Here, in no particular order, are the top ten greatest events of 2007.

“We Have No, What You Call, Homosexuals Here.”
Tehran laments lack of popped collars, pastels in mosques
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the current leader of Iran, bravely stood alone in the single most hostile situation in which he could have been placed: a tie store. No, not really. He was at Columbia University. But seriously, I think the guy is afraid of ties or something. Or maybe he’s just a fan of open shirts, or just afraid of buttoning the top button. And they made fun of Ashcroft for fearing the dread calico cat. Anyway, he did stand bravely in front of a group of students on a visit to the United States and bravely declared that unlike the decadent states of Western civilization, Iran had managed to dodge the gay bullet, as it were, since there was not one single homosexual within the cultural borders of Persia. Which explains the poor syntax in the translation of Will & Grace on Al-Jazeera.

Mighty Casey At The Bat! And By “Bat” We Mean “On The Street Corner Buying Narcotics.”
Fans, Players, Management, Advertisers, Collectors, Sports Historians, Beer Vendors, Everyone’s Mother Just Shocked, Shocked! About Steroid Use In Baseball
The Mitchell Report was released not that long ago, fingering many major baseball figures as rampant steroid and HGH abusers. This comes as an absolute shock to those of us who haven’t noticed that Barry Bonds’s head is the size of a watermelon, which is no one. The end effect is that the baseball records are dotted with more asterisks than a TNT airing of Reservoir Dogs. Baseball’s rules specifically prohibit the use of performance-enhancing drugs, even though the most effective performance-enhancing drug is still legal, otherwise known as the luxury tax.

Thankfully, the Nobel Committee is a Controlling Legal Authority
Nobel Peace Prize Awarded To Former Vice-President For Inventing A Way For An Inconvenient Truth To Be Related Enough To Peace To Win The Nobel Peace Prize
Al Gore, whose eight years as vice president has been eclipsed by his tireless work as an advocate for global warming change and gaining about sixty pounds. He won the highly coveted Nobel Peace Prize, beating out Hugo Chavez, the reanimated corpse of Vladimir Lenin, and Clifford the Big Red Dog. But why is it when I create a PowerPoint presentation based on sketchily-attained research I did at two in the morning on the Wikipedia the night before the presentation I get a C, but Al Gore gets a Nobel Prize? That’s an injustice I hope the next Nobel Peace Prize is awarded for rectifying.

China Secures Lead In Toy Manufacturing
The Celestial Empire Is Apologetic, But C’Mon, How Often Do Kids Put Toys In Their Mouths?
Nearly every parent was alarmed to learn that of the sixty thousand toys they purchase for their child each year, probably about 100% of them come from China, and of those toys, approximately 100% of those contain massive amounts of lead. Popular characters such as Dora the Explora and Thomas the Tank Engine had to be recalled lest the lead seep into the children’s bodies and stunting their intellectual growth, consigning them to work at night shift at Denny’s or a scriptwriter on Lions for Lambs. China tried to ease the panic by promising that any lead-laced toys identified and found will instead be directed to children in Formosa and Japan.

Greatest Video Game Of All Time Released
Master Chief Heals Cancer, Destroys Evil, Does A Bunch Of Other Geeky Shit
The highly anticipated Halo 3 was release to wildly approving positive reviews and insanely large amounts of money. The release was met with long lines of devoted fans and endless laurels usually reserved for major motion pictures and papal visits. The Halo Series, for those who are uninitiated, involves an individual known as Master Chief who tries to save humankind from an alien race known as the Covenant by selling an overproduced Duke Nukem clone for $20 above MSRP. Or something like that. I was too busy playing Oregon Trail to really pay attention.

To Ignignokt Is Human
Lite Brites Based On Stoner Cartoon Threatens Democracy Or At Least Makes Us Late For the Celtics Game Tonight
Very few promotions have gone so terribly, terribly wrong ever since the Pepsi corporation crashed a Harrier jet into a puppy factory. The creators of the late-night completely insane cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force, about a band of food that does crazy things usually but not related to smoking massive amount of hash, decided that the best course of wisdom to promote their feature-length motion picture would be to place mysterious boxes with the figure of one of the characters flipping the bird on it in public places around different cities. This did well until Boston, a city so sober they threw away the tea not for political reasons but because of its stimulant content, mistook the ads for terrorist bombs and called in the SWAT team. End result: Ted Turner had to pony up about 2 mil in cash to the City of Boston, who will use the money not only for recompense for the scare but also to enlarge their population of pretentious, humorless pricks.

