The Year In Review

barackarrivesCharles Dickens might well have been referring to 2009 when he famously wrote:  ”It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.”  Here is Carbolic Smoke Ball’s recap of this awful year:

NATIONAL NEWS

The new administration:

 •The United States saw an historic changing of the guard in January when its first black president took up residence in the White House.  Two weeks before the inauguration, President-elect Barack Obama made a triumphant entry into Washington, D.C. riding an ass while an exultant crowd waved palm branches in his path.  

•Political commentators lauded President Obama’s inaugural address for not producing any memorable lines, as well as for the absence of eloquence, form, structure, and cohesiveness.  One presidential rhetoric expert hailed the speech as a landmark: “In its absence of meaning, President Obama’s speech gave meaning to absence.” 

•The inaugural festivities were marred by the seizure suffered by Sen. Ted Kennedy during the dignitaries’ luncheon in the Capitol Building.  Kennedy was rushed to a hospital, but fortunately, Pennsylvania’s Governor Ed Rendell was available to finish off Kennedy’s meal. 

•The most talked about moment of the day came when Howard Stern found his new “Stuttering John” — Chief Justice John Roberts, who flubbed the oath so badly that Obama had to be brought back that night to retake it.  Senator Kennedy was also brought back to have another seizure.  This time, the oath took, and Obama was unquestionably president.  The rise of the oceans began to slow, and young people hailed Obama’s inauguration a “life altering event.”  That, and the Jonas Brothers’ concert film.  After dinner the first night in office, the President’s mother-in-law commandeered Air Force One to whisk her to Tuesday night bingo in Chicago.

•Quickly, the new administration’s cabinet took shape.  Secretary of the Treasury-designate Timothy Geithner put his tax problems behind him and was sworn in using tax cheat Al Capone’s bible.

•President Obama made his mark on the national consciousness.  Ohio welder Noah Swayne, 27, and his buddies played a game in which they each took a shot of Jack Daniels every time the President said the word “look” in a press conference.  Doctors attribute Mr. Swayne’s alcoholism to one particular April press conference.

•The new administration suffered its share of gaffes.  The White House apologized after it panicked New York City with an Air Force One photo-op flyover of the Statue of Liberty. Two weeks later, it apologized to Hiroshima for its Enola Gay photo-op flyover. 

•Vice President Joe Biden panicked the nation when he called for the evacuation of all confined spaces where air doesn’t circulate, especially airplanes and think tanks.

•House Speaker Nancy Pelosi found herself in the eye of a political maelstrom when she claimed she was unaware that the Bush administration tortured war prisoners.  Her claim was cast into question when it was revealed that she serves as technical advisor for the “Saw” film series.

•President Obama convened a “beer summit” with Cambridge, Mass. Police Sgt. James Crowley and the man he arrested, Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. in a racially charged altercation. Crowley and Gates soon hit it off when they checked into a detoxification unit, blaming the beer summit.

•In October, President Obama deployed 40,000 troops to Fox News’ Rockefeller Center headquarters in a stunning surprise attack that quickly wrested control of the conservative cable television news channel from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and placed it in the hands of the Obama White House.  President Obama appeared on television, with his Nobel Peace Prize slung around his neck, to solemnly announce the start of the war:  “My fellow Americans, on my orders, at this moment, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to liberate the airwaves from Fox News’ atrocities against the truth regarding this administration’s record.”

•On Halloween, Linus and President Obama waited in the pumpkin patch for the Great Pumpkin and change, respectively.

•Immediately upon returning from Denmark where he unsuccessfully appealed to the International Olympic Committee to choose Chicago as host of the 2016 Olympic Games, President Obama traveled to Coney Island to make a personal plea to the International Federation of Competitive Eating to bring Nathan’s International July Fourth Hot Dog Eating Contest to Chicago in 2016.

The economy:

•The economy dominated the news throughout the year. China foreclosed on the United States and seized the Statue of Liberty as collateral.  A Chinese official lamented that the Statue is not worth enough to substantially pay down the US’s  debt.  “After all, it was made in France.” 

•The recession even hit the Catholic Church.  To help raise needed funds, parish priests were given lessons on how to pickpocket parishioners when they receive Communion. 

