That’s right, baby! 2007 is back once again to prop up your hopes and dreams. While the rest of these clowns waste their time talking about what happened in 2013, I’m going to tell you about what happened in a year that was even earlier than that one. This makes my articolumnblog thingy simply better than theirs. Besides, 2013 was mostly crap and garbage swallowed up by members of the Kardashian/Jenner/West family and regurgitated to the world. Do we really need to talk about it anymore?

2007 was a much happier time. We didn’t know banks were manipulating LIBOR for loans and we were only beginning to find out about credit default swaps, sub-prime lending and just how much of a dick Chase CEO Jamie Dimon really is. Sure, we could see the end coming, but we were determined to ride that one-legged donkey until she collapsed under the supreme fatness that has come to symbolize the good ol’ U.S. of A. New Years 2007 was our last hurrah before the shit show that has been the last seven years.

Just think about it. The government had been fucking up everything since Bush got elected into office in 2000; but in 2007, all was pretty much quiet. Dick Cheney was still busy watching videos of Saddam getting hung and screaming “Mission Accomplished” until his heart popped, which at least kept him out of some trouble. Bush knew his time was up and had probably already started painting pictures of dogs by then. Sadly, his legendary masterpiece from the era, Dogs in the War Room, still has not been released for public consumption.

The tides were changing. Barack Obama was the man to beat. Sarah Palin and Old Man McCain were busy running for “Grizzly Mom of the Century” and “Most Cantankerous,” respectively, and the rest of us had that hope and change fever. Obama saw the problems we had and the ones we were facing and he was going to fix everything. It didn’t really work out that way, but it sounded great at the time. Of course, had we known that we had only seen the wee turtle head of the massive ball of shit headed our way, we might have lowered our expectations.

But this was 2007 and expectations were supposed to be high. A 400 square-foot house was worth $650,000. We had shiny new iPhones in our pockets for the first time ever. We were on the cusp of something great. Sure, it turned out to be the second Great Depression, but we still had faith in our governing bodies to find common ground to solve the problems we faced. It was a nice feeling, and it lasted for a lot of us until Obama took office.

But enough politics and economics; let’s talk about what was really great in 2007: celebrity news and TV! For some reason we were still in love with American Idol that year and people were so happy that they decided watching The Big Bang Theory wouldn’t hurt them too much (you fools!). Bob Barker, a legend in television broadcasting, signed off for his last regular appearance on The Price is Right so that he could be replaced by a Yukon Gold potato with glasses.

Bob wasn’t the only television great that we lost in 2007. Anna Nicole Smith figured out the right combination of drugs to make the paparazzi go away forever. Ashton Kutcher also selflessly cancelled his hit show Punk’d so that he could search the world for “e”s to put in his show titles and to focus his energy on his relationship with Demi Moore and Bruce Willis. Not all was a loss, though. A young upstart from the adult film industry, Kim Kardashian, and her family of loveable, overly wealthy misfits first graced us with their presence on the E! Network in 2007. Thanks, E!

Living in the past ain’t so bad, if the past was that good. Wouldn’t it be great if we could go back to that time of innocence? If only we could just pretend that none of the horrible things around the world today were happening, just like how we used to in 2007. The world was our oyster and we were all given sledgehammers to shuck it. We may have ended up making a huge mess, but it sure was a lot of fun doing it. Cheers to you, 2007!

Bocephus Chigger
bocephus@submergemag.com

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