the White House. “I think he just wants her to make him VP,” I remember saying dismissively, happy about a Clinton return, not knowing I was a year away from becoming the family apostate and doing something the young me never would have guessed: voting Republican for the first time in my life.

25.   Though I wouldn’t register til early ’08, I first stopped by a website called BMDO and thought the place was weird. I definitely do weird.

Memories of 2008


1.   Early in the year, in the last spurt of childless twenty-something craziness, Landon and I, in possession of a bit of spending money, traveled to northern France, took a train through the Chunnel, then drove all across Britain from Cornwall to Scotland, and finally ferried over to Ireland
.
2.   In Pere Lachaise I kissed Oscar Wilde’s tomb while wearing red lipstick, a tradition now impossible due to Plexiglas, and a groundskeeper told us Jim Morrison is not really in the grave marked as his. Speaking the language made for interesting moments, and some things I overheard Parisians saying included: “Yes, they are Americans but they somehow don’t have big asses.”; “I wish tourists would get out of the way of people who know where they’re going.”; “Americans always smell strange.” Truthfully most French people were fine and many delightful.

3.   Long story short, I got pregnant in either Scotland or Ireland, not entirely accidentally but sooner than I was thinking it was going to happen. We later flipped a coin to decide where the monumental deed was done, and Scotland won the toss as origin-place of our baby. Best trip ever!


4.   In this year of personal new beginnings, there were endings in the world. Heath Ledger overdosed, Tim Russert and Bernie Mac died of coronary events, Charlton Heston lost a battle with Alzheimer’s, and the man who’d played Bozo the Clown terrified his last coulrophobe this side of Heaven.

5.   Breaking Bad and True Blood debuted on TV, as did Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which had a delightful Saturday morning cartoon feel. In movies, there was Cloverfield, The Dark Knight, The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons, and Twilight.


6.   Popular music, however, continued a 2000s trend of mostly sucking society’s brains out through the ears. (Confession, I did sort of think Katy Perry’s Hot N Cold had a good beat.)

7.   I discovered writer Michael Swanwick, and read him a lot. If you like science fiction and don’t know his work, you’re missing out.


8.   In the news, Ted Kennedy’s health failed due to a malignant brain tumor; half of the world’s Blockbusters closed; the governor of Illinois got busted for lots of stuff, while New York’s governor resigned after a sex scandal; Guitar Hero was humongous; India introduced a $2,500 car; the Beijing Olympics had a great closing show; and Castro retired after a half century of attempts on his life. (To more or less quote Furious Styles, “Somebody musta been praying for him.”)

9.   My godson was born, and to be a godmother I had to be in a so-called state of grace, so I went to confession for the first time since the ‘90s, and there made the mistake of telling the priest I was only doing it to play by the rules. He said if I didn’t believe in the sacrament, I had no business being a godmother. Point taken, but he still heard me out. Not long later I had to do it all over for my goddaughter, Courtney.


10.   In the church, where I had to promise on a baby’s behalf to renounce the devil “that great liar and deceiver,” I had a moment when for several seconds I honestly could not say the boy’s name, Brian; it was like it would not move past my throat. Guess after eight years that word still conjured pain, huh? Frankly I’ve never been good at ceremonies, and at my confirmation as a little girl, I got in a giggling fit in front of the archbishop. Sure, it’s charming when you’re seven but try being twenty-nine and feeling dozens of people awkwardly waiting, and a grandmother with a long and unforgiving memory glaring at you with white-hot loathing she’d been storing up since 1999, and which you only that moment realized existed.

11.   That summer Michael Jackson recorded his last original song, Best of Joy, intended for an album he never lived to finish.


12.   There was a 5.6 earthquake two states over that rattled my house and sent a watercolor to the floor. Also that year five tornadoes hit the area in one afternoon while we were in a lakeside cottage which had no basement. In my diary I ranked it in the top five worst storms I’d ever experienced. Then that fall Hurricane Ike did the improbable and retained tropical storm force hundreds of miles inland and rolled across our city, leaving about 90% of a metropolitan area of 2.3 million without power for up to two weeks. On the plus side, devoid light pollution I’d never seen such starry skies.

13.   I got hit with news I had to work in Boston for a short-term assignment. It’s never been a city I’ve done well in, and in 2008, pregnant and homesick, I begrudged every minute spent there, surly and overworked for my condition.


14.   Prince Harry served in combat in Afghanistan in ‘08, and soon the press was jumping all over him for his raucous partying when he came home. Sorry but in my book a soldier returning from war deserves to let off a little steam.

15.   That year I met my oft-hilarious friend Edie, a self-described LGJP----Lawn Guyland Jewish Princess---who has been a trip to know. One of her maxims is if a woman has sex with her husband more than once a month---or twice if he never complains about her spending---she’s spoiling him. She sometimes calls me shiksa, I sometimes call her Jewess, but we’re great buds and she takes me bris-crashing for the free food and swag.


16.   Britney Spears was held for involuntary psychiatric evaluation, and later had her father appointed overseer of her finances. Poor Britney was not even allowed unsupervised visits with her sons.

17.   For her 48th birthday I took my mom to hear Fresh Air host Terry Gross give a talk. While driving we saw a bumper sticker that said: Visualize World Peace, Or I’ll Punch You. It was one of those moments you laugh hysterically over something not that funny, and we laughed til tears were rolling.


18.   On November 4, 2008 junior Illinois Senator Barack Obama became President-elect of the United States, beating war hero John McCain by ten million popular votes.

19.   Me, I was in labor that day, soon undergoing the only conscious out of body incident I’ve experienced. I’d had enough of all the pain, and was suddenly shocked to notice I was above the tilted hospital bed looking down at myself still pushing away. Instantly I was back inside my body, but I’ve never forgotten that split second of being somewhere else.


20.   A day earlier if you’d asked me if I knew what love felt like, I’d have said yes, but when I held my minutes-old daughter for the first time, I realized any love I’d ever felt to that point in my entire life had been eclipsed. It’s like the highest of all loves lies dormant and only activates when you have a child. Maybe “joy” is the right word, but there was no emotion that had ever come remotely close.

21.   Moving on…. “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” commercials amused me longer than they should have. They launched some great parodies too. (“I’m a bra, I’m a jock strap.”)


22.   Bill O’Reilly, a man not nearly so dexterous when he wasn’t on his home turf, had an on-air cat fight with the eternally hormonal hosts of The View.

23.   The Great Recession almost steered the economy onto the shoals of depression, but dang there were a lot of bargains on offer if you had two bucks to rub together. Like Subway’s new $5.00 eleven-inch foot longs, so underpriced franchisees lost money.


24.   Dracula’s Lament, the song from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, was so hip I downloaded it and listened to it about a quadrillion times. I still like it!

25.   After living for most of my life with an oft-confided premonition that I was to die at age twenty-nine, I turned thirty that December 24th, and felt deeply relieved, not least because kids never forgive a parent for dying, you know.

And that was 2008.

1999.

1) I started finished my first year of my 2nd HND and started on the second year. Because I'd found child porn on a former friend and classmate's computer the year before, I and the other person who had been there when it was found were put into a different class from him, which I felt was unfair. If anyone was to be moved, it should have been him.

2) After several attempts to have sex with me were turned down accidentally, I finally ended up having a one-night stand with a girl I was at college with. By the time it happened, I don't think either of us really wanted it anymore although there had been times in our relationship when one or the other did want it. There were some reasons why it happened, but they weren't good ones. The sex itself was mostly poor. The only plus I have is that it did allow me to add another country to the list of ones I'd been to bed with a woman from, although much later on have sex with another woman from that same country, so it doesn't really even have that as a consolation. It seemed odd to me that a woman who was so desperate for sex with so many men would just lie there and do nothing (she didn't like anything but the missionary position). I've been told there is no such thing as bad sex. This night proved that to be wrong. She was an attractive girl, but just didn't really do it for me. I was getting close to 30 at this point while she was still a teenager. This remains the biggest age gap I've ever had between myself and a partner. I had very quickly learned the previous year that girls who had strict parents went absolutely wild when they got to taste freedom for the first time.

Mind you, this would not be the only time I'd have sex with a woman I wasn't physically attracted to. The other times though generally managed to be fun regardless. I've always felt vaguely proud that I've always been able to perform even if I didn't overly want to.

3) The euro was established. People started getting angry that this might one day replace the £ and was the source of many a fist-shaking newspaper headline. Oh if only they knew then how it would all work out.

4) Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic all joined NATO, seeking protection should Russia ever end up trying to dominate them again. This seemed highly unlikely to ever happen though due to the mess that nation was in. Oh if only they knew then how it would all work out. Doubtless more nations would have been clamouring to join.

5) An F-117 was shot down over Yugoslavia. China & Russia are believed to have gotten their hands on the wreckage. The Chinese embassy in Kosovo is accidently hit by a B-2. This later event would happen on my birthday and would greatly upset the girl mentioned in 2 above.

6) The suspects in the Lockerbie bombing are finally handed over for trial. They are generally seen as being patsies in the UK being handed over just to get the sanctions off Libya and not really the ones responsible. I would be sitting in a pub with a woman many years later, when I would finally see justice done, when I saw a terrified Ghadaffi dragged from his car to be shot. I got an immense sense of satisfaction out of that, although I did wish his ending had been longer and more drawn out rather than being over relatively quickly. Then again, how could you punish him enough so it was equal to what those who died that night and the pain felt by those who knew them?

I would be disappointed by the rest of the world seemingly welcoming Libya and Ghadaffi back into the international fold.

7) The Scottish Parliament is officially opened despite attempts by the Tories to sabotage and weaken the project. This would lead to a long (and ongoing) struggle between Edinburgh and London over what powers each should hold.

8) India and Pakistan have a short war which India wins. A few months later another war would almost break out when a Pakistani military aircraft is shot down over India territory.

9) The Dreamcast is launched. I ignore it because I am a PC guy.

10) After bombs kill several hundred Russians, Chechen terrorists are blamed and the Second Chechen War is launched by a recently elected Vladimir Putin. Russian agents however were actually caught by Moscovite police planting bombs and were ordered to release them. This would not be the last false flag operation used by Putin. He is able to use this to get promoted from his position as Prime Minister to that of President though when Boris Yeltsin retires before the year is out.

Oh if only back then we'd known how that would turn out.

11) Australia votes not to get rid of the queen. While I don't have anything against her, I don't particularly understand why they wouldn't want their own head of state.

12) Kuwait gets rid of the right of women to vote. With memories of Maggie Thatcher being in power, this doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to me.

13) I start taking part in weekly pub quizzes in a bar (The Black Cat) over our lunch hour. This leads to me missing several classes while I wait for the scores, or just decide I'd rather have another beer than go sit in a classroom.

14) The millennium bug is big news. We figure on the one hand it is a storm in a tea-cup, but at the same time that it will provide us with a lot of work and money.

15) After several years of not watching it, I take a casual interest in Pro-Wrestling. The Rock seems more interesting than Hulk Hogan ever was.

16) Travelling to and from college is an approximately hour-long trip which allows me to read more books than I've had time to for many years. I do my best to look hostile and mostly always get a seat to myself.

17) Having done a 12-hour shift at work and then cycled home I was surprised to be awoken by a phone call at 3 or 4 in the morning to hear Susanna angrily asking how much I would charge to murder her sister. They had gone to the cinema together and a guy had tried to chat her up. She'd turned him down, but her younger sister had been interested and got the guy's phone number. She was outraged that her sister would move in on her territory (her words). I can't believe that after this I still went and slept with her, but things like this were part of the reasons why I didn't want to get into a relationship with her. It would not be the last time she'd ask me to hurt or kill someone for her. She was one freaky deeky girl.

18) I can't remember what job I took this summer. I know I was doing something, but what the hell it was, has faded into the mists of time. My best guess is that this is when I was working as a slaters labourer in the building industry working with Wattie and Jock. I hope they are both retired by now. Wattie was the elder of the two (in his 40s or 50s), and his back was screwed from years of carrying loads in an unsafe method. Jock was in his mid-30s. I did use to work with people who were older then than they would be now though, and they were really f**ked up physically. I told them my cunning way of getting laid. I'd lie about still being a virgin and women would want to be my first, something I had never mentioned to anyone else from that day, until today.

19) I refused to get involved in the big celebrations for the end of the millennium, preferring instead to spend the time with my family. It just seemed to be fireworks and alcohol anyway, which I was quite capable of having at home. I was glad though that it wasn't John Major in power, taking us into a new era anyway. It would have been a bad start.

20) I started running a game of Werewolf: The Apocalypse for my younger brother and his friends. Wanting an experienced player, I started looking online for another player. What I got was Fat Dave.

Fat Dave was a bi-sexual (unsuccessful) actor who was my first ever problem player and I would learn a lot from dealing with him when it would come to similiar players in the future. He thought he should permanently be the centre of attention and was constantly making belittling remarks to everyone else playing. One night after I treated him back the same way he sent me an email accusing me of being a b***h. The next session involved the players basically time travelling and going back to the era of Vietnam to find the location of a MacGuffin. I had prepped a lot of era-appropriate music, but Fat Dave had brought a CD of Bauhaus which he insisted on me playing. To keep the peace I put it on for a couple of songs, but no one else was enjoying it so I took it out of the CD player and put on my original soundtrack. He would then pointedly sit the CD case beside me. When I ignored that, he took the CD out of its case and put the disk beside me.

When I still ignored the disk he lept out of his seat and roared "Are you taking the p**s out of me?" I quietly told him to sit down (already having decided due to his behaviour that at the end of the session I was going to talk to him privately and tell him that him being in our group wasn't working out and he was no longer welcome). When he didn't I decided to get up out of my seat. I don't know exactly what my face was like when I stood up, but it was enough to make Fat Dave realise he'd pushed things too far. For his trouble he got kicked out of my house, leaving behind only a smell that strongly suggested he had shat himself.

One of his friends tried to make peace between us, but I'd already moved on and didn't care. I didn't need an apology from him, nor did I feel like giving one. He would then try phoning me one night and hanging up whenever I answered, but the night he tried I was the only one in the house and I only answered the phone the first time it rang. I then went out for the night and the number of calls from him for the rest of that night amused me greatly.

21) It seemed odd to me this year that I'd lived for an entire quarter of a century this year not to mention having seen 3 decades. I'd been stabbed enough times that I didn't think I was going to be around for too much longer.

22) I had a spot on my wrist that had always bugged me. I decided this year that it had annoyed me enough that I was going to cut it out. I now have a scar where it used to be.

23) I listened to Marilyn Manson for the first time. I liked a couple of his songs, but in general, seemed a bit too screechy for my taste. Just after this, he would be blamed for a school shooting, rather than something sensible, like say guns.

24) I went to the cinema for the last time with Suzanna. We went to see South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. Unlike when we watched Armageddon, she would not burst into tears at the end. I got a bad feeling about The Phantom Menace though and avoided going to see it for quite a while. Indeed it would be a year or so before I bothered. Payback and Virus would be my favourite movies of the year, both films I picked up on both VHS and later on DVD. Other ones I'd enjoy though would be The Matrix, Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels,  ExistancZ would just be weird. I would take my younger brother and his friends to the cinema to see The Blair Witch Project as a birthday present. He had dyed his hair pink at this time and this had some police staring at him. He was worried about it, but I told him that the police didn't enforce the laws of nature, and he'd be safe. We went to see Rob Halford live, and I accuse him of trying to get a backstage pass off Rob with his pink hair...

25) The phrase MILF entered the popular lexicon, replacing the term Yummy Mummy. I still prefer the older phrase.

Some Memories from 1985:
1.  Having come home on leave from the U.S. Navy to get married on Dec. 15, I loaded up my new bride and we boarded a military flight for Yokosuka, Japan.
2.  Navy Housing found us an apartment off-base in a suburb of Yokosuka called Kita-Kurihama, where we would live for the next year.
3.  After a frantic week of buying furnishings for our apartment, I had to get underway for a month-long deployment.  Patty returned home to visit her Mom, who was not taking the departure of her daughter very well at all.
4.  We came back to our home port for a brief visit, and then sailed forth again, with a planned port call at Sasebo, Japan in April.  Since we were scheduled to be there for several days, I planned for Patty to take a train down and meet me there.
5.  After two days in Sasebo (after which we were supposed to join the 7th fleet for an extended Indian Ocean deployment), my ship the USS Lockwood was scrambled from port because the Russians were doing their largest naval exercise in the Pacific since WW2.
6.  For three days we shadowed an entire Russian battle group.  I got to see a Russian aircraft carrier at a range of less than a mile, and we got buzzed by Soviet MiGs several times.  Our captain told us he'd informed the Russians that they could send back to Vladivostok for more ships if they felt intimidated by our presence (there were 11 of them and one of us!).
7.  We were relieved in our surveillance by the flagship of the 7th fleet, the USS Blue Ridge, which then got all the credit on the news for intercepting and surveilling the Russians (typical of the "Blue Pig" as we called her).
8.  A cracked boiler forced us to return to Yokosuka, instead of proceeding to the Indian Ocean with the rest of the fleet.
9.  After the boiler was fixed a month later, the Lockwood entered dry dock for its scheduled five-year overhaul.  For the next six months it was almost like being on shore duty!
10.  I took my wife sightseeing all over Japan, including several visits to the beautiful shrines and temples at Kamakura.
11.  We went on a tour package to climb Mt. Fuji, the day after I'd stood an all-night watch on the ship.  I made it within 200 feet of the summit, where we spent the night in a hostel.
12.  We were supposed to climb to the summit early the next morning to see the sunrise, but I got severely altitude sick in the night and missed reaching the top of the mountain.
13.  I had a picnic and clam bake at "Monkey Island" in Yokosuka Bay for several of my shipmates and their spouses.  The clams were delicious fresh out of the harbor.
14.  Our captain introduced a program of morning PT for the whole crew which pretty much everyone hated.
15.  Patty broke her arm at karate practice one evening and had to have a long pin inserted to hold the tip of her ulna in place while it healed.
16.  Despite the broken wing, my wife insisted on cooking a Thanksgiving dinner in our tiny apartment for several of our shipmates who couldn't go home for the holiday.  The turkey burned, but the guys loved her for trying.
17.  My brother, on his way home from seven years working in the Sinai Field Mission, came to Japan to visit us and we took him on a bus tour of the "Fuji Five Lakes" region, which is quite lovely in the winter snows.
18.  I got within a few miles of the famous "Suicide Forest," but was unaware of its existence at the time.
19.  I saw "Return  of the Living Dead" in the theater for the first time.  Linnea Quigley's "tombstone dance" carbonated my hormones.
20.  Our friends Mike and Priscilla had the entire original run of STAR TREK on a new format called Laser Disks - like DVD's but the size of a record album.  We were assured it was the wave of the future for home video viewing.
21.  A large apartment opened up on base, and Patty and I bid farewell to Kita-Kurihama and moved into a sixth floor flat that was three times as big as the one we had, at least!
22.  The Lockwood finished its overhaul and put out to sea for a shakedown cruise to test out its new weapons and radar systems.
23.  Coming back into port, those radar systems didn't keep us from getting slammed into and nearly cut in half by a Filipino ore carrier.  Miraculously, no one in our crew perished (although our Captain's career was a casualty).
24.  I wrote a song about the collision to the tune of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."  I still sing it every now and then.
25.  Patty and I celebrated our second Christmas as a married couple, and the first one in a place of our own.  It was kinda nice. (Edit after my wife read this -with a very limited budget for a tree and decorations, Patty made and decorated a large star out of cardboard and felt to go on top of our tree.  We've had many larger, nicer tree toppers since then, but that star is still placed on our tree every single Christmas to this day!)

And that was 1985!

That makes the Christmas tree star all the more special. Wonderful story there, and a great read about an eventful year.  :thumbup:

Memories of 2009: Sex, drugs, classical music.

1.   It was a year for celebrities dying: Ted Kennedy, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Billy Mayes (remember him?), Natasha Richardson, Patrick Swayze, and Brittany Murphy. I also mourned King of the Hill shuffling off to syndication afterlife.

2.   I probably shouldn’t put this, but screw it, I was really proud of it at the time. I lost the weight from being pregnant with my daughter, and was 124 pounds by winter. In your face, baby weight!


3.   Speaking of my daughter, we got pestered by “some” in our families about having her baptized, which I called a placebo, but finally Landon, who is utterly uninterested in religion, said, if it’s only a placebo, and it makes our loved-ones happy, what’s the real objection? So I caved.

4.   In the news: Captain Sully crash-landed his jet in the Hudson River; Analog TV was phased out for digital, and the government gave away free converters; Avatar broke box office records and briefly launched a 3D craze; Economists claimed the Great Recession ended, yet both Chrysler and GM filed for bankruptcy; and swine flu broke out globally.


5.   On TV: Susan Boyle wowed millions on Britain’s Got Talent; The Vampire Diaries, Parks and Recreation, Modern Family, Caprica, and Jersey Shore (shudder) debuted; while Conan took over The Tonight Show.

6.   I saw a French movie called Girl Cut in Two that was close to high-art porn. I set foot in a Wal-Mart for the first time in my life that year and was quietly describing a lurid scene in the movie, when an overweight woman wearing stretch pants and with obviously great hearing glared at me from the opposite end of the aisle. Welcome to Wal-Mart, I guess.


7.   Thirty-three-year-old Aunt Sarah, who had previously lived in Atlanta for several years before returning to Ireland, moved in with Landon, our daughter, and me. I loved the arrangement, but even though I do not have a reputation for being jealous, I began to get this feeling that my aunt and Landon had had something happen between them. I had no evidence for it, but the feeling wouldn’t go away. I decided if it had happened the consequences of verifying it would be so horrible for my family that I said nothing, and apparently hid my suspicion so well that when in a heated moment in 2014 I finally did fling an accusation at Landon, his shock convinced me I had been wrong, leaving me feeling very relieved, very low, and very glad my aunt, at least, never knew I had thought this.


8.   I was offered the task of going through stories and poems written by a nineteen-year-old boy unknown to me, who had hanged himself eight years earlier, and his family wanted the writing he left behind catalogued. It was Fed-Exed to me in a box and came with a thousand page S.O.C. journal this young man had kept til close to the end of his life. I was deeply affected, and soon felt like I knew this dead boy. I wrote in my own diary that it was like he had crawled into a cave and darkness swallowed him, since as time went on I could feel him losing touch with life around him. In the end the family kept the writings private instead of their original plan of submitting them for publication.

9.   Weddings, weddings everywhere. My cousin Adam, a selfish jerk, frankly, married the Brazilian girlfriend he’d been living with in Rio for about a year; His younger sister Allie, who’d been married in a civil service, got married in a church; The sister of that adoring boy from college I sometimes mention, a girl who was my friend in her own right (I seem to stay close to the sisters of guys with whom I’ve kept company) got married in Maine; Annnnnd my dad got re-married, wedding a nice lady named Barbara, who had a twelve-year-old son, Todd, a scientific prodigy aiming for Cal Tech.  I liked Barbara just fine, but stubbornly told everyone: “Just because my dad is marrying her does not make her my stepmother.” I even posted that in here, and ghouk (if you remember him) replied: “Uh, actually I think it does.” Ha.

10.    Spending money we shouldn’t have, and which we could use nowadays, we went back to France, then to Ireland, where I saw my maternal grandfather for what turned out to be the last time, since he suddenly died a few weeks later. He was a truly good man, and with his passing I had only one grandparent left from that point til just last month.


11.   OK….I will tell you guys this story. Maybe a little insecure after having a baby, especially since I was caught up in wondering if the man I’d been living with for years had been “indiscreet” with my own aunt, one spring evening, feeling moody, I drove off wanting at the same time to be alone and not alone, so after being out a while I called a man I knew who was an artist my dad’s company represented, and who was a year younger than me. This artist had a striking pseudo-androgynous beauty to him, we connected with each other, and there’s no doubt that if I had not already been in a committed relationship, we’d have had something going.

He drove out to meet me, something that flattered my ego right there, and we sat on a bench, under an awning, in the rain, and it had gotten late, no one else was around on a night like that. The sound of the rain made me happy, the smell of falling rain was nice, the light gray mist that thickened the air in pauses between downpours seemed almost dream-like….and I sat there with this artist and watched and listened and felt alive in my place in the now, feeling what the Japanese call mono no aware, and just to have him there with me in that quiet rainfall was a thing of loveliness.

I told the artist I was happy with my life, happy to have a baby, not even stressed about turning thirty, but I admitted just lately I had also felt lost in the new landscape around me. Without saying anything in reply, he pulled me close to him and we stayed like that, and it was one of those moments in a lifetime where you wish time would freeze and go on and on and on.

A few minutes later though we said goodnight and went our separate ways, and never shared anything like that again, but it made me feel renewed inside.



12.   A friend of mine wanted to know if I would be interested in going with her to get a Qi-Gong exorcism, and I said, “You really have to ask???” The “exorcism” featured the drawing of symbols in the air around us, the burning of incense, and chanting, but the part that grabbed me was when one of the practitioners said something uncannily like what I had been told in the past by two unconnected people: “You have spirits of grief inside you, living in you like you are their house.” I admit hearing that claim once again felt eerie, even though I said I didn’t believe in Qi-Gong and didn’t and don’t.

13.   I started playing Fallout 3 and enjoyed myself immensely in the Capital Wasteland. It was the first of four Fallout titles I’d play in years to come.


14.   I was working on an air force base when I heard about the mass shooting at Fort Hood, an absolutely appalling event. I didn’t know any of the thirteen who died or the thirty left wounded, but I did know people stationed there, so it was doubly horrible news.

15.   Mostly on a lark to fill the time while my baby took naps, I submitted a proposal to HGTV for a show I called Home Facelifts. I figured maybe Landon, who had been restoring 19th century houses for most of the decade and getting some nationwide notice in the field, could become a breakout TV star, but I never got anything back.


16.   We went to hear David McCullough lecture at a local university, and Landon asked if I noticed the man shook his butt when he walked. I hadn’t (and I’m not sure why he was looking there), but to this day we still call that august author “the ass shaker.”

17.   I was still doing a lot of Amazon reviews---long story why---and was listed as a top 150 reviewer, but Amazon wasn’t going to let me use the phrase “dick in your face” for a review of the movie Bruno, til I convinced an Indian rep for the company it was a US colloquialism meaning “funny.”  Evil of me.


18.   With my dad and Barbara, we---yes, by 2009 I’d become a “we”---went to Final Friday open houses and showing debuts at downtown art houses and galleries almost all year. It was cool, we’d get dressed up, see art, sip some wine, meet and talk to people in the field, then meander to another gallery to do it all again.

19.   We also went as guests of my friends Rob and Tara to an SCA Middle Kingdom feast that had the theme “The Courts of Love” referencing Eleanor of Aquitaine's 12th century sex parties. (To be clear, there was no sex at the SCA event…)

20.   But while I am thinking about sex, and honestly when am I not, one night I asked Landon to tell me a story from his pre-me amorous life, something he often did because we colorfully accentuate one another’s perversions. Anyway, I got treated to a tale of him and some girl who worked at the TV station where he interned in college. They split a hit of LSD and had a night of intense physical experiences where their hands blurred when they held them together, and it was like they melted into one energy form gently sailing down a waterfall. Wow! Well, I made the mistake of telling my cousin Dana and she said, “What is it about girls talking men you know into taking LSD during sex?” I said, “What do you mean? Who else was there?” Wrong question! She said, “According to what your dad told my mom on his birthday in 1973 when they’d had a few beers, he had hot, trippy acid sex with some hippie girl he knew that summer at Columbia.” Yeeeeah, Dee, I could’ve lived without that tale setting up shop in my head.


21.   I found out a man I knew online years before was killed by his unstable ex-girlfriend. I remembered him as funny and nice, someone who used to say he felt protective toward me. I laughed though when a mutual friend told me that back when I knew the man from a chat room, he used to tell his buds I seemed like a Catholic school virgin and he might have been making progress warming up to me, so maybe he could be “the one.” Oh, that poor goofy man….

22.   My anything but tech-savvy impending mother in law accidentally included me on an email in which she aired some frank criticisms of me and included the thought that I had brainwashed her poor innocent son with my fey wiles. While reading that my head hit the desk. Repeatedly. We’re fine nowadays.


23.   Through Edie I met a fifty-something non-practicing rabbi named Dan, someone who could discuss anything philosophical, and who spoke extemporaneously with the sort of polish usually found in much edited books. He described himself as a “brittle diabetic” and spent a lot of time in a wheelchair, so maybe that contributed to his being so acerbic. Still, in intricate depth the man knew all there was to know about every religion on the planet, and I think he enjoyed talking to me, since he dubbed me his “Shiksa scholar.”

24.   Just before New Year’s Eve I was asked by an intern taking surveys for a radio station what was the biggest lesson I’d learned in this decade, and I instantly said, “Men who have had sex with me should drive carefully.” She wouldn’t have understood, of course, but it entered my head to say that, so I did. I came home and answered questions about the 2000s I’d written for myself on New Year’s Eve 1999, and then wrote questions about the 2010s for me to answer in December 2019. (This account of that long-ago day has been brought to you by: extra-strength parahyperthymesia!)


25.   News outlets had ‘00s wrap stories claiming 2000-2009 was the worst decade ever. It was by no means close to the worst decade ever. We endured no world war, no great depression, no civil war, no Black Death, no Krakatoa stealing our summer and bringing famine after global crop failure. People who hyperbolically said the ‘00s were the worst time ever were simply spoiled by the greatness of the ‘90s.

And that was 2009!

1984:
1. Just finished my first year of Jr. High School at Whitford, which is probably about 3 miles from where I live now.  I remember our end-of-year assembly playing "The Bird" and "Jungle Love" by Morris Day & The Time.
2. Lost of great blockbuster films.  GHOSTBUSTERS, GREMLINS, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, AMADEUS, ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, PURPLE RAIN, KARATE KID, COTTON CLUB, THE LAST STARFIGHTER, POLICE ACADEMY, SPINAL TAP, 1984, DREAMSCAPE, THE NATURAL, PLACES IN THE HEART, GREYSTOKE, SPLASH, INDIANA JONES & THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, ROMANCING THE STONE, A PASSAGE TO INDIA and TOP SECRET and THE TERMINATOR.
3. Flicks I would see a lot on cable: BLAME IT ON RIO, MOSCOW ON THE HUDSON, ICE PIRATES, FOOTLOOSE, CLOAK & DAGGER, and REPO MAN.
4. What great music thumped over the radio/boom box this year!  Some of my faves: LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE BOY, FOOTLOOSE, AUTOMATIC, SELF-CONTROL, YOU MIGHT THINK, DRIVE, WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO GO, THEY DON'T KNOW, HEAD OVER HEELS, HOLD ME NOW, WHEN DOVES CRY, LET'S GO CRAZY, OH SHERRIE, DANCING IN THE SHEETS, CARIBBEAN QUEEN, CARELESS WHISPER, JUMP, WE BELONG, AGAINST ALL ODDS.
5. Plenty of crap in the box office too: DUNE, BEST DEFENSE, TANK, BOLERO, CANNONBALL RUN II, HARD TO HOLD, GIVE MY REGARDS TO BROAD STREET, OH GOD! YOU DEVIL, SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT, WHERE THE BOYS ARE 84, SUPERGIRL, SLAPSTICK OF ANOTHER KIND, SHEENA.
6. The first PG-13 film is RED DAWN.
7. SPORTS: The Raiders win their last Super Bowl title, as the L.A. Raiders in a whooping of the Redskins.  The Clippers move from San Diego to Los Angeles.  The Celtics win a tight 7 game series with the Lakers in the NBA Finals.  Hakeem Olajuwon, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and John Stockton are all selected in the NBA Draft (my Blazers took Sam Bowie at #2 instead of Jordan, to the scratching of many heads, though we did get Clyde Drexler later that draft).  Tommy Hearns KOs Roberto Duran to retain the WBC World Jr. Middleweight title.  The Detroit Tigers win the World Series over the Padres.  Gretzky and the Oilers win the Stanley Cup.
8. Summer Olympics in Los Angeles: Moscow boycotts the Olympics in response to America boycotting the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics over Russia's invasion of Afghanistan.  The US wins the most medals and most gold medals.
9. Jason Voorhees meets his end at the hands of a boy-- Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman)!  I remember being really impressed by the special effects by Tom Savini of the machete in Jason's face, then Jason falling on it and REACTING as it pushed through.  Super gory but super impressive!  FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL FRIDAY (FRIDAY THE 13TH PART IV)
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_YiZmpbHEw#)
10. The Macintosh computer debuts.
11. The Winter Olympics are held in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia.
12. Canadian PM Pierre Trudeau retires.
13. US CIA Chief in Beirut, William F. Buckley, is kidnapped by the Islamic Jihad Organization and dies in captivity.
14. The classic puzzle game TETRIS is released in the Soviet Union on Elektronika 60 computers.
15. Cirque du Soleil is founded.
16. The US Embassy in Beirut is car-bombed by the Hezbollah.
17. The Provisional IRA tries to assassinate PM Margaret Thatcher, and fails (though 5 are killed) in Brighton.
18. Massive famine in Ethiopia leads to a Christmas relief all-star group BAND AID releasing "Do They Know It's Christmas?".
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3fSknbR7Y4#)
19. PM of India Indira Gandhi is assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguards!
20. Murders of Sikhs across India follow the PM's assassination.
21. Several hundreds die in a Mexico City petroleum plant explosion.
22. A deadly methane leak at a Bhopal, India pesticide plant kills several thousands.
23. Near Christmas time, 4 black youths try to rob a white man, Bernie Goetz, on a Bronx subway train.  He shoots them, sparking a debate on urban crime.
24. The first official minivans are released: Chrysler Town & Country, Dodge Caravan, and Plymouth Voyager.
25. Watched TONS of this cartoon: HEATHCLIFF AND THE CATILLAC CATS!  Damn, that theme made me wanna dance!  "Heathcliff, Heathcliff, no-one should, terrify the neighborhood.."
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LLb8EBU9nQ#)
Oh that Cleo.. one of the early examples of sexy furry characters..
Another toon that I loved (and still do to some degree):
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae-Pl-Q34ng#)
PS: If anyone is interested, I have a YouTube series of videos detailing what I feel are the 20 best arcade games of each year of the 1980s, with at least 2 "flashback" sequences for each year.  So you get more of a visual treat than what you can get on this thread.  A taste:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twM1KsdyaEw&t=140s#)
Russell Shiley/Crazyclimber80

Memories of 2010: When Life Changes, It Changes


1.   In the news, the 2700-foot tall Burj Khalifa opened in Dubai; the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill was an ecological disaster; WikiLeaks told lots of secrets; and coinciding with reports of snow flurries in Hades, TEA parties turned well-off Republicans into social protesters.

2.   It was a bad year for disasters. An 8.8 Chilean earthquake was one of the most powerful in history; Haiti likewise suffered a 7.0 earthquake that left a million homeless; Christchurch, New Zealand was hit by a quake that wrecked its cathedral and inspired the wizard who used to colorfully orate out front to retire; and the Fukushima nuclear accident followed a tsunami, fueling fears of an emergence by Godzilla.

3.   At long last, after about a half-decade of cohabitation, I got married on the vernal equinox. It came about because after resisting it for years, I woke up on January 23rd and said, “OK, let’s get married.” Things happened fast after that. We went to Brazil on our honeymoon, and I discovered the rain forest was an overhyped swamp filled with bugs and fetid mud. The rest of Brazil was pretty all right though.

4.   Lady Gaga wore a dress made of meat to the MTV Music Awards, and I always imagined that if Joan Rivers had asked her, “WHO are you wearing?” Gaga would’ve replied, “Blossom and Clover and Sukey and Patches….”

5.   The penultimate Harry Potter film was in theaters, and suicide hotlines trained workers to be ready ahead of 2011 for calls from devastated Potterheads unable to face life without new Harry Potter movies.


6.   In politics, thirteen years of Labour rule came to an end when Tories joined forces with Liberal Democrats in a slightly hypocritical coalition; Obama repealed Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, and signed the Affordable Care Act into law; soon after, Republicans re-took the House. (Just sayin’…)


7.   On TV, The Simpsons celebrated twenty years on the air; The Legend of the Seeker was our enjoyable Saturday night never-miss; Conan O’Brien was fired from The Tonight Show; Lost was a wrap; and Downton Abbey, a soap opera dressed up as a drama, debuted, making me yawn.

8.   Elizabeth Edwards, Dennis Hopper, Gary Coleman, and Corey Haim died, as did one of my favorite writers, Louis Auchincloss, favorite illustrators, Frank Frazetta, and two of my least favorite authors, JD Salinger, and Howard Zinn.


9.   It was the snowiest February in local history, and I got to experience a thunder-blizzard. It would go on to be a drought across the rest of the year.

10.   In other news, geocaching was so popular even a Nevada brothel became a cache location; at a mall in California, three unconnected flash mobs realized they’d picked the same time and place to assemble; a disgruntled man flew a plane into an IRS center in Austin; and thirty-three Chilean miners were rescued after sixty-nine days underground, releasing me from the dreams I kept having about them.


11.   My thirty-month-old godson began a mildly awkward stage that accompanied his realization that ours is a diverse society, namely whenever he saw anyone of African descent in public, he would happily point and announce, “Black!”


12.   My pushy, nerdy literary agent decided to get out of the profession, and sold off all marketable manuscripts in his possession to other writers, who, via ownership, were then allowed to claim authorship of the stories as their own. “It goes on all the time in this business,” he told his former clients. It was in the fine print that he could “rep” us that way, brokering our work in this manner, but I was so hurt I stopped writing for about two years, and more than a decade later still have zero interest in being published again, just write for fun and let my friends read my stuff if they’re interested.



13.   A famous statue called Touchdown Jesus, that sat outside a megachurch off I-75, got struck by lightning and burned to the ground, while next door Larry Flynt’s Porn Palace sat untouched.


14.   In sports, Martina Navratilova beat breast cancer; Tiger Woods claimed he was sorry (right…) for putting his putter where it did not belong; the longest tennis match in Wimbledon history ended after three days; at the Winter Olympics there were noticeably few black athletes; and I went to a lot of eleven year old Tyler’s baseball and football games, proving to nay-sayers that boys who are gay do in fact play sports.


15.   In family news, my mom turned fifty; the two biggest video games in my life then were Fallout: New Vegas, and Demons Souls; we went on a five day Maine-to-Virginia “East Coast history trip”; I took an extensive insurance survey that forecast that I would live 87.3 years; and around Labor Day (can I get a drumroll, here?) I got pregnant with my son, yaaay!!!


16.   As a former ‘90s teen, it was amusing to live through the date 9-02-10.

17.   On The Late, Late Show, Geoff Peterson became Craig Ferguson’s gay robot sidekick!

18.   In movies, there was Shutter Island; 127 Hours; Winter’s Bone, the social network, and a remake of everyone’s favorite eye-rollingly, awesomely bad ‘80s flick, Clash of the Titans.

19.   Chelsea Clinton got married, and so did Katy Perry, Megan Fox, Emily Blunt, and---let’s review here---me.

20.   For some reason I found myself using the word “automagically” a lot, and had no idea where it came from. Did I invent it? Was it from a movie? Did it slide into my mind from some dark evil word-inventing government bureau?

21.   Music was total crap in 2010. Really. Can you think of one good top-40 song from that year? Besides Firework?

22.   The FIFA World Cup in South Africa showed that people everywhere could come together in mutual detestation of vuvuzelas.

23.   Mark Twain’s pseudo-Dadaist autobiography was “officially” published after a hundred years, and reminded me he had dropped unnumbered pages on the floor, and rather than take time to put them back in order, handed it off all mixed up. I… totally…. admired…. that.

24.   Apple released the iPad, which sold for half a grand, so I bought a fifty-buck knockoff that did the same stuff.


25.   In closing, Lisa Simpson once quoted: “prayer is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” and as 2010 was the year of someone’s terrifying plan which he called “the Mouse Trap,” it was, not coincidentally, the end of my being nihilistic toward God. In fact, developments left me praying like there was no tomorrow, because I wasn’t sure there would be. In late winter I was getting married, I had a small child, life was beginning anew in so many ways, yet it suddenly looked like I was about to die. The fires of life test us and reveal who we really are, and I humbly admit there was hypocrisy in my pretense of agnosticism. If 2010 was the year I lost connection with being young, in return I was forced to concentrate on more important things, which was a fair trade. And if you notice, I'm still here.

And that was 2010.

Memories of 2018

1.   Billy Corgan grabbed my attention for the first time in years when he went on Howard Stern and detailed his encounter with a naked shape-shifter.

2.   The #MeToo movement did some good and some bad, but did get Harvey Weinstein arrested.

3.   In the news: Prince Harry wed Meaghan Markle; fidget spinners were a fad; Kilauea erupted, sending plumes six miles into the air; and Saudi Arabia removed selective restrictions on women operating motor vehicles, possibly as good publicity following its hit on journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

4.   George H.W. Bush, Stan Lee, Burt Reynolds, Anthony Bourdain, Stephen Hawking, John McCain, and Billy Graham died in 2018, as did Aretha Franklin, Barbara Bush, and Koko the Gorilla, whose alleged use of sign language never convinced me. Furthermore, Dolores O’Riordan, like Jim Morrison and Whitney Houston before her, may have fallen victim to a musician-slaying creature with the ability to mimic a harmless bath tub. (Maybe that’s what Billy Corgan saw…?)

 
5.   Pornstress Stormy Daniels claimed she was paid $130,000 to keep quiet about a tryst with Donald Trump. (Obviously money well spent…)  She would compare the First Penis to a mushroom character from Mario Kart. How embarrassing for the mushroom dude!

6.   TWC’s Mike Seidell got busted faking being blown around by a hurricane, while men were seen causally walking past him in the background; speaking of weather, where we live we had a day in July ’18 where the temperature was 107 and the heat index 111.


7.   On April Fool’s Day someone showed me an ad he’d faked that had me thinking Playtex Tampons had won naming rights to an NFL stadium. It was a convincing ad, I tell you.


8.   I woke up one January morning after a seven-inch overnight snowfall, amused to see a coyote doing her best to leap up and eat seeds from our lowest bird feeder. That year we also had a fox and her babies come up on our patio each night for weeks. Since she had white socks, we nicknamed her Momma Montelli.


9.   Driving home I saw a Japanese schoolgirl in a white medical mask standing near a high school with what looked like red lipstick smeared from her mouth to her cheekbones. Some kid cosplaying Kuchisake-onna….or the real thing?

10.   My maternal cousin Donna, a physical therapist, told me ideally a person should only be up during noon or midnight, not both. This made a profound impression on my sleeping habits in ’18.


11.   I got chucked out of an after-party at the Chinese musical Shen Yun, for pointing out the suspiciously tiny feet of its female dancers; I also heard Neil Gaiman speak yet again and noticed since his marriage to Amanda Palmer, he’d aged quite a lot, satisfying me Palmer was a succubus; we saw a Doors tribute band called The Doors of Chicago, saw Steve Martin and Martin Short do a play, saw the Pixies and Weezer in concert, and for Christmas went to a Boar’s Head Festival where we met Henry VIII!

12.   I was hanging with my dad at his office when I wasn’t working elsewhere, and would have lunch fairly often with my almost father-in-law who worked nearby, and one day my dad said, “Going out to lunch three times in a week counts as dating.” Oh, yeah, real funny, Dad. THEN I got home and my husband told me he was tired of my “emotional affair,” but ironically he was talking about an entirely different man. I swear, some people think everything in my life is about sex, when it’s really about higher things, like wisdom, and money.

13.   At the same office, same summer, an intern brought in a 1995 magazine article “Things That Will Be Extinct By 2020” which in some ways was prescient, since pay phones, videos stores, and Saturday morning cartoons are gone, but we still have paper money, newspapers, and beachfront property in Florida, since oceans did not rise as anticipated.

14.   In TV: Super Bowl LII was the least watched since 2009, and the Academy Awards drew its lowest audience ever; Babylon Berlin, and The End of the f**king World, justified paying for Netflix a little longer, but I think 2018 was the year the streaming service began to tank.

15.   Roseanne Barr was fired from her eponymous sitcom for comparing a Presidential advisor to the product of an unnatural union, yet happily host Samantha Bee was not fired for calling First Daughter Ivanka Trump a “feckless c**t,” proving free speech does still exist in post-Woke America…..for some people.


16.   On the Hebraic front, I went to an Israeli film festival; took a course in the Talmudic commentary of the Medieval French scholar Rashi; and tried to convince my cousin Joshua, who planned to convert to Reform Judaism when he turned thirteen in a year, to adopt the name Shlomo. Alas, no dice on that.

17.   At age nine, Daisy, my oldest daughter, joined the Roman Catholic Church, entirely her decision; she then acquired a resultant scrupulosity stage of wondering whether various things were “sinful,” like her reading The Mortal Instruments. If there is one thing about religion that drives me crazy, it is when it conflicts with a person’s freedom to read. I later took her to where I went to college, and we buried a time capsule under the pines outside my former bedroom. I was disappointed Ray, my pervert downstairs neighbor, didn’t live in the building anymore, and wondered if ‘00s girls didn’t put up with his groping like we did in the ‘90s?

18.   I also found it a disappointing commentary on society that six of the top twenty movies in 2018 featured superheroes. Think of the great scripts that never got a chance.

19.   While on spring break at South Padre, eighteen year old Tyler, the boy I partly raised, had sex with eight men, and boasted about it. I present that fact without additional comment.


20.   My friend Clare’s eighty-nine year old grandmother died. Even though the grandmother lived across town, Clare never met her because the woman disowned her father before Clare was born, after her dad married her mom (who was pregnant with her older brother) instead of going to medical school like the grandparents wanted for him. What. A. b***h.


21.   In 2018: I completed a marathon, but only by running-walking, running-walking; I tried a Vietnamese dish called phuk, pronounced exactly like it looks; I was diagnosed with a spot of skin cancer, which I had removed without anesthesia, because phuk pain (see what I did there?); I read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and Ready Player One in the same day; I listened to The Black Tapes Podcast (which is about demonology) on nights when I had insomnia. It didn’t cure my insomnia.

22.   Proving a rivalry never dies, the 2018 release of Dark Souls Remastered VR, and Skyrim Special Edition VR, divided younger nerds as the original games had their older peers in 2011; however nerds everywhere joined in vomiting their disgust at Fallout 76, the most panned game in Bethesda Softworks’ history.

23.   November 11th marked 100 years since the conclusion of The War to End All Wars, though despite the optimistic name, the armistice brought more of a generation-long pause, reminding us that: “War. War never changes….”


24.   In more news: Facebook was in the hot seat over violations of privacy; thousands of US students paraded through the streets protesting gun violence; Kirk Douglas turned 101, and Olivia de Havilland 102; scientists declared Earth has an eighth continent, Zealandia, mostly under the Pacific in our era; and a poll showed only 40% of Americans believed the USA would still exist in 2118.

25.   Finally, on September 6th there was a mass-shooting in a downtown lobby I was a few minutes away from walking through as my usual shortcut to get to a federal building were I worked several days per month. Upon hearing on the radio of a gunman leaving passersby dead there, I thought of the small decisions I had made that morning that changed my arrival time. Chilling stuff.

And that was 2018.

1987:
1. Upon completing my first year of high school at Beaverton High School, I moved out of my dad/stepmom's house.  I just couldn't stand either of them anymore and moved up north to Auburn/Federal Way area in Washington State to live with my mom and stepdad and his kids.  Though he could be a bit immature I got along with everyone fairly well.  Lived in a very nice split level house.
2. Thomas Jefferson High School was the only school I'd been to that wasn't at least almost all in a single building-- you had to go outside to get to every class.
3. DOUBLE DRAGON, even though there was awful slowdown and you could exploit a trick to make the game painfully easy, is a rousing success in the arcades.  The franchise CONTRA makes its debut as well.
4. Reagan publicly admits that the US engaged in an arms-for-hostages deal, despite previously saying they did not.
5. PLATOON wins Best Picture at the Oscars.
6. THE SIMPSONS first appears, as animated shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show.
7. The great cynical, dark-humored sitcom MARRIED WITH CHILDREN debuts.
8. The phenomenon that is RICK ASTLEY begins with the hit "Never Gonna Give You Up".
9. All but one on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 are killed during a takeoff crash near Detroit.
10. Pope John Paul II visits LA and San Francisco.
11. Stock market levels fall all over the world, known as Black Monday (10/19).
12. A weird hack broadcast interrupts 2 Chicago-area programs: a football game and a Dr. Who episode.  It features a nut in a Max Headroom mask, who is never caught.
13. All on South African Flight 295 die when it crashes into the Indian Ocean due to a fire in the cargo hold.
14. North Korean agents bomb Korean Air Flight 858.  It crashes into the Andaman Sea; 115 die.
15. The passenger ferry MV Dona Paz collides with an oil tanker in the Philippines; around 4,000 die.
16. Famous deaths include Ray Bolger, Andy Warhol, Liberace, James Coco, Randolph Scott, Danny Kaye, Robert Preston, Rita Hayworth, Fred Astaire, Jackie Gleason, Lee Marvin, John Huston, Lorne Greene, Bob Fosse, Henry Ford II, Ralph Nelson.
17. THE UNTOUCHABLES is huge at the box office-- even though I'm not a big fan of Kevin Costner I have to admit this is great-- especially the baby carriage scene at the train station.
18. Other big flicks: MOONSTRUCK, WALL STREET, THE LAST EMPEROR, GOOD MORNING VIETNAM, BEVERLY HILLS COP II, LETHAL WEAPON, THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK, FATAL ATTRACTION, FULL METAL JACKET, ROBOCOP, THREE MEN AND A BABY, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: THE DREAM WARRIORS, STAKEOUT, THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, EVIL DEAD II, HELLRAISER
19. Bad movies are led by the legendary ISHTAR.  Also: ERNEST GOES TO CAMP, SUPERMAN IV, GARBAGE PAIL KIDS: THE MOVIE, LEONARD PART 6
20. DUCKTALES debuts!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DXo5haNd9M#)
More to come when I get home from work.

21. Also debuting in 1987: The first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxuvUAjHYWQ#)
22. Also: Star Trek TNG, 21 Jump Street, Full House, Blackadder III, Animal Crack Ups, Bionic Six, Bol And The Beautiful, Classic Concentration, A Different World, Father Dowling Mysteries, Friday the 13th the series, Jake and the Fatman, Morton Downey Jr., Max Headroom, My Two Dads, NFL Primetime, Out of this World, Remote Control, Thirtysomething, Unsolved Mysteries, Wiseguy, Win Lose or Draw
23. Sports: Twins win the World Series, Lakers beat the Celtics in the finals, Giants pummel the Broncos for their first Super Bowl victory, and the Gretzky-led Oilers win the Stanley Cup.
24. The cartoon Beverly Hills Teens was big with my stepsister, and I admit I loved the limo pool in the opening!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu2eawfTiCM#)
25. With or Without you and I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For are big #1 hits for U2.

Memories of 2017: Quite The Year.


1.   A solar eclipse that summer left parts of the US in darkness, and saw daylight dim for millions more. President Trump gazed at the sun with his bare eyes, inspiring some of his admirers to abandon the advice of science, and do the same.

2.   Netflix produced a controversial version of a 2007 YA novel I’d liked called 13 Reasons Why, but turned it into a festival of woke teenaged emoting, and as I watched I kept thinking a better title might’ve been 13 Reasons Whine.


3.   New words: GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) was added to The Oxford English Dictionary; my friend Edie said some atheists told her the new term they wanted to be called was “bright” as in, “I don’t believe in God, I’m bright.”

4.   In my diary I summed up my existence by noting: I'm thirty-eight and I bet in my life I've slept and eaten as much as most thirty year olds, consumed less meat than most ten year olds, worried and grieved more than most do in a long life, loved more deeply and passionately than most humans ever do, and been luckier in my family and friends than almost anyone.


5.   The same activists who raged against suggestions Barron Trump might be mentally impaired later claimed the display of a Donald Trump mannequin head on TV had Barron Trump believing his father had somehow been decapitated without him hearing about it.  Way to sit on both sides of the fence there, activists.


6.   The Last Jedi came out, and I said new Star Wars films were like post-classical Greek art: Hellenistic, but never Hellenic. Sigh, well, history majors got that.

7.   My nine-year-old daughter, Daisy, got into soccer, and for a time I thought it would be to her what tennis was to me. The sport brought out a competitive aggressiveness in my bookish girl I’d never seen. She also got a pet snake for Christmas, and named it Cornelius, because we were told it was a corn snake (get it?), but it was later identified as a scarlet king snake. One night Cornelius disappeared in our house, never to be found, and for all I know is still slithering sOmEwHeRe aMoNg Us….


8.   Two quotes I liked that year: “I have loved the souls of men and the bodies of women, but never the bodies of men or the souls of women.” And: “The days are long, but the years are short.”


9.   In the year that Kurt Cobain would’ve been fifty, Czech tennis star Jana Novatna passed away at forty-nine, Mary Tyler Moore died at eighty, Hugh Hefner at ninety-one, FOX grand poo-bah Roger Ailes died a few years too late, and the world lost Tom Petty, whom I always thought of as the Sarah Lee Cheesecake of Rock, because nobody didn’t like him.

10.   When one of the tenants at a house we rented-out shot himself after a breakup with his fiancé (as in male), my husband and I had to go clean the place after his intended moved away. I can now say I have scrubbed-up copious human blood and picked up pieces of brain and skull, and will tell you, I’m not rushing to do it twice.

11.   I earned my green patch in Krav Maga, but was told by the iron-tough Israeli instructors I needed more strength to go with my speed, and should lift weights. Never wanting to be a hard-body, I figured if I couldn’t outrun a thug, I’d shoot him. As life would later prove, sometimes neither is possible….


12.   My friend Amy, a funny, wild girl, one of the first friends I made in college, died of breast cancer. I’d lost people my age to other causes, but she was the first who died of a physical ailment. God, I miss her.

13.   A hard drive containing Terry Pratchett’s unpublished writings was run over by a steamroller, fulfilling the late author’s request.


14.   I have never felt our century-old house was haunted, but for a few weeks in 2017, every one of us heard a strange recurring sound at night, that to me was like distant white noise, and to my husband was like a hair dryer running far away. We never figured out what we were hearing and eventually stopped hearing it. I remember my five-year-old, Trinity, having a vivid nightmare during this time about the ground opening up and eating our house with “teeth made of rocks.” Shudder!


15.   Years ago I read The Poisoned Kiss, by Joyce Carol Oates, which she claimed she did not write, but rather channeled an unseen contributor she called “Fernandes” who placed the words in her mind. Late in 2017 I experienced something similar, and the result was 110 pages that flowed through me almost as if I was taking dictation, and which emerged complete and without re-writes, a rare thing for a flawed writer like me. It was one person’s recounting of his life and afterlife, and begins with an opening sentence in which he introduces himself, then promptly says he is dead. Even the title that came with the story, Tu Fui Ego Eris (Latin for “what you are, I was; what I am, you will be”) was unknown to me until I looked it up. The experience of writing Tu Fui Ego Eris remains among the oddest of my life.

16.   In good news, my college roommate adopted a bi-racial little girl named Sophia; in bad news, my psycho cousin Celia got arrested for domestic violence. In good news we acquired a second black lab; in bad news our existing dog wanted to kill her, so we had to return the new lab. In good news I got to meet Ashley Jenkins in Austin; in bad news, she wasn’t cool in person at all.

17.   First Lady Melania Trump refused to don a hijab (head scarf) when visiting Saudi Arabia, and I remember thinking, good for her!  After all, to avoid offending us, do you see Arab women taking their hijabs off when visiting here?

18.   My hometown’s most notorious serial killer, a man who murdered thirty-seven patients at a hospital where he was a nurse in the ‘80s, was beaten to death in prison.


19.   My eight-year-old godson was at the height of a stage where he seemed to have an inordinate amount of fear, and among other things wouldn’t be alone in a room with a door closed. I found his fears ironic because his uncle of the same name didn’t seem afraid of anything at all. Fortunately my godson did outgrow his peculiar apprehensions about everyday life, and maybe going zip-lining with his grandpa in Costa Rica that summer helped him build courage.

20.   I was understanding when my husband spent weeks with a dying woman named Corrine (Corrie) with whom he fell in love long before he knew me. I didn’t adore the situation but I let it happen. He used to come back from the hospital smelling like a honeysuckle candle, and I have never since been able to like that scent. In 2016 Corrie fell victim to a virus that attacked her heart and left her weaker and weaker, til it eventually killed her in May 2017. I was even all right when my husband took our daughter with him and went to Corrie’s funeral in California, and I bought Daisy a black dress at a boutique, and let her wear my grandma’s pearls. I thought they were coming right back but they spent several weeks driving home, and went to San Francisco and the Grand Canyon and all across the Southwest. It was the first time death had ever touched my husband’s life (the Irish call such a person a maighdean bàis literally "death virgin"), and he was vulnerably unprepared. I admit, ours is an unusual marriage.

21.   I went to my twentieth high school reunion and read David Sedaris’ diary while there, mostly staying aloof and wondering why I’d come. Classmates I’d found interesting weren’t present, and ones I hadn’t liked were, including Andrea, whom I’d once shoved to the ground after she said something about my mother. Many from the class of ’97 had gotten fat, and they all looked older. I left before it was halfway over, so don’t know who got the prize for Best Facelift.

22.   I read The Book of Joy, co-authored by the Dalai Lama and the man who gave Tyler his middle name, Desmond Tutu. (It’s the Desmond part, though Tutu would be a funny middle name.)

23.   Speaking of Tyler, he moved in with us a few months before he graduated from high school; moving out while still in 12th grade being something I had once done myself. Tyler and I had deep talks, and one evening he informed me he’d just tried sex with a girl, who was herself having first-time sex with anyone. I asked what he thought and he said…an ironic observation about the dimensions of the female body. Fact is girls were all over Tyler, and he ended up getting another girlfriend that year and they’re still together and have a surprise son named Giovanni, but all through their relationship Tyler has carried on with boys. I know he loves her, and maybe that’s how Freddie Mercury felt about Mary Austin, but I don’t get why a nice girl like Kylie puts up with that.

24.   During one of our talks I asked Tyler, who was still only seventeen, how many men there had been in his life in the last year and he said, “About sixty halfway and maybe thirty all the way.” I convinced him to have a blood test by saying I’d go with him and get one too, just to get him to go. I grew up in the early days of AIDS, and was worried sick for him, even though he told me times were different now. When our tests showed we were both clean, I asked him to see this as a fresh start and be more careful, and he said he would.


25.   Still….that August a man he met on a hook-up app tried to lock Tyler and his friend in his dungeon-like basement, but they got away. He came home freaked out and told me about almost getting abducted, and under my relief that he was OK I blew up and asked if he considered accepting an invitation off an app for a three-way involving a complete stranger to be keeping his promise to be more careful? Like a little kid again, he said, “No….” I told him I loved him and yet nothing I could say was going to make him stop being so stupid in his personal life, was it? He said he was sorry for scaring me, and I knew he was, but I also knew he was going to keep it up, and for a couple more years he did, before a realization that he wanted to be there for his son seemed finally to have made him wiser. The man who tried to abduct Tyler disappeared not long after.

And that was 2017.

I notice some folks are just listing stuff that just happened that year- not something they actually recall.

1980

I was 18 and grandfathered in on the newly changed drinking age in NJ (from 18 to 21).  I went to bars.  A lot. 
I saw JEFFERSON STARSHIP for the first time at South Mountain Reservation South Orange, NJ. 

I finished my first year of college that June.  I was living in Morristown, NJ. 

In my 2nd year, I turned 19 and a month later December 1980, JOHN LENNON was murdered. 

Eh, that's okay; I was just initially hoping people at least wouldn't list 25 things for a year they weren't yet born.  Describing in detail personal memories is better and more interesting IMHO.  But I'm flexible.

This wasn't my setup but it actually was pretty close to what I had

(https://i.imgur.com/FEWHzez.png)

I miss the days of the Atari 2600. 

Memories of 1989

1.   That June my parents and I moved thirty miles north from a house we’d lived in for three years near an international airport in Burlington, Kentucky, to a booming little city called Mason, Ohio. But I’m mostly telling the year in order, so that’s getting ahead of myself.


2.   In fourth grade we had an assembly to watch George H.W. Bush’s inauguration, and it was pointed out that Ronald Reagan had been the first President since 1840 elected in a year ending with zero to survive his time in office. This was termed “the zero factor” which ten-year-old me misheard as “the zero factory,” and as in some sinister President-killing place of industry.

3.   The local NFL team went to the Super Bowl, played well, lost. At school, Sssster, my teacher and the coolest nun ever, had promised she’d do the “Icky Shuffle” for us if the Bengals won, and I regret not getting to see that. Later in the year, when Lucille Ball died, Sssster called off lessons for the afternoon and let us watch I Love Lucy episodes. Sssster was awesome.

4.   We had a tornado watch in January, which everybody said they couldn’t remember happening locally that time of year. It had been a warm, sticky day, more like April, and a freaky lurch by the jet stream sent a batch of storms from the Gulf states to our area. Nothing happened that day, but in March ’86, about the time we moved to Burlington, a tornado had skipped past our neighborhood, downing trees and flipping over planes at the airport, so tornado watches weren’t something you could entirely shrug off.

5.   My dad, an Apple fan from the beginning, had a Macintosh SE, with a then-staggeringly powerful 20 megabyte internal hard drive. That computer cost him $1500.00!

6.   Because we were near the international airport I mentioned, we could watch planes land pretty much all the time. We also used to sometimes see lights in the sky we couldn’t ID, so we called them UFOs. We’d see them so often they stopped being remarkable, these odd hovering lights. I have had an odd childhood… adolescence… adulthood, and if I make it there I’ll probably have an odd old age too.

7.   While we still lived in Burlington, I hung out with a neighborhood wild boy nicknamed Tarzan, who was always building these insanely unsafe ramps to jump his bike off of. One day he dared me to climb to the top of a tall tree in order to be let into a club, so I agreed, and he was so sure I was about to fall to my doom he gathered not just neighborhood kids to watch, but his mom, who came out not to stop me but to spectate herself, and right before I started climbing, she said, “Little Catholic Girl, does your mom know you’re doing this?” (Yes, we lived by her three years and she never learned my name.) I made it up and down fine though I don’t remember the club I risked life and limb to join being a big part of my childhood.

8.   About a month after we moved to Mason, Gina and her brother Mark moved in down the street. Gina was my age and went to my school and would stay my best friend for many years, though she moved to Los Angeles a few years ago and sadly we’ve been losing touch. Her brother Mark, who is three years younger than Gina and me, is still local, and still my friend.


9.   Gina and Mark’s mother, Lynn, while always nice to me, used to work in tiny put-downs about my mom, implying she thought my mom was dumb. I did not like these…. Eventually it was pointed out to me that Lynn was jealous of my mom and was shamelessly flirting with my dad, who was completely uninterested in her. This would stay Lynn’s pattern for years, badmouthing Mom, hitting on Dad.

10.   While hanging out at her house, I watched my cousin Dana, who was fifteen, break up with this boy during a big verbal fight she 100% started, then the same afternoon take a phone call from the boy on speaker while he tried to patch things up with her. She told him, “Not yet, but keep asking and we’ll see.” She explained that some guys were at their best when they were trying to win a girl back, and he’d be a lot better boyfriend after “wiggling on the hook a while longer.” Her self-confidence just floored me!

11.   My grandpa took me to a ball game downtown the day after I got home from my summer trip to Ireland, and he asked what I liked best over there that year, and I instantly answered, “Being with new Baby Celia.” Having no (surviving) siblings I was completely captivated by my newborn cousin over there and would do my best to put her near the center of my life for the next two decades. I probably don’t need to go back over how that turned out.


12.   My dad took me to Mammoth Cave on the last day before fifth grade started at my new school, and it was a fun trip except the guide turned off the lights to show us how dark a cave was, then pretended the lights wouldn’t come back on and we were stuck in the dark, badly freaking out a Japanese lady in the group. Maybe I’m wrong but I can’t imagine a tour guide pulling a stunt like that nowadays.

13.   Local hero Pete Rose, whom my grandpa, a Reds super-fan, deeply admired, and to whom he once introduced me, was banned for life from the sport because he bet on it while a player and a manager. I believe the sentiment behind Rose’s overwhelming support in town was that, sure, the man was a sleaze, but he was OUR sleaze. I remember feeling a little shocked that this great baseball player, who’d been on such a pedestal all my life, toppled like that, but mostly I only noticed because it upset so many people.

14.   Speaking of baseball, a big earthquake hit San Francisco during the World Series that October, delaying the event for what I was told was the first time ever. Again, baseball disappointed my grandpa, who said the game should play anyway.


15.   My dad used to coach a youth basketball team for “high risk” young men in the inner city, and I’d go with him sometimes. I met a boy there a few years older than me, in a wheelchair, because he was shot on the sidewalk in front of his house in a particularly bad neighborhood called Over-the-Rhine. Why? No reason. Some other boys in a passing car just either shot him or were shooting indiscriminately out the window and happened to hit him. Both then and in retrospect what impresses me most about that young man was how little self-pity he seemed to have about his situation.

16.   It’s the funniest thing now, but on a Friday my grandparents flew my cousin Jared and me to Sea World in Florida, and we came back late on Sunday, so I didn’t even miss school Monday. In fact not all my classmates believed me when I told them I’d been to Sea World the day before.


17.   After it taking five years to get her abusive first marriage annulled by the Catholic Church, my Aunt Christie got remarried. It was a lovely wedding, all the family came, glad for her, but in one dark cloud that day, I was clued in by Dana that Aunt Christie’s teenaged children, our cousins Adam and Alison, were drugged out of their minds the whole time, unwilling to stay sober for a handful of hours, even for their own mom.

18.   I did like Alison, though, and one day that year our grandma took Allie and me to a farm in Indiana where miniature horses were raised. I don’t remember being scared, but don’t know if it was because these horses were the size of collies, or if my hippophobia wasn’t yet at full power. It was a rare day of not catching thirteen-year-old Allie high, and I much preferred her that way.

19.   I went to see Batman that summer with Dana, who’d already seen it a few times and loved it. Sadly, I found it absurd and kept telling her so during the movie, til after going “shhh” to me a few times, Dana got up and moved to another row. She was fifteen, I was ten, and always trying to impress her, so I was crushed with embarrassment! We walked to Taco Bell afterward and she said she’d buy, then gave me the pretty gold chain she was wearing, so I guess she felt bad about hurting my feelings, even if I should have shut up during the show. (I never have enjoyed super hero flicks.)


20.   My dad used to sometimes let me go with him to the federal building where he worked, and his friend there was this FBI agent, a black man named Ted, who shared my dad’s love of basketball, and who actually was the person who introduced my dad to the urban basketball program where Dad coached. Anyway, one day Ted burst into Dad’s office, not knowing I was there, and started happily telling him, “We ‘effing’ got another one off the ‘effing’ list down in Miami! ‘Effing’ Humphries shot the ‘MF-er’ in the ‘effing’ head…” Then Ted saw me and froze, and my dad jokingly picked on Ted for his spicy language in front of a kid, and later told me in the car, “Those FBI guys have no control over their mouths.” In his career dad had a higher opinion of the FBI than I did, since I am of the view that 9-11 may not have happened if a bunch of a***oles in the FBI had not withheld intelligence federal law required them to share.

