The Weird Year In Review

What a great finish to a year, eh? Michael's in cuffs, Saddam's in jail, and my 401K is finally beginning to show signs of life. I still see stockbrokers jumping out windows every day, but now they're bungee jumping and throwing fistfuls of cash on the downstroke.

Let's take a look back, though, at the rocky road that got us to our present state of post-holiday-gorging bliss.

January

We started the year humming right along with the good people of Kokomo, Ind., learning about the odd sound that tormented some residents and drove others to leave town completely, complaining of all manner of physical ailments brought on by the sound, which was blamed on sources from the mundane (industrial fans) to the fringe-dwelling (government experiments, UFO transmissions).

Also, in what would become an epidemic in the spring, we brought you early word of an attack by the Evil Squirrels on the country's power grid in a blatant attempt to leave us helpless and coffee-starved.

Just to give the beginning of the year a soupçon more weirdness, the otherworldly creature at right, claiming to be a chemist working on behalf of a cult called the Raelians, announced to the world that her tinfoil hat-wearing pals would, any day now, have a human clone to show the world.

The debate over humans playing god went from zero to insane with amazing speed, but no one ever managed to define for me exactly which god was being played.

February

I began February on a frisky note, laying down a challenge to Dave Barry to match up his much-ballyhooed Florida wildlife against the venom-filled creatures great and small that prowl my adopted home state of Texas. Barry chickened out, of course. He probably had band practice.

Of course, I can't really blame Dave, I guess. He DOES hail from a state where the preferred method of escaping detection after causing a mass-casualty accident is to plop down by the side of the road and begin knitting.

In perhaps the most fulfilling moment of weirdness of the year, Dell Dude Benjamin Curtis got busted on *gasp* marijuana-related charges. This also led to my favorite pop culture-related joke of the year, courtesy of the good folks over at Mike Menninger's Good Eats Fan Page:

I'm not sure what to think about the Dell Dude getting busted. I always thought marijuana was a Gateway drug.

In other news that could have been drug-related, we took a look at some of the anti-French activities going on around the country, with french fries being renamed and gallons of French wine being dumped in the streets.

March

We began March with talk of Crystal Kent, whose neighbors got a bit bent at her anatomically correct snow sculpture and forced her to drape it with a tablecloth (a towel apparently wasn't large enough to cover the offending protrusions).

Then, in mid-March, the military trotted out the MOAB, its latest superweapon designed to win wars in one fell swoop. After they tested it in Florida and completely failed to wipe out any Disney properties, I provided them with list of my Top 10 uses for the remaining stockpile. They never got back to me.

The Dixie Chicks did their level best to get added to the MOAB list with their headline grabbing comments about the current tenant of the White House. Their subsequent, seemingly daily, switches between proud free-speech advocates and crawfishing apologists rendered them too low-profile a target, though.

The month ended on a troubling note, what with the steady hand of David Letterman absent from the tiller of late-night comedy and various pseudopatriotic goofballs making complete asses of themselves over the whole French-bashing issue.

April

Things lightened up a bit in April, though, with a quick trip around the weirder corners of the Web, British style, culminating with that sultan of sweets, the PIE-obsessed Weebl and his erstwhile companion Bob, who brave the menace of such baddies as Chris the Ninja Pirate in their quest for sustenance in a tin.

Continuing our bit of spring happiness, the city of Rolling Hills, Calif., finally got around to decriminalizing "immoral conduct," including adultery, among the citizenry. So now the penalty has reverted to the usual "shotgun blast from a jealous husband" as opposed to criminal charges.

And we can't forget a true Weird hero, Lazaro Diaz, the former Marine who was just doing his job as a first-base umpire when he was attacked by a crazed fan at Chicago's Comiskey Park. Diaz calmly threw a wristlock on the goon and took him to the ground, where player for the Kansas City Royals proceeded to tenderize him.

May

May began with the tale of a cheerleading mortician, and any month that kicks off with a story that perfect is OK in my book. As a special bonus, we also found out about Utopias, a 48-proof beer that for a time was fetching upward of $300 per bottle online. For that money, I can buy Shiner Bock for at least a month.

Mid-May, my mind was occupied by certain words from certain sponsors that left me on the verge of tossing something heavy through my TV screen.

However, even those 30-second bits of inanity couldn't prepare us for the sheer idiocy of Steven Joseph, a headline-grabbing attorney who filed suit against Nabisco, trying to force them to stop marketing Oreos to kids. His argument was that the delicious snackables were loaded with trans-fats, which are apparently more dangerous to the wellbeing of our youth than parties at Neverland Ranch.

In spite of my generous offer to relieve you gentle readers of the offending goodies, the mailbox wasn't exactly deluged with submissions.

Of course, none of that could prepare us for the onslaught of the Fuzzy Menace, the Evil Squirrels, whose exploits I revealed in the first of a two-parter.

June

In a story that left even the Evil Squirrels shaking their furry little sides with laughter, we began the month with David Taylor, who accused his wife of trying to kill him ... with smells. He claimed that she was using his extreme sensitivity to smell against him, menacing him with room air fresheners and the like.

Things came off the rails briefly mid-month, with ghosts in a jar showing up on eBay, Spike Lee suing SpikeTV over using his name and a truckload (sob) of my beloved Reese's Puffs going up in smoke.