Fake Hockey Team Wins Fake Championship
Stanley Cup Now Anthropomorphized, Starring In Late Afternoon Cartoon
Hockey is a fascinating sport, not the least of which that real, true hockey should pretty much be played in Canada and possibly Detroit. But for whatever reasons the commissioners of the National Hockey League insist that such ridiculous places as Florida and Texas should have hockey teams, states with cities that couldn’t fill a stadium if they promised a free hockey puck with the Confederate flag on it, much less a playoff hockey game. Anyway, the relatively young Disney-created Anaheim Ducks of Anaheim won the championship, the first western hockey team to win since the Oregon Trail closed up shop. The Mouse has long since sold the team, and the Niedermeyers have brought the team to prominence, but the true staying power of the team will only be determined by yet another successful playoff run which will last approximately a year and a half.

Yes, We Have No Muhammeds
Unfortunately Named Teddy Bear Is Apparently A Big Deal To Those Sudanese No One Has Committed Genocide On Yet
The sad tale of Gillian Gibbons is one fraught with lurid tales of blasphemy, cultural intolerance, and a polyester bear stuffed with cotton. Gibbons, a British teacher in the Sudan, thought it would be a cute thing to name the class teddy bear, apparently a measure aimed at misdirecting the students from the fact that they had no microscopes or textbooks to name instead. The class chose the name “Muhammed,” which was also the name of pretty much every other boy in the room. Unfortunately, a school official found out about this crime against Islam and activists soon declared that she would be executed for insulting the state religion. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed, “cooler heads” primarily being the British diplomats who risked intolerant imams with protestors armed with the help of the army had to escort her back to the homeland, where she will face no intolerance greater than disagreeing with the toll structure of local throughways or the existence of Germany.

I’d Tap That
Gay + Senator + Airport Bathroom + Bruno Maglis = Unspeakable Hilarity
It’s an absurd scene in and of itself—homosexual individuals engaging in an elaborately staged song-and-dance routine to solicit sexual favors in random washrooms around the nation, a product of generations of underground social cues and taboo cultural mores. Absurdity defined is when you enter into the mix a reasonably conservative Senator from the unfortunate state of Idaho, caught on tape agreeing to his charges while standing palms up in total denial of his sexual orientation. Senator Larry Craig is still in office, despite his insistence that he is still wanted and needed in that chamber, a feeling almost as strong as his insistence that he is straight or not a hypocrite.

Mortgage Housing Market Crisis Continues
People Who Cannot Afford Homes Upset That They Cannot Afford Their Homes
Equal parts sad and enraging, the emerging mortgage crisis has gone through several phases. The first phase is called “The market has already corrected for the mortgage crisis” phase. The second phase is called “It appears that the market has not absorbed all the information about the mortgage crisis.” The third phase is called “The market has already corrected for the mortgage crisis.” The fourth phase is predicated to be “It appears that the market has not absorbed all the information about the mortgage crisis.” After that, it’s anyone’s guess. Wonder upon wonders what the next phase will be. It’s sad that people are losing their homes, of course, and it’s sadder yet that the government is formulating a plan that is more complicated than the statement “Rates subject to change.” If homeowners can’t understand that statement, I can’t understand how the bailout is going to go any better.

Here, in no particular order, are the top ten greatest events of 2006.

Academy Awards Actually Slightly Less Predictable Than Normal

We’re here, we’re queer, and we didn’t win any Oscars

This year’s Oscars had a lot to declare, but being the gayest Oscars ever is a pretty bold claim. I mean, it’s hard to imagine a show full of elaborate musical numbers, choreographed dance performances, and an unhealthy devotion to fashion designers could contain even minute influences of homosexuality. But with Philip Seymour Hoffman’s portrayal of Truman Capote, the transgender drama TransAmerica, and Brokeback Mountain all as important contenders, this would be one big lavender celebration of fabulousness. The only way they could have made it any gayer would have been if Jude Law had hosted.

