oodbye, 2004. Thanks so much for biting the dong and hanging around for at least eleven months too long, until it finally took a forty-story tall wall of hauling ass saltwater to wash your taste out of our mouths. Thanks for finally dragging your skanky, broken ass off our calendar at last, and don’t think we won’t be calling the Goodwill in the morning to come pick up what’s left of your shit. The new year is here, and it doesn’t stink quite so strongly of Jovan Musk.

2004 dazzled us like strange, incomprehensible kabuki theater, in which a talking gonad was somehow re-elected president and the biggest group of losers this side of Color Me Badd accidentally won the World Series. Martha Stewart went to jail and Kobe Bryant didn’t, teaching America’s children a valuable lesson about the horrors of overly tasteful home décor. The country had to grow up fast with the revelation that Janet Jackson has breasts, while her brother Michael strangely has no interest in the same. Americans everywhere were up in arms about an unjustified war in Iraq… no wait, sorry. Americans everywhere were up in arms about a fertilizer salesman who snuffed his wife, vigilantly demanding to see justice done before more Modesto singles could be put in harm’s way.

Meanwhile, on the bright side of political news, Ronald Reagan and Yasser Arafat both died in “unrelated� incidents, leaving more Ben Gay for the rest of us.

There were also the usual run of celebrity mercy killings, though 2004 couldn’t even get those right, as nobody was especially eager to see Ray Charles, Marlon Brando, Rodney Dangerfield or Christopher Reeve go. Though the thought of the four of them all on the same bus to the afterlife offers many amusing possibilities, which isn’t a half-bad idea for a sitcom or at least a winning bar joke. Note to self: write down this million-dollar idea!

2004 was the year gays started getting married, Britney Spears couldn’t stay married, and somebody accidentally married J-Lo. Though thanks to a timely UN intervention, Ben Affleck remained single at year’s end.

But mostly, 2004 felt like a dead hooker rolled up in a carpet, which shrinks mercifully in the rearview mirror by the minute as we peel out bravely into the future. Both of the top grossing films of the year were sequels, which seems like a golden treat when you realize the third-place film was about Jesus getting the holy shit beaten out of him. And the top-selling album of the year was by some kind of disgruntled movie theater employee, likely having had to sit through one too many screenings of The Passion of the Christ or, even worse, Catwoman.

However, movies couldn’t sate our thirst for horribleness in 2004, so the real world had to oblige us with the Madrid train attacks, ethnic cleansing in Sudan, and the tragic first-ever meeting of the Russian PTA. By the time the south Asian tsunami rinsed what was left of 2004 down the crapper, few were sad to see it go. Unless they were wealthy, horny Republican NBA stars with points on The Passion.

We’ll miss you, 2004. Like we miss polyester underwear. Don’t let history hit you in the ass on your way out.

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OH MY GOD SNOW

America's favorite love-it-all reviewer from Spineless Magazine has the scoop on this summer's hot-to-trot blockbusters… and we've got the scoop on Dickman! Actually, we just paid him a standard fee. He's previewed this year's big summer blockbusters and here's his unbiased reviews!

Kingdom of Heaven
"I'm converted! A Kingdom of Heaven is waiting for you—at your local theater! At last, there's a reward in this lifetime!"

Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
"It's Star Wars-tastic! So good you'll wish it wasn't the last one! But it is. I'm getting in line now for the special effects explosion of the lifetime! Makes all the other five movies look wretched by comparison! Jed-I love it!"

Mr. and Mrs. Smith
"Bradgelina! Yum! The world's most beautiful super-spies make love and war! Based on a Hitchcock film that didn't have quite-so-sexy celebrities, Mr. and Mrs. Smith may just be good enough to break up your marriage!"

War of the Worlds
"The war is over—and earth won! Set your movie dial on 'Cruise control' this summer! A Spielbergin' good time! The aliens are coming, but we can stop just by giving them this movie—'cause it kicks ass!"

Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
"Hot damn, a remake! The world's hot new Jesus, Johnny Depp, is throwing all his old awards in the trash just to make room for the Oscar he'll win with this role! Burton? Depp? Pure nitro-glycerin and oily rags!"

Fantastic Four
"Talk about good Four-tune! Jessica Alba is hot, hot, hot as the sister of the fire guy. Look Four-ward to this big-ass blockbuster release—it's based on a comic book!"

Batman Begins
"If this is how Batman Begins, I can't wait to see him end! Light up the bat signal this summer! This caped crusader is Bat-ting a thousand! Christopher Nolan puts the 'man' back in Batman!"

The Honeymooners
"The Honeymooners are back and black! Cedric the Entertainer lives up to his name—the 'Entertainer' part. Jackie Gleason wishes he could get out of his grave to grab a ticket to this 'blackbuster' hit!"

The Bad News Bears
"Good news for people who love Bad News—the Bears are back in town! Billy Bob Thornton is his funniest since Sling Blade in this awesome-tacular sports saga! I'm hoping to get Bad News every summer! Don't run from these Bears!"

The Dukes of Hazzard
"A movie that could be Hazzard-ous to your health! This summer, put up your Dukes for Dukes! Jessica Simpson can slide into my car through the window anytime!!! It's remake-tacular!"

Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
"A stunning and moving follow-up to the never-ending Deuce Bigalow saga! Based on the poignant series of novels, Deuce Bigalow is pure dynamite, and I'm ready to set it on fire! Rob Schneider blows (insert explosion here) the screen away!"