21.   Mel Blanc died that summer, and I remember seeing a poster that had all the Warner Brothers characters he voiced standing by an empty microphone, bowing their heads.

22.   We had a dodgeball game in PE that my class dubbed “the bloodbath.” One boy named Greg Stoeffer got hit in the stomach so hard with the ball, he hurled up his lunch right then and there in gym. Another girl got elbowed in the mouth hard enough to draw blood, and I was after the ball myself when it bounced off the bleachers and bashed my nose. Another girl wiped out face-first on the floor, and still two more boys smacked their heads together. Yet when the gym teacher blew his whistle because we were too rough, everyone yelled that we wanted to keep playing.

23.   After the US invaded Panama in December, I saw a picture on the front page of the local paper showing a girl I kinda knew named Dawn, at a funeral holding the high school jacket of her brother, James Markwell, a Ranger who died in in the fighting. People on TV kept declaring what a great victory Panama was, but I always thought of the look of grief on Dawn’s face in that photograph.

24.   I remember the local FOX affiliate kept showing commercials for The Simpsons Christmas Special, which was airing ahead of the regular series debut in January, and I wrote in my diary “the Simpsons give me the creeps because they’re so crazy looking.” I’d go on to love that show across the ‘90s.

25.   On the subject of my beloved diary, I’d begun writing a journal the Christmas before, when my grandma gave me a blank diary for a present, and finished about a hundred pages worth of thoughts in ’89. During some years to come I’d write six times that, but big undertakings gotta start someplace.

And that was 1989.

Memories of 1982-1988: Life in Reaganland.


1.   On December 16, 1982 we were living in Montgomery, Ohio, and I was a week shy of being four, when we heard a massive crashing sound, and then sirens. Just down the street smoke was billowing, and it would turn out three FBI agents were flying with a suspect who’d hidden stolen cash somewhere known only to him, and he was taking them there. Since all aboard the small plane perished, the money is unfound to this day.

2.   When I was three, playing out in the fallen leaves on a windy November day at my grandparents’ house (the house we live in today) resulted in a fever of 104, along with an excruciating ear infection. I got checked into the hospital and there were concerns I could actually die if my fever went much higher.


3.   I got my first library card at age five, summer 1984 and it said: “Expires June 1988.” That now long-ago date seemed SO FAR AWAY, like it could never possibly come.

4.   I had an imaginary friend when I was four, and I’d wake up in the night and there he’d sometimes be, this friendly man who told me he was my grandson. He taught me to read, or at least somehow I was reading at a third-grade level by age four. I told people a man would come talk to me at night, and everyone thought it was a hoot that I called him my grandson, but nobody freaked that I said there was a man in my room! One part I have reflected on these last forty years and that is the man…my “grandson,” told me to write lots of things down, and in my life I have.

5.   When I was four we were still in the same townhouse in Montgomery, and I was jumping on my bed like I wasn’t supposed to, tripped, and busted my mouth open. I was more afraid of getting in trouble for jumping than I was of my pain, so I called my grandma, and she said to put ice on my mouth and maybe the swelling would go down and I could hide what I’d done. I said I couldn’t get to the freezer without passing Mom, so Grandma said she’d call her and distract her while I sneaked in, and that’s what she did and I got the ice and Mom never knew.

6.   My dad got an early screening pass for Return of the Jedi, and told me I was one of the first kids in America who’d be seeing it. As a fan he was thrilled but I was four and it didn’t hold my attention. Sorrrrry.

7.   In 1983 I developed a fascination for Vikings, and my dad got me a stack of books on them, and I’d happily play at being a Norse raider, making the sofa my longboat, but I noticed Vikings all had beards, so I got the bright idea to tie my hair under my chin to simulate facial hair. Trouble was it got so knotted it took my mom to get it undone, and I remember sitting inches from her while she got the tangles loose, a look of concentration taking over what I thought was the most beautiful face in the world.


8.   When I was five my grandpa asked if I would like to shoot a gun. I said well, sure, so he got a .22 and let me make holes in paper targets twenty-five yards away, and he was so impressed with my aim he used to show me off to his business associates. When I shared this cherished memory with my blue state friends in college, they universally freaked out. Welcome to red state America, ladies.

9.   Before she became a full-on drug addict in late childhood, my cousin Allie was a much nicer person, and one day when I was in kindergarten and she was in about second grade, she and I had a sno-cone stand out in front of her mom’s house while Aunt Christie sat near us in a lawn chair. I remember a police car pulled up and though we were only charging a dime per cone, the officers each gave us a dollar. I felt completely rich.

10.   In first grade a roughhousing boy named Carl came down the slide after me and kicked me into a mud puddle. I got soaked, and my mom had to bring me clean clothes. Carl got paddled in front of the class for it and cried before the principal ever touched him, then got an extra swat on top of the first three for “not taking it like a man.” (A man? He was six.) I’d never seen anyone get paddled before and felt so sick about it I tried to be nice to Carl, who remained a jerk, and that same week stole my trapper keeper with balloons on the covers, then got paddled for that too when the teacher found it in his book bag. Today Carl is a deacon. No joke.


11.   My parents were young when I was little, my dad was still in college getting his masters til I was six, and money was tight. So when in summer ‘85 Dad got his job, he took us to Disney World, which was something that meant a lot to him to be able to do. There, though, we were on the jungle cruise ride, and some man tried to spit from the boat into the water, and a big loogie landed on my dad’s arm, nearly resulting in a fistfight. Security came and my dad and the other man got taken off for a while, but Dad came back and said it was cool, and we continued our vacation there.

12.   When New Coke came out I remember the big controversy about it and how it failed, and because I was six I felt sorry for New Coke like it had actual feelings and knew it was being rejected as no cola had in all of history, so somehow I got the idea that we’d give it a funeral. My parents indulged me, and we buried a can in the tiny back yard of our townhouse, where it may or may not be to this day.

13.   I spent nearly a quarter of the ‘80s in Ireland. Not only would I go every summer, but a few times during my dad’s long job-related absences, Mom took me over, and we stayed for half-planned visits that could last weeks. My grandmother there was nothing like my grandma back home. She was not unkind but she was very serious, very religious, and very convinced it was impossible for me to receive a proper Catholic upbringing in the US, so she had me go to Mass EVERY morning, and in due time, to confession every Saturday. No days off, no exceptions. And then when not in church she would tell me about the lives of saints and have me pray decade after decade on the rosary with her and grade-school-age Aunt Sarah. Sometimes when I mention all the time I spent in Ireland, people get the idea I was over there kissing the Blarney Stone and having a great vacation, but it really wasn’t like that.

14.   Christmas 1985 every kid wanted Teddy Ruxpin, a teddy bear that would talk and blink and interact. Trouble was, the one I got was possessed. It would come on when it was switched off, and start moving its mouth without saying words. Sure I know it was just defective and we should have returned it, but the thing was, that bear gave me the creeps, and one night it came on next to my bed and opened its eyes and mouth and seemed to look right at me while emitting this screeching moan that left me screaming hysterically, tangled in my sheets while trying to run. Teddy went to Goodwill the next day.

15.   In Burlington we lived on a street that had houses under construction, ours being among the first built, and while we had to stay off the job sites during the day, evenings we were allowed to go there. When I was eight I was playing chase with other girls, and as I ran around the outside corner of the concrete basement of a half-built house, I scraped my leg against it. I kept running til the other girls started screaming, so I looked down and there was a flap of skin about the size of a quarter hanging off my calf, and blood was streaming down to my sock, which was already soaked with red. Then I felt the pain! Turns out one edge of the concrete was knife-sharp and sliced me good. I was taken to the hospital and as luck would have it, a cosmetic surgeon happened to be there who sewed my leg up using three fine stitches where most doctors would have used one, which he said would help me not have as much of a scar. I healed so well that over the years I have challenged people to find the place where the cut was, and it’s never been easy.


16.   One day I was trying to get something off the top shelf in our garage and I knocked down a paint can that fell from about ten feet up and went through the window of my mom’s car, sloshing paint all across the interior. When my mom came hurrying to see what the noise was, I ran over and held the door closed, and said this line she still quotes to this day: “Don’t come in, it’ll only cause you stress to see this!”

17.   We were the poor relations in the family. Just true. My dad worked for the government, while his dad owned three companies, his oldest sister married a sickeningly rich man, and his next oldest sister was not only a lawyer herself, but she too married a wealthy husband who owned radio stations. Thus all my paternal cousins were richer than me, and some made sure I knew it. Still, I had a childhood with eclectic privileges, and one was I went to Democratic fundraising events at parties among people who were known to be influential donors. Through these I met people in politics. John Glenn I met several times. I also shook hands with Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill. Amy Carter was at another event, as was Tipper Gore. I was at one where Ted Kennedy (blah) spoke but that doesn’t stick out in my mind. One who does was a fellow named Paul Simon, (not to be confused with Edie Brickell’s husband) who wore a bow-tie and spoke in a monotone. At one pre-Super Tuesday event in 1988, I was taken along to hear a candidate named Joe Biden talk, and he had crazy-looking eyes.

18.   All through my childhood when we were driving to my grandparents’ house, we’d go by the street where my future husband lived and grew up, and not until 2001 would I know we’d been doing that all my life. I’ve often wondered if I ever saw him out someplace when we went by not knowing of our impending connection.

19.   At my confirmation when I was seven, it was my turn to approach Archbishop Pilarczyk for him to anoint my head with oil, and I started involuntarily giggling…and giggling, and then I really giggled. Much of the congregation started laughing, mostly with me, and though I was told it was a cute moment, for the longest time I used to blush when someone would tease me about that.

20.   I was friends by proximity rather than closeness with a little girl named Michelle, who lived by us in Burlington, and one lovely summer day she and I were having a picnic out by the woods behind our houses, and she went in to use the restroom, and while she was gone I took a bite of her peanut butter and honey sandwich, and then because I didn’t want her to find out, I threw it into a thorn bush, and when she came back told her I had to get rid of her sandwich because it was covered with ants. I got the impression she really wanted that peanut butter and honey sandwich.

21.   The Easter I was seven I was in Ireland and had a lovely yellow dress my grandma back home bought me, and my cousin Madga, the only cousin older than me (and much, much bigger) got jealous of people complimenting the dress, so in our grandparents’ garden she said, “I think your dress is foul!” And she pushed me down and started rubbing dirt on me. Well it was like Magda was rubbing the dirt on my grandma, and I count that as the first time my Celtic berserker DNA activated, and leaped up and grabbed blubbery Magda, and next thing I knew we were rolling around on the ground and I was pounding her and yanking her hair, even head-butting her while howling in this sobbing, roaring cry, and people flooded out of the house to break us up, my uncle lifted me straight into the air, and I had to sit in a corner, where I cried for a while over my ruined dress, but when on the phone I told my dad what I’d done, he was amused and proud and said he would buy me a dress just like my ruined one, so I felt better.


22.   We were at King’s Island amusement park in June 1987, and my dad happened to have on a bright red shirt, and unbeknownst to us it was “Gay Day,” an unofficial event in those Reagan days when gay men would descend on the park en masse, and one sign of looking for a guy-guy hookup was you wore a red shirt. He got hit on by bunches of men, and it was SO funny….


23.   I was almost an extra in Rainman. A scene was being shot in a Newport, Kentucky restaurant called Pompilio’s---it’s the one where the toothpicks get dropped---and the script called for a family to be sitting in the background in a booth. I made it so far that I was given instructions that included not looking at Misters Hoffman and Cruise on the set (I never saw them) only to be abruptly told it was thought a child in the scene might be too distracting, thanks for your time. Thus ended my career in movies.


24.   The MLB All-Star game came to Riverfront Stadium in July 1988, as did Good Morning America, doing a live broadcast. It was a fun day to be downtown, since it was also the city’s 200th birthday and the river (low because of a drought) was filled with historic steamboats, and the 1860s suspension bridge was hung with banners that showed flying pigs, a symbol of the city. Grandpa took a bunch of us to the game that evening, where a lot of famous people were in the stands, and there were fireworks and jet flyovers, the Vice President threw out the first pitch, and I remember thinking at nine years old that it was the best day of my whole life.

25.   In October 1988 Dana was inexplicably hanging with an Eagle Scout who played high school baseball, but who was a bit innocent for her even though she was fourteen. The boy’s father was an AA-member, and when he suggested his son go as well to possibly prevent him following in his footsteps, Dana was not supportive of the idea, claiming that was like saying everyone who ever drank alcohol had a problem with it.

She told me she wanted to rescue this boy from AA, so when he headed to a meeting at an American Legion Hall, Dana rode with him, and because I was with her, she took me along. We sat in the hall’s basement waiting for the meeting to start, a coffee pot making the place smell like breakfast, and the man who was to head the meeting said Dana and I had to leave, so we went upstairs where it was semi-dark, and Dana was wrapping herself up in this big American flag right when the man who’d told us to leave came up and saw her doing that and said, “Hit the road, girls.”

We walked out front but it was hot and Dana wanted to get in the car belonging to the senior and turn on the AC, but he had the keys, so she tried to get back in the hall and found we were locked out, so Dana, seeing a challenge, went to the window and tried to get the high school boy’s attention, but the AA leader came out instead and said he was going to call the police.

At mention of police I took off walking down the street while Dana told the AA man what she thought of him, then caught up with me and was like, “I am so going to f**k over that a***ole drunk who runs the meeting. Only f**kwads who can’t hold their booze need AA anyway, for Christ’s sake.”

Suddenly though she grabbed my arm and took off running toward a bus which I remember said TANK on it, and paid for us to ride downtown, where we walked seven blocks to her mother’s law office, and she got an intern to drive us to her house, where she yelled at her brother Jared and took her day out on him.

I don’t know if Dana ever hung out with the boy from AA after that, but I think he was a good-living type of person who probably made a lucky escape from my hellion cousin.

And those were my 1980s.

I wonder if that can would be worth money nowadays?

Hmm, if so a-metal detecting I go.

Well, there is an empty coke can going on ebay for £10k, while a can from the 60s is £200.

Memories of 2011: Babies & Dragons.

1.   Forty-one story Great American Tower opened downtown in January, topped by a hundred-foot atrium inspired by a tiara famously worn by Princess Diana. We went to an open-house tour of the building, complete with (wait for it) free bagels!

2.   Not having a mortgage payment frees up money, so early in the year we were able to rent a tiny house near the town of Barjac, in southeastern France, getting a good deal by going in the off season, and staying outside the more popular coastal parts of Provence. (This place was in the sticks….) I was pregnant with my son and saw a French obstetrician during my time there, and thought she was the best doctor I ever had.


3.   One of the places we visited in France was the attic room in Auvers, where Vincent Van Gogh died, and I don’t think it was the power of suggestion, that room echoed with morosity as only a couple other places I’ve been have. However, the Musee de l’Arles had the most amazing ancient Roman collection on earth, proving the old saying that the best Roman artifacts are found outside Italy.

4.   I realize the Fukushima meltdown was a terrible disaster, but it sure launched some good Godzilla jokes.


5.   During the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, we were in London for a few days before coming home, and saw the ceremony on a big screen in a park. I was also eight months pregnant, and had to get a doctor to sign off to be allowed to fly, since my husband was adamant his son was not going to be born outside the US. I said I could have him in an embassy, which was US “soil,” but I was kidding. Mostly.

6.   The morning I woke up and heard bin Laden was no more, I spent the day wandering amid old graves in Highgate Cemetery, finding the plot of the twice-buried Elizabeth Siddal among others, but nothing I did that day was bigger than the news bin Laden finally got what was coming to him. High-five, SEALs!

7.   Expecting a boy, I got heartily sick of people---French people, Irish people, American people, people in grocery stores and doctors’ offices, winos chit-chatting before begging for fifty-cents---constantly asking if he was going to be circumcised. Like “stop asking or I will punch you in the eye” magnitude sick of it. If you live outside the US and have ever had a son, consider yourself lucky that you likely didn’t face that kind of intrusive NOYB pestering everywhere you went about a stupid elective procedure eschewed by most of the developed world but seen as virtually de rigueur in America.

8.   Going into labor I told everyone if I didn’t make it, I wanted my tombstone to read: Wish You Were Here Instead. But this delivery was infinitely easier than when I’d had my daughter in 2008, zero out of body experiences, but something I remember is lines from an ‘80s Don Henley song kept rolling through my mind: "Out on the road today, I saw a Dead Head sticker on a Cadillac..." I could not get that out of my thoughts, and I think only then realized what the lyrics were saying.

9.   Shortly after he was born, I was changing my son Keagan’s diaper while talking to my husband, unaware of the spraying power of boys’ cannons, and my son fired off a volley while I was leaning down to grab a diaper wipe, and a splash of warm pee hit straight in my open mouth. My husband laughed so hard he couldn’t talk, and in that situation, the unexpectedly sweet-ish taste of baby urine in my mouth, there was only one thing to say: “Give me a kiss.”

10.   My sociopathic cousin Celia asked me to be a character witness for her in her motion to have supervised vitiations with her daughter Lizzie ended and normal visits restored, and I told her I couldn’t in good conscience do that. For one second I thought that psycho was going to pick up something and come at me. Yeah, she really needed unsupervised visits, didn’t she?

11.   While looters passing themselves off as “activists” burned London, my cousin Magda, who lived there, sent me ongoing live reports that made it sound like Devil’s Night on steroids. She described it as “anarchy” where she was in Brixton, and since she hated most law and order, that was saying something.

12.   Clare would stop by to keep me company with the kids, and while they napped we’d watch DVR’d episodes of The Vampire Diaries, and Pretty Little Liars, sometimes The Clone Wars cartoon, a nice, brief ritual of mindless TV that added a lot to life during a sleep-deficient time when I was otherwise often very busy.

13.   My husband and I seemed to find dubious delight in a game we’d play those rare nights we went out in 2011, and that was debating whether the high school girls babysitting for us were virgins. We both tended to say no, but statistically there were probably some among them. Rude pastime, yes, but parents of newborns have to grab amusement where it’s to be found.

14.   I spent a lot of 2011 dwelling on Carl Sagan’s question about how intelligent does a species have to be before killing it is murder. What’s the answer? Do cetaceans and elephants qualify? Is intellect the standard we should set? Recognizably complex communication? Literal speech? Advanced emotional capability? I try not to kill anything that doesn’t deserve it but…. should there be a universal line in the sand?


15.   My LDS friend Mandy began to believe we were in the Biblical end times, and all the earthquakes and those record-breaking storms down south that spring were a sign, as she told me in many emails. To me one of the parts of Christianity that most strains credulity is the idea that Jesus is going to come down from the clouds and conclude this chapter of the world---and how would he do it “today” when it’s already tomorrow in Australia?---but to Mandy it was the part that made the most sense.

16.   Borders, a chain that helped kill off many independent bookstores in the’90s, closed its last local store, and everything in it was half price. I had mixed feelings about Borders, true, but I also didn’t want it to go. I spent an indecent amount of money there in the month til it shut its doors, and still haven’t read every book I bought.

17.   My husband’s dad, with whom I’ve always gotten along great, is a past-Master Freemason, and it has been his dream to have his son become a Mason, too, but knowing my husband has shown no interest, and apparently forbidden by Masonic custom to try to persuade him, he asked if we would please come to a series of dinners at his lodge that summer, hoping something would catch fire in him. We went, it made my father-in-law happy, but like sports, religion, and politics, Freemasonry bounced right off Landon, who simply has no interest in anything organized at all. I thought the little aprons Masons wore were a hip fashion statement, myself.

18.   I liked Amy Winehouse’s music but wasn’t a super-fan, and I wondered why in the weeks after her joining Club 27, her death was affecting me so much. I discovered maybe it was because two months after giving birth, still technically postpartum, I got pregnant again---WHAT?!---making my emotions tailspin. I was happy for another child but shocked that I was going to be spending nearly two straight years pregnant. Hey, an active sex life ain’t for wimps.

19.   People cheered the brutal murder of Muammar Gadaffi, and I can’t say he didn’t have it coming, but (unlike bin Laden, who’d made himself a combatant) I’d rather have seen him given a fair trial where he’d have faced the consequences of his wrongdoings before the world.

20.   My dad truly mourned Steve Jobs. I mean like…more than he’d mourned his father. I took Jobs’ passing as a news story, my dad took it as a personal loss of a hero and icon.


21.   Todd, my father’s genius stepson, smartest science nerd I ever knew except Roger Morgan from my own days, turned fifteen, and an odd/sweet birthday tradition he and his mom Barbara had had going since he was about four was she’d fix him all the buttered mashed potatoes he could eat. Shrug.

22.   Skyrim was released on 11-11-11, and I did not have my husband’s undivided attention in the evenings for weeks.

23.   We went and saw Neil Gaiman again, this time in Minnesota, and for her third birthday in November my daughter Daisy, who got part of her middle name, Cora, from Neil Gaiman’s novel Coraline, got a copy of the movie and wanted to watch it endlessly, which I found cool as heck. Gotta raise kids on the right sort of input, you know.


24.   Pat Buchanan’s 2011 book Suicide of a Superpower, which details a hypothetical disintegration of the United States from within, was a depressing read, but looking back it was like he was writing today’s headlines.

25.   I was having a hard time with morning sickness one day and asked Landon to cheer me up with a funny story, so he told me how his cousin/best man Vince, lost his virginity. In high school Vince was going with this girl down the street named Fran, whose parents were strict and kept an eye on her, so chances to get together had not manifested. One day Fran called Vince and said, “Drop everything and get over here now!” So Vince ran all the way there and heard a bunch of yelling inside her house, and Fran let him in the back door and told him her parents were jumping all over her brother for his grades and would be busy with that for a while yet. So Vince and Fran went upstairs to her bedroom, did the deed, which Vince admitted took all of a minute, and no sooner were they done than Fran told him, “Go, get out of here! They’ll only keep yelling for a few more minutes!” That story did the trick, I laughed so hard I felt better til I hurled again.

And that was 2011!

I  was on holiday in Norway, fishing in the middle of Fjord and texted a friend back in the UK saying "Wish you were here" type stuff. His reply was that so did he, as several English cities were burning and the rumour was that the military were going to be deployed in the streets. I figured if that did happen, 1) that the government would lose the next election badly and 2) there simply weren't enough of us anymore to make a difference.

Nevertheless, I turned my phone off for the rest of my holiday so no one could recall me. It was the first holiday I'd had since joining up and I wasn't letting anything short of a full-scale war disturb it.

Memories of 2012: A Baby, A Ghost, A Pointed Gun.

1.   2012, the year Duck Dynasty improbably became the country’s most-watched show, began on a gray day with fifty-mile-an-hour winds moaning in the woods like a harmonica. Skipping ahead, since the world apparently did not end on December 21st. as the Mayans cautioned, the year concluded on a bookending night of equally fierce wind and sleet. I think 2012 liked continuity.

2.   Back when same-sex individuals could not legally wed in my state, I went to a commitment ceremony of a lesbian couple, one of whom was a first-cousin of my friend Edie’s, who despite her atheism was culturally very Jewish, as was the flavor of the ceremony, complete with stomping a glass to recall the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. (Which Jesus predicted, by the way.)


3.   In March The Weather Channel gave our city the first TORCON of 9 it had issued in a year. Two small towns were wiped out, including one called Moscow that had a non-operating nuclear power plant that took a direct hit, killing a pair of peregrine falcons who’d been nesting atop the cooling tower. I remember walking out under jade-colored clouds so eerily calm it felt like dead air, and watched a piece of mail fall from the sky. The recipient's address was a house in Kentucky.

4.   My daughter Trinity Elizabeth was born on Friday the 13th of April, 323 days after I had my son Keagan. Trinity was definitely a night person, and demanded constant contact; hold her she was an angel, put her down and she’d wail. I did find Claude Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun hypnotized her to sleep, so I played that a lot that spring. The way my husband would get up at night and walk Trinity back to sleep made me admire his empathy with his little girl.

5.   I had to reshuffle my Last Will and Testament for the second time in a year, a difficult task when it wasn’t possible to know my children’s future interests and personalities, so I re-divided things as best I could, took The Man In Austin out entirely, put something in for a different Texan, gave Clare back things that had come to me after her brother’s death, and included letters to my children made out for specific future dates, hoping my sentiments would not sound pathetically out of touch. I did this knowing if I died in the near future, my oldest would have only hazy memories of me, and my youngest two not know me at all.

6.   We saw a couple music legends that year. We went downtown to the MusicNOW Festival and heard Philip Glass perform inside Memorial Hall, a historic concert venue built in memory of local men who died in the Civil War. In the summer we’d also pay more than it was worth to hear Bob Dylan, not someone I have ever been into, play a concert under the stars. Just us, 15,000 others, and a mumbling man with a gravelly voice.

7.   In my diary I recorded a dream where I was in a car with a stranger who wouldn't answer me when I talked to him, and when he pulled up to a restaurant, I got out and he drove off leaving me standing there. I noticed I was formally dressed and walked into the restaurant where a server came over as if expecting me and showed me to a white cloth-covered table, then put this bowl in front of me containing a disgusting pile of what looked like raw chunks of viscera. Then I looked around and realized all the people sitting at the tables were dead and propped up in their seats dressed in fancy clothes. At that second a door to the kitchen area opened and out walked a man wearing a lab coat, who grabbed me and started pulling me back to this room where I knew he was going to embalm me and add me to a table, and in the dream I was struggling and insisting I wasn't dead.


8.   For his fourth birthday I bought my godson a cool as heck stuffed lion dressed as one of the guards of Buckingham Palace, and only several weeks later did Clare sheepishly tell me she’d put it in a closet as her phobia-prone son harbored an intense terror of stuffed animals. He wasn’t autistic or anything else that could be diagnosed, the boy just had the oddest connection to fear: fear of all kinds of things.

9.   When Ray Bradbury died that June, I re-re-re-read The Martian Chronicles in tribute, and danced to Rachel Bloom’s song f**k Me, Ray Bradbury (for the record, NOT an ambition of mine), but have you ever noticed in interviews Ray Bradbury was kind of a jerk, and outside a few dozen gems his stories are easier to like in theory than in reality?


10.   Over three steamy July nights we went to the Bunbury Musical Festival downtown, named after a non-existent Oscar Wilde character (you read that right). On night one I wore a black Siamese Dream tee Brian got in high school, which made my husband kind of grimace. (Ha!) We heard Jane’s Addiction, Weezer, Guided By Voices (“from the mythological city of Dayton, Ohio!”), 50 Miles To Memphis, Wussy, and Death Cab For Cutie. I also heard a girl there exclaim: “This festival’s awesome! SXSW can suck it!” Indeed. I suspect on the second night some of the marijuana floating around may have been more than “just” marijuana, as I noticed it felt like I was seeing the music, which made me happy, because I finally got to experience something like synesthesia.

11.   My “more vain than a girl” pretty-boy husband got the first facial pimple of his adult life and kvetched more than any teenager sharing the planet. Sigh, no, he’s uber-straight, trust me, just way too proud of his looks, and karma f**ks with you for s**t like that.


12.   I ran into my favorite middle school science teacher, whose quirky inspiration was a big part of why one of my bachelor’s degrees was in biology. He used to tell me if I didn’t win a Noble Prize by thirty, he’d send flying monkeys after me, always adding, “And it won’t be pretty.” Since I was past thirty and unadorned with such a prize, I timidly scanned the skies for winged monkeys.

13.   Neil Armstrong, who lived not far from me, passed away, closing streets around our home and filling the roads with limos and black SUVs, and the air with helicopters bringing in grand so-and-sos to pay tribute at a memorial service nearby. At one point Navy jets did a flyover so low they rattled our windows, made my dogs bark, and set all three of my children crying at the same instant, sending me scurrying to dole out multiple hugs. Way to go, Blue Angels.


14.   A little earthquake shook the house for about twenty seconds. I knew at once what it was, and it was thrilling and scary at the same time but did no real damage.

15.   Awkward event one: Landon and I went to an Asian-fusion restaurant, where my cousin-in-law Vince and his wife Lindsey tried to get me, a vegetarian, to eat a bite of moo-shu pork off the end of chopsticks. I wouldn’t, so having had a couple or five shots of sake, they started boisterously chanting EAT! EAT! EAT!  til everyone in the restaurant was staring. At the table Lindsey came at me with the moo-shu pork making this buzzy airplane sound, I jerked back, and it fell off the chop sticks and went down my front, and there I was with greasy, sauce-oozing pork sliding down under my clothing with a restaurant full of people chuckling.

16.   Having outgrown writing on bedroom ceilings, I had William Butler Yeats’ short little poem The Four Ages of Man calligraphied on parchment and hung inside my bedroom closet door.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=20682 (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=20682)

17.   I sat up late holding Trinity and watching The Weather Channel’s coverage of Frankenstorm/Superstorm Sandy, which flooded NYC. Some said climate change was to blame, others pointed out Manhattan had previously been hit by such storms, proving even weather can divide ever-contentious Americans.

18.   Awkward event two: I was walking downtown after seeing my bosses and a pigeon pooped in my hair. Not a little poo, there was a wad of pigeon s**t in there. I tried to hold my hair away from me with one hand, carry my purse with the other, and I refused to go back and have my bosses see me with pearly-white pigeon crap running down my scalp, so I went into this block-long indoor arcade and found a restroom, where this nice college-age black girl who worked as a barista there helped me extricate the excrement, and I tipped my head sideways while she used wet paper towels to get most it, and I stuck my hair under the water in the sink to flush off the rest and tilted sideways to stand under a hand dryer, but when I got back home, my dog instantly zeroed in on sniffing at my hair.

19.   I recall feeling an unpleasant frisson listening to the final JFK tapes when they were released that year, in which the President, a day away from death, talks of the fateful Dallas trip, and ironically says the Monday after (which turned out to be the day of his funeral) would be a “horrible day.” He really was Irish, wasn’t he?

20.   My friend Rob went to San Diego Comic-Con and phoned me with the consciousness-altering news that Neil Gaiman was writing his first new Sandman material since the ‘90s. I said, “Rob, we must drive carefully, not run with scissors, or juggle loaded guns, since it is imperative we not die between now and whatever sweet day we hold those comics in our hands.” He solemnly concurred in what was as close to a blood pact as people 2,000 miles apart could make.

21.   Ever get something stuck in your head? (Besides a splatter of pigeon dung…) For a couple weeks in the summer of 2012 I got the phrase “Basilisk Sun” lodged in my brain and could neither ID where it came from, nor seem to forget it while it bounced around in my thoughts day and night. Basilisk Sun. What IS that? It was like the government implanted a deep-mind code, but forgot to tell me what it meant. I kept expecting to wake up after sleep-walking miles from home with someone’s eyeballs in my pocket.

22.   To celebrate the autumnal equinox we had a big bonfire, and the guest of honor was a seven-foot wicker man we created out of loose twigs and twine and straw hair. Sometimes one’s inner heathen strains to get out, and mine generally lives close to the surface anyway. We stayed out til almost dawn and it was a haunted, primeval sort of night when our spirits burst all shackles and ran free.


23.   I had laser procedures to rid my sides of a small but annoying patch of stretch marks, the toll of so much pregnancy in so little time. The stretch marks vanished, but flashing forward, having this done would be associated with skin cancers, and in exchange for not joining a class action suit, I was given my money back and offered free skin cancer checks and no-cost skin cancer treatment should the checks find any. Hey, also, no stretch marks!

24.   One of Landon’s employees, Donny, a wholesome Kentucky country boy, had stayed behind one December evening packing up tools and shutting off kerosene heaters, alone in the basement of a dilapidated 19th century house that through my husband’s artistry was being changed from a ruin to a showplace. Donny said “plain as anything” he heard a female voice whisper in his ear: “What are you doing here?” He ran out of the house and refused to be alone there for the rest of the project, something he’d never done before then.

I was intrigued and insisted Landon go sit with me in the same basement. We stayed from sunset til about midnight, munching Smartfood and doing “stuff” together, and never heard any ghostly voice either with our ears or on the digital recording.

The finished house later sold to a gay couple (a lot of Landon’s restorations went to gay couples) who turned the basement into their all-purpose rec room, and I asked that they tell me if they had any paranormal experiences there, and as they never reported any, who knows if Donny heard a ghost or his imagination just ran away with him?

25.   And now for something completely different. Near Christmas I was driving alone through a not-OK part of town, and stopped at a light. A sketchy-looking man with dreads walked over and tapped on my window, and held up gold chains in his left hand and motioned with a finger for me to roll my window down. I noticed he kept one hand in his jacket pocket, which I didn’t like, so I shook my head no, and he then reached down and tried to open my car door, so I jerked out my Desert Eagle and pointed it at his face a foot on the other side of the glass. As calm as butter he stepped back to the sidewalk, never taking his eyes off me or removing his hand from his pocket. When I drove on I got a tsunami of adrenaline that left me with tunnel vision for a moment. Something about the professionalism in the way that man calmly backed away creeped me out. I don’t think that was that dude’s first rodeo.


And that was 2012.

I find a lot of classic sci fi authors seem to have been dicks in real life.

Maybe it was Donny who was being haunted, rather than the building.  :wink:

1987: the year that changed my life.

1. I came down to Pretoria from Zimbabwe and at 19, I got my eyes opened wide to big city life.
2. South Africa was a different country then, all laws and no mercy: I got detained walking to class at www.tut.ac.za  (http://www.tut.ac.za)(when it was still in the city centre) and because I had no ID book, I was nearly arrested until I produced my passport with study visa and residence permit. Since then, I have always carried my ID book with me wherever I go.
3. No cinemas open on Sundays.
4. Restrictions on life down to the fact that black SA's had to be off the street by 6 pm.  :buggedout:
5. Very few shops open on Sundays and forget about going to the local bar for a drink: that was against the law called "The Sunday Observance Act" which remained in force until 1993! :buggedout:
6. Censorship was rife, sadly: even libraries enforced this.
7. Very little crime in the city centre: you could walk around and window-shop at 8 pm, no problem. Try that now:  :buggedout:
8. I was first made aware of the Scientology cult by a fellow student: after doing some reading on it, I thought, nah, not for me. After seeing Going Clear, definitely not for me.  :buggedout:
9. Pretoria Centre these days is a filth pit: back then, you would get fined if you littered or loitered.
10. I made my first acquaintance with strange things called video shops and game arcades.
11. I also became aware of things I wasn't familiar with in Zimbabwe: namely drunks, drug addicts and prostitutes.
12. I met the first teacher who ever gave a damn about me, recognized potential in me and encouraged me: thank you Jeanette.
13. All the Afrikaans students I was living with in the residence found me more than a little odd as I was English but spoke their language fluently: I never bothered to explain. :wink:
14. One thing I found very difficult was living with people I didn't know, almost all of whom were raised differently to how I was, especially in terms of relating to people who were not Caucasian. I was always taught to see people as people, regardless of differences and I still follow that today.
15. It was difficult being away from my folks and I only saw them twice a year when I rode the bus back home to Zimbabwe. I loved leaving Pretoria for a while and hated coming back.
16. I met my first atheist and my first so-called Satanist while living in this residence: I had no problem with any of them and they had no issues with me.
17. I joined a youth group at my local church and was easily the oldest "youth" there: fun times.
18. The Ninja Turtles craze hit SA that year: most preachers condemned the "new age intrusions" in their lives and asked the censor board to ban the turtles.
19. The "rock and roll is bad and evil" movement also evolved here around that time: we were told at church that listening to rock and rock would send us to hell and don't get them started on albums which supposedly had "back masking". I was personally condemned because I liked listening to The Moody Blues.
20. One stupid thing I did: I started smoking as "it looked cool". Took me until 2009 to quit.  :tongueout:
21. I saw Star Trek IV The Voyage Home and The Untouchables at the cinema here that year.

1993:
1. There was an earthquake that shook the Scotts Mills area south of Portland, and its shock was felt through much of the state.  It wasn't super powerful or anything (5.6) but for Oregon that was pretty impressive.  I think I was asleep at the time and thought my brother came into my room during the night, fell asleep on the floor and kicked my bed in his sleep until I woke up and realized what was happening.  I remember the force knocked a whole bunch of items off the shelves at the department/grocery store where I worked.  We all had to scramble to set things right.
2. THE COMEBACK!  My Bills looked really awful in the Playoff game vs. the Houston Oilers-- admittedly the Oilers had a fantastic squad led by Warren Moon, who had great weapons on offense and some key pieces on defense.  But 35-3??  Yuck.  My youngest brother was a fan of the Oilers at the time and had to taunt me after every score.  I watched this on my crappy old 19 inch Symphonic tv/vhs player that wigged out when certain audio frequencies were displayed.  Anyway; in the 3rd quarter the Bills started getting the breaks and the offense really started clicking.. and in overtime they pulled off the biggest comeback ever with a victory!  It shut my brother up but good.
3. I also recall the AFC Championship against the Broncos (my 2nd-youngest brother's team) looking like offensive fireworks were in store.  Uh... nope.  A 10-7 win by my Bills was marked by ugly offense and THREE missed field goals by Denver's David Treadwell!  Whew..
4. I remember just before the Super Bowl I went to the Washington Square Mall a couple miles from my folks' house and leisurely chatted with a cop at McDonald's about the upcoming game, agreeing that Buffalo could win it.  Oh dear God no.  They got waxed like crazy by the Cowboys, 52-17.  The only plus was this cool play by Don Beebe that kept the score from getting worse:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6gmDtVYdLA#)
5. I think this was the year I first took karate lessons.  My brothers, 2nd oldest sister and I attended initially, then she dropped out after like one lesson.  Later it was down to me and my youngest brother.  After a while he dropped out and I eventually stayed to almost my black belt.  Did it for about 3 years.  The sensei eventually got busted by the police on molestation charges.. ew!
6. My youngest brother and I were still in our karate gi's when we got home just in time to watch the rest of game 6 of the World Series in my room with our Blue Jays facing the Phillies, up 3 games to 2.  We were down by 1 with two on and one out.  Mitch Williams served a meatball over the plate and Joe Carter smashed it to left to win the Jays' 2nd consecutive championship!  My brother and I jumped and screamed till we were hoarse.
7. A mile and a half or so from my folks' house is a tavern that used to be a produce store.  I remember walking over there to see game 5 of the Stanley Cup between the Canadiens and the LA Kings, in Wayne Gretzky's last Cup appearance.  The Canadiens won.  I got hammered and then tried to eat a brownie sundae; I almost threw up everywhere!
8. Still having many great players returning on my Blazers, I was really depressed that they lost in the first round to the Spurs.  This was kind of the "beginning of the end" of their great late 80s/early 90s squad.
9. It might have been later this year that I got my first custodial job at the same department store I had been working.  Skills I learned then that I still use to this day, as a hospital housekeeper.
10. Jumped on board the Sega CD bandwagon!  I still really like this console and though a lot of people don't like its deluge of Full Motion Video games, I think some of them are awesome.  The graphics weren't always altogether THAT much more impressive than the Genesis with the non-FMV titles, but the music quality and the animated cutscenes were terrific.  My favorite games were LUNAR, ROAD AVENGER, FINAL FIGHT CD, NIGHT TRAP, and SEWER SHARK.  SONIC CD was fun too.
(https://now.estarland.com/images/products/52/43352/162113.jpg)
I got this particular model, and the connection between the Sega CD and the Genesis would break fairly easily.  Had to take it for repairs numerous times.
11. Ol' Slick Willy is sworn in as the 42nd President.
12. 8 years prior to the 9/11 attacks, the World Trade Center is befallen by a lesser tragedy as a van bomb explodes, killing 6 and injuring over 1,000.
13. Janet Reno is the first female Attorney General of the US.
14. Cult leader David Koresh, or as we called him, the "Waco Wacko", burns to death at his Branch Davidian compound.  75 others also die.
15. All members of the Zambia National Football team die in a plane crash.
16. Monica Seles is stabbed during a tennis match in Hamburg by a crazed fan of rival Steffi Graf.  She recovers but does not play for 2 years.  No word on whether the assailant made a Seles-like grunt during the stabbing.
17. The Sri Lankan President is assassinated by a Tamil Tigers suicide bomber.
18. Michael Jackson is accused of sexual abuse of a 13-year old, Jordan Chandler.  This hangs over him pretty much for the rest of his life.
19. The "Black Hawk Down" incident occurs in Mogadishu, Somalia.  During a war with the Somali National Alliance 2 US choppers (Black Hawks) are shot down. 
20. Drug lord Pablo Escobar is gunned down by police in Medellin, Colombia.
21. Seminal first person shooter DOOM is released by Id Software.
22. The E Coli outbreak among several Jack In The Box restaurants in the Western US is first reported.  I remember applying to work at one the previous year when I was still living in Auburn/Federal Way, WA.
23. I was SUPER bummed that the Bulls won yet another title, with sharpshooter John Paxson left wide open all by his lonesome to complete the Bulls' comeback to take game 6 and the championship on the Suns' home floor.  Puke..
24. New teams inaugurated in sports: FLORIDA MARLINS, COLORADO ROCKIES, MIGHTY DUCKS OF ANAHEIM, FLORIDA PANTHERS.
25. NBA JAM dominates the arcades.  SAMURAI SHODOWN, FATAL FURY SPECIAL, MORTAL KOMBAT II, THE PUNISHER, VIRTUA FIGHTER, and SUPER STREET FIGHTER II are among many other hits.
P.S.:
WHAT IS LOVE, MR. JONES, MARY JANE'S LAST DANCE and COME UNDONE were a few songs I really liked.
Hit movies: TOMBSTONE, A NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, SCHINDLER'S LIST, MENACE II SOCIETY, JURASSIC PARK, DEMOLITION MAN, IN THE LINE OF FIRE, DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY, FREE WILLY, MRS. DOUBTFIRE, PHILADELPHIA, THE PIANO, COOL RUNNINGS (loved that one), THE FUGITIVE, DAVE, and LOADED WEAPON 1 which had me falling over laughing in the theater (even if it is pretty dumb, there's plenty of good chuckles).

1995.

1) Having left school 3 years previously, I was still looking for a career and working in the grey economy. I was making good money, but also working over a hundred hours a week. I was at my height of physical fitness during this period, using what little free time I had to work out.

2) Nick Leeson became famous when he single handily crashed Barrings Bank. This should have sounded alarm bells and brought in regulations that would have been handy around about 2007. He'd get a movie made about him which I've never felt interested in watching.

3) The Tokyo subway is hit by a sarin attack. I was hearing a lot about doomsday cults at this time and made a bit of an effort to study them, although this was much harder in the early days of the internet (which I didn't have regular access to and was too slow anyway). It would be a couple of months before the leaders of the cult would be arrested and 13 of them would receive death sentences.

4) The Chechens were fighting off the vastly superior numbers of the Russian Federation army, eventually defeating the invaders and forming an independent nation for a while. I followed the campaign as closely as I was able to. The Russian forces had used up pretty much all their reserves of ammunition. I thought that was bound to cause a restructuring of their armed forces to ensure it would be a long time before they'd have another debacle like that.

For anyone who has been watching the news this year, it obviously didn't.

5) An F-16 was shot down over Bosnia. This would later be made into a movie, which I have seen but the name of which escapes me at the moment. It was however the first time I'd seen how a missile takes down an aircraft depicted accurately on film. I don't think I've seen another one since.

6) I think this year I watched Motorhead, The Almighty, The Wildhearts and Queensryche live in concert in Glasgow (at different times, although that would have been an awesome lineup for a single night). When I went to see Queensryche, I bumped into a guy I'd met at a concert previously although neither of us can remember what it was. We kept in touch and to this day, still meet up to go to concerts in Glasgow.

7) I moved in with my gran for a few months. She lived in a flat, and a woman with mental health issues had moved in upstairs, and then started threatening her. I could hear her upstairs ranting and raging about me moving in, but she never said another word to my gran. Another neighbour tore down her garden fence and put an ugly breeze block thing in its place. He said it was there and legally she couldn't do anything about it. I pointed out that since he'd put the supports on her side of the fence, that it actually belonged to her and she could have it knocked down if she wanted and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it. The wall was gone the next day and another wooden fence was erected.

8) Fearing a political coup against him, John Major called a snap leadership election. His potential opponents were caught a little bit off guard but there was at least one opponent. He was an otherwise unremarkable man, whose only memorable trait was that he looked like he was a Vulcan. John Major would retain his position though and his scandal-prone party would continue in power until ousted by Tony Blair. The endless parade of corruption from them was very wearisome. I made the decision that if people in my country were going to continue to vote for people who would be a constant source of embarrassment (especially you, David Mellor), then I wasn't going to be patriotic about being in the UK.

9) China fired missiles near Taiwan prompting the US to give them a very bluntly worded reminder of who was the main power in the Pacific. Rumblings of going back into Iraq continues persistently through this time. The bright new world that had seemed so promising when the Iron Curtain had fallen felt like it was dying. Some people have told me that when Charles Manson had his minions go out on their murder thing, that it felt like the death of the flower power hippy era. I often wondered if how I felt about things happening in the mid 90s was the same as they'd felt back then.

10) eBay was founded. It would be many years before I'd notice it though.

11) The first Playstation was released. I'd mess about on it and play wrestling games, but not much else on it seemed to interest me that much.

12) Quebec decided not to break away from the rest of Canada. I vaguely wondered if the rest of Canada had voted on kicking Quebec out, what would the result have been? Bermuda also decided not to become independent.

13) Toy Story was released. I cannot recall if I saw it in the cinema or on video. I do remember that I liked it, but I preferred hand-drawn animation. I hoped it wouldn't be the way of the future, but guessed that it would be. I also wondered how long it would be before Disney bought the studio. Disneyland Paris would annually announce it was losing money hand over fist around this time

14) OJ Simpson was found innocent which confirmed a lot of people's suspicions about the US justice system. Overnight everyone became a legal expert. A whole slew of documentaries about people on death row in the states would follow, generally along the lines of this person couldn't have done this murder and needs a new trial. I have no idea if any of them were successful or not and would only pay vague attention to them. Then again, before work and keeping fit, very little got any series degree of attention from me.

15) My younger brother started the same secondary school I had left three years earlier. Many of my old teachers were still there, including a very old woman (Mrs Donaldson), who had taught my gran.

16) South Africa won the world cup, initially getting a lot of congratulations from around the world, but these quickly dried up due to some unsportsmanlike comments made by one of the team members. It was a shame. As someone who followed rugby without actually supporting any single team, I'd thought it had been a good competition, and it was a shame for things to finish on a sour note. Jonah Lomu (New Zealand) was the stand-out star of the whole thing and would be a player whose career I would keep an eye on as he became the most famous rugby player on the planet for a while.

17) I went down to London to visit CJ for the last time. I tried to stay friends with him, but something he'd done (or rather not done) earlier that year really damaged our friendship and I just didn't feel the same way about him anymore. It would be almost a decade before we'd speak again and even then, I knew things would never be repaired. I saw him and Ali. Stella kept trying to get to see me (because she wanted attention), but the one time we sort of met she didn't get any. She'd tell people I'd growled at her and that she'd driven off before I could kick her car door or something, but the truth is I hadn't even noticed she was there. I did however put a curse on her. Many years later when I got back in touch with CJ he'd mention how things had gone in her life since then and it matched exactly what I'd put down. Maybe it was just a coincidence, maybe it wasn't. Decide for yourself.

18) I started thinking about going to college. It wouldn't be until the next year that I'd sign up for an adult learning course though, and another couple of years before I'd go to an actual college, but I spent a lot of time debating what courses to do. It is a shame I didn't think more about where I wanted to study though rather than just going for the closest college.

19) I got my younger cousin a job working with me. He'd repay me by stealing off her boss (admittedly, she was a fairly bad excuse for a human being whose feet stunk out of sight, but still) and trying to stir up trouble between me and other family members. He would end up dying young. I can't remember if it was alcohol poisoning that killed him first, or if he died in the house fire that started while he was passed out drunk, but he didn't make it to his 30s. He was lucky to avoid a lot of jail time prior to that, had an extensive drug problem, got into fights a lot (which it has to be said, he mostly won), and it is rumoured was the actual cause of a young woman being run over by a stolen car and left with life-changing injuries, but he managed to get the blame put on someone else. I never knew for sure what the real story was though, only rumour and hearsay. However, there had been enough other s**t from him that when he died, no one claimed his body and he was buried in a paupers grave. He chose his own path and resisted all attempts to help him find another.

20) Although previously I had covered my room in all manner of heavy metal type posters to cover up the hated colour of the walls, I lost interest in them this year. When some fell down, I'd either roll them up and put them away or throw them in the bin. I did find a few survivors that were packed away in the bottom of a box just a couple of weeks ago, but I didn't feel nostalgic about them and they went in the bin too, even my once prized 5-foot by 3-foot Ozzy Osbourne 'No More Tears' poster.

21) I mostly survived the year on an incredibly unhealthy diet of Irn Bru, Pot Noodles and cheese on toast. The work I was doing though seemed to burn through any amount of crap I was eating. My waistline at this point measured a slim 24 inches and my calf muscles were big enough that I'd occasionally need help getting my jeans past them. Even today my calf muscles are still overdeveloped.

22) I started to notice a distinct separation between myself and my friends over drugs. I occasionally smoked some weed and drank alcohol, while they were indulging in all sorts of pills. As far as I know, none of them had progressed onto any of the really bad s**t like heroin, but our different views had caused us to start to drift away from each other slowly. I've never wanted to get into anything that I'd end up addicted to and always kept one eye on how much and how often I was drinking.

23) I'd spent quite a while saving up money to move out of the village I was living in, but after my plans fell through I went out and spent it all over the course of a weekend. I did love the leather jacket I bought that weekend, and would wear it a lot until it got stolen over 10 years later.

I miss that jacket.

24) I bought myself my first brand new stereo, capable of playing CDs as well as my beloved vinyl albums. The first CDs I bought were Queenryches Empire, and Iron Maiden's debut album.

25) Me and three friends had an epic three-hour-long wrestling match, whose ending I missed when I had to go to the toilet. My partner was picked up and power slammed onto a concrete floor, before being counted out.

#16, "a Seles-like grunt" :bouncegiggle:
You know at the time Seles made those sounds mostly that was seen as low-class behavior, but nowadays you hear it everywhere on court. The sport was better without it.

1994:
1. Grrr.. 4 straight Super Bowls, and my Bills didn't win any of them.  This one had such promise at halftime, where they actually led 13-6!  But then the Cowboys score 24 unanswered points.  I was at a co-worker's house watching it with his wife and kids.  He was having troubles making ends meet and I was giving him a bit of a hand financially.. until I found out it went straight to drugs.
2. Clinton and Yeltsin sign the Kremlin Accords.
3. Portland figure skater Tonya Harding is embroiled in controversy when her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly had her rival Nancy Kerrigan attacked.  Harding's 1994 US Figure Skating Championship title is stripped.
4. After the attack but before Harding pleads guilty to conspiracy to hinder prosecution, Nancy recovers and wins Silver in the Lillehammer Winter Olympics (Tonya places 8th).  Tonya is banned from the US Figure Skating Association later that year.  I remember my friend and I watching her skating on tv at a bar and hoping she'd crash into the walls over and over again.
5. SCHINDLER'S LIST wins SEVEN Oscars!
6. Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain kills himself by shotgun.  Though I never want to hear about someone taking their own life, I had to roll my eyes over my brother crying over his death.  Though I realize they were a big founder of the grunge movement, I wasn't a big fan of grunge then, and I'm still not big on it now.
7. The Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi are both killed by a missile striking their jet.  This puts the Rwandan Genocide in motion.
8. Nelson Mandela is sworn in as President of South Africa, striking a major blow against apartheid.
9. F-1 driver Ayrton Senna is killed in a crash at the San Marino Gran Prix in Italy.
10. Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley marry in the Dominican Republic.  I remember wondering what Elvis would have thought of this union.
11. I think it was this year that I got deathly ill-- I lost 30 pounds because I simply could not eat (and I was already skinny as f***), which made me about 120 pounds.  For a 23 year old male, that's.. not good.  Just some nasty stomach virus I guess.  And of course my grandmother tried to get me to eat nasty food like garlic pork.. (ralf)
12. Oh man.. the OJ Simpson case!  His wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman are murdered outside OJ's Los Angeles home.  He is declared not guilty but held liable in a civil suit.
13. LOL.. after the murders, OJ is driven by his friend Al Cowlings in a Ford Bronco, fleeing from police in a remarkably low-speed chase.  It ends at Simpson's Brentwood mansion, where he surrenders.
14. The Aum Shinrikyo cult releases sarin nerve gas in subways in Japan.
15. Oh man, I remember this.. Colombian footballer Andres Escobar accidentally scores an "own goal" in a match with the US in the FIFA World Cup.  He is later shot dead in Medellin.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFjke_ahBYY#)
16. An Israel-Jordan peace treaty ends hostilities that had raged for nearly 50 years.
17. Woah-- NO WORLD SERIES!  A MLB players' strike begins in August and wipes out the remainder of the season. 
18. WOODSTOCK 94!  The 25th anniversary celebration of the original Woodstock is now held in Saugerties, NY.
19. The US sends forces to Kuwait as Iraq threatens to stop cooperating with UNSCOM inspectors.
20. The Houston Rockets win their first championship!  The awesome (H)Akeem Olajuwon, Kenny Smith, Sam Cassell, Robert Horry and Vernon (I called him "Vermin" due to his short temper) Maxwell survive a tough 7 game series with Patrick Ewing and the Knicks, largely due to John Starks going ice-cold at just the wrong moment.
21. Upon knocking out Michael Moorer, George Foreman becomes the oldest heavyweight champion in boxing history at 45.  Later this year, he patents his "George Foreman Grill" (I got one many years later).
22. Hurricane Gordon nails the area of Cuba, Bahamas, Haiti, Central America and SE U.S. for tons of damage and over a thousand deaths.
23. NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR is released!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmVhH8WCdeU#)
24. The cool Windows program KLIK N PLAY had a bunch of games and showed you how to make your own game.  I never quite could make it work but it was still fun.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUTpumYboDs#)
25. The NY Rangers win their first Stanley Cup title in 54 years by beating the Vancouver Canucks in 7 games.

Memories of 2014: Life Was A Variety Pack


1.   Locally it was the coldest winter of the decade, with multiple “polar vortices” sinking daytime temperatures below zero, and as sub-freezing days and snowfall went on into April, it was dubbed “the winter that would not die.” (Though I thought “undead winter” was a better term.)

2.   Around my sometimes demanding, sometimes lull-prone career of seventeen years, (which in 2014 had largely devolved into overseeing those doing deep background checks on red-flagged applicants for high-clearance jobs….safe but boring) I made time to put in hours at my dad’s office, and met some really cool interns there. I count the stretch in the mid-‘10s when I got to be with my dad and those college kids as a particularly enjoyable chapter in my life. Heck I even got an impressive-sounding title: office manager. Gasp!

3.   Dark Souls 2 launched, and after I slashed my way through Drangleic, I wasn’t impressed that first outing and would shelve the game for five years, though eventually it would wind up being the Souls title I’d invest the most hours re-playing. In fact I did a play-through last month.

4.   And people say I’m death-focused? Clare had a strange meltdown about her own demise after some disturbing dreams.  She actually called me around five in the morning and told me, “I had another bad dream and saw my funeral and they put me in a gross gauzy white dress and put white flowers in my hands….” I told her the dream couldn’t be prophetic, since everybody knew white wasn’t her color. Those worries culminated in her asking me to sign legal forms saying I would raise my godson if something happened to her and her husband. I signed, but some fatalistic sense of paranoia taunted me to wonder if I wasn’t somehow re-ordering the path of the universe and setting dark things into motion, maybe making Clare think it would now be OK to die…? You know once when her brother was leaving to go back to college, he said, “You should be friends with my sister when I’m gone.” Over the last twenty-some years that sentiment has registered as irony he never intended.

5.   For fun I wrote an e-book about life and the movies I saw in 2014, and said anyone who wanted to read it was welcome; shrug, a few dozen people did.

6.   Even though I also had, among other works, Seth Speaks, The Ramayana, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, The Egyptian Book of the Dead, The Prose Edda, The Koran, Rashi’s Talmudic Commentary, and The Satanic Bible on my theology/philosophy bookshelf, a guest at a party singled out a title I had by Billy Graham and made fun of me for having read it. Ever noticed how supposedly permissive people who claim to be cool with almost anything really aren’t?


7.   My husband took our three-year-old son with him to the barber, and got an old-fashion straight razor shave, and naturally our son wanted one too, so the barber used an edgeless razor “too dull to cut warm butter,” lathered him up and “shaved” him too. My son came home beaming and made me feel how smooth his face was.

8.   On April Fool’s Day my dad told me we’d be meeting with a man on business. Unknown to me he recruited identical twins, who kept finding scenarios to leave the room so the other would come in, and any other day that might’ve worked longer, but my brain knew there was something going on and I laughingly dragged the second twin back among us. Still, great prank! (Did you know magicians and spies use twins all the time?)

9.   Having read The Hot Zone, news that Ebola was in Texas was not cheerful tidings. Deep in her Mormon heart my bud Mandy was surer than ever this was yet another sign of The End Times. I told her it was a cop-out to rely on a deus ex machina rescue from our problems, and only after that hurt her feelings did I remember the adage: “Do not dim another’s hope.” From then on I let her emote all she wanted on her life-sustaining conviction all troubles would soon be put right supernaturally.

10.   When I was out one evening with the children I ran into the tutor who’d groped teenaged me in his car, and who was later my teacher for the last quarter of twelfth grade. Seeing him again gave me a sick-angry feeling but I returned his hello and walked on without making an incident. I’ve let some people get away with serious s**t in my life.

11.   One of the interns at my dad’s office, Mattie, who was nineteen, missed most of a week of work, claiming illness, but it turned out she’d had an abortion. I liked her and hung out with her a lot the semester she was there, and in a dark corner of my mind I had to admit that her having an abortion was somehow part of that, like it stirred something morbid in me that drew me to her even more. Don’t ask me why because I don’t know, but that’s the truth. All that aside, she was one of my favorite interns out of dozens over the years.

12.   Though I’ve been to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I’ve always viewed it with a certain contempt, and I had to ask myself what Kurt Cobain would’ve thought of Nirvana making it into the place that spring. Unless you were a certain age in the mid-nineties I don’t know if you can appreciate how massive Kurt’s celebrity became, with him being demigod-level ubiquitous for a couple years. Even people who loudly rejected the status of Nirvana back then were still keeping the band in ongoing dialogue by the act of that rejection. Hearing Nirvana was “honored” that way in 2014 made me remember a wonderful summer night in 1994 getting into a club near a university and hearing Paige, that beautiful girl dating the guy I was in love with, dedicating a song she wrote and sang on stage to: “Mr. Kurt Cobain.” (It had ironic lyrics, “Tell my heart, tell my heart, that we belong together…”) When she was done everybody cheered and started spontaneously chanting: “KURT!” I ruefully thought Paige was cool no matter how much I tried to hate her, and admit I was as much into Nirvana then as almost everyone else my age, even if nowadays I can’t see what the big deal was. And for the record, putting a nihilistic band in a hall of fame is stomping on the past.

13.   My father in law persuaded my unenthusiastic husband to go walleye fishing with him for a few days up north in “the brown end of the state,” and to our children’s delight and my horror, my mother in law stayed with us. On May first she heard me wishing my maternal family happy May Day, and though I explained it was the traditional start of summer in Ireland, she was ever-after suspicious that my mom’s people were Communists. There has been talk lately of my MIL coming to live with us should she survive her husband, who is not in good health, sadly, and if that happens (it must not happen) I think I’ll become a hobo.

14.   I was in Austin and a faith healer connected to the W.V. Grant Ministries was on the street saying he could make legs grow and cure back pain caused by uneven limbs. I watched and sure enough the leg of the man who volunteered appeared to get longer before my eyes, so I asked the faith healer what I felt was an entirely logical question: “Couldn't you use that same technique to lengthen a male member?” He said, “Ma’am, Jesus don’t do that kind of stuff.” I thought that was a shame because I could see that becoming a popular sideline for faith healers.

15.   The first wild black bear spotted in our county in 140 years was a cause célèbre. He turned up on security cams for about a week, raiding trash cans but doing no harm. He was finally darted and moved to a national forest, with biologists saying he’d come all the way from Appalachia to vacation in our seven-hilled city.

16.   My dad’s stepson, Todd, got accepted into Cal Tech, which was his near-lifelong dream, however his matriculation there wouldn’t end well, as a hustling hot girl with a low GPA flirting with a naïve nerd glad to do her homework will almost invariably lead to trouble. I also found out Todd and Dana’s daughter McKenna were (as McKenna put it) “sort of” talking a lot and even seeing movies together, but I was glad that went nowhere since I couldn’t figure out what relationship that’d give us if they married. Would Todd have been my step-cousin-in-law and Kenny my cousin-stepsister?

17.   Speaking of cousins, 2014 was the year Celia hit rock bottom. Addicted to opioids, into a scary dealer for a lot of money, terrified, broke, she came to me for help, and I endangered my own marriage to pay off the dealer for her. When I met the man, he took the money and then asked, “How’d you like me to get you higher than the angels?”

Celia stayed with us while waiting for a place in the rehab center she reluctantly agreed to, and treated me like dirt, calling me a “has been” (ouch!), “a former cool person who’d lost it” (oy!), “a second-tier sort of woman” (hey!), and claimed my mistakes were all worse than her own. (No comment there.) Things got so scary my husband sent our children to stay with his parents, and his mother told me she didn’t want me to see the children until I got “this cousin thing straightened out.” I gave her a dragon-eyed smile that let her know nothing short of the Prussian army would keep me from my children.  

It was during this time Celia attacked me with a pair of scissors she drove deep into my hand while aiming at my face. (Thank you, years of self-defense training!)  Then she took off.

When she came back I only wanted rid of her, so I said if she’d agree to move to California, about as far away as I could get her, I’d pay for her to start college there. She agreed, actually seeming excited, but my husband said that was too big a commitment for us, we’d done enough.

He and I had the biggest blowup of our lives, one of our very few in all, and this was when I slipped up and accused him of having something going with my Aunt Sarah when she lived with us in 2009. I think I was wrong about that and was definitely wrong to bring it up five years and three children later. Landon didn’t talk to me for much of the week, but one day took the kids to an ice cream place and brought me back a peanut butter malt, so I figured he didn’t totally hate me.

Anyway, I amended my offer to Celia but was still willing to give her enough to get started in California, and she said she’d feel better if I’d drive because I would help her get there without changing her mind. The result was we were at a McDonald’s in Kansas when she just…walked off, and rather than go looking for her, I drove home, where I listened to a lot of “joking” speculation that I’d killed Celia and buried her in some wheat field out on the prairie. No such luck, she came back eventually, more evil than ever.

18.   In the fall I had to go to New York to testify in a matter concerning my employers, and went knowing lawyers from about sixteen countries would be there, none friendly, all allowed to ask almost anything they wanted. For the days I was there I had to stay in a shoebox-size hotel room when not in court, no outside contact, and a rotation of curt, shark-eyed “people” stayed to oversee me. No, I wasn’t under arrest, but it felt like I was, and I was rarely so glad to get home in my life! I felt lots of worries over this matter during 2014, because it was a s**t storm and I was pulled into it. While in New York I did blow a kiss toward a certain flat in the San Remo, as asked to do by my Uncle Lark, Dana and Jared’s dad, who when fresh out of college in the ‘60s had a summer fling with a cougar-ish widow in her forties who once lived in one of those famed double towers that overlook Central Park.

19.   That summer I enjoyed reading Joan Rivers’ Diary of a Mad Diva. She was brilliant as ever on talk shows and clearly enjoyed being back in the limelight, even returning after decades to The Tonight Show. Yet a month after her career re-sparked, Joan was dead. I think the last time I saw her was on Tavis Smiley that July joking about her death, saying, “When I go it’s not like they’re going to say, ‘but she was so young!’”  The poet-laureate of political incorrectness was an amazing woman, and I wish we had her to take on cancel culture today, because woke warriors wouldn’t stand a chance.

20.   U2 continued to suck, as even my mega-fan mom admitted. The thing about U2 is 75% of the band’s output is terrible stuff, it’s just that among the remaining 25% is some of the greatest music of the last forty years.

21.   I was glad when Scottish voters decided to stay in the UK, though I could see the attraction for independence, and think the desire to break away was a sign of a global move toward embracing a more localized identity. Anyway, thanks for staying in 2014, Scotland!

22.   My friend Mark, Gina’s brother, had me mad at him because his longsuffering wife Jenn was not only on the edge of divorcing him after his years of tomcat-ish philandering, but she discovered she was pregnant and said she couldn’t imagine having a third child if unmarried. I’d hear Mark’s side from him, Jenn’s side from her, thought it was 90% Mark’s fault, and both used me as a confidant and conduit to tell the other things. Even after twenty-five years of friendship I wanted to shake Mark and ask him if he knew he was throwing away both his marriage and his unborn child’s life? In the end they worked things out, stayed together, Mark at least somewhat reformed, and their third daughter, Emma, was born the next May, an adorable little girl whom we nearly never got to know.


23.   We went and saw Alton Brown do his stage show about science and cooking, and I found him caustic and gaunt-looking and not at all the good-natured chap I thought I knew from Good Eats. Among famous people whose off-screen personae clashed with the “character” they played on TV, only my middle school hero Bill Nye would disappoint me more, as unscripted he seemed a sour, arrogant, closed-minded meany without any sense of humor, and those were just his good traits.

24.   Craig Ferguson made me sad when he not only ended his surreal late night talk show---he dubbed it Pee-Wee’s Playhouse for grown-ups----but he badmouthed the program in his last weeks. I’d later find out how much animosity there’d been toward him from network execs and see his bitterness was at them, but didn’t know that at the time. Ferguson had about ten points of IQ on anyone else on late night TV and I still miss him cheerfully beginning each episode by calling out, “It’s a great day for America!”

25.   We had a wonderful Christmas dinner at my Aunt Christie’s house. We were all together, everyone seemed happy, and it was a grand, glorious day that I truly think we made the most of, but I can barely think about that Christmas now, as on that afternoon my beloved aunt, who seemed healthy and bright-spirited, had only a week left among us. My last diary entry of 2014 would read: “If in the year ahead something bad is going to happen to anyone I love, please, God, let it happen to me instead. That is all I will ever ask.” Guess God said no, huh?

And that was 2014.

Memories of 2015: Annus Pseudo-Horribilis.

1.   On the first day of 2015 my Aunt Christie had a massive stroke in her sleep. Her ten-year-old daughter, Alba, whom she’d adopted in China, would go in to see her after my aunt wasn’t up in the morning, and found her unresponsive. Emergency surgery would follow, and for nearly two weeks my aunt was comatose. She was the same age, sixty-four, as her mother had been when she also had a stroke and the scenarios eerily mirrored one another.

