That Was The Year That Was: 2010 in Retrospectives

Let's have a bit of fun, shall we?

• Best journalistic howlers of the year
• The 5 Worst Op-Eds of 2010
• YouTube picks its viral hits of 2010
• The Onion takes a satirical look at "the people who mattered in 2010"
• The most heroic animals of the year

JibJab has its usual musical end-of-year video (this time with puppets!), but I think I prefer Google's retrospective, "Zeitgeist 2010":

Since everybody loves movies here at MM Blog, I give you all the movies of 2010 smashed into a 6-minute video.  Somehow it makes the year in movies seem a lot more awesome than it actually was.  My personal favorites for sheer amusement were "Iron Man 2," "Inception," "Toy Story 3," "Easy A," the Percy Jackson flick, the latest Harry Potter movie, and the new Narnia movie, and I have a whole bunch of other 2010 releases in the theater and on DVD to see now that school is out and I have a bit of free time.  Oh, and here is the ever-readable John Scalzi's look at the most notable sci-fi flicks of 2010.  If I had to pick the best of the best of 2010, though, I would pick "Inception," "Toy Story 3,"and "True Grit."  You *must* see these three movies.

My own picks for best, worst, weirdest, or just worth remembering of 2010 are after the fold.


The following are in no order other than the random order in which they popped into my head.


BEST:

• The rescue of the Chilean miners
• The midterm elections (presaged by Scott Brown)
• The Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo
• The release of Aung San Suu Kyi
• The World Cup in South Africa
• The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver
• the Large Hadron Collider
• the iPad

WORST:

• Haiti disaster
• China earthquake
• The BP oil debacle
• The Greek implosion
• Obamacare
• Riots in (insert predictable European country here... and England?)
• Euro debt contagion
• North Korea
• US government attempts to stem the recession
• US foreign policy
• WikiLeaks
• Explosives found on cargo planes

WEIRD:

• Snowicane/Snowmageddon/Snowpocalypse
• Vuvuzelas (BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!)
• Paul the Oracle Octopus of Germany (RIP, Paul!)
• The most epic Wimbledon match ever
• The Rent Is 2 Damn High Party
• I'm With Coco in the late night comedy wars
• The Icelandic volcano
• "Don't Touch My Junk" TSA backlash
• Slick Willie takes over as Obama ditches press conference for Christmas party
• Rallies to Restore Honor and Sanity
• Tiger Woods, is that a golf club in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
• Egg recall
• Ground Zero mosque controversy
• Stephen Colbert testifies before Senate subcommittee as real life and satire become one
• Christine O'Donnell is not a witch

MISC. MEMORABLE:

• Wills and Waity Katie get engaged
• The quiet revolution of dissenting scientists in the AGW controversy
• Flight attendant Steven Slater quits
• MIT students' TARDIS prank
• Campus meltdowns over funding
• The Taiwanese news animators come into their own

PERSONAL SILLINESS:

• "Supernatural" redeemed itself
• I fell madly in love with a renegade Time Lord
• "Inception" is the most creative flick I've seen in years
• David Tennant redefines "Hamlet" on PBS
• La Parisienne hooks sci fi skeptic Count Chocula on "Farscape" and "Battlestar Galactica"
• Netflix streaming will change your life
• I went to 3 Nerdmoots and still haven't gotten busted for not being a serious scholar!

DIRTBAGS OF THE YEAR:

• Charlie Rangel
• Julian Assange
• Al Gore
• John Edwards
• Tiger Woods
• Terry Jones
• Mel Gibson
• The United States Congress

SATIRES OF THE YEAR:

• The Onion: "Historians Admit to Inventing Ancient Greeks"
• Iowahawk: "Beltway Adventure"