By Jess Nobert | Chief Copy Editor

This year was full of ridiculous. It started with Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl changing his name to Steelerstahl in honor of his team taking on the Ravens. We saw the famous water landing by Sully, Michael Phelps got busted for smoking pot and they stopped playing Fox News in Einstein’s.

Utah started requiring applications to get into the bar, a woman blocked a bullet with her weave and we saw the kid from “Slumdog Millionaire” get exploited by his father. Kids at a day care in Arkansas drank windshield wiper fluid, a Texas man robbed the bank via drive-thru and a guy in Michigan got busted for using a car wash vacuum for, um, personal reasons.

A guy’s body was exhumed after his family heard the undertaker may have cut his legs off to fit him into his casket. A woman in Texas called 911 because she didn’t get enough shrimp in her fried rice and an Ohio teacher took some of her students to the strip club.

Overall, we saw a lot of ridiculous this year, but here are what I classify the best of 2009.

There were a lot of fame seekers this year. A lot of them surfaced this summer and a few just in the last few months. The big ones started with Octomom. She made headlines after having octuplets, but already having six kids at home gave her story a new spin. Jon and Kate (plus their eight) made headlines with Jon’s midlife crises and his multiple girlfriends. Heidi and Spencer Pratt are more infamous with their reality show “The Hills,” and were all over the tabloids when they eloped in Mexico.

The most ridiculous fame seekers have to be balloon boy’s parents, Richard and Mayumi Heene. They had been trying to max out their 15 minutes, and I think they achieved their goal. Congratulations to the most ridiculous fame seekers.

With pop culture, we lost more people than participated in ridiculous acts. This year, we lost Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Walter Cronkite and Billy Mays among many others.

The most ridiculous pop icon had to be, by far, Kanye West. His improv show he put on at the Video Music Awards when he mortified Taylor Swift. Congratulations to Kanye for being ridiculous.

Sports saw a lot of headlines for off-the-field activities. Alex Rodriguez got called out for his steroid use. We have all had enough of Tiger. And Serena Williams went a little wild with her outburst over the foot fault. Brett Favre came back out of retirement, again, to play for the Vikings.

The most ridiculous athlete, however, has to be Allen Iverson. He signed with Memphis and never really got on the court. He took personal leave, then retired somewhat unexpectedly. Suddenly, he was playing for the 76ers. Wait, What? He was in retirement for like a week and then was back. Congratulations, AI, you take the cake for most ridiculous athlete this year.

Politicians are always doing something ridiculous. Blago, and Mark Sanford have to tie on this one. Rod Blagojevich was making the headlines right as the year was starting, and Sanford lied to everyone about his affair with the Appalachian Trail, er, a woman in Argentina. Congratulations, politicians, you never cease to be ridiculous.
These are the most ridiculous events of 2009 as I have seen them. Let’s hope 2010 doesn’t cease to amuse us with even more ridiculous acts.

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