2.   After five years of trying to maintain gratitude for my spiritual experiences of 2010, when I believed I was facing my own imminent death, I finally let myself admit I’d again developed an areligious outlook that bordered on anti-religious. My husband happily said, “Welcome back to the real you!” But it was more complex than that, and my aunt’s situation wasn’t the cause of my realization, only a trigger to admit what I’d been feeling for a while. What I discovered was I was a person who believed in God, but didn’t particularly want to.

3.   While Aunt Christie was in a coma we went to morning mass at her parish where her name was read in the prayer intentions, and later I told the priest what a disgrace one of his predecessors a generation ago had been for telling my aunt to be a better wife to her abusive first husband so he wouldn’t beat her up. The pastor agreed and said he’d never tell anyone to stay in an abusive situation. He asked if there was anything else I wanted to get off my chest and I told him not really, and he said he’d keep Aunt Christie in his prayers. She died two days later. In one last irony, her funeral was on what would’ve been her sixty-fifth birthday, and distant friends, not knowing she was gone, sent her cheerful cards that day.


4.   I found when I stayed active I grieved less, so that winter I played more tennis than I had in many years, summoning up a quiet, intense game that was about the action, not the outcome. I was too out of practice to be as good as I’d once been, but I played with an uncharacteristic viciousness that sometimes saw me win matches over younger opponents. I remember I had iced oolong tea after a tiring four-set match and got a fortune cookie with it that said: “If you’re afraid of loneliness, don’t get married.”
 
5.   I found myself wishing I could go back to the ‘90s and be with all those I’d lost, then coincidentally that winter VH1 launched a series called Hindsight, in which a present-day woman wakes up in her life in 1995. The zeitgeist was almost too perfect.


6.   Life went on. In February I found out Celia did make it to California, and was working as an $18.00 an hour paid protester picketing Disneyland. I also found out Aunt Christie’s son Adam, who didn’t attend his mother’s funeral, was being deported from Brazil as an undesirable person after his Brazilian wife, Hilma, divorced him and revealed his drug habits in court. While not nearly as bad as Celia, Adam was a narcissistic addict, and I thought Brazil was smart to give him the heave-ho, but then I realized the deportation was likely to put him back in our lives.

7.   I did have to laugh when around Valentine’s Day I asked Edie if she realized what a stereotype come to life she was, always rushing out the day after ANY holiday, to buy marked-down merchandize and celebrate a day late. She seemed puzzled and said, “That’s what I call being smart.” Or cheap.


8.   Nine inches of snow graced us in one day that month, and another six inches fell atop that the next night. Century-old records dropped to the wayside as temperatures dipped to twelve below zero. It did allow me to take Daikeagity (my collective name for my children, Daisy, Keagan, Trinity) outside to successfully execute the “toss boiling water into the air and it’ll freeze before it hits” experiment.

9.   My job required most employees to visit a psychologist monthly and though I viewed this with contempt, one day I explained in a session how I thought it was a gauge of healing when the day came that you could think of a person you’d lost and not have your first thought be “that person’s dead.” The doctor asked how long it usually took me to get to that stage, and I said when I lost my grandma at sixteen, it was two years; my grandpa when I was twenty-one took six months; with the man I almost married, I still hadn’t reached that point in fifteen years. I told him every time I remembered Aunt Christie, all I thought of was that at that very second she was lying in darkness in a casket under frozen ground, wearing a beautiful dress. I’d never seen a psychologist take notes so fast.


10.   For our fifth wedding anniversary we took a trip to Chicago, our old playground, and there I asked my husband to describe what he liked about me, and he said, “You have all of your teeth, most of your wits, and some of your virtue.” Not what I’d been going for, but I’ll take it.

11.   That year, though, not long after that fifth wedding anniversary trip, my husband asked me to take a short drive with him and in the car said we’d always been honest with each another, right? I said yes, because I believe we have, and figured some joke was coming, but instead he told me that over the last month he’d cheated on me “on six occasions” with a twenty-four year old Starbucks barista.

I said, “Wow.”

It was odd how I shrugged off that confession, miffed a bit in a “stung pride” way, yet not otherwise caring much at all. Maybe it was because I understood polyandrous feelings, maybe there was just too much at stake to let myself care. We came home, had this sudden intense sex against his closet door (yeah, well), and later I picked out what tie he would wear for this event we had to go to that evening, since me picking out his tie is an old thing of ours, though I’m not sure why it started. We went out and had a nice time.

I wasn’t mad at the barista, since she didn’t know he was married, but I did get borderline obsessed with her for much of the year, and kept going to her Starbucks and hanging out there, liking how she had no idea who I was when I’d talk to her. I even brought friends to ask from afar what they thought of her, and the consensus was the girl had a nice ass and a cute face, but she wasn’t all that, which was kinda my take too. Or at least that’s what I convinced myself I thought. (Really not many men would’ve kicked her outa bed.)

I basically understood two things: the first that my husband had wanted to see if in his thirties he could still hook up with a random hot girl, and the second, if I’d been the one telling him I’d been seeing someone, he would have shrugged off my offense too. We’re a team facing life and that’s how it would’ve been, and was. Besides I figured after letting him get away with that I had a Get Out of Jail Free card good for anything short of murdering his mom, but I’ve never used it.


12.   We went to Pittsburgh to the Andy Warhol Museum, where a docent told us Warhol had been even stranger than was popularly known, naming his wigs, and stalking his friends to see if they were doing things without him. He was a big believer in ghosts, claiming he felt them around him everyplace he went, the good ones welcome, the bad ones sometimes leaving him absolutely terrified. He told Liza Minnelli her ghost from the future had visited him, which even Minnelli found too flaky. He was also a religious man who regularly went to church, something he sometimes tried to conceal from the public because he felt it was too conservative for his image. When paparazzi needed quick cash they’d sometimes take pictures of Warhol going to mass, and he’d pay them pocket money not to publish the shots.

13.   What else that year…. Fallout 4 came out, taking 200 hours of my life…. We saw Jay Leno on stage and did Final Friday gallery walk afterward…. A friend and I had our annual fantasy food day wherein for one afternoon out of 365 we’d go out and eat whatever we wanted, pizza, Cinnabon minnies with extra icing we’d shamelessly lick straight from the tubs, pretzels the size of basketballs, you name it.

14.   Vince and Lindsey, my “cousins in law” adopted a little boy named Sammy after wanting their own child for many years, and I was glad for them. Sammy doesn’t look anything like them but they sure do love him.


15.   I got obsessed with the movie version of The Last Five Years. The sadness of the plot fit me like a glove, and I played the soundtrack all the time when I was in the car alone. I found out my nice boy from college was some sort of distant cousin to TL5Y star Anna Kendrick’s family in Maine, but I guess that fact plus five bucks would’ve gotten him a small latte from a certain barista at Starbucks.

16.   Richard III, given a bum rap by history, IMHO, was reburied more than five centuries after his risk-all charge at Bosworth Field didn’t work out for him, offending my visiting grandmother, who said a Catholic king should not have been given an Anglican funeral. She had a point. That summer my mom, my aunt, my maternal cousins and I took my visiting grandmother to local places that interested her…. churches, a nunnery, the cathedral….other churches. Churches. It was nice having her over.

17.   Someone sent a drone hovering over our normally private back yard, so I gave it the classier two-finger flip-off, and calmly shot it out of the sky. Minutes later the drone’s owner came screaming at the end of our gated driveway saying he was going to sue me, but I never heard from him again, and he never flew another one above us, though I’d plenty of shotgun shells if he ever tried.


18.   More things… That summer broke a local high-rainfall record dating to 1871…. My mother in law took my oldest for a haircut without asking, and brought her back with a short summer bob, yet somehow I refrained from beating on her….. And one night when I had insomnia I watched a marathon on Animal Planet of this glorious show called Treetop Cat Rescue. Such fascinating television.


19.   I saw a bumblebee land on a flower, climb inside, and its weight made the flower lean to the ground. After getting its pollen, the bee hopped off and the flower lifted back up. That was a Zen moment.

20.   I told my dad about a place in the woods dubbed the hollow, where every year a few marijuana plants grew, which we left alone. He asked where that was exactly, then laughed and said when he was growing up in the house in the early ‘70s he and his friends used to get stoned sitting on a fallen tree that leaned out above the hollow, and toss seeds down there. Talk about an heirloom crop!

21.   There was a super moon/blood moon/eclipse, all in one night, and conspiracy sorts smelled doom, but we sat out and watched it and the world didn’t end. We also had Dog Day’s Night that year, our dusk to dawn Perseids-viewing pool party. One of our guests informed me, “Take enough drugs and one night lasts a lifetime.”

22.   My “other” job sent me to Wyoming for a week, to this isolated place with a miles-long unmarked gravel road, and signs warning about bears, and where at night the stars radiated from pitch black skies like few places I’d ever seen, but where I did a job so unpleasant that the last two people assigned it before me turned conscientious objector to get out of it. I was asked to be there by one of my longtime bosses, who said it would be a special favor to him if I would, and it was a favor I bloody well cashed in not long after. It wasn’t anything that’d make a good story to tell about, it would be hard to explain, but it also had life-changing ramifications for a few people connected to what was going on and left a big impression on me with me asking myself why/how I could be part of certain things just because I was asked to. Sometimes in life you pick your path, you do your job, and you hope you’re on the side of the angels, and that’s all you have as consolation. That and convincing yourself it wasn’t “really” you who did something. It was someone else.


23.   Because his cool Jewish stepdad was the only father-figure of his life, my nine-year-old Irish-born, American-raised, cousin Joshua decided he wanted to covert to Judaism, an announcement I figured would single-handedly kill our grandmother, even after she somehow survived my Aunt Sarah marrying a Jewish guy in the first place. The Reform rabbi at the family’s temple was kind to Joshua and took his wish seriously but said, “Let’s see how you feel when you’re thirteen.”  Skipping ahead to 2019, my cousin never changed his mind, and at thirteen was accepted into the temple as Jewish, where the same rabbi hugged him and told him Judaism was better off for such a fine young man choosing to become part of it.

24.   Can I get an “oy vey?” Some of the college-age interns at my dad’s work took me out for “a drink” at lunchtime, and showed they were pros in comparison when they kept buying me cocktails with insane names, like “The Floor Banger” “Alien Secretions” “Orgasm on Mars” and “The Nerdy Virgin,” which contrary to expectation, was NOT made without alcohol. I wasn’t so far gone as to be sick but was so beyond buzzed that my husband had to come drive me home. The outing deep-sixed any aura of authority I’d been cultivating around that crop of interns, since it’s impossible to be a boss figure to girls who have seen you giggling drunk telling juicy stories about….stuff.

25.   Here goes. As if it was not enough to mourn my aunt that winter and learn that spring my husband was banging some girl a dozen years younger than me, very late in the summer and into early autumn, I experienced something I found out was called a grief recursion, and spent two months extremely sad about another loss that seemed to flash back from a decade and a half in the past like it was day one again.

I tried to pacify myself by remembering I got half my DNA from a people who marked necroversaries of loved ones long deceased, but for a while I was in a black hole. Not suicidal, maybe not even depressed so much as simply sad, but I let myself walk deep into a dreary inner landscape and began to feel almost at peace there, entertaining unanswerable old questions about why he had to die so meaninglessly, and letting pains I’d thought finished come back again until loss wrapped itself around me like fifteen years had not passed.

I could go to work and function fine because there I could be a different person, and more importantly I could come home and seem happy for the children and even have good times, but then I’d go off alone and almost drown in sadness.

Over and over I started playing the CD he was listening to in his car that last day (Moby’s Play), wondering what song he was hearing when that other car hit his head-on, and I even used to go to where he died and quietly stand on the precise spot beside a quiet road. Sometimes a quarter-hour would pass between cars going by, and I’d think of the odds of two cars meeting in a place that untraveled. Was it fate? Who knows. Inside I was far into what the Irish, with their words for everything bleak, call the dorchadasuir, “dark territory.” (I may not be spelling that right, but that’s how it sounds.)

My husband was sympathetic for as long as he could be but finally said, “I know you loved him more than you love me, but we’ve got a good life together with the children, and you have to find a way to get out of this.”

And he was right, I did, and I did, but those couple months in 2015 were a time like no other in my life, illogical, strange, perilous, painful, and I only hope nothing like that ever happens again.


And that was 2015…

1985:
1. Oh man.. this commercial was on ALL THE TIME and it was so weird and goofy I loved it!  Plus, what cheap eats you could get at AM/PM!  2 hot dogs and a Coke for less than a buck?  Great deal!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH2-M_1Patk#)
2. Another big charity single from all-celebrity artists, released to provide relief for starving nations in Africa, with the band appropriately named USA FOR AFRICA.  The song is called "We Are The World" and hits #1 in over TWENTY countries!  Cyndi Lauper, Michael McDonald, Paul Simon, Kenny Rogers, Tina Turner, Billy Joel, Steve Perry, Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Pointer Sisters, Hall and Oates, and tons of other superstar musicians/singers adorned the lineup.  We cracked up when Cyndi delivered her "exuberant" contribution.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AjkUyX0rVw#)
3. CHERRY COKE debuts!  Still love that s**t.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s46QPk_p_cU#)
4. Max Headroom and Bill Cosby would plug the overly sweet critical flop that was NEW COKE.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/New_Coke_can.jpg)
5. Not to be outdone by Coca-Cola, this Pepsi ad with Michael J. Fox was on all the time too:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFEQ7aH7JDQ#)
6. Yeesh; lots of air disasters this year.  Spain's Iberia Flight 610 (crash), Air India Flight 182 (bomb), Delta Airlines Flight 191 (crash), British Airtours Flight 28M (crash), EgyptAir Flight 468 (terrorist attack), Arrow Air Flight 1285 (crash), Japan AirLines Flight 123 and other commercial flights suffer major casualties. 
7. Natural disasters also befell the world in 1985, including earthquakes in Santiago/Chile and Mexico City, a fire at a football stadium in Bradford, England, tornadoes in the US and Ontario, a Bangladesh tropical storm and a Columbian volcano eruption, and a dam collapse in Italy all leading to a multitude of casualties.
8. Lives are also wiped out by a PIRA mortar attack in Northern Ireland, bombing in Beirut, Nepal and Spain, rioting during the Euro Cup final in Brussels, and a terrorist attack in Rome and Vienna airports.  Can't we all just get along?
9. LIVE AID, a major concert in both Philly and London, raises more money for famine relief in Ethiopia.  Queen, Elton John, Madonna, Santana, Run DMC, Sade, Sting, Bryan Adams, Beach Boys, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Duran Duran, U2, The Who, Tom Petty, Neil Young and Eric Clapton perform.
10. SUPER MARIO BROS. takes the world by storm, appearing on the Nintendo Entertainment System, which debuts in the United States.
(https://assets-prd.ignimgs.com/2022/01/08/smb-nesart-1641603921866.jpg)
My oldest sister worked at Toys R Us and was gushing about how cool the game was.  Man, I miss that place-- right around this time I would buy Transformers toys there (I was still playing Atari 2600 games and had more than enough to satisfy me at the time, so my NES purchase came years later).
11. The 49ers whup Dan Marino and the Dolphins in the Super Bowl.  This commercial for Diet Pepsi (with Nutrasweet-- remember that sh*t??) was quite memorable.  "Buy you a Diet Pepsi?"  "That's the LEAST you can do!"
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N-wjnFNkIE#)
12. Yet another Lakers/Celtics NBA Finals, with the Lakers coming out on top in 6.  With the colors of green and yellow on the court I would always think of M&Ms.
13. The Kansas City Kings move to Sacramento, where they continue to languish to this day.
14. NHL MVP Wayne Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers take the Stanley Cup.
15. The Kansas City Royals surprise baseball with a World Series victory over the Cardinals in 7.  Earlier in the season Pete Rose passes Ty Cobb for the most hits in MLB history.  Rollie Fingers gets the saves title.
16. Top arcade games of the year: Ghosts 'N Goblins, Yie-Ar Kung Fu, Space Harrier, Gauntlet, Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom, Commando, Rush 'N Attack.
17. AMADEUS wins the Best Picture Oscar.
18. I remember the first NES commercials featured the really stupid R.O.B. (Robot Operating Buddy) that spun some sort of gyroscope thingy to play 3 games-- one of a number of really dumb ideas by Nintendo around that time (like the Power Glove).  Nah, I'll just stick to the NES control deck and maybe the Zapper.
19. Some top songs of the year: LIKE A VIRGIN (continued from 1984), FREEWAY OF LOVE, WE BUILT THIS CITY (I always called it "We Milked This Titty"), SHOUT, SAVING ALL MY LOVE FOR YOU, OH SHEILA, TAKE ON ME, SOME LIKE IT HOT (on the great POWER STATION album), MONEY FOR NOTHING, CRAZY FOR YOU, A VIEW TO A KILL, BROKEN WINGS, ONE MORE NIGHT, AND SHE WAS, PART TIME LOVER, WE DON'T NEED ANOTHER HERO, WALK OF LIFE, WHAT YOU NEED
20. Top films: BACK TO THE FUTURE, PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME, INTO THE NIGHT, AFTER HOURS, FRIGHT NIGHT, JEWEL OF THE NILE, OUT OF AFRICA, THE GOONIES, THE BREAKFAST CLUB, THE COLOR PURPLE, PALE RIDER, DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN, COCOON, RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II, RAN, RE-ANIMATOR, PRIZZI'S HONOR, WITNESS
21. Big TV debuts: MACGUYVER, GOLDEN GIRLS, MOONLIGHTING, GROWING PAINS, SPENSER FOR HIRE, MR. BELVEDERE, ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, THE EQUALIZER, THE TWILIGHT ZONE, SHE-RA, RAY BRADBURY THEATER, JEM, SMALL WONDER, THE COLBYS, GI JOE, THUNDERCATS, NEIGHBOURS
22. Some debuts: Amiga computer, Ford Taurus, Nissan Pathfinder.
23. Other video game debuts: ALPHA MISSION, THE BARD'S TALE, DEJA VU, DIG DUG II, GRADIUS, GUN.SMOKE, HANG ON, RING KING, ICE CLIMBER, MAGMAX, KICKER, MAT MANIA, SECTION Z, SKY KID, CHOPLIFTER (arcade), TWINBEE, WRECKING CREW, WINTER GAMES.
24. I think this was the year my mom bought a COLECO GEMINI for me to play at her house in Vancouver WA over the weekends (while I was living with my dad and stepmom in Portland).  It was a system created by Coleco that played Atari 2600 games, but had a cool combination of joystick and paddle in one controller.  Very well put together and I had a blast playing it!
(https://retrothing.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/coleco_gemini.jpg)
25. Since we enjoyed CLUE as a board game, we got the VHS interactive game of CLUE.  Tried it, never really got into it, and forgot about it. (Also, a rather dumb movie of it came out in theaters)
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAVcQBYY9PM#)

1984 

PURPLE RAIN the movie, the album, suddenly, PRINCE was King Cool. 

GREMLINS was probably the last movie I saw at a drive-in.  When the film opened with DARLENE LOVE "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" the crowd in the audience hanging out car windows startied cheering and howling. 

A friend and I committed a Christmas crime that year.  There was a tied to post perfectly shaped 6 foot tall cut tree, indicating where to turn in on the highway for Christmas tree shopping.  It was late, no one around, we pinched it.  I'm ashamed to advise that that tree displayed proudly in my friend's parent's house, Robert's father's boyhood '30s toy train (that puffed smoke) circling the base, 50s bubble lights, the works.  Robert's father passed away a few months ago, but Bob Sr. ("Pops") and I became good friends that year I met the man and it was 1984. 

I was into ducking into clubs without paying cover.  My friends and I put together bizarre and cool outfits.  I dressed very much like a Punk priest, pointy Beatle boots, skinny pants, crucifix.  We came around the corner confronted by a long line to get into the newly opened Limelight (de-sanctified church disco bar) which was NYC right in mid-town. 
The bouncer at the door glanced at me as we were about to walk to the end of the line.  He indicated non-verbally that I may enter right away. 
I turned to my 4 friends and urged them in ahead of me, "Clarabelle" and all.   A gal at the head of the line waiting remarked "Oh I wonder why they got in!" :bouncegiggle:

Saw THE PRETENDERS that year at Caldwell College in NJ (Learning To Crawl tour).  CHRISSIE HYNDE sang "Talk Of The Town" and while singing the line "You've changed..." I was bouncing off the removable wood and wire fence right up front, the crowd surging behind me, almost horizontal, pointing up at her singing her lyric back to her and she looked at me and shrugged! 

Memories of 2016: All Quiet in Chaos

1.   I woke up on January 11th to my husband sitting in bed reading his phone with a stunned look on his face, then he showed me David Bowie was dead. This was news I never gave a thought to facing. Bowie, dead? The shock lasted all day.

2.   My godson got a one-day suspension from third grade for punching a boy who’d cut him in line, so I met him and his mom at Chucky Cheese’s (his reward for getting suspended, I guess) and while there witnessed the strange sight of some woman letting her toddler son wander all around half-naked and diaperless.

3.   I had to extricate my father’s stepson, Todd, from his problems at Cal Tech, with the result being him leaving the university, but avoiding legal trouble. Hurt feelings after figuring out a beach-bodied girl was using him had led to discovering the hard way that using campus wi-fi to post topless revenge pictures of the girl wasn’t wise. It left me convinced God made science prodigies nerdy so they’d be forced into celibacy and get more studying done. (Think Isaac Newton.) Todd did immediately land a $44,000 job in Chicago, and was making double that by decade’s end, so maybe it was a fair trade-out for losing Cal Tech (among other things lost) out there.

4.   While in California I did something difficult and talked to my godson’s grandfather, that person I’d spent fifteen years loathing. If you expect personal forgiveness in life, it’s hypocritical to withhold it from someone else, and I told him I was weary of carrying around so much one-sided animosity, and the longer I talked the more I noticed the burden leaving, which felt good. I think that day I was able to finally forgive him, and if that sounds arrogant, well, there were reasons I’d held my grudges for so long. Later in the year he moved back to his home city after being in LA since 2001, doing humanitarian work, and I found him a far better person than when I’d known him in the 1990s, and we ended up being closer friends than I would’ve ever thought was possible: way better than the anger. I still say I’ll never decide if so much interaction with the people in that family has been a result of my own actions or has been thrust upon me by fate.

5.   My daughter made a card for “All of Harambe’s Friends” and sent it to the zoo. We’d seen that grand beast in his compound I can’t tell you how many times, and his violent death was upsetting.

6.   In early 2016 everybody I knew save one laughed at the idea of a Trump Presidency, but I saw how underreported the crowds were at his rallies, and everywhere I went I encountered unexpected fervor in people’s support for him, so by mid-spring I reached the conclusion insiders had it wrong, Trump was going to be President. In my diary in January I described a Trump rally I’d watched online as “like a Nazi event minus the hate” but I’m not sure I got that quite right. BTW, in the summer of ’16 a gallon of gas got down to $1.39 after hitting four bucks not long before. Sometimes Trump is given credit for bringing down fuel prices across the late ‘10s, but in truth they were low before he got in office. Just wanted to add that.

7.   That year: Volvo promised “death-proof” cars by 2020…. I gained appreciation for a Genesis song, Home By The Sea, after learning what it was about…. I took up Krav Maga again, and asked the instructor, “Be honest, isn’t this all just a fancy way to kick an Arab in the balls?”

8.   In the summer I had a chance to go to a retreat near Chicago where people would be tripping on ayahauasca, and after being tempted, declined, less out of virtue than fear, as I couldn’t think leaping into my superconsciousness would be a happy experience.

9.   After I explained his cousin Tyler “liked” boys, my five-year-old son asked a good question: “How come instead of making boys and girls God didn’t make everybody the same and then you could just like somebody and not worry about the rest of the stuff?” When I brought up his deep inquiry to his dad, this exchange ensued: Landon: “You didn’t used to think about God so much.” Me: “You used to be able to do five-hundred ab-crunches.” Landon: “OK, we’ll call it even.” (“We’ll call it even” is an old jest of ours.)


10.   One of the interns of ‘16 was an LDS girl named Sunny, well-named because she’d light up a room and was one of the most positive people I ever met. It took me weeks to find out she was like that even though she’d lost a leg after a car hit her as a child. She didn’t limp, climbed stairs fast, and didn’t publicize her loss by wearing short skirts, only slacks and long dresses, so if she had not shared the story of her injury, I might never have guessed.

11.   Random thoughts: It got to 105 degrees that August when I went to a lecture by a former CIA bureau chief on why the KGB still runs Russia, and pseudointellectuals at the university scoffed, though I guess 2022 shut them up…. His prose peculiarly Nigerian, Donald Trump emailed me from his “mansion in New York City, USA,” needing my bank info and promising a cut of his fortune if I’d help hide it from “Crooked Hillary”…. Antonin Scalia died, and the tin foil mafia went crazier…. One of my daughter’s classmates was named Holly Madison, who if you’ve forgotten was Hugh Hefner’s girlfriend…. I took Daikeagity on a day-trip to a fossil park called Big Bone Lick. I kid you not---Big Bone Lick.


12.   I took part in a confidence-building exercise where a man placed a live five-foot rattlesnake into a secured canvas bag which was passed around in a circle of the participants while the angry snake buzzed and coiled inside. It was harrowing but low-risk, though the top of that sack sure got damp from sweaty hands by the third pass.

13.   Edie took a trip to Auschwitz with her temple, and came back mad that there was a gift shop at the place where masses of her people perished. I think I counted forty-one uses of the eff-word in her rant, and KNEW in the face of that much passion I should keep quiet, but what came out of my vibrating vocal cords was, “Was the gift shop tacky?”

14.   My Stoics-embracing dad did the only dishonorable thing I ever knew him to do in my lifetime when after seven seemingly content years he abruptly divorced his second wife, Barbara, a perfectly pretty, pleasant woman whose one flaw (besides being a tad boring) happened to be that she wasn’t my mom. Yes, Dad dumped his wife so he could pursue my mother, his great love and obsession, the foil to his sanity, his personal Lucy van Pelt who eternally yanked the football out from under him, poor man. My father is a master strategist, it was literally his job for years to be one, and it all happened with such startling precision Barbara never knew what hit her. I felt so bad for her. A side effect was Todd, furious at how his mom got treated, tried to come after my dad from afar in his geeky way, to which my dad kind of sighed and told Todd he respected the sentiments, but stop while he was ahead. Honestly it was like a kitten batting at a leopard.

15.   It terrified me to the marrow of my bones when my four year old sneaked past me and from inside I saw her standing on her tiptoes on a chair, trying to get over the fence around the swimming pool. I doubt I ever moved as fast on any tennis court as I did scooping her up and then hugging her while I told her she knew better, as not going near the pool without a grownup was Rule One, and if something happened to her I’d never quit being sad. It was a tall, gated fence, she wouldn’t have made it over, but I still put her in time-out for the rest of the afternoon. But you know what her dad said when I told him? “Why the (bleep) weren’t you watching her better?!” What could I say?

16.   I thought it was sweet when Tyler asked me instead of his parents or girlfriend or his many boyfriends, to drive him back when he had his wisdom teeth removed. Coming home, paler than snow, doped to the gills, he kept trying to lean his head against me while I drove, and he babbled about howler monkeys in trees eating apples (do they?) and telling me over and over that he loved me.

17.   My mom took my oldest to Irondale, Alabama, home of EWTN, and “the most Catholic town in Dixie” to see a full-size replica of the Shroud of Turin on display there. For balance I tried to steer them toward the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville on their way back, but whatever, they had fun. Dominus vobiscum.

18.   Dishonored 2 came out, a worthy successor to the greatest stealth title of all time. In September No Man’s Sky, with its famous boast of eighteen-quintillion planets, became the most vilified game ever, but, me, I enjoyed my time exploring the Euclid Galaxy.

19.   Since I saw he was wearing a pointed rainbow birthday hat, I gave my favorite Kroger cashier a condom and a five-dollar bill and told him not to use them both at the same time.

20.   On the hottest November 18th in local history, I sent the interns to Dairy Queen for Friday lunch, gave them the office debit card, and magnanimously said, “Take your time. Enjoy the day.” Those girls stayed out over two hours!

21.   There was one intern in ’16 I didn’t care for because she was mouthy and lewd and wielded a deliberately vulgar variety of pro-choice militancy like a sword, clearly trying to be offensive in an immature way. Yet for all her rants about what a great thing abortion was for the world, she came in one day almost in tears after an endangered sea turtle she’d been watching on a zoo web cam dug up and ate some of her own clutch of eggs before handlers could stop her. I wondered if she noticed a contradiction between the “I Heart Abortion” button pinned to her bright pink cap, and her condemning unborn turtles getting aborted by their mother?

22.   I liked Rogue One, and so did my five year old son. He liked it so much we figured he was cool with sci-fi, but one night when my husband unwisely let him watch an old X-Files with aliens abducting someone, Keagan got so freaked out by the big-eyed greys, which he termed “UFOs,” that I had to sleep in his room with him for the next several nights. The thing that got to him the most was seeing the extraterrestrials could unlock doors, so he didn’t feel safe anymore.

23.   On November 8th we found out that for the first time in history a billionaire would be moving into public housing vacated by a black family. The schadenfreude of watching TV pundits lose their minds over this was tepidly entertaining, though the MAGA-flag-waving pickup trucks going up and down the roads for days, blaring their horns got old fast.

24.   Years previously, someone we knew said unless they found a home for their beagle, Ernie, it’d be the pound for him, so we took him. He was sweet and patient with the children, but had one flaw in that he liked his walkabouts, sometimes taking off into our woods, nose to the ground, and not coming back for two days. Every few weeks he’d have his adventures, so we didn’t worry until the third day he stayed gone, then we went looking all over the forest for him, and never found any trace. We told ourselves he got lost and some nice family took him home, but I noticed his disappearance coincided with when we began to hear coyotes at night. Darnit, Ernie, you should’ve stayed in the yard.

25.   It was a year for stage performances. We saw a play called Summerland, about post-Civil War spiritualism; saw a one-woman show called Erma Bombeck, At Wit’s End; saw Shakespeare in Love; saw A Prayer for Owen Meaney; saw Little Shop of Horrors; saw Kodo, a Japanese drum performance; saw Gwen Stefani in concert; heard Idomeneo, Mozart’s first and least weird opera; I took Dizzie (Daisy’s nickname) to see Matilda onstage; we went to An Evening With Garrison Keillor; we saw The Magic Flute transposed to Weimar Germany as its setting; saw A Midsummer Night’s Dream; saw  The Kaplan New World Project do interpretive dance; took Daikeagity to PJ Masks; attended a one-man Groucho Marx play; and in December we sat in for A Christmas Carol,  and The Nutcracker, in the same week. Oh, even though it wasn’t a stage performance, I’ll mention we also saw a restored version of 1981’s Ghost Story inside a 1920s Moorish movie palace. (Did you really read that entire list?)

And that was 2016.

1986:
1. We watched the Challenger explosion in Oceanography class.  My teacher (Mr. Hadder) was deeply saddened by the death of teacher Christa McAuliffe who was of course the first teacher in space (recruited as a payloader).  I remember the explosion looking like rabbit ears due to the structural breakup.  My stepdad (who I would move in with the following year) was fond of the joke "What does NASA stand for?  Answer: Need Another Seven Astronauts".  Too soon..
2. 15 years before 9/11, a DIFFERENT Twin Towers was getting notice: (H)Akeen Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson for the Houston Rockets!  They reached the franchise's first NBA Finals, but lost to Bird and the Celtics in 6.
3. This was my first year of high school.  One major improvement over grade/jr. high school I noticed was the quality of the cafeteria food was MUCH improved.  They even had milkshakes!  The cafeteria was ENORMOUS and fortunately I was able to sit far away from everyone else except for maybe a few people I could actually carry on a conversation with.  I liked visiting the Student Store for a few snacky things, and using my student ID for discounts at various places.
4. Halley's Comet is the closest it has been to the sun in 76 years.  This was especially a big deal in science classes and science fairs, where we'd try to create our own comet or a somewhat reasonable fascimile.
5. The MIR Space Station is first launched.
6. Ferdinand Marcos is ousted as President of the Philippines and is replaced by a first-time female President-- Corazon Aquino. 
7. Prime Minister of Sweden Olaf Palme is shot to death.
8. OUT OF AFRICA wins Best Picture Oscar (and best Director).  Still haven't seen it.
9. I remember the big news about the discotheque bombing in Berlin, and the US claiming Libya was responsible   We strike at Benghazi and Tripoli though most were skeptical of either Libya or despot Gaddafi having ordered/carried out the bombing.
10. PLATOON gets the major buzz at the box office.  The image of Willem Dafoe falling to his knees with his arms open wide as he dies is truly iconic.
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTkyNDIzNjc3M15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMTc1MzgxNA@@._V1_.jpg)
11. One of the better arcade games of the 80s is released-- the epically cool BUBBLE BOBBLE!  What a cute, fun game.. I saw this at all the arcades and though the gameplay was hella fun, the music was quite impressive too.  And 2 could play at the same time!
(https://www.crazykong.com/cabs/bubblebobble/img7.gif)
12. Other big arcade hits were ARKANOID, RAMPAGE, OUTRUN, VS. GRADIUS, RENEGADE, VS. SUPER MARIO BROS., 720 DEGREES, LIFE FORCE, GLADIATOR, SUPER SPRINT, IKARI WARRIORS, KID NIKI, SIDE ARMS, BREAK THRU, and EXPRESS RAIDER.
13. I've never really seen the major appeal of FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF.  I guess it was because of all the direct-to-camera dialogue from Matthew Broderick that I found annoying.  And that to me at least the movie didn't really have a whole lot to say.  Plus, the principal (the actor that played him, anyway) went on to be a pederast creep.
14. Ugh.. the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine kills over 4,000 with a failed safety test releasing radiation.
15. The IMHO stupid and overtly jingoistic TOP GUN is released.  But it helped Tom Cruise's star power soar and gave rise to this rather good pop tune:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVkiCHHiJYk#)
16. From NYC to Long Beach CA a human chain is formed as "Hands Across America" raises money to fight hunger and homelessness.
17. The Statue Of Liberty gets a grand re-opening after a long refurbishment. 
18. Typhoon Wayne strikes China, killing almost 500.
19. A weird naturally occurring eruption of CO2 gas emerges from Lake Nyos in Cameroon, killing nearly 2,000.
20. Disaster for Beantown!  The Red Sox blow a likely World Series win in game 6; and a routine ground ball gets through Bill Buckner to give the Mets the win in game 6, and they win game 7 too.
21. Reagan and Gorbachev meet in Reykjavik to discuss scaling back missile stocks in Europe.
22. Oh boy.. a NYC traffic chopper crashes into the Hudson River, killing on-the-spot reporter Jane Dornacker.  Haunting..
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w01Ml8tZIA0#)
23. IRAN CONTRA AFFAIR:  It is first reported that the US sold weapons to Iran to secure the release of US hostages in Lebanon.  Though Reagan initially denies this he later states that after researching the facts that it is true after all.  This video is a long documentary but certainly interesting, especially since Elizabeth Montgomery narrates!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Tg9EGlSAo#)
24. Sports news: DA BEARS win Da Super Bowl in a legendary defensive performance against the Patriots (decades before a certain Tom Brady would surface)-- they even had their own song "The Super Bowl Shuffle"!  Also, Mike Tyson becomes the youngest heavyweight champ in history with a brutal KO of Trevor Berbick.  Tyson is 20 years and 4 months old.  Kid was damn scary.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaKJQvxenB0&t=904s#)
Jack Nicklaus is the oldest Masters winner at 46.  And the Montreal Canadiens hoist the Stanley Cup for approximately the 100th million time.
25. Big hits from the music world: WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN, I CAN'T WAIT (from Portland's own Nu Shooz), WALK THIS WAY, DANGER ZONE, IF YOU LEAVE, TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT, VENUS, WORD UP, TRUE COLORS, MANIC MONDAY, TWO OF HEARTS, THE WAY IT IS, DON'T FORGET ME WHEN I'M GONE, WHY CAN'T THIS BE LOVE (with Van Halen's new frontman Sammy Hagar), PAPA DON'T PREACH, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR ME LATELY, LIVE TO TELL, NO ONE IS TO BLAME, SLEDGEHAMMER, EVERYBODY HAVE FUN TONIGHT.
Bonus:
Other top movies: SHORT CIRCUIT, HIGHLANDER, LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, STAND BY ME, LABYRINTH, MANHUNTER, PRETTY IN PINK, CROCODILE DUNDEE, ALIENS, THE FLY, STAR TREK IV, THE COLOR OF MONEY, BACK TO SCHOOL, TRANSFORMERS THE MOVIE (which scarred many a child that had to watch Optimus Prime die), AN AMERICAN TAIL, THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE, KARATE KID PART II, and a couple movies I also enjoyed: FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI: JASON LIVES, and the goofy anime PROJECT A-KO.
And top shows debuting in 1986: ALF (kids at school liked to quote the titular alien), PERFECT STRANGERS, THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS, SLEDGE HAMMER! (funny show), MATLOCK, OPRAH WINFREY SHOW, DESIGNING WOMEN, PEE WEE'S PLAYHOUSE, LA LAW, HEAD OF THE CLASS, SISKEL & EBERT AT THE MOVIES, AMEN, IT'S GARRY SHANDLING'S SHOW, VALERIE, DEFENDERS OF THE EARTH, DOUBLE DARE.

1988:
1. My Blazers were starting to get good-- they won 53 games and 4th place in the West, Kevin Duckworth won Most Improved Player and Clyde Drexler was an All-Star (and Steve Johnson was selected but didn't play due to injury), but lost in the first round to the Utah Jazz 3-1.  A disappointing end to the season, and coach Mike Shuler (fresh off a coach of the year award the previous season) ended up getting canned due to not getting along with a number of players (especially Clyde).  But better days were definitely coming.  We would collect Blazers trading cards found in loaves of Franz Bread around this time.
2. The Winter Olympics are held in Calgary, Canada.  The first team to represent Jamaica in the bobsled event is later rather fictionalized in the film COOL RUNNINGS. 
3. The Anfal campaign begins and will kill several tens of thousands of Kurds in iraqi Kurdistan under Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's orders.
4. US Lt. Col. Oliver North and Vice Adm. John Poindexter are indicted on charges of conspiracy to defraud the US over the Iran-Contra affair.
5. The US mistakes an Iran commercial jet for a fighter plane.  After warnings are not heeded, the USS Vincennes shoots down the jet, killing 290.
6. Thousands die in Burma/Myanmar in anti-government demonstrations. 
7. Oh man; it had been a long time since I laughed so damn hard in a movie theater.. but I was ON THE FLOOR among the sticky soda, dirty candy and buttered popcorn, while watching THE NAKED GUN.  It was an extension of the sadly underappreciated POLICE SQUAD tv series of 1982 that only lasted 6 episodes, but was damn brilliant (go watch it if you haven't).  So much silly, WTF dialogue, and Leslie Nielsen was so brilliantly deadpan.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LIHoEJAA4k#)
8. Over 2 years after the Challenger disaster, NASA resumes space shuttle flights.
9. A major earthquake nails the Nepal-India border, killing around 1,000 or so.
10. The Summer Olympics are held in Seoul, S. Korea.  The Soviets dominate.  Nadia Comaneci's record of 7 perfect 10s in gymnastics is equaled by Daniela Silivas of Romania.  Canadian Ben Johnson's record time in the 100 meter final would later be disqualified over steroid use, which Johnson claimed was a sabotaged test.  Diver Greg Louganis whacks his head on a springboard and suffers a concussion.  Riddick Bowe and Roy Jones Jr. lose in controversial fashion in Olympic boxing (both probably should have won in their finals).
11.  A Libyan bomb blows up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.  270 die, including those on the ground hit by falling wreckage.
12. A major earthquake nails Soviet Armenia, killing nearly 25,000.
13. The Detroit "Bad Boys"-- the Pistons-- come up *just* short in a 7-game series against the LA Lakers.  The Pistons would get sweet revenge the following year.  This is the last NBA title for Magic and Kareem.
14. I remember the weird name Orel Hershiser entering the conscience of baseball fans as coach Tommy Lasorda and the LA Dodgers win the World Series.
15. A major player in the internet movement is the TAT-8-- a transatlantic cable using optical fibers.  It is the first of its kind.
16. Guns 'N Roses' SWEET CHILD O' MINE is their first and only #1 hit.  I have never liked Axl's whiny voice.  My brother was crazy about him and tried to sing in his style and I'd have to leave the room or tell him to shut the hell up.
17. The Algerian army kills around 500 rioters.
18. The Pakistan President and US Ambassador to Pakistan die in a plane crash near Bahawalpur.
19. Seminal sci-fi anime AKIRA debuts.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA8KmHC2Z-g#)
20. Some major classic arcade game debuts: BAD DUDES, GHOULS 'N GHOSTS, POWER DRIFT, TOOBIN', CYBERBALL, SUPER CONTRA, NARC, FORGOTTEN WORLDS, ALTERED BEAST, NINJA GAIDEN, ROBOCOP, CHASE H.Q., and CAPCOM BOWLING.
21. The first issue of NINTENDO POWER is released!  The new SUPER MARIO BROS. 2 is featured on the cover.  I subscribed to this for a year or two.  At a convention in more recent years I got this issue again.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a7/Nintendo_Power.jpg)
22. The first black starting quarterback in a Super Bowl also wins MVP, and the whole shebang as the Redskins WHUP the Denver Broncos 42-10.  Doug Williams goes 18/29 for 340 yards and 4 touchdowns with one pick, as the Redskins actually trailed 10-0 at one point (reeling off 42 unanswered points!).
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu2rv-WcKyg#)
23. Other big movies of the time: CHILD'S PLAY, BEETLEJUICE, DIE HARD, WILLOW, WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, THEY LIVE, YOUNG GUNS, BIG, BULL DURHAM, LAND BEFORE TIME, MISSISSIPPI BURNING, RAIN MAN, THE ACCUSED, DEAD RINGERS, ALIEN NATION, BLOODSPORT, SHAKEDOWN, MIDNIGHT RUN, RAMBO III, BEACHES, THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST, THE LAST TEMPATION OF CHRIST, HAIRSPRAY, KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE.
24. The Beach Boys set a record for longest time between #1 hits (22 years) with KOKOMO from the stupid movie COCKTAIL.  I remember working out in weightlifting class to this song.  I'm glad I took that class because I was dangerously skinny.
25. Other big songs: THE FLAME, WILD WILD WEST, SHATTERED DREAMS, TELL IT TO MY HEART, DON'T WORRY BE HAPPY, I HATE MYSELF FOR LOVING YOU, LOOK AWAY, CHAINS OF LOVE, WHEN IT'S LOVE, PERFECT WORLD, CULT OF PERSONALITY, DESIRE, GET OUTTA MY DREAMS GET INTO MY CAR, I DON'T WANT YOUR LOVE.
Bonus:
LOVED the supergroup band TRAVELING WILBURYS, and was sad to see Roy Orbison pass away.  I still love the song HANDLE WITH CARE and sing it often for karaoke.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o4s1KVJaVA#)

Odd, I think it was just before Thanksgiving that same year a traffic helicopter for a local AM station crashed in the woods near my grandparents' house, killing the pilot and a popular reporter named Nancy McCormick, just minutes after her last traffic check-in. People had really liked her. Strange how certain events happen in clusters.

Memories of 2019 Part One: Normal Abnormal Life.

1.   Tyler, who was still living with us part of the time, went to work at a library for the blind, and I was proud of him for that. And of course within weeks he was hooking up with a blind man there.

2.   The seventy-eight-year-old cardiologist in Egypt with whom my dad had played chess online for many years, died suddenly. He had been one of the few people able to give my dad a challenging match. (I have never been able to; doubt you could either.)

3.   I watched an episode of the Magnum PI revival wherein Magnum and Higgins invaded a foreign consulate, kidnapped diplomats, and got away by stealing police cars, all with zero legal consequences. Forget Game of Thrones, Magnum was TV’s biggest fantasy.

4.   The coolest intern ever was a girl that year named Livvy, who was like a cross between Lydia Deetz and April Ludgate, and one degree removed from my platonic soul mate. There was not a day that girl did not give me a morbid chuckle or raise my eyebrows. One afternoon playing hackey sack at lunch I told her I could sexually harass her and no one would ever believe it. She said, “No, I record all my conversations because I’m waiting for lawsuit material.” Ha!

When an intern from 2015 brought by her baby by to show us, Livvy found out she delivered him at Jewish Hospital and asked, “Did a rabbi have to certify your breast milk kosher? And if so, is that done by taste?”

The other intern stared blankly at her and said, “Well, we’re Presbyterians.”

Livvy did do one thing too far out there even for me, she’d go to funerals “for fun” but “only funerals of attractive people.”

She also had a sister who was trying for a baby, and she’d text her sister every month at three in the morning to wish her “a successful ovulation.”

I took her to a Halloween event called Chocolate in the Crypt, where internationally-famous chocolatiers gave out samples in the Gothic revival chapel of the area’s most famously sprawling 19th century cemetery and arboretum, and Livvy said she felt completely at home there. I said, “Yeah, me, too, in the ‘90s I had sex on that hilltop by General Hooker’s grave.” She turned around without missing a beat and said, “Small world!”

Yeah, if among interns Mattie had been fun and Sunny awesome, Livvy was a trip.

5.   Another intern I was fond of that year was from Alabama and in a pageant in her home town she’d been Miss Sweet Potato Queen. (Pronounced Sweet Buh-tay-tuh.) She was the anti-Livvy and I liked her for many reasons, including her determination to remain a virgin til marriage. (Go for it, girl!) I took her to lunch one day and she told me her father and her uncle were once best friends, til they fell out because her uncle held salvation was only “through and after” baptism, and her father said it arrived only through faith in Jesus, and that was what divided them. The Deep South really is like a different country, you know it?

6.   I got back into yoga, at home because I hated yoga culture, and after weeks spent trying I finally got the Destroyer of the Universe pose down according to my dancer friend Clare. It’s harder than it looks! THEN she introduced me to the nearly-impossible savasana position (i.e. “the corpse pose”), which notoriously takes “at least” a lifetime to master.

7.   Continuing on the subject of my second favorite family, Clare’s dad got her and me tickets to see Hamilton off Broadway, and seeing it I was bored to a listless stupor and p**sed about the cultural appropriation, but in time the show grew on me and today it’s in my top five musicals ever. I’d list them but I suspect you’d rather I did not. (And I’m sorry about the same names of friends recurring in these lists, but I live my private life in an admittedly tight circle, having a handful of those I’m close to instead of a broader base of semi-friends I just “kinda like.”)

8.   My dad asked me to renegotiate the lease on the building where his office was, and I was worried I may not pull it off, til I remembered my almost father in law’s super power was sales, and when he came with me he ended up getting three-hundred bucks a month knocked off our lease, plus new carpet, plus I think one of the realtors threw in her immortal soul. He’s that good!

He said, “Just let your dad think it was all you.” But I couldn’t do that, so when I told Dad about Joe’s part he said quietly, “Then-I-guess-I-owe-him-lunch.”

At lunch my dad sat there like the whole thing was some sort of head-on challenge to intimidate Joe, who sidestepped my dad’s stoical intensity toward him in a sort of “irresistible force meets immovable object” contest, and I swear sitting through an hour with those two masters of their respective arts was like watching a cobra and a mongoose in a lethal dance.

I’ve learned a lot from those two….

9.   Did the “Fight for Air” climb downtown for the American Lung Association, wherein participants get sponsors and then run up the stairs of the half-scale prototype for the Empire State Building ten times to make a vertical mile. It was the most hell-ish run of my life, but since I was doing it with a sixty-two year old, I couldn’t exactly drop out if he was finishing it. I got a side splint that hurt for days though and I think my internal organs shifted a little, but I raised a couple hundred for charity.

10.   While we were looking for ferns in the woods, Tyler told me going out with a girl wasn’t the same. I said, “Oh, yeah?” He said, “Nah, it’s more dangerous.” I kind of choked and thought, oh really, more dangerous than random sex with bunches of guys? But he wasn’t done. “Girls are like playing with loaded guns,” he said, rhapsodizing philosophically, leaving me shaking my head. I guess maybe he was onto something since later in the year he found out to his dismay he was going to be a father. (Ha-ha, Dana’s a grandma!) A baby on the way forced him to leave the library for the blind and he hired on with his grandpa, my Uncle Lark’s, company. Despite the full life I’ve described my spiritual son living, I will note Tyler was still not quite twenty years old at the time.

11.   I told my dad I was going to give him a present of learning German, something he’d always wanted me to do. I tried, I failed, he still loved me. Dad’s cool like that.

12.   My friend Tara sent me links to porn videos she shot in her bedroom and was actually making some pocket money off of from those who liked the sub-genre BBW---Big Beautiful Women. Could’ve lived without seeing those, to be honest, though I did compliment her breasts, as there is no American woman alive who is not obsessed with her own breasts.

13.   A small plane crashed into a house near my in-laws, when my children were there at the time, scaring me half to death when the news broke, though Daikeagity were all fine, unlike the poor pilot.

14.   Gina, my best friend from 1989 til…. moved away, to Los Angeles. Sad, angry, I asked Joe what exactly was so blasted special about LA that it seemed to draw off half the people I knew, and he said it had more energy than any other city on earth. Yeah, well, I never felt it the times I’ve been there. We visited her that summer after her family’d settled into that stupid Gina-stealing mega-city, and I told her I unless she moved back I was going to promote Clare to my best friend. Gina sadly said, “I think you already did that long ago.” I hate the City of the Angels. And mayonnaise.


15.   We adopted a little gray teenaged feline my youngest, Trinity, named Princess. One morning before school Trinity was playing rough with Princess, who scratched a little blood out of her forearm, and Chocolate, our sometimes over-protective old lab, who at best tolerated Princess, saw this happen, and went over and smelled the blood on Trinnie’s arm, and I think she thought, “You’ll pay for this, cat.” Sad-story-short, when my mother in law brought the children home that afternoon, they walked into the terrible sight of Princess chewed up, lying like a rag on the floor. I know Chocolate thought she was getting rid of something that had hurt her little girl, but it was such a sad day.

16.   Sadder though was when Chocolate herself passed on in September, at age nearly fourteen. I’d had her since Gina and I shared a house in early 2006, and I buried her on our overlook that rises above a river in the distance: it’s where I’d like to be buried myself someday. Unannounced, Landon and Daisy drove to Pittsburgh the same week and brought back two black lab brothers, Skipper and Bojack, getting them I felt too soon, but they were great boys, all long legs and giant paws, and we loved them, even if the first time I met Skipper he had poop between his toes and smeared it all over my slacks.

17.   Random 2019 stuff…. I tried rum-infused ice cream, and actually got buzzed…. I started seeing more middle-class suburban families needing help at the food pantry where I volunteered…. My Fallout 76 character was a butchy killing machine named Muffy Muncher, and surprisingly few people got that name…. I somehow acquired a scratched retina…. It was the second rainiest year in area history, and by June we were fifteen inches above average.

18.   I stood horrified along with half the western world and watched Notre Dame burning. I’d been there and found it oddly dark inside (before it was on fire) but it oozed so much history that I felt like I wanted to be very still in there. I can only hope that treasure is rebuilt as close as possible to the way it was.

19.   Celia reared her ugly---OK, actually pretty, albeit evil---head. Years after abandoning her son up here, she sued his father for custody because she claimed she’d reformed and wanted the baby she was pregnant with in Florida to have his older brother with him. She also hooked a rich forty-something man who funded her lawsuit, and in a terrible injustice, she got custody of the three-year-old she’d walked away from in his infancy. She asked me to meet her that summer and she was absolutely disgusting, gloating and glaring at me and basically threatening me stay out of her way or else. In return I told her that unlike her I didn’t believe in shedding family blood, but I could call in a favor in five minutes and f**k her life up in ways she couldn’t begin to imagine, so she shouldn’t make threats. She was too proud to be scared, and we parted on almost the worst possible terms we could have, which continues today. Never have I gone from loving someone so much to such negative feelings.

20.   My near-lifelong obsession is the idea of God, yet a question posed by the late “anti-theist” Christopher Hitchens seemed one of the most insightful ever raised into God’s nature. Hitchens said that for God to be the creator, the arbiter, and the source of mercy struck him as illogical, as why would a benign being create both morality and a nature to oppose that morality, then punish its creation for obeying a directive it had implanted within it? And if God did not create that nature, then either God did not create everything, or was not all-powerful. Wow. My husband said me tacitly agreeing with Hitchens was evidence that I only used God as a feel-good drug, and I kidded back that, nah, I was the future Saint Evelyn the Pure, Patroness of the Improbable Redemption. But dammit I spent weeks tripping more over what Landon said than I did Hitchens. Conclusion? Whatever is, is, be a good person despite your lack of understanding.

21.   At age ten and two-thirds, Daisy spent part of the summer visiting her family in Ireland, like I used to do. Been some tough money times lately, and my pay is also slashed after retiring, so I don’t know if we’ll be financially able to send her brother and sister over to do that anytime soon, but I’m glad Daisy got to go.

22.   The Big Bang Theory ending bummed me out, but it went off with a good episode, unlike Game of Thrones, the conclusion of which left practically every fan on earth feeling like sticking a cactus down the producers’ britches.

23.   T’was a rough year for Dayton, where I worked at least a couple days a week. For starters thirteen tornadoes (13,13,13,13) hit the city on Memorial Day. Since he was born there, Rob Lowe came and raised relief funds. No sooner had Dayton recovered from that than it had the worst spree-shooting incident in its history.

24.   As mentioned, this was the summer when Clare’s mom asked to meet me before work, then punched me in the face and told me not to pretend I didn’t know why she did it. Because she was also Brian’s mom, I didn’t file charges or do anything to her at all, just let her get away with it, but whatever the reason she sucker punched me, I hope it resolved things for her. And she gets a terrible disease.

25.   On their last day that academic quarter I took the interns to the art museum to see an exhibit about Belle Epoch Paris, and we all went out for ice cream. Though I did not know it, that afternoon marked “almost” the end of my five years spent working with interns, since in the fall my other job unexpectedly took me out of the country for the rest of the year (hence this being a two-parter), and when I got back Covid hit, the office closed, and so far my father has never re-opened it. I miss those times, they seem golden now with all that college-age energy, even if the interns did disabuse me of my ideas that I was still young by reminding me that River Phoenix, Kurt Cobain, the golden age of The Simpsons, even Y2K, were all before their time.

And that was the first half of 2019…

1976: I was pretty damn young to remember terribly much but I do have mild inklings of the following events:
1. Another milestone in video games is released in arcades: BREAKOUT.  It took the concept of PONG and took out the 2nd player, then put a row of blocks to bust with the ball and shifted the action focus to vertical.  Great idea!  There were still a lot of pinball machines in the arcades, but that was set to change come the end of the decade.
(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IF93inK2Cz0/Xa3ShqoEHpI/AAAAAAAAT60/I7KeW4Byx6sD3gS-nrCo8TcMz6eoOwFmwCNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/breakout%2B1.jpg)
2. One of the more notable genres in arcade video games was the fixed first person perspective shooter.  SEA WOLF was one I'd see everywhere.  Great design-- the cabinet had a nice big periscope to look through and twist left and right to move where you fire your torpedoes from.  Sound effects included a sonar "ping", the "whoosh" of the torpedoes, explosions and the emergence of high-scoring targets.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/3a/8b/ed/3a8bed4914c820347fac5256337d6138.jpg)
(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRb1f5CrAyHEf8204ZfjRh3AnY0hrlyUuzG2A&usqp=CAU)
I would play this at the riverside amusement park OAKS PARK in SE Portland.  They had a great roller coaster called the Mad Mouse, and a roller skating rink.  The place is surprisingly still there.
3. Another one I almost forgot that I played a lot as a kid: SPRINT 2.  Racing games were all the rage in the early generally black and white arcade video game library.  This featured up to two simultaneous racers doing laps around fixed courses, which would change partway through your lap!  Something about the cabinet I really liked.
(https://www.arcade-museum.com/images/118/118124217259.jpg)
4. Other new arcade games that were big that year: 280 ZZZAP, NIGHT DRIVER, BLOCKADE (the first "snake" game), F-1, INDY 4, LeMans, Stunt Cycle, Tank 8 and Tornado Baseball.
5. I remember the Pittsburgh Steelers being a big thing with their first Super Bowl win.  I had no idea what football was at the time but I remember my dad watching it.  We still had a B&W tv but it was pretty big.  I remember when I got to visit my grandma she had a nice big COLOR tv to watch cartoons on!  And she was a pretty damn good cook.
6. A violent earthquake hits Honduras and Guatemala, leaving around 25,000 dead.  Another in Tangshan, China claims several hundred thousand!
7. Actor Sal Mineo ("Plato" from REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, "Dov Landau" from EXODUS) is stabbed to death outside his West Hollywood apartment.
8. One of the more famous "Greatest Hits" albums, THE EAGLES GREATEST HITS '71-'75, with the iconic eagle skull on the cover, is released.  We had that on tape forever, which my mom held on to long after her divorce with my dad.  The Eagles' album HOTEL CALIFORNIA is released at the end of the year.
9. Boxer "Hurricane" Rubin Carter appears in court for a murder re-trial; it is upheld.  It will be overturned in 1985.
10. Patty Hearst is found guilty of armed robbery of a San Francisco bank 2 years prior during her time with the Symbionese Liberation Army.  Boy, did everyone hate her (even though she testified she was raped/threated with death by them)!
11. My sisters were big fans of the song SAVE YOUR KISSES FOR ME by The Brotherhood Of Man, which won the Eurovision Song Contest that year.  Cutesy little tune.
12. FRAMPTON COMES ALIVE!  This album is notable for being one of the most famous live albums of all time, and also for showing Frampton back when he had hair.
13. The Boston Celtics defeat the Phoenix Suns in the NBA Finals.  Game 5's triple overtime victory by the Celtics is one of the most memorable Finals games ever.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBtyTVOOUE0#)
14. The ABA is dissolved and 4 of its teams join the NBA.
15. The CN Tower is unveiled in Toronto!  I been there!
16. The US Bicentennial is celebrated all over the country.  The way I remember best was on the kids show MAKE A WISH.  "Anything you want to try.. just let go, fly hiiiiiigh.. and make a wish!"
17. Nadia Comaneci's 7 perfect 10s in gymnastics are the big story in the Montreal Summer Olympics.
18. The "Son Of Sam" (David Berkowitz) begins his murder spree.
19. At a Jerry Lewis MDA telethon, Frank Sinatra visits with a surprise friend: Lewis' old partner Dean Martin.  They had not been together in over 20 years.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3KAMg9LIzw#)
20. Jimmy Carter wins the Presidential election; the first Deep South President since the Civil War.
21. North and South Vietnam are joined as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.  The Viet Cong are disbanded.
22. TV show debuts: THE MUPPET SHOW, FAMILY FEUD, BIONIC WOMAN, LAVERNE & SHIRLEY (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, Schlemiel, Schlimazel, Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!), THE GONG SHOW, WHAT'S HAPPENING, ALICE, IN SEARCH OF, TARZAN, JABBERJAW, THE KROFFT SUPERSHOW, DYNOMUTT, BLACK SHEEP SQUADRON, CHARLIE'S ANGELS, QUINCY M.E. and the unusual game shows 50 GRAND SLAM, STUMPERS and DOUBLE DARE (not related to the 80s kids game show, but one I liked).
23. Big movies: ROCKY, SILVER STREAK, CARRIE, OUTLAW JOSEY WALES, A STAR IS BORN, THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, THE OMEN, KING KONG, TAXI DRIVER, NETWORK, BAD NEWS BEARS, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, THE SHOOTIST, THE LAST WALTZ, THE GUMBALL RALLY, LOGAN'S RUN.
24. Other sports: The Montreal Canadiens prevent the Philadelphia Flyers from 3-peating in the Stanley Cup.  The Big Red Machine, the Cincinnati Reds, repeat as World Series champs and do not lose a single game in the postseason, a feat still not matched.
25. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak form Apple.  The first Apple computers debut.  The first commercial Concorde flights debut. 

1991:
1. Still living with my stepdad, having just moved into our new digs in Auburn/Federal Way WA.  Beautiful 2 story house with pretty much everything brand spanking new (carpet, flooring, everything).  Very spacious.  Kind of a gravelly pit for a back yard though, leading down to the street behind us below.  Had my Sega Genesis to keep me busy.  Still working at Pizza Hut; usually worked mornings making the dough, and sometimes closed the place with an assistant supervisor, often getting home with fairly wet pants from dishwashing.  Probably should have brought spare pants..
2. The first NEO GEO arcade game on their MVS cabinet I noticed was FATAL FURY.  Boy did I love that one-- not as polished as another fighting game that debuted that same year but I loved it all the same.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7c/NEOGEO_Fatal_Fury_-_King_of_Fighters_%28Gar%C5%8D_Densetsu_-_Shukumei_no_Tatakai%29.png/220px-NEOGEO_Fatal_Fury_-_King_of_Fighters_%28Gar%C5%8D_Densetsu_-_Shukumei_no_Tatakai%29.png)
 Speaking of which..
3. STREET FIGHTER II is the latest arcade smash hit.  Very nice graphics courtesy of Capcom, and it re-defines the vs. fighting game genre.  That Bison-- what a cheap bastard, though not as bad as Geese Howard (!) from FATAL FURY.
(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTPmC3xWtLPcxahcu7rgM0upsa8EadxPIUvHg&usqp=CAU)
4. TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY destroys the box office.  Special effects standards jumped like crazy with the awesome T-1000 (Robert Patrick) made of liquid metal.  Looking back on it, I don't like it nearly as much now as I did then and think the original was much better.  But those SFX were pretty damn cool, and the action scenes certainly delivered.  I just didn't like very many characters in the movie at all.
5. Nirvana's seminal grunge album NEVERMIND is released.
6. A major earthquake in Afghanistan kills nearly 850.
7. Iraqi troops leave Kuwait, but burn oil fields on their way out.
8. US troops begin to leave the Persian Gulf as President Bush declares victory over Iraq.
9. The Soviet Union begins to dissolve as several countries claim independence.
10. Rodney King is beaten by 4 Los Angeles police officers.
11. After a franchise record-setting 63 wins is set by my Portland Trailblazers, they make it to the Western Conference Finals and.. poop themselves against the inferior LA Lakers in 6 games.  One of the bigger heartbreaking moments in the franchise's history.  At least we beat my stepdad's team (Sonics) on the way.  Watched that series on his giant screen tv (with a smartwindow); both parents worked at Boeing so they could afford some nice things.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1YyVrLeL24#)
12. A disarmament resolution passed by the UN is accepted by Iraq.
13. A major tropical cyclone hits Bangladesh and kills over 100,000.
14. Mt. Pinatubo's eruption in the Philippines kills over 800.
15. Lt. Col. Oliver North is acquitted on all charges in the Iran-Contra Affair.
16. Heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson is arrested and charged with the rape of Miss Black America contestant Desiree Washington.
17. Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is arrested in Milwaukee after the remains of 11 victims are found in his apartment.
18. An earthquake in Uttarkashi, India claims nearly 800.
19. Queen frontman Freddie Mercury dies of AIDS in London.
20. The last of American hostages in Lebanon is released.
21. 450 die in the Red Sea when an Egyptian ferry sinks.
22. More heartbreak for me.. my Buffalo Bills get to their first Super Bowl and lose by the slimmest of margins, 20-19 as their field goal attempt at the end misses.
23. Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls win their first NBA title.  Also, the Minnesota Twins win a 7-game World Series against the Braves.
24. Mike Tyson faces Ramon "Razor" Ruddock twice (we watched both bouts on Pay-Per-View, I think) and wins both.  But the World Heavyweight Champ is Evander Holyfield, who retains his title by defeating George Foreman.
25. "Hello, Clarisse..."
(https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2013/09/20/17/anthonyhopkins.jpg?quality=75&width=982&height=726&auto=webp)
THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is released, and Anthony Hopkins gives an electrifying performance as Dr. Hannibal Lecter.  Other movies: HOOK (sucked), BOYZ N THE HOOD, BACKDRAFT, ADDAMS FAMILY, CAPE FEAR, SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY, JFK, THE FISHER KING, BARTON FINK, CITY SLICKERS, TMNT 2.
Bonus:
Some decent songs: LOSING MY RELIGION, BABY BABY, UNBELIEVABLE, RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW, JOYRIDE, ENTER SANDMAN, EVERY HEARTBEAT. 
Also, tv show debuts: HOME IMPROVEMENT, DINOSAURS (we loved that stupid show), STEP BY STEP, REN & STIMPY, RUGRATS, HERMAN'S HEAD, CLARISSA EXPLAINS IT ALL, DARKWING DUCK, EERIE INDIANA, DOUG, RED GREEN SHOW, AEON FLUX, MAURY POVICH, JERRY SPRINGER
And other big arcade hits: T2: JUDGEMENT DAY, TMNT: TURTLES IN TIME, STARBLADE, DRAGON'S LAIR II: TIME WARP, THE SIMPSONS, SUNSET RIDERS, JOE & MAC, and the big hit for the home game systems: SONIC THE HEDGEHOG!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqQYDLcvkBc#)

Memories of 2019 Part Two: Life Disrupted.

1.   At the annual Lunken Air Show there was one of only twenty WWII B-17s still flying, and you could buy a ride on it, which part of me wanted to do, but something held me back. Well, the plane went up, landed fine, all was well, and I felt like kicking myself for missing a chance at experiencing history. A few weeks later however a B-17 owned by the same group was giving rides at an air show in Connecticut and crashed amid much death, so maybe my instincts hadn’t been that far off after all.

2.   Events… My parents vacationed in Egypt, where my father paid a condolence call on the family of his chess friend…. My son started going to work with his dad, which was not completely legal, but sweet…. We watched a taping of American Ninja Warrior downtown, and that obstacle course looked so fun I wanted to try it…. I loved Fleabag, the smartest dark comedy of the decade…. I let almost-eleven year old Daisy read some of the safer, younger years of my diary, which felt like “the other day” to me but which were ancient history to her…. On the 25th anniversary of the time I nearly died in 1994, she also made me a surprise cake.

3.   Whereas when he was younger my son was terrified of aliens, in ’19 he was obsessed with them, especially after the Navy first hinted they were real; he and I sat out late many a summer night scanning the sky for any signs of them. Alas (?), no luck.

4.   I was only at Dad’s work about one day a week for a month among the new/last crop of interns, so felt not as much a part of things as I had. Among that bunch was Leigh, who was born Lee, a biological male, but who self-identified with and tried to live life as, a female. I don’t think I treated Leigh differently from anyone, something that surprised some of the interns, who did treat Leigh differently, but the impression I got was that poor Leigh was a deeply unhappy person.