Then, to everyone’s shock and dismay, the Best Picture award didn’t go to Brokeback Mountain. It went to Crash, a dramatic tale of…well, something. I don’t know what because no one has actually ever watched it. As a conciliatory note, Brokeback director Ang Lee did win. So, for those of you keeping score at home, in the Hollywood scorecard Asians rank above the gays, who rank above Polish directors who have sex with 13 year olds, who rank above cousins of Francis Ford Coppola who can’t act yet still manage to keep finding work, who rank above fluffers, who rank above TV stars.

No, I Said DUCK, not Duck!

The Vice President shoots a lawyer in the face, which is somehow unexpected

Close your eyes for a second and imagine this. Say I say to you, “One of our Vice Presidents just shot someone in the face. Who is it?” Chances are you you’d say Richard Nixon. Then I would tell you no, not him, then you’d probably go with Spiro T. Agnew. Then I would say, no, dammit, guess again, and you may say Al Gore, and I would say what, did I say he shot him in the face with a nerf dart gun? No, guess again. Then you would say John Ashcroft, and I would say I didn’t say it was a Planned Parenthood receptionist that got shot plus he was never vice president, then you would guess Donald Rumsfeld or something, because you’re stupid, and I’d say just forget it and storm off.

Anyway, Dick Cheney shot some guy in the face, and that’s hilarious.

Women Take Over The Government

Wars scheduled to start approximately every 28 days

Around the world, nations gathered around the ballot box and managed to elect several new leaders, a rather remarkable number of them women. Michelle Bachelet was elected President of Chile; Han Myung-sook was elected Prime Minister of South Korea; and even in America, the next Speaker is poised to be Nancy Pelosi. Granted, women have been in power in modern history, most notably the United Kingdom and India, but women are also making gains in nations and institutions that formerly were strictly sausage-only affairs. Even in such testosteronial territory as the corporate boardroom, Patricia Dunn exemplified that women can be just as corrupt and misguided as men in the business world.

Because of this sudden and slightly unexpected surge in female leaders, many women government leaders have joined together to create kind of a master plan for a more feminine political administration:

1) Replace “veto” powers with “I may change my mind later” powers;

2) Break off diplomatic relations with any country that doesn’t call the next day; and

3) Emphasize diplomatic relations and use military force as a last resort unless she’s wearing the same outfit as you. Then the bitch is dead.

Flying Blindly Into The Inappropriate Metaphor

Scads of people previously lifted to significance on the merits of their own flawed illusion of self-importance resign

It wasn’t the best year for those already in power. Many important people resigned, either out of scandal, corruption, inappropriate behavior, or personal responsibility.

Ha! Just kidding about that last one. No, everyone was pretty much screwed this year. First was Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who rather than run a campaign after what would be a certain indictment, he resigned. Unfortunately, he resigned after it was revealed that he had spent time in a room with several baby puppies, and he had failed to strangle a single one of them, thereby violating the terms of the contact he had with either Lucifer or George Soros, depending on the source.

Another high-profile resignation was for Charles Kennedy, leader of the Liberal Democrats in the UK Parliament. After a little more than six years as their leader, he resigns after admitting that he is an alcoholic, a move that shocks most analysts, expecting him to resign because he is not an alcoholic.

The resignation of Mark Foley, a heretofore invisible congressman from Florida, resigned after it was found that he inappropriately propositioned several male pages under his employ. While he originally tried to blame it on alcohol, he was eventually unable to come up with a defense more solid than “I thought I was a priest.”

Last on the chopping block was Donald Rumsfeld. Too few troops on the ground, and Rumsfeld gets his paycheck as normal. Abu Ghraib? Donald is invincible. Mounting civil war? “You’re doin’ a heckuva job, Rummy.” Lose control of the Senate? Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Meet Virginia
Young slutty stars shocked—shocked!—that their hoo-has appear all over creation

Remember when you were like thirteen years old and a male and there was absolutely nothing more in the world than you would like to see than what was hidden underneath the confusing confines of the opposite sex’s layers upon layers of complicated clothing, undergarments, and various oddly shaped accessories with clamps and elastic and who knows what else? And despite all your efforts the best you could do was the occasional glimpse of the record store clerk’s cleavage and, if you were exceptionally fortunate, the pink Power Ranger?

