A Decade in Review: 2003

January

NEWS

• Lindsay Graham of South Carolina and Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina are among the freshman U.S. Senators sworn in.
• A Central Line tube train in the London Underground crashes into a wall at Chancery Lane station. 34 are killed.
• International volunteers depart London for Baghdad, hoping to serve as human shields and stave off an invasion. This does not work.
• Meanwhile, the United States sends 62,000 troops to the Middle East in preparation for just such an invasion.
• A Cambodian newspaper incorrectly states that a Thai actress said Angkor Wat belongs to Thailand. Things weirdly escalate until the Thai embassy in Phnom Penh is burnt down. I think this may need to be a movie.
• Scientists find a dinosaur fossil in China with straight-up wings. Now when I go to the dinosaur exhibit at the museum they all have feathers. I am not sure how I feel about this.

ARTS

• Chappelle’s Show debuts on Comedy Central. It is brilliant but fleeting.
• Mythbusters premieres on Discovery Channel. It is sort of like porn for geeks, if geeks did not also like porn.
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon is published.
• FOX cancels Firefly, and I’m trying to be funny about but I just can’t.

SPORTS

• The Ohio State Buckeyes pull off a fairly huge upset of the Miami Hurricanes in double overtime to win the NCAA football national championship. Maurice Clarett scores the winning touchdown. Many observers declare it the greatest College Football game of all time. This is the only major Ohio championship of the decade.
• The Cleveland Browns play in their only Playoff game since re-entering the league in 1999. They blow a 12 point lead with five minutes to play and lose a rather epic 36-33 game to their arch-rivals the Pittsburgh Steelers.
• The Tampa Bay Buccaneers win their first Super Bowl in team history easily over the Oakland Raiders. Three Rich Gannon interceptions are run back for touchdowns, which is the only time I’ve ever seen that happen in any game.

February

NEWS

• The Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates while re-entering the atmosphere over Texas. All 7 astronauts on board are killed.
• Secretary of State Colin Powell explains to the U.N. Security Council why the United States wants to invade Iraq. Charts are used.
• At the same time, more than ten million people join protests worldwide of the impending invasion.
• Osama bin Laden releases a video tape warning that al-Qaeda is planning more attacks. Donald Rumsfeld claims this is somehow proof that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda are connected.
• A laid-off former taxi driver tries to publicly kill himself by setting himself on fire in the Daegu, South Korea subway. The fire spreads and nearly 200 die.
• The Station nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island is set on fire by pyrotechnics during a concert by the band Great White. 100 die.
• An American businessman is admitted a hospital in Hanoi with an unknown disease. Both he and his doctor soon die. This is the first documented case of SARS.
• Beatles producer Phil Spector is arrested and charged with murder, thus lending credence to all those people who played the records backwards.
• Daniel Libeskind’s design for a new “Freedom Tower” on the World Trade Center site is selected by the city of New York. Construction has yet to begin.

ARTS

• Fred Rogers dies. As my mother would say, “he is a saint.”
• Norah Jones cleans up at the Grammys.
• 50 Cent’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’ makes him a superstar.
• Old School opens in theaters, and people star throwing around the term “Frat Pack”.
• Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow is published. He later buys back the rights and releases it for free under a creative commons license. The novel becomes the focus of a great deal of “how do we deal with intellectual property in the internet age” debates, and also becomes known for its invention of the post-monetary currency “whuffie”.

March

NEWS

• The Invasion of Iraq officially begins. This becomes known as the “shock and awe” campaign.
• The World Health Organization releases a global alert regarding SARS after the disease spreads quickly throughout Asia, particularly China.
• Hu Jintao replaces Jiang Zemin as President of China.

ARTS

• Chicago becomes the first musical to win Best Picture since the sixties. Roman Polanski wins Best Director for The Pianist.
• Evanescence releases Fallen, which is a massive hit. It is destined to be their only good album, to have about seven singles released off of it, and to serve as epic background music for epic things until the end of time.
• Bend It Like Beckham is one of the year’s surprise hits at the movies.
• The Sci-Fi Channel cancels Farscape.