5.   When I took it in for a cleaning, I was jolted to find out my grandma’s beautiful blue Isfahani Persian rug, which I inherited and which had been on the floor for fifty years, was worth twenty thousand dollars! I’d thought maybe a few hundred…? The Azarbajani-born rug merchant urged me to insure it separately. Know what, though? I left it on the parlor floor where my grandma had always had it.

6.   I noticed in 2019 that wherever I went teenaged girls seemed to have quit holding their stomachs in and many went around with poochy bellies. I couldn’t decide if that was a sign of liberation from excess body consciousness, or lazy slovenliness.

7.   I went with Edie to hear David Sedaris speak, and what I remember most about that night was I had an ingrown hair bugging me the entire event, and when I mentioned it to my third favorite Jew, she capped on me for all the times I said shaving caused ingrown hairs, but waxing didn’t and that’s why I liked it better. “Guess waxing’s not foolproof, huh?” she taunted. I’ll tell you, her capacity for such altruistic sympathy is what keeps our friendship afloat.

8.   That same week that I went with Daisy to a ceremony where a century-dead Belgian-born bishop was reburied in an elaborate tomb in the gloriously grand cathedral in Kentucky whose construction he oversaw. It was more hip than it sounds: the cathedral has the largest stained-glass window in the world. It was said the bishop’s last words before he died were, “I believe I have done good work, and will rest now before I go to be with the Lord.” How do people come up with all these great last words? It’s like they have a speechwriter whispering in their ears. I’m convinced my last words before I keel over will be something banal like, “I need to pick up dog food at Krog….arrrrgh.”

9.   From the depths of unpleasantness came someone’s strange….prank?... and I started getting vicious emails that claimed to be from my late one-time fiancé Brian, nineteen years dead. I believe it was his hate-filled mother sending them, part of her morbid obsession with me, and concluded she was honestly no longer sane, but I never acknowledged them enough to confront her, and eventually they stopped. You gotta beware of insane folk in this life, and was glad when she moved far away that year.

10.   I took Daikeagity clothes shopping for school, and my son came out of the dressing room at Target and said, “Somebody left a Pepsi can full of pee in there.” I went in and sure enough, he was right, a can of pee. The restrooms were fifty feet away too.

11.   Landon and I generally get along well, we’re nicely-matched, we understand one another and form a solid team, but it seemed like in the early fall of 2019, even as it was unfolding, I was aware that he and I were having a stretch of truly wonderful days together, feeling happy in the moment, the children’s lives playing out in that high summer that lies between babyhood and adolescence, his business was going well, it was like we never disagreed or quarreled…. We were experiencing one of the golden times that if you’re lucky you get in marriage.

12.   I did a rare Saturday volunteer session at the food pantry and a crazy homeless man kept coming over and loudly saying he was going to marry Daisy. Yep, said it over and over. It was nearly cute the first time, annoying the second time, creepy after that. One lady there said that man’s name was Dan and he was harmless, but there was a disturbing mania in his focus on my fifth-grader.

13.   Life. Can. Change. One week I was home being a suburban mom, the next, with only days’ notice, I was abruptly working on an inconvenient assignment in Adana, Turkey that took me away from mid-November on into 2020. I remember lying in bed on my last night home telling myself, “I should have become a college professor instead. I should have become a biologist instead. I should have flipped burgers instead. I should have done almost anything else instead.”

14.   I was scared at first to be in this foreign city, with a civil war being fought over the horizon and Syrian refugees living pitifully on the sidewalks. (“Don’t give the refugees money,” we were told. “Desperate people will attack them for it.”)  One afternoon, though, I went into downtown Adana with two coworkers after being assured it was statistically safer than most comparable-size US cities. Plus we were told: “Turks despise thieves, and think of them like you Americans think of sexual deviants. Polls show even secular people have sympathy with the idea of cutting off thieves’ hands, so you’ll be safe.”

I asked if hand-chopping would ever become Turkish law, and the local who worked with us as a translator said, “Nah, it would torpedo our EU membership hopes.”

It ended up being a fun day and when we went down the coast to the port by the river mouth, we saw a Russian merchant ship come in and Russian sailors mill about, drunk in daytime and looking very happy.

“It’s illegal to trade with Russian sailors,” our local friend said. “But people do it all the time, and those sailors are probably trying to unload vodka and caviar to get counterfeit iPhones to take home.”

“Why is bartering illegal?” I asked.

“It’s not,” she said, “but circumventing tariffs is.”

We went to a restaurant, my first time in one since I got here. The food was heavily fried in olive oil but the spices were great and a little like Indian. Adana, being in the conservative south, the custom was families sat in the middle of the restaurant, single men went to the right, and women without men (with or without children) sat to the left, though all the sections were equally nice. We four sat by a window and the server was attentive and friendly and the food was the best I’d had in weeks.

Our local friend said nowhere in the world is a diner treated better than in a Turkish restaurant, since it is a matter of pride for a restaurateur to honor customers as personal guests. That was the feeling I got, like extending courtesy was a point of pride. They could have taught US servers many things.

15.   On the sidewalks though a lot of Turkish men saw nothing wrong with casting lingering, lascivious stares at women, foreign or domestic. Most western men, including hard-hatted construction workers, don’t openly do that and even men in Latin countries don’t with quite the unashamed enjoyment that Turkish men did.

16.   I noticed things were secular six days a week, not a lot different from being in, say Italy (Turkey got compared to Italy a lot), with Gaps and Starbucks and Apple stores dotting the cityscape, bike riders everywhere, but on Fridays it was like huge parts of the population took on the behavior of revival season in the Deep South. Calls to Prayer were more heeded those days, and many streets actually looked like ghost towns because so many people went to mosques, many men wearing lace caps (the name of which escapes me). More than once I was cordially invited to go into services, but didn’t. One man there said something that humbled me, since I doubt many Christians back home would have said anything similar to him. He told me, “Never doubt that Allah loves you, for as a Christian you are a person of the book and you will be received into Allah’s love, in Heaven.”

17.   I kept telling myself to appreciate where I was, getting paid to experience a different nation and culture, a couple years from retiring and never having to leave my family again, but I was too upset about being away from home to let that happen. With me away, Daisy’s soccer team played in the semis, our puppies were growing into dogs, Thanksgiving happened, and of course ushered in the onset of the Christmas season. And if I had only known, those weeks in Adana were the good times, since after the new year things would go crazy and my assignment would get far worse.

18.   Some Turkish I picked up, (spelled the way I heard them): evet (yes); hayur (no); memnunietel (you’re welcome); muhaba (hello); gurusurooz (goodbye); iutfen (please); tessukur edium (thanks); iui gecorlor (goodnight); uzgunum (sorry----I said “sorry” a lot there); benim adam…. (my name is….); and most useful of all: Turkce konusamiyorum (I don’t speak Turkish). I'm probably butchering a few of those but that's close enough to have been mostly understood.

19.   Turks as a rule seemed exuberantly friendly, almost Ned Flanders-ish, but stood close when speaking to you, violating my comfort zone. When I’d back up, they’d advance, and it occurred to me I was being rude, so I learned to have conversations from a distance of inches. I wished they were less heavy on scents though, colognes, perfumes, body sprays, they tended to overdo them all by American standards. I also found they openly loved a good laugh but their sense of humor ran toward absurdities, rather like that of French people I’ve known, and sometimes these absurdities seemed irritating, like Turks seemed to have a thing for pretending to hand you something, and then jerking their hands back and laughing before finally giving it to you. And my goodness did Turkish men love their mustaches! Think Freddie Mercury at Live Aid and add a week’s growth to that.

20.   Because my job had often put me around military bases and personnel, as it did there, I became friends with a Royal Marine named Tim, who liked many of the same books I did, and I gave him A.S. Byatt’s Possession when I finished re-re-reading it. Tim would use this same (I thought hilarious) expression whenever anything negative happened. He’d, go: “Right buzz-kill, wunnit then?” He taught me how to speak Mancunian, like his former northern girlfriend used to, and I told him how to sound Texan, which was by substituting the letter e for i. “Tixas.” (Not that I’m Texan, just been there a lot.)

21.   I had to leave Adana and briefly go to Ankara, which was a startling clean city, like no one littered and everything was ultra-modern: not what I’d expected. I’ve only been one mile into Germany before we turned around, just to say we’d technically been there, but Ankara reminded me Germany was like that, ultra-efficient, ultra-tidy. Under my homesickness I began to realize I admired many things about Turkish people, and only hope the ardent desire of a growing minority of Turks to form an Islamic republic never happens, though there are definitely some unfortunate fault lines forming in that nation and I don’t know how Turkey will end up by mid-century. When I talked about this with locals they said, “Oh, no, our version of an Islamic nation wouldn’t be like the Taliban or Iran, it’d be a kinder place.” But I don’t know…

22.   After Ankara I went to Istanbul for two days off, and actually did get to sightsee. The cherry on top of that was my dad flew over to see me. We went into Hagia Sophia, among the last weeks it was open for visitors, I believe, and to the historic Eyup Cemetery, which was filled with the tombs of sultans, and, alas, also gangs of present-day heroin addicts who rather strongly demanded money but otherwise left us alone.

Strangest part of Eyup was the collected graves of the Ottoman Sultans’ court torturers, honored men who were given status burials. One such man there had ritually strangled all of Suleiman the Magnificent’s many brothers, an Ottoman policy to prevent civil war among claimants to the throne, leaving the strangler seen as a man of peace, and almost holy. When he died in old age he was buried in a silk shroud and Suleiman personally kissed the gold coins he himself placed above the old executioner’s eyes, and those coins are still apparently buried there with him, worth many thousands of dollars apiece.

I told my dad about a Kurdish graveyard I’d heard about near Adana, and of the superstitious terror of the place many Kurds had, and how at night the cemetery was scrupulously avoided. The Kurdish word for a ghost is ruh, and they said ruh entered the orifices of the unwary or the sleeping, causing nightmares, so when near a graveyard at night one was not supposed to speak or yawn or even look right at it lest the eyes become doorways, and to cover one’s nose with a hand just to be safe, as is sneezing when finally past a burial place. Most importantly, though, Kurds say never sleep in a cemetery.

I left it out, since I was talking to my dad, but it’s said ruh particularly delighted in entering through the sexual organs if one urinated or copulated in a graveyard, causing insatiable madness.

23.   That same night in Istanbul my dad and I had dinner in the Sultanahmet District, where Dad got by fine speaking German, which seemed a second language to a lot of Turks. In fact German companies seemed all over the city, and there was at least one German radio station. There were also many resident Sephardic Jewish people in that part of the city, descended from those given asylum after they were expelled from Spain in 1492. From what I saw they were treated as well as Jews in America, no discrimination.

24.   When my dad left the second evening and I had to go back to my job, it was painfully depressing. I didn’t feel like a “professional” I felt like a homesick mother missing her kids. I was a legacy and had gotten hired-in at seventeen years of age, and used to delight in working overseas in my teens and twenties but in 2019 I was forty and hated the assignment. If ever I’d entertained the slightest thought of not putting in for retirement when it became available in 2021, those ideas left me then. I knew I was done, and never vacillated on the subject.

25.   Later that month I spent and unmarked Christmas Eve turning forty-one, then came Christmas day, still down, still wanting my family, and I had nothing better to do than join in drinking bitter Turkish beer with equally depressed co-workers who also wanted to be back home in the US and UK.

When I guess I b***hed too much, Tim, who told me he was surprised I wasn’t a funnier drunk (usually I am), told me he’d been in Afghanistan a few Christmases before, stuck behind sandbags on a hill, snipers scattered throughout the valley below them, with his friend in a body bag, his days-old corpse making sounds (God!), and all of his unit waiting to be pulled out, barely thinking about the fact it was Christmas.

He had a point, that absolutely would’ve been worse than doing what amounted to office work in a modern city like I was (and he was too by then). 

We kind of teased and picked on each other to feel better and drank beers til my ears rang. I got drunker than I had been in literally years, and then he and I staggered down to a basketball court at sunset and I showed him how to play HORSE like I used to with my dad, though being that drunk most shots were misses. When we were done he took a paperback copy of Gone Girl out of his bag and said, “Merry Christmas.”

I was moved by this kindness, and still have that book.

When I headed back though I noticed he was walking with me, and somewhere under the beery slushiness inside me it clicked, “Oh! He thinks something’s going to happen….”

Duh, maybe I should have caught that sooner but after having spent most of my time since the mid-‘90s in committed relationships, I was inexperienced at pick-ups and all that, preferring to go for one person maybe a little too intensely rather than playing the field. (Plus I was, yeah, drunk.) So I gave Tim what I hope was the proper version of the “you’re nice, I’m flattered, but no thank you” speech, then went back to my room feeling like an idiot, and read Gone Girl in one lie-down while my head began to feel split open from what was by my standards a lot of drinking.

It was as good a Christmas as it could be stuck far from home in a place no one wanted to be, not sure what was coming next, and making the best of life’s many s**t-storms. I vowed when I got home I’d never ever again complain about having a normal Christmas, and I never have.

About a week later I’d get sent to the first of several rural hellholes and realized I should never have complained about how good I had it in Adana. But that’s 2020’s tale.

And that was the rest of 2019.

1997:
1. My first apartment!  Outstanding location-- right by Hwy 99 in Tigard OR, with absolutely everything you could want within a handful of blocks.  Cinemas, bars, restaurants, grocery stores, etc.  But being on the 2nd floor it got BRUTALLY hot in the summertime.  And I got ants.. not the tiny sugar ants, but big black ones.  Landlord/handyman were about worthless too.
2. This may have been the first year I switched to a different location for my job, within the same department store chain.  About 10-15 miles from my place; I had to catch a last bus to make it (the train from the Transit Center wasn't quite yet completed).  Not overly demanding.  I got along with the supervisor at the time.  She seemed to like me.  We sometimes grabbed a bite after work.
3. One of the first things about 1997 I think about is this great song:
SEMI-CHAMED LIFE= Third Eye Blind
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jILAu6pftT8#)
4. Also, one of the big events of 1997:
TITANIC!
James Cameron's box-office haul is unprecedented until AVATAR the following decade.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/18/Titanic_%281997_film%29_poster.png)
I remember laughing out loud when the people fell from the ship and struck their head as it tilted.   BONGGG!
5. Comet Hale-Bopp makes its closest approach to Earth.  I remember thinking "Hale-Bopp!  Bop-bop-doo-wop, yeah yeah.."
6. In a big deal involving man vs. computer, Computer wins!  "Big Blue" defeats Garry Kasparov in a famed chess match.
7. World famous fashion designer Gianni Versace is shot to death outside Miami Beach.
8. Boeing and McDonnell Douglas complete an expensive merger.
9. Diana, Princess of Wales dies at a Paris hospital after a car crash.  Her close friend Dodi Fayed and her driver are also killed.  Very pretty lady, very sad..
10. Elton John's "Candle In The Wind '97" is dedicated to her.  It is a worldwide smash hit.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o9rLDCfO6o#)
11. Iraqi guards are seen burning documents, moving files, etc. by UNSCOM inspectors in the ongoing disarmament crisis.
12. An episode of the Japanese animated series POKEMON triggers epileptic reactions from 700 children in Japan.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LQLvgXLguk#)
13. The Chicago Bulls win their 5th of 6 titles in the 90s, with this being the first matchup with Karl Malone/John Stockton and the Utah Jazz.  Michael Jordan is dangerously ill but still gets MVP honors.
14. Watched Super Bowl XXXI at my bowling league captain's house with all my teammates.  His house was adjoined to a convenience store a quarter mile from my folks' house.  There was also a little barbershop where his wife cut hair (poorly).  Brett Favre won his only Super Bowl title, over Drew Bledsoe (not Tom Brady) and the Patriots.
15. On my way out to work (graveyard shift) I would sometimes stop by G.I. JOE'S (sporting goods/outdoors store and also sold sports/concert tickets) and get Blazers tickets.  Or I would stop by the McMenamins pub and grab a pint of ruby and a house special (steak sandwich).  On one such instance I watched the exciting game 7 of the World Series between the Florida Marlins and the Cleveland Indians..
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSXClHvIK_s#)
16. I nearly crapped myself when they put a Burger King right inside my work building.  I would often grab a burger or two if I had a little extra cash right before work.  Some time later they put in a BIG TOWN HERO sandwich place.  Never got into that-- too much bread.
17. I had a lot of hate for my division rivals the Philadelphia Flyers, so I was thrilled when they got swept by the Detroit Red Wings in the Stanley Cup finals.
18. BITE NIGHT!  I watched this at work (they had cable).  Mike Tyson's 2nd fight against Heavyweight Champ Evander Holyfield is stopped when Tyson bites a chunk out of Holyfield's ear!  Tyson is disqualified, and his boxing license is suspended a year and he is fined 3 million.  Tyson claims he was headbutted repeatedly by Holyfield.  I claim that Tyson was a butthead.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_bkDbpS-vw#)
19. Other notable '97 songs: B*TCH, TUBTHUMPING, I WANT YOU, BARBIE GIRL, WALKING ON THE SUN, YOU WERE MEANT FOR ME, KARMA POLICE.
20. Other notable '97 movies: GOOD WILL HUNTING, CONTACT, THE FIFTH ELEMENT, PRINCESS MONONOKE, MEN IN BLACK, CON AIR, AIR FORCE ONE, ARMAGEDDON, LA CONFIDENTIAL, JACKIE BROWN, AFFLICTION, JOYRIDE, AMISTAD, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, MIMIC, THE LOST WORLD, SCREAM 2, FACE/OFF, STARSHIP TROOPERS, PERFECT BLUE
21. SOUTH PARK debuts!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So2Y_Ruur6U#)
22. Other tv debuts: KING OF THE HILL, JOHNNY BRAVO, OZ, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, STARGATE SG-1, ALLY MCBEAL, DHARMA & GREG, DARIA, RECESS, JUST SHOOT ME, POKEMON, THE PRACTICE, TELETUBBIES (ugh), LEXX, THE VIEW (also ugh), VERONICA'S CLOSET, CAILLOU (triple ugh)
23. This may have been the last year I took karate lessons, as the sensei got busted on molestation charges and went on the lam.  He eventually did get caught and served time.  As of 2008 he was sentenced to 12 years in prison.  Yuck.  Never took any more lessons again; don't know that I really need to.  Not that I'm a particularly tough guy but I just do quite well in avoiding dangerous situations.
24. TIM DUNCAN is picked #1 overall in the NBA Draft.  2 years later he would win the Finals and MVP honors.
25. This was famed coach Marv Levy's last season with the Bills.  And the first season in the post-Jim Kelly era.  Todd Collins was given the keys to the team, and he was not the answer at QB as the team just went 6-10.  He did however have an incredible comeback against the Colts:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMoPX-ESaIg#)

1998:
1. I remember vacationing in Reno with my folks this year and my Aunt went with us-- God, she was such a dipstick and it annoyed us all to the limit of our patience.  My dad even had to unload on her at one point.  I remember her trying to talk at length to someone sitting with me on the plane even though it was obvious she didn't speak any English.  I get annoyed with my mom on occasion when she tries to talk at length to total strangers but my Aunt Virginia is miles worse.
2. While in Reno I watched game 6 of the NBA Finals-- the mighty Bulls actually didn't have home court advantage!  But Utah still couldn't pull it off, especially with a horrid game 3 blowout loss (the other games were pretty close).  This is the last title for Jordan and the Bulls, as they lose many key players (including Jordan when he eventually announces his retirement, lasting until 2001 when he returns with the Washington Wizards).
3. Perhaps the most embarrassing Presidential scandal occurs when it is revealed that President Clinton engaged in sexual relations with intern Monica Lewinsky.  He is impeached after lying under oath, stating that he did not have sexual relations with her.  He does finish his 2nd term to 2001, but his law license is suspended for 5 years.
4. Several thousand are killed in multiple Afghanistan earthquakes.
5. Saddam Hussein agrees to a deal with the UN to allow weapon inspectors back into Iraq.
6. Roberto Begnini makes a bit of a scene with his hyperactive Oscar acceptance for LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL.  Titanic wins ELEVEN Oscars!
7. My Buffalo Bills found an instant savior in diminutive QB Doug Flutie, who just finished his CFL tour.  His gutsy play propels the team to the playoffs and gets him a breakfast cereal "Flutie Flakes".  Though they lost to the Dolphins in the playoffs in early 1999, it was still a kind of magical season.  This late play to beat the undefeated Jaguars was truly iconic:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q-0g7rNBFo#)
8. Super Bowl XXXII finds the beleaguered franchise the Denver Broncos  and their QB John Elway finally winning a title, over Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers.
9. Unrest in Indonesia erupts with around 1,000 of Chinese Indonesians being killed by riots.
10. The Second Congo War begins.  By its end in 2003, millions will be killed.
11. China's Yangtze River floods, killing over 12,000.
12. US Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya are bombed.  Hundreds die; this activity is linked to Osama bin Laden.
13. Swissair Flight 111 crashes in Nova Scotia en route to Geneva; all 229 die.
14. Google is founded in Menlo Park, CA.
15. Gay U of Wisconsin student Matthew Shepard is beaten and left for dead outside Laramie, WI and dies 6 days later.  The media coverage brings focus on homophobia issues.
16. A pipeline explodes in Nigeria, killing over 1,000.
17. The first DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION game is released by Konami in Japan.  The interactive dance game becomes a worldwide smash, and reaches North America and Europe in 1999.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/DanceDanceRevolution_White_Machine_with_DDR_A_installed.png/220px-DanceDanceRevolution_White_Machine_with_DDR_A_installed.png)
18. The Yankees sweep the San Diego Padres 4-0 in the World Series.
19. Mark McGwire breaks Roger Maris's old home runs in a season record (61), and goes on to notch 70, with Sammy Sosa finishing at 66.  McGwire and Sosa would both later be found to have taken steroids, as did Barry Bonds, who later broke McGwire's record (Bonds hit 73 HRs in 2001).
20. Yuck.. my New Jersey Devils, who were the #1 seed in the West, lose to the #8 seed Ottawa Senators 4 games to 2.  The eventual Stanley Cup champions are the Detroit Red Wings in a sweep of the Washington Capitals.
21. The awesome RESIDENT EVIL 2 is released, introducing Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield!  I had this for the Playstation, and found massive replay value with all the unlockables and different scenarios.  I can still play this today (when I pick up a used PS2 sometime).
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujZY6MSCBII#)
22. Lotta other great games of 1998, including HALF-LIFE, ZELDA: OCARINA OF TIME, BANJO KAZOOIE, XENOGEARS, BALDUR'S GATE, SPYRO, RAINBOW SIX, and..
the awesome METAL GEAR SOLID.  I could not get enough of this-- and when I got the stealth suit with one ending completed, I would sneak up on the soldiers and put C4 on their back and push the button.. XD
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj6plOoDl_s#)
23. Big movies: The great SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, AMERICAN HISTORY X (with the nasty curb-stomping scene), THE BIG LEBOWSKI, THE TRUMAN SHOW, THE THIN RED LINE, PRINCE OF EGYPT, STAR TREK: INSURRECTION, ELIZABETH, GODS AND MONSTERS, BLADE, THE HORSE WHISPERER, SMALL SOLDIERS, LETHAL WEAPON 4, THE WEDDING SINGER, THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY, HALLOWEEN H20, PSYCHO
24. Tolerable songs this year: ONE WEEK, SLIDE, CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF YOU BABY, YOU GET WHAT YOU GIVE, NEVER THERE, THE WAY..  Big hits: DON'T WANT TO MISS A THING, THIS KISS, JUMP JIVE 'N WAIL, PRETTY FLY FOR A WHITE GUY, INTERGALACTIC
25. Lotta tv debuts: THAT 70s SHOW, SEX AND THE CITY, DAWSON'S CREEK, WHO'S LINE IS IT ANYWAY, WILL & GRACE, CHARMED, KING OF QUEENS, POWERPUFF GIRLS, BECKER, FELICITY, WILD THORNBERRYS, COWBOY BEBOP, CELEBRITY DEATHMATCH.

Memories of 2020 Part One: From Turkey To Covid.

Read at your own risk.

1.   On New Year’s Day I could say I had been alive in six different decades, the 1970s to the 2020s. That week the US embassy in Iraq was attacked, and Iran was fanning the flames of a regional conflict by posturing in the face of a megalomaniac President who seemed to want any excuse to escalate. I’m not sure how things were reported at home, but in early 2020 troops flooded from elsewhere into Turkey, and the last time there had been a buildup like that, the US invaded Iraq. The region was on high alert, as Iran had just seen its spymaster assassinated by the US, and wanted revenge. Incirlik AFB, outside Adana, was in range of Iran’s missiles and a presumed high-priority target. Then came intelligence that Russia and China were backing Iran, and it was thought by many that the probability of a regional war had morphed into the possibility of a world war. How bad was it? Well, we had to surrender all our phones and devices, a protocol reserved for the most extreme times. Then we were told to call home and talk to our families on monitored lines, given three minutes, and specifically instructed not to make it sound like we were saying goodbye.

2.   I talked to Tim, the Royal Marine, still my friend even though I shot down his amorous hopes at Christmas, and it was reflective of our mindset that we didn’t discuss books, we talked about bombs. He said he grew up amid IRA bombings, and asked when I’d heard about the Oklahoma City blast, so I told him that story, but I said I’d look at McVeigh and through his hard stare it was like I could see a confused, scared boy, underneath his anger. Tim asked if I felt sorry for McVeigh and I said no, he was our country’s worst-ever murderer, but somehow it was like I felt what McVeigh was feeling, trying to be stoical but knowing he was doomed. Tim looked at me like I was surely kidding, but, no, I remembered feeling that about him.


3.   Without warning, my department found itself appropriated by those who disregarded title, position, job description, and put a number of us on a truck and drove us to what looked like a construction site possibly near the Turkish-Iranian border, I still don’t know exactly where it was. In about two days a bare plot of ground in an extremely rural location was turned into an armed camp. Being there combined the worst involuntary living conditions of my life with the most helpless feeling of my career.

4.   As other trucks came in a co-worker and I were assigned menial tasks like unpacking boxes. She asked me if I’d seen any authorization for sending us there, and like her, I had not. “They just did this on their own, didn’t they?” she said. While we were discussing how we could get a call back to Adana, a hot-headed army officer, maybe twenty-five, sunburned, unpleasant, yelled at us to quit jawing and work. Something drilled into us was that when you were on the clock you had a reputation to uphold, so you did not let outsiders push you around. (Those who were higher-ups of our employers could and frequently did, however, s**t on us all they wanted and we had to take it, just not from outsiders.) So my co-worker and I informed the officer we were not under his command, he told us we most definitely were, and when we began to quote the law, this “officer and gentleman” blew up and said he was going to kick us in our….well, lady parts….if we didn’t get back to work. (I don’t think this guy liked women.) The matter called for a ruling from a higher-up, which came down on our side and we were told this would be sorted out, but that however long we were there we should lend what aid we could. An annoying compromise, yet even then the officer, this man from Georgia with one of the worst hick accents I’d ever heard, screamed that he refused to work if he did not have complete authority. Fool, as a soldier, he had to obey any lawful order he was given.

 
5.   I ended up spending longer in that hellhole than I’d have thought, doing grunt work, and then things got still worse, though I won’t write about that. I hated the officer in charge but admired the soldiers for keeping up spirits and finding a semblance of normality in tense times when I think all of us believed we were in the start of a war. (One big black guy whose job was to mount a huge machine gun used to bellow out hip-hop songs and about half the guys nearby would beat-box in time.) One thing that puzzled me was how hostile the Turkish army, our NATO ally, was to our presence out in the wilds. Turkish soldiers came at one point and semi-surrounded the place. I don’t know what that was about; never asked, was never told. Playing dumb and keeping my eyes open was SOP for half my career anyway. The Turks departed one morning, but that situation left me thinking if war did come, the US might not get the support from Turkey it thought it would. Maybe that helped de-escalate what was looking like a rush into war.

6.   We finally did get back to Adana (the long way), and there my co-worker and I filed grievances protesting the fact we were ever grouped-in with the army, something contrary to our stated assignment, and to the departmental separations mandated by federal law. Our highest-up on-site boss met with us and heard what we had to say about the officer, and though his expression did not change, something in his eyes did, and my co-worker and I agreed that officer from Georgia made himself a marked man, and I imagine his career was a mess from that point on.


7.   In Adana, I took it as an ominous sign that Syrian refugees were fleeing the city, meaning they felt it was more dangerous there than back home? Talk was still about Iran having stockpiles of missiles to fling at Incirlik, though I couldn’t figure out why they would want to start a war, until it was explained to me that “Iranians treasure martyrdom.” How, I thought, could you reason with someone who wished for that? There was a feeling of a breakdown somewhere on our side, and talk began to swirl that people at the top were acting like amateurs moving everyone around a chess board without knowing the rules of the game. Morale was low. Anger was high. In all my years of working around members of the military I never saw so much rage against those back in Washington. Crazy things were going on, like someone had tossed away all the rulebooks, and inmates were running the asylum.


8.   Abruptly, in the middle of all this, I was summoned in to see my immediate supervisor, who asked if I wanted to go home. I said, uh, yeah, thinking it was a shell game, but he said with the buildup they now had others on hand who could do the jobs I and some others had been temporarily called up to do. My two months in Turkey ended, but it cemented my admiration for all the super-humans in the service who bravely do an almost impossible job to keep us safe. From the bottom of my heart I say they are heroes. (It also convinced me there were people high-up in government who didn’t have the beginning of an idea how to do their jobs.)


9.   I ended up outside Washington, attending meetings and giving reports about the state of things observed overseas, and when I saw myself on a security monitor as I walked into a building, I thought…I looked rough. I saw an Air Force doctor who told me I had adrenal depletion, and I went, yeah, wonder why?  (TMI, maybe, but I had no sexual desires and no appetite for the next couple months.) I was in the DC area for a week and a half, during which President Trump’s impeachment trial was being held, and when I read what the charges were, I thought his enemies calling him out for his recent Mid-East micro-mismanagement would have made for a better case. Though I wanted to go home, at least I was in a place where I could order pizza and watch Jeopardy’s Greatest of All Time tournament, which Ken Jennings won.

10.   I went home, and it was like no time had passed, and like I’d been gone a year. We had a makeup birthday and Christmas, and I was given a lovely 1960s coffee table book with beautiful Kodachromes of Canada’s wilderness called The Great Green North. I caught up on things and gave my friend Mark the complete Arkham collection on PS4 for his birthday I’d missed. I looked at Tyler’s ultrasound pictures of his unborn son. Yet I knew I didn’t feel right. I didn’t want to have sex, didn’t want to go places, didn’t want to eat, didn’t want to hang out with my friends or listen to music or do much except stay home in the quiet. There were some unpleasant things I saw over there, and I found myself thinking about them. Yet if soldiers could go through experiences infinitely worse, who was I to complain about being shaken up just because I’d wet the merest tip of my baby toe in choppy waters? So I bottled it up and let things keep bothering me, which wasn’t a good policy.


11.   Stuff: Right when I got back Kobe Bryant was among those killed in a helicopter crash, and that news was jarring…. I met Edie for the Israeli Film Festival, and saw The Spy Behind Home Plate, about Moe Berg, a baseball catcher and OSS agent…. A doctor gave my friend Rob a pedometer and told him to go for 5,000 steps a day, and at the end of the first week it showed he had a total of 1,136 steps. How was that humanly possible? His insane, self-destroying laziness gave me my first real laugh in a long time.


12.   I finally told my husband about the unsigned, accusatory, from-beyond-the-grave emails from last fall that someone had signed “Brian,” and he said, “Sounds like you’ve ruled out everyone but one person as the author.” I said, “I have? Who?” Landon looked at me and said, “You.” OK, that was funny at first and then eerie, as he colorfully ventured into a backstory of me having a dark-side personality writing dreadful accusations and sending them to myself, and it got full-on Jekyll and Hyde, even if he was never serious about it. (I hope.)


13.   Starting in February I began to hear solid warnings about covid-19 being an impending global pandemic. I had been saying for years we were due for one, and it felt peculiar to know this plague was out there, that its arrival into our country, our state, our hometown, was unavoidable. Whether it was overreaction or not, the local news showed the National Guard mobilized and clearing out the local convention center, a two-block 750,000-square foot area, and setting up cots and quarantine zones, to treat the “estimated 350,000 area people projected to come down with the coronavirus by summer.” Yes, that got my attention.

14.   I felt bad for Tyler and Kylie, having a baby in the midst of an impending pandemic, and just before stay-at-home orders came down, their son Giovanni was born, one of the most beautiful babies I’d ever seen, though I only saw him in pictures, not in person and wouldn’t for weeks. Daisy went over to help with the new baby and got stuck there for a month after shelter-in-place became law. We talked daily but I couldn’t see her in person, yet another separation. She had fun, though, being with the new baby and living like she was older than her years. (Living with a couple kids who themselves now had a kid.)


15.   I donated money to a group that relocates endangered African wild dogs (painted wolves would be a better name) and got to see a private live event where the dogs were released into a preserve after nearly being poisoned by a rancher whose herds they had been feeding on. If you look around you might find even your micro-donations can add up to help a lot of good causes out there. If you can’t do great things, do small things in a great way.

16.   My almost father in law came back from visiting Los Angeles barely ahead of covid, and said his longtime friend at ABC told him Roseanne Barr secretly orchestrated her firing from her show, cooked up as a stunt to get publicity for the launch of the continuation without her, since she was tired of doing TV. I didn’t know what to think about that but that’s what he told me.

17.   Out of nowhere, just when he got done telling me about Roseanne, I told him some bad things that’d happened in Turkey, including seeing a woman and her husband die in front of their children in an awful, unnecessary incident of violence. It felt like vomiting up poison to relate some of it, and he asked why I’d kept that to myself. I explained one way I had gotten by in life was by compartmentalizing things, telling myself someone else, not me, had seen and done things I found unpleasant, when of course that wasn’t reality. He told me, “I think you’ve run out of compartments, Evelyn.” He was all about 12-step groups and told me I needed to talk to someone. Since I first met him when I was sixteen he’d told me I had bright eyes, but that day he said my eyes looked “lightless.” In my life I’ve hated that man and I’ve loved him but I’ve had to acknowledge he’s usually been right, so I listened.


18.   In late March I was heading to the store and saw the parking lot was overfilled, cars were parked in the road and in the lanes between the parking spaces, and police were directing traffic. I spotted someone I knew walking to her car and asked what was up. She said, “Don’t go in there. Not only is there probably covid in the air but you’d wait in line for an hour to check out. It’s a mob inside and it’s scary, plus there’s nothing left to buy. Canned goods are gone and so is toilet paper, bottled water, bleach, and hand sanitizer.” I turned around and went home, glad we had six-week supplies of most staples.

19.   On March 13th the President officially declared a nationwide state of disaster. Covid hit, we stayed home and didn’t get sick, and were able to go outside and into the woods and have places in the house to go to be alone while the whole world turned upside down in a time like no other. Yes, 9-11 may have been more of a staggering gut punch of horror, but this was like a flood that reached out to cover everything for months, changing the tiniest parts of life you’d always taken for granted.


20.   I slept more than usual during lockdown and had strong dreams. I dreamed I was having dinner with Jim Morrison and Pamela Courson, and ate with my hands, like they were doing. And I had a clear dream that seemed as real as life. My grandma was standing by my bed stroking my hair and telling me, “Don’t come to Heaven, Dollbaby, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.” Just a dream, yes, but it stuck with me. To have something to do, I took a lot of online quizzes, including a Myers-Briggs personality test, which said I was an INTJ, or an “architect.”

21.   My husband perhaps took the isolation worse than I did and one day griped at me about my online friendship with a man I’d known since 2000, and asked me in what way it was not a symbiotic relationship. I asked if he wasn’t thinking of parasitic? He normally had a good vocabulary, he was a published writer, and I wondered if him messing up that word was a sign of strain, and contemplated how soon he’d be chopping through the bathroom door with an ax, quoting lines from 1970s late-night TV.


22.   I heard some good coronavirus jokes, and appreciated the gallows humor. One of my favorites was: What’s the difference in a naked woman and covid-19? (Nine out of 10 nerds will have contact with one of these this year.)

23.   During the pandemic our local archbishop emeritus died, yet his funeral was held in an empty cathedral. Another noted local death was a longtime on-air personality who had been the weatherman on the NBC affiliate where Jerry Springer anchored after getting dumped as the city’s mayor following his dalliance with a prostitute. You know the weatherman’s type, someone you’ve never met but feel you’ve known for years, so his dying hit home? It began to feel like things were going to be as bad as the pessimists said. My next door neighbor from my teen years in Mason, a down-home West Virginian, died of covid before summer, as did others I knew, two elderly, one in his forties and HIV-positive. And many got sick. My extended family stayed healthy, but there was constant worry. Many people weren’t working, and I wondered how long society could endure all this before the economy collapsed along with collective sanity.

24.   Amid this Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth, Boris Johnson, and Donald Trump all tested positive. So did Tom Hanks. It was a dismal Easter. Charles, my cousin Dana’s second son, Tyler’s brother, turned eighteen and had a humble party at his house, just parents and two siblings, not the blowout he’d planned for months. He graduated from high school that spring and got no prom, no cap and gown ceremony, and never saw some of his classmates again as life dispersed them without celebratory hookups or even goodbyes.

25.   By May the area opened up a little and stay-at-home orders ended, though many restrictions blossomed, including face masks, which I think will go down as an ecological disaster based on how many I still see littering streets and waterways. Postponed by the lockdown, I finally got out to have my “witch’s mark” removed, because it was decided it might be showing signs of becoming cancerous, and I asked for no local anesthetic during the procedure, freaking out the doctor how much pain this presumed east side princess could take while a one-inch circle of flesh was deeply sliced from my shoulder. I missed the little diamond witch-mark so much I looked into having it recreated by tattooing over the scar, even though I have an almost pathological distaste for tattoos.

And thus ends the first part of 2020.

1999:
1. The 1998-99 NBA season is shortened drastically due to a lockout over a disagreement between the owners and NBA Players Association.  It is shortened to 50 games starting in early 1999, but does continue on with a postseason as usual.
2. The NBA Finals does not feature the Bulls, Rockets or Pistons as champs for the first time in the decade.  Instead, the San Antonio Spurs hoist their first championship trophy with longtime center David Robinson and young star (and finals MVP) Tim Duncan knocking off Latrell Sprewell (my sister called him "Latrine") and the Knicks in 5.
3. My Blazers would reach the Western Conference Finals two years in a row, starting with this year.  There was a great mix of vets and young talent, including Arvydas Sabonis, Bonzi Wells, Rasheed Wallace, Damon Stoudamire, Brian Grant, the talented but brain-dead JR Rider, and coach Mike Dunleavy.  I remember Sabonis being a kind of quiet guy but occasionally he would show emotion like when the streamers came down after a playoff series win over the Jazz, and Sabonis looked up and busted out a wide grin.  It was wonderful!  Unfortunately we got swept by the Spurs and lost game 2 by a MIRACLE 3 shot by Sean Elliot-- so heartbreaking.
4. John Elway and the Denver Broncos repeat in the Super Bowl, earning Elway MVP honors in a rousting of the Atlanta Falcons, who surprised with a big upset over 15-1 Minnesota in the NFC Championship.  Usually reliable Gary Anderson misses a field goal and Atlanta drives late to score a tying TD.  In overtime, MORTEN Andersen of the Falcons boots a game winner to send Atlanta to their first Super Bowl appearance.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz3xGS6BerI#)
5. The Dallas Stars (formerly Minnesota North Stars) win their first Stanley Cup, beating the Buffalo Sabres 4 games to 2.  The final game was mired in controversy, with Brett Hull's skate in the crease not called at the end and the winning goal being allowed.  I remember watching this from a hotel room as my brothers and I were staying somewhere near Puyallup where my Aunt was getting married.  I hadn't slept for 24 hours at least and was absolutely bushed but still watched the game.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDfHXmWTE7U#)
6. I believe it was this year that I became a night shift manager at the department store I worked at.  Okay money for the time kept a roof over my head.  Seldom took time off.  Had a weight bench in my living room and I was still fit as a fiddle.  Sprung for a laptop and brought it in to work with me to watch funny stuff on the net during lunch break.
7. I remember all the hype leading up to the new millennium being of course all for naught.  I knew it wasn't that big a deal and Nostradamus could kiss my butt from beyond the grave.
8. The movie MYSTERY MEN was dumb but had this cool song:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_jWHffIx5E#)
9. More hit songs: I WANT IT THAT WAY, NO SCRUBS, BILLS BILLS BILLS, SMOOTH, CALIFORNICATION, MARIA, LIVIN' LA VIDA LOCA, and FA FA (NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN).
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sfkm7hd7zlo#)
10. Movies: AMERICAN BEAUTY, THE MATRIX, THE IRON GIANT, GIRL INTERRUPTED, BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, THE SIXTH SENSE, SLEEPY HOLLOW, CIDER HOUSE RULES, THE MUMMY, STAR WARS EPISODE I: THE PHANTOM MENACE, THE BONE COLLECTOR, FIGHT CLUB, EDTV, AMERICAN PIE
11. Clinton is acquitted in impeachment proceedings by the US Senate.
12. SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE wins Best Picture at the Oscars.
13. WORLD SERIES: The Yankees win another title with their very talented lineup, this one a rematch of the 1996 series with the Braves, beating them again in a sweep.
14. Cyclist Lance Armstrong admits to doping.  His Tour de France wins are all disqualified. 
15. Fashionable PGA golfer Payne Stewart dies in a plane crash.
16. NATO bombs Albanian refugee convoys, mistaking them for Yugoslav military trucks; around 75 die.
17. COLOMBINE MASSACRE: 2 Littleton CO high school students open fire at their school, killing 12 students and one teacher and then themselves, sparking a national outcry over shootings in schools becoming an ongoing problem in the US.
18. British TV newswoman Jill Dando is shot to death on the steps of her home in Fulham, London.
19. John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn and her sister all die in a plane crash near Martha's Vineyard. 
20. A violent earthquake hits NW Turkey, killing over 17,000.
21. Around 2,400 die in a Taiwan earthquake and around 10,000 die in a cyclonic storm in India.
22. EgyptAir Flight 990 from NY to Cairo crashes near Nantucket, MA; all 217 die.
23. Top TV shows: SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9L4AseD-aA#)
Also: WWE SMACKDOWN, FUTURAMA, ED, EDD 'N EDDY, THE SOPRANOS, THE WEST WING, FARSCAPE, ROSWELL, BOB THE BUILDER, FREAKS AND GEEKS, BATMAN BEYOND, QUEER AS FOLK, ANGEL, LAW & ORDER: SVU, REDWALL, HOME MOVIES, STRANGERS WITH CANDY, and this little show:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiaUEr8_a1U#)
24. The not-really-a-big-hit-then-but-gained-a-following-later SEGA DREAMCAST debuts:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOsw-Au9JCo#)
As does NEO GEO Pocket Color.
25. The ball drop to lead into the new millennium:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65mDUl9nT0o#)

Memories of 2020 Part Two: My Year-Long Half-Year

1.   By summer, though people were still dying of covid and it was scary, life had loosened up. It was possible to go out and pick up food and go into stores as long as you wore a mask and stayed apart via “social distancing” guidelines. Conspiracy theories ran amok, as did misinformation based in both over-reaction and denial, but most people stayed sensible and life resumed at least a little bit of normality.

2.   I danced around when I heard Neil Gaiman was finally liberating himself from Amanda Palmer, but when it turned out to be a rumor I stress-read Sandman #12 to commune with the classic-era Gaiman, in spirit.

3.   I drove by a Catholic cemetery off a major road, and saw a new burial there had a poster board hand by the grave and on the hand it said, “Hi, I’m Glen!” I was incredibly impressed with Glen for giving post-life chuckles.

4.   My job sent me to Colorado, where I worked as an instructor teaching some brief courses, and I enjoyed doing that enough to ask for another such assignment, so was later sent to San Diego to do the same, then Wyoming beyond that. I always said I never wanted to do what my dad did and be gone from my family for stretches of time, yet there I was doing the same thing, though in smaller chunks, and I wasn’t as out of communication with home as he had been. Still, I knew I was separating myself from my loved ones and I vowed that in a year I’d take retirement and be there for them, but more and more I realized the sad truth was….their lives were going on fine without me.

5.   In Colorado I took part in an infamous multi-day outdoor physical challenge I first entered at eighteen and had participated in several times since as well. It’s nowhere near the Marine Corp’s Crucible, not at all, Marines set a standard for hard-core, but it does share that name, the Crucible, which when Marines gripe about, they are informed this Crucible pre-dates their more rigorous one by a generation. I have repeated this event mainly because I like messing with people’s expectations and perceptions of me. I can no longer run a 5 ½ minute mile like I used to be able to do when I was playing tennis, but at forty-one I was proud to see my scores did fall in the 93rd percentile among participants who completed the event. I also busted up my knee pretty spectacularly on the last day, then limped for a couple weeks, only to come home to my mother in law having her knee replaced altogether, so I couldn’t even have the satisfaction of bellyaching about my injury for sympathy.

6.   Rob and Tara were expecting a son they named Tolkien Bluejoe for his first and middle names. I wonder if in life Tolkien will tell of being part of that club Giovanni is also in known as “pandemic babies?” Meanwhile their other son, thirteen-year-old Draven, lived out every teenage boy’s fantasy but was likely ruined for life when he got a girlfriend who was---wait for it!—a nudist!!! Yes, a nudist. Let that sink in a second….

7.   More on Rob. I played MTG with him one night that fall when people started being able to go to each other’s houses again, and he told me he dreamed the Night Stalker was telling him, “Go to Disneyland!” I reassured him that was just Disney’s new subliminal sleep ad campaign. That night he also told me he planned to join the Satanic Temple. Yeah, um, that man ain’t right.

8.   After months off, my husband and his crew went back to work restoring an 1850s row house they’d let sit in April. Since it was summer he let our son go with them, and nearly their first day back our son saw some men outside trying to break into a truck and take tools, so he ran at them, a nine year old berserker, and the crew and his dad came out and incredibly, rather than run, the two thieves, total junkies, real bad neighborhood, stood their ground with pieces of rebar in hand, and it was a mess. Cops came and rather than seeing it as a straightforward robbery-prevention, the police, timid after nationwide protests galore about discrimination, seemed to want to arrest everyone, and while my husband wasn’t taken in, he had to bail his guys out, and one of the cops shouted at my son. Then the junkies hired an ambulance chaser to come after us for assault, and that was an expensive legal quagmire, all rising from the fact they were prevented from carrying out a burglary. Not done yet: to save their own skins, some of the crew, who’d worked for my husband since the ‘00s, who’d been paid out of his pocket while they were off work due to covid shutdowns, turned on him in court. It was a hard betrayal for Landon to handle, and a lesson in why ultimately employees and bosses are never really friends.

9.   My second-favorite Mythbuster, Grant Imahara, died, but at least his robotic creation Geoff Peterson lives on. Oh, wait, CBS disassembled Geoff to get back at Craig Ferguson. Damn this list is getting dark. Another non-covid death from 2020 was the lovely Kelly Preston, who died of cancer, even though she was a Level-Eight Scientologist, and L. Ron Hubbard promised those who went “clear” they’d never experience disease.

10.   Dying remained on the minds of many, putting them into territory it feels like I’ve walked half my life. A dear author friend asked this of me should he pass away: “Don’t forget me when I'm gone. Tell people about me, and my stories, and my books. Tell them I was your friend.” Man. I promised I would, but I’m glad he’s still alive and well.

11.   Daisy, almost twelve, started hanging out with my cousin Dana’s youngest daughter, Tyler’s sister, Bethany Brooke, who was fifteen, almost the same difference in ages between Dana and me when we did all the stuff we did together long ago. I liked the inter-generational continuity, though the situation also scared me, since a tween hanging with a teen? What could go wrong?

12.   My dad, who has a pilot’s license, took my youngest, Trinity, flying with him in a little plane above the city, showing her what things look like from the sky, and in mid-flight Trinity hurled up her milkshake, leaving her and her grandpa in a tiny cockpit bedazzled with yakk. Dad found it amusing.

13.   After many years of him not knowing who his biological father was, my husband’s birth mother across the state finally told him who this man had been, and it was a shock. It was no one famous, and thankfully he was not conceived in rape or parental incest, but it was the kind of information that leaves you stopping in your tracks as the sentiment, “Oh my God…” slides past your lips. He could have taken the news better, to be honest. “Hey, at least it wasn’t Ted Bundy like Mandy used to say,” I told him. Within a couple days he came full circle and said it didn’t matter because: “The man who raised me is my dad.” He was right.

14.   On The Weather Channel we watched a derecho ravage Iowa with 112 MPH winds, and move down across the country straight toward us, hammering all points in between. Isn’t life in the Midwest in storm season fun? When it finally got to us after dark it was only gusting at twenty-five but waiting for it to get here was really something.

15.   I downloaded Randonautica, an app that claims it will fulfill your wishes by leading you to a place where that fulfillment may be found. Honestly, it mostly led us nowhere, except one day Daisy asked to be taken to something nice, and the GPS coordinates guided us to a little wooden book exchange outside a school, where sat a Shel Silverstein title she’d been wanting to read. After that impressive bit of…chance…I stated my intention as taking me to someplace that’d make me happy, and the next coordinates took us to a street nearby and in front of a house was a wooden sign that said HOME. I had to laugh, because gone as much as I’d been in 2020, HOME was certainly the place that made me happiest.

16.   My mom left my father for the second time in her life, though less dramatically than she had in 1995 when she went back to Ireland in a breakdown. I couldn’t help but wonder---amidst my total sympathy of course---if my father ever regretted divorcing his perfectly nice, though utterly staid, second wife so he could re-marry my ever-fluttery mom.

17.   On August 28th my cousin Magda died of cardiac arrest, in London Her husband came home and found her half slumped over their bed, knees on the floor, her phone just out of reach. Always a big-boned sort, Mags had gained a massive amount of weight in the 2000s and that and her smoking and excessive social drinking did her in. Her sister Eonne said to me, “That makes you oldest, doesn’t it?” I hadn’t thought of it yet, but it did. Magda was a loud, exuberant person, rough on me sometimes growing up (she was the one I got in a fight with that Easter over my dress), but we also had many fun moments, and I loved her and I mourned her and I miss her. Incidentally, I was making a post in here when I was told she’d died, so, reeling from shock, I mentioned the news in real time.

18.   I had an amusing, irritating episode of “how stupid can some people be” when a woman in an upstate  Meijer store argued with me that the Scottish flag was another form of Confederate flag, and when I tried to show her online that it wasn’t, she said she didn’t want to see my “misinformation.” Don’t you sometimes wish ignorance was painful?

19.   McKenna, Dana’s daughter, Tyler’s sister, was living in Busan, South Korea when a major typhoon hit, and she called it “thrilling” to feel the high-rise building sway in the wind. Her relocation there came after she’d also lived in Argentina and Mexico, and she is preparing now to go live in either Melbourne or Sydney Australia, depending on which strikes her fancy most when she visits. Interesting girl. Brave.

20.   On a whim I located Paige, whom I equally liked and wished death on as a lovesick teenager. She was in Hawaii, had a university-age son, and had divorced a well-off husband with connections to a professional sports team. She was surprised to hear from me, remembered me well, and was as friendly and polite as ever, but though we talked a couple times about the mid-'90s, after the early buzz of reconnecting, we didn’t have much to say. Also a shark ate her three days later. Yeah, OK, it didn’t, darnit.

21.   If I didn’t hate covid before (I hate it so much I don’t even capitalize its name) I did after November, when I had to spend time in quarantine in Utah, with my family, who were miffed at me for my bright idea that they come along with me to San Diego, so we wouldn’t have to keep getting separated, resulting in them being quarantined too. I guess I should be glad it was for no good reason and none of us caught the covid we were exposed to out west, but I think it was also about this time that my twice-vaccinated father actually did get covid, scaring me very much, though he’d be fine.

22.   One other thing covid did kill was the Ohio State-Michigan game that fall. For anyone who says covid isn’t real, think what it took to bring the cancellation of the biggest football game on Earth. (Of course it’s also possible “B itchagain” was afraid to show up and lose again for the sixteenth time in seventeen years…)

23.   My youngest and I repeated an experiment my oldest and I once did, where you boil rice, place an equal amount in two containers, seal them up, and then set them a few feet apart on a counter. For the next two weeks you say kind things to one container, and mean things to the other. This was the second time we did this and each time the result was the same: the rice we spoke badly to got moldy much faster than the one that had kind words said to it. I have no explanation except maybe negative and positive emotions give off real energy? Try it yourself and let me know.

24.   One rainy pre-Christmas afternoon I was telling my daughters about my wedding dress, and they wanted to see it, so I dug it out and put it on for the second time in ten years. I thought it was a nice thing to do, however, about fifteen minutes later, I heard a crash and lots of yelling, and I found my ever-spirited eight-year-old atop my scholarly twelve-year-old, pulling her hair and yelling, while my twelve-year-old fended her off. I separated them, and you know what they were fighting about? Which of them would get the dress when I was dead. Good grief, way to make me feel wanted, huh? Well they kept bickering so much about the dress, who would own it, who would wear it to her wedding, I finally had perhaps one of my less bright ideas as a mom, and told them if they didn’t stop I’d go out back and burn the dress. In about one second my two combatants forgot their fight and spun around on me shouting together, “You are not going to burn our dress!!!!” Sigh, someone send me back to Turkey.

25.   And finally, speaking of Turkey, late in the year, my co-workers and I received an apology and financial compensation for our unauthorized reassignment. The conclusion was people made mistakes when it came to assigning personnel during those tense weeks in early 2020 when I truly believe the nation was closer to entering into a global war than it had been since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

And that was the second part of 2020.

Memories of 2021, Part One: “Ave Atque Vale.”

1.   It was quite a year! On New Year’s Day it was remarked with double-meaning: “Hindsight is 2020.”…. In 2021, mostly on the twenty-eighth of each month, I started meeting and having deep conversations with a fifteen-year-old who, well, let’s just say she was a lot like me at her age…. On the heels of all-time low temperatures, Superstorm Christoph hit Ireland with disastrous flooding…. That year I saw the most impressive magic act ever, like Chinese face changing, but involving the whole body…. And for a few Sundays, Daisy and I went to a megachurch that was 98% African American. It was considerably different from a Latin Mass.

2.   The news reported a nearly $100,000,000 office and housing complex was going up on prime south-of-the-river real estate on a hilltop that featured an excellent view of the city skyline. The catch was the project was to sit atop land unoccupied since Memorial Day 1977, when 165 people died there piled atop one another in one of the worst fires in US history.

3.   Greg, my “nice boy from college,” told me his son collected ‘90s Goosebumps books, so I sent him all my old ones, making Daisy have a fit, saying she loved those books. I told her I never saw her reading them, and she answered: “I liked to read them in private, OK?” Uh, sorry?

4.   When it came empty, I rented an apartment I’d spent a lot of time hanging out in in 1995, the apartment where among other things, I first had sex. I thought it’d be a nice reconnection with personal nostalgia to have that apartment as my secret hideout when I wanted time to myself, but it wasn’t like that, the past was JUST TOO LOUD there! And sometimes the apartment itself felt wrong and it wasn’t pleasant being there, especially alone, and particularly at night. I can joke and say hey, who needs a ghost, I can apparently haunt myself, but a few times I felt like I should stand up and walk out very quickly. I eventually did take a few others inside and they felt fine, with Daisy begging me to let her have a party there. Yeah, it was just me, I know, but that doesn’t mean what I felt there wasn’t in some fashion “real.” Incidentally, when the lease came due, I renewed it, I just don’t spend much time inside what was once my favorite place in the world.


5.   On February 9th eleven inches of snow fell from dusk to dawn, the deepest one-day snowfall since 2008. I think it was the same system that put half a foot of white on Dallas, then sent temperatures there plunging, freezing water pipes and in general causing havoc on Texan snow virgins.

6.   My godson spent the night with us and he and Daisy and I started playing MTG around 6:30 and stayed up til after three playing about a dozen duels in all. And they say that game isn’t addictive?

7.   Because he kept asking me, I went with Tyler to gay clubs downtown, something we hadn’t done together since he turned twenty-one. The first bar was Rambone’s, which was leatherman sleazy and didn’t pretend not to be, though the semi-erotic paintings of Sylvester Stallone in full ‘80s Rambo mode---plus motorcycle chaps---were pretty hilarious. The second club was The Birdcage, yes, like that movie, a trendier, flashier place. It’s always dicey going out into the gay scene because I know many gays feel like they’re being made into a tourist attraction when straight people go for a novelty experience, but when you’re invited, it’s usually cool. Well funny story, but this more than decent-looking gay man young enough to be my…. ahem, little brother, asked me to dance with him, so I said OK, feeling silly and flattered, and the thing was, while he was behind me grooving to neo-techo beats, that guy humped on me almost enough to count as a notch on the bedpost. Jeeeez! I halfway think Tyler put him up to the whole thing.

8.   A soldier friend was in a plane crash where two died, eight lived, but all were badly injured. The plane hit the ground and rolled for almost a hundred yards. Among other things my friend’s hip was shattered like ice chips, and he would spend fourteen months in surgery and therapy. Yet when I went to see him at a VA facility, how did he describe the crash? “Yeah, almost ruined my day.”

9.   I heard The Cure’s Lovecats playing on an FM-Oldies station, and felt like crying. That song can never be an Oldie. It was just out the other day!

10.   While wrapping up work in a supposedly secure facility an hour from home, almost ready to call it a day, I heard yelling outside, and an on-site Active Shooter Warning sounded, telling us to go into lockdown mode in designated safe spaces. I kept thinking I’d been ten minutes from getting out of there too…. As everyone marched down the halls in line like it was a school fire drill, I turned around to gripe to a co-worker, but instead of her there was a uniformed man holding an assault rifle motioning me toward a room. Whoa! Thankfully he was a security agent, and in still better news it turned out it was all a false alarm triggered by an overly-zealous gate guard.

11.   I was sitting on my car around sunset, the window down and my left arm out when a spider about as big as a popcorn kernel bit my wrist. It stung like crazy and a tiny red bump formed before my eyes. I walked into the house and proclaimed, "Guys, I just got bitten by a spider!” This inspired nine-year-old Trinity to show where her sympathies lay by asking: “Aw, did you hurt the spider?"


12.   I had (my friends) Tara and Rob and their boys over to swim, and Rob filled me in on his life in 2021, saying the Satanic Temple proved to be "full of posers” and declaring he was back in Norse paganism. I’d had my fill of his epistemological flip-flopping and suggested that since by Norse custom the winner of a struggle for leadership became jarl, and since Jesus clearly conquered Odin in Norse hearts and minds, why not go Christian, as the Norse had for the last thousand years? Yeah, he didn’t like me saying Jesus beat Odin up.

13.   I learned the Japanese word yandere, which is when someone goes back and forth in treating a romantic interest with excessive sweetness and then equal cruelty, and I thought, yeah, that totally describes someone I knew in England in the ‘00s. This man used to go to great lengths to be delicately, bizarrely kind to me, then he’d suddenly show another side that was so far off the tracks I won’t EVEN begin to go into the worst parts, but if I said he fired a pistol point blank next to my face so I felt the bullet go hissing by my cheek on its way to his wall, that STILL wouldn’t be the worst of it. I just hadn’t known the concept actually had a word.

14.   I read The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles, someone I have come to consider possibly the best writer of literary fiction to have debuted in the 21st century. Few authors create one “perfect” novel, but Towles has now penned three of them.

15.   Daisy started telling people her brother had autism, and when I asked why she was going around saying this, since no physician ever suggested it, she said she believed it. She wants to be a doctor and studies a lot, true, but that was the first time in her life she ever said something that registered strong real world disagreement in me. Others incidents soon serially followed, and I think at a certain stage in their lives, daughters exist to try to trip up their mothers.

16.   Speaking of my son, when I told him if he pulled up his math grades, I’d let him shoot an AK-47, his scores soared. Hey, I’m a certified marksman, have a license to carry, and have permits, so stop looking at me that way. Besides I once knew a dad in Provence who promised his kid if he made honor roll he’d take him to a brothel. Now that’s motivation!

17.   When Tyler took a drawing class, I told him about the Victorian illustrator and all-around Aesthetic poster-boy weirdo, Aubrey Beardsley, with whom he was completely unacquainted, but in whom he soon developed considerable interest. Really, the strange, doomed Beardsley should have made a bigger splash amid posterity, but is barely remember in his friend Oscar Wilde’s shadow.

18.   I watched Wandavision and at first liked the framing device of the TV sitcoms through the decades approach, but knew absolutely nothing about the characters and their stories and when the series moved off into that, it lost me.

19.   I heard this exchange: “Sex is the ultimate expression of attraction.”  “Nah, stalking is.”

20.   ‘80s sex kittens actresses Tawny Kitaen and Tanya Roberts both passed away in 2021, making a friend of mine confess amid his lamentations: “I went through so many Kleenexes watching their nude scenes in Witchboard and Beastmaster.”

21.   I bought my son a metal detector for his birthday and he and I went out detecting a lot that summer, including on a river bluff an old map showed Morgan’s Raiders used as a campsite during their raid in the summer of 1863. Didn’t find anything spectacular but it was always a thrill to get a beep and wonder what it was.

22.   My father in law was diagnosed with cancer, and as he wrestled his affliction, I spent time with him hearing funny stories he said no one else in the family knew, like when in the 1960s he got arrested for drag racing 100 MPH, and was more afraid of his dad taking away his hotrod than he was of the police, so he refused to ID himself, and sat in jail for five days til the cops finally said they figured he’d served his time, whoever he was, and let him go. Things were looser back then, he explained, and cops still had that kind of authority. I never would’ve guessed our family’s Master Freemason had been to jail, ha!

23.   I went bris-crashing with Edie for the first time since before covid, and at those a good time was always had by “almost” everybody there. Most goyim wouldn’t believe the after-parties that get thrown at those things. “Free food is very motivating to a Jewish person,” Edie assured me, and claimed she’d get alerts when a big bris-bash was scheduled somewhere among the local Tribe. In irony, though, the mom of the---ahem---guest of honor, said if it hadn’t been for staying home for covid, her son wouldn’t even exist. Life coming out of a time of sickness and death, it’s a nice thing.

24.   That year: Landon and I saw Brit Floyd, and it felt like we’d seen the real group…. We got all dressed up and I took my girls to high tea in a nearly 100-year-old tea room downtown…. I started collecting opals just because I think they’re pretty….. I got an 18th century cookbook and started messing around with making things from it, like buckwheat apple cider donuts, which were amazing…. My daughter asked why more freshwater sharks didn’t evolve, and  I told her God lets us have hurricanes and genocide, but he’s not cruel enough to throw freshwater sharks at us.

25.   In 2021 I mostly worked near our home but I was also sent out briefly to a lot of places. I worked in Seattle, and I worked back under the big empty skies of the Wyoming badlands at a hard-to-find facility where I’d been a few times over the years. In mid-January I also worked in Virginia on the most novel assignment of my career among some good-hearted, misguided people. Finally I was sent back to Wyoming again, and teaching a course there ended up being literally my final task for the employers I’d been with since I was seventeen. When that wrapped up, what a weak-kneed moment, realizing it was all over. I’d made it. I was done. The good, the bad, it was behind me, and with luck I still had half of my life to live. Compared to 2020, early 2021 was a very good time.

And that was my life in the first part of 2021…

2000
Y2K!  The world's gonna end!  Buy all kinds of supplies for your bomb shelter!  And other such nonsense.
1. Perhaps the biggest thing was the heavy heartbreak that befell me this year.. no, not relatives dying or anything like that.  Sports heartbreaks-- the kind that can hurt nearly as bad!  Oh man.. my Bills had the head coach pull a move that disgusted the team's fans and he switched out Doug Flutie  for Rob Johnson.  But somehow we were leading the Tennessee Titans in the playoffs on the road late in the game anyway.   Just a handful of seconds left; all the Titans could do was lateral several times on the return to have a chance.  And thanks to a missed flag on a forward-- not lateral-- pass, they did just that and won.  It was dubbed "The Music City Miracle" and it still rankles Bills fans' feathers to this day.  The Bills would fail to make the playoffs for the next 17 years!
2. Not to be outdone by the last tragedy, my Portland Trailblazers faced Shaq, Kobe and the mighty LA Lakers in the Western Conference Finals.  My team had a great mix of vets and young stars, including Scottie Pippen of the 6-time champion Bulls!  They stormed back from a 3-1 deficit to tie the series, and game 7 was in LA.  Things were going great going into the 4th quarter-- we led by 15 at one point!  And then, of course, the wheels fall off and the refs accept LA's bribe money.. all thrown away in a year that would have seen us go against an inferior Pacers squad in the Finals that should have brought a 2nd title to Portland.  Alas..
3. Though that absolutely did suck, there was a beautiful moment in the series vs. Utah where Scottie Pippen helped close the door on the Jazz in game 5 with a 3.  I lost my s**t watching this!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP-j2EGnK6E#)
4. I don't remember if it was this year that we got him but I was getting at my wit's end with a really stupid employee who was brain-damaged from a car accident years back; he was stupid, couldn't focus, screwed off, etc.  He could do more heavy-duty work than the Hispanic gals that made up the rest of the crew, but man was he a handful.  I was far nicer to him than he deserved.  My ex-boss who I liked I think went funny from mixing pain pills (for her hip) with booze, and hit her head in a fall and lost her memory (or so she said).  By that time I was done with her and her b.s.  A lot of crap for a young manager to have to handle.
5. The St. Louis Rams (yeah, they moved from LA to St. Louis by this point) were earning their nickname "The Greatest Show On Turf", with a prolific offense led by QB Kurt Warner.  They won the Super Bowl by the skin of their teeth, over the same Tennessee squad my team "lost" to, with their final play coming up just short..
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKwrQ6T-TS0#)
6. WORLD SERIES: Or, should I say, SUBWAY SERIES!  The New York Yankees and the New York Mets meet in the big game for the first time (though New York area teams like the Brooklyn Dodgers and Yankees had met before in the Series).  Though the Yanks did not have a particularly impressive regular season they came alive in the postseason with that incredible team that won the previous 2 World Series, and a 4-1 series victory over the Mets made it a 3-peat.
7. To offset the heartbreaking losses by the Bills and Blazers, my hockey team won the Stanley Cup!  New Jersey's Jason Arnott scores the double-overtime goal to win the Devils their 2nd title, over the Dallas Stars.  Woot!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0CvU004kZU#)
8. America Online purchases Time Warner for a ridiculous $162 billion.
9. Windows 2000 startup and shutdown:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlIgRZb2YX4#)
10. Massive flooding in Mozambique kills several hundreds.
11. In a publicized custody battle, 6-year old Elian Gonzales is taken from his relatives' Miami home by federal agents to his Cuban father in Washington DC.  I remember seeing news reports of Hispanic people in Miami crying their eyes out over this kid that they didn't even know or were related to, and it kind of annoyed me.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/43/Jim_Goldman_and_Elian_Gonzalez.jpg/300px-Jim_Goldman_and_Elian_Gonzalez.jpg)
12. A new computer virus is called the ILOVEYOU virus.  It instantly made me think of the "I LOVE YOU" ship from the movie The Naked Gun.
13. The artwork website DEVIANTART debuts.  I'm a membah!
14. The Summer Olympics are held in Sydney, Australia.  Several countries win either their first medals or first golds.
15. Over 11 years since the Exxon-Valdez disaster, 250 million gallons of coal sludge is spilled in Marin County, Kentucky.
16. A controversial end to the Bush v. Gore presidential race occurs when a recount is halted.  George W. Bush, the 2nd son of a US President to also become President, is elected (John Quincy Adams was the first).
17. A fire at a shopping center in China on Christmas Day kills 309.  ...Merry Christmas??
18. GLADIATOR was not nearly as great as advertised IMHO.  Other big movies: CAST AWAY, ERIN BROCKOVICH, CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON, TRAFFIC, NURSE BETTY, ALMOST FAMOUS, QUILLS, POLLOCK, THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE, PITCH BLACK, FINAL DESTINATION, GHOST DOG, HIGH FIDELITY, 28 DAYS, AMERICAN PSYCHO, VIRGIN SUICIDES, EXPENDABLES, GONE IN 60 SECONDS, ROAD TRIP, THE PATRIOT, SCARY MOVIE, CHICKEN RUN, X-MEN, POKEMON 2000, BEST IN SHOW, MEET THE PARENTS, SNATCH, CHOCOLAT, SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE.
19. The Best Picture Oscar goes to AMERICAN BEAUTY.  I remember noting that the family's deterioration in that movie was anything but beautiful!
20. Evander Holyfield regains the WBA heavyweight title with a decision over John Ruiz, becoming the first boxer to win the world heavyweight title 4 times.
21. Tiger Woods wins 3 of the 4 major golf championships, winning the US Open, British Open and PGA Championship (Vijay Singh wins the Masters).  He sets or ties below par records in all 3 championships.
22. Oh brother.. back to the Olympics-- Vince Carter for the US team just EMBARRASSES French center Fredric Weiss.  They win the Gold Medal.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WihbbVEmppI#)
23. TV Debuts: MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE, GILMORE GIRLS, CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM, CSI, SURVIVOR, JACKASS, YU-GI-OH, HARVEY BIRDMAN, BIG BROTHER, ANDROMEDA, ALI G SHOW, SEALAB 2021, BOSTON PUBLIC, WAKING THE DEAD, DORA THE EXPLORER, THE BRAK SHOW, CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG, THE WEAKEST LINK, HAMTARO
24. And of course, this crazy show..
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRVc6YF-fIs#)
25. Some top songs from 2000: OOPS!..I DID IT AGAIN, THE REAL SLIM SHADY, KRYPTONITE, BYE BYE BYE, WHO LET THE DOGS OUT, STUTTER, IN THE END.