Well, hold the presses, boys, because today, the ladies are just givin’ it away for free.

A plethora of young starlets, such as the pretty Britney Spears, the adorable Lindsay Lohan, and the plastic Paris Hilton, have made it somewhat of a cottage industry of “accidentally” placing themselves in such a position as to display to the entire world their canyon of pleasure. Usually this is done by playing the old “I’m getting out of a vehicle” card along with the “I must have forgot to put my underwear back on after getting busy with someone who is not you” card. And sure, they have excuses and they have apologies and they have creative explanations relayed via their agent or, if you’re a multiple time winner of the panoramic honey pot display world trifecta, a stilted interview on The Insider to prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt you really aren’t that careless about your public image, which is directly counter to the established fact that you’re an incredible whore.

Anyway, keep it up, ladies. Some of us don’t have access to the Internet all the time.

I Can Say “Sugar Tits” In The Course of A Legitimate Journalistic Investigation

Mel Gibson drinks, then drives, then says some unfortunate things

Celebrity meltdowns are always wonderful things to watch, whether it be Nick Nolte’s high just-woke-up slacker brother-in-law in I-can’t-believe-he’s–actually-wearing-that-shirt-well-he-was-in-I-Love-Trouble-so-I-guess-his-judgement-really-isn’t-that-great mode of expression or Michael Richard’s petition to join the crazy racist but-no-I’m-not-honest-to-Pete-I-Knew-a-Black-Guy-in-the-70’s clan (er, club). But nothing was so extraordinarily fantastic as watching Mel Gibson dissolve.

Perhaps it couldn’t have been so bad. Simply calling a police officer “sugar tits” is insensitive yet somehow inspiring. Uniforms sometimes do that to guys, you know. Like that blonde public safety officer at the university I attended who I know could have easily beat the daylights out of me, and oh how I tried to get her to do so…

Wait. What was that? Oh, right. Mel Gibson could have gotten away with just being a boor. But he also peppered his comments with anti-Semitic remarks. Alas, Gibson had been charged with anti-Semitism before, when his movie Passion of the Christ was charged with being an appeal to hatred against the Jews. After the movie’s release, he had for the most part managed to skillfully maneuver around that inconvenient sentiment, and then threw all his credibility away by blaming them for all the wars. Such remarks, many contended, will harm him movie career; Gibson was previously one of the highest-ranked movie stars and directors in the world. Now, however, his future is uncertain. Thank goodness Hollywood doesn’t have any Jews to offend!

Oh, and he was also drinking and driving. But that’s hardly important.

If A Tree Falls In A Forest And No One Is Around, Does Someone Post It on the Internet Accompanied By That Benny Hill Music?

MySpace, Google, Yahoo, MSN, YouTube, the Wikipedia, FaceBook, and hotsingleukrainianredheadswaiting4u.com become one big conglomerate mass of insignificance

The announcement that Google had purchased YouTube for a paltry $1.65 billion (with a capital B), which works out to about $165,000 per video clip of a dog vomiting on a sidewalk, is a nearly unprecedented activity in the annals of that odd fusion of technology and business. It started to raise red flags for many people, from internet consumers wary of any media monopoly to business leaders watching carefully for the next big buyout that will turn out to be a bust. But mostly it was a fear that if you suddenly needed to get a video of a 18-year-old webcam hottie wearing next to nothing dancing to London Bridge by Fergie on her iPod while posting a blog about how her g-friends all went out to the party last night and got crazy drunk and then post all the photos of all the girls making out, but honest Ryan I luv you glitter-style, there may only be one place to do it. And I think that replaces Pestilence as one of the Four Horsemen.

Popeye and Goofy High Five

Pluto gets kicked to the wannabe playa train

Poor Pluto. It don’t get no respect. Forever the runt of our planetary solar system, Pluto’s status has been questioned for quite a few years now. And despite generations of many very educated (or perhaps just energetic) mothers, Pluto finally got kicked off the list of places where there could conceivably be aliens building a utopian megalopolis, or at least tapping out Yo Momma jokes in Morse code for ham radio operators to record and subsequently play on Coast to Coast with George Norry.

