In The Rear View

Not so fast on that calendar page there, kiddies. It's time to do a little inventory and post-mortem on the year passed. Before we go traipsing off into the very round 2008, let us take a look at what moved and shook us in the somewhat more crooked 2007.
There's a war going on, you know. Though we are being told to be gratified by the decrease in casualties (read: Americans), people and things continue to blow up at an alarming rate over there in the Middle East. In case you've lost track, we will soon be celebrating our wood anniversary there, and I can't think of anything more appropriate than the blockheads that got us into this mess in the first place.
This year also found me in Las Vegas with a little extra time on my hands, so I decided to get married. Conveniently enough, my wife just happened to there with me, so it made the whole thing go a lot smoother without that whole courting nonsense. I heartily recommend the three-song Elvis ceremony, with the silver rose bouquet. Now that's class.
A lot of folks came and went this year, some just to visit, and others left permanently. Darrent Williams started things off on a pretty sad note, providing ominous foreshadowing of a football season that played more like a soap opera than a sporting event. We ended the year with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Her death was also just a prelude to more anarchy and killing. Those fireworks you hear might be the Middle East erupting.
Or it might be the nutjob down the street on his way to the mall, getting ready to make himself famous via the tried and true American invention of the gun-crazed rampage. Then again, he never seemed like the kind of guy who would do such a thing, since he was always so quiet and kept to himself, what with all that ranting on the Internet and target practice on the dummies he had dressed like his high school principal.
We were also treated to a marathon of a presidential campaign that started more than a full calendar year before the election. If you haven't made up your mind yet, don't worry, because Al Gore has yet to announce his candidacy. For that matter, neither has Pat Paulsen.
On a more personal note, I got to see Bruce Springsteen play live one more time. This brings my personal total to: I've lost count. Any year that gets me to a Springsteen show and has me dancing down the aisle to "Viva Las Vegas" with my wife and kid stacks up as a pretty good one. So here's my prescription for 2008: More dancing in the aisle, and less killing. I know it's a crazy notion, but it just might catch on.