Memories of 2021, Part the Second: How Beautiful A Boring Life Can Be.



1.     It was strange to wake up one day and have nowhere I absolutely had to be, and to have no one in a position of authority telling me what I had to do. It was a new feeling in my life, since first there’d been my parents in that role, then my schools, then the deeply controlling force of my employer, all of them always to some degree above me, laying out an agenda. I’d retired, I was free, it was nice, yet it also felt like writing on an unlined piece of paper if you’re used to having margins. Ever dreamed of something for so long that when you get it, you stare at it and think….what now? That was me for months in late 2021.

2.   That summer it was time for the seventeen-year “Brood-X” cicada emergence. Billions of the red-eyed screeching bugs were everywhere, filling skies, covering trees, making the ground look like it was moving as they tunneled up from below. Most people hated cicadas but I loved the event and was always glad to see our homegrown version of the Maasai Mara wildebeest migration. My first Brood-X was 1987, then 2004, and 2021. I’ll be fifty-nine next time they come out. You know, if.

3.   After a business trip to Japan my almost father-in-law, knowing I have a collection of soils from around the world, brought me back a vial of earth from Aokigahara: the suicide forest. My friend Mitch, who lives in Spain and claims to be a trance medium, told me I was bringing terrible mojo into my home with that dirt, but what did he know? Not tomorrow’s lottery numbers, clearly.

4.   Donald Rumsfeld died. He was a man who did a great deal of harm to the very people he was meant to be looking out for, and I wish he’d had to face more consequences for his actions than he ever did. Colin Powell also died, and unlike Rumsfeld he was a good man who did right by those serving under him.


5.   In my copious free time I saw the most recent film version of Journey’s End, probably my favorite WWI tragedy. I also saw the excellent Hulu series, Only Murders in the Building. Lest I forget, to my surprise I got hooked on the Wonder Years remake, the best new show of the year.


6.   A philosophical discussion with my ultra-genius father saw him tell me about the German concept of ewige wiederkunft, or “eternal return” a fascinating idea which if my lesser brain understands, holds that all that exists in the universe remains caught up in an infinite cycle of repetition, including the echoing consciousness that constitutes our very selves. We think we’re living this life for the first time, but what if we’re not? This concept interested me because I was experiencing events that seemed to suggest other aspects of personal consciousness in some way existed outside myself, and I was seeking explanations for what I was experiencing. My father’s description of the idea also reminded me of the time I was given a theta-inducing IV drug to help me recall exact events that had transpired in an important matter, and one of the things I said was we keep re-living our lives. What if that’s the big secret? What if we do?

7.   I also spent time with a Taoist study group, and was told drinking a cold beverage in a cemetery was perilous to one’s spiritual well-being, since any coldness in the human body draws spirits. (Hence fevers burn away bad spirits that bring illness, Taoists say.) I did an experiment and chugged an Arctic Blast at a memorial park down the road at night while standing on the grave of a death row inmate named Jermaine Mitchell, and nothing dramatic happened, though I did get a headache. Score one for the scientific method. And ibuprofen.

8.   My husband got into the geothermal business. It was moderately successful but he allowed another man to buy in and their conflicting visions didn’t bring harmony, so in early 2022 he let his partner buy him out. And has done nothing since…. (Wait, as of press time he is thinking of studying to become an architect. Shrug.)

9.   One day driving in a car with Daisy right before she turned thirteen, she started picking a fight, saying, she was tired of the way I treated a particular person we both knew with “concealed animosity,” and demanding to know why I did. Yes, there was a degree of truth to her claim but it was more complicated than that, so I dismissively told her I didn’t have any antipathy for this person, and rather than have her insights slighted, she blindsided me by hitting the nail on the head with a theory as to why I felt as I did, and that caught me unready, making my throat go dry and my heart speed up, and showed me that I had raised a frighteningly insightful child. But did I admit she was right? No, I shamelessly lied and denied to my daughter like a politician caught in a burlesque house til I undermined her confidence, because I’m sorry but that was the pragmatic thing to do in a case with such big ramifications. Friends, your kids know more about you than you think they do.


10.   Trinity started riding horses on weekends. She loved them, but to me of course they remained long-faced devils out to kill. It’s been a nice event though, us all going out together while she rides on a farm in the shockingly flat country that lies only a few miles beyond our rolling river hills. Lots of variety in our terrain here. Lots and lots.

11.   Russian hackers held Sinclair Broadcasting’s channels, coast to coast, hostage, keeping them off the air for weeks, demanding millions in ransom to return services. I don’t know how this was resolved but I went through Big Bang Theory withdrawal while I waited.

12.   I was offered a very good job in Ireland, doing much the same as I had done here. “Help us stick it to the fookin’ Brits with their noses in our business,” I was cajoled. (I don’t know how much you heard but in 2021 the UK pulled some seriously low in-house shenanigans on the government of the Republic, and a lot of my mom’s native people were unhappy with their neighbors, saying nothing was ever going to change in British minds where Eire was concerned.) My mother had long wanted us over there and began sending links to houses, resulting in Daisy saying she wanted to move there. Still I never really considered it. I was done working, home is home, and in my life I’d been away far too much. Yes, I have Irish citizenship, but I’m incurably American, for all that claim carries with it, good and bad. Here I live. Here I will stay. I want to know just where my bones will rest, to dust, I guess, forgotten and absorbed into the earth….below. (Thank you, Mr. Corgan for that makeout song, and the sentiment.)

13.   Because I count his book The Case for Christ as one of the more persuasive arguments for the validity of the Gospel accounts of Jesus, I drove with Daisy, ever my partner in misadventures, to a megachurch in Louisville to hear author Lee Strobel speak about what I thought was going to be near death experiences as they related to his newest book, The Case for Heaven, but got there and found in the sports arena-like confines of the megamall-sized Southeast Christian Church, Strobel came off more as a huckster than a scholarly theologian, setting a countdown clock and offering 40% off his courses to everyone there who bought in the next few minutes. Je$u$.The mini road trip with my daughter was nice, the event was disillusioning.

14.   There was a stampede at a rock concert in Houston that resulted in crushing deaths (always avoid crowds!) that vaguely mirrored The Who tragedy of 1979 my father’d nearly attended, and the rumors that followed about the Houston concert got strange, with some saying a CERN device was involved in causing panic, and others claiming the performer invoked a Satanic incantation, and people dropped dead. No limit to how low the tin-foil mafia will stoop in its fake news, is there?

15.   Got up at 2:30 in the morning to see an entrancing blood moon accompany the longest lunar eclipse since the 1400s, and walked back in our woods to a clearing and watched the sky, only gradually becoming aware as the night wore on that a pack of coyotes was circling me in the darkness, neither getting too close nor retreating. I was in their territory, and they weren’t happy about it. I heard and sensed them more than saw them, but smelled them plainly, a sort of thick sweaty dog smell. I played it safe and walked out of the woods, and heard them trailing me, step for step. While I knew not to run, instinct wanted me to. They stayed maybe thirty feet off til I finally got out into the open of our yard. Not the most relaxing night outdoors I ever spent.

16.   It was shaping up to be a beautiful fall for colors but autumn leaves are always precariously-poised, and as Robert Frost said “….wind if it be wild, should waste them all….” A gusty storm blew through right at the color-peak and we woke up to bare branches except for those few rusty survivors clinging to the stoutest of oaks. Those colors come just once a year too…

17.   I took my son Keagan to Target, and he asked if he could look at toys on his own, and I said, “OK, just no taking candy from bare-legged strangers in trench coats.”

Before we left home he’d put on a jacket he used to love two years ago, but it barely fit him by then, and I almost told him to put on one of his new coats. Thing is, when I met up with Keagan a half-hour after we split up, he was wearing a brand new jacket, and being my quiet man, I don’t think he was even going to mention this til I pressed, then he said matter of factly, “Oh, yeah, some lady bought it for me.”

“Uh….?”

“I think she bought it for me because she felt sorry for me having to wear my old jacket that didn’t fit. I guess she thought I was a poor kid.”

Well, my hand went over my mouth in disbelief and I didn’t know whether to melt into the floor in embarrassment or laugh til I fell sideways as he described a white-haired lady who looked at his ill-fitting old jacket, shook her head and asked, “Would you like a new coat, young man?”

Keagan said he kind of shrugged and said, “I guess.”

So she picked him out a nice jacket, paid for it, put it on him and said if he ever needed warm winter clothes, to call a church.

He said, “OK, thanks.”

Oh my gosh, did my son look that needy? What he had on was a size too little for him and not new, he’d worn it on many an outdoor adventure that added wear and tear, but….

But what a nice lady, and let’s leave it at that!



18.   There are many weird ways to die, and after a diagnosis eluded the county coroner, the family of a woman I’d known in Texas hired a private pathologist that fall to determine what caused her to suddenly die in early middle age, seemingly in the best of health. The eminent pathologist’s report said she had a rare, undiagnosed condition that disabled proper utilization of vital minerals, which led to a chronic and eventually critical inability of electrical function in the nervous system which caused her brain to one day stop sending impulses to her heart, killing her almost instantly, no warning. She likely had no idea she was in any danger, just slid into blackness. Scary.

19.   I had it explained to me what a “brojob” was and was told the stigma for men who identified as straight to help one another out this way was eroding. Somehow that claim was too much, my brain leaked a little smoke and I said in effect: “Nuh-uh.” I still think it’s largely an inclusionary fantasy, since most men I know would cheerfully take a bullet before doing that to one of their buds.

20.   Now what did that topic remind me of? Oh, yes, American Crime Story: Impeachment ran a season on the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal of the ‘90s, and it remained a shock to see events I remembered happening in my lifetime depicted onscreen as history. Again, that was just the other day, wasn’t it? No, it was a third of a long human lifetime ago. Time blows my mind.  (Yes, that was on purpose.)

21.   For a minute or a couple months I was fascinated watching some girl named Marz play video games on her channel. Haven’t checked her out in a while, but during her run of the PS5 remake of Demon Souls, that foul-mouthed console jock was magnetic north to my compass.

22.   Heading to a state fair I ran into George Clooney’s dad Nick, a local broadcast legend, and told him I once attended a communications class he taught at a nearby university.

Mr. Clooney was cordial about that til I guess he did the math and said, “I haven’t taught a class in decades. When was this?”

I said, “When I was about eleven.”

His mouth fell open. “Eleven? Taking my class?”

“’Taking,’ no, I’d wander the campus while my mom did some art classes in evening, and I figured out I could slip into the big auditorium where you taught using a back door up by the projection booth, and could stay pretty inconspicuous there while I listened to my Walkman and paged through magazines. Hey, but sometimes I listened to you.”

Nick Clooney laughed big. Cool gentleman, him.

 
23         I took Daikeagity (my collective name for my kids) to this immense grocery store that sells almost literally anything that could possibly be eaten from anywhere in the world except for long-pig, and decided we should have a contest to see who could find the strangest thing there, which turned out to be butter made from the milk of Siberian reindeer. A contender, though, was my daughter turning up with a tub of frozen goat testicles, which made her brother turn red and walk away without a word.

24         Went to a concert to hear Alanis Morissette, my 1995 go-to for when I was feeling rebellious, play with Liz Phair, my one-time girl crush, but Liz backed out on the tour and that left us with Garbage doing the second set. Such a rip-off. To this day Miz Liz remains in the doghouse.

25      A co-worker of mine from an important, long ago time in my career died of testicular cancer. He was one of the bravest, most capable people I ever knew, and also the sort who tried to tough out everything, including apparently the presence of a lump on his body when it still could have been treated, leaving the cancer to spread and end his life far too early. For probably the last time I and the others from our old crew got together and remembered him and powerful times when we were younger. I doubt this group, D.F.W. (which doesn’t stand for Dallas Ft. Worth, by the way) will ever be in the same place at the same time again, and if our old bosses had known we were, they wouldn’t have liked it, but he was worth a final farewell. And though it’s of course none of my business, in closing I’d like to say to the men here that women are doing a much better job than your half of the world are at detecting and getting treatment with gender-specific cancers, so please choose life and go see a doctor if you ever feel anything could possibly be wrong, OK?


Now you know my entire life story. Curtsy.

Yeah, not happening ever.

Note: If we exhaust all the years we experienced or have memories of, we can add more entries for that same year.  It doesn't have to be 25 either.  It can just be bonus additions to that year.  Like 25 for a particular year, and then when you think of more you can add, say, maybe 7.

2001:
1. The obvious.. the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York are demolished by a terrorist attack never quite seen like this in the US, Pearl Harbor included.  Two airlines are hijacked and crashed into the Towers, one airline is flown into the Pentagon, and another airline crashes at Shanksville, PA.  In all almost 3,000 are killed.  My personal memory of this is coming home from work that morning to my friend leaving a message on my phone.  It said: "Turn on the news... it's bad."  Wow.  The next time I went to work I heard of a couple from the Middle East or thereabouts that went to buy groceries there and upon conversing about 9/11 they said we deserved it.  They were kicked out of the store.
2. Not long before (I think late July) I took a week's vacation (any time off was rare for me) to go to Slidell, LA with my mom.  We stayed at a condo and arrived super-late at night.  I had to go out and get the key from the key box with very little light.  But I could just make out enough to see.. BUGS of all different types that I'd never seen before, crawling ALL OVER IT.  It was just like a scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  So gross!  I managed to swat/brush away enough so I could get it.  But although the condo was nice enough, the electricity was TOTALLY out of code.. I nearly electrocuted myself when I plugged in out VCR to watch a rented movie-- the whole wall around the outlet went BLACK.  Holy f***!  We were otherwise happy with the trip.  Got a bayou in the back with an actual gator swimming around (we didn't go out to feed it or anything but took pics).  We went on a big ol' paddleboat down the Mississip' and visited the Battle of New Orleans site, went to New Orleans a few times and visited shops and restaurants in the French Quarter-- but pathetically we were happy enough with Popeye's!  Fun trip.
3. NBA FINALS: Shaq and Kobe and the Lakers have the most dominant playoffs run ever: they go 15-1 (!) on their way to a waxing of Allen Iverson and the 76ers in 5 games.  I watched this at home and was shocked that the 76ers won that first game in Los Angeles-- gave me hope that the Lakers might have trouble on their hands.. but no.  My team the Portland Trailblazers were the first doormat for the Lakers in the postseason.  We got a sliver of the player Shawn Kemp used to be, who was now fat and full of drugs.
4. Letters containing Anthrax are delivered from Princeton, NJ to ABC, CBS and NBC news, as well as the New York Post and National Enquirer.  22 are exposed and 5 die.
5. Western India is hit by a massive earthquake.  13,805–20,023 are killed.
6. Wikipedia and iTunes are launched.  So is the iPod.
7. An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease occurs in cattle across the UK.  Millions of sheep and cows are killed to curb the spread, which is successful.
8. Super Bowl XXXV: I saw this at my mom's house.  What a snoozefest: the Baltimore Ravens (who had spun off of the Cleveland Browns franchise much to the disgust of Browns fans back in 1995) win their first title with a ridiculous trouncing of the hapless New York Giants, in a 34-7 rout that really wasn't that close.  The Giants' only score was a return TD.  LB Ray Lewis wins the MVP.
9. World Series: The New York Yankees try to make it a four-peat, but the Arizona Diamondbacks have different plans and thanks to the brilliant pitching of Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling (co-MVPs) they win their first (and to date only) title in 7 games.
10. UGH.. my New Jersey Devils were so close to repeating as Stanley Cup champs, but blew a 3-2 lead and lost to the Colorado Avalanche.
11. The President of the Congo Laurent-Desire Kabila is shot and dies 2 days later.
12. Former Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic is arrested and charged for war crimes.
13. The first space tourist, Dennis Tito, travels aboard the Soyuz TM-32.  Switching to the TM-31 at the International Space Station he returns 8 days later safely.
14. The Crown Prince Dipendra of Nepal kills his father (the King), his mother (the Queen) and other members of the Royal Family with an assault rifle before killing himself.
15. The US Government takes Microsoft to court over monopoly charges.
16. The US invades Afghanistan to crush the Taliban in response to the 9/11 attacks.
17. The American company Enron Corporation files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  Towards the end of the year an accounting fraud scandal within the company is uncovered.
18. SHOE BOMBER!  British-Islamic terrorist Richard Reid has explosives hidden in his shoes and attempts to blow up American Airlines Flight 63; he fails.
19. The X-Box is released.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1ebJZUOtL8#)
20. Peter Jackson's LORD OF THE RINGS film saga begins with FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING.
21. Other big films: HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE, MONSTERS INC., SHREK, OCEANS ELEVEN, PEARL HARBOR, HANNIBAL, A BEAUTIFUL MIND, IRIS, MOULIN ROUGE!, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, MEMENTO, THE WEDDING PLANNER, SPY KIDS, FAST & THE FURIOUS, LEGALLY BLONDE, WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER, RAT RACE, MULHOLLAND DRIVE, JEEPERS CREEPERS, JOYRIDE
22. Some TV debuts: THE MOLE, LIZZIE MCGUIRE, HOUSE OF MOUSE, BOB THE BUILDER, FAIRLY ODD PARENTS, INVADER ZIM, THE WEAKEST LINK, TRAILER PARK BOYS, SIX FEET UNDER, HARD KNOCKS, SAMURAI JACK, LOST, THE AMAZING RACE, THE PROUD FAMILY, THE ELLEN SHOW, CROSSING JORDAN, SCRUBS, 24, THE TICK, JUSTICE LEAGUE, BERNIE MAC SHOW, SMALLVILLE, TOTALLY SPIES!.
More to come later..

23. Tiger Woods wins the Masters, becoming the first PGA golfer to have taken 4 straight majors.
24. Some top songs: Clint Eastwood, Lady Marmalade, Jaded, Space Between, Hash Pipe, Standing Still, One More Day, I'm A Believer, Drops Of Jupiter.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xf-Lesrkuc#)
And an R.E.M. song I like that played on the music PA at work: ALL THE WAY TO RENO
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHlpWokiduk#)
25. Various debuts: The doll line BRATZ, Lemon Coca-Cola, Game Boy Advance,
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_ZD3FxMcvQ#)
Kinder Joy, Mountain Dew AMP, GameCube,
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksZh-FHuKpk#)
and Rockstar drink.

2002:
1. The Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City.  The Salt Lake Organizing Committee is accused of bribing the International Olympic Committee to allow the city to host the Games, after 4 previous failed attempts.  Australia wins their first gold medals ever at the Games, and controversy occurs when a Korean speed skater is accused of "blocking" and subsequently disqualified, giving the Gold to an American.
2. A major air show disaster occurs in the Ukraine when a fighter jet crashes into spectators while performing aerobatics; 77 die.
3. Chechen rebels in Moscow take control of a theater and hold its patrons hostage; a rescue attempt leaves around 170 dead.
4. The SARS epidemic begins in China.
5. The Department of Homeland Security is established.
6. This was my last year on the job as night manager at the Walker Road Fred Meyer department store.  I had enough of witless employees, excessive work, and indifferent superiors.  Quit near the end of the year.  I had some money left over to see me through my next job, which I actually could not find for just over a year!  The job market was really tough at this time.
7. The first Academy Award for Best Animated Film goes to SHREK.  Cartoon tv debuts: CYBERCHASE, KIM POSSIBLE, THE ADVENTURES OF JIMMY NEUTRON: BOY GENIUS.  The sad episode of FUTURAMA, "Jurassic Bark" airs.  Animated films ICE AGE, TREASURE PLANET, LILO & STITCH, HEY ARNOLD: THE MOVIE, POWERPUFF GIRLS: THE MOVIE, SPIRITED AWAY and THE WILD THORNBERRYS: THE MOVIE debut.
8. Top movies: LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS, SPIDER-MAN, CHICAGO, STAR TREK NEMESIS, CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND, HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS, MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING, MEN IN BLACK II, DIE ANOTHER DAY, SIGNS, STAR WARS EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES, THE TRANSPORTER, AUTO-FOCUS, THE RING,FEMME FATALE, 8 MILE, ABOUT SCHMIDT, MONSTER'S BALL, XXX, SUPER TROOPERS, PANIC ROOM, INSOMNIA, THE BOURNE IDENTITY, SCOOBY DOO, ONE HOUR PHOTO, BARBERSHOP, RED DRAGON, BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, MINORITY REPORT, ROAD TO PERDITION, and also the awful horror sequels JASON X and HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION.
9. The New England Patriots' reign of terror begins.  Tom Brady and company knock off the HEAVILY favored St. Louis Rams with a 20-17 win and the first trophy for the franchise.  I watched this at a bar with my friend, and we both kind of chafed at U2 honoring the victims of 9/11 after previously bashing Americans with their political rhetoric.
10. Shaq and Kobe and the LA Lakers continue their dominance, sweeping the New Jersey Nets 4 games to 0 to complete their three-peat (watched this at my mom's house).  This probably should have been the year for the Sacramento Kings, who pushed the Lakers to 7 games in the Western Conference Championship.  It is said by some that the refs fixed at least game 6 in the Lakers' favor.
11. World Series: The Anaheim Angels (formerly California, now LA) beat Barry Bonds and the San Francisco Giants in 7 games.  I watched this at the same bar as the Super Bowl (Gator's), and was delighted that Barry Bonds lost-- he was quite the douchebag.
12. Stanley Cup: The Detroit Red Wings beat the Carolina Hurricanes 4 games to 1.  I don't remember even watching this.
13. This was the year my Bills' "Next Great Hope" quarterback was signed-- former Patriot Drew Bledsoe.  I always liked him (and he visits family around in my area) and he was pretty decent but not particularly mobile, with an often terrible offensive line in front of him.  We remained mediocre at best.
14. Lennox Lewis KOs former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson.  Mike's lack of trying to get up in the 8th was the epitome of "how the mighty have fallen".
15. TV debuts: THE OSBOURNES, THE SHIELD, THE BACHELOR, GEORGE LOPEZ, WHAMMY! THE ALL NEW PRESS YOUR LUCK, THE WIRE, CRANK YANKERS, AMERICAN IDOL, MONK, LIBERTY'S KIDS, WHAT'S NEW SCOOBY DOO, DR. PHIL, 8 SIMPLE RULES (FOR DATING MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER), TWILIGHT ZONE, FIREFLY, CSI: MIAMI, WITHOUT A TRACE.
16. The NBA's contract with NBC (and the great "Roundball Rock" theme by John Tesh) ends with the move to ABC.
Part 2 tomorrow..

17. Some commercials from the year 2002, including one for the games KINGDOM HEARTS and SUPER MARIO SUNSHINE which debuted this year.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aanXi683WW4#)
18. Notable sports rookies: YAO MING, NENE HILARIO, AMAR'E STOUDAMIRE, CARON BUTLER, CARLOS BOOZER (NBA), JULIUS PEPPERS, DWIGHT FREENEY, ALBERT HAYNESWORTH, JEREMY SHOCKEY, JAVON WALKER, ED REED, LITO SHEPPARD, LECHARLES BENTLEY, CLINTON PORTIS, MICHAEL LEWIS, BRIAN WESTBROOK (NFL)
19. Going back to Bledsoe, he had a great game against the Vikings in Minny.  I watched this either on the way to or back from a camping trip in central Oregon at a bar with my friend and one of his friends, and we met others at the campsite including my landlord-to-be.  Boy did I get wasted that first day.  Hell of a game for Bledsoe, throwing for 463 yards (still a Bills record) in a hell of a game period.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyMC34PBWNY#)
20. Linkedin debuts.
21. The Euro currency is introduced.
(https://www.thoughtco.com/thmb/iljOY9dnRm3ctjDH-xwuK86MwTs=/1000x1000/smart/filters:no_upscale()/Euro-currency-58c2dfc75f9b58af5cce0ba9.jpg)
22. Several food or toy industry founders/owners pass: Dave Thomas (Wendy's), Verne Winchell (Winchell's),  Ruth Handler (Barbie Doll/Mattel), William Rosenberg (Dunkin' Donuts), Alfred Heineken (president of Heineken Brewery).
23. The Houston Texans are introduced into the NFL, becoming the 32nd team.
(https://a.espncdn.com/i/teamlogos/nfl/500/hou.png)
24. The Charlotte Hornets move to New Orleans.  They soon suspend operations and a couple years later are re-named the Charlotte Bobcats.  That mostly dismal iteration of the franchise would return to Charlotte in 2014.
25. Some famous deaths: Richard Harris, Dudley Moore, James Coburn, Robert Urich, Billy Wilder, Rod Steiger, John Frankenheimer, Laurence Tierney, Jonathan Harris, Milton Berle, Rosemary Clooney, George Roy Hill, LaWanda Page, J. Lee Thompson, Raf Vallone.

I may go back and add stuff to years I've done already.

2004:
1. Finally got a job-- working at the same place my mom was working at!  A Nike golf warehouse with clubs, shirts, irons, hats, caddys, etc.  I worked 7AM-3:30PM, no overtime and made 9-ish an hour; much of the staff were Hispanic (some illegal) but most spoke at least a little English.  Some people who weren't in charge tried to get me to change the way I was doing things and that did not sit well with me.  I got hired around February and let off sometime in the summer (a big barbecue lunch would herald a lot of layoffs as cut employees would get a bobblehead golfer on their way out the door).  I found a couple jobs to keep me afloat later that year; one lasted 3 days (!) moving furniture and the other a small handful of months, moving/repairing warehouse furniture.  I got along well with most people on all those jobs; a couple sh*tbirds of course tried to make my life a living hell.
2. Drew Bledsoe was still with the Bills at this point, and we had a showdown with the team up north from me, the Seattle Seahawks.  At the (then) Qwest Field, my brothers and dad went to hopefully see at least some good plays from my team.  Holy crap did we kick the Seahawks' @$$es!  Willis McGahee was the star as he plowed through the Hawks for 4 TDs (!) and 116 yards.  I got a high-five from another Bills fan in the restroom, who said "Who said so??  Bledsoe!!".  Great fun.
3. Continuing on #2.. after an 0-4 start the Bills caught fire late in the season, winning 6 in a row (most games in blowout fashion)!  In order to make the postseason we had to beat Pittsburgh at home in the final game of the season and they played a lot of 3rd-stringers since their playoff spot was already determined.  But.. we failed.  That put us out of the playoffs for the 5th straight year and Drew would not return, being replaced with JP Losman (blech).
4. I returned towards the end of 2004 I believe to the Nike warehouse for a 2nd stint.  This time I stuck on for a couple more years.  I grew to really like this job-- I would be relied on to help out in many different departments-- inspection, assembly line, packing, loading, etc.  Also drove a forklift.  We would sometimes get sports celebrities walking through on a tour of the place, but I don't recall seeing any.  I think I still have some clubs/irons/balls from there.  My dad's friend put ads in the Oregonian newspaper and I'd help him after work sometimes for some extra cash for groceries.
5. MASSIVE earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean kills over 225,000 in several countries.  One of the deadliest natural disasters ever.
6. Facebook is launched (as THE FACEBOOK) as a social networking website for Harvard students.
7. Al-Qaeda bombs trains in Madrid, killing around 200.
8. The 2004 Summer Olympics are held in Athens, Greece.  Swimmer Michael Phelps wins 6 golds (8 medals overall) for the US.  Paula Radcliffe is expected to win gold in a marathon but sickness due to anti-inflammatory drugs for a leg injury forces her to drop out.  BIG SHOCKER: The USA Basketball Team loses badly in the opening game to Puerto Rico and goes on to win only the Bronze medal, despite having stars like Allen Iverson, Carmelo Anthony, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Tim Duncan, Amar'e Stoudamire, Lamar Odom, and more.  Boo..
9. Chechen rebels take over 1,000 hostages at a school in Beslan, Russia; over 330 are killed.
10. George W. Bush is re-elected President of the United States.
11. Former guitarist of Pantera "Dimebag" Darrell is murdered onstage with his band in Columbus OH.
12. Tom Brady and the Patriots win their 2nd Super Bowl, this time over the surprising Carolina Panthers in their first SB.  This was definitely one of the more thrilling Super Bowls with an explosion of offense after very little in the 1st half.  Jake Delhomme went toe-to-toe with Tom Brady but the Pats pull it out by a 3 point margin (again).  I watched this at my friend's house, which was downstairs from his parents.  He invited his dad to watch it with us, which I wasn't thrilled with since his dad was in his 80s and I wanted to yell and scream-- I had to watch myself so I didn't have much fun.  Especially since the Pats won.
13. The NBA Finals however made me VERY happy-- the Lakers tried to build a super power team with Karl Malone and Gary Payton being signed to go with Shaq and Kobe.  Boy almighty did they suck it in the Finals against the Pistons, who (along with former Blazer Rasheed Wallace) win in 5 games for their 3rd title.  Also notable this playoffs was that Karl Malone would retire, the Timberwolves would reach their first Western Conference Finals, and the Memphis Grizzlies made their first playoffs for the city of Memphis (previously Vancouver, Canada).
14. WORLD SERIES: Ha ha ha.. Boston's postseason woes of the past seemed to leave a pall over this season as well.. the Yankees got up THREE GAMES TO NONE.  I repeat: THREE GAMES TO NONE.  Over the Red Sox in the AL Championship series.  When unbelievably, the Sox won the NEXT FOUR GAMES to go to the World Series.  Truly awesome-- being a Blue Jays fan I really hate the Yankees.  The Sox then sweep the St. Louis Cardinals for their first World Series title since 1918.
15. The Colts' Peyton Manning sets the NFL record for most TDs thrown in a season at 49 (breaking Dan Marino's record of 48; Tom Brady would throw for a record 50 in 2007).
16. Ichiro Suzuki of the Mariners sets the record for most hits and singles in a season.
17. Mike Tyson in a comeback attempt is KO'ed by Danny Williams in Louisville, Kentucky.  Tyson received ligament damage in one of knees early in the fight, contributing to the loss.
18. Stanley Cup: The Tampa Bay Lightning win their first Stanley Cup in 7 games over the Calgary Flames.
19. NHL Lockout: The NHL season is cancelled in September, meaning no Stanley Cup in 2005.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHlsuvKz0-E#)
20. Top movies: THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, THE AVIATOR, SHREK 2, MILLION DOLLAR BABY, SIDEWAYS, RAY, FINDING NEVERLAND, HIDALGO, DAWN OF THE DEAD, ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, HELLBOY, WALKING TALL, SHAUN OF THE DEAD, KILL BILL VOL. 2, SUPERSIZE ME, TROY, HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN, NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, FAHRENHEIT 9/11, THE NOTEBOOK, SPIDER MAN 2, ANCHORMAN, BOURNE SUPREMACY, MISTER 3,000, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, SHALL WE DANCE, THE GRUDGE, SAW, THE INCREDIBLES, POLAR EXPRESS, SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS: THE MOVIE, THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU.
21. TV debuts: LOST, HOUSE, ENTOURAGE, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, DEADWOOD, VERONICA MARS, CSI: NY, BOSTON LEGAL, DANNY PHANTOM, THE APPRENTICE, GHOST HUNTERS, THE BIGGEST LOSER, DOG WHISPERER, RAMSEY'S KITCHEN NIGHTMARES, and DRAWN TOGETHER (pretty twisted but hilarious cartoon).
22. Some popular songs I remember: DROP IT LIKE IT'S HOT, AMERICAN IDIOT, SUNSHINE, REDNECK WOMAN, MY BOO, 1985, TAKE YOUR MAMA.
23. Some famous deaths: Uta Hagen, Ann Miller, Mercedes McCambridge, Paul Winfield, Peter Ustinov, Carrie Snodgress, Estee Lauder, Tony Randall, Ronald Reagan, Ray Charles, Marlon Brando, Isabel Sanford, Jerry Goldsmith, Rick James, Fay Wray, Julia Child, Elmer Bernstein, Laura Branigan, Johnny Ramone, Russ Meyer, Janet Leigh, Rodney Dangerfield, Christopher Reeve, Yasser Arafat, Ol' Dirty Bastard, Jerry Orbach, Artie Shaw.
24. Various debuts: Vimeo, The Angry Video Game Nerd, FreeBASIC, GMail, Ritz Chips
25. 2004 commercials:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caY3wQvFd9s#)

2005:
1. Finally jumped on the Playstation 2 bandwagon-- I liked Soul Edge for the Playstation 1 and saw that Soul Calibur III was available for PS2.  Also, I had heard that it played Playstation 1 games as well!  I had saved a bit of coin from both jobs-- the Nike warehouse job and the Oregonian job-- to get one.  Man oh man was I blown away!  No wonder it's the best selling console of all time (not counting the Nintendo Switch).  Had this hooked up to the tv in the guest bedroom.  I remember I had a pull-out futon bed/couch in that room.
2. Also bought the brand new RESIDENT EVIL 4.  Love love love this game!  Best game in the series.  So deep, so many weapons, so many side quests, and so many tense moments.  The only downside is the whiny damsel-in-distress Ashley.
3. Oh boy-- Hurricane Katrina is one of the most deadly and destructive US hurricanes in recent memory.  Over 1,800 die and it causes $125 billion in damage.  Southeastern US and Mexico are hit hard but the area around New Orleans takes the biggest hit.  Mass flooding around the city caused the most casualties.  Sports teams playing in the city had to be moved to different locations for home games.
4. I remember all the buzz surrounding Eagles QB Donovan McNabb and his admittedly funny Chunky Soup commercials (I loved the one where his mom makes a block to spring her son for a TD).  He got  his team to their first Super Bowl since 1981-- but they got JUST short of a first title as Tom Brady and the Patriots win a 3rd championship.  Apparently star receiver Terrell Owens was not happy with McNabb's performance and was not shy about telling him.  They would go on to have a long-standing feud and led to Terrell being suspended and later waived.
5. Not to be outdone by the Red Sox winning their first title in over 80 years, the Chicago White Sox take their first title since 1917!  I remember Steve Perry from the band Journey singing with the White Sox players who adopted his song "Don't Stop Believin'" as their team anthem.  It was very cool!  The White Sox sweep the Houston Astros 4-0.
6. The term "sexting" gains steam.  I don't think I've ever used it.
7. Moustapha Akkad, long-time producer of the Halloween films, is killed by bombings in Amman, Jordan, along with his daughter.
8. Other deaths: Will Eisner, Hal Seeger, Amrish Puri, Virginia Mayo, Johnny Carson, Max Schmeling, Ossie Davis, Arthur Miller, Dan O' Herlihy, Sandra Dee, Hunter S. Thompson, Teresa Wright, Mitch Hedberg, Pope John Paul II, Rainier III Prince of Monaco, John Mills, Frank Gorshin, Howard Morris, Ismail Merchant, Eddie Albert, George Mikan, Anne Bancroft, Luther Vandross, Long John Baldry, James Doohan, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, Peter Jennings, Robert Wise, Don Adams, Nipsey Russell, Rosa Parks, Link Wray, Eddie Guerrero, Pat Morita, Richard Pryor.
9. The Detroit Pistons nearly get their 4th championship but come up one game short to the San Antonio Spurs, who win their 3rd title in 7 games.  Scoring was woefully low in the 2000's!
10. As alluded to in my 2004 recap, there was NO STANLEY CUP championship!
11. FAMILY GUY makes a return to tv after being canceled 3 years ago. 
12. Tv debuts: AMERICAN DAD!, THE BOONDOCKS, BEN10, AVATAR THE LAST AIRBENDER, BONES, CASH CAB, THE CLOSER, THE COLBERT REPORT, THE DEADLIEST CATCH, DEAL OR NO DEAL, EVERYBODY HATES CHRIS, THE GHOST WHISPERER, GREY'S ANATOMY, HELL'S KITCHEN, HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, IRON CHEF AMERICA, IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA, THE LATE LATE SHOW WITH CRAIG FERGUSON, MARTHA STEWART SHOW, MY NAME IS EARL, NUMB3RS, THE OFFICE, PRISON BREAK, ROBOT CHICKEN, SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE, SQUIDBILLIES, STELLA, THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER, WEEDS, LUCY THE DAUGHTER OF THE DEVIL.
13. Top movies: STAR WARS III: REVENGE OF THE SITH (I rather liked this one), KING KONG, WALK THE LINE, BATMAN BEGINS, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, JARHEAD, SIN CITY, 40-YEAR OLD VIRGIN, HOSTEL, THE CORPSE BRIDE, WEDDING CRASHERS, WOLF CREEK, THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE, DOMINION: THE PREQUEL TO THE EXORCIST
14. Some okay songs: BEVERLY HILLS- Weezer, SUGAR WE'RE GOIN' DOWN-Fall Out Boy, BEST OF YOU-Foo Fighters
More later..

15. George W. Bush officially begins his 2nd term as US President.
16. YouTube debuts.  Me At The Zoo is its first video.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw#)
17. The Kyoto Protocol is enacted.
18. A major earthquake hits Sumatra, killing around 1,000.
19. Prince Charles marries Camilla Parker Bowles at Windsor's Guildhall.
20. Syria ends its military occupation of Lebanon after 29 years.
21. Almost 1,000 Shia Muslim pilgrims are stampeded to death in Baghdad during a religious festival.
22. Muslim riots occur around the world in response to an illustration of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper.
23. Pakistan is hit by a massive earthquake, which kills over 86,000.
24. Debuts: Burger King Chicken Fries, Coca Cola with Lime, Hershey's Kissables, iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle, and XBOX 360.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92coix3E_vY#)
25. The Washington Nationals debut after 35 years of existence as the Montreal Expos.

2006:
1. New job!  My brother had a job driving a truck for a beverage warehouse way out in an industrial area in the Columbia River area called Swan Island.  I applied there and was delighted to see that a Fryer Tuck's Chicken was out there (great chicken and spuds), but that was gone shortly after I got hired. :(  Brutal job where the early orders to complete weren't so difficult-- I ran an electric pallet jack and loaded it with orders, then shrink wrapped it and loaded it onto a trucks.  It was the late order that was several pages long and the likelihood that you would finish it on time was minimal.  If you thought you could take all your breaks and lunch, GUESS AGAIN.  You were WAY too busy.  Just throw some snacks on your pallet jack's basket with your order and fly.  You were so exhausted and if you spilled over your order, you would want to break down and cry.  So rough.  In additional, there is no bus service when you get off work (somewhere between 1-3 AM usually) so if I was walking home it's 8 miles or so.  I had to do this a few times.  Fortunately I could usually catch a lift with a guy that lived in Hillsboro so I was kind of on his way.  Absolutely rough job.  The typical "the harder you work, the more you get to do someone else's job" workplace.  Winters along the Columbia got really cold but I worked so fast and hard that I often wore a t-shirt and wasn't cold.
2. Pluto is officially declared a "dwarf planet".
3. Saddam Hussein is sentenced to death by the Iraqi Special Tribunal for crimes against humanity.  He is hung at the end of the year.
4. An earthquake in Java, Indonesia kills over 5,700.
5. Social media platform Twitter is launched.
6. The Nintendo Wii is released.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Wii-console.jpg)
7. A mosque bombing in Iraq sets the Iraq Civil War into motion.
8. A massive mudslide in the Philippines kills 1,126.
9. Over 1,000 die when an Egyptian ferry sinks in the Red Sea.
10. A stampede at the "Stoning of the Devil" ritual in Mina, Saudi Arabia kills at least 362.
11. Turin, Italy hosts the 2006 Winter Olympics.  Germany tops the golds and overall medals list.
12. SUPER BOWL XL: Ugh.  I was happy to see the Seattle Seahawks make their first Super Bowl.  Pittsburgh has always been a team I never cared much for.  The refs were TERRIBLE this game, and even though the final score was 21-10 Pittsburgh, there were some blatantly bad calls that could have shifted the odds dramatically in Seattle's favor if they were the right ones.  Watched this one at my friend's house downstairs, where my profanity wouldn't disturb his folks upstairs.
13. Drew Brees ditches the San Diego Chargers and signs with the New Orleans Saints.  One of the greatest free agency signings ever!
14. The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Detroit Tigers 4 games to 1 in the World Series to become the franchise with the 2nd most World Series Championships (behind, of course, the Yankees).
15. Kobe Bryant goes full-on nutso and tallies the 2nd highest point total for a single player in a game with 81 points over the Raptors on January 22.  Wilt Chamberlain remains at #1 with 100 points even.
16. I was really rooting for the Dallas Mavericks, who with the great Dirk Nowitzki reached their first NBA Finals (as did the East champion Miami Heat).  And they got off to a great start, winning the first 2 games.  After that, though.. Dwyane Wade torched them four straight games and gave the Miami Heat their first title.  I remember Shaquille O'Neal and Gary Payton also being on the team, along with great signings Jason Williams and Antoine Walker.
17. Wladimir Klitschko wins the heavyweight boxing title.  I loved his pose with him shaving with an axe:
(https://www.meme-arsenal.com/memes/ca67287f17dece17da9100be61e1d3ca.jpg)
18. TV debuts: AMERICA'S GOT TALENT, METALOCALPYSE,
(this first episode scene cracked me up)
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUk6Y5fSIPo#)
CURIOUS GEORGE, BLEACH, NBC SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL, RACHAEL RAY, HAPPY TREE FRIENDS, UGLY BETTY, DEXTER,
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lHcn0YvBp0#)
 30 ROCK, FRISKY DINGO.
19. MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL makes a historical move from ABC to ESPN.
20. Big movies: THE DEPARTED, BORAT, LITLLE MISS SUNSHINE, DREAMGIRLS, THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND, THE DA VINCI CODE, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST, X-MEN: THE LAST STAND, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE III, CARS, HAPPY FEET, CASINO ROYALE and a movie I barely was able to sit through because of a retarded kid in front of me HOWLING whenever the soundtrack kicked in: SUPERMAN RETURNS
21. Disney purchases Pixar.
22. The University of Florida wins their first NCAA Men's Basketball championship over UCLA.  Center Joakim Noah wins Most Outstanding Player award.
23. The Carolina Hurricanes win their first Stanley Cup, one year after the NHL lockout prevented a Stanley Cup championship.  They beat the Edmonton Oilers in 7 games.
24. Daniel Craig becomes the new James Bond.
25. The Playstation 3 is released.

Memories of 1988: When You’re Young, Life Seems Huge

1.   I was in third grade the first half of ’88, and one of our substitute teachers grew up in western Pennsylvania, near PBS’ Mister Rogers, and told us his family bought a picnic table from her family. That fall I was in 4th grade and had my favorite teacher ever, the aforementioned “Ssster” who was a trip and a half.

2.   One of my friends in Burlington, Kentucky, where we had lived for two years and would live for another year, had a live-in grandma, who had a blue-milk cataract covering one of her eyes, and she mostly seemed to sit in this chair watching TV with two hairy gray cats in her lab, and I remember her robe would be covered in cat hair. She was a nice lady who smiled at us, but, unfairly I know, her circumstance and age kind of put us off as kids, and we’d sometimes say hi to her and run past as fast as we could.


3.   My thirteen year old cousin Alison got in trouble with her dad for stealing money from him to buy cocaine. She’d started using at about age nine or ten, and it was a scandal in the family. I liked Alison but was also put off by her ways, and would only years later learn how sad and difficult her life was, a pitiful little rich girl, basically, abused and addicted. I learned from her that money isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. (No pun there.)

4.   We had a drought all summer, and a heat wave, it basically did not rain for months. Creeks went dry, leaving the exposed stones bleached white by the sun, and the river went so low it stranded barges. Farmers from down south formed a miles-long caravan and out of their own pockets drove up hay to donate to local farmers, whose fields were withered by the conditions. Although I lived in Kentucky, I remember late in the year Sssster told us in science that 1988 was the first year (ever?) that Ohio had not even one tornado.


5.   When I went to visit my maternal family that year, my mom’s youngest sibling, Aunt Sarah, who was twelve and a half, basically gave me her old bike when she got a new one, and we spent many pleasant days riding all over town, and that made it probably my best summer visit to Ireland ever.

6.   Because I was spending the weekend with my paternal grandparents, who lived nearby, we went to the grand opening of the biggest and most posh mall in the city. That mall is actually still thriving, but many others from 1988 are gone now. Anyway, some radio station was handing out gift bags to the first however many kids through the door, and I got one of the last ones. Among other things it had a pass to the mall’s movie theater in it, which I used to see Beetlejuice.


7.   Stephanie, a girl I liked in school, had a new baby brother named Jordan, and we went in to see him at her house, and Stephanie---cringe-worthy---put her finger on Jordan’s soft spot and kind of rubbed on it while she explained how babies’ skulls aren’t hard there. Jordan didn’t cry but it couldn’t have felt good to have someone pressing on his head like that. I sometimes wonder if Stephanie altered the poor kid’s brain structure and today he’s a Scientologist or something else weird.

8.   That was the Christmas my grandma gave me a blank diary, and set the next third of a century and counting into motion as the macro and micro of my life was recorded. For example, this list will probably go into tonight’s entry. ;-)


9.   The local NFL team went 12-4 in the regular season and success-starved fans went insane. They’d go to the Super Bowl and almost win, and during the season one of the players, Icky Woods, did this odd in-zone dance called the Icky Shuffle, and it became an embarrassing fad in town to imitate that, Ssster used to do it for us as a reward, but thankfully the Icky Shuffle didn’t last. Nor did Icky himself.

10.   Pete Rose, who was managing the Reds by then, got chucked out of a game for shoving an umpire who tapped him in the face during a heated argument. It was the first incident in the trail that would eventually lead to Rose’s fall from glory and banishment from baseball (for gambling) in about a year.


11.   A filly won the Kentucky Derby for only the third time ever. Her name was Winning Colors, and though I knew almost nothing about horse racing, I liked it a little better because of her victory and even named my bike Winning Colors. This was the same year my grandparents drove me and my cousin to Claiborne Farms, in Paris, Kentucky, and my grandpa got them to let us see Secretariat in his paddock. He was a big beautiful red horse, still muscled and obviously proud of himself, gazing confidently back at us over top of the farm’s black fences, and a worker there told us, “He’s a king.”

12.   I saw a man almost choke to death in a Big Boy restaurant. Someone Heimliched him and the man said thank you, sat back down and finished his food. My friend’s mom had taken my friend and my friend’s sister and me there while we were hanging out, and she said, “The man could have at least offered to pay for the other guy’s meal, since he saved his life.” Yeah, really.


13.   I got a hair crimper for my tenth birthday that year and…overused it.

14.   My dad was in West Berlin for fourteen weeks early that year, and another time for nine weeks later in the year, but at least he stayed in touch with us. He brought me back cool stuff, newspapers in German, a bottle of the city’s water, which tasted sort of minerally, and little souvenir type things, and dirt from just outside the Wall. I asked if I could go with him to the city when he went back, but of course I couldn’t.


15.   This teenage boy down the road tried to look like Bon Jovi, complete with an out of control mullet, he’d blare the Slippery When Wet tape when he’d peel out of his parents’ driveway in his loud ‘70s-vintage Trans-Am, and while we should have respected his efforts to be who he wanted to be, all the kids on the street made fun of him for it, including me, so he’d smirk and slink to his car when he saw we were out. I feel bad about that now, especially since he was such a dweeb and imitation was probably all he had.

16.   This is beyond gross, but this girl told me if I’d finish off the half-full jar of tartar sauce in her fridge, she’d give me seven dollars, so I did, and she kept her word and gave me the money. I still hate that stuff to this day. Um, not money.


17.   When I went to get my teeth cleaned and have a checkup at the dentist, Dana, my cousin, begged me to please scream and moan a lot, to scare the other kids in the waiting room, like she did when she went in to her own dentist. I wish I had been gutsy enough to do that, though I’m not 100% sure she really did actually do that herself.

18.   Speaking of Dana, she got a Moped that summer, because back then you could ride them on certain 25 MPH residential streets at age fourteen, like she was. Well, she was coming home and hit a pothole and flew head-first over the handle bars going about thirty miles an hour, and landed on her back, and the Moped even kind of hit her. She laid there a second, the wind knocked out of her, then got up, somehow, to her shock, totally unhurt, and rode it the rest of the way home. I would think she was exaggerating the whole incident except too many people saw it. But that was the end of her Moped-ing days, since my aunt freaked out and sold it.


19.   It was the city’s bicentennial, 1788-1988, and celebrations went on all year, always something big and fun going on, but maybe the coolest was this event called Tall Stacks, in which the biggest gathering of steam-powered riverboats and old paddle wheelers and such, came together at the public landing, and the river for half a mile was wall to wall Mark Twain-era steamboats, and at noon on a Saturday they all blew their horns at once, and it was said that was heard for twenty miles. I held my ears, ha.

20.   My dad had a Macintosh SE, and he mostly wouldn’t let me be on it too much, it was seriously expensive, but he did have this Broderbund game he played called The Ancient Art of War, in which you could battle famous generals from history like Genghis Khan and Napoleon and Julius Caesar, and of course Sun Tzu. He was surprised when after letting me mess around with the game, I was pretty good at it, and beat every general on there except Sun Tzu, who was basically invincible.


21.   In many ways I had a sheltered childhood, unlike so many others, especially nowadays, but I almost had that innocence shattered one time spending the night with Dana, who thought it’d be funny to subject me to this Ken Russell flick called Gothic (which I later actually liked), but at the last second her brother, Jared, ratted her out and her mom put a stop to her nefarious intentions to show me a movie filled with lurid behavior, peaking with Julian Sands’ bare ass, and culminating in Claire Clairmont's nipples turning into eyes. Narrow miss that!

22.   I think my mom must’ve gotten some sort of package deal on symphony tickets, because I remember we went to the symphony all the time in 1988. Seriously, I bet twenty performances. I was blasé on that, liking the setting, this 1870s massive Gothic hall, more than having to sit quietly for music that was often very good but just as often tedious. I remember the Spanish conductor’s name was Jesus, and when I told this fact to my Irish grandmother, she gave me a lecture on how people who named their kids after the Lord were blasphemers who would at best stay in Purgatory til the end of time. Rough God up there….


23.   I don’t know if the drought had anything to do with it but in the summer of 1988 I saw more lightning bugs than ever in my life. They seemed thick in the air, as they have never been since, and I recall sitting one night on my deck and unfocusing my eyes and the blinking of hundreds of fireflies began to look like the fairy dust sequence in Disney movies, like the entire world became this magical place for a little while.

24.   This neighborhood wild boy I hung out with named Tarzan tried to jump his handed-down 1970s looking banana-seated, mismatching parts Frankenbike, Black Angel, over a freezer his dad was throwing away. He pushed and hauled the freezer into the street (not much car traffic) and put a ramp up on barrels and rode way far back then peddled like maniac, and kerplopped face-first straight into the freezer when the ramp collapsed. He rolled and got up and immediately fixed the ramp “better” and credit to the boy’s guts, he made it on the second try, blood running down his skinned elbows. He was the bravest little s**t in town.


25.   My grandpa went elk hunting in North Dakota, which I thought was totally mean, and while out there he was invited onto tribal land and met some people trying to get a casino set up. I don’t know the whole story and never will, but apparently he stayed in a tiny motel near where he hunted, and heard a pitch to invest in the planned casino, but he said he thought the tribe there was in bed with the Chicago mob, so he said no. Turned out the casino was totally legit, it was the beginning of “Indian  casinos” and in later years he’d say he would have seen a hundredfold return on what they were asking him to invest. Sheesh….

And that was 1988….

2007:
1. The iPhone is unveiled.
2. A goofy bomb scare occurs in Boston when LED signs with the Mooninites from Aqua Teen Hunger Force on them are somehow mistaken for explosives.
3. A Bangladesh cyclone kills around 15,000.
4. I remember my Bills taking QB Trent Edwards in the 3rd round this year.  After JP Losman got hurt Edwards would take over.  He had some decent games but would be known for checking down rather than airing it out, and an injury the following year would basically seal his fate. 
5. Also Bills: This was the year of a handful of bad memories: One of the bigger heartbreaks in the team's MNF history (a late-game meltdown vs. Tony Romo & the Cowboys), the worst home loss in team history (a ridiculous 56-10 kerstomping courtesy of the Patriots), a disgusting loss at home to the Giants (leading 14-0 and then getting outscored 38-7) and a complete slogfest in heavy snow to the Browns, losing 8-0.  However, I did enjoy Super Bowl-winning coach Joe Gibbs screw up this game with a 2nd consecutive time out to "ice" Rian Lindell (a penalty):
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs-jNcFD41M#)
This came not long after Redskins safety Sean Taylor was murdered.
6. I remember this being the year I discovered that a place near me did karaoke on odd days of the week, so on a couple of my days off (I got 3 days off-- Sunday being an "on call" day which I'd often have to work and I was the only dummy to actually call in) I'd go over there-- a Chinese restaurant that's still around.  I had one hell of a voice back then; now that the pandemic is mostly in the rearview mirror, and I've recovered from my own Covid bout, I'm trying to get back to where I used to be.  Not easy when I have to wear a mask at work all day.
7. 500-some die in a massive earthquake in Peru.
8. Bombings kill over 500 in northern Iraq; 200 more in Baghdad.
9. North Korea agrees to shut down some of its nuclear facilities.
10. SUPER BOWL XLI: Peyton Manning (then with the Indianapolis Colts) gets his first Super Bowl ring with a 29-17 win over the Chicago Bears.  My brother and dad are Bears fans and I remember wanting them to lose-- not to rub it in their face but because Rex Grossman wasn't a very good QB and they basically made it to the SB on their defense and return game.  Great start for them with Devin Hester returning the opening kick for paydirt, but then Peyton started doing Peyton things, like win the MVP.  Halftime show: Prince, with the Florida A&M Marching Band; National Anthem: Billy Joel.
11. The Patriots would become only the 2nd NFL team in the Super Bowl era to go undefeated during the regular season (after the Dolphins).  They would not, however, win the Super Bowl in a shocking loss to the Giants.
12. I was tickled pink to see the Dolphins only win one game this year.  However, they had a dramatic turnaround the following year.. boo!
13. Barry Bonds passes Hank Aaron to become the all-time home run leader.  This record is tainted by Bonds' use of PEDs.
14. The Colorado Rockies make their first World Series!  However, they get swept by the Red Sox.
15. LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers make their NBA Finals debuts.  They are swept by Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, etc. and the San Antonio Spurs 4-0, with Parker winning MVP.
16. The Anaheim Ducks (formerly Mighty Ducks of Anaheim) win their first and to date only Stanley Cup, over the Ottawa Senators, in 5 games.  Former New Jersey Devil Scott Niedermeyer wins Playoff MVP.
17. Actor Isaiah Washington is fired from the show Grey's Anatomy for calling a male co-star a gay slur.
18. Former Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith dies of prescription drug overdose.
19. Bob Barker retires as host of The Price Is Right; comedian/actor Drew Carey replaces him.
20. Massive wildfires hit the Malibu area, forcing some Hollywood stars to evacuate.
21. Some top movies: SUPERBAD, (ROB ZOMBIE'S) HALLOWEEN, JUNO, SWEENEY TODD, TRANSFORMERS, SPIDER MAN 3, 28 WEEKS LATER, THE MIST, SHREK THE THIRD, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END.
22. TV debuts: THE BIG BANG THEORY, MAD MEN, CALIFORNICATION, BURN NOTICE, RULES OF ENGAGEMENT, PHINEAS AND FERB, PRIVATE PRACTICE, TIM AND ERIC, KITCHEN NIGHTMARES, TOTAL DRAMA, SARAH JANE ADVENTURES, ARE YOU SMARTER THAN A FIFTH GRADER?.
23. The Cinema Snob (Brad Jones) debuts on YouTube with film reviews.  He kind of reminds me of a former renter/friend.  Talks the same, has the same kind of pessimistic view about certain things.
24. Notable songs: LOW, BEFORE HE CHEATS (yuck-- too many people karaoke this), HEY THERE DELILAH, FERGALICIOUS, CHASING CARS.
25. Product debuts: Amazon Kindle, AppleTV, Coca Cola Orange, Logitech Driving Force GT, Pepsi Zero Sugar, Reese's Whipps.

Memories of 1987: When You’re Young Time Seems So Slow

1.   Eight was a pretty good year, because when you’re that age you are not the innocent you were but you’re in this high childhood state that still holds magic and wonder, yet you can do so much more, and you’re learning new things daily. (I used to read encyclopedias in bed each night and there was this whole entire world of things about which to learn.) It was wonderful to be eight.

2.   Don’t ask me why but it made total sense to a bunch of us neighborhood girls to form what was probably the world’s only Will Shriner Fan Club, named in honor of this syndicated talk show host we got together and watched every day at 9:00 AM that summer. That was about all there was to the WSFC, no secret handshake or conventions, but til school started and pushed it from our minds, it was our thing.

3.   Also that summer the seventeen-year Brood X cicadas erupted from the ground in their hordes, wobbling through the air less dexterous than bumblebees, and collecting on branches til whole trees were covered in them. There was a restaurant chain in town in those days called Snappy Tomato Pizza that had a jingle that got changed in parody to “Snappy Cicada Pizza.” I always like the cicada swarms but I seem to be in the minority.


4.   There was this barge filled with trash from NYC that apparently, as I remember, could not find anyone willing to let it land and dump its piled-on contents, so this barge cruised up and down the east coast looking for refuge for the refuse, which grew more and more noisome. Finally entrepreneurs sold trash from the “Garbage Barge” and I wanted a piece. My dad looked at me when I asked and said, “You want to pay for a piece of garbage, El?” Then he paid me to pick it up outside; better deal.

5.   I’ll tell you what freaked me out that year was little Jessica McClure falling down a well in Texas. If I thought about her situation, which of course being me I did to excess, I started feeling like I couldn’t breathe. It was horror! But, you know, happy ending.

6.   Iran-Contra hearings were shown live on eve-ry TV channel, canceling out my shows. I remember my dad and my grandpa, who, sadly, never were on good terms (my dad used to get my mom to take me over there when his dad was home) were on opposite poles about charismatic right-wing superstar Oliver North, with my dad saying he belonged in prison, and my grandpa, who by then had evolved into that strange creature known as a Reagan Democrat, dubbing him a hero. It felt like those hearings went on and on and on that summer, but like I said, when you’re young time moves slowly, and a summer can last as long as a year seems to when you’re middle-aged.

7.   That fall I would make it home just when Duck Tales started airing, running in the door as that theme song started playing. I loved that half-hour commercial show.

8.   That Halloween I went trick or treating three times! Once at the local mall off I-75, which did a “mall-or-treat” the weekend before Halloween (GNC gave out frickin’ sunflower seeds though, blah! Only took them to be polite), once at my cousin’s neighborhood, which had afternoon trick or treating, and then she and I came back to my own neighborhood for the regular evening trick or treating as the furtive gods of darkness intended. I’d never had so much candy in my entire life, yet in a weepy post-script, my mother, being Irish Catholic, guilt-tripped me into donating half my haul to the “poor kids” at the St. Vincent de Paul Society, where I bet the clerks just ate it themselves.

9.   On one of the last times I remember going to a drive-in, we saw The Lost Boys, which I didn’t care much for then but in my teens I enjoyed it. It was in a double feature with Conan the Barbarian, which I thought was possibly the coolest use of Arnold I’d ever seen. I went around for weeks telling people what was best in life.

10.   Tarzan down the street somehow got ahold of his brother’s box of Ultimate ‘80s Boy Accessories, including Chinese throwing stars, a butterfly knife, and a survival knife like Rambo had. He asked if I wanted to go back to “the pond” as this swampy ditch in the woods was called, so I did and he tried to throw the Chinese stars into trees, but they’d just bounce off, and he found some poor worm and diced it with the butterfly knife, and then unpacked everything in the handle of the survival knife and laid it out, fishing line and hooks and adhesive bandages and weird little things he couldn’t get to fit back inside. We were still having a blast when Tarzan’s brother Steve came looking for him for taking his stuff and literally threw him into the pond, where Tarzan came up muddy and soaking but the thing was, his brother was probably fifteen, Tarzan was about eight, but Tarzan charged up from the water wind-milling his fists and actually fought his brother to a draw, right in front of me. That family was something, I’ll tell you. My mom never understood what made me want to hang out over there but they were all so nuts I never knew what was coming next.

11.   The principal at my school was universally feared, being this scowling old man who’d started teaching circa 1935, and who never ever smiled, and who seemed to have a peculiarly twisted delight in paddling kids. Anyway, one day this boy I knew from class got sent by our teacher to the gym to take down some soup labels in the drive for new equipment we were part of, and this boy came back upstairs at the same time another class taking gym dismissed, so he was walking beside the class, minding his own business, when the principal who was standing at the top of the stairs saw him and said, “You’re walking out of line.” And he hit the boy HARD with his paddle, but because the boy flinched, the principal ended up hitting him across the lower back, doing real damage. Maybe in the past the principal would’ve gotten away with that, but it was such a big deal he suddenly “retired” and a much nicer principal came in, thank goodness.

12.   My neighbor had a cat named Gilligan who would run into our house if you gave him half a chance. He’d even hide in our yew bushes and rush in while one of us walked out. He wasn’t mean but he seemed neurotic, and once he was in the house it was hard to get him to leave. He’d immediately flee under furniture and if you tried to get him out from under there, he’d take off running anyplace he could, even leaping atop our entertainment center and bookcases. He never hissed or bit or scratched, but trying to pick him up to get him out was like trying to scoop jello with a toothpick. My dad always said he thought somebody must’ve dropped Gilligan on his head when he was a kitten.

13.   We had a membership at the Tri-City YMCA, where my dad would go work out sometimes and play ball and I’d go swim and, you know, just do stuff. There was this strange knockoff of the Brownies that met there called Indian Princesses, and one evening I watched them making leather coin purses and thought I’d like to join. “Indian Princesses is sort of a wussy name, don’t you think?” my dad said when I told him in the car. And it kinda was, yeah, I mean Indian Girl Assassins would’ve been much better, but still I wanted in, so even though it was the middle of the year they let me join. I only wanted to make a leather coin purse though, not do all the other stuff, like sell popcorn door to door and pledge on my “Tribal Honor” to the always walk the Indian Path, so I think I lasted all of three meetings, which made our Teepee Mother, Mrs. Waldenheim,  write me a card to say she was very disappointed in me since I didn’t strike her as a quitter. I felt terrible about that til my mom said, “Watch.” Then she stuck a wad of chewing gum on the Teepee Mother’s passive-aggro card and threw it away, and then it just seemed funny. (Never did get to make a leather coin purse though…)

14.   That year the geeky teen neighbor who would be so into Bon Jovi in ’88 was into Van Hagar (as he called Van Halen), and would BLAST the 5150 tape EVERY time he was outside lifting his weights in the driveway or washing his rattle-trap Trans-Am. But to this day when I hear that song Why Can’t This Be Love, I can still remember that desperate-to-be-cool teenager singing it.

15.   I got my first tennis racquet that fall, and when Jimi Hendrix handled his first guitar I wonder if he got the feeling I did, that this perfect extension of my hand had just been activated via the instrument of my destiny and almost my doom. I discovered I loved playing tennis, and if it’s not too immodest to say, I found I had a natural talent for the sport, getting better with practice, yes, but right off the bat having some undeserved innate ability that took off instantly. Even from my early days I would go onto a court against someone, and usually---sorry, truth---win. Yet it was just a fun thing to do for a while and not for years would I get serious about it like I did in middle school and the first two grades of high school. Eventually of course it nearly killed me, and a few months later I discovered I was also a sexual prodigy and quit playing tennis so much in order to devote my free time to that pursuit. But that’s a bit down the road from 1987.

16.   I don’t think my tastes in music were particularly sophisticated, I liked Cyndi Lauper and The Bangles and bubblegum pop, but I did come to discover this Peter Gabriel song called Solsbury Hill that was old for me and would play it over and over on this little tape recorder I kept on the basket of my bike. Thing was, I wouldn’t play it when I was home or with others, it was like it was my secret song, and I’ve noticed I’ve had a lot of those over the years, songs I don’t tell other people about, that I only play when I am alone. I’m not sure if others have their own songs like that but that was probably my first.