Even more alarming, apparently there are two other “planets” in our solar system that are even bigger than Pluto that no one has bothered to tell me about. I mean, sure, maybe they showed up in the classifieds section of Omni magazine (“Lonely spherical, relatively warm asteroid looking to orbit. Want to be upgraded to dwarf status someday. No fat chicks.”), but the fact that there are large masses of minerals zooming around the heavens with naught a mention in Johnny Knowledge’s Big Book of Smartness is an distressing development, and shakes my faith in the astronomical community.

There are now three “dwarf planets” in our solar system to keep Pluto company. There’s Pluto himself, of course, making the cold and lonely trek around the sun every—well, whatever the time frame is for a celestial body to make its way around the sun. There’s also Ceres, wedged between Mars and Jupiter, waiting to see which one of them is going to make the first move. And finally there’s Eris, which was formally known as Xena, the name being changed once it was determined that the dwarf planet did not have another planet following its orbit to make subtle lesbian advances against her every episode.

Come on down! And grab my Metamucil while you’re at it

Bob Barker retires, still plans on groping women, snipping the nuts off of dogs

It was bound to take place eventually, really, but it always seems to be a surprise when it happens. Some fixture of the television screen announces their retirement, and everyone seems shocked, surprised, and slightly saddened until one remembers that said institution is pretty much a 90-year-old granite statue of uselessness, dragging the vibrant creativity of newer content down with them.

Thankfully, not so with Bob Barker. He started hosting The Price Is Right in 1972, CBS’s flagship daytime game show. And since then, he’s chugged away, hosting the hell out of what many would consider at most a one-trick pony of a show.

Still, Barker has to be given quite a bit of credit for lasting as long as he has. With his two stints as game show host (the other was his breakout hit, Truth or Consequences), he’s managed to stay on the air for over fifty years. And despite the banality of the games he has to officiate over (guessing the price of toothpaste isn’t going to be fun regardless of whether you dress it up in a game of Nine Men’s Morris), he still manages to make it a fun, fast-paced, stress-free ride. If you haven’t watched lately—I know I haven’t—the contestants aren’t bored housewives or grandmothers bused in straight from Branson, but mostly college kids and young honeymooners just waiting to make that Cliff Hangers mountain climber fall down or wait for that irritatingly placid noise that Squeeze Play makes when you lose. Or win. And, really, that’s the thing about the show: it isn’t so much the fact that you’re winning six rolls of TP, an electric cookie cutter, or a trip to Rio de Janeiro. It’s the witless fun of playing a glamorized version of a Speak N’ Spell that forces you to guess how much toaster ovens are nowadays.

But with Bob Barker retiring, we all lose. The only winners are German Shepherds, miniature schnauzers, and Dian Parkinson.

Trump vs. Rosie

The Ultimate Battle Between Talentless Lesbians and Shady Real Estate Moguls Finally Begins

I’m so glad I waited to write this illustrious retrospective, since otherwise I would have missed this particularly brilliant gem. Sometimes it is hard to choose, you know? On one hand, you have an overly opinionated, obnoxiously arrogant media personality with dubious physical charm known mostly for controversy and with little natural talent, relying on the efforts of others to prop up their otherwise vacant careers that are always on the verge of embarrassing collapse, yet too many people have financial and creative interest in them to let them fail. On the other hand…well, okay, I guess that’s both of them.

Rosie O’Donnell called Donald Trump an immoral, bankrupt rake who has no business declaring what the rules to morality are. The Donald told Rosie that she’s a fat slag with a penchant for slander and an uncertain grasp on her own romantic inclinations and, oh yeah, by the way, The Apprentice premiers on January 7^th, Eastern Standard Time. Personally, I’m slightly in favor of Trump on this one, mostly because I prefer unearned money to unearned misinformed nonsensical bloviations. The winner of this feud will probably be Barbara Walters, who finally ahs a reason to jettison the increasingly ingratiating cohost. Do you know how hard it is for Barbara to try and pick up truckers at the gas station with that loudmouth cranking away?