April

NEWS

• U.S. forces seize control of Baghdad with a few weeks of the beginning of the invasion, ending the regime of Saddam Hussein. Statues get pulled down.
• Pvt. Jessica Lynch is rescued from an “enemy hospital”, which is a nice news story for a few days.
• The Human Genome Project announces its own completion.
• The spread of SARS continues throughout Asia and, randomly, Toronto, which nearly shuts down for a month or so.
• Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania compares homosexuality to bestiality.
• President Bush re-appoints Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Fed.

ARTS

• The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown is published, and inexplicably becomes an international uber-bestseller.
• The White Stripes release Elephant, which includes their biggest hit to date, “Seven Nation Army”.
• A Million Little Pieces by James Frey is published.

SPORTS

• A freshman named Carmelo Anthony dominates as the Syracuse Orangemen win the NCAA basketball championship.
• The Cleveland Cavaliers tank the end of the season in a fairly transparent attempt to end up with the number one pick in the NBA draft.
• Sammy Sosa becomes the first Hispanic player to hit 500 home runs.

May

NEWS

• President Bush lands a fighter jet on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and proceeds to give a speech about the “end of major combat operations in Iraq”. A huge banner behind him reads “Mission Accomplished”. 98% of casualties in Iraq would occur after the speech.
• Eric Rudolph, suspected in the 1996 Olympic Park bombing as well as another bombing at an Atlanta nightclub, is arrested after hiding out in the wilderness for years in Murphy, North Carolina.
• The “Old Man in the Mountain” rock formation in New Hampshire crumbles after a heavy rain.
• 2,200 people die in Northern Algeria due to an earthquake.
• A draft of the proposed European Constitution is unveiled.
• Reporter Jayson Blair resigns from the New York Times after it becomes clear that he pretty much made up some of his stories.
• The first Democratic Primary Presidential debate is held. Candidates include Howard Dean, John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, Bob Graham, John Kerry, Dennis Kucinich, Joe Lieberman, Carol Mosley Braun, and Al Sharpton.
• I graduate from high school.

ARTS
The Matrix Reloaded hits theaters. While not quite reaching Star Wars prequel levels of terrible, nobody really likes it that much.
X2: X-Men United is a mega-hit that many declare the best superhero film of all time. According to consensus, this title will change hands about seven more times over the course of the decade.
The computer-animated Pixar film Finding Nemo is an even bigger mega-hit, even with adults.
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is published.
Paul McCartney performs a concert in Moscow’s Red Square.

ARTS

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer airs its final episode on UPN. In my opinion, it sticks the landing.
• Dawson’s Creek airs its finale on The WB. I do not quite care as much about this one.

SPORTS

• AC Milan wins an all Italian Champions League final on penalties over Juventus.

June

NEWS

• Tens of thousands of protesters descend of Evian-les-Bains, France during the G8 summit there.
• The U.S. Supreme Court rules that Affirmative Action in university admissions is constitutional. Three days later it declares anti-sodomy laws unconstitutional.
• Joseph Hunter Parker shows up at an Albertsons grocery store in Irvine, California with a sword. He kills two employees with it before the police shoot him.
• Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina dies after serving in the Senate since the 1940s.
• The national “Do Not Call” registry is created in an attempt to foil telemarketers. It mostly does not work.

ARTS

• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth book in J.K. Rowling’s bestselling series, is published. It is over 800 pages and is the longest book of the series. It takes increasingly dark turns and some people realize Rowling’s not really just going for little kids here.
• Martha Stewart is indicted for insider trading in one of the stranger celebrity legal cases of the decade.
• Gregory Peck and Katharine Hepburn die.
• Living History by Sen. Hillary Clinton is published.
• The British film 28 Days Later, directed by Danny Boyle, manages to reinvent the zombie subgenre.
• Dead Like Me premieres on Showtime.