17.   In gym the teacher, a pretty all right guy, showed us this film about stranger danger, and it was the most lurid, terrifying, trauma-including piece of twenty-minute cinema third-grade me had ever seen. These two girls my age were playing on a playground while this strange man, shown in first-person perspective, just a camera, made nice to them and gave them chips and candy, then said he knew their families and offered to drive them home in his van, then it was implied he did “bad stuff” to them because all we were shown was a black screen while the girls shrieked and begged for about a minute straight, and one screamed til her scream cut off all at once and the screen sat there on black for maybe ten more seconds til it flashed forward to police looking for the missing girls by flashlight, and they found their bodies floating in a lake. It was way too much for little kids, totally out of the usual “life is happy” ‘80s childhood style PSAs, and it rattled my brain for the longest time. In fact when I was briefly mad at the world in 1995, I used to go walking alone at night by this highway daring something to happen to me, and even so many years later I found myself thinking of that creepy film.

18.   My parents got new cars that year, the first “new” new cars we’d had, and despite the fact you can buy it as a fragrance, I hated that new car smell. It was also a feature in those models that the seatbelts would descend automatically to go over you, with the result that at my height I was half-strangled with every drive.

19.   Late in the year my dad got one of the biggest books I’d ever seen, this totally massive novel called Sarum, that had Stonehenge on the cover, and he told me it was about the Salisbury Plain region of England over the last 10,000 years, which blew my mind, me never guessing a book could have that much scope. He read big parts of Sarum to me out loud, and later when I was about twelve I read it myself over the course of several months. It’s still among my all-time favorite novels.

20.   That September slick California New Age guru Dick Sutphen came to town in Motley Crue’s tour bus, with his hypnotic regression therapy road show. When Dana said she was going, she being all of thirteen, I desperately wanted to as well, since the idea of seeing the historical past, as regression promised, thrilled me. I wasn’t allowed but Dana did buy me one of Sutphen’s books called You Were Born Again To Be Together, in retrospect cheesy and obviously fake, but that marked the start of my twenty-year-long interest in reincarnation. On a number of occasions that fall Dana and I would lie quietly in her darkened room and listen to Sutphen’s regression tapes as he supposedly guided us into our pre-birth pasts, and at the end we’d tell one another the impressions we saw: an ice age cave and a Greek island and a dark-skinned woman with dreads pounding purple roots in a stone bowl. I had to hide the fact we were doing that from my mom, who wouldn’t have liked it. In fact living where I did when I did and going to the school I did, there wasn’t anyone at home to talk to about things like past lives, and my interests were not those of your typical eight year old. Or typical at any age, really.

21.   Star Trek the Next Generation premiered, and we never missed it. Friday the 13th the Series came on next to it, and was pretty good too. And on Saturday evenings a local CBS affiliate aired Tales from the Dark Side, which had this great opening sequence (“….a DARK side…”). There was also a FOX series called Werewolf that was corny but fun, so if you liked sci-fi and horror, TV wasn’t bad in 1987.

22.   My dad was on a YMCA basketball team, the last year he actively played before he started coaching this inner city team, and he was a good player. He had been on a team in high school that only lost two games all season and won by an average of over twenty points per game, but the two times they lost were to the same team that itself went unbeaten, so my dad’s phenomenal squad never went into post-season play, something that still bugs him almost half a century later. Anyway, one night at one of his YMCA games this scantily-dressed woman abruptly ran onto the court mid-play and started kissing the men, including my dad, and kind of jiggled her well-developed upper half against him in particular before running off into the cold night, leaving everyone staring in shock. Well, that really disrupted the game, and my dad, who was normally composed, was so thrown off he hardly said anything driving back with me, and he went home and told my mom about the incident, I think ready for her to be miffed about it---you know women, right---but she said yeah, she’d heard on the news about some weirdo doing that around the city. Mom seemed to think it was funny, so my dad, relieved, said to her, “I feel so violated and abused, Cath...”  Mom said, “Sure you do!” Ha.

23.   I also got to stay up late in ’87 watching Doctor Who on Saturdays on Channel 48, and sometimes Elvira’s Movie Macabre on Channel 64 on Friday nights, but I usually fell asleep watching those and woke up the next morning mysteriously in my bed, never sure how I made it there. (I suspect a parent….mebbe?)

24.   As I’ve said, my mom changed my destiny as a teenager because she was never on time to pick me up after school, something that was also true in my elementary years in the ‘80s. In fact the only way I got to school on time in the mornings was my dad, who was NEVER late for anything, drove me in, and normally Mom’s eccentric tardiness wasn’t that big a deal, I’d just stand in the lobby waiting, but for some reason one afternoon I walked outside to wait for her and went over and sat on the swings behind the school, and she must’ve been really late this one day because it was cold and the sky actually got dim and I couldn’t get back inside. I was alone, which seems absolutely incredible to me to think about, eight years old and left there, probably thinking of the lurid stranger danger film, I dunno, so I stood out with my bare legs freezing in winter temperatures, and let me tell you, whoever designed Catholic school uniforms probably never had to wear one, because those things are insanely impractical with the winter wind rushing up to freeze you. My mom was chagrined at being well over an hour late and did try to do better for a while, but even by looser Irish standards there is just some quirk in her nature that resists grasping the concept of a set time, and I bet she picked me up when she was supposed to less than one day a week throughout my entire school career. (No buses where I went.)


25.   Near Christmas 1987 I remember my dad went to a funeral that deeply upset him. He was gone a couple days since it was held in a southern state, and afterward he spent time with the surviving family of this person. What sticks out in my mind is when he told me the service was held above an un-dug grave with a headstone put there, which he told me was called a cenotaph, and when I asked why, he said because the body of the person “will never come home.” Only years later would he tell me the whole story, and how it was a service for a co-worker who died in the line of duty under torture. And my dad had known the man well. People do good work in the job my father did and find the reward in that, yes, but I think there is an element of addiction in many who do that job. The delight of getting back safely, of pulling off the task at hand, that feeling is so intoxicatingly great compared to the mundane emotions normal life gives that it compels those doing the work to keep on going so they can find that high again. It’s not a sensation that can be explained, you’d have to feel it. I think it was in 1987, that early, that long ago, that I caught on how deep into another sort of life my dad was. Coming to that realization was probably the first time I felt deeply aware that he was part of something truly scary, literally a type of unspoken war with real consequences and casualties; that he could someday be in one of those empty graves with a monument called a cenotaph. It was like leaving a room where you’d been safe and happy all your life, and from then on nothing is ever exactly the same, because after that you’re aware of how dangerous life is.

That is how I remember 1987.

2009:

1. My brother introduced me to his girlfriend's 1-year old dog named Mya.  She (and my brother) came to live at my house when I bought it the following year, and I just lost her in recent weeks.  What a sweet girl.  She had so many problems in her life but she toughed it out (attacked by another dog as a puppy, with some lasting issues).  It took me a while to break down the morning she died, but it sure kept me from being able to go to work.  Miss you Mya.
2. The father of cryptocurrency, BITCOIN, is introduced.
3. The Gaza War basically ends with a ceasefire between Hamas and the Israeli Defense Forces (though there are still some airstrikes afterwards).
4. 173 die in bushfires in Victoria, Australia.
5. The Sri Lankan Civil War finally ends with the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
6. I spent the weekends of much of this year going house-shopping with my folks.  It was so awesome that they were so supportive.  I stayed a couple times over at their house with their dog (a pitbull mix) who was very sweet and loved to play "keep away" with me with his toys.  Met my real estate agent this year and I liked her; met her for coffee a lot.
7. Air France Flight 447 crashes in the Atlantic Ocean; all 228 die.
8. The King of Pop, Michael Jackson, dies.  On my birthday no less!
9. My Portland Trailblazers had a great record with some great talent (like Brandon Roy and Lamarcus Aldridge) and a promising young bench-- though, without their #1 draft pick Greg Oden who missed his whole first season (and was thereafter on the court very little, making the pick a massive bust).  Unfortunately they lost 4 games to 2 in the first round vs. Yao Ming and the Houston Rockets.  I remember working in the Post Operation Ward and watching the series in the waiting room.  Major bummer for a 54-win season.
10. Kobe Bryant, without Shaquille O'Neal, shows he can win it all without the Big Fella and takes the NBA Championship over Dwight Howard and the Orlando Magic in 5 games.
11. SUPER BOWL XLIII: I hate the Steelers.. my brother who worked at a bar in Hillsboro OR had the family there to watch the big game.  My other brother and I were really hoping the Cardinals (in their first Super Bowl) would take it and it was close.. but no.  I remember wishing the Gatorade bath for winning coach Mike Tomlin was actually pee.
12. Yemenia Flight 266 crashes into the Indian Sea, killing 152 of 153.
13. A massive typhoon hits Taiwan; 673 die.
14. A swine flu pandemic hits, stemming from the H1N1 virus.  Worldwide, deaths range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands before vaccines help end it the following year.
15. WORLD SERIES: The New York Yankees win yet another title, this one in 6 games over the Philadelphia Phillies.  Hideki Matsui is the first Japanese player to win World Series MVP.
16. STANLEY CUP: The Pittsburgh Penguins win their franchise's 3rd Stanley Cup, over the Detroit Red Wings in 7 games.  My team, the New Jersey Devils, crashed and burned in the 1st round when they allowed 2 goals in the final 1:20 to lose their series in game 7.
17. It was strange to not see Tiger Woods win any Major Championship.
18. Kim Clijsters wins the Women's US Open in tennis.  I remember not knowing how to pronounce her name, thinking it looked like "Clitsters".  That can't be right!
19. Big movies of 2009: THE HURT LOCKER, BRUNO, INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, THE HANGOVER, AVATAR (which sets box office records), UP, STAR TREK,  THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, TAKEN, FAST & FURIOUS, X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE, TERMINATOR: SALVATION, CORALINE (I remember thinking of the song ROSES by Outkast-- "Caroline/Coraline, she's the reason for the word b*tch"), DISTRICT 9, THIS IS IT, LAW ABIDING CITIZEN, WATCHMEN, YEAR ONE, SAW VI, THE BLIND SIDE, TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE, SHERLOCK HOLMES, MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3D, FRIDAY THE 13TH, GI JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA, CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, ZOMBIELAND, BLACK DYNAMITE, WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON, ANTICHRIST, SHERLOCK HOLMES, ALVIN & THE CHIPMUNKS: THE SQUEAKUEL.
20. Moviegoing experiences of this year: Went to see MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3D with my mom (!), and while we both liked the original 1981 flick we kind of agreed this wasn't so great, especially with the overbearing 3D that we didn't really need.  Saw FRIDAY THE 13TH by myself and was not impressed (though Derek Mears made a great Jason), and went with my sister to LAW ABIDING CITIZEN, which wasn't very good.  It was funny, however, that it did play as a double bill with the Michael Jackson bio film THIS IS IT-- the marquee read MICHAEL JACKSON and LAW ABIDING CITIZEN.. lol!
21. A typhoon along the Philippines, Manila and Thailand kills hundreds.
22. An earthquake kills over 1,000 in Indonesia.
23. TV debuts: HANNITY, RU PAUL'S DRAG RACE, LATE NIGHT WITH JIMMY FALLON, THE ED SHOW, PARKS AND RECREATION, GLEE, TOSH.0, 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU, PAWN STARS, SHARK TANK, THE DR. OZ SHOW, SABRINA: THE ANIMATED SERIES, NCIS: LOS ANGELES, THE GOOD WIFE, MODERN FAMILY, THE CLEVELAND SHOW, THE PRISONER, JERSEY SHORE, NARUTO: SHIPPUDEN, AMERICAN NINJA WARRIOR, and...
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC8A8fW03LI#)
24. I like the song USE SOMEBODY by Kings of Leon:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnhXHvRoUd0#)
25. I started a YouTube channel.  Still on, with over 1,300 videos uploaded.

Memories of 1986: Into The Way-Back Machine

1.   A teacher from down the hall came running into our first-grade classroom shouting, “It blew up! The space shuttle blew up!” We were sent into the cafeteria to watch the news about the Challenger, and it was upsetting because they’d put so much emphasis on a teacher being on the mission that we felt we knew her. There were also baby chickens sent up, and little me was sorry to think of them being killed too.

2.   In early March a tornado passed right by the nascent subdivision we’d move into that summer, missing our unfinished house by a few hundred yards, and it went on to flip over planes at the airport, before swirling toward the riverfront and damaging the dome of a beautiful 19th century baroque church built by German immigrants. Here is the church, to give you an idea how beautiful it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_of_God_Roman_Catholic_Church_(Covington,_Kentucky)

3.   For the first half of the year we were still in our townhouse in Montgomery, Ohio, and I liked it there because it had my beloved library, and it had a nice park where my mom and I would walk, filled with century-old trees. (Which would themselves be flattened by another tornado in 1999, jeez!) When we moved to our brand new house in Burlington, Kentucky, on the other side of the city, I was excited and happy right up til the last minute, then I cried about leaving our home, the only one I could remember.

4.   Burlington was nice though. There was an international airport within sight of our back deck, there were only a couple finished houses in the subdivision, and constant construction on new homes, so it was fun to play there after workers went home. We were also a few minutes from a big mall, and the new library down the road was soon in my good graces. I did have to switch schools that fall, but was cool with it by then and didn’t think about Montgomery so much.

5.   On TV I liked Sledgehammer, which was all about this goofy, bug-eyed cop who loved his gun and was about as un-PC as can be imagined. Since it was largely about cartoonish sight gags, I found it hilarious and understood it just fine. Not sure how well the humor would hold up today but as far as the1980s are concerned the emo 2020s can run off and have a good cry.

6.   Chernobyl’s reactor exploded that April, and was a Very Big Deal. My mom had us eat powdered kelp for months to get iodine to help our thyroids in case of radiation exposure. At first that made me gag but after a while I got to like it well enough to snack on sheets of nori, and my dad used to tell me the song “Turning Japanese” was about me.

7.   Halley’s Comet made its return in ’86 and was a major pop culture star that spring. In the end we couldn’t see it, we got ripped off, and I’d have to wait eleven more years to see a comet, the beautiful Amish-broom like Hale-Bopp.

8.   I remember Imelda Marcos’ gazillion pairs of shoes being on the news. I have never cared about shoes beyond function, if I like a pair I’ll buy it, that’s about it, so the fantasy of owning all that footwear skipped over me, but some adults I knew went gaga at the idea.

9.   I saw the movie Labyrinth four times, which was almost unprecedented for me. I knew who Bowie was before then but from then on he became relevant in my life. I think maybe the movie soundtrack was the first I ever bought, and I played it for weeks, loving those songs.

10.   I also saw Stand By Me because my cousin had a bootleg VHS tape of it while it was still in theaters, and it’s another ’86 movie that’s still a favorite of mine. That Christmas we got our own VCR and the world opened up. My dad had a copy of The Holy Grail, and we watched it together too many times to count.

11.   My grandpa asked if I wanted to go to Chicago with him for the weekend, and I said sure, but what I didn’t know was we’d be flying there on his friend’s Cessna, and that was like adding two cherries atop a sundae. Awwwwwwesome experience! Before we came home we saw the Lions of Tsavo in the Field Museum, which were disappointingly undramatic in aspect, but still, eating a hundred people isn’t an achievement to sneeze at.

12.   For her twelfth birthday Dana wanted an Elvis impersonator, so her dad got her one. Her parents were going through a divorce and Dana was a pro at playing them against each other in a “who loves me more” contest. She was a jerk to me at her party, but the next morning she phoned and recalled all the cool things from that day, and finally I just went along with it and knew that was how she was sometimes, kinda mean for no reason but most of the time she looked out for me and did thoughtful things, a pattern that continues, as she’s been slinging attitude at me all this month saying I am “holding some secret back” instead of telling her what it is, and no matter how many times I tell her I have no idea what she means, she tries to go Spanish Inquisition on me to ferret whatever it is out, yet she also bought me a pretty silver necklace the other night, for no reason, just said she thought I’d like it. Shrug, that’s my big sister-ish cousin for you, the carrot and the two-by-four.

13.   My mom was an inimitable mix of rule-abiding and earthiness, and was strangely unabashed about some things, such as one day she called to me from the bathroom in this put-out tone to come get my wet swimsuit and goggles out of the tub, and when I went in she was standing there totally naked, pointing down at the things I was to pick up, no apparent awkwardness about her seven-year-old coming in while she was sky-clad waiting to take a shower,. I turned boiled-lobster red, grabbed my stuff and hustled out. Later she said, “You’re getting older, so I guess I shouldn’t have done that, should I?” I assured her it was OK, but inside I was thinking….no! But then I was an easily embarrassed kid. And for the record, my mom was only twenty-five at the time and turned the heads of plenty of men who would have given up a pinkie to be me at that moment.

14.   In 1986 the Orange Order seemed to really “show its arse” as they say over there, marching through Catholic neighborhoods and being dangerously offensive. This was mostly in the North, but things got scary enough even as far down as Connaught that my mom almost canceled us going to see her folks that summer, and although I am not sure of exact details, one night, amid flashing lights, several streets by where my grandparents lived got closed off, Gardai with bullhorns were telling people to stay inside their homes, and there was a curfew. I recall the news about the Portadown police station bombing just before we came home, and recall that dick Ian Paisley screaming on TV about wanting justice, even as he fanned the flames by saying truly derogatory things about Catholics. (How that fool died a natural death in old age defies all odds.) It was a terrible summer for The Troubles.

15.   I started second grade in Kentucky right after I got home from Ireland, and my teacher was a really nice lady whose maiden name had been the utterly Italian Battinanglio, which she used to say fast at random moments to make us giggle. Thing was, she must’ve weighed 250 pounds and stood maybe five-four. None of us ever commented on her weight, because she was so nice, but on the playground kids in other classes disparaged her for being rotund, and when we heard them we’d retaliate. One afternoon this led to an actual fistfight between a boy who sat in my row in class, Scott, and a lad from another room, and while they each got in trouble with our sadist principal, our teacher knew Scott was defending her honor, so she was extra sweet to him.

16.   My school gave eye exams a couple weeks into the academic year and I told them I’d just had one when I had my checkup, but they made me take it again during dodge ball day at recess no less, which activated my innate stubbornness, and I deliberately told the school nurse nothing but wrong answers off the chart. She was flabbergasted and wrote a note to my mom saying I qualified as legally blind and she didn’t understand how I’d fallen between the cracks for so long. My mom took one glance at the note, huffed and said, “What did you do? You take that test right tomorrow.” So I did and the nurse was annoyed with me for my “stunt.”

17.   My father was in Angola that year (at least I am 90% sure it was that year….) and while I got the impression it was not a pleasant place to be, I’d eventually find out just how unpleasant.

18.   I desperately wanted a dog, and it is one of my life’s mysteries why I was never allowed one; in fact I didn’t get my first dog til Charlotte Sometimes in 1994. But it was particularly painful in 1986 because a kid from our church had a collie who had a beautiful littler of Collie-Alsatian pups and they were only a hundred dollars each. I begged, pleaded, bargained for one, but was told no. As I said I still have never gotten a reason for why I was deprived of a dog for so long, and it’s enough to make my mind drift into the X-Files for explanations.

19.   There was a wolf spider the size of a tostado under my sheets one night, and my voice was hoarse the next day from screaming so loud.

20.   I had my First Confession that year, and it was such a big deal that the teacher practiced with us, playing the part of “Father” and we had to get the formula of Confession just right---I guess ‘cause God only listens if you say the magic words---and the rule for practice Confession was you told made up sins, nothing real. (“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned by stealing a cowboy’s horse and eating it….”) When the day came to confess for real I couldn’t think of anything I’d done wrong to tell the priest, so I made more things up and maybe went too far, because when we compared penances later in class, I found I got a lot more Hail Mary’s than most. Dana tried to get me to confess I’d had something called “oral sex” and while I didn’t know what that was, I was wise enough to know if she was keen on me telling a priest that, I was better off not following through.

21.   Halloween sucked, because my dad, who was cooler about Halloween than my mother was, was not home, my mom didn’t want to drive me to another neighborhood, and there were about twelve houses in our entire subdivision finished and occupied, with half of those not giving out candy. Trick or treating took about ten minutes, and I felt so wronged….

22.   That Thanksgiving my grandma, a really beautiful lady with a strategist’s mind, made a wordless statement to her middle child when she invited my Uncle Lark, her daughter’s mint-condition ex-husband, to dine with us at her house after my Aunt Jude (Judith) declined and said she was having Thanksgiving with her friend across town. It was a masterstroke that said everything while saying nothing, and since I liked Uncle Lark a lot more than my ever-bossy lawyer aunt, I grasped the situation even as young as I was, and thought my grandma was awesome to play politics like that. Aunt Jude got soooo mad….


23.   I didn’t like eating meat. It felt philosophically wrong, plus I just didn’t enjoy it, so I said I was going to stop eating anything that had a face. My parents said, OK, that’s cool, and for probably ten months I did stop. I am not sure why I started again, maybe because I knew it made my grandma sad when I wouldn’t try things she fixed, but it was my first touchdown into vegetarian country, where I still swing my fork today.

24.   We had an Atari 1200XL computer (128K of RAM….wowwww!!!!) hooked to our one and only TV, and my dad was a member of an Atari Users Group that met one Saturday a month in the basement of a bank off US-42, and Dad would bring home stacks of big floppy discs filled with games, and 1986 had some amazing titles, like Kronos Rift, by George Lucas’s short-lived software company; Destroy the Dark Tower; and Activision’s Olympics, which Dad and I played head-to-head a lot, but my favorite was also one of the simplest and on the surface, least impressive, called Tapper, in which you were an Old West bartender who filled up miners’ and cowboy’s mugs when they slung them down the bar. Let three glasses hit the floor and it was Game Over. Dad couldn’t figure out why such a difficult and pointless game compelled me to spend so much time on it but it ate up hours of my seven-year-old life.

25.   I turned eight in the last week of the year, and usually when I was given a present I was told, “Here’s a combination birthday and Christmas gift.” Gee, thanks! But that year my grandma told everyone to do better by me, and half the things I was given were for my birthday, distinct from Christmas. I hope that doesn’t make me sound ungrateful in a world where I realize many children don’t receive birthday presents at all, but it actually did mean a lot to feel like I was having a real birthday, even if it fell on Christmas Eve. I have long said I want to switch my birthday and celebrate on January 24th instead, but the only time I’ve come close to getting that was when I came home from Turkey in 2020, though I still think we should make it a new tradition.

And that, anyone who is reading this, was the twelvemonth we dub 1986.

2011:
1. One year in the books at my first house.  I think I ponied up for my first 60-inch hi-def tv.  Football was going to almost literally jump off the screen!
2. Deposed former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is captured and killed in the Battle of Sirte.  This is part of a massive slew of government overthrowings in or near the Middle East.
3. A massive 9.1 earthquake smashes eastern Japan, causing a resulting tsunami, and kills 15,840, making it deadlier than the Kobe earthquake 16 years prior.
4. Hundreds of protestors in Syria are killed by the government, starting the Syrian Civil War.
5. An outbreak of tornadoes in parts of the US kills 324.
6. Terrorist and al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is killed by US forces in Pakistan.
7. A protest against economic equality in Wall Street sparks Occupy Wall Street.  The protesters are forced out within a couple months.
8. The Basque separatist military organization, ETA, ends its campaign of political violence after 43 years.
9. 600-some die in a 7.2 earthquake in Turkey.
10. US troops leave Iraq, ending the Iraq War.  Insurgencies, however, continue.
11. Tropical Storm Washi kills over a thousand in the Philippines.
12. North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il dies of a heart attack/stroke.
13. SUPER BOWL XLV: Aaron Rodgers and the Packers win the franchise's 4th Super Bowl over the Steelers.  I had my folks/brother over for this.  When I have a bunch of people over I spare no expense for some good grub.  Trying to remember what we had; probably pizza, lasagna, chips/salsa, etc.
14. NBA Finals: I was thrilled to see Dirk Nowitzki win the Dallas Mavericks' first NBA title, over LeBron James and the Miami Heat, in 6 games.  Watched this from the pre-op unit I had to clean as part of my very demanding routine.
15. Was SUPER P*SSED that the Texas Rangers totally blew the World Series with a misplayed pop up that would have ended it in game 6.  The St. Louis Cardinals rally and win game 7 too.  Sucked.  That would have been the Rangers' first title (they still don't have one), while the Cards have a bajillion.  Watched it in the Post Op Surgery Unit (POPS).
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEEOZpdp9bo#) 
More later..

16. Also a bummer: the College Bowl Championship Game.  My Oregon Ducks reach their first, and fall *just* short to Cam Newton and Auburn.
17. Peyton Manning undergoes neck surgery, causing him to miss the entire 2011 season.  He is released by the Colts and joins another "horse" team-- the Denver Broncos.  Reminded me of John Elway being drafted by the Colts but playing for the Broncos instead.
18. Another bummer-- the Vancouver Canucks, still looking for their first Stanley Cup trophy, blow a 3-2 series lead over the Boston Bruins and fall in 7.  At least Boston won their first title in almost 30 years.
19. Big films: HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HOLLOWS (part 2), TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES, TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN Pt. 1, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE GHOST PROTOCOL, FAST FIVE, HANGOVER PT. 2, THE ARTIST, HUGO, IRON LADY, THE HELP, THE MUPPETS, RANGO, THOR, CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
20. TV debuts: GAME OF THRONES, AMERICAN HORROR STORY, HOMELAND, BLACK MIRROR, SHAMELESS, GRIMM, 2 BROKE GIRLS, BOB'S BURGERS, HELL ON WHEELS, WILFRED, LAST MAN STANDING, PORTLANDIA, THUNDERCATS, THE VOICE, AMAZING WORLD OF GUMBALL
21. Adele hits #1 with SOMEONE LIKE YOU and ROLLING IN THE DEEP.
22. TWO AND A HALF MEN halts production of the rest of their 8th season due to Charlie Sheen's rehab.  His contract is terminated and he is kicked off the show.
23. Gilbert Gottfried is fired by the Aflac corporation over jokes made on Twitter about the Japanese earthquake/tsunami.
A little more to come..

24. AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE changes its title to AQUA UNIT PATROL SQUAD 1.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cbjby1a-p4#)
25. THE OPRAH WINFREY SHOW ends after 25 seasons.
Bonus:
The NFL nearly has a lockout but settles on a collective bargaining agreement just in time.
Both ALL MY CHILDREN and ONE LIFE TO LIVE air their last episode, but will return 2 years later.
Hank Williams, Jr.'s MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL song is pulled after remarks on the show FOX AND FRIENDS comparing Obama to Hitler.
Saints QB Drew Brees sets a single-season NFL record for passing yards with 5,476.
An NBA lockout shortens the 2011-12 season to 66 games.
Former Penn St. football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky is found to have sexually abused children.  For covering this incident up, coach Joe Paterno and the University President are fired.

One extra entry from 2011 that I forgot:

For a team desperately trying over the years to scratch out a win over Tom Brady and the Patriots, this victory was oh-so-sweet.  Especially after trailing by 3 scores!  That put us at 3-0 to start the season!  Of course, being the Bills, the wheels would eventually fall off and the team would go 3-10 the rest of the way, including losing 8 of the last 9.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG3SyoqXnl4#)

On to 2012:
1. A massive fight in Egypt occurs between fans of 2 football teams at Port Said Stadium; 72 are killed.
2. Explosions at a munitions dump in the Congo kill over 250.
3. Vladimir Putin is elected President of Russia.  :(
4. During the film THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, a gunman opens fire in an Aurora CO theater, killing 12.
5. The Summer Olympics are held in London.  The US tops the gold and total medal tally.  Michael Phelps wins a record 22nd medal.  7 countries win their first medals (Bahrain and Grenada win golds).
6. Hurricane Sandy strikes the Atlantic coast from the Caribbean to Canada, killing 233.
7. Barack Obama is re-elected President of the US over Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
8. Typhoon Bopha slams into the Philippines, killing over 1,000.
9. Washington State is the first modern jurisdiction to legalize possession of cannabis for personal use.
10. 28 die in an elementary school shooting at Sandy Hook, CT (the shooter commits suicide).  Most of the victims were children.
11.The Mayan Calendar predicts the world will end on 12/21/12.  Didn't happen, did it?
12. Whitney Houston's legendary voice is silenced forever when she is found dead of heart disease and drug abuse, drowned in a hotel bathtub in Beverly Hills.
13. Another Super Bowl with the Patriots and Giants, and another close shocking win by the Giants.  Peyton's brother Eli Manning wins his 2nd MVP award.
14. The Los Angeles Kings win their first Stanley Cup, at the expense of my New Jersey Devils, in 6 games. :(  After a 3-0 deficit it looked pretty bad, but with 2 consecutive wins there was a faint glimmer of hope.  But game 6 was a blowout.  Watched this in the Post Op Ward.  I kept getting put in the high maintenance sections of the hospital because of my work ethic, but I would start to get really annoyed at other employees screwing off all around me, and having supervisors that didn't care would really weigh me down.
15. The Seattle Supersonics-- eh heh, I mean, the Oklahoma City Thunder-- reach their first NBA Finals!  Unfortunately they lose in 5 games to Lebron James and the Miami Heat.  I was really pulling for OKC in this one, but boy would I come to dislike Russell Westbrook.
16. World Series: The San Francisco Giants sweep the Detroit Tigers in 4 games.  I didn't really care for either team so I don't recall the Series too well.
17. One of the greatest Portland Trailblazers ever, Damian Lillard, is drafted 6th in the NBA Draft.  I had a good feeling watching his workouts, and he certainly has not disappointed.  Other notables: Anthony Davis (#1), Bradley Beal (#3), Andre Drummond (#9), Draymond Green (#35), Khris Middleton (#39).  My Blazers also selected dud Meyers Leonard at #11.
18. The Indianapolis Colts, coming off a horrid 2-14 campaign and itching for the "Next Peyton Manning" after dealing him to the Broncos, select Andrew Luck at #1 overall in the NFL Draft after a fan-named "Suck For Luck" campaign.  Subway spokesman and way-too-often injured QB Robert Griffin III was selected 2nd.  Ryan Tannehill was taken 8th.  Bobby Wagner went to the Seahawks in the 2nd round, Russell Wilson in the 3rd, Nick Foles in the 3rd, Kirk Cousins in the 4th.
19. Ha ha-- TEBOW MANIA!!!  Tim Tebow's moment in the sun comes when he wins a playoff game for the Broncos over the Steelers with an 80 yard TD pass in OT! 
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMVnLsODqqg#)
It's funny how short his tenure was but I hated the Steelers so much.  The Broncos would get annihilated in round 2 by the Patriots.
20. A gimme 32-yard kick by Baltimore to force OT against the Patriots in the AFC Championship game goes wide left.  The laces on the football were not "out", prompting fans to recall the plotline of ACE VENTURA: PET DETECTIVE.
21.TV debuts: AVATAR: THE LEGEND OF KORRA, ARROW, ELEMENTARY, CHICAGO FIRE, THE MINDY PROJECT, SWORD ART ONLINE, LONGMIRE, KEY AND PEELE, DUCK DYNASTY.
22. Funny episode of Key & Peele concerning 2 stupid valets going on about Liam Neeson:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhfHu6IHBiI#)
23. This was the first playoffs where the new OT rules were put in place: a FG on the first possession is not an automatic win-- the opponent gets possession and attempts to do the same (or get a TD).
24. Big movies: ARGO, LIFE OF PI, THE HUNGER GAMES, LINCOLN, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, DJANGO UNCHAINED, JACK REACHER (which I nickname "Jack Reacharound"), BOURNE LEGACY, THE AMAZING SPIDER MAN, DREDD, THE AVENGERS.
25. This great animated film JUSTICE LEAGUE: DOOM.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBh4HdaEE6A#)

It didn't actually ever predict the end of the world. That was just certain people misinterpreting what it did say. A bit of mistranslation combined with opportunism.

Over 7,100 views for this thread. I'm surprised.

2013:
1. 11/6/13: The hilarious and perhaps best-known episode of Key & Peele-- a football star WR goes overboard with his celebrations and gets penalized when the ref decides he went one "pelvic thrust" too far.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGJb2iLvOKE#)
2. A garment factory building in Dhaka, Bangladesh collapses.  1,134 die.
3. The Boston Marathon Bombing: 2 Islamist Chechnya-born brothers detonate 2 bombs at the Boston Marathon in Boston, MA.  2 die and 264 are injured.  
4. 245 die in a nightclub fire in Brazil.
5. Park Geyun-hye is the first woman President of South Korea.
6. This great song was released at the end of the year:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbZSe6N_BXs#)
I didn't even know of this song until the following year during the NBA Finals I was watching at my folks' house-- the song played during a break to commercial and I started to like it.
7. Federal recognition is granted to same-sex marriage in the US.
8. Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi is deposed.  Nearly 2,700 demonstrators who strongly decried the uprising are killed by security forces.
9. Typhoon Haiyan hits the Philippines and Vietnam, killing 6,241.
10. Civil War begins in the Sudan.
11. NBA Finals: Despite a 36-point blowout courtesy of the Spurs in game 2, LeBron/Wade/Bosh/etc. and the Miami Heat prevail in 7 games.
12. SUPER BOWL XLVII: My mom watched this over at my house.  Joe Flacco and the Baltimore Ravens win the franchise's 2nd title.  Later-to-be controversial QB Colin Kaepernick and the 49ers lose a close one, after a big rally falls short.  There was a major outage with the lights and it took over a half hour to restore power.  This was the first matchup of franchises that were undefeated in the Super Bowl (Baltimore 1-0, San Francisco 5-0).  This was dubbed either the Blackout Bowl or the Har-Bowl-- the latter due to the Harbaugh brothers (Jim, Jon) coaching the teams.  I kind of rooted for the Ravens because I thought Kaepernick was way overrated (turns out I was right).
13. WORLD SERIES: David Ortiz ("Big Papi") and The Boston Red Sox win the World Series over the St. Louis Cardinals in 6 games.  I remember calling the MVP the "Most Valuable Papi".
14. STANLEY CUP: The Chicago Blackhawks, who scored 2 goals in 17 seconds towards the end of game 6, win the Cup in 6 games over the Boston Bruins.
15. The Houston Astros begin play this year as an AL team (formerly NL).
16. I was happily surprised by the Memphis Grizzlies reaching their first Western Conference Finals!  They were no match for the Spurs, however, who swept them.
17. My team, the Bills, cut their long-time starting QB Ryan Fitzpatrick (who we would dearly miss for several years) and started our 1st round pick EJ Manuel.  Yuck.. I watched the first game of the season at my brother's black belt celebration at some Lebanese restaurant.  I got severe claustrophobia from all the people in attendance, but at least I got to shake Pedro Sauer's hand.  Very, very nice man!
18. This was my last full year in the Post-Op ward.  Funny how after I left someplace that my replacement has to have help to catch up on everything.. and any nurse that complains about stupid s**t realizes too late how good they had it..
19. TV debuts: 60 MINUTES SPORTS, HOUSE OF CARDS, VIKINGS, PIERS MORGAN LIVE, BATES MOTEL, HANNIBAL, HEMLOCK GROVE, TEEN TITANS GO, AVENGERS ASSEMBLE, GET OUT ALIVE WITH BEAR GRYLLS, ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK, AXE COP, SWORD ART ONLINE, HULK AND THE AGENTS OF S.M.A.S.H., TALKING BAD, PAW PATROL, SLEEPY HOLLOW, BROOKLYN NINE-NINE, THE BLACKLIST, MARVEL'S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D., THE GOLDBERGS, STEVEN UNIVERSE, and of course...
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCdfDvcDfn4#)
20. Hit movies: FROZEN, IRON MAN 3, DESPICABLE ME 2, THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG, HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE, MONSTERS UNIVERSITY,  STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS, THE WOLVERINE, THOR: THE DARK WORLD, WORLD WAR Z, EVIL DEAD, MAN OF STEEL, FAST AND FURIOUS 6, 12 YEARS A SLAVE, DALLAS BUYER'S CLUB, GRAVITY, WOLF OF WALL STREET, BLUE JASMINE, AMERICAN HUSTLE, BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR
21. Adam Scott is the first Australian to win the Masters in golf.
22. Tiger Woods wins 2 World Golf Championships but none of the Majors.
23. Product debuts: Chromecast, iOS 7, ITunes Radio, Playstation 4, Ouya, My Little Pony: Equestria Girls.
24. A meteor explodes over Chelyabinsk, Russia and causes damage to several thousand buildings and injures 1,500 people.
25. Lance Armstrong publicly admits to doping during an interview with Oprah Winfrey.

2014:
1. Moved to the Dialysis unit run, which now also includes cleaning the Chemo unit.  Busy run.  But I work by myself, and later in the day most of the staff (if not all) is gone.  Some seriously spoiled knucklehead nurses are lazy and entitled and I try to avoid talking to them.
2. The shot heard round the world!  My Portland Trailblazers FINALLY pass the 1st round of the NBA playoffs, with Damian Lillard burying a DEEP 3 to beat the Houston Rockets in game 6.  What a historic moment for the franchise.  This took me from a low (Houston scoring with less than a second left) to pure joy!  I was in the nursing station well after everyone had left, listening to this on streaming radio (I paid 10 to 20 bucks or so for a full season of listening to any game; great price!).
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mejFtEY5faU#)
Damian would later ask for the mic and shouted "RIP CITY!!!" (our team's catchphrase) to the crowd.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XG5Ylw_O5E#)
3. My Buffalo Bills' only owner in franchise history, Ralph Wilson, dies.  Partway through the season Terry Pegula takes over ownership along with his wife Kim.  The team would have a winning record for the first time in a decade but it wasn't enough to make the playoffs, extending the playoff drought to 15 years.  Coach Doug Marrone and Bills QB Kyle Orton (who took over for struggling EJ Manuel) left the team at the end of the season.  We moved up in the draft to get WR Sammy Watkins at #4, but he never quite lived up to his abilities.
4. The Seattle Seahawks make their first Super Bowl in 9 years, and WHUPPED Peyton Manning and the Broncos to win their first title, and the city's first in 35 years.  The defense known as "The Legion Of Boom" would absolutely dominate the contest and Denver was nearly shut out.  My mom (a big Seahawk fan) and I watched it at my house.  Though I get sick of hearing about the Seahawks all the time (living in the Pacific NW) I was happy they got their first title.  It was such a whuppin' that the first score came on Denver's very first offensive play (a snap that Peyton wasn't ready for and resulted in a Seattle safety)!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgfkFcVG8zc#)
5. NBA Finals: The San Antonio Spurs get sweet revenge on the Miami Heat from last year's Finals loss and beat them in 5 games.  This was the Spurs' 5th championship and I remember really hoping they'd tie the Bulls with 6.
6. Stanley Cup: The Los Angeles Kings win their 2nd Stanley Cup, this time against the NY Rangers in 5 games.  I remember liking the San Jose Sharks team (mostly due to the cool logo of the shark biting through a hockey stick), but they had the ignominious dishonor of leading the Kings in the playoffs 3-0 and losing in 7 games.  In other news, the Columbus Blue Jackets notched their franchise's first playoff game victory.
7. The brutal terrorist regime ISLAMIC STATE OF IRAQ AND SYRIA (ISIS) takes over territories in Iraq and Syria.  They behead 3 Americans in the region and President Obama orders airstrikes and sends in troops to help Iraq and Syria retake their territories.  I remember the hilarious animated show ARCHER had a spy agency called ISIS, and had to stop name-dropping it.
8. Russia annexes Crimea, overtaking the Crimean capital under Putin's orders.
9. Outbreaks of Ebola begin in West Africa.  Over 11,000 die.
10. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappears over the Gulf of Thailand.  It has never been found.
11. The 2014 Winter Olympics are held in Sochi, Russia.  Russia wins the most medals and is tied for the most golds with Norway.
12. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych is ousted by the Ukrainian Parliament after days of unrest leading to deaths in Kyiv.
13. Korean ferry MV Sewol sinks, killing 304.
14. President Obama places sanctions on Russia for their annexation of Crimea.
15. Militants kill 300 in two cities in Nigeria.
16. An apartment building collapses in Pyongyang, N. Korea, killing almost 500.
17. Militant group ISIL kills 1,566 Shia Iraqi Air Force cadets in Tikrit, Iraq.
18. Israel strikes the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip with missiles and a ground attack, killing over 2,000 Palestinians.
19. Over 4,000 die in ISIL attacks in Irag's Sinjar district.
20. Riots erupt in Ferguson, MO after black teen Michael Brown is shot to death by white police officer Darren Wilson. 
21. The Pakistani Taliban shoots up an army school in Peshawar, killing 145.
22. Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501 crashes into the Java Sea, killing all 162.
23. Hit movies: BIRDMAN, JOHN WICK, CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER, MALEFICENT, AMERICAN SNIPER, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, THE HOBBIT: BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES, BIG HERO 6, X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION, HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINJAY PT. 1, LEGO MOVIE, AMAZING SPIDER MAN 2
24. TV debuts: TRUE DETECTIVE (oh man.. I was mesmerized by Alexandra Daddario's topless scenes), THE FLASH, FARGO, GOTHAM, SILICON VALLEY, THE 100, HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER, BLACK SAILS, OUTLANDER, BOJACK HORSEMAN, BLACK-ISH, TURN: WASHINGTON'S SPIES, THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JIMMY FALLON, NCIS: NEW ORLEANS.
25. Famous deaths: Juanita Moore, Saul Zaentz, Russell Johnson, Riz Ortolani, Pete Seeger, Maximillian Schell, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Shirley Temple, Sid Caesar, Harold Ramis, James Rebhorn, David Brenner, Mickey Rooney, Bob Hoskins, Farley Mowat, H.R. Giger, Maya Angelou, Rik Mayall, Ruby Dee, Eli Wallach, Casey Kasem, Tony Gwynn, Bobby Womack, Meshach Taylor, Paul Mazursky, Tommy Ramone, Johnny Winter, James Garner, Mehahem Golan, Robin Williams, Lauren Bacall, Don Pardo, Richard Attenborough, Joan Rivers, Richard Kiel, Bob Crewe, Polly Bergen, George Hamilton IV, Jan Hooks, Acker Bilk, Glen A. Larson, Jimmy Ruffin, Mike Nichols, Pat Quinn, PD James, Mary Ann Mobley, Joe Cocker, Joseph Sargent, Christine Cavanaugh.

2015:
1. The Boko Haram terrorist group kills over 2,000 in Nigeria.
2. The Seattle Seahawks return to the Super Bowl, primed to repeat.  They very nearly win it at the end against the New England Patriots, but one of the more questionable calls in Super Bowl history results in an interception right at the goal line.  WHY would you not feed your power running back?
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7rPIg7ZNQ8#)
My mom was over and we had Chinese takeout (I sometimes actually think it's an excellent Super Bowl dish) brought back for the big game.  I remember the lady at the counter talking about the game with me, and I predicted a 4-point Patriots win, which actually happened.  Seattle would soon after lose key players to Free Agency and the team that really should have been a dynasty was done for.
3. My Bills, though they would still miss the playoffs, made a FANTASTIC trade by shipping promising young LB Kiko Alonso to the Eagles for star RB LeSean McCoy.  He was fantastic for Buffalo for a handful of years.  We picked up QB Tyrod Taylor, who replaced the departed Kyle Orton, and was serviceable at least.  And to replace departed coach Doug Marrone came fat, bombastic Rex Ryan who helped steer 2 Jets teams to the AFC Championship.  Not so successful here.
4. The first NFL Draft not to take place in New York is held in Chicago.  Jameis Winston is taken first, and Oregon Duck Heisman winner (the first Duck to do so) Marcus Mariota is taken 2nd.  My man Stefon Diggs is taken in the 5th round somehow.
5. One team that could exceed the Bills for playoff futility: the Toronto Blue Jays.  Well, they finally got back to the playoffs.. not only doing so, but winning the AL East!  Some great players included Josh Donaldson, Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion, and Russell Martin.  The first round of the playoffs had us matched up against the Texas Rangers, who had gone to the World Series a couple times recently.  Punk Roughned Odor infamously punch Bautista in the face earlier in the season, but we got the last laugh, especially being down 2-0 in the series (both losses at home) before rallying to take game 7.  The Jays would lose the AL Championship to the Kansas City Royals in 6.
6. Related to #5 but I'll post it as a separate entry: The 7th inning of game 5 in the Texas series will live on in Toronto Blue Jays fans' heads forever.  In the top half, catcher Russell Martin threw the ball back to the pitcher, but it hit the tip of the batter's bat.  Odor at 3rd base ran home.  The ball was initially declared dead but during a lengthy review, the Blue Jays fans dumped beer cans and bottles onto the field and they weren't any happier when the run was allowed.  This gave Texas the lead.  Then the Jays have a monster rally off the bat of Jose "Joey Bats" Bautista (and helped by numerous Ranger errors).  I was screaming with joy!  Bautista's authoritative bat flip would endure in the minds of Jays fans forever.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V8W6_bD7bE#)
7. The Golden State Warriors win their first NBA title in 40 years.  Dynamic Duo Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson beat the Cleveland Cavaliers (who got LeBron James back) in 6 games.  I remember the Clippers getting really good this year and wanting to see them make the Finals.  They led the Rockets 3 games to 1 in the Semifinals (and they had just knocked off the defending champs, the Spurs), and then they lost 3 straight.  I watched the last game at a bar with my brother and his friends before seeing MAD MAX: FURY ROAD and was really p*ssed at the outcome.
8. The Kansas City Royals win their 2nd World Series title, in 5 games over the New York Mets.
9. STANLEY CUP: The Chicago Blackhawks beat the Tampa Bay Lightning in 6 games.
10. Jordan Spieth wins the Masters and US Open in golf.  Zach Johnson wins the British Open and Jason Day wins the PGA Championship.
11. ISIL demolishes several ancient city sites in Iraq.
12. Germanwings Flight 9525 is deliberately crashed into the French Alps, killing all 150.
13. Military terrorist organization al-Shabaab kills 148 at a college in Kenya.
14. A 7.8 earthquake in Nepal kills 9,018 across Nepal, India, China and Bangladesh.  A later 2nd quake kills 153.
15. ISIL fighters kill over 220 in Syria.
16. At least 2,200 are killed during a pilgrimage stampede in Mecca.
17. Almost 400 die in an earthquake affecting Pakistan, Afghanistan and India.
18. Celebrity deaths: Stuart Scott, Donna Douglas, Little Jimmy Dickens, Rod Taylor, Anita Ekberg, King Abdullah, Louis Jourdan, Leslie Gore, Leonard Nimoy, Anthony Mason, Mike Porcaro, Jorgen Ingmann, Cynthia Lennon, James Best, Percy Sledge, Jayne Meadows, Ben E. King, B.B. King, Anne Meara, Betsy Palmer, Christopher Lee, James Last, Ron Moody, James Horner, Dick Van Patten, Patrick Macnee, Omar Sharif, Alex Rocco, Theodore Bikel, Lynne Anderson, Rowdy Roddy Piper (my brother met him, said he was a really nice guy), Cilla Black, Yvonne Craig, Justin Wilson, Wes Craven, Dean Jones, Martin Milner, Moses Malone, Jackie Collins, Yogi Berra, Maureen O'Hara, Flip Saunders, Gunnar Hansen, Allen Toussaint, Phil Taylor, Scott Weiland, Robert Loggia, Dolph Schayes, Haskell Wexler, Lemmy, Natalie Cole, Wayne Rogers.
19. UPTOWN FUNK is the song of the year:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPf0YbXqDm0#)
20. TV debuts: EMPIRE, DAREDEVIL, KILL LA KILL, the awesome BETTER CALL SAUL (here's one of the best scenes in the series; Saul/Jimmy tries to reason with a crazed cartel lord over the lives of two skateboarding grifters)..
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob9QOxocDnM#)
..SCHITT'S CREEK, THE LATE LATE SHOW WITH JAMES CORDEN, FEAR THE WALKING DEAD, NARCOS, THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, ASH VS. EVIL DEAD, JESSICA JONES, THE LION GUARD, and the awesome F IS FOR FAMILY. (NSFW language)
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2AmK5QVtbg#)
21. At MAD MAX: FURY ROAD we sat at the very front because I wanted to be right there with all the action.  However, I got numerous closeups of Immortan Joe's HEAVILY pregnant wife shoved right in my face.. ick!  My brother and his friends laughed at me squirming.  Otherwise a pretty cool flick.
22. Other top movies: STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS, JURASSIC WORLD (kind of liked it; saw it with my mom), AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, THE REVENANT, FURIOUS 7, HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINJAY PT. 2, MINIONS, INSIDE OUT, FIFTY SHADES OF GREY, KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE, TERMINATOR GENISYS, ANT MAN, PIXELS, MARTIAN, BRIDGE OF SPIES, PEANUTS MOVIE, CREED.
More later..

23. Compendium of 2015 commercials:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pZI5pkWAh4#)
24. My Oregon Ducks play for the national championship again, and again fall short, this time to Ohio State, this time under the College Football Playoff system.
25. 2 French Muslim terrorist brothers kill 12 office workers at a French newspaper office of the weekly magazine "Charlie Hebdo" in Paris.

Memories of 1985: Festina lente.

1.   In half-day kindergarten, we watched President Reagan take his second oath of office. We also that year swapped classrooms for a day with kids in a Lutheran school down the road. We got their teacher and classroom and they got ours. They had this wicked-cool set of plastic dinosaurs I envied, sigh.

2.   When my mom played David Bowie’s song When I’m Five, I’d get mad because I wasn’t five anymore, I was six.  “You used to like it,” she challenged. “Yeah, when I was five!”

3.   When it was in the teens-below that January, we stacked cardboard boxes in front of our windows because my dad said trapped air was a good insulator. The old furnace in our townhouse had to run all day and night to keep the internal temperature at about fifty.

4.   When we were living in our Montgomery townhouse, word got out that Bob Hope, in town for a celebrity golf event, was going to be eating at his favorite restaurant in the Midwest, the Montgomery Inn, which was within walking distance of where we lived. Mom and I strolled down to see him get out of his car and wave and walk in for lunch. The restaurant still has pictures of him on the wall from all the times he’d eat there, and the story was Mr. Hope would not only have ribs from the Inn shipped to him in California, he’d buy cases for the USO to send to soldiers overseas. Heck of a guy, him.

5.   That Memorial Day at my grandparents’ house, my thirteen year old cousin Adam told me my family was so poor our grandma was supporting us. I told him that wasn’t true, my dad worked, and he laughed and said I was as stupid as I was impoverished. (A definite exaggeration on the second part….) I didn’t know where money came from, I just figured life was the way it was, but in truth our grandma actually was helping us out while my dad was in school. (I noticed she bought most of my clothes, for instance.) Getting married and then raising a kid when you’re still in college, like my dad did, probably wasn’t a road map to immediate prosperity, but when you’re twenty and you fall in love with a girl you meet on a summertime overseas trip, well, what else can you do when the heart wants what it wants? When my dad got his Masters around this time, he went into a job that greatly boosted the quality of our lives, leading to new cars and a new house, though the disdain my rich cousin tossed at me that Memorial Day was the first of many slights he’d dole out over the years, (he called me “Pest”) always looking down on me and my family and calling us “the poor ones.”


6.   I distinctly remember my dad talking to my grandma about Mikhail Gorbachev, and saying to her, “With policies like he’s got, he’s going to have an ‘accident’.”

7.   I got chicken pox that spring. My grandpa had picked me up from kindergarten by coincidence one day and I was going to go spend the weekend with him and Grandma, but I didn’t feel so well in his car. When I got to his house, my grandma had dinner ready and I didn’t want any of it, and while my grandparents and my cousin Alison, who was also staying over, were in eating, I hurled in the parlor on my grandma’s Persian rug, and Grandpa took me home. I broke out with bumps everywhere and stayed off school for almost two weeks, the most I’d miss til my bizarre brush with death in tenth grade.

8.   I recall Live Aid happening as a big deal but didn’t watch it because we didn’t have cable. I remember hearing Queen getting rave reviews for what was later dubbed the greatest live rock performance of the 20th century.

9.   I do remember hearing We Are the World playing on the radio all year though, and I thought it was a dumb, overplayed song.

10.   I was in a public restroom with my mom washing my hands when I saw a penny lying on the floor, and wanted it, but my mom said no, it’s dirty, I’ll give you a different penny, but even when I had her penny I still tried to go for the one on the floor.

11.   I got “grounded” from swimming for a week that summer because I jumped off the ten-foot diving board which Grandpa had beside his pool back then and which I wasn’t supposed to be on. You’d think they’d have been happy I survived and proud of my courage, but noooo.

12.   Everybody in America but me saw Back to the Future. I still have never seen all of it. Ah, I swam against the current, I guess.

13.   Before Mom and I went to see my maternal grandparents that summer, she and Dad and I were in New York for a few days and I went to the top of the World Trade Center for the first time. The elevator was soooo fast my ears popped. We could look out and see they were assembling scaffolding for repairing the Statue of Liberty, which was apparently in poor shape at the time.

14.   I caught snippets of outraged talk that summer about a Belfast to Dublin train being blown up, and my maternal grandfather said they should keep their problems “up north.” It was mostly nice going over in summer but especially when I was a small child there were bad things going on in the background of life, like bombings and kidnappings spoken about on the news, rarely happening where my family lived, but touching them, as it tangentially touched everyone on either side of the border in Ireland, and being aware of this going on was a sort of foundational memory from my childhood. When I was in college in the east and certain a***oles from Boston would swagger around with their IRA tattoos and beer-powered boasts about “supporting the revolution” I would get disgusted because they were as clueless as children about the misery that insane conflict brought to people’s lives.

15.   That was the summer Bob Geldoff somehow became a demigod in Irish reckoning, even if he did cozy up a bit too chummily with Princes Diana for homegrown tastes. To me he’s mostly just Pink Floyd, though I also don’t like Mondays much.

16.   When I began first grade that fall, “all-day school,” I said I didn’t like lunchtime, and was told I had to go anyway, so even that young I learned the trick of fake-eating, which I have so often used in my life. I’d have much rather been allowed to go to the library during that half-hour, since being around so many people eating grossed me out. It can still weird me, honestly, but I deal with it.

17.   I don’t know that I ever had a strictly normal life compared to most kids, but that fall was when two things happened that left my life forever different from almost everyone else’s. The first was my parents, my grandparents on both sides, all my cousins, my aunts, my aunts’ current and past husbands, some of our neighbors, my dad’s friends, the priest at our parish, the place my dad used to work, got deeply investigated, and young as I was I got told all these intrusive things, like if someone asks you questions about your dad, tell immediately. If anyone seems to be following you, tell immediately. If someone wants to know what your dad does for a living, tell them he’s a consultant, then report on whoever asked. A consultant, yeah. Um, I’m pretty sure my dad was doing something for the fiddle gummit, y’know?

18.   The second change that made everything different from then on was for the first time I was ID’d as (blah, sorry) “exceptionally intelligent” with the fact I was reading at a middle-school level particularly impressing the overlords of Catholic education, and was put into a special program that met an hour a day, me and a few other poor suckers It was the beginning of a lot of annoying and frequently awful special programs I’d be part of that I wouldn’t recommend for any child, because it has more disadvantages than benefits to be branded that way, and the pressure they put on you is like living on the bottom of the sea.

19.   On September 11th, Pete Rose broke Ty Cobb’s all-time baseball hit record, 4,192 hits, leading to a long standing ovation and a live call from President Reagan, amid citywide fireworks and the honking of car horns for thirty miles around. The path to the record was closely-followed and counted-down for weeks all around town by radio and TV and a number of billboards around the city, a tally each day on our class chalkboard, even by a banner pulled by a plane. Since Pete Rose is now banned for life from baseball and not allowed in the Hall of Fame, the Reds put a rose garden outside their stadium, with 4,256 baseballs mounted on a wall, marking the number of hits Rose got in his career. But since baseball won’t allow mention of Rose, that’s a coincidence, I’m sure.

20.   I remember Rock Hudson dying of AIDS, and finding out that basically AIDS was a disease “certain people” caught, as it was explained to me, and I remember thinking how horrible a thing that was to be sick like that, and yet I noticed people were weird about AIDS, either making unfathomable jokes about it or going to paranoid lengths to shun it. “Never touch somebody’s blood if you see it, because it might have AIDS,” my mom told me, making me wonder why on earth she thought I’d have touched blood anyway. I didn’t grasp most of the connotations of the stigma about the HIV-AIDS plague in the mid-‘80s, just saw some actor sick with it and heard he was dead, and it seemed ghastly enough to leave an impression on me even amid a general public feeling then that people who got AIDS deserved it.

21.   I religiously watched MacGyver and thought it was a great show, and it seemed totally realistic to me at the time that someone could use a toothpick and a shoestring to hotwire a helicopter. I also liked the Twilight Zone revival, but the Serling series, which I’d watched with my dad since I was practically a toddler, was a million times better. While we watched one night my dad told me Rod Serling was only 5’4” and considered too short to be a paratrooper, but his determination to be one during WWII impressed his commander so much the rules were bent and Serling qualified. “That shows how important determination is,” Dad told me.

22.   A year before Saturday mornings at 10:30 would belong to Pee-wee Herman----no arguing, no wiggle room, that half-hour was his alone---I loved Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. Didn’t know it yet but it was also the start of my long appreciation of Tim Burton films.

23.   Although I’d already been riding a bike for a couple years, I got this amazing thing called a pogo-ball, a sort of pogo stick magically morphed into ball form, and for a little while actually let my bike sit around while I jumped everywhere on this thing, defying predictions I was going to trip and chip my teeth.

24.   For my seventh birthday that December I got a membership to The Doctor Who Fan Club of America, which came with this pin-on diamond-shaped thing of wonder and mystery called a “thermodynamic badge” that actually changed colors while you wore it, cycling through a rainbow of swirled hues, like a giant mood ring. It was the most awesome thing I think I had ever seen, and I wore that sucker for years.

25.   I spent the night with my grandma on New Year’s Eve and for the first time in my life I got to stay up past midnight and watch the ball come down in New York, and we drank fizzy apple juice for a toast to 1986, and she told me we were only fourteen years away from the 21st century, which she said, would “be here before we know it.”  I told her I’d miss the 20th century, and she said, “But think of all the nice things you’ll do in the 21st, Dollbaby.” I only wish she could have been here for it as well.

I don’t know if I can summon enough memories for 1984, but there you go, that was 1985….

2016:

1. It sure was nice to see my Blue Jays starting to get really good.  Last year was their first playoff appearance in 22 years, and they managed to get to the AL Championship!  Ditto for this year!  Though they didn't win their division this time.  They had a one game playoff with the Baltimore Orioles in a wildcard matchup.  Things were tight and the game went to extra innings.  In the bottom of the 11th O's manager Buck Showalter went with Ubaldo Jiminez instead of Cy Young candidate Zach Britton.  The decision led to this:
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Boy was I hootin' and hollerin' in the Chemo unit (thankfully all patients were gone).  This put them in the AL Division series with Texas-- a rematch of last year-- and we swept jerkface Roughned Odor and the Rangers, putting us again in the AL Championship series, this time against Cleveland, which we lost in 5.  Ah well.  The future is bright with our current team as of 2022.
2. The longest-suffering fans in nearly all of sports, the Chicago Cubs, finally got their due in the World Series with a seven-game win over the Cleveland Indians.  Yes, the same team that is now called the "Guardians" (ugh).  108 years was the longest championship drought ever!
3. I remember thinking it would be cool to call the Super Bowl "L" for 50, looking like "loser".  Well, the NFL decided to just call it Super Bowl 50.  At any rate, the Carolina Panthers (who went 15-1 in the regular season!) made their 2nd Super Bowl, this time with Cam Newton.  They didn't win this one either, as Peyton Manning and the Broncos won the franchise their 3rd Super Bowl, 24-10.  When a player gets an MVP and I didn't think they deserved it, it really annoys me.  Fortunately they didn't give it to Peyton, and he didn't play all that great (this was his last season).  One of the more memorable plays was Cam Newton backing away from the pile of players trying to recover a fumble.  I remember watching the big game at my folks' house.  The actual MVP, Von Miller, now plays for my Bills!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytwAalH7vec#)
4. NBA FINALS: Wow-- the city of Cleveland had been yearning for some kind of title for the past 50 some years-- the Indians and Browns certainly had opportunities over the years-- but the CAVALIERS??  Wow.. LeBron James helps knock off the mighty Golden State Warriors in 7 games with some late offense.  This Warriors team had dethroned the Chicago Bulls for best regular season record at 73-9!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgVOgGLtPtc&t=497s#)
5. STANLEY CUP: The San Jose Sharks reach their first Stanley Cup Finals!  Unfortunately the Pittsburgh Penguins spoil their party in 6 games.
6. This was one of the more blah NBA Drafts in recent memory.  Ben Simmons went #1, followed by Brandon Ingram (#2) and Jaylen Brown (#3).  Others: Domantas Sabonis (#11), Pascal Siakham (#27) and Dejounte Murray (#29).  Undrafted: Fred Van Vleet.
7. The 2016 Summer Olympics are held in Rio De Janeiro.  The US wins the most golds and most medals overall. 
8. The mosquito-transferred Zika Virus outbreak is announced by the World Health Organization.
9. Ex-Bosnian-Serb leader Radovan Karadzic is sentenced to 40 years in prison for crimes against humanity and genocide during the Bosnian War.
10. I think my brother moved out of my house this year.  He got his GF pregnant and figured I didn't want kids running around my house (he was right).  I had our mutual friend Jake move in.  Kinda weird guy but we got along fine due to our love of 80s nostalgia.
11. A 6.2 earthquake kills almost 300 in Italy.
12. Business tycoon/former tv personality Donald J. Trump is elected the 45th President of the US over former Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton.
13. The VSV-EBOV vaccine is discovered to be from 70 to 100% effective against the Ebola virus.
14. A Russian Defense Ministry jet crashes into the Black Sea, killing all 92.
15. My brother got married to his GF at a restaurant his friend owned.  I hated to have to dress up, let alone be at a wedding.  At least we got to watch the NFL playoffs a bit.  I watched Minnesota lose yet another heartbreaker as Blair Walsh missed a gimme FG vs. Seattle in the Wild Card game.  And hanging out with my other brother and nephew is definitely twisted entertainment, which makes family functions more tolerable.
16. A gunman claiming to be for the Islamic State kills 49 at a gay nightclub in Orlando.
17. The first female leader for China/Taiwan is Tsai Ing-Wen.
18. Hit movies: ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY, SUICIDE SQUAD, DEADPOOL, THE HANDMAIDEN, MOANA, STAR TREK BEYOND, ZOOTOPIA, X-MEN APOCALYPSE, SAUSAGE PARTY, DOCTOR STRANGE, CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR, 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE, MOONLIGHT, LA LA LAND, FENCES, GET OUT, THE SHAPE OF WATER, COCO, THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBING, MO.
19. The film GHOSTBUSTERS is re-invented with an all-female team of Ghostbusters.  It gets overwhelmingly negative reviews.
20. TV debuts: Westworld, Stranger Things, American Crime Story, Preacher, This Is Us, Atlanta, Fuller House.
21. 2016 Super Bowl commercials:
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22. A little bit of MADDEN NFL '16:
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23. My Bills were a mess this year.. thankfully they fired coach Rex Ryan and his defensive coach brother Rob Ryan.  The final score allowed in the finale vs. the Jets was so laughably incompetent.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6v5olbgirw#)
24. As 2016 draws to a close on Dick Clark's New Years Rockin' Eve, Mariah Carey has difficulty with trying to lip synch to one of her songs and has technical difficulties as well..
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJKooIkqHRI#)
25. I remember being bummed that my Portland Trailblazers had to take on the tough Los Angeles Clippers, with Blake Griffin and Chris Paul.. but in a stroke of irony the OTHER team suffered through injury problems (the Blazers' usual hangup as a franchise), as both Griffin and Paul got hurt and the Blazers would capitalize, winning the series in 6 games!  Mason Plumlee was great down the stretch.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YYiKz_GATA#)

2017:
1. The International Olympic Committee bans Russia from the 2018 Winter Olympics for its state-sponsored doping.
2. A gunman dressed as Santa Claus kills 39 at an Istanbul nightclub.
3. Donald J. Trump officially becomes the first elected US President to neither have been a political office holder nor an attorney general. 
4. This woman reacting to Trump's election became an oft-used meme:
(https://i.imgflip.com/1imw8y.jpg)
5. ISIS and ISIL terrorists claim 30 lives in Manchester and London, England.
6. Former FBI Director Rpbert Mueller conducts an investigation into the possibility of Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential Election.
7. The US Government announces it will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords.
8. ISIL destroys the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul, Iraq.
9. The cholera outbreak in Yemen hits its peak with 2,000 deaths.
10. The UN continues to impose sanctions on North Korea for their nuclear arms testing.
11. Twelve years after Hurricane Katrina hit the southern US, Hurricane Harvey is just about as destructive, hitting the Houston area and causing massive flooding, with over 100 deaths.
12. The Cassini-Huygens probe is the first spacecraft to enter Saturn's atmosphere.
13. Hurricane Maria strikes the Caribbean area, causing over 3,000 deaths.
14. A shooter at a country music concert in Las Vegas kills 60.  He later commits suicide.
15. A truck bombing blast in Mogadishu, Somalia kills nearly 600 (!).
16. 26 die in a shooting at a Sutherland Springs, TX church.
17. 305 die in a Mosque attack in Sinai, Egypt.
18. The Iraqi military frees its territories from ISIS control.
19. SUPER BOWL LI: Oh man, was I pulling for the Atlanta Falcons to win the Super Bowl, and they were well on their way.. with a 28-3 lead in the 3rd quarter, they somehow totally blew it and Tom Brady and the Patriots came all the way back to win in overtime-- the first Super Bowl to require an extra session.   I think both brothers were over, my folks too, at my house with a big ol' spread as usual.  I think my sis and her hubby and maybe my nephew and his friend were over too. 
20. WORLD SERIES: The Houston Astros win their first World Series title, in 7 games over the LA Dodgers.  MVP George Springer now plays for my Blue Jays!
21. NBA FINALS: A rematch with the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers gives the Warriors a measure of revenge for the last Finals upset.  Warriors win in 5.  The Warriors swept my Blazers in the first round; one of those games I watched at a fancy steak restaurant I took my mom to for Mother's Day.
22. STANLEY CUP: The Nashville Predators made their first Stanley Cup appearance!  Alas, the Pittsburgh Penguins win their 5th cup, in 6 games.
23. Wow-- My Bills did something they hadn't been able to do for 18 years: MAKE THE DAMN PLAYOFFS!!!  This was such a big deal to the franchise-- and even though we took care of business on our end on the final day of the 2017 calendar year by beating the Dolphins, we STILL had to hope and pray that Cincinnati would somehow beat the Baltimore Ravens on the road to make it.  Things looked bleak.. but..
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMdxpMXFR04#)
The Bengals would go on to win, propelling the Bills into the playoffs vs. the Jaguars.  Kyle Williams, playing his last season, would emotionally hug his kids in the locker room as the team celebrated.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uwIaXfo1xo#)
I fell to my knees and screamed in joy as I watched the end of the Bengals/Ravens game. 
24. Movies: STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI, WONDER WOMAN, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, VOL. 2, IT, SPIDER MAN HOMECOMING, THOR: RAGNAROK (excellent, hilarious movie-- my brother and I went and had a blast), JUSTICE LEAGUE, GET OUT, LOGAN (saw at the old Laurelhurst Theater with my brother Erik and his friends), ALIEN COVENANT, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES, ATOMIC BLONDE, THE KINGSMEN: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE, BLADE RUNNER 2049, HAPPY DEATH DAY, THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MO, THE SHAPE OF WATER, I TONYA.
25. TV debuts: DRAGON BALL SUPER, RIVERDALE, MARVEL'S IRON FIST, BEAT SHAZAM, CASTLEVANIA, CARPOOL KARAOKE, THE ORVILLE, STAR TREK DISCOVERY, THE GOOD DOCTOR, DYNASTY, VAMPIRINA, THE INGRAHAM ANGLE.

