It’s not original to say 2020 has been the most cursed year in living memory, but whatever, I’m going to say it anyway. 2020 blows. It sucks farts, as my mate Mitch would say. It’s a raging turd fire of psychotic energy that spits out new and devastating events without rhyme or reason. New Year’s Eve won’t be a celebration this year, but a defeated, sad limp to the finish line. I can’t wait.
The flipside of a year where everything and nothing has happened is that it feels like it’s gone by in a second. Did you know we only have four months left? In a year where we’ve spent more time in the hideous company of our own thoughts than ever before, time has somehow… passed. Chronologically, it’s late August. Emotionally, I’m still in March.
Time has fallen in on itself. To borrow another overused phrase: Thanks, I hate it.
A side effect of this heinous phenomenon is that I keep thinking about huge events, and then remembering they happened this year. Not last year, not five years ago, but in the Most Cursed And Awful Year Of Our Lord 2020.
So with that in mind, I thought I’d take you through some of them. Buckle the fuck in.
Australia was on fire
We love to talk about the ‘before times’ of this pandemic. You might recall that for Australia, there was no before times. Not really. In January, the entire east coast was on fire, Scott Morrison was being told to fuck off by exhausted firies, and we were getting ready to travel locally in order to help restart the fire-ravaged economies of small towns.
Oh, how naive we were to the horrors 2020 still had in store for us.
Weeks ago: 35
Harry and Meghan quit being ‘senior royals’
It feels like this one has dragged on forever, but did you know that at the beginning of this year, Harry and Meghan were still normal royals? They still lived in the UK, they’d just had their son Archie, and they weren’t being weird quasi-celebrities in LA? IDK if they were simpler times, but they were certainly more normal.
Weeks ago: 34
Everyone became obsessed with Cheer
Remember when the world suddenly remembered cheerleaders were, like, actual athletes? (Like Bring It On taught you nothing?) Cheer, Netflix’s docuseries about cheerleaders from Navarro College, feels like it came out four thousand years ago, but it was only January. That one everyone loved (Jerry) even went to the 2020 Oscars, and to make this feel even older, he was Ellen‘s correspondent. Remember pre-publicly problematic Ellen? Sure you do. This year, baby.
Weeks ago: 33
Kobe Bryant died
It feels like another lifetime ago that NBA great Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, and seven other people died in a tragic helicopter crash in Calabasas, California. Nope. It was this year. It’s still awful to think about.
Weeks ago: 32
Married At First Sight dominated our conversations
This one is absolutely wrinkling my brain: did you know that Married At First Sight was only this year? Not last year, THIS year? In fact it was during March / April, right when this coronavirus thing stopped being a headline and started forcing us to cancel flights, stop seeing friends, and just sit our asses at home. When I think of MAFS, I think of working from the PEDESTRIAN.TV office in Sydney and that, my friends, feels like a lifetime ago.
Weeks ago: 21-30
Award shows were still a thing
That’s right: the Oscars, the SAG Awards and the Grammys all happened! This year! Before 2020 became synonymous with ‘event cancelled, rescheduled never’.
Unlike the USA, Australia did end up cancelling The Logies, but that was more of a mercy, really.
Weeks ago: 29-34
Three baboons escaped a hospital in Sydney
Oh GOD this was the best story. It sounds fake. It sounds like a news story from the beginning of a disaster movie, which plays ominously in the background as the main characters eat breakfast. Anyway, it was legit, and it only happened in February this year. Three baboons escaped from the RPA hospital in Sydney and ran rampant in Sydney. You can’t make this shit up.
Weeks ago: 26
Tiger King ruled our lives
Obviously, Tiger King was a ‘lockdown thing’ – there’s no way this deranged Netflix docuseries would have gone as big as it did if we weren’t all bored out of our minds at home – but it was in the first stage of lockdown. Everything was a bit exciting then. We were doing friend quizzes over Zoom and getting dressed up to take the bins out. Lockdown Round 1 was a simpler time.
Weeks ago: 22
J.K. Rowling wasn’t an out and proud transphobe
Look – the signs had been there for a while. But at the beginning of this year, J.K. Rowling wasn’t a straight-up transphobe, using her billions of Harry Potter dollars to convince the public that trans women were making cis women uncomfortable in bathrooms, or something. Then she wrote that open letter, and ruined her legacy forever. Yuk. There’s only two good points here: almost every single Harry Potter star denounced her views, and our sweet lord Alan Rickman wasn’t around to see it.
Weeks ago: 11
X Æ A-12 was nonsense gibberish
Ahhhhh, remember when X Æ A-12 meant nothing to you? It was just a collection of random letters, numbers and symbols? Unfortunately, it’s what Elon Musk and Grimes chose to name their kid. That baby is less than four months old.
Weeks ago: 16