SPORTS

• Tim Duncan leads the San Antonio Spurs to the NBA championship. They defeat the New Jersey Nets in the Finals.
• The New Jersey Devils win the Stanley Cup back in seven games over the Anaheim Ducks, despite the efforts of Ducks goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere, who is named MVP.
• The Cavaliers actually do end up with the number one pick in the NBA draft and select a local high school boy named LeBron James. Many Clevelanders believe this is the closest they’ll ever get to incontrovertible proof God exists.
• Roger Clemens notches his 300th win and 4000th strikeout in the same game while pitching for the New York Yankees.
• France wins another Confederations Cup, in a tournament marred by the death of Cameroon player Marc-Vivien Foe during a semifinal game.

July

NEWS

• The WHO declares that SARS is “contained”.
• 500,000 march in Hong Kong to protest “Article 23”, which essentially would have redefined the definition of treason to include, among other nebulous things, “subversion”. It does not end up passing.
• Washington Post reporter Robert Novak outs Valerie Plame as a CIA operative in Niger. Her husband was a former Bush administration official who had said that evidence involving African sources for Iraqi WMDs used by the Bush administration was false. He states publicly that he believes the Bush administration outed his wife in retribution. This leads to a lengthy investigation.
• The U.S. military kills Uday and Qusay Hussein in Iraq.

ARTS

• Pirates of the Caribbean is a surprise hit in one of the more crowded blockbuster seasons ever, partially because of the Orlando Bloom/Keira Knightley romance and partly for Johnny Depp’s brilliantly goofy performance as Captain Jack Sparrow.
• Queer Eye for the Straight Guy debuts on Bravo and before long is a sensation.
• Barry White and Bob Hope die.
• The Rolling Stones and AC/DC headline a SARS benefit concert in Toronto. Estimates put attendance at about 450,000, making this the largest concert in Canadian history.
• Beyonce’s first solo album, Dangerously in Love, is released and debuts at #1.

SPORTS

• Vancouver is selected to host the 2010 Winter Olympics.
• Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant is arrested in Colorado and charged with rape.

August

NEWS

• Large portions of the Northeast United States and Canada are without electricity. In some places the blackout lasts for days. It is the largest such outage in American history.
• The United Nations authorizes plans to send an international peacekeeping force to Liberia.
• NATO takes command of the peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan. It is the first major operation outside Europe in the organization’s history.
• California puts a recall of its Governor on the ballot. Candidates to replace him include Arianna Huffington, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Larry Flynt, and Gallagher.

ARTS

• Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom is published and becomes a bestseller.
• FOX cancels Futurama, but it seems it will never really go away.

SPORTS

• Lance Armstrong ties the record with his fifth straight Tour de France victory.
• Bill Parcells comes out of retirement to coach the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys.

September

NEWS

• President Bush asks Congress for an additional $87 billion to fight the war in Iraq, which Donald Rumsfeld had previously stated would only cost $60 billion total. He gets the money.
• Estonian citizens vote to join the European Union. Four days later, Sweden votes to join the U.K. in refusing to adopt the Euro.
• Anna Lindh, Foreign Minister of Sweden, is stabbed to death while shopping in a Stockholm department store.
• Hurricane Isabel makes landfall in North Carolina, killing 16 people.
• Gen. Wesley Clark enters the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
• The one year period that I like to call my “Arizona Interregnum” begins.

ARTS

• Outkast’s single “Hey Ya” is the biggest hit of the year. I do indeed shake it like a Polaroid picture. Their double album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below threatens to eat the world.
• Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation is released and penetrates the national zeitgeist.
• Johnny Cash and Leni Riefenstahl die.
• Britney Spears and Madonna cause a minor sensation at the MTV Movie Awards when they kiss each other during the opening number, despite the move obviously being calculated specifically to cause a sensation.
• The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger is published.
• Two and Half Men, NCIS, and Cold Case premiere on CBS. All are still extant.