2018:
1. NFL DRAFT: My Bills pick the franchise QB they've been looking for, for a LONG time-- the awesome big, strong-armed and mobile Josh Allen at #7.  I can't believe I was actually hoping for Josh Rosen, who sputtered right off the bat.  Other big names: Baker Mayfield (#1), running back Saquon Barkley (#2), Bradley Chubb (#5), Minkah Fitzpatrick (#11), Tremaine Edmunds (#16, also to my Bills), Lamar Jackson (#32), Nick Chubb (#35), Shaquille Leonard (#36), Courtland Sutton (#40), Harold Landry (#41).
2. My Bills had bumps in the road on their way to a blah season at 6-10, but Josh Allen (who took over from the awful Nate Peterman) had some great highlights.  This vault over a Vikings defender with a shocking rout on the road made the whole league take notice:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErdNYs6Ea-4#)
3. This was the year my brother and my nephew and I had a bet on who would have the worst record of our 3 teams (Bears, Bills, Lions).  The loser would have to eat a Balut egg (duck embryo-- a Filipino delicacy); we couldn't find the exact thing but it was close enough.  My Bills beat the Lions to get the edge so my nephew had to gag on it; he couldn't finish. (NSFW language)
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8Yff3rqXLE#)
4. My brother is full of silly ideas (among other things)-- this Christmas he had me pose in a ninja outfit in all sorts of karate-type poses for a calendar for my family members.  Though by this point I was well past my martial arts shape.  Such a dingus.  He brought a stuffed dinosaur and had me put it in a headlock for one picture.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8Yff3rqXLE#)
5. SUPER BOWL LII: The Philadelphia Eagles win their first Super Bowl title!  They knock off the mighty Tom Brady and the Patriots.  Nick Foles wins MVP.  Most everyone was over at my place; brothers, nephew, sis and her hubby, and my folks.  Can't remember what food I made for the occasion.  But I certainly enjoyed the outcome.
6. NBA FINALS: The Golden State Warriors win in yet another matchup with the Cleveland Cavaliers, this one in a sweep.  I remember there being such promise for my Portland Trailblazers in the playoffs with their first round matchup against the New Orleans Pelicans-- and they promptly s**t the bed in a sweep.
7. WORLD SERIES: A bit of controversy looms over the Series that the Boston Red Sox won in 5 games over the LA Dodgers-- it was said that the Sox stole signs from their opponents during the season.  This would continue to be an issue for Major League Baseball in later seasons, notably with the Houston Astros.
8. STANLEY CUP: The awesome Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals win their first Stanley Cup Championship, against a team playing in its very first year of existence, the Vegas Golden Knights, in 5 games.
9. Chinese scientists create the first monkey clones.
10. The 2018 Winter Olympics are held in Pyeongchang, South Korea.  Norway nabs the most medals and ties with Germany for most golds.
11. President Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to discuss nuclear disarmament.
12. 17 students and staff are shot to death by a former student at a high school in Parkland, FL.
13. Vladimir Putin is elected to a 4th term as President of Russia.
14. A protest against gun violence is conducted in several cities internationally, called March For Our Lives.
15. A sarin chemical attack in Syria kills over 70.
16. 257 die in an Algerian Air Force plane crash.
17. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are wed at St. George's Chapel in England.
18. Hundreds die in heavy flooding in Japan.
19. Over 500 die in an earthquake in Indonesia.
20. Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg protests outside the Swedish Parliament over action on climate change.
21. An earthquake/tsunami in Indonesia kills over 4,000.  Another tsunami later in the year kills over 400.
22. Hit movies: AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM (which I thought was awful and saw at the theater with my brother and nephew), BUMBLEBEE, AQUAMAN, SPIDERMAN: INTO THE SPIDERVERSE, BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY, VENOM, BLACK PANTHER, INCREDIBLES 2, HALLOWEEN, DEADPOOL 2, GREEN BOOK, A STAR IS BORN, A QUIET PLACE
23. TV Debuts: COBRA KAI, 9-1-1, YELLOWSTONE, CELEBRITY BIG BROTHER, CRAIG OF THE CREEK, THE LAST O.G., CELEBRITY UNDERCOVER BOSS, DALLAS & ROBO, DR. PIMPLE POPPER, BIG CITY GREENS, DISENCHANTMENT, TOTAL DRAMARAMA, TRANSFORMERS: CYBERVERSE, MAGNUM P.I.
24. Some 2018 commercials:
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25. The College Football National Championship is decided in overtime, in a tight contest with Alabama besting Florida 26-23.  It's the first National Championship to go to overtime.

2019:
1. First off-- my Blazers made their first Western Conference Finals in almost 20 years!  What a way to start things off.. Damian Lillard, the face of the current franchise (and one of their best players off all-time), sends the jawing Oklahoma City Thunder home in 5 games in round one with a near half court 3  over Paul George.  The Blazers crowd was absolutely electric in pre-pandemic form and to see Dame's teammates just mob him like that was so heartwarming.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-M3x-eZpV8#)
2. Also, this ending of the 2nd round where we took out the mighty Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets thanks to CJ McCollum's heroics:
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Unfortunately the Warriors swept us in the Western Conference Finals but it was still a sweet ride.
3. My roommate moved out to live with his sister (after his girlfriend died) and I was all by my lonesome (fine by me!).  I had a few more home improvements to make, and then I'd prep the house for a prospective renter or two.
4. My nephew and I grudgingly hopped on board for another crazy scheme dreamed up by my brother-- this was a homemade Christmas CD for my folks and numerous other people that wanted a copy.  Very silly; some of the stuff was actually pretty good (like my Burl Ives or Jimmy Durante and brother's Elvis) and some was terribly cringe.  That's my living room and me in the middle in the  video.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT5PsvNv1uY#)
5. Almost 250 die in a mine tailings dam break in Brazil.
6. President Trump and Korean leader Kim Jong-un meet for a summit again, this time in Vietnam.
7. Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 (Boeing 737) crashes shortly after takeoff; all 157 die.
8. Cyclone Idai crashes into southern Africa, killing over 1,000.
9. ISIL's final controlled territory is liberated.
10. Islamist bomb attacks kill over 250 in Sri Lanka.
11. Sudan President Omar al-Bashir is deposed in a coup after 30 years in office.
12. Boris Johnson becomes Prime Minister of the UK.
13. Monsoon flooding kills at least 227 across India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
14. Houthi militants use drones to attack oil refineries in Saudi Arabia, causing damage and production delays.  The US sends troops and military equipment to help the Saudis protect their refineries.
15. US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi begins an impeachment inquiry against Trump.
16. Greta Thunberg leads another climate change protest in Montreal with PM Justin Trudeau.
17. ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is killed during a US Special Forces operation.
18. The Taliban agrees to a temporary cease-fire in Afghanistan.
19. Protests over an extradition bill and democratic reform sweep Hong Kong.
20. SUPER BOWL LIII: The New England Patriots tie the Pittsburgh Steelers for most Super Bowl victories at six win a 13-3 victory over the LA Rams.  This would be Tom Brady's last Super Bowl appearance as a New England Patriot.
21. The NBA Eastern Conference Semi-Finals was one for the ages!  The Philadelphia 76ers gave the Toronto Raptors all they could handle.. but the ending of game 7 came on a ridiculous buzzer-beater by Kawhi Leonard.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qXeDaUf4b4#)
22. The NBA Finals featured the Golden State Warriors, who were hobbled by injuries, and the Toronto Raptors, who were the first team outside the US to appear in the Finals, and they would also be the first non-US team to win it all.
23. WORLD SERIES: WHAT A WEIRD WORLD SERIES!  This was the first to feature absolutely ZERO home wins.  All victories were by the road team.  And the former Montreal Expos, now known as the Washington Nationals, take their first title in 7 games over the Houston Astros.
24. Stanley Cup: The St. Louis Blues finally win their very first Stanley Cup title, in 7 games over the Boston Bruins.  Being as this was before the pandemic we still had a table in the conference room (before the room was converted into a Covid patient room) and I sat there watching the end of the final game.  For some odd reason the Blues team used Laura Branigan's classic song "Gloria" as their team anthem!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFfwnHBTUzc#)
25. Movies: AVENGERS: ENDGAME, THE LION KING, JOKER, ALADDIN, STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER, FROZEN II, TOY STORY 4, CAPTAIN MARVEL, PET SEMATARY, JOHN WICK 3, BRIGHTBURN, GODZILLA, DARK PHOENIX, CHILD'S PLAY, SPIDER MAN FAR FROM HOME, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, IT: CHAPTER TWO, RAMBO LAST BLOOD, JOJO RABBIT, EL CAMINO, ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP, TERMINATOR: DARK FATE, THE IRISHMAN, DR. SLEEP, A BEATIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD, KNIVES OUT, 1917

Bonus: some tv debuts-- ROSWELL NEW MEXICO, LOVE DEATH & ROBOTS, WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS, TACOMA FD, VICTOR AND VALENTINO, THE BOYS, INFINITY TRAIN, JUDGE JERRY, EVIL, CREEPSHOW, BATWOMAN, PRIMAL, HARLEY QUINN, THE CASAGRANDES.

Memories of 1984: So….very….fuzzy.

1.   My mom thought the Thriller video was too scary for me, which naturally compelled me to watch it every chance I got.

2.   My nine-year-old cousin Dana got her ears pierced at Beechmont Mall that January with a gift certificate she got for Christmas ’83, and when she came over and showed me, I wanted to get mine done too, though I’d have to wait another seven years. She had color-changing mood earrings that were cool, and when I finally got my ears pierced at thirteen, I asked if she still had those earrings, and if so, could I borrow them, and she made fun of me and was like, “Uh, nope? Lost them a century ago? Hello?” Ha, jerk.

3.   I don’t know if it was because he saw the famed “1984” commercial during the Super Bowl, but my dad bought one of the original Macintosh computers soon after. He called it Lucy, which I think may have been the overall nickname for it.

4.   I found a (quarter-) baggie of marijuana stashed under a swing in our neighborhood park off Montgomery Road. I showed my friend’s mom, who said, “Put it back and go play somewhere else.” It seemed to make her uptight because she herded us to her car soon after and we left. Hey, never know, some reefer freak might’ve kidnapped us or something.

5.   Songs that played on the radio a lot that year were, well, first, often by Michael Jackson, but Prince seemed to be making headway into superstardom too. Wham’s Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go was played way too much, and Born in the USA and I’m on Fire were also constantly to be heard, Billy Joel and Phil Collins were both big, and so was Madonna (whose Like A Virgin young me assumed meant something about the Virgin Mary…seriously). Late in the year Band-Aid’s song about famine relief got a lot of air. Not a bad year for ‘80s music.

6.   We went to the Smokies that spring, and while trees were still mostly bare where we lived, down there the landscape was budding in pale green and it was beautiful. I wanted to see a bear and also a venomous snake (I actually persuaded my dad to flip over rocks to see if we could locate one), but didn’t see either. We did find lots of salamanders in the creek near the cabin, which had a balcony that jutted way out over this steep, sharp hillside, so it was a few feet off the ground at the top and probably twenty feet at the edge. I had a pack of those little parachute guys Mom bought me on the way down, and I dropped them over the edge. We’d rent that cabin several more times over the years, but coming home we got pulled over by a scowling cop just on the south side of the Tennessee-Kentucky border, who made my dad open his trunk, had us get out and patted my dad down, even had him take off his shoes and shake them, checked under our seats and in our glove box and under our hood, and ordered my dad to take the hubcaps off the tires before he finally let us drive on. My dad would tell that story for years and say he got stopped for no reason at all, just a small town cop harassing passersby, hoping to find something. Back in the days before dashboard cameras and so much counter-pressure, I think police abuse must’ve been incredibly rampant, you know?

7.   Shortly after we came home, a woman from our church killed herself during the Lenten season, with pills and by running her car in her garage, something I was shielded from knowing until I “heard too much” when adults were talking and I was lurking. This woman’s death seemed to be received more as a scandal than a tragedy. (A suicide couldn’t be buried in holy ground and suicides were thought to be damned.) Having the curiosity of the young and being uninhibited by social convention, I tried to find out all I could about this hush-hush matter, as I don’t think I had ever heard of suicide til then or even thought about a concept like killing yourself, but my questions were brushed off awkwardly, even by my creatively (mis)informative dad, and my grandma probably told the most to me when she said, “That lady was sick. People who are well don’t do something like that.” She at least seemed sympathetic to people driven to take their lives.

8.   That Fourth of July we went as usual to my grandpa’s big bash, his one day of the year to throw a hugeass party, invite friends, business associates, family, neighbors, for food, music, fireworks. Scores of people came, he spent thousands on professionally-launched fireworks (he had to bribe the police every summer to get away with it) and that year I remember I walked around holding lit cigarettes to light people’s firecrackers, and the idea that back then it was OK to let a five-year-old walk around with burning cigarettes is a little freaky. Second-hand smoke and burn-danger, and…just the ethics, you know? But no one seems to have thought anything of it and I spent the day walking around like a little waitress, holding out cigarettes to fire-up explosives.

9.   I was in Ireland from about the seventh or so of July til late August, and that summer we went “to the shore,” which was what they called going to the beach, and while I had on little shorts and a halter top, over there it was apparently the custom for pre-school age children to be allowed to be nude when going to the shore, and on this sunny, almost warm-ish day there were all these naked toddling kids, including cousins of mine. I swear, pedos over there back then must’ve had it made.

10.   My Grandparents went to Los Angeles for the Olympics, which were boycotted by the Soviet East Bloc, a plus for the US medal count. They brought me home a teddy bear dressed like a Team USA sprinter.

11.   Miss America, Vanessa Williams, surrendered her crown amid scandal. I remember hearing about it but didn’t care much about details til Dana said to me, “She showed her boobies and stuff.” Then she tapped her flat chest and between her legs to enhance the point. It mystified me why the heck anyone would want to be seen naked, especially by strangers.

12.   I saw a black cat get run over on this busy road across town called Buttermilk Pike. I watched it try to run across the road in front of a big evangelical church, yelled “Don’t do it!” and it got hit and I looked through the back window and saw it flopping around in death throes and I wailed that it was still alive, we had to help it! We drove on.

13.   I read Little House in the Big Woods that year, plodding through it for a month, and it was the first of many books I’d read in bed until I fell asleep: one of life’s great pleasures.

14.   I was alone, pretending to play sand volleyball on a court at the park (same one where the pot had been), and I discovered the hard way that local cats loved to prolifically use the sand as a litter box.

15.   I started kindergarten that fall. My teacher’s son was in the navy, and would send her post cards from places his ship stopped, and she had a bulletin board full of them. She gave us seeds to grow a window herb garden inside Dixie cups with our names on them, but I packed the top soil too hard on mine and my parsley didn’t push through, so I did not get a gold star for the project, though did learn the importance of loose dirt.

16.   Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef” commercial seemed to morph to god-like heights that year, being shown constantly, and people went around (obnoxiously) quoting that line. It was even worked into the Mondale-Reagan political debates, I believe. I can’t think of another ad since that took over pop culture quite so hard, so fast. Must’ve had subliminal sex images or something. Maybe Miss America?

17.   I liked riding my bike in the much-referenced park when He-Man and GI Joe were on in the afternoons, because so many kids were in watching TV that the place was deserted. (BTW, how could ‘80s people miss the gayness of the He-Man show???) There was a nice really old man who liked to sit in the park, and he’d give kids cookies from a package he kept by the newspapers he’d bring to read. His name was Mr. Burns, I kid you not, and he looked strikingly like the Mr. Burns that’d be infamous in the next decade. If that was not ironic enough, we called him Mr. Bill, after his first name. (He was a living pop culture reference point, huh?) My mom seemed to think he was OK, though, so I’d take his cookies, which I looked forward to whenever I saw him. Funny, but Mr. Bill, who sat on a kids’ playground and gave them cookies seriously did also drive a van without side windows…. Poor soul checked every box, didn’t he?

18.   PR reps from the L&N Railroad came to this crazy-arrogant Catholic high school down Montgomery Road called Moeller (hated rival school of that boy I fell for years later) and they brought in we elementary kids from nearby, and in the gym showed us a film about railroad crossing safety, and how dangerous it was to try to drive around those gates that come down. Gory film, actually, so I went home and happily told Mom every last gruesome detail about smashed cars and dead kids in the back seat, and people run over and flung a hundred feet by locomotives, and she said they shouldn’t show that to children too young to even drive. Hey, I still remember that presentation every time I cautiously go past a railroad crossing, so mission accomplished, right?

19.   Speaking of school presentations, we went to my cousin Jared’s school DARE event, because he was in the little morality play PTA put on (he portrayed a boy who got rushed to the hospital to get his stomach pumped because he took drugs to be cool) and at the same DARE event, during the days before the Presidential election, there was an impromptu mini-debate by the local Democratic and Republican parties, and what sticks in my mind now is how civil and even cordial to one another the two representatives were, both WWII-era gentlemen, and how that contrasts to the rancor in today’s rancid political discord.

20.   President Reagan won reelection, and no one in my family seemed happy about that. What, were they truly shocked by the voting results or something?

21.   That Thanksgiving at my grandparents’ house, my Aunt Judith told me Santa Claus would soon be checking his final list, and I confessed I didn’t think I’d ever believed in Santa Claus. She said, “That’s a shame for you then, hon.” But I think most children are sophisticated enough to grasp how make-believe can enhance something, and understand that Santa falls in that category, and I don’t know why some parents lie so hard to their children about the matter when the kids are probably just humoring them.

22.   I thought V was cool, both the movies and actually even the TV show. Space-invading reptiles as stand-ins for Nazis overrunning Reagan’s America? What else could ‘80s viewers want? I also liked Family Ties, set in my home state, but didn’t much care for its new lead-in The Cosby Show, and in those days I could opine that I thought it was silly without anyone tossing out the “R-word” which back then was still reserved for actual racism.

23.   I used to go watch my dad’s basketball games, where he played forward on a YMCA team, and honestly was better than almost anyone playing with or against him. I could get a soft drink there (something I was rarely allowed at home) and would ask for a suicide, which was all flavors mixed together, squirt by squirt. Tasted weird but it was fun. At one game my dad bloodied this guy named Ted’s nose with his elbow, and then took him out for a beer afterward. They ended up friends til we moved south of the river to Burlington in ’86.

24.   My dad counted Dune among his favorite books and went to see the movie late that year. We also saw Splash, which I thought was insanely stupid, Firestarter, The Never-Ending Story (had a good theme song), and The Search for Spock which established the trend of the odd-numbered Star Trek movies being drags. We was so po’ that going to movies was a big treat, and getting popcorn was just…. It was genuinely appreciated, let’s put it that way.

25.   I turned six, it was Christmas Eve, and as usual---as I often note---was generally told: “Here’s a combination birthday and Christmas present for you!” Yeah, thanks, tightwads, gipping a little girl out of her birthday. You know, I don’t think I was ever a virgin, because every year on my birthday I got screwed. (Uh, too much?)

Took me a while to think of memories worth noting, but there’s 1984 in the Ellieverse.

2020: Covid & Colitis

(January - June)

1. It's been ten years since my mom passed away. Still miss her very much.
2. Reports of covid seeking in. How long until it arrives in Germany?
3. I was phoneless for two years. Finally bought a new smart phone.
4. Googled Li Wenliang. His selfie before he died haunted me for days.
5. First cases of covid in Germany. First sighting of people wearing masks.
6. (Hawaiian) Bowls are all the rage. Had to drive 25 minutes to try my first. Good stuff.
7. First of many lockdowns. Let the toilet paper madness begin.
8. My hands are sore, red, raw and cracked from constantly washing and disinfecting.
9. First case of covid in our town. Great. The young woman documents her quarantine on Instagram. of course.
10. I puked at work, and I blame my gastritis. Went home early.
11. I'm losing weight but my stomach is swelling. My doc tells me it's my gastritis.
12. I've been eating less for months. Bought two cheese burgers, only managed to finish one.

(July - December)

13. Not feeling well and the lockdowns are starting to annoy me.
14. I had to go to emergency on a Sunday out of town. It wasn't easy with all the pandemic restrictions. The doctor said I have abdominal influenza.
15. My nephew and his wife caught the covid. Both lose their sense for taste and are feeling weak. They are fine after two weeks.
16. I'm in and out of my doctor's office on a weekly basis. I continue to lose weight and my stomach continues to swell.
17. Met my older sister while shopping. She said I looked awful and should see my doc immediately. I told her I'm already doing that every week.
18. I'm at the hospital. They do a few tests before surgery. They say I have colon cancer. A young male nurse asks me if I want to see a priest. He said not to worry, it's only standard procedure. They have to ask that.
19. Surgery took 5 1/2 hours. They removed 7 1/2 liters of, well, s**t from my colon. That's why my stomach was swollen. I now have an artificial anus, yay.
20. All the doctors and nurses can't seem to handle my artificial anus. It is constantly leaking. The leaking causes infection in my surgery wound. I need a second surgery for scraping and cleaning.
21. I have three tubes coming out my stomach for drainage, a catheter for peeing, an infusion in my right arm for whatever and an artificial anus. Not feeling human.
22. Physiotherapy: I have to re-learn how to walk. Not easy with all these tubes hanging from my body.
23. New tests reveal I have colitis, and not colon cancer but both have the same symptons. They told me that after two colonoscopies.
24. After four weeks all tubes and whatever are removed and I'm free to walk and move again. Still have to stay two more weeks at the hospital because my potassium levels aren't correct. I'm driving the chief doctor crazy because nothing seems to go the normal way with me.
25. I'm the nurses' favorite patient. They constantly bring me sweet and savory pastries, candy, coffee, snacks.
26. After six weeks and just in time for Halloween I'm finally discharged. They did find a cancerous cyst in my right kidney. Surgery appointment for removal of cyst is March 2021. Surgery for removal of artificial anus is June 2021 (two surgeries, one more colonoscopy) and March 2022. Chief doc orders me to eat as much as possible to gain more weight.
27. Finally home again. Boy did I ever miss my bed. One thing I brought home from the hospital:insomnia. Can't sleep longer than two hours for the next 18 months.
28. Radiology and Nuclear medicine appointments in November.
29. I'm not allowed to lift heavy stuff, not allowed to stand or walk too much. I should rest and eat, rest and eat, rest and eat.
30. I'm baking peanut butter brownies once a week. We order döner, pizza, pasta or chinese take out once a week. I get a bag of nuggets and burgers at McD's once a week. 18 months later I now have a little gut I'm trying to reduce but damn, it's so hard to do.

Wow, I didn't know you were going through that. Hope it gets better!

My final surgery was in March. I'm good as new now except for all the scars on my stomach.

2021: Covid & Colitis, part 2

(January - June)

1. I'm 18 months on sick leave. Feeling depressed, and the lack of sleep ain't helping much. My doc won't give me strong sleeping aids in fear I get addicted. The plant based stuff doesn't help at all though.
2. Because I'm not allowed to do anything (physical activities) I struggle walking up the stairs to my apartment. I always have to take a break halfway up.
3. Spending most of my time on the internet until my butt hurts from sitting. I then lay down to rest and sleep at odd hours. I'm usually wide awake after midnight.
4. Various family members, friends and co-workers have covid throughout the year.
5. I'm not getting used to having an artificial anus. It looks gross, and I hate to change my poop bag. I have to apply a new one every 2-3 days. Very annoying. I get artifical anus supplies every month from my artificial anus dealer. Costs me 5 Euros each month.
6. Been sleeping on my back since September 2020. Can't lay on the side because of my aa (artificial anus). Whenever I go to bed I make sure my poop bag is empty. I'm constantly in fear it might leak while I'm sleeping.
7. I'm in another town at a clinic specialized in removing my cancerous cyst from my kidney. I feel like I'm in the movie Hostel when they roll me into the section for surgery.
8. Surgery went well. This huge hospital doesn't let you choose your meals unlike the small hospital in our town. Food is good though and I'm discharged early after one week because pandemic and overcapacity.
9. Daily self injection into my upper thigh at home for 28 days so I don't get thrombosis.
10. I've re-discovered nuke's top 5 on youtube. He has the best paranormal videos, and some of them are actually very creepy. Love his channel.
11. I'm at the hospital again in my home town. After pre-surgery prep I lay down and fall asleep. A nurse wakes me and tells me they had a few emergency surgeries and if it would be ok if I came back in one week. Sure. No problem.
12. Done with surgery, aa removed. However, the part of my colon didn't widen as they expected even though they knew about this from x-rays before the surgery. Whatever. I'm told I need another surgery for a new aa so one week later they cut me open again. I spent another total of six weeks at the hospital. Fun times.
13. Bladder infection because of dodgy catheter.
14. Just like my first time at the hospital last year, they struggle to draw my blood because I have rolling veins and/or "hidden" veins. The guy trying to take my blood apologies for stabbing me like 60 times with a needle.
15. Discharged. The final surgery appointment is scheduled for October 2021 that is, if my surgery wound heals in time.

(July - December)

16. My surgery wound is not healing in time. This means I have to see my doctor three times a week for seven months. He has to clean and bandage my wound until it's completely healed.
17. Not much going on in the final half of 2021. My October surgery was cancelled because of my wound.
18. November appointment at the Radiology out of town. They call me the next day saying they weren't able to capture certain important images from my insides and if I would return next week to do it all over again. Like, filling my colon with liquid again that made me squirt hard from my real anus? Sure. No pronblem.
19. My wound finally healed in January 2022. Hallelujah. Final surgery appointment March 2022. Everything went well. Goodbye artificial anus!

Good to hear you're better!

2020:
1. The first news I heard of Covid.  I had not heard we had to start wearing masks at work until I tried entering the door without one.  I was not thrilled to have to breathe back in my own breath all day.  Still sucks.
2. Also at work they were continuing to try to pair me up with an assistant but they were all incompetent and/or had behavioral problems.  They guy working with me this year was definitely off-- from what he told me his mom had him when she was like 14 or so, which might have accounted for his mental state.  He would go on a smoke break where he wasn't supposed to, play with RC cars where he wasn't supposed to (this is a hospital for Christ's sake!), and blurt out non-PC things to the wrong people and think nothing of it.  Oh, and he would flat-out refuse to do some things he was asked to do.  Real POS.
3. This was the year we got a new Facilities Management boss-- basically my bosses' boss.  They were without a doubt the worst people in any kind of supervisory position I have ever seen.. it was clear they didn't give a damn about you, that they could say whatever they wanted in front of you, they could completely undo anything you were doing or take your equipment and either replace it with something totally inferior or just get rid of it without telling you, etc.  One of them was the 2nd in command and wasn't quite as bad as the other, but still went along with their b.s.  I am so, so glad they left (I think they saw the writing was on the wall).
4. Got my first vaccine (Pfizer) at the end of the year.  I went early and grabbed some schwarma while waiting for the next bus.  Was hoping to be done with the jab on time for work but didn't account for the waiting time after receiving a shot (15 minutes).  Oh well.  Did get a little bit of the chills that night at home (vaccine side effect), so I wore pants and a sweater in bed.  It passed in an hour or so.
5. Joe Biden is elected the 46th President of the United States.  Some say it was a stolen election, and I think some elements of it are suspicious, but I feel it's too late to really get into it.
6. My Buffalo Bills, on the arm and legs of QB Josh Allen, made the playoffs again.  They fall in heartbreaking fashion to Deshaun Watson and the Houston Texans 22-19 in overtime (at one point they lead 16-0).  In the 2020-21 season, however, they would improve quite a bit.
7. We were the victim of the annoying "Hail Murray" throw at the end of our game with the Arizona Cardinals, as Kyler Murray just chucked it downfield and our defenders were not positioned well, allowing the winning TD to fall in DeAndre Hopkins' outstretched arms.  As much as it ticked me off, we would go on a big winning streak after that and we would tie our best franchise record at 13-3!
8. SUPER BOWL LIV: Sensation QB Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs win the franchise their 2nd Lombardi Trophy (almost 50 years since the first one), with a 31-20 win over Jimmy Garoppolo and the San Francisco 49ers.  The Chiefs earlier in the playoffs faced the Texans team that took out my Bills in the playoffs-- whom the Bills lead 16-0 and lost-- and the Texans led the Chiefs 24-0 and blew that game!
9. NBA FINALS: LeBron James wins another NBA title, this time with the LA Lakers, in 6 games over the Miami Heat.  Sports with very few fans in the seats (due to Covid) just isn't sports to me.
10. My brother and I started our restaurant reviews!  He and I took his Jeep on the road for the first one, and it was a doozy-- a long 300-some mile drive out to the Boise area for a review of the burger joint Culver's, and it was pretty good.  Kind of cool trip (VERY expensive with 2 full tanks of gas) and we went up near the Boise State football field (gates were locked but we could still see, and took pics).  Drove by fields FULL of hopping bugs that splatted constantly on our windshield.
11. My brother also wanted to get serious about recording and set up a mic in the corner.  But he basically wanted me to do all the work in getting it set up and contacting a sound manager to visit us and help set it up-- I had nothing to do with this idea from the get-go!  I was pretty p*ssed at him and let him know.  He did back off but this is still kind of a dumb dream project of his.  We did eventually record some Elvis karaoke but now the mic isn't working and we're not sure how to fix it.  Eh, not my problem.
12. World Series: The LA Dodgers win their first title in 34 years, beating the Tampa Bay Rays in 6 games.  The MLB season was shortened to 60 games (and other sports also had their seasons cut down) due to the pandemic.
13. Stanley Cup: The Tampa Bay Lightning win their 2nd Stanley Cup, defeating the Dallas Stars in 6 games.
14. A Ukrainian airliner is shot down by Iranian forces shortly after leaving a Tehran airport.  All 176 passengers are killed.
15. Donald Trump is acquitted after the first impeachment trial.
16. The stock market crashes due to fears of Covid spreading.
17. The 2020 Summer Olympics are re-scheduled for Summer 2021.
18. Confirmed Covid cases reach several tens of millions.  Over a million infected with Covid die (though other afflictions are sometimes chiefly responsible for the deaths), and lockdowns are executed in many countries across the globe.  Masks are commonplace in many gatherings, outdoors and indoors, and social meetings are often conducted via computer.
19. Severe flooding hits East Africa.
20. While arresting criminal George Floyd, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneels on Floyd's chest, eventually killing him after Floyd complains he is unable to breathe.  Destructive protests and rallies across the US break out over racism and police brutality.
21. A new outbreak of Ebola is released in the Congo.
22. The US exits the Paris Climate Accords.
23. The first successful trials of Covid vaccines are announced.
24. Top movies: 365 DAYS, A QUIET PLACE PART II, DOLITTLE, SONIC THE HEDGEHOG, NOMADLAND, PIECES OF A WOMAN, TENET, MINARI, BIRDS OF PREY, THE INVISIBLE MAN
25. TV debuts: FBI'S MOST WANTED, THE OWL HOUSE, STAR TREK: PICARD, LEGO MASTERS, DUNCANVILLE, SLOW BURN, BREEDERS, THE MANDALORIAN, SOLAR OPPOSITES, STARGIRL, LOONEY TUNES CARTOONS, STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS.

2021:

1. The CDC announces multiple Covid variants over the year (Omicron, Alpha, Delta, etc.).
2. With people continuing to get Covid even after vaccines, the CDC suggests "booster shots".  I never got one, since even those with the booster shots can still get Covid.
3. Got my 2nd Pfizer shot right at the start of the year.  That's enough for me.
4. January 6, 2021: Protestors of the 2020 Presidential election advance on the Capitol building.  Lax security allows them inside, and $1.5 million in damage is dealt out.  Fortunately, only 5 die (2 protestors from heart attack, one protestor from drug overdose, one protestor shot to death by police, and a cop who died of a stroke.  Though only 5 died the event has been compared to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, somehow.
5. A major winter storm strikes the US, with at least 136 dead.  With the Veterans Hospital where I work having high elevation, it often gets very cool, snowy and icy in the winter and can be a real bugger going down the hill.  Buses even with chains may not go up the hill.  If that's the case I may have to take a handy lift to OHSU (Oregon Health & Science University) next door and walk.  At the very least, patient flow will be severely lessened, making a shorter work day likely.
6. The US rejoins the Paris Climate Accords.
7. Billions of vaccines are administered worldwide.  Lockdowns/mask requirements/etc. continue over the year.
8. Hideki Matsuyama is the first Japanese man to win a Major golf championship, taking the Masters.
9. Israel and Palestine war over a property dispute in East Jerusalem.
10. Nearly 100 die in a condominium collapse in Southside, FL.
11. The Summer Olympics are held in Tokyo.  The US wins the most total medals and golds.
12. Over 2,000 die in an earthquake in Haiti.
13. The Taliban capture Kabul. The Afghan government surrenders to the Taliban.  Hundreds die in an airport suicide bombing, including 13 US servicemen and women.  The US responds with an airstrike that kills 10 civilians, not terrorists.
14. The last US troops leave a Kabul airport, with Afghan civilians clinging to a jet in fear of Taliban rule, and falling to their deaths.
15. The trial of 17-year old Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot 3 young men (2 fatally) in Kenosha, WI during racial unrest over the Jacob Blake shooting 2 days prior, ends when he is declared Not Guilty of murder, after pleading self-defense.
16. SUPER BOWL LV: Tom Brady, with his new team the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, wins a 7th Super Bowl title and the franchise's 2nd.  They whup the favored Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs 31-9.  It is the first Super Bowl with the host city being represented by the Super Bowl champion (held in Tampa, Florida).
17. NBA Finals: The Milwaukie Bucks, led by the "Greek Freak" Giannis Antetokounmpo, win their 2nd NBA title in franchise history, topping the Phoenix Suns in 6 games.
18. Stanley Cup: The Tampa Bay Lightning win the franchise their 3rd Stanley Cup title, beating the Montreal Canadiens in 5 games.
19. World Series: The Atlanta Braves win their first Worlds Series championship in 26 years, beating the Houston Astros in 6 games.
20. My Bills had such a great year, finally breaking through in the playoffs with not only one win (versus Indianapolis) but two (versus Baltimore).  One of the longest pick sixes you'll ever see, courtesy of Taron Johnson:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DTmW0T_ppA#)
Getting to the AFC Championship for the first time since 1994 was sweet, but Kansas City continues to have our number..
21. The LA Clippers reach their first Western Conference Finals!  They fall to the Suns in 6.
22. Top films: SPIDER MAN: NO WAY HOME, NO TIME TO DIE, HALLOWEEN KILLS (saw it in the theater, boy was it dumb but to me "funny bad"; saw it with my renter), GODZILLA VS. KONG, VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE, BLACK WIDOW, THE BATTLE AT LAKE CHANGIN, HI, MOM, DETECTIVE CHINATOWN 3, DUNE, WEST SIDE STORY, CODA, THE POWER OF THE DOG
23. The Korean Netflix show SQUID GAME debuts:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqxAJKy0ii4#)
24. My birth city of Portland was reaching a record high in homicides over Black Lives Matter protests.  The Pioneer Courthouse, among other landmarks and businesses, is vandalized by the protestors.  Also, homeless tents and drugs are all over the place.  Yuck!  Seattle also has similar problems, with occupation protests taking over parts of the Capitol Hill district.
25. 2021 film trailers:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n73_6vyq2v4#)
Plus:
Many longstanding presidents/PM's around the world are killed, retired or overthrown during elections.
Popular Vermont senator Bernie Sanders meme of Bernie masked and huddled in a chair:
(https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best/newscms/2021_03/1663262/bernie-mittens-main-khu-210120.jpg)

Adding to some older years:
1980

1. One of my favorite arcade games CRAZY CLIMBER was released!  It was originally released by Nichibutsu but also licensed to Taito (the one I'd seen at our local arcade Malibu Gran Prix).  Play the hell out of it and was never good at it back then, but still really enjoyed it.
(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uA1dEJdqtig/Xk4L5trwlkI/AAAAAAAASrQ/mjRh2vi9HLYTX4ugRCdy_zQ7qpHX90XLgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/ezgif.com-gif-maker%2B%252811%2529.gif)
2. Great jammin' songs of this year we had on 45 or I'd hear on the radio:
STOMP!- Brothers Johnson
GIVE ME THE NIGHT- George Benson
TIRED OF TOEIN' THE LINE- Rocky Burnette
DREAMING- Cliff Richard
CALL ME- Blondie
MISUNDERSTANDING- Genesis
WHAT I LIKE ABOUT YOU- The Romantics
RIDE LIKE THE WIND- Christopher Cross
ROMEO'S TUNE- Steve Forbert
3. Some AM radio-friendly hits I enjoyed:
SAILING- Christopher Cross
LET ME LOVE YOU TONIGHT- Pure Prairie League
INTO THE NIGHT- Benny Mardones
LOST IN LOVE- Air Supply
ALL OUT OF LOVE- Air Supply
HEY NINETEEN- Steely Dan
LITTLE JEANNIE- Elton John
DRIVING MY LIFE AWAY- Eddie Rabbitt
BIGGEST PART OF ME- Ambrosia
MORE THAN I CAN SAY- Leo Sayer
HIM- Rupert Holmes
4. I used to love watching Tic Tac Dough even though the dragon scared me.. this champ, Tom McKee, won a boatload of cash and his final episode was on 9/22/80.  He finally lost, but took home $312,700-- a startling figure for a game show of that time!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00d-aVvLkWE#)
5. I remember my hometown team the Portland Trailblazers signing a shooting guard with a lot of upside and hustle named Billy Ray Bates.  The fans loved him and he had some great moments his first couple years in Portland-- I even remember him making a guest appearance at our school.  Unfortunately drug problems derailed his NBA career, though he had a fantastic career overseas.  This is one of his more memorable moments-- a great tip-in with one second to play against the 76ers.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8meMBSWrnKA#)
6. WHO SHOT J.R.?  On the prime time soap DALLAS, J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman) is shot and America is glued to their sets wondering whodunit!  The episode draws record Nielsen ratings.
7. MIRACLE ON ICE!  The US men's hockey team knocks off the mighty Russians in the Winter Olympics, and goes on to win gold!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYscemhnf88#)
8. Women swooned and got all hot and bothered over Richard Gere's performance (and body) in AMERICAN GIGOLO.  I was too young to know what a gigolo was and got the word confused with "Jello".
9. A violent coup in Libya ends with the killing of the Libyan President and 26 others, effectively overthrowing the entire government.
10. Iron Maiden's debut album is released.
11. Rosie Ruiz apparently wins the Boston Marathon, until it is revealed that she didn't run the entire race.
12. The word "yuppie" is first coined.
13. The LA Lakers, despite missing injured star center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, lean on their rookie Magic Johnson and win the NBA championship (Magic wins MVP honors).
14. The NY Islanders win the first of 4 straight Stanley Cups.
15. 2,000 pro-democracy protestors are killed in South Korea.
16. A massive heat wave kills 1,700 in the US.  I remember all fans blowing in the house and lots of Otter Pops for us kids to keep cool.
17. Bon Scott of the hard rock band AC/DC dies of alcohol poisoning.  Later in the year Brian Johnson replaces him as lead singer and their new album BACK IN BLACK is released to great acclaim.
18. Haiti's Hurricane Allen kills over 200.
19. Playboy Playmate of the Year Dorothy Stratten (who earlier in the year was in the dumb comedy GALAXINA) is murdered by her creep husband Paul Snider, who then kills himself.
20. Saudia Flight 163 catches fire, killing 301 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
21. Thousands die in a 7.1 earthquake in Algeria.
22. The Philadelphia Phillies win their first World Series championship.
23. A major fire at the Las Vegas MGM Grand Hotel and Casino kills 85.
24. Thousands are killed in an earthquake in Irpina, Italy.
25. Terry Bradshaw and the Steelers win the Super Bowl, becoming the first team to win 4.

1995 Part II: Not A Year If You Want An Uneventful Life

Really a bunch of personal memories, so skip it: you’ll find it boring. Truly, go play with your cat.


1.   The same week The Far Side ended---leaving me bummed and unable to imagine life without it---I went back to school for the first time in two months, following my brush with death. It felt like jumping into cold, dark water. No one on campus made the big deal about my return that I was worried they would, and the people who mattered were nice to me, with one of the most encouraging being my in-home tutor from the last semester, an education grad student in his late twenties. We were still in touch after his assignment of tutoring me at my house ended, and sometimes would meet to talk in the public library or at a nearby diner. He said many nice things and did seem to honestly care about me, and I still can’t decide if he was a manipulative pervert or a decent man who misread things and went off the rails, but in one stupid moment he ruined the mentoring friendship he’d spent months establishing. I probably should’ve reported him, and hope he never did that with anyone else. He’s still a teacher today.

2.   When Rose Kennedy died at 104, they had a memorial service for her at my school, which we HAD to attend, even though my generation barely knew who she was. It was the only time I remember that we were allowed to not wear our uniforms to school, because we were all told to show up wearing black. I wore my standard black dress---all my life I’ve always had at least one black dress since my mother said every woman should---and I thought it was modest, but it was the same one I’d have on to wear to my grandma’s funeral later in the spring when my aunt viciously scorned me, saying I was trying to look like “a babe,” which was as far from true as something could be. She hurt my feelings on one of the worst days of my young life, though I think in her mind she believed I had a smack-down coming. (More on that later.)

3.   In January things got strange at home. People who weren’t my mom started driving me to and from school, plus some in my family and even neighbors started acting like they felt sorry for me, and one afternoon my cousin Allie, who was three years older, picked me up after class and seemed like she was pitying me, and asked if I wanted some Clonopin, and I inquired what that was, and she said sleeping pills, and I said uh, no, thanks, why would I want sleeping pills, and she said, in case you can’t sleep right now. I was SO clueless, or at least mono-focused elsewhere, but very near that same day, after sitting in her car in our driveway til late in the night talking to a priest, my mom came in and packed a suitcase and said she was going to be with her family for a while. (Her family, yeah, well, what were we?) Somehow I managed to be blindsided by this despite weeks of apparent signs that the sky was falling. Eventually, sounding ashamed and apologetic, Mom called me from across the ocean, and I sat backward on a bar stool with my elbows on the counter while I talked to her, two things she’d never let me do, and she said I could come over with her if I wanted, but I said no thank you, Ireland sucks, and since you’re there, why would I want to be there too? I was furious with her, mostly without a whole lot of right to be.

4.   In a very dark mood after listening to my mom try to explain herself that afternoon, I left my dad a note on the kitchen counter and went to the apartment of the young man I’d one day almost marry, someone I was crazy in love with, and stayed til it was later than I said I’d be back in my note. I’d left the apartment in a defiant, self-justified mood that deflated by the time I got back, and as I came in I saw my note crumpled on the counter, but instead of being worried I realized how tired of everything I was, the sneaking around of the past couple years, the problems at home, school, just everything, so I told my dad I wasn’t going to lie about my life anymore, and he said well isn’t that a first for you these days, and I said it was his fault I had to lie anyway, and he said what, if I just let you do anything you want to do you wouldn’t need to lie to me? So I told him where I had been and said nothing had happened, which was simultaneously a total lie and an absolute truth, depending on how you looked at it, and I ended up telling him a lot of things about my life that he likely already knew but which I had never openly said, and at the end of this intense monologue all he did was asked if I’d gotten my homework done, and that banal question  after everything that’d happened that day and everything I’d just told him seemed unbearable, so I fell backward onto the lowest stair and laughed myself silly from emotion, something I have long done in certain serious situations: like when life was crumbling. What a day….

5.   To practice my driving my grandpa took me on so-called Death Hill on I-75, this notorious high-speed S-curve that had been the site of all number of fatal wrecks going back decades, saying if I could drive that I could drive anywhere. I thought I did great handling the Hill in my grandpa’s Lincoln, but when we got to the bottom Grandpa said to turn off, he needed a beer. I looked across and saw he’d balled his hands into tight fists, ha.

6.   To add to the torments of Great and Terrible 1995, my grandma, whom I loved without limit, had a stroke that sent her into a coma, and my dad’s second-oldest sister, a formidable woman, arranged a special intentions Mass for her in this posh suburb called Hyde Park, which means she paid out of her own pocket to essentially rent out a church for a private service to be held honoring my grandmother, and prayers were to be offered for my grandmother’s recovery and her soul. All the family were there, family friends, my aunt’s lawyer co-workers, neighbors, some high-ups in the Archdiocese, even the Archbishop’s personal representative. It was a big deal. Well, in a supremely unwise, unplanned, outburst on my part, I, in my sixteen-year-old emotionally-charged illogic, told my aunt in front of all those witnesses that I thought she was a hypocrite and was showing off, making my grandmother’s stroke about herself, and if she cared about her mother she’d go visit her, not put on a show event and make it all about her. My rude words shocked everyone so badly they just sat there in an otherwise dead-still, echoing church til my dad and my Uncle Lark ushered me outside, still ranting this hysterical, out of control diatribe that I couldn’t believe was coming from me. Maybe I was past my own ability to keep absorbing the serial tragedies of the time---my own near death, my mom going away, my grandma becoming a vegetable, problems and problems and problems---but there was no excuse for me to verbally explode like that and humiliate my aunt, my family, myself, and to this day my aunt very much holds what I did and said twenty-seven and a half years ago against me, and no amount of apologies or demonstrations of humble contrition have quite erased how livid I made her that horrible day.

7.   Life went on, though, and nobody sent me to the Magdalene Sisters for what I’d done in church, and despite being appalled by my behavior, my dad shielded me from his vindictive sister, telling her if she came after me she’d be “hurting.” (He didn’t make empty threats and she knew he could open a floodgate of “hurt” if he wished, so she didn’t move against me, just stayed furious for years.)  In fact things were so stressful and sad that late winter that my dad and I were always trying to cheer each other up, and one evening I was shopping with him in this store which at least for back then was huge, it was even called bigg’s, and we kept daring each other to do or say things there, and I dared him to jump up and hit this aisle sign, and right in the middle of a mall–size grocery store, my dad of all people ran down the aisle like it was a basketball court and leaped up and smacked this overhead sign that was about ten feet off the floor, hitting it so hard it rocked on its chains for about the next minute. People were staring, and it was awesome. Sure, Dad and I had a lot of strains in our relationship during early 1995, and that spring he more or less took away my whole life for about a month, but we had some great times too in the wake of my mom’s desertion.

8.   But my dumbassness continued unabated, and on the phone I dumped the boyfriend I’d spent the best part of three years trying to get. I did it without even exactly meaning to, more like I was emoting and moping and my words got out of control like a rock rolling down a hill. (If you notice that was a recurring problem for me in 1995….) On the phone I told him I knew I was a s**t girlfriend and he should be going with someone his age, and he was trying to calm me down but I hung up on him mid-sentence and unplugged my phone. I only realized later what I’d done, and he took my semi-unintentional dumping of him seriously and it wasn’t an easy thing to repair. I don’t know about all teenagers but at sixteen I had moments of complete idiocy. I don’t know if I can blame the stressed-out state of my life or if it was just me making one moronic mistake after another, but I, formerly a good-as-gold type kid, made a lot of them.

9.   Finally I did repair things with my boyfriend, you might say I really did, and on the Ides of March I came home with my brain a-whirl wondering why the world was still stubbornly the same as it ever was, to find my dad was waiting there in our house, back from downtown much earlier than usual, and he asked if I wanted to play him chess. I stood in the foyer paralyzed for a second, thinking chess? Chess then? Chess right then? It was too weird to be a coincidence. Or was it? Well, in all my life I had never beaten my dad in chess, it was like tilting at a windmill, the dizzyingly-high IQ of this professional strategist against poor sub-genius me, but since my mind was running in overdrive at that moment, wondering if this was a psych-out, I played a particularly bad match, wanting it to be over, sitting there with each second stretching out, feeling like the narrator in The Tell-Tale Heart, and I wanted to tip over the table and yell out a confession about what I’d done that day. Not for a quarter-century would I finally find out it really was a garden-variety coincidence, not a mind game, but you couldn’t have convinced me of it that guilt-plagued afternoon.

10.   A few weeks later life seemed calmer, not exactly better, just you get used to living under stress, and I introduced my boyfriend to my dad’s oldest sister, my Aunt Christie, and they really hit it off. Her own son, my cousin Adam, was horrible to her, and I think she latched onto my boyfriend all the more readily because of that, but they also had many shared interests, both were even English majors. I almost got jealous at how they got so close and how she even stayed that close to him during a time I wasn’t in his life, the first half of 2000, when my work had kept me away and he said he couldn’t handle those uncertain separations anymore, so we were apart in multiple senses of the term. (We would have gotten back together….that’s a cruel irony.)

11.   In the days of long distance charges, our phone bill around this time was over $200.00, a lot for 1995 considering it was usually about twenty bucks. All those lengthy calls to Ireland between my parents added up. What they talked about, I don’t know, but they talked a lot. Me, I decided I had nothing to say to my mother. She’d hurt me and so I was trying to hurt her in return, though all I really wanted, of course, was her to come back so we could hug it out. Missing her, loving her, being mad at her, it throbbed like a deep bruise.

12.   No matter how great things could be between him and me, I had an interesting dynamic with my boyfriend’s family. By that I mean I wouldn’t meet his mom for more than a year, and wouldn’t come to know his sister, who has gone on to be such a good friend of mine, until the next century, because those two had recently relocated to Florida so his sister could attend a school with a great dance program. Very strange, I know. But I did meet his father in the summer of ‘95, and discovered to my surprise that I disliked him on a somewhat visceral level almost from the first moment, something I didn’t understand and tried hard not to show. I wasn’t sure why I disliked him since he went overboard to be nice to me, still does, but dislike him I did. One of the strangest things his father ever told me, and not for over twenty years, was that as a teenager I intimidated him. I asked how on earth I could have intimidated him, being the powerhouse of projected self-confidence that he was, and he said all he knew was when he was around me he felt like he had to constantly be trying his best, because he wanted me to approve of him. I certainly wasn’t aware of that back then.

13.   I did a report on AIDS for a science class, and focused on “Patient Zero” a Canadian man who ignored and denied his HIV-positive status and infected at least two-hundred other men with the disease before his own death. I think there’s a picture of him in the dictionary next to the word “selfish.” I liked that science teacher, though, and he was influential in inspiring me to get one of my degrees in biology. He was a looser teacher than most at my school and in his class girls could actually relax their legs, which is not a joke, many teachers enforced the rule that girls had to keep their knees close together when at their desks, even though as most Catholic schoolgirls can tell you, that meant you’d come home each day with sore legs. (I think this is why so many Catholic girls have better muscle tone in their thighs than their public school counterparts.) Teachers at my school were so obsessed with us not showing too much of our legs in those dreadful plaid skirts that they’d monitor how we ducked and covered during tornado drills, and it was possible to wind up in detention if you hit the deck too immodestly. (And people ask me why I didn’t send my girls to Catholic school….)

14.   Every year during the annual Right To Life Day we were told we had to be there to attend all these brainwashing presentations, or else if we were absent for any reason we had to volunteer for a day at an RTL center, or we would be ineligible for re-admission the next fall. (Wow, what a shame…) The boys weren’t let off the hook on RTL Days, but they really went to town on us girls. The same obese red-faced lady even came every year to rant at us and show us close-ups of dumpsters filled with aborted children, and to ask us to think of how every one of those babies was murdered by its own mother, and to ask ourselves if we would one day be a mother who would do something like that. They threw everything but the kitchen sink into these presentations, and mostly succeeded in desensitizing many of us, since you can only see so many lurid slides before your brain starts humming the theme to The Andy Griffith Show. Well at lunch that particular RTL Day, ’95, some boy from one of my AP classes read this morbid transcript he’d printed offline of what was claimed to be the cockpit recording of the Challenger astronauts as they fell toward the ocean---if you’ve never read it, do yourself a favor and don’t---so that afternoon I had disturbing thoughts in me and disturbing material all around me, and to top it off, for the first time in my life I also suddenly thought of how I actually could get pregnant, no hypothetical Charlotte Flax-level BS anymore, I really could, and it made for the worst RTL Day ever! And where was my darn cousin with her Clonopin then, huh?

15.   It seemed to rain constantly that summer. One of the local weather anchors joked that he saw the sun and thought it was a UFO, it’d been so long since it put in an appearance. (We had a lot of strange weather in 1995: snow, ice, storms, rain, droughts, smoke from an Appalachian forest fire, we had it all.)

16.   Except for the thirty-minute chapel we had to attend at my school, I quit going to church altogether, something done partly to hurt my mom, and partly for genuine reasons, but it was liberating to be free of that. I could give you a dozen reasons why I didn’t think there was a God, and took almost every chance to do so, sometimes inventing the opportunities just to make sure people knew I was rejecting the values of my upbringing. I shudder to think how I sounded then, young, knowing everything, and smugly bashing God, and I think the embarrassment of recalling that is why today I have so little patience for when rebellious atheism is weaponized for shock value.

17.   I often went to see my grandma at her care facility. Though she was in a coma I liked to think she could hear me we I talked to her, and feel me holding her hand. It was there on one visit that I had possibly the only full-on supernatural experience of my life, when I saw a sleeping (or dead?) woman in a room as I passed down the hall to visit Grandma, and when I passed back up the hall that woman and her bed and everything that had been in the room, flowers and cards and a rosary draped on the bedframe, just all of it, was gone, and yet when I mentioned this to the nurse at the floor’s check-in desk, she said no patients had been removed that week and no one had been in the room I pointed out to her. She gave a look that was part quizzical and part freaked out, and I wondered if maybe she’d had her own odd events there. Me, I tried to science it out and thought about time slips more than ghosts, but whatever, I did see something. When my dad told me at the end of May that Grandma was dead, it felt like all the air was ripped from my body, and despite her being comatose and slipping away for a quarter of the year, never in my life did I ever cry so much or so hard as I did when I got that news, and I kept crying for days. Yet sometimes I thought of that vanishing woman in the empty room and wondered if that vision was some sort of sign that life continued after death, though a sign from whom, I didn’t know. Then I rejected the idea, decided my grandma no longer existed, and felt very sad about that, so I cried some more.

18.   I wasn’t aware then as I would be later, that my grandpa, who was a good-looking man with great charm and force to him, had been serially unfaithful to my grandma for most of their marriage, or I am sure I would have felt terrible negativity toward him, but as it was I just had deep pity for his loss and spent a lot of the summer with him: the only one of the grandchildren who did. I was the youngest of the generation and he didn’t make much secret that growing up I was his favorite---shudder-worthy admission yet also true---but I think that summer he appreciated me being there with him, and the fact that in five years he’d leave me his house and most everything he owned had its roots in that time. My family lives in his (and Grandma’s) house to this day, and I hope to pass it down to one of my children. My grandpa changed my entire life.

19.   Though she loved me and made me her sidekick in life, my cousin Dana always had a cruel streak too, probably inherited from my aunt, and one day she invited me to her “bungalow” near her college campus, knowing I was meeting up with my boyfriend that weekend, and then she proceeded to try to trick me into drinking so much I would have been on the far side of wasted and out of commission for days. Since I thought of her as a mentor and mostly trusted her, even knowing her occasional devilishness, I think I may well have walked into her trap and wound up blind, blotto drunk except I got rescued from her machinations by my boyfriend showing up early, and whispering to me, “Don’t drink any more, OK?” Mean stunt for Dana to pull, really, but it ended well, since I was only lightly toasted, not rolling in my own puke on the floor. You know, even though I expected they’d get along great, Dana and my boyfriend never particularly liked each other, and maybe that weekend was the cause.

20.   That year I also got to be friends with a local boy from a public school I’d known of for a while but never paid much attention to. His name was Rob and I still know him today. I kind of disdained him, to be honest, condescended might be a better word, but in mid-1995 I did spend an amount of time around him that astonished me and made me wonder why. One day it dawned on me that I plain and simple liked him in this non-romantic just hanging out way, and realized I was fine with that. He was a nerd but from the branch of the nerd tree that wasn’t all that geeky. He liked Viking weapons and I think he was the first person to tell me about how the world will end at Ragnarok. Anyway, I watched a lot of “Japanimation” with him that summer, which he mostly got by being in a club that traded VHS tapes back and forth across the country, and it was also with him I went to my first and last game of D&D late at night in someone’s basement, and was later told it was too distracting to have a girl there, so don’t come back. Sexism in action, y’know? But the funniest thing was that summer Rob nailed his bedroom door shut from the inside, hacked a hole in his floor with an ax, and started using a ladder to get in and out of his room. His mom half-killed him but wouldn’t repair the hole in her ceiling til the 2000s.

21.   My best friend, Gina, turned seventeen on August first, and for the first time in the six years I’d known her I was able to be there for the day, because for the first time in my life I wasn’t in Ireland for the summer. My friend’s little brother, Mark, who was thirteen and a half then and is still my friend today, had a thing for me and so was a real dick to me the night of Gina’s birthday, jealous that I had someone in my life when he wanted to be that someone. He was truly plssy to me, and he walked back with me after the party giving me all this attitude. But a couple nights later he asked if he could come watch Killing Zoe with me, and I said OK, but then my boyfriend showed up and Mark went into this offensive mode to me, my boyfriend, the world, which bothered me but amused my boyfriend, and his amusement made Mark madder still to the point of wanting to fight my boyfriend, who had over seven years on him and a lot more strength. After my boyfriend left, Mark was still at my house, and I don’t know why, I guess he just caught me in a high-stress moment in a high-stress year, but I started very quietly crying, which freaked Mark completely out, and he began pleading please don’t cry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings! He actually sat down on the porch in front of me looking up at me with hurt, terrified eyes, and somehow it was so sweet to see him trying his best to make things up with me that I did feel better, and because I appreciated him caring that way, it changed how I was to him after that, making us almost like contemporaries who understood each other, instead of me thinking of him as my friend’s annoying little brother. (Teenage boys are not as cluelessly heartless as people say.)

22.   That fall, in her senior year in college, Dana got pregnant with her daughter McKenna, a future world traveler who is currently in Australia, and finding out Dana was up the spout floored me, because….well, I don’t know why, but it did, that she was pregnant, my cool, perfect, always in complete control, attitude-spewing twenty-one-year-old cousin, accidentally pregnant? OK, the girl had been a sex machine since she was barely thirteen, but still… Although it shouldn’t have been, it was a paradigm shift of my entire universe to suddenly think of her as somebody’s mommy. Welcome to The Twilight Zone, young me.

23.   My boyfriend spent Christmas in Florida with his mother and sister, and while there this smoking-hot red-haired girl from his sister’s gymnastics class came onto him REAL hard in a dark studio. He resisted…after a minute, and told me about it the same night, not making excuses but also underscoring that much more could have happened than did. So I told him in return that this geek-god of a boy named Roger (his nickname was Captain Morgan, I kid you not) who was in almost all my classes had just come over to give me a Christmas present, and kissed me: and not just a peck. I said I didn’t know he was going to do that and didn’t kiss him back, and my boyfriend more or less said oh, well, I don’t feel so bad then about the girl. I thought wait a second, someone hauled off and kissed me to my surprise in my front yard on a holiday, you gave in for a lusty couple minutes with someone out to roger you silly, putting your hand up her shirt in mid-flaming makeout, and that’s “even”? Ah, whatever, I didn’t care much, but I still think the math on his equation was off. The fact we were still good left him summing it up dismissively by saying of us: “We survive everything together.” I swear, in retrospect that boy made the most ironic statements.

24.   I saw the movie Nixon with my dad on one of our rare nights out together late that year, and coming home asked if Hoover was really a drag queen who surrounded himself with boy-toys and all else that Oliver Stone implied of him, and Dad said Hoover was a man who’d made enemies for decades and would never have lasted if things like that were true. Which made sense. Thing about my dad is he’s kind of  a myth-buster, slicing through life with Occam’s Razor, once telling me at five when I asked him if Santa was real: “Does it seem logical to you that someone can slide down millions of chimneys in one night?” My dad would’ve made a good Vulcan.

25.   On the final day of the year, the last-ever Calvin and Hobbes appeared in papers. The Far Side had ended on January 1, 1995, and to bookend it Calvin and Hobbes ended on December 31, 1995. How in the world have we survived without them all these years? And how did I survive 1995? It was quite a year.

Hey, I told you not to read this….

You have lived a very interesting life, ER!

More 1981:
1. Jason gets his start as the primary antagonist in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART II.  Critics trashed it (especially Siskel & Ebert) and they're not wrong.  I remember seeing a bloody axe on the poster and wondering why the murder weapon in the first movie's poster was switched (from hunting knife to axe).  Like the first movie, I didn't get to see this till the later 80s since I was too young.  Warrington Gillette got all the credit as Jason, though he was only in it at the end.  Steve Dash (rip) was mostly playing the masked killer-- with a potato sack instead of the iconic hockey mask from part 3 and beyond-- a nod to THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN.
2. A surprise hit at the theaters this year was a dumb (I would assume; never saw it) sex comedy called PRIVATE LESSONS.  Sylvia Kristel (of EMMANUELLE fame) starred as a maid seducing a teenage boy in a scheme to get at his family's riches.  The most memorable thing about the film (apart from a great soundtrack) might be that game show producers Jack Barry and Dan Enright helped finance this film!
3. Went back to regular grade school at Garden Home elementary school after a year of a "special" (ugh) school.
4. Blondie's "Rapture" was released; we though it was a dumb song even then.  Man from Mars?  Eating cars?  And eating bars and guitars?  WTF!
5. A couple big hits involving Stevie Nicks:
LEATHER AND LACE (with Don Henley)
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLEMiDrdSKU#)
STOP DRAGGIN' MY HEART AROUND (with Tom Petty)
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5i7j0VhEHw#)
6. Started tagging along with my dad (as did the rest of the family) for his Monday night league bowling.  I didn't care for the bowling, I was there at the alley (Kellogg Bowl in Milwaukie, OR) for video games, soda and candy (Sweet Tarts and Boston Baked Beans were my favorite)!  I would bring my remaining homework with me to finish.  Sometimes we'd have dinner at Pietro's Pizza next door, which had terrific thin crust pizza.  Sadly, Kellogg Bowl is now defunct.
7. I think it was this year that my dad and I took a shuttle bus from Johnny Wong's (a terrific Chinese restaurant by Burlingame Fred Meyers department store) to a Portland Trailblazer game.  I think it was a preseason contest with the Denver Nuggets that ran a whopping FOUR OVERTIMES.  We lost thanks largely to bumbling refs.  My dad and I were stunned it ran that long!  It was around midnight by the time we got home.  I was wiped out and I had to go to school the next morning!
8. One of my favorite songs of the year was a surprise hit theme from the tv show GREATEST AMERICAN HERO, by Joey Scarbury.  I used to crack up watching "Mr. Hinkley" (William Katt) try to fly and yell "Damnit!!!" when he'd eventually crash.  Amusingly, the show had to change the name to just "Mr. H" due to the same name of the guy who shot Reagan.
9. A bit of controversy was caused on the set of the show FRIDAYS when Andy Kaufman starts a fight with Michael Richards, by splashing a drink in his face.  This awkward skit was later revealed to have been staged.  Perhaps to boost ratings; though the show was cancelled the following year.
10. We bought the 45 of Weird Al Yankovic's ANOTHER ONE RIDES THE BUS.  We thought it was hilarious!  Al would appear on Tom Snyder's tv show to play it, with his friend and bandmate Jon "Bermuda" Schwarz.  We liked the B-side too: GOTTA BOOGIE.
11. I remember watching the intensely stupid tv movie THE HARLEM GLOBETROTTERS ON GILLIGAN'S ISLAND.
12. A players' strike cancels dozens of games of the MLB season.
13. HALLOWEEN airs for the first time on network TV (NBC) with new scenes inserted, which were filmed during the making of HALLOWEEN II released earlier this year.
14. Cable stations HBO and SHOWTIME now air programming for 24 hours.
15. Chuck Woolery leaves WHEEL OF FORTUNE over a salary dispute with producer Merv Griffin.  New host Pat Sajak debuts shortly after.
More to come..

16. CHARLIE'S ANGELS, SOAP, THE MIKE DOUGLAS SHOW, and THE WALTONS all conclude their series.
17. Some product debuts: ACT II popcorn, The BBC Micro, Better Cheddars, the Mattel Children's Discovery System, Deely Bobbers, Kibbles 'n Bits, Lean Cuisine, Mrs. Dash, the McRib, Prego sauce (does it make you pregnant if you eat it?), and Skor candy bars.
18. Jim Plunkett won the MVP award in the Super Bowl-- his name always made me think of the strategy game KERPLUNK.
19. An extremely rare (the only one I know of) 3-way MVP award is given in the World Series: Ron Cey, Pedro Guerrero and Steve Yeager win it for the Dodgers.
20. Mercurial coach Bobby Knight and his Indiana Hoosiers win the NCAA Basketball Championship.
21. John McEnroe wins the Wimbledon and US Open Men's Championships.  During a Wimbledon match he has one of his most famous outbursts.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ransFQVzf6c#)
22. Jelly Bellys debut!
23. Tex Avery's final cartoon work is the awful KWICKY KOALA SHOW, produced by Hanna-Barberra.  I remember watching and thinking how much it sucked.  It was thankfully gone by the end of the year.
24. The classic kids show YOU CAN'T DO THAT ON TELEVISION is brought to America from Canada, airing on the cable channel NICKELODEON.
25. THE HOLLYWOOD SQUARES ends its initial run.  It will return 2 years later as THE MATCH GAME-HOLLYWOOD SQUARES HOUR, with host Peter Marshall replaced by John Bauman.

