Dave Barry's 2004 year in review

On the health front, medical researchers announce that if you feed one aspirin per day to laboratory rats, eventually you are going to get bit.

In sports, popular spunky horse "Smarty Jones" wins the Kentucky Derby, confounding exit pollsters who had unanimously picked Seabiscuit. Congress vows to call its bookie.

The big entertainment news in May is the much-anticipated final episode of "Friends," in which Joey, Chandler, Ross, Rachel, Monica and Phoebe suddenly realize that that they are, like, 53 years old.

Speaking of final episodes, in . . .

June

. . . former President Ronald Reagan dies and embarks on a weeklong national tour. Also hitting the road for the last time is Ray Charles.

Another former President, Bill Clinton, travels around the nation bringing comfort to large crowds of Americans who injured themselves attempting to lift Clinton's 1,000-page memoir, titled "Some Day I Might Read This Myself."

The news from Iraq continues to worsen as the interim governing council, in a move that alarms the Bush administration, chooses, by unanimous vote, its new acting president: Al Gore. He immediately demands a recount.

In a related development, CIA Director George Tenet — the man who advised President Bush that the case for proving there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a "slam dunk" — resigns to accept a job advising the New York Yankees.

President Bush meets with the pope and, in impromptu remarks afterward, describes him as "a great American." John Kerry, campaigning in Michigan, strangles a deer.

On the economic front, there is good news and bad news. The good news is, the U.S. economy has generated 250,000 new jobs. The bad news is that 80 percent of these openings are for cable TV legal experts needed to speculate endlessly about Scott Peterson.

Speaking of jobseekers, in . . .

July

. . . John Kerry is formally nominated at the Democratic convention in Boston and, in his acceptance speech, tells the wildly cheering delegates that, if he is elected president, his highest priority will be "to develop facial expressions." Also well-received at the convention is Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz-Ketchup Kerry, who gives a moving account of being an immigrant in America with little more than hopes, dreams, a personal staff, a large fortune and a Gulfstream jet. Vice-presidential nominee John Edwards also makes a well-received speech, after which he is never heard from again.