•Consumer advocates taught cash-strapped Americans how to get their money’s worth out of parking meters: wait until the meter completely runs out before leaving the parking space.  

•Circumcision clinics were also hit by the recession and warned customers to expect cuts. 

Other U.S. news:

•Amelia Earhart stunned the world when, after 72 years, she emerged from the same box where six-year-old Falcon Heene hid while his family falsely claimed he was flying in a helium balloon over Colorado.

•The GOP was shocked when Ronald Reagan’s long-lost birth certificate was found, and it showed he was born in Kenya.

•Mel Gibson’s father declared the Holocaust Museum shooting a “hoax.”

•On March 28th, America turned off it’s lights in observance of Earth Hour, but it ended badly for the Cooper family of Exton, Pennsylvania.   Harry and Helen Cooper and their teenage daughter Karen were brutally dismembered by marauding zombies after Mrs. Cooper shut off the floodlights atop their farmhouse. Police said the floodlights were the only thing that kept the zombies at bay at night.

•Sarah Palin resigned as Governor of Alaska and announced that she would replace that late Billy Mays as the Oxiclean spokesperson.  Beloved Rankin/Bass Claymation character Yukon Conelius succeeded Palin as Governor.

•Last summer, headlines across California screamed: ”Wildfires spreading like . . . real fast.”

•Feminist writer Maureen Dowd revised the title of her book “Are Men Necessary?” by tacking on a subtitle: “Only When I Plagiarize Them.”

•New York’s St. Patrick’s Day parade was marred by sobriety and marching in straight lines.

•General Motors raised the cash needed to emerge from bankruptcy when GM’s President Fritz Henderson visited the home of George Bailey, president of Bailey Bros. Building and Loan in the town of  Bedford Falls, and locals showered him with cash before breaking into Auld Lang Syne.

•Travis the Chimp, a primate of interest in the mauling of a Connecticut woman, made a surprise appearance at the reunion of iconic illusionists Siegfried and Roy in Las Vegas, but the visit ended tragically when the 200-pound chimp lunged at Roy Horn and mauled him.

•The public was repeatedly warned that without a digital converter box, they would not be able to see or hear analog people.

•An investigation was launched into a security breach at the syndicated daily comic strip Peanuts after two uninvited guests, reality television contestants Tereq and Michaele Salahi, managed to crash the strip and inexplicably appear in a panel with Charlie Brown and Linus.

•NASA revealed a satellite photo showing that the Lunar Rover, abandoned on the moon’s surface in 1972 by Apollo 17 astronauts, is now covered with parking tickets. 

•NASA fired a rocket into the moon in a search for water on the lunar surface; the moon fired back, and President Obama apologized to the moon.

•Hillary Clinton one-upped Levi Johnston when she bared all for Playgirl Magazine.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

•Somalian Pirates seized the Love Boat.

•French President Nicolas Sarkozy offered a uniquely French solution to the Mideast crisis: both sides should surrender.

•President Obama told Europeans to stop blaming America for the world’s ills — “that’s my shtick,” he said.

•The Baghdad Chapter of NOW lauded a female suicide bomber for shattering the glass ceiling, the glass windows, the glass doors — and pretty much everything else in sight. NOW bemoaned the fact that when the suicide bomber entered Paradise, she was greeted by only 55 virgins instead of 72 because of the gender wage gap.

•The Chicago Daily Tribune was mortified for publishing a banner headline incorrectly declaring former New York Governor Thomas Dewey the winner of Iran’s presidential election over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

•Immediately after brokering the release of two imprisoned journalists in North Korea, former President Bill Clinton flew from Pyongyang to Mayberry, North Carolina to seek the release of town drunkard Otis Campbell from the local jail.

•President Obama insisted that Iran come clean about its intent to build an Atomic Fireball candy factory. “The international community will not allow Iran to produce candies of mass destruction,” Obama said.

•The U.S. military in Hawaii was placed on “high alert” in response to intelligence reports that North Korea ”likely” will fire long-range ballistic missiles toward the set of the ABC hit series “Lost,” which films on the island of Oahu, in a show of displeasure over the popular series’ incomprehensible plot-lines.

•In September, President Obama revealed that the joke was on Pittsburgh, which thought it had been selected to host the G-20 Summit.  Mr. Obama revealed that the former US steel capital was actually getting the WD-40 summit, not the G-20.

