Seven Years!? It Only Seems Like Nine!

It's a very happy 7th birthday to us! No, not US magazine, which only seems as though it were written by seven year olds. As of January 20th, the Dictionary of Unfortunate Ideas is seven years old.

The what you say? All right, I realize we've been pretty lax around here lately and 2011 was a quiet year for us. However, we're not out of business yet, assuming you think of this as a business. We've approached it more or less as a highly experimental effort in wasting people's time, just like network television!

So, just like on a network television show that's lasted seven years, I thought it would be a good time to reminisce about some of the more memorable moments in our illustrious history, resulting in many wavy, filtered flashbacks and sudden jarring, yet jolly cutaways to past moments of mirthful mayhem. Think of this as our clip show, only we don't actually have that many clips, as we mostly do written stuff.*

Why some of these moments seem like they only happened yesterday, or would've if we'd posted anything yesterday...

• Remember our very first post? Who was Chico y Jose, anyway? He never turned up. I'm assuming his absence was golf-related.
• It wasn't long after that when I instituted our longest running tradition - the annual review of Oscar Best Picture nominees. My thanks to the Academy for extending the nominee list from five to ten.
• Then there was that time Stew became convinced that Star Wars and Titanic were all part of one, long cinematic continuum. It's still a pretty convincing argument, if you ask me.
• We've been here so long, we were around before David Tennant cemented his financial future by becoming Dr. Who. Before that he played Casanova, where he did almost as much tongue-wagging as he did in the fourth Harry Potter film. No offense to David, but Elvis still would have done a better job, if you ask me.
• Speaking of revisionist cinema, Stew has his own vision for this sort of thing, only with the Governator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
• Then there was that time I was on Iron Chef, in Japan. Funny; I don't ever remember visiting Japan, and I never eat carrots.
• Remember Jorge Carlito Viejo? Man, the people at La Raza do. I keep explaining that he's native Esperanto, but no one listens. Anyway, he does write a great script.
• JCV is also an accomplished poet. In all honesty though, his work reads better in the original Latin.
• I still don't know how Stew scored an interview with both J.K. Rowling AND Peter Jackson, but I do know that it is nerd heaven.
• Then there was that running argument I had with the Friends of the National Zoo. I'm assuming that I won, since they never responded. Of course, I originally thought I was debating Henry Winkler.
• I was saddened to learn of the death of Cheetah this year. I'm just glad I got to interview him before he passed on.
• I also interviewed that guy from Viva Las Vegas (hint, hint)
• I also broke the story on the lost Teletubby. Thank heavens they never found him.
• Remember when Nuffy Noe (No relation to French arthouse pornographer Gaspar) launched his Five Times Better program? It changed the way I think about the number five.
• Stew's research into the Man in Black was too late to make the Johnny Cash film, but it still resonates with prop comics.
• Whatever happened to Linus Coconut, the man who used up our prize budget for the next 25,000 years?
• We've also always been interested in Super Bowl Ads.
• One day, Stew and I were discussing Frankenstein's Monster at lunch. Not only did it put us off the Mexican BBQ we were eating, but it inspired this post.
• Speaking of Stew, he's done some great work with actresses in the past. (Dear Mrs. Miller, not that kind of work.)
• One year we visited the International Hitler Impersonators Convention. Without these guys you wouldn't have all though great Downfall parodies.
• This is also a good time to remind people of Nuffy Noe's fine work in music criticism.
• Not many people remember, but it was this blog which first called attention to the anti-vegesectionist movement.
• I'm sure everyone remembers that little disagreement I had with Nuffy a few years ago. It would all be water under the bridge now, if that troll hadn't attacked us.
• A lot of people (nearly seven) have asked me why Stew isn't around so much these days. My answer is Stew's answer.
• An actual clip for the clip show. Jorge Carlito Viejo is in it, and who doesn't recognized the beloved** Cakey the Clown.
• Then there was that time I took up jogging. The funny thing is that I haven't given it up, yet. I could have run from New York to New Jersey by now (I'm assuming that's a long way).
• 2009 was a busy year for me. I traveled to Ireland and tied up a guy in Boston.
• Don't forget the time I let the cat out of the bag about some of the world's biggest secrets. The cat, as usual, savaged me.
• Speaking of savaging me, I had hernia surgery in 2010!
• The whole Conan/Leno feud seems ages ago, but reading Nuffy's cogent, searing analysis brings it all back."

Good times, good times, and there's much more where that came from (just peruse the "Best of" list if you doubt me). Who knows what will happen in the next seven years, provided those wacky Mayans weren't on to something?

* Yes, yes, I know we do a best of post, and that will turn up in a few days. Just hush your belly-aching and play along, will you?
** In Estonia, French Guiana, and parts of Poughkeepsie.