SPORTS

• Jamal Lewis of the Baltimore Ravens rushes for 295 yards in a single game against the Cleveland Browns, setting an NFL record.

October

NEWS

• Gray Davis is recalled as California Governor. Arnold Schwarzenegger is elected to replace him.
• China launches Shenzhou 5, its first manned space mission.
• 11 die after the Staten Island Ferry slams into a pier in New York Harbor.
• The Concorde makes its final flight. No supersonic service has replaced it.
• A huge forest fire burns down large swaths of the San Diego metropolitan area. 14 die.
• Mathahir Mohamed resigns as Prime Minister of Malaysia after 22 years in office.
• Rush Limbaugh admits that he is addicted to Oxycontin.
• The trial of the two DC Sniper suspects begins.
• The Taipei 101 skyscraper is completed in Taiwan, becoming the world’s tallest building.
• The Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank Gehry, opens in Los Angeles.

ARTS

• Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill is released in theaters.
• Elliot Smith is found dead with two stab wounds to his chest, most likely self-inflicted.

SPORTS

• Chicago Cubs fan Steve Bartman interferes with a ball in play and is generally blamed for the favored home team continuing its losing streak and handing the NLCS to the Florida Marlins on a silver platter.
• Aaron Boone homers in the 10th inning of Game 7 of the ALCS to lift the Yankees over the Boston Red Sox.
• The Florida Marlins, with a team mostly made up of young unknowns, upset the New York Yankees to win the World Series title.
• LeBron James makes his debut for the Cavaliers, scoring 25 points in a loss to the Sacramento Kings.
• The Women’s World Cup, moved from China to the United States due to the SARS outbreak, ends with a victory for Germany.

November

NEWS

• The Supreme Court of Massachusetts rules that anti-Same Sex Marriage laws are unconstitutional in their state.
• President Bush makes a state visit to London and is met with mass protests.
• Gary Ridgway, the “Green River Killer”, confesses to murdering 48 women in Washington state throughout the 80s and 90s.
• Al-Qaeda claims responsibility for two car bombs outside a mosque in Istanbul that kill 25 people.
• A bill banning Partial Birth Abortion is signed by President Bush.
• The DC Sniper suspects are found guilty. One is sentenced to death.

ARTS

• Arrested Development, loved to pieces by many people who are not me, debuts on FOX.
• The Matrix Revolutions is released, just feels superfluous.
• Michael Jackson is arrested on charges of child molestation. Some people seems surprised at this.

SPORTS

• England wins the Rugby World Cup in an overtime thriller over Australia.
• NFL Network starts broadcasting, but many cable carriers refuse to carry it. This dispute continues to this day.

December

NEWS

• Saddam Hussein is captured by U.S. troops in Iraq while hiding in a spider hole near Tikrit.
• Paul Martin replaces Jean Chretien as Prime Minister of Canada.
• A massive earthquake devastates southeastern Iran. Estimates of those killed range above 40,000.
• The FDA approves the “Morning After Pill”.
• Terrorism threats cause a great deal of edginess. Air France cancels several flights after a cryptic request from the French government, and a British Airways flight is escorted into Dulles Airport by fighter jets for reasons the U.S. government does not fully articulate.
• The U.K. bans the use of cell phones while driving.
• Libya admits to trying to build a nuclear bomb.
• An outbreak of Mad Cow Disease in Washington State causes several countries to stop buying U.S. beef.
• NASA loses contact with the Beagle 2 just before it is scheduled to land on Mars.
• Al Gore endorses Vermont Governor Howard Dean for President.

ARTS

• The final film of Peter Jackson’s trilogy, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is released worldwide. It eventually tops out at #2 behind Titanic on the all-time box office list, despite being almost three and a half hours.