º Last Column: You Don't Know Dickman (Vol. 2)
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The history of video games thus far can be neatly divided into three eras: the Arcade Era, which was covered in part one of this series, spanned the rise of video gaming up from the primordial, pixilated ooze. Second was the Console Era, when gamers finally gained the opportunity to play lame, half-assed knockoffs of their arcade favorites at home, for the quarter-saving initial outlay of several hundred dollars. But it did mean less time spent developing cancer in the smoke-filled game room of the local bowling alley, so progress was progress. Thirdly came the No-Arcade Era, after home consoles got so good that there was no reason to go to the arcade any more, unless you were too broke to buy Camels and needed a fix of second-hand smoke, or you wanted to play that life-sized Stuck In Traffic driving game.

But forget about that third era for now, you'll just get confused since this column is all about the second one, the rise of the consoles. From the first, shitastic home Pong in 1972, through the Atari 2600, Colecovision, Intellivision and Chevy's little-known and ill-fated foray into the gaming business, Impallavision, home consoles have sprouted hair on the nads of an entire generation.

The very first home video game console was Magnavox's Odyssey in 1972, an impressive bit of engineering done in by the fact that they never made any games for it. This oversight on Maganvox's part quickly became apparent in 1973, when home gamers grew bored of playing with the console's menu screen and realized there were no games in this game console. Magnavox attempted to re-release the Odyssey as simply a "console" in 1974, hoping to profit on mystery alone, but this tactic soon proved as futile as their attempts a year earlier to convince gamers that the Odyssey was actually full of fun games, but that finding them was the most challenging game of all.

The Odyssey was soon superseded by Coleco's Telstar in 1976, a big oval box that put out more radiation than a Russian microwave. Coleco originally started out as the Connecticut Leather Company (I shit you not), which over the years had made leather craft kits for shoe makers and, just for the hell of it, plastic kiddie pools. Their experience with kiddie pools made them a natural to enter the highly competitive world of complex consumer electronics, but unfortunately a complete lack of engineering know-how left Coleco with a product more deadly than Hasbro's ill-fated "Exploding Porcupine" doll in the mid-70's. Coleco made one last stab at saving the Telstar with their "It glows in the dark!" ad campaign in 1977, but after a while the mounting death toll began to hurt the company's bottom line.

In spite of never having put out a home console, Atari was dominating the home console market by the mid-70's due in large part to the criminal ineptitude of their competitors. The company was started by a couple of computer science drop-outs, Noel Bushnell and Cole Dabney, who had both been kicked out of college for refusing to toe the party line about things like not making grilled cheese sandwiches on hot motherboards or obeying programming language syntax. Though they originally wanted to name their company Syzygy, for the sound a keyboard makes when you sit on it, that name was already being used by an Indiana roofing company. So the two had to settle for Atari, a Japanese chess term meaning "Eat shit and lose."

After the success of their initial run of arcade games, Atari decided to take the next logical step by opening a chain of restaurants featuring singing robot animals in 1977. Pizza Time Theater and its mascot, a terrifying man-sized rat named Chuck E. Cheese, was an instant success. But once he saw his vision in action, Bushnell, who'd thought of the concept while getting stoned at Disneyland the year before, was scared straight and immediately steered Atari's course toward the home console market.

Atari released the 2600 later that year, which was quickly followed by Bally's copycat console, the Bally Professional Arcade. Though Bally would not answer questions about who exactly these video gaming professionals were that the console was being marketed to, the system was a minor hit due to the workout provided by kids moving the unreasonably heavy console from TV to TV whenever they wanted to play the console's only game, Meathead.

Again boosted by the ineptitudes of their competitors, Atari made another bold move in 1978, releasing the Atari 400 to compete with Apple's line of home computers. Consumers, however, prefered the way Apple's computers went "boop" and did nothing useful, and Atari quickly withdrew from the shitty computer market. Magnavox would also briefly try to dethrone Apple with their Odyssey 2 home computer, which quickly failed due to a complete lack of software.

Sales of Atari's 2600 skyrocketed in 1980 with the release of the system's first game, Space Invaders. Finally finding the key to home console success through the synergistic combination of system hardware and games, Atari was quickly aped by toymaker Mattel with the release of the Intellivision later that year. Realizing Mattel's console wasn't selling well due to its association with intelligence, Coleco named their new console Colecovision in 1982 and cleaned up, in spite of the system's bizarre controllers that looked like some kind of garage door opener from hell.

Later that year, a Chicago man would drop dead of a heart attack while playing Atari's Berserk, sending video game sales through the roof.

That event was to be Atari's last hurrah for some time, however, since at around the same time Atari released their home port of Pac-Man for their 2600 console, in a version so stupefyingly shitty as to cause the infamous video game crash of 1982.

From late 1982 through 1985 the home video game market went down in heinous flames, due to the dozens of different consoles being released almost daily by anyone with a soldering kit and a bad idea. Consumers eventually grew confused, trying to play Danavision games on their Scatari console, or trying to plug Donkey Kong Jr. into their toasters. Soon gamers gave up and went back to playing Stratego and throwing rocks at squirrels, spelling death for the video game industry. And it wouldn't be until 1985 that a fat ethnic plumber would roust the industry from its watery grave and once again enslave the minds of a generation. But that's a sunshine story for another day.

º Last Column: You Lose: The History of Video Games
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