HEALTH NEWS

•MSNBC executives determined that the swine flu outbreak wasn’t nearly as serious as they initially expected, so they huddled in an emergency meeting to pick the nation’s next panic.

•President Obama announced that the centerpiece of his health care reform was that physician waiting rooms get new magazines.  He also said that his health plan will eliminate the need for eyeglasses by requiring physicians to use large print eye charts when giving eye exams.

•The salmonella outbreak prompted the recall of Peanuts.  Charlie Brown was not happy.

•President Obama said that the headquarters for the new health care death panels would be completed by 2011.  He added that the headquarters’ resemblance to Star Wars’  “death star” was purely coincidental and that “people shouldn’t read anything into it.”

•The GOP offered its alternative to the Obama health plan: first aid kits in every company cafeteria.

•The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which reversed decades of previous recommendations by telling women to start receiving mammograms every other year at age 50 instead of annually at 40, declared December “Breast Cancer Unawareness Month.”

LEGAL NEWS

•Police across America were on high alert following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. v. Murray barring executions of low IQ inmates.  Law enforcement officials feared the decision would touch off a reign of terror by the retarded if they ever realized they could murder without paying the ultimate penalty.

•Sonia Sotomayor made history when she became the first Latina selected to the United States Supreme Court. President Obama said that Sotomayor’s comment calling for all white males to be castrated until they are no longer dominant was ”taken out of context.” 

•Just before her confirmation hearing, Sotomayor broke her ankle and declared that “because of the richness of my Latina ankle’s experiences, it will undergo a faster recovery than the ankle of a white male.”  

•At her confirmation hearing, Judge Sotomayor told the Senate Judiciary Committee that she uses a mood ring to decide cases. 

•Senators applauded the fact that Sotomayor was forthcoming about her past when she admitted she had been a member of the Puerto Rican gang The Sharks, which struggles for control of the neighborhood against the American gang The Jets.

•Wise Foods, Inc. announced that Sotomayor was replacing Wise’s iconic owl as the company’s potato chip mascot, and that she would be known as “The Wise Latina Woman.”

ENTERTAINMENT

•Tinseltown was a flurry of activity in 2009.  Angelina Jolie sent two of her adopted children to Madonna in a blockbuster deal consummated just hours before the trading deadline.

•Michael Moore unveiled his latest film about his quest to track down the head of General Motors, “Barack & Me.”

•Kanye West interrupted the ceremony for the Nobel Prize for Chemistry by declaring: “This award belongs to Beyonce.”

•Joe the Plumber said portraying Dr. Manhattan in “Watchmen” was “the most challenging thing I’ve ever done.”

•Congress passed the “Right to Know Which Celebrities Are Gay” law.

•A sequel was green-lighted for Oscar best picture winner “Slumdog Millionaire” – only this time, the film’s producers are looking for a bigger audience, so it’ll be a teen raunch-fest called ”Slumdog Rush Week.”  It’s tagline: ”He left the slums of Mumbai behind him and has come to the one place where a young man can find fulfillment: an American frat house!”

•When lucid, Jamie Foxx regretted the lobotomy he underwent in order to play Nathaniel Anthony Ayers in “The Soloist.”

•The 4,000 Jews who failed to show up at work at the World Trade Center on September 11th were spotted celebrating the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, leaving the Arabs to wonder “what are those pesky Jews up to now?”

•Director Roman Polanski said he was willing to cut a deal with the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office that would keep him out of prison but would force him to wear a sign every day for one week outside the Beverly Center Mall that says:  “I had quasi-consensual sex with a 13-year-old girl.”

•The Jerry Lewis Telethon set a record over the Labor Day weekend: 512 maudlin moments.

•Iconic soap “The Guiding Light” signed off the air after 72 years, and CBS released the complete DVD box set of all 18,360 episodes. If watched continuously, the network said the DVDs could be viewed in a little more than seven years.

•Warner Brothers cut the scene from Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino” where veteran actress Jessica Tandy, reprising the role of Daisy Werthan that she originated in Driving Miss Daisy, accidentally mistook Eastwood’s prized car for her limousine and climbed in the backseat.  Eastwood, playing tough-as-nails Korean War veteran Walt Kowalski, opened the door and bludgeoned Tandy to deathwith a crowbar.