That was exacerbated by VH1, proving that hair gel actually CAN cause brain damage, released its list of the Top 100 songs of the last quarter-century. Much to my outrage, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," the Nirvana anthem, was named as the top song, outranking everything from Pink Floyd to Lynyrd Skynyrd.

The end of June, however, brought sweet triumph as the far-flung and sharp-eyed members of the Alert Reader Brigade blew the Evil Squirrel phenomenon wide open, catching the furry felons engaging in dozens of criminal activities, such as the housebreaker at left.

July

I'm still apologizing for starting off July by revealing the ugly truth that all colors of Froot Loops taste the same

Oops, I did it again.

We also met repeal civil disobeyer Alan Davis, otherwise known as the World's Worst Neighbor, who is, at press time, still embroiled in a court fight over his yard or, as his neighbors and the Seminole County, Fla., authorities call it, "the eyesore." Alan's predilection for turning his property into a part-landfill/part junk sculpture has not sat at all well with the general public.

The heat, and the wrath of Hurricane Claudette, sent things a bit wonky toward the end of the month, what with the Brits claiming lasagna was a creation of Great Britain and the whole "Weapons of Mass Destruction" gag on Google.

Then, of course, there was the Food Police jumping on the tired bandwagon of suing fast food restaurants. Fortunately, we had Jose Nunez, with his Sugars coffee bars staffed by lingerie-clad women, to add a little froth to the month's latte.

August

The Food Police followed us into August, this time alerting the public to the fact that (hold on to your hats) ice cream isn't good for you. In fact, it's downright FATTENING! The horrors! I never knew. Did you?

We also mourned the passing of Jane Barbe, whose perfect diction and even, unaccented tones placed us on hold and gave us voice mail instructions on thousands of systems around the world.

But I didn't have much time for mourning, as I had to get things in order for my bid to become the next governor of California. After a thorough examination of the leading candidates, and some threatening mail from the Gallagher camp over my evaluation of his current stage worth, I decided to run. I'm pleased to say that, while I didn't receive any actual votes due to not being a California resident and thus ineligible to run, I DID get a number of pieces of favorable mail from supporters ... some of whom even offered to loan me their Alien Death Rays and tinfoil hats.

I'm actually sort of glad I didn't get elected. Someone might have expected me to do something about the flying attack carp or the fish growing legs. August was a bizarre month in the piscean kingdom.

And just to help you all expand your culinary horizons, we closed out the hottest month of summer with a really hot snack. The durian, pictured at right, is the most noxious fruit on earth, but no Weird banquet would be complete without it.

September

September was a fairly peaceful month, because after Talk Like A Pirate Day, your whole definition of what's weird and what isn't tends to mellow for a while. Eventually, though, the staff here at the sprawling suburban Weird Chronicles complex ran out of rum and tequila and all the Jimmy Buffett CDs got scratched, so we had to get back to work.

No sooner had I made it back than news of the dessert waiver at the 5 Spot restaurant, which you've got to sign before being allowed to consume The Bulge, their monster-sized dessert. The idea is to protect them from any fast food-type lawsuits. I'm still waiting for my bosses to authorize the field trip for me to sign one in person.

October

September was just there to set us up for a haymaker in October. (Hay -- fall, get it?) We got off to a running start with the reappearance of crop circles, this time in southern Ohio. I haven't heard anything from that area lately, so we can safely assume that either the aliens went ahead and invaded or the circles were a one-shot phenomenon.

Gallagher lost badly in the California gubernatorial race, no doubt partially due to his having misplaced the interview questions I sent him. Howard Dean, take note! That bizarre-smile thing can only get you so far with us fringe dwellers. Sooner or later, you'll have to stand under the blazing strobe light of irrationality and answer random questions mumbled at you by a variety of societal castoffs.

It shouldn't be much different from a current White House press briefing. We'll have better doughnuts.

The last two weeks of the month, you took over the column, relating some of the creepiest, funniest and most entertaining local ghost stories I've ever had the pleasure of writing. A big thanks (and economy-sized box of Ectoplasm Remover) to all of you who submitted!

November

November is Sweeps time here in the semi-TV biz, and you'd think that sort of activity alone would generate enough weirdness to power a medium-sized city, but the world in general continued to horn in on the act.

The Food Police, who I'm sure didn't time their campaign to get any extra media coverage at ALL, started a push to get more complete nutritional information posted on fast-food restaurant menus. That sounds like a great idea until you contemplate wading through 40 pages of scribble to find what flavors of milkshake you've got to choose from.

I give myself the award for "Best Subheadline of the Year" for the "Burnt Wienie Truckwich" story that appears in the above-linked column, by the way. The competition was fierce.

And just to close out our year-long cavalcade of crudity, along came Robert Durst, the (as every news anchor repeated ad nauseum) cross-dressing multimillionaire who shot his neighbor, chopped him into Victim McNuggets, bagged the bits and tossed them in Galveston Bay.

Waiting for the punch line? You'll have to click on the link, but I'll give you a hint: it doesn't involve prison time.

Of course, we can all just run off and join the Beer Church. And isn't that what we all need, anyway?

Have a great New Year out there, people, and let's hope for 366 days of unremitting insanity to come!

I welcome your comments, complaints, stories and professions of undying love. Large cash grants are also accepted. Just click here, type and send.