1982:
1. Late Night With David Letterman debuts!
2. Andy Kaufman gets booted off SNL with his weird Elvis skit; he takes off his wig and apologizes to the audience.  Later a poll of SNL fans stating they prefer him leave the show leads to his dismissal.
3. Andy also gets in a scrap with pro wrestler Jerry Lawler (after a brief wrestling match in which Lawler "breaks Andy's neck") on Letterman's show.  Lawler slaps him and Andy loses it and swears at him.  All was later revealed to have been staged.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxPtNUKptag#)
4. "The Catch"!  Dwight Howard's legendary catch for the 49ers helps put them in the Super Bowl as they squeak past the Cowboys.
(https://clemsontigers.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Clark.jpg)
5. The great cartoon block USA CARTOON EXPRESS debuts!  I liked seeing various cartoon stars riding the train with the kids.
6. Another debut was the cool arcade video game show-- the first of its kind-- STARCADE!  This was on WAY too early in the morning for me to watch, on WTBS.  Had to watch it at my mom's house later on (finally did catch it just once) since I didn't have cable.
7. Big hit on AM radio at the time: LEADER OF THE BAND- Dan Fogelberg
8. Some scary movies I remember seeing in the papers (I sometimes got to see some on cable, but I was easily scared): VISITING HOURS, SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE, HALLOWEEN III, THE SENDER, THE ENTITY, Q, PARASITE, CREEPSHOW, PIECES, BASKET CASE, HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW, THE THING, SILENT RAGE, DEATH VALLEY, THE DORM THAT DRIPPED BLOOD, THE HOUSE WHERE EVIL DWELLS, HUMONGOUS, X-RAY, MADMAN, XTRO, and a couple local horror films: BLOOD SONG (shot in Coos Bay and Coquille, OR at the coast) and UNHINGED (shot around Portland's Pittock Mansion).
9. The awesome POLICE SQUAD! debuts, and America unfortunately doesn't get the brilliant humor in the show.  It only lasts 6 episodes (!) but it spawns the hit movie THE NAKED GUN years later.  I loved how the show's announcer gave a different episode title than what was shown onscreen, how the "guest star" would be killed immediately during the opening credits, and how the show would not freeze frame going into the closing credits, but the actors would just try to freeze in place.
10. Other TV debuts: CAGNEY & LACEY, TJ HOOKER, FAME, AMERICAN PLAYHOUSE, JOANIE LOVES CHACHI, CAPITOL, FAMILY TIES, TALES OF THE GOLD MONKEY, SILVER SPOONS, KNIGHT RIDER, MATT HOUSTON, SQUARE PEGS, CHEERS, REMINGTON STEELE, VOYAGERS!, CBS MORNING NEWS, ST. ELSEWHERE, NEWHART, and TATTLETALES returns after a 4-year hiatus.
11. Also, with video games still super-popular, this cartoon was inevitable: Hanna-Barberra's PAC-MAN!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-Ex3Ce1KNU#)
The cartoon was stupid as F but gotta admit that theme was catchy.  Got used in the later arcade game PAC-LAND.  This show aired as part of the LITTLE RASCALS/SCOOBY AND SCRAPPY DOO/RICHIE RICH cartoon block.
12. Daughter of the wacko Klaus Kinski-- Natassja Kinski-- grew up real good in CAT PEOPLE.
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMzg2OTkwMzkwMF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwNzk5Mzg5._V1_.jpg)
13. Other notable flicks of 1982: ANNIE, 48 HRS, THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP, GANDHI, TOOTSIE, POLTERGEIST, THE SECRET OF NIMH, TRON, CONAN THE BARBARIAN, BLADE RUNNER (also overrated IMHO), THE MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER, FIRST BLOOD, THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS, THE VERDICT, KOYAANISQATSI, FITZCARRALDO, THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY, AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN (overrated IMHO), NIGHT SHIFT, MY FAVORITE YEAR, VICTOR/VICTORIA, KING OF COMEDY, EATING RAOUL, DINER, PERSONAL BEST and the dumb GREASE 2.  I also remember the bad movie THE TOY with Jackie Gleason and Richard Pryor (!) back in the day-- my mom and I watched it a lot on cable and we loved it!
14. After bouncing around a few apartments that I visited her on weekends at, my mom finally found a nice house in Vancouver WA right across the freeway from the awesome Vancouver Mall.  They had an Aladdin's Castle-- great arcade where you got 6 tokens for a buck!-- and an Orange Julius with great hot dogs.
15. Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy are great in one of SNL's classic skits-- this one a spoof of the hit song EBONY AND IVORY.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h2jZtuRuic#)
More to come..

All right, Russell, these are great! Good job keeping this thread going.  :thumbup:

16. The basis for the later film REVERSAL OF FORTUNE: Socialite Claus von Bulow is convicted on charges of attempting to murder/paralyze his wife Sunny.  The initial verdict of guilty is eventually overturned.  Jeremy Irons won an Oscar for his portrayal of von Bulow.
17. A medley of 1982 commercials:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deqLdRqKSBE#)
18. The long-running Christmas McDonald's commercial with Ronald skating with a bunch of kids begins.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Xi-kKMBNe0#)
19. The Emmy-winning animated special THE GRINCH GRINCHES THE CAT IN THE HAT airs.  Yep-- I remember this one for sure.  And yes, the Cat In The Hat and The Grinch lock horns!  Character actor/voiceover artist (especially for Smuckers) Mason Adams plays The Cat In The Hat.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVqvSXMwZMk#)
20. Tennis: Bjorn Borg retires at only 26!  He does, however, have 11 Grand Slams under his belt.  Speaking of which, Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert win 2 Women's Grand Slams each.
21. A major boxing event: Heavyweight champ Larry Holmes takes on white boxer Gerry Cooney in Caesar's Palace, NV.  The bout surprisingly is close and lasts to the teens but Cooney eventually tires and the fight is stopped as Holmes defends his championship.
22. Big year for great arcade games: TIME PILOT, BAGMAN, DONKEY KONG JUNIOR, DIG DUG, MR. DO!, BURGERTIME, PENGO, POLE POSITION, SPACE DUEL, XEVIOUS, POPEYE, JUNGLE KING/HUNT (renamed "Jungle Hunt" and changed heavily from Jungle King due to the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate taking offense to the "Tarzan yell" in the game), Q*BERT (my sister and I laughed at the alien swearing), ZAXXON, ROBOTRON, JOUST, TRON, MOON PATROL, SUPER PAC-MAN, FRONT LINE, KANGAROO, REACTOR, BUMP 'N JUMP, BUCK ROGERS: PLANET OF ZOOM, ZOOKEEPER, SINISTAR and MILLIPEDE.
23. A couple home console games achieve notoriety for being bad/poorly received/poor home conversions: Atari 2600's PAC-MAN (which I still kind of enjoyed-- we got too good at it and had to play on the highest difficulty or we'd be on it too long), and E.T., which was so awful it kicked off the "buried in the New Mexico landfill" thing the following year with other unsold games and consoles/computers.
24. The awesome Colecovision debuts!  It was tops for arcade conversions.  I didn't play one till well after it was discontinued (I still had enough good titles for the Atari 2600) but it was still pretty cool.  Crap controls and lack of much good outside of the arcade conversions, plus the home computer dud the ADAM helped sink it, though it still finished 2nd in 3rd generation home console sales behind the Atari 2600.
(https://www.videogameconsolelibrary.com/images/1980s/82_Coleco_Colecovision/82_Coleco_ColecoVision_CGE-950.jpg)
25. Home console classic games: PITFALL!, TRON: DEADLY DISCS, PICKAXE PETE, ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, and CHOPLIFTER.

1983:

1. Started Jr. high school at Whitford.  I was never an outgoing kid and tended to stay away from others if I could help it.  A personality that continues to this day.  I don't feel like changing; people suck in general.
2. The US Embassy in Beirut is bombed; 63 die.
3. Israel withdraws from Lebanon.
4. The Nintendo Famicom is released in Japan.  A modified version is released 2 years later in the US, called the Nintendo Entertainment System.
5. The Sri Lankan Civil War begins.  Thousands are killed in riots and fighting.
6. A bomb explodes on board Gulf Air Flight 771, sending it crashing into the Emirates and killing 117.
7. A very possible war between the Soviets and US is averted when Soviet military officer Stanislav Petrov correctly identifies what is thought to be American missiles as a false alarm.
8. The PM of Grenada, Maurice Bishop (among others), is assassinated in a coup.
9. The USMC barracks and French Army barracks in Beirut are bombed; over 300 die.
10. Some animated films: ROCK & RULE, FIRE AND ICE, FINAL YAMATO, BAREFOOT GEN, TWICE UPON A TIME, and GOLGO 13: THE PROFESSIONAL.
11. More big albums: METAL HEALTH- Quiet Riot, SHE'S SO UNUSUAL- Cyndi Lauper, HOLY DIVER- Dio, SYNCHRONICITY- The Police
12. The VIOLENT FEMMES debut with their eponymous album.  Renowned song BLISTER IN THE SUN is included.  TEARS FOR FEARS also debut with their album THE HURTING.
13. Legendary college football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant and Chicago Bears founder/coach George Halas die.  Legendary boxer Jack Dempsey passes as well.
14. Major Golf Championships: Masters- Seve Ballesteros, US Open- Larry Nelson, Brit Open- Tom Watson, PGA Championship- Hal Sutton.
15. Martina Navratilova wins the Australian Open, the US Open, and Wimbledon in Women's Tennis.
16. Nearly 20 years prior to pitcher Randy Johnson killing a bird with a pitch, Yankee outfielder Dave Winfield kills a seagull with an errant throw.  He is actually arrested and charged with cruelty to animals!  The charges are eventually waived.
17. Wendy's introduces their baked potatoes with toppings on their menu.
18. The Jenny Craig weight loss program is founded.
19. President Reagan unveils his "Star Wars" plan to intercept enemy missiles from space.
20. Guion Bluford is the first black astronaut in space, aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger.
21. Jim Henson's FRAGGLE ROCK debuts on HBO.
22. The first mobile phones debut.
A few more later.
But first, one I missed from 1982: HBO IN SPACE intro debuts!  This is the full version; most of the time it was shorter.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rmv98a2OZ3Y#)

23. McDonald's McNuggets are officially released!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXkD19-geXw#)
24. The last episode of M*A*S*H* airs.  It is a made-for-tv film that sets a then-record for most watched broadcast in television history.  "Goodnight, Farewell and Amen" is its title.  Sad scene:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvBS0VqJPXs#)
25. Another big song of that year I liked: MAJOR TOM- Peter Schilling
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO0A0XcWy88#)
Also, Wheel Of Fortune introduces their new theme:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZeOfjRdG1E#)

1984:
1. The crazy McDLT debuts!  Somehow it was a big deal to separate the ingredients of a burger.  I love Jason Alexander's energetic performance in this commercial.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTSdUOC8Kac#)
2. Top albums: 1984- Van Halen, LIKE A VIRGIN- Madonna, BORN IN THE USA- Bruce Springsteen, PURPLE RAIN- Prince, PRIVATE DANCER- Tina Turner, DIAMOND LIFE- Sade, STOP MAKING SENSE- Talking Heads, MAKE IT BIG- Wham!, BUILDING THE PERFECT BEAST- Don Henley, HEARTBEAT CITY- The Cars, THE UNFORGETTABLE FIRE- U2, FOOTLOOSE- Soundtrack, RECKLESS- Bryan Adams, CHICAGO 17- Chicago, EMERGENCY- Kool & The Gang, INTO THE GAP- Thompson Twins, I FEEL FOR YOU- Chaka Khan
3. Some great arcade games: KUNG FU MASTER, CIRCUS CHARLIE, GAPLUS, KARATE CHAMP, PUNCH-OUT!!, SPACE ACE, DO! RUN RUN, VS. EXCITEBIKE, TIME PILOT '84, 10-YARD FIGHT, CHEYENNE, HYPER SPORTS, 1942, RETURN OF THE JEDI, PAC-LAND, BOMB JACK, MARBLE MADNESS, SNAKE PIT, PAPERBOY, STOCKER, DEMOLITION DERBY and VS. ICE CLIMBER.
4. Game series KING'S QUEST and DRAGON SLAYER debut.
5. Heisman winner Doug Flutie throws a miracle Hail Mary as his Boston College Eagles beat the Miami Hurricanes.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTSdUOC8Kac#)
6. The Miami Hurricanes open the year with a national championship victory over the Nebraska Cornhuskers 31-30 in the Orange Bowl.  Oddly enough, the 1984 college football season's championship is also played in 1984.  It is won by the BYU Cougars over the Michigan Wolverines 24-17 in the Holiday Bowl.  Many pundits felt BYU didn't deserve the championship due to their soft schedule.  They are the last team from a non-power conference to win it all.
7. Patrick Ewing and the Georgetown Hoyas deter Houston's 2nd consecutive attempt at a NCAA basketball title.  Houston's "Phi Slama Jama" players  Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon were great but just couldn't bring their college a title.
8. Golf Major Championship winners: Masters- Ben Crenshaw, US Open- Fuzzy Zoeller, Brit Open- Seve Ballesteros, PGA Championship- Lee Trevino.
9. 1984 commercials:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05ljPv5HL7o#)
10. Eddie Murphy's star appeal continues with the smash hit BEVERLY HILLS COP at the end of the year.  Hit songs NEUTRON DANCE and THE HEAT IS ON are on the soundtrack.  Eddie's laugh used to crack me up.  "Hiiihh, hiihhh, hiihh.."
11. The toy line of TRANSFORMERS debuts.  Collected my share of them at Toys R Us.  Man, do I miss that place.  It was magical for Transformers toys and home video game shopping.
12. My friend moved much further from where he used to live.  I would ride my bike several miles on the weekend just to meet him partway (usually at 7-11).  Kinda nerdy kid that was really into Japanese anime way before it was cool in the US.  Plus, he knew where his stepdad's stash of porn mags was kept. :)
13. It was either this year or the previous year that my folks rented a laserdisc player for a couple years.  We watched lots of CREEPSHOW and STUDENT BODIES on it.  My oldest sister got VISION QUEST the following year and at some point my folks rented THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS and THE GROOVE TUBE.
14. Product debuts: Canfield's Diet Chocolate Fudge Soda, Air Jordans, Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cereal,  Depends, Discman, HP LaserJet, Pop Secret popcorn, Power Wheels, Slice (which I loved-- especially Cherry Slice), the Tandy-1000 and Velveeta Shells And Cheese.
15. Oh and also:
CLAP ON.. CLAP OFF..
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTNuJXi6UUk#)
and Extra Gum-- with NUTRASWEET!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmu2Agy5N1Q#)
16. WHERE'S THE BEEF??
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6_eWWfNB54#)
17. The Ferrari Testarossa debuts!
18. I was never a huge fan of Madonna but I do like some of her songs.  One of my favorites was her first really big hit: BORDERLINE.  Before she got *really* slutty.
More later..

19. Young actor Jon-Erik Hexum accidentally kills himself during filming for the tv show COVER UP.  He puts a bullet-less gun to his temple and pulls the trigger as a joke, but paper wadding from a blank strikes his temple with enough force to crack his skull and send pieces into his brain.  Severe hemorrhaging would lead him to be declared brain-dead.  He is later taken off life support.  He was only 26 years old.
20. Pop star Michael Jackson's hair catches on fire during the making of a Pepsi commercial.  He receives mild burns but recovers.
21. A&E, Lifetime, and AMC cable channels debut.
22. Ice cream truck driver Michael Larson (otherwise unemployed) makes an appearance as a contestant on the game show PRESS YOUR LUCK.  He takes the show in his one day appearance for $110,237, which for its time was a record!  He flusters host Peter Tomarken and the CBS staffers as he continues to play spin after spin, forcing the episode to be split into two halves.  CBS took him to court, believing Michael cheated somehow, but he had simply taped past episodes and studied the board patterns; he would memorize them and know when to stop the marker for the top prize and extra spin, and thus avoid the "whammy".  CBS was forced to let him keep his earnings.
23. TV show debuts: NIGHT COURT, LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH & FAMOUS, RIPTIDE, THE MASTER, AIRWOLF, MIKE HAMMER, KATE & ALLIE, BROTHERS, SANTA BARBARA, KIDS INCORPORATED, CHALLENGE OF THE GOBOTS, VOLTRON, SNORKS, THE GET ALONG GANG, MUPPET BABIES, MIAMI VICE, PUNKY BREWSTER, COSBY SHOW, HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN, HUNTER, WHO'S THE BOSS?, MURDER SHE WROTE, V, CHARLES IN CHARGE, CRAZY LIKE A FOX, and this cool show:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNwUBHAUags#)
24. Jeopardy! is back!  This time, not with Art Fleming, but Alex Trebek (HIGH ROLLERS, BATTLESTARS, DOUBLE DARE)!  Also, Password returns-- this time as SUPER PASSWORD and hosted by Bert Convy (TATTLETALES).  And Chuck Woolery returns to NBC years after leaving Wheel Of Fortune with a new show-- SCRABBLE.
25. My favorite Atari 2600 game of all time was released: PITFALL II: THE LOST CAVERNS.  This blew my mind how much better it was than PITFALL; Much more interesting settings (caves, waterfalls, all new enemies, a balloon to take you to higher areas, new treasures to collect, a "checkpoint" feature, a definitive ending, great music, etc.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZIMaJnzPzw#)

I also remember us getting a bunk bed, and I slept on the top while my brothers slept below.  We had a cool flashing multi-colored night light.  Pretty cool setup!  I think I moved back upstairs the following year.

One more tidbit from 1983: FOX affiliates debut.  Ours (Portland/Vancouver) was KPDX-49.  Logo:
(https://bangpdx.com/fpo/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/vlcsnap-2018-03-06-00h32m41s798-720x445.png)

More 1991:
1. How embarrassing-- US Open Bowling champ Pete Weber hoists the trophy over his head.. and it BREAKS!  Shatters live on camera on the lane.  The crowd gasps and Pete stammers, but the camera keeps on a-rolling..
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kcd44VfN-Ro#)
2. Some really bad films: PROBLEM CHILD 2, CHILD'S PLAY 3, RETURN TO THE BLUE LAGOON, HIGHLANDER II: THE QUICKENING (went to the theater with my mom to see that-- ugh), COOL AS ICE, MANNEQUIN II: ON THE MOVE, SUBURBAN COMMANDO (we rented that.. how awful), V.I. WARSHAWSKI, ZANDALEE (popped up on pay per view real quick), SCENES FROM A MALL, DOUBLE IMPACT, ERNEST SCARED STUPID, TRUTH OR DARE, and 2 of the all-time turkeys-- NOTHING BUT TROUBLE and DROP DEAD FRED.
3. A small consolation for my Buffalo Bills losing the Super Bowl by one point would have been Thurman Thomas winning the Super Bowl MVP (they did give it to a losing team's player once before), which he would have richly deserved.. but no.  They gave it to the Giants' RB Ottis Anderson, who didn't have nearly the game Thurman did.  Also, how the hell did we lose the Super Bowl to a Giants team WITHOUT Phil Simms???!!!
4. The Colorado Buffaloes, who nowadays suck outright, won the Orange Bowl for the national championship.
5. Desmond Howard, who later won a Super Bowl MVP for the Packers, wins the Heisman for Michigan.
6. In FIFA the US Women's team win the World Cup!  2-1 over Norway.
7. Magic Johnson announces he has HIV.  This ends his regular season NBA career; he plays for the 1992 USA Dream Team in the Olympics but quits after a bloody cut occurs in the 1992-93 preseason.
8. Back to the 1991 NBA Finals: I have always hated the Lakers, and was so ticked that the Lakers eked out a win in Chicago to take game 1.  Fortunately it was all Chicago from then on.  I was thrilled the Bulls won their first title (I always root for the team that hasn't won one), but little did I know they would win a lot more.  I hated Jordan for his ugly tongue wag.  Stephen Curry's mouthpiece hanging out of his gob may be worse..
9. I never quite appreciated my job enough at Pizza Hut-- it was pretty great.  For the day shift I'd make all the dough and when they were satisfied with how much I made I could go home.  They'd let me make my own pizza and buy a soda for 50 cents.  And when I did the closing shifts the manager/assistant manager would often give me a lift home (just in time to watch some softcore porn on Showtime when everyone was (hopefully) asleep).  But still being a kid fresh out of high school I guess I just had to complain.
10. I still have all the 1990-91 HOOPS basketball cards I collected back then in a binder.  Some good ones probably worth some decent coin.  Also collected most of the UPPER DECK baseball season cards and NFL PRO SET cards, of which I also still own.
11. The biggest blowout in the history of the NBA: The Cleveland Cavaliers utterly demoralize the Miami Heat by SIXTY EIGHT POINTS!  148-80 on December 17.
12. I was big into ESPN's SportsCenter show-- and this was even before Dan Patrick/Keith Olbermann/Rich Eisen/etc.!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG5QiSIqs2o#)
13. Monica Seles wins the US Open, French Open and Australian Open tennis titles.  Steffi Graf wins Wimbledon.
14. Whitney Houston delivers one of the most famous National Anthems ever for Super Bowl XXV.
15. Coverage of the Gulf War pre-empts a lot of programming during evenings.
16. A-hole actor/martial artist Steven Seagal is banned from Saturday Night Live after being difficult with the cast/crew/Lorne Michaels.
17. Beloved Little House On The Prairie actor Michael Landon dies of prostate cancer.
18. The NBA Finals begins airing on NBC, which will last for a dozen years or so.  John Tesh's awesome theme "Roundball Rock" will open for almost its entire run.
19. On the set of the show THE ROYAL FAMILY, Redd Foxx's castmates are amused at his heart attack, thinking he is emulating his "I'm coming, Elizabeth!" routine from SANFORD AND SON.  Unfortunately, he dies for real.
20. STAR TREK creator Gene Roddenberry dies.
21. The first Norton Anti-Virus software is released.
22. Debuts: SUN CHIPS, SUPER NINTENDO, Lipton BRISK, EXCEL (gum), FRUIT BY THE FOOT, and FRUIT GUSHERS.
23. More celebrity deaths: RED GRANGE, DAVID LEAN, RALPH BELLAMY, FRANK CAPRA, BRAD DAVIS, MILES DAVIS, COLLEEN DEWHURST, TENNESSEE ERNIE FORD, JEAN ARTHUR, DR. SEUSS, BILL GRAHAM, FRED MACMURRAY, YVES MONTAND, LEE REMICK, DAVID RUFFIN, DANNY THOMAS, and DOTTIE WEST.
24. More famous games: ZELDA: A LINK TO THE PAST, FINAL FANTASY IV (II in the US), SIM CITY, SUPER GHOULS 'N GHOSTS, STREETS OF RAGE, STARFLIGHT (awesome game), TOEJAM AND EARL and SUPER MARIO WORLD and F-ZERO debut in the US.
25. Crappy games I got suckered into: ART ALIVE (though I did come up with some cool anime-styled artwork that I took pics of), PIT FIGHTER, MIKE DITKA POWER FOOTBALL, HEAVY NOVA and DARK CASTLE.

Bonus:
A legend is born!
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!
The home port of ZERO WING is given terrible Engrish dialogue:

Captain: What happen?
Mechanic: Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb.
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What!
Operator: Main screen turn on.
Captain: It's you!!
CATS: How are you gentlemen!!
CATS: All your base are belong to us.
CATS: You are on the way to destruction.
Captain: What you say!!
CATS: You have no chance to survive make your time.
CATS: Ha ha ha ha....
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/03/Aybabtu.png)

And some commercials:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_bBJhXH858#)

More 1976:
1. US women's skater Dorothy Hamill wins gold in the Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria.  Her appearance on TV Guide's cover:
(https://i.pinimg.com/236x/a7/f1/65/a7f1658fbe079f5fa0d98fb16dd87118--november--tv-guide.jpg)
2. A couple TV Guide listings from 1976:
(https://i0.wp.com/the-avocado.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/img_2165.jpg?resize=720%2C527&ssl=1)
(https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3S2PDbdJnAY/UjGfePAJXiI/AAAAAAAAJro/03MXaD2KafE/s1600/001.jpg)
3. 1976 commercials:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM4_QnRT7FU#)
4. The Ramones debut.  My favorite songs BLITZKRIEG BOP and BEAT ON THE BRAT are on their debut album.
5. Palestinian hijackers hold 103 hostages on an Air France plane at Entebbe Airport in Uganda.  Airborne commandos release them all but several Ugandan soldiers are killed.  The 1977 TV film RAID ON ENTEBBE is based on this event.
6. 7 people are killed on the campus of Cal St.-Fullerton during a mass shooting.
7. Bruce-- yes, BRUCE-- Jenner wins gold in the men's (yes, MEN'S) decathlon in the Summer Olympics.
8. New sports franchises: SEATTLE SEAHAWKS, TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS, and my hometown PORTLAND WINTER HAWKS.
9. After the ABA is folded, a "dispersal draft" is held to integrate players from the ABA into the NBA.  My Blazers got Maurice Lucas, who was instrumental in helping us win the 1977 title.  We also selected Moses Malone but he didn't play for us.
10. Irish rock band U2 is formed.
11. Famous 70s funk-groove Stevie Wonder album SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE is released.
12. Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong dies of a heart attack.
13. The band, um, THE BAND, has a famous farewell concert in San Francisco with lots of famous musical guests like Dr. John, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Emmylou Harris, Paul Butterfield, Joni Mitchell, Ringo Starr, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters, Neil Young and others.  Director Martin Scorcese films this and makes it into a documentary film 2 years later.
14. Reggie Jackson signs with the New York Yankees, going on to win multiple World Series titles for them.  His own candy bar (kind of like a peanut cluster but with caramel) debuts!
(https://www.candywrappermuseum.com/03_classics/reggie%20bar%20standard%20brands.jpg)
15. Reggae star Bob Marley and 3 others are shot in his Kingston home by politically-motivated armed intruders.  All 4 survive and the shooters are tried and executed.
16. Famous deaths: Agatha Christie, Howlin' Wolf, Percy Faith, Lee J. Cobb, Jean Servais, Florence Ballard, Busby Berkeley, Paul Kossoff, Howard Hughes, Phil Ochs, Carol Reed, Fritz Lang, Rosalind Russell, Tommy Bolin, Jack Cassidy, Freddie King.
17. Mentioned before that FAMILY FEUD debuted this year, but here's the first episode! (We used to love this show, even though Richard Dawson could be a serious @ss)
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiUzcuai6nc#)
18. Magazine cigarette ad-- remember those?  TV cig ads had been banned since '71.  My mom stopped smoking somewhere in the early 90s, but she did smoke B&H in the 70s.  She got me a B&H brand deck of playing cards.
(https://i.etsystatic.com/20524517/r/il/262b2e/2871904106/il_570xN.2871904106_51wg.jpg)
19. Game show hosts Tom Kennedy and Allen Ludden were very good, close friends and it showed when they visited each other on their new NBC shows 50 GRAND SLAM and STUMPERS, neither of which lasted past the year.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaOVV4J74pU#)
20. An episode of MATCH GAME '76:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ofi8ZZdKSM#)
More to come..

21. Loved this celebrity game show: BREAK THE BANK (1976-77), hosted by Tom Kennedy and then Jack Barry (also co-producer).  The Kennedy episodes were ABC daytime and the Barry episodes were syndicated at night.  That's the one I remember best, watching it at my grandma's house before Portland Wrestling and Benny Hill.  There were other shows called Break The Bank before and after, but were totally different from this show.  The syndicated version's episodes did not straddle (as in, a game would not be carried over to the next episode) and there was a bonus round.  Tom probably didn't do the syndicated version because he was busy with NAME THAT TUNE as well as 50 GRAND SLAM at the time.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWroisdwSik&t=78s#)
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRGrjhKVRQk#)
22. Acclaimed miniseries RICH MAN, POOR MAN debuts.  The follow-up RICH MAN, POOR MAN BOOK II would air later this year and conclude the following year. 
23. Steve Railsback delivers a dynamite performance as Charles Manson in the tv film HELTER SKELTER.  Another made-for-TV film: THE BOY IN THE PLASTIC BUBBLE with John Travolta.
24. Childrens TV Special RUDOLPH'S SHINY NEW YEAR debuts, as well as FROSTY'S WINTER WONDERLAND, both by Rankin-Bass.  Loved their ending bumper for some reason.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxm1l9CQu-k#)
25. Other cartoon debuts: TARZAN: LORD OF THE JUNGLE, CLUE CLUB, and THE SCOOBY DOO SHOW.
Also:
Bad movies: THE FIRST NUDIE MUSICAL, THE SHAGGY D.A., WON TON TON- THE DOG WHO SAVED HOLLYWOOD, THE CLOWN MURDERS, SQUIRM, GUS, DRIVE IN MASSACRE, THE SAVAGE BEES, BOBBY JO AND THE OUTLAW, EAT MY DUST, FOOD OF THE GODS, GRIZZLY (kind of a guilty pleasure).

Just think, in three weeks we'll be able to list twenty-five things about 2022. Ewwww, ahhhh.... 

Bleck-- Kinda want to pretend this year didn't exist..

1977:
1. In Des Moines, IA, Anita Bryant's crusade against gays and gay rights takes an embarrassing turn when a gay activist throws a pie in her face!  Right in the middle of reporters talking to her!
2. For my 6th birthday I got this cool album that had been around a couple years:
GOOFY GREATS (K-Tel)
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51Np3paocbL._SY580_.jpg)
A lot of silly songs like Yummy Yummy Yummy, Ahab The Arab, Mr. Custer, Simon Says, and others from mostly the 60s.
3. Aww.. the original run of THE ELECTRIC COMPANY ends.  Close of the last episode is a song appropriately called "That's All".  Complete with the creepy PBS closing.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PU1CjDUmuU#)
4. Arcade video games were continuing to provide a major threat to the pinball fad.  DEPTHCHARGE was one I really enjoyed when it made its debut at Malibu Gran Prix.  The sonar "ping" and trying to time your torpedoes to hit the submarines below really drew me in.
(https://classicreload.com/sites/default/files/depth%20charge.png)
5. Other cool titles: DOMINOES, SPACE WARS (another one I enjoyed, which is actually a ripoff of the old computer game SPACEWAR!), CANYON BOMBER, SPRINT 4, SPRINT 8, STARSHIP 1, and SUPER BUG, notable for its oddly angular cabinet.
6. David Cassidy's (PARTRIDGE FAMILY) younger half-brother Shaun flashes major sex appeal with not only the HARDY BOYS/NANCY DREW MYSTERIES show but as a singing sensation with hits like THAT'S ROCK 'N ROLL, HEY DEANIE and his #1 remake DA DOO RON RON.
7. I've never been a big fan of Bruce Springsteen, and the lyrics to this song he wrote were stupid as eff, but Manfred Mann's Earth Band turned it into a surprise #1 hit: BLINDED BY THE LIGHT.  Yep, the "revved up like a douche" song.
8. The Festrunk Brothers debut on Saturday Night Live!  Hilariously played by Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd, they are 2 "swinging Czech brothers looking to score some American chicks".  Catchphrase: "We are 2 wild and crazy guys!"
(https://media1.popsugar-assets.com/files/thumbor/w4IhsfK00gcyy5-f5VC-ixUyjxg/fit-in/728xorig/filters:format_auto-!!-:strip_icc-!!-/2016/09/20/929/n/1922283/4b90a5af_tumblr_lslpypn8Jg1qewvtgo1_400/i/Festrunk-Brothers.gif)
9. Star of the hit TV sitcom CHICO AND THE MAN, Freddie Prinze, shoots himself over depression and drug addiction and is taken off life support and dies a day later.  The show continues for another season without him.
10. Elvis' final concert, ELVIS IN CONCERT (filmed in Omaha NE and Rapid City SD), is aired after his death and due to his poor performance is panned.
11. A record-fast trip up the pyramid on THE $20,000 PYRAMID is set by Billy Crystal and his razor-sharp contestant partner-- Billy is as shocked as we are!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc0ifVlU8t8#)
12. Concluding series: SANFORD & SON, MCCLOUD, MCMILLAN & WIFE, EMERGENCY!, and MARY TYLER MOORE.
13. Debuting celeb/civilian game show I liked: SHOOT FOR THE STARS (NBC).  Geoff Edwards (Treasure Hunt) hosted.  One gives clues to a 2-word phrase to the other.  Pilot title: SHOOT THE WORKS.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4I5Q7kzH_g#)
14. Two of my all-time favorite albums: Billy Joel's THE STRANGER and Fleetwood Mac's RUMOURS.
15. Also, Fleetwood Mac nabs their only chart-topper with the Stevie Nicks-led DREAMS.
16. Another Stevie hits #1 with Mr. Wonder's awesome SIR DUKE.
17. I think the Beaverton Burger King opened this year-- Oregon didn't get Burger Kings until the 70s.  We loved getting gift certificates for birthdays or Xmas stocking stuffers.  Plus they had a nice playground right outside the restaurant.  It closed about 10 years or so ago; I still have one about a mile away.  Not such a fan of the "flame broiled" flavor nowadays.
18. Commercials:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zzRp-jxx0E#)
19. The really stupid live action tv series THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN debuts.
20. Pat Boone's daughter Debbie scores a ridiculous TEN WEEKS at #1 with the mushy YOU LIGHT UP MY LIFE.  Didi Conn later stars in the movie of the same name.
21. Other big hits of the year: JET AIRLINER- Steve Miller, THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE- 10cc, COLD AS ICE- Foreigner, (YOUR LOVE HAS LIFTED ME) HIGHER AND HIGHER- Rita Coolidge, WE'RE ALL ALONE- Rita Coolidge, EASY- Commodores, WHATCHA GONNA DO- Pablo Cruise, SLOW DANCIN' (SWAYIN' TO THE MUSIC)- Johnny Rivers, STAYIN' ALIVE- Bee Gees, SOUTHERN NIGHTS- Glen Campbell, HEARD IT IN A LOVE SONG- Marshall Tucker Band, STAR WARS THEME- Meco, BEST OF MY LOVE- Emotions, YOU MAKE LOVING FUN- Fleetwood Mac, DO YOU WANNA MAKE LOVE- Peter McCann, UNDERCOVER ANGEL- Alan O'Day, COME SAIL AWAY- Styx, WHAT'S YOUR NAME- Lynyrd Skynyrd
22. The awful Tampa Bay Buccaneers finally get their franchise's first win.  This breaks a ridiculous 26 game losing streak, at the expense of the New Orleans Saints.
23. The prelude to the MAMA'S FAMILY tv series was a skit on THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW.  One particular episode in 1977 had Tim Conway just going off script with a goofy improvised story about an elephant.. and his castmates bust up trying in vain to keep their composure (especially poor Dick Van Dyke)!  Classic!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qqE_WmagjY#)
24. MLB clubs Seattle Mariners and Toronto Blue Jays (my favorite team) debut.
25. Bad 1977 movies: EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC, THE CHOSEN, TENTACLES, THE VAN, RAGGEDY ANN & ANDY: A MUSICAL ADVENTURE (we saw this at the Valley theater; it was weird and dull), EMPIRE OF THE ANTS, TINTORERRA, THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN, ORCA (though Bo Derek gets her leg bit off), GRAND THEFT AUTO, RETURN TO BOGGY CREEK, AIRPORT '77, PICNIC AT LAKEWOOD MANOR, DAMNATION ALLEY (we saw this at the Family Drive-In on a double bill with Ralph Bakshi's WIZARDS), AUDREY ROSE, VIVA KNIEVEL, THE CAR and THE CRATER LAKE MONSTER.
Bonus:
Other films we saw at the theaters: RACE FOR YOUR LIFE CHARLIE BROWN and THE RESCUERS, and tv animated specials THE HOBBIT, NESTOR THE LONG EARED DONKEY and A COSMIC CHRISTMAS.

1978:
1. FAMILY FEUD host Richard Dawson makes one of his many appearances on MATCH GAME and acts like a serious jerk.  His surliness had been building up for a long time on the show and finally fans wrote in to ask him to smile.  He refuses when prompted by host Gene Rayburn.  Gene even tries to force him as the credits roll!  Richard would soon after leave the show.  Episode:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=495BF-ciits#)
2. A big new addition to MATCH GAME is the STAR WHEEL!  Contestants got to spin the wheel to determine which celeb they got to try and match.  This was designed to keep a certain celeb from being picked over and over again (usually Richard).
(https://i.etsystatic.com/16385012/r/il/c4a562/1837474380/il_340x270.1837474380_8k5q.jpg)
3. One of my favorite animated tv specials: THE DEVIL AND DANIEL MOUSE!  This is of course a takeoff on THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER, and features 2 mice musicians-- one of which is lured into stardom by the devil (a big fat lizard) and the other has to fight for her soul.  The devil is brilliantly played by Chris Wiggins (FRIDAY THE 13TH THE SERIES) and Daniel's singing voice is John Sebastian!
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTg4MzI2OTE0N15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMTc3MzA5MDE@._V1_.jpg)
4. The funny episode of WKRP IN CINCINNATI is aired around Thanksgiving in which Arthur Carlson says "As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!" as turkeys are dropped from above for a radio promotion.
5. The funny Beatles parody THE RUTLES-- ALL YOU NEED IS CASH airs.
6. Another great game show moment: Contestant Norma Brown wins the maximum amount of $28,800 on CARD SHARKS's bonus round "Money Cards".  She bets the maximum on every card and gets a great deal of luck!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCzvH9nLZYA#)
7. Concluding series: CAROL BURNETT SHOW, BOB NEWHART SHOW, RHODA, CHICO AND THE MAN, COLUMBO, POLICE WOMAN, and BIONIC WOMAN.
8. Kids seemed to love Godzilla's nephew "Godzooky" on the animated series of GODZILLA. 
9. Bad 1978 films: I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND (which cost producer Robert Stigwood a serious setback financially), ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES, BAD NEWS BEARS GO TO JAPAN, THE SWARM, CORVETTE SUMMER, SEXTETTE, LASERBLAST, OLIVER'S STORY, RABBIT TEST, and THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE.
10. Novelty act THE VILLAGE PEOPLE release their signature disco smash hit: Y.M.C.A.
11. Other hit songs: BOOGIE OOGIE OOGIE- A Taste Of Honey, NIGHT FEVER- Bee Gees, SHADOW DANCING- Andy Gibb, HOT CHILD IN THE CITY- Nick Gilder, TAKE A CHANCE ON ME- ABBA, WE WILL ROCK YOU/WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS- Queen, LE FREAK- Chic, KISS YOU ALL OVER- Exile, LAST DANCE- Donna Summer, IMAGINARY LOVER- Atlanta Rhythm Section, LADY- Little River Band, REMINISCING- Little River Band, MACARTHUR PARK- Donna Summer, I LOVE THE NIGHTLIFE (DISCO ROUND)- Alicia Bridges, DON'T LOOK BACK- Boston, HOLD THE LINE- Toto, BLUER THAN BLUE- Michael Johnson, DOUBLE VISION- Foreigner, MISS YOU- Rolling Stones, EMOTION- Samantha Sang, LOVE WILL FIND A WAY- Pablo Cruise, WITH A LITTLE LUCK- Wings, LOVE IS LIKE OXYGEN- Sweet, LIFE'S BEEN GOOD- Joe Walsh, COPACABANA- Barry Manilow, HOT BLOODED- Foreigner, EVERY 1'S A WINNER- Hot Chocolate, WHO ARE YOU- The Who, MACHO MAN- Village People, SHAKE YOUR GROOVE THING- Peaches & Herb, HOW MUCH I FEEL- Ambrosia, and YOU NEEDED ME- Anne Murray.
12. Drummer Keith Moon of The Who dies of alcohol and drugs.  Kenney Jones of the band Faces/Small Faces replaces (heh) him.
13. Israel and Egypt sign the Camp David Peace Accords.
More to come..

14. GREAT, underappreciated movie-- one of Elliot Gould's best-- THE SILENT PARTNER.  Gould plays a bank teller who plays a cat-and-mouse game with a bank robber dressed as Santa Claus!  Rather than give all the money demanded to the robber he skims some for himself, and gets in hot water for it.  Saw the ads for this but as a 7 year old was too young to watch.  I think clips of this were in the later film TERROR IN THE AISLES.  It was hilarious to see Christopher Plummer dressed as Santa and saying "Just give me the money, f***er!"
(https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.rogerebert.com/uploads/review/primary_image/reviews/the-silent-partner-1979/EB19790330REVIEWS909229998AR.jpg)
15. Great arcade games besides SPACE INVADERS: SUPER BREAKOUT, SKY RAIDER, BLASTO, BLUE SHARK (we played the hell out of this at Malibu Gran Prix, especially when they set it to free play once), FIRE TRUCK (was always at the Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor we went to), GYPSY JUGGLER (also at Malibu), SEA WOLF II, SHUFFLEBOARD, SKY DIVER, and the cool 4 PLAYER BOWLING ALLEY (also at Malibu; my sister was crazy good at this).
16. Japanese explorer Naomi Uemura is the first person to reach the North Pole on a solo expedition.
17. The first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, is born in England.
18. A major shift in democracy occurs in Spain with the creation of a new Constitution.
19. A major teachers' strike across the US extends the summer vacation for students.
20. The first Susan B. Anthony dollar (coin) is minted.
21. Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat and Israel PM Menachem Begin win Nobel Peace Prize awards.
22. Actor Bob Crane (Hogan's Heroes) is murdered in his condo in Scottsdale, AZ; bludgeoned by what appears to be a camera tripod.  Though his manager John Carpenter (not the director) was suspected, the case remains unsolved.
23. Other famous deaths: John Cazale, Robert Shaw, Will Geer, Charles Boyer, Gig Young, Ed Wood, Edgar Bergen, Louis Prima, Norman Rockwell, Rocky Dennis, Golda Meir, Margaret Mead, Hubert Humphrey, Aram Khachaturian, Chill Wills, Totie Fields.
24. Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious apparently kills his girlfriend Nancy Spungen in a NY hotel room.
25. San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk is murdered.
Bonus:
Chicago (band) singer Terry Kath accidentally kills himself jokingly playing Russian Roulette, not realizing a bullet was in the chamber.

Another great list. I did not know that about Chicago's singer. Actually I didn't know a couple things there, and yesterday I had to watch the clip of the unsmiling Richard Dawson. (What was that with the host getting to kiss that Joyce woman on the lips? Did balding paunchy middle-age lushes get to go around kissing on women back then?)

Ha ha, yeah honestly I liked the 2nd host Ray Combs better.  He was funny and far less abrasive/creepy.  Sad that he was so deeply troubled and committed suicide.

Another re-visiting!
1979:
1. American icon John Wayne dies of lung cancer.
2. A major benefit concert is held at the UN General Assembly to raise money for UNICEF.  The Bee Gees, Donna Summer, Rod Stewart, ABBA and Earth Wind & Fire are performers.
3. The Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Iran after a 15-year exile.
4. American ambassador to Afghanistan Adolph Dubs is kidnapped by Muslim extremists in Kabul.  During a rescue attempt by police he is killed.
5. A heated race between racers Cale Yarborough and Bobby Allison at the Daytona 500 erupts into a fistfight!  Richard Petty wins the race.  This is the first 500 race completely televised (CBS).
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDDcmz8VMew#) 
6. Loved the high-energy disco remake of KNOCK ON WOOD, by disco singer Amii Stewart (hideous costume though).
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7b/Amii_Stewart_-_Knock_On_Wood.jpg)
7. Disco tunes on the radio.. TRAGEDY- Bee Gees, LOVE YOU INSIDE OUT- Bee Gees, RING MY BELL- Anita Ward, HOT STUFF- Donna Summer, GOOD TIMES- Chic, IN THE NAVY- Village People, BOOGIE WONDERLAND- Earth Wind & Fire & The Emotions, TOO MUCH HEAVEN- Bee Gees, THE MAIN EVENT- Barbara Streisand, WE ARE FAMILY- Sister Sledge, SEPTEMBER- Earth Wind & Fire, LADIES NIGHT- Kool & The Gang, DON'T BRING ME DOWN- ELO.
8. Other big hits on the radio: SAD EYES- Robert John, JUST WHEN I NEEDED YOU MOST- Randy Vanwarmer, THIS NIGHT WON'T LAST FOREVER- Michael Johnson, YOU DECORATED MY LIFE- Kenny Rogers, COWARD OF THE COUNTY- Kenny Rogers, YOU'RE ONLY LONELY- J.D. Souther, ESCAPE (THE PINA COLADA SONG), REUNITED- Peaches And Herb, WHAT A FOOL BELIEVES- Doobie Brothers, FOOL IN THE RAIN- Led Zeppelin, SULTANS OF SWING- Dire Straits, THE LOGICAL SONG- Supertramp, MY SHARONA- The Knack, GOOD GIRLS DON'T- The Knack, I WANT YOU TO WANT ME- Cheap Trick, TOO HOT- Kool & The Gang, YOU CAN'T CHANGE THAT- Raydio, LEAD ME ON- Maxine Nightingale, ROCK AND ROLL FANTASY- Bad Company, I'LL NEVER LOVE THIS WAY AGAIN- Dionne Warwick, GOODBYE STRANGER- Supertramp, LONESOME LOSER- Little River Band, COOL CHANGE- Little River Band, STILL- Commodores, YOU TAKE MY BREATH AWAY- Rex Smith, BABE- Styx, RISE- Herb Alpert, MUSIC BOX DANCER- Frank Mills, SHAKE IT- Ian Matthews, DRIVER'S SEAT- Sniff 'N The Tears, CRUEL TO BE KIND- Nick Lowe, I WAS MADE FOR LOVING YOU- Kiss, ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL (PART II)- Pink Floyd.
9. I remember watching this crazy episode of the game show WHEW! on my grandma's tv-- a contestant excitedly jumps up and down after a win, but throws out his knee!  He is unable to play the bonus game and is rushed to the hospital.  Happy ending though-- he is invited to come back on a future episode when properly healed.  He does, and wins over $28,000!  Episode:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYyUzgHJxfw&t=442s#)
10. Kurt Russell wins an Emmy for his role as the titular "King of Rock and Roll" in the made for TV movie ELVIS.
11. Cable channels ESPN, C-SPAN, Nickelodeon and USA Network debut.
12. Cable movie channel THE STAR CHANNEL is re-named THE MOVIE CHANNEL.
13. TV series endings: WHAT'S HAPPENING!, HARDY BOYS/NANCY DREW MYSTERIES, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, STARSKY & HUTCH, WELCOME BACK KOTTER, ALL IN THE FAMILY (re-named ARCHIE BUNKER'S PLACE), GOOD TIMES, WONDER WOMAN, THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF DISNEY, MATCH GAME (continued on as MATCH GAME PM).
14. Debuts: THE DUKES OF HAZZARD, ANGIE, THE ROPERS, REAL PEOPLE, THE FACTS OF LIFE, HART TO HART, SPORTSCENTER, BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY, THE NEW ADVENTURES OF FLASH GORDON (great cartoon), TRAPPER JOHN M.D., KNOTS LANDING.
15. The great horror classic made-for-TV film SALEM'S LOT is aired.
16. Some great arcade video games besides the immortal ASTEROIDS: VIDEO PINBALL, GALAXIAN (released in the US in 1980), HEAD ON, LUNAR LANDER, MONACO GP, ASTRO FIGHTER (also released in the US in 1980), ATARI BASKETBALL, LUNAR RESCUE, WARRIOR, SPEED FREAK and STAR HAWK.
17. One of the Intellivision's signature titles, LAS VEGAS POKER AND BLACKJACK, caught my attention.. I loved the expressions on the dealer's face when you win/lose and his eyes moving about as he deals the cards.
(http://www.intvfunhouse.com/mattel/games/pbj-01.png)
18. MVP Willie Stargell and the Pittsburgh Pirates win the World Series.
19. APOCALYPSE NOW, 10, THE BLACK STALLION, BEING THERE, AMYTIVILLE HORROR, THE GREAT SANTINI, ALL THAT JAZZ, ZULU DAWN, THE WANDERERS, THE WARRIORS, THE TIN DRUM, QUADROPHENIA, BREAKING AWAY, LIFE OF BRIAN, MAD MAX, PHANTASM ("If this doesn't scare you.. you're already dead"), and THE BLACK HOLE are notable films.
20. I remember MORK & MINDY kind of jumping the shark with a weird episode where Mork shrinks into microscopic size as a result of an allergic reaction to cold medicine.  It is a 2-part episode with no laugh track.
More later..

I watched him host that show when I was young, and he was famous for kissing every woman who came on the show - they lined up for it, in fact!
BTW, he did a wonderful job playing the villain in the movie adaptation of Stephen King's THE RUNNING MAN.  Absolutely worth a watch!

21. The World Hockey Association folds and 4 of its teams join the NHL: The Edmonton Oilers, New England (later Hartford) Whalers, Quebec Nordiques and Winnipeg Jets.
22. An accident occurs at the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island, PA.  A reactor meltdown allows coolant and radioactive gases to escape.
23. Anti-nuclear protest music concerts known as NO NUKES are held in Madison Square Garden; Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, The Doobie Brothers, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Graham Nash, Jackson Browne, Nicolette Larson, Ry Cooder and several other prominent names appear.
24. 1979 product debuts: Happy Meal, Sony Walkman, Strawberry Shortcake greeting cards, Erasermate, Honey Nut Cheerios, Hubba Bubba, Maglite, Mello Yello, Microvision, Tostitos.
25. Commercials:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzpK2fjaGx0#)

One from 1980 I missed:
NBC, during a malaise where they were in last place among the major networks, does a joke promo called "We're Loud!", in which they basically make fun of their misfortune.  Numerous staff got fired over this.  I imagine network exec Fred Silverman was none too thrilled.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir6gJHSyAgc#)

Also 1980: Loved DRESSED TO KILL.  Elevator murder scene that had everybody buzzing:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8_HfT2ndyg#)

And with Richard Dawson being a jerk a number of times of Family Feud it was nice to see him break down emotionally when his sons surprise him on his birthday!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsbmTC1Vj4U#)

No, not Richard Dawson, the man hosting the game show on which Dawson was a panelist who refused to smile. The woman clearly did not relish kissing the host. It seemed so much a violation for him to do that. Of course she did try to charge him for it, so I admire her brazen side-hustle of prostitution.

Oh, and one more well-known FF episode from 1980:
"September"
Richard just loses his s**t when a contestant gives a particularly bad answer during the Fast Money round.

"During what month of pregnancy does a woman begin to look pregnant?"
"September."
Richard just CANNOT keep his composure.  It's happened a number of times during his FF tenure.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J05Dzd_8OjE#)

He had a bad reputation on Hogan's Heroes too. Ugh,  and now I think of it he didn't seem to mind sending those people out to die on the Running Man game show either that he hosted. I think they made a documentary movie about that....?

Someone PM'd me and said The Running Man wasn't an actual game show but a movie based on a book by Stephen King.

I told him it was a game show in 2017, but he said Richard Dawson was dead by then, and I said no, he hosted The Running Man, and sent a clip off YouTube to prove it. Oh, he kept blathering on so I said we were going to have to agree to disagree. However, I did get this person to agree it was sheer pretentiousness of Richard Dawson to make an autobiographical series about growing up beside a creek in Massachusetts, a young man obsessed with Spielberg movies and his orphaned neighbor Katie Holmes, then shifting the time frame from WWII England to the fin de siecle US.

Though Dawson's series really did do a good job depicting how teenagers actually talk.

1985:
1. Oh man.. loved watching Nickelodeon at my mom's on the weekends.  And in 1985 they introduced this nonsense song in this bumper:
"Hon de laud hup hivvel up Nick, hon de laud hup hivvel up Nick Nick, hon de rikki tikki lo Y livin' #1 Nickelodeon!"
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsOLAoS6IfQ#)
Even my mom loves that song!
2. Family Feud ends its initial run.  Richard Dawson had one more moment of coming unglued at a bad answer:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_Nvud4-cpU#)
3. Great albums: POWER STATION- Debut, BROTHERS IN ARMS- Dire Straits, SONGS FROM THE BIG CHAIR- Tears For Fears, NO JACKET REQUIRED- Phil Collins, CENTERFIELD- John Fogerty, SCARECROW- John Mellencamp, AFTERBURNER- ZZ Top, SHE'S THE BOSS- Mick Jagger, PROMISE- Sade, AROUND THE WORLD IN A DAY- The Revolution
4. Bad movies: CLUE, LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN, THE SLUGGER'S WIFE, HOWLING II: YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF, PORKY'S REVENGE, PERFECT, THE BRIDE, GYMKATA, SANTA CLAUS THE MOVIE, STICK, CREATURE, DEATH WISH 3, THE MAN WITH ONE RED SHOE, GODZILLA 1985, MISSING IN ACTION II (I called the series "Missing in acting"), MOVING VIOLATIONS, KING SOLOMON'S MINES, AMERICAN NINJA.
5. What the hell-- a new Friday The 13th movie WITHOUT JASON??  Yep-- part V featured an impostor.  I wasn't expecting anything good but boy was this a stupid letdown.  My friends still liked it for the high body count and gore.  Showed up on cable a lot.  FRIDAY THE 13TH PART V: A NEW BEGINNING.
6. The Titanic's wreckage is found, 73 years after it sank.
7. Rock Hudson's death of AIDS brings the disease to major national spotlight.  I remember a classmate telling the joke "What's Rock Hudson on roller skates?  Rolaids!"
More to come later..

A bit of older stuff I forgot about, and just to let you all know-- if you already posted 25 nostalgic things about a year and then remembered another one or two instead of a full blown new list of 25 for that year, you can just add the one or two.

Or, what the hell-- post as many as you want.  I'm flexible.  I just like reading the memories.

So:
1980
The awesome groundbreaking computer graphic intro for THE ABC SUNDAY NIGHT MOVIE debuts! 
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3geJWOiZw4#)
1984
I loved the Pointer Sisters giving their blessing to the cable channel SHOWTIME for the use of their song "I'm So Excited" in Showtime's movie intro.  A refrain would also play during the "Coming Next" prompt.
Promo:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoV7pcD6TMQ#)
Also 1984:
This goofy commercial was on all the time!  TWIZZLERS had been around forever, but they made a big comeback in the 80s with this claymation commercial brought to you by a mouth!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vIdjXvHmeU#)
Back to a bit of 1985:
8. Another goofy commercial that was ever-present: the Colgate Pump had actually been around a few years already, but this weird British-made commercial (based on a Madness song) was embedded in every kid's head at the time.  Now there's the Colgate pump!  We love the Colgate pump!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18wxzA75-2g#)
9. GOONIES 'R GOOD ENUFF!  This Cyndi Lauper hit was not originally supposed to be tied to the film THE GOONIES, but Warner Bros. persuaded her otherwise.  Great music video with lots of wrestling stars-- Cyndi was a wrestling fan and close friend of Captain Lou Albano, who plays her dad here.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxLhytQ67fs#)
10. The collectible sticker line-- and spoof of the fat-looking Cabbage Patch Kids dolls-- GARBAGE PAIL KIDS debuts!  I loved collecting these, though never came remotely close to getting them all.  The ones I did have I stuck all over my bedroom window when I had the bedroom over the garage.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/43/GPK_8a_adambomb.jpg)
More to come!

Well done, retro!

Thanks!
More 1985:
11. Ricky Nelson (OZZIE & HARRIET, musical career) dies in a plane crash on New Year's Eve.
12. More famous deaths: YUL BRYNNER, ORSON WELLES, ANNE BAXTER, CAROL WAYNE, JAMES BEARD, BARBARA COWSILL, CLARENCE NASH (voice of Donald Duck), EDDIE SHORE, MICHAEL REDGRAVE, DOLPH SWEET, EDMUND O'BRIEN, CHESTER GOULD, SELMA DIAMOND, MARGARET HAMILTON, KYU SAKAMOTO, GALE SONDERGAARD, RUTH GORDON, E.B. WHITE, NELSON RIDDLE, JOHNNY OLSON, RICKY WILSON (B-52's), PHIL SILVERS, BIG JOE TURNER, MAURICE PODOLOFF, BILL SCOTT (Bullwinkle), ROGER MARIS, IAN STEWART, DIAN FOSSEY.
13. Stephen King writes THE TALISMAN, THINNER and SKELETON CREW.
14. Other notable books: TEXAS- James Michener, THE POLAR EXPRESS- Chris Van Allsburg, SARAH, PLAIN AND TALL- Patricia MacClachlan, ENDER'S GAME- Orson Scott Card, THE CIDER HOUSE RULES- John Irving, and IF TOMORROW COMES- Sidney Sheldon.
15. The Commodore Amiga debuts!
(https://www.oldcomputr.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/commodore_amiga_1000-complete.jpg)
16. After the debacle known as NEW COKE, the original formula is brought back and re-branded as COCA-COLA CLASSIC.
17. PICTIONARY debuts!  When I moved to Auburn/Federal Way the family had fun Pictionary parties with Little Ceaser's Pizza (back when it was good as well as cheap)!
18. The "Gay Elm Street" debuts in theaters: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY'S REVENGE.  They called this one as such due to the close friendship of 2 young men in the film and the appearance of a "leather bar".  Turns out the lead actor in the film was indeed gay.  Not that I care one way or another about any of that, but it was kind of an interesting turn in the series. 
19. This was kind of the year when scary movies stopped getting to me so much-- they used to terrify the hell out of me.  I watched FRIGHT NIGHT at a friend's house this year and it just didn't scare me.  It is a good film though.
20. Other scary films of 1985: CAT'S EYE, THE STUFF, SILVER BULLET, BLOOD CULT (one of the first shot-on-video horror films for the rental market), THE BRIDE, DAY OF THE DEAD, DEMONS, THE HILLS HAVE EYES II, LIFE FORCE, THE MUTILATOR, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD and the anime VAMPIRE HUNTER D.
21. Route 66 is officially decertified.
22. SOUR PATCH KIDS debut! 
23. Though the Dairy Queen BLIZZARD had been introduced decades ago, its re-introduction in 1985 proved super popular.  I snapped them right up when my local DQ started selling them.
24. SQUEEZ-IT fruit drinks debut!
25. Pizza Hut introduces the PRIAZZO pizza!  A deep dish pizza stuffed with meats/veggies and blanketed with tons of cheese.  It had big meatballs too.  I loved the hell out of this!  It disappeared in the early 90s.
(https://mommysmemorandum.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/pizza-hut-priazzo.jpg.webp)

More 1986:
1. Oh man were these tasty-- Hormel's FRANK 'N STUFF stuffed hot dogs!  They came stuffed with either chili or cheese.  They debuted in 1986 and disappeared by the 90s.  There was one brief instance where razor blades were found in a couple packages at a production plant but there was no recall (and that was the only incident).
(https://dinosaurdracula.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/FACEBOOK2-2.jpg)
2. My Aunt Amy and I spent a day housewatching for her friend.  We picked up a couple movies from 7-11 (remember when they rented them out??).  One was the great Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, and the other was the abysmally awful Scream from 1981.  One of the few times in my life I ever slept on a waterbed.
3. Bad 1986 movies: SOLARBABIES, CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR, THE GOLDEN CHILD (some funny parts, and Eddie Murphy is always great, but really not terribly good), HAMBURGER: THE MOTION PICTURE, SHANGHAI SURPRISE, JUMPIN' JACK FLASH, KING KONG LIVES, MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE (saw this stinker at the drive-in), PSYCHO III, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2, RATBOY, TAI-PAN, VAMP, 9 1/2 WEEKS, HAUNTED HONEYMOON, HOWARD THE DUCK, UNDER THE CHERRY MOON, and DEADLY FRIEND.
4. The Calgary Flames reach their first Stanley Cup-- but unfortunately don't win (lost in 5 games to Montreal).
5. The cool game show with the giant cards CARD SHARKS returns, this time being hosted by Bob Eubanks and appearing on CBS.
6. Kids that saw TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE were sad to learn that both Orson Welles (Unicron) and Scatman Crothers (Jazz) had died while working on or shortly after the film.
7. The cool game show PRESS YOUR LUCK ends.  Fortunately it would rerun for several years on the USA Network.
Speaking of which:
One more 1985 moment-- One episode of PRESS YOUR LUCK had a glaring error by the staff, who thought the Looney Tunes character Daffy Duck said "Sufferin' Succotash!" and of course, it was Sylvester the cat.  Mel Blanc himself called in (staged to some degree, though Mel was probably a fan of the show and did contact the producers) in character to set the record straight!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke6F736nDfc#)
More to come later..

A couple more quick 1985 entries:
Madonna appears nude in a September issue of PENTHOUSE.  Got to peruse this-- and other-- issues due to my friend knowing where his stepdad's stash was. 
Wink Martindale leaves as host of TIC TAC DOUGH and is replaced by Jim Caldwell.
1984 entry:
Jack Barry, host of THE JOKER'S WILD and producer of tons of game shows including TJW, dies of a heart attack while jogging in Central Park.
And 1983:
2 surprising episodes of DIFF'RENT STROKES air involving a bicycle shop owner molesting children!

Back to 1986:
8. The toy line of LAZER TAG debuts!  Pew pew!
(https://sciencefiction.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Lazer-Tag-Academy-7.jpg)
9. Product debuts: A&W Cream Soda, Atari 7800, Intel 386 Microprocessor, and the 3D printer.
10. Geraldo Rivera opens up Al Capone's vaults on a 2-hour special and finds.. nada.
11. More album debuts: GRACELAND- Paul Simon, TRUE BLUE- Madonna, and SLIPPERY WHEN WET- Bon Jovi.
12. More debuts: The book IT (Stephen King), the game THE LEGEND OF ZELDA and METROID, and the bands ALICE IN CHAINS, CYPRESS HILL, THE GOO GOO DOLLS, and GREEN DAY (then known as STREET CHILDREN).
13. OFFICE DEPOT debuts in Fort Lauderdale.
14. Fox Broadcasting Company's channel is officially unveiled.
15. The first utterance of the phrase "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV": A Vicks Formula 44 commercial, by Peter Bergman (ALL MY CHILDREN).
16. Rod Roddy replaces Johnny Olson as the announcer for The Price Is Right.
17. Acclaimed TV film RETURN TO MAYBERRY airs.  16 original ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW cast members appear.
18. A hacker naming himself "Captain Midnight" hacks HBO's signal, protesting its monthly fee.
19. Lucille Ball makes one last attempt at a series with LIFE WITH LUCY.  It is a colossal flop.
20. Series endings: BENSON, THE FALL GUY, HARDCASTLE AND MCCORMICK, INSPECTOR GADGET, RIPLEY'S BELIEVE IT OR NOT, DIFF'RENT STROKES, THE JOKER'S WILD, THE LOVE BOAT, KNIGHT RIDER, T.J. HOOKER, RIPTIDE, TIC TAC DOUGH, TRAPPER JOHN M.D., and SEARCH FOR TOMORROW.
21. THE HOLLYWOOD SQUARES returns!  Not with Peter Marshall hosting, but John Davidson.  It runs till 1989.  Jim J. Bullock, Joan Rivers, Vincent Price, Phyllis Diller, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Richard Simmons, Tom Poston, John Byner, Steve Allen and many others appear.
22. Food/drink debuts: POP SECRET, FIVE GUYS restaurant, POWER BAR.
23. THE CALIFORNIA RAISINS, MY PET MONSTER and the game OUTBURST debut.
24. A Mad Cow disease outbreak occurs in the UK.
25. LAPUTA: CASTLE IN THE SKY is the first Studio Ghibli animated film.

A 1985 nugget I missed:
An episode of FAMILY TIES with Alex falling hard for a girl to the song AT THIS MOMENT helps launch the song to a belated #1 spot on the music charts.
Another 1990 nugget:
The silly animated special CARTOON ALL STARS TO THE RESCUE airs.  Various characters including Garfield, Alvin & The Chipmunks, the Smurfs, Bugs Bunny, the Muppet Babies and others try to keep kids from doing drugs.  This well-intentioned but cheesy misfire has endured as a cult classic.


1987 re-visited:
1. Oh man.. Pennsylvania Treasurer R. Budd Dwyer commits suicide on live tv in Harrisburg, PA at a press conference.  After a lengthy reading, protesting his innocence on charges of conspiracy, mail fraud, perjury and aiding in racketeering, he then gives criticisms of those who charged him with these crimes and thanks friends and family.  At the end of his speech he opens a manila envelope and pulls out a pistol.  He warns panicked onlookers to stay away-- "Don't, don't, don't; this will only hurt people."  He then blows his brains out.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/68/R._Budd_Dwyer_suicide.jpg/220px-R._Budd_Dwyer_suicide.jpg)
2. Televangelist Jimmy Bakker is forced to step down from his program The PTL Club after an alleged rape attempt of a church secretary, and the hush money he gave her.
3. Valerie Harper gets a bug in her britches over a contract dispute and is let go from the sitcom VALERIE.  Sandy Duncan replaces her and the show is eventually re-named THE HOGAN FAMILY.
4. Shelly Long leaves CHEERS and her role as Sam's love interest is taken up by Kirstie Alley (rip).
5. Crispin Glover's appearance on LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN is a disaster, as he nearly kicks Letterman in the head while apparently in character for his future film RUBIN AND ED.  Glover is gone after the commercial break.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCaxKq5KFQM#)
6. Notable video of Michael Jackson's BAD:
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd4SJVsTulc#)
7. What a weirdo cartoon: BRAVESTARR!  A Native American Indian marshall on an Old West-styled planet-- with an anthropomorphic talking horse!  Dafuq?!
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/bd/Bravestarr3030.jpg/200px-Bravestarr3030.jpg)
8. Another weird cartoon, with 4 shorts: COMIC STRIP!  Created by Rankin-Bass, it featured TigerSharks, Karate Kat, Street Frogs and Mini-Monsters.  I did like the theme song: "C-O-M-I-C.. S-T-R-I-P.. Come on take a trip down the Comic Strip!"
9. 1 1/2 year old baby Jessica McClure falls down a well in Midland, TX; the event draws national exposure.  She is safely freed over the next few days.
10. ESPN is the first cable channel to air an NFL game, as ESPN SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL debuts.
11. The Facts Of Life get a made for tv movie where the girls visit Australia: THE FACTS OF LIFE DOWN UNDER.  There was also one 5 years prior when they went to Paris.
12. Hit songs: GOT MY MIND SET ON YOU- George Harrison, SHAKE YOU DOWN- Gregory Abbott, ALWAYS- Atlantic Starr, (I'VE HAD) THE TIME OF MY LIFE- Bill Medley/Jennifer Warnes, HEART AND SOUL- T'Pau, SHAKEDOWN- Bob Seger, I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY- Whitney Houston, NOTHING'S GONNA CHANGE MY LOVE FOR YOU- Glenn Medeiros, HEAD TO TOE- Lisa Lisa & The Cult Jam, NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP- Rick Astley, TOGETHER FOREVER- Rick Astley, RHYTHM IS GONNA GET YOU- Gloria Estefan, I THINK WE'RE ALONE NOW- Tiffany, DUDE LOOKS LIKE A LADY- Aerosmith, CAUSING A COMMOTION- Madonna, ALONE- Heart, LOST IN EMOTION- Debbie Gibson, WHO'S THAT GIRL- Madonna, POUR SOME SUGAR ON ME- Def Leppard, NEED YOU TONIGHT- INXS
13. More bad movies: JAWS THE REVENGE, MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, WHO'S THAT GIRL, FATAL BEAUTY, OVER THE TOP, RENT A COP, CREEPSHOW 2 (saw this with my mom at the drive-in), PINOCCHIO AND THE EMPEROR OF THE NIGHT, and TOUGH GUYS DON'T DANCE.
14. Also, this bad movie was forgotten for many years and later gave birth to the meme: GARBAGE DAY!! 
SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT PART 2.  I have a signed poster from the villain's actor!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7gIpuIVE3k#)
More to come..