•NBC hired effeminate film critic Rex Reed to replace John Madden.

•CBS commentator Andy Rooney, 90, was arrested for trying to extort $2 million from David Letterman over Letterman’s affairs with CBS female employees. In the squad car, Rooney scribbled a whimsical list of prison shower atrocities.  Police said that Mr. Rooney was also a person of interest in the John Travolta blackmail case.

•In New York, a Broadway show broke out in a gay rights march.

•Paul Anka claimed rights to Michael Jackson’s “This Is It.”  Anka also claimed he wrote “Happy Birthday” in 1983 under a different title, “The One I left Behind,” as a disco hit for The Bee Gees.  Anka insisted he would sue anyone who sings “Happy Birthday” without paying him a royalty.

•Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey played the sleep double of the boyfriend in “Paranormal Activity.”

•Former busty blond and Penthouse model Susan Boyle couldn’t get anyone to listen to her singing until plastic surgery made her look like a frumpy, overweight spinster.

•TV Land replayed the controversial final episode of  “The Brady Bunch” for the first time since it aired in 1974 in which practical joker Jan falsely accused Greg of rape as a gag, and father Mike Brady overreacted by shooting Greg to death, leading to Mr. Brady’s conviction for murder.  The episode was deemed too dark for syndication, even with the light-hearted final line spoken by wisecracking housekeeper Alice:  “Oh, well, look at the bright side, Mrs. Brady: that’s two less males for us gals to clean up after!”

SPORTS

•The Pittsburgh Pirates announced their 2010 promotions and said they expect to fill PNC Park on Tiger Woods Mistress Day when the first 20,000 of Tiger’s bedmates will be admitted free of charge.

•The Pittsburgh Steelers signed the woman who knocked down the Pope at the start of Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve to plug up the team’s pass defense.

•Ted Williams’ head was unthawed, and “Teddy Ballgame” promptly blasted Alex Rodriguez for using steroids.

•An intruder ran on the court at the French Open and tried to put a red hat on Roger Federer.  The College of Cardinals were named persons of interest.

•The death of John Updike cast a pall over Super Bowl media day. “Excuse me for a moment,” said teary-eyed Pittsburgh Steelers’ cornerback Ike Taylor. “I’ve just been informed that John Updike, novelist and keen observer of the American middle class for over fifty years, has died.”

•Famed classical pianist Van Cliburn broke his silence and said he was “pissed” about being bypassed for the 43rd time to perform at the Super Bowl half-time show.

•The Pittsburgh Pirates traded their fans to Buffalo.  “For a long time, we were focusing on the wrong thing — getting better players,” said team general manager Neal Huntington.  ”Our current thinking is that the problem has been the fans all along.”

•After winning the Masters, Angel Cabrera said that while trying on the iconic green jacket, the Master’s tailor felt him “a little too high up on the inseam, but I liked it.” 

•The Olympic Torch was implicated in the arson that caused the California wildfires.

•Pittsburgh’s school chief disposed of 8,500 pounds of rancid beef by adding it to the Pittsburgh Pirates’ roster.  The Pirates’ record improved drastically.

TRAVEL AND TOURISM

•A U.S. Airways flight was forced to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River after a flock of birds got sucked into the engine.  Alfred Hitchcock was named a person of interest.  A week later, a copycat bird was sucked into another plane’s engine. 

•Paul and Rachel Chandler, the British couple captured by Somali pirates on their yacht in the Indian Ocean, gave their captors’ accommodations an abysmal 1.5 rating: “We travel often and were very, very disappointed with our accommodations.  Location is good, but we did not feel safe. The staff’s English is limited.  We asked for, and were promised, a non-smokers’ room, but, alas, the previous kidnapped occupant obviously was a smoker. Towels are cheap, cheap, cheap, and there was a hair in the tub. In short, if you want to be pampered, this is not the place.”

•A pilot died of a heart attack while flying from Brussels to Newark, and Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger, the hero of US Airways’ dramatic Hudson River landing, chided him for dying: “A good pilot waits until he has the plane safely on the ground before he drops dead.  That’s what I would have done.”

•When the Obamas’ vacation on Martha’s Vineyard was ruined by bad weather, the president blamed Bush administration policies. “We did our best to have a relaxing family vacation, despite the mess we inherited,” said the President.  Meanwhile, Vice President Biden vacationed on Martha Vineyard’s less posh sister island, Marvin’s Vineyard.

•Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Poughkeepsie) said he wants the Statue of Liberty’s vagina reopened to the public for the first time since 9/11, when it was closed for security reasons.

SCIENCE AND THE ACADEMY

•The Antarctic ice shelf broke off, and HGTV carpenters were dispatched to fix it. 

•A study showed that big box think tanks are putting mom and pop think tanks out of business. 

•Another study showed that children of bipolar parents are more likely to be wack jobs, too. 

•A man said the 13,000 year-old tools he found in his backyard are the only ones that can fix his Ford Pinto.

•Scientists said that people should be happy that their skin isn’t made of sponge material, especially when it rains.

•The Hubble Telescope broke, and NASA ordered space shuttle astronauts to fix it.  NASA explained: “If we need to do a service call, it’s two billion dollars just for the repairman to walk in the door.”

•A study debunked the cliché that “it is what it is” by proving that most of the the time it isn’t what it is.

•A woman’s story shocked listeners when one thing led to the same thing, not another. 

•Scientists have debunked the cliché “that’s all she wrote” by proving that she wrote more.

RELIGION

•The Swiss Guard deserted the Vatican after learning the Pontiff isn’t Swiss. 

•Frito-Lay tapped into the market of religious fanatics eager to find faith-based images in the company’s popular Cheetos snack brand by marketing a special line of the cheese-flavored cornmeal snack consisting entirely of images of the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and other religious figures.

•Theologians confirmed that the windows in the upper room referenced in the New Testament as the site of the Last Supper were manufactured by window and door manufacturing giant Pella® Corporation of Pella, Iowa. 

•President Obama and theologians at Notre Dame proved they share common ground on abortion by hammering out a consensus statement:  “The fetus is a human being; no it isn’t.”

•On Palm Sunday at churches across America, during a reading of the Passion, a mix up led the crowd to call for the release of Chris Brown instead of Barabbas. 

•Peter Cottontail was critically wounded by a roadside bomb along the bunny trail outside of Baghdad.

•The University of Notre Dame defended its selection of Count Dracula as this year’s principal commencement speaker.  The Count met his critics head-on in his commencement speech and defended his centuries-long practices of Satanic rituals, brutal murders, and other acts of unfathomable evil by imploring the graduating class to “stop reducing those whose conduct you disagree with to mere caricatures — both sides must stop demonizing each other.”

•The oldest known portrait of St. Paul was found on a Roman catacomb wall dating to the 4th Century, and he looked exactly like the late TV pitchman Billy Mays.

DEATHS

The world lost some of its most beloved celebrities in 2009: 

•Walter Cronkite, the native of the Netherlands who never learned to speak English but mastered the art of delivering the news phonetically, died at 92.  Cronkite delivered with passion his signature sign-off – “And that’s the way it is” – because CBS founder William S. Paley convinced him the words meant “I want to make love to all the beautiful women in your country.” 

•In an eerie replay of actor Heath Ledger’s death last year, Michael Jackson’s masseuse notified actress Mary-Kate Olsen of Jackson’s death before she called 9-1-1, even though Mr. Jackson had no connection with Ms. Olsen.  The masseuse told reporters that she called Ms. Olsen because she thought that was “standard Hollywood protocol.”  Eventually, Jackson was taken to a local hospital, and when doctors frantically tried to resuscitate him, they accidentally snapped off his nose and were shocked to find a terrified blond, Caucasian boy living inside his body.  Later, Paris Jackson reacted tearfully when she realized that Michael Jackson couldn’t have been her real father “because I’m white.”

•The National Enquirer’s 40th issue announcing “the end” for Patrick Swayze finally got it right.   

•Ricardo Montalban died, but the funeral director assured mourners his casket was lined with fine Corinthian leather.

•A local boy said he was “conflicted” about masturbating to a poster of deceased Farrah Fawcett.

•Sargent Shriver went to his grave “pissed” that the Kennedys never promoted him to lieutenant.

•Kung Fu icon David Carradine died of self-inflicted kick wounds.

See you in 2010!

Dec 28