2013 YEAR IN REVIEW
Maybe we were just too busy making derivative Vine videos or playing Candy Crush Saga on our smartphones to smell the zeitgeist, but 2013 hasn’t left a particularly remarkable aftertaste. As the world mourns the loss of Nelson Mandela and Miley Cyrus fights for the right to party, we enter 2014 in search of new role models and advancement of social justice without backlash.
Here in The 570, we stood together under umbrellas at October’s Bonfire at the Iron Furnaces and trudged through six-inches of winter mud to help build local culture at Holiday on the Square. We are posed toward progress, but let’s take a quick look back.
January
• Beyonce delivers a heart-felt yet lip-synched performance of the “The Star-Spangled Banner” live at the inauguration of President Obama.
• TMZ publishes pictures of Justin Bieber smoking marijuana. Weed is instantly not as cool as it used to be.
• Biker Lance Armstrong conducts an interview with Oprah Winfrey on her OWN channel and shows off his dancing-around-the-questions skills.
• Congress approved a plan to end Washington’s long drama over the “fiscal cliff” after House Republicans surrendered to President Obama’s demand to let taxes rise on the nation’s richest households.
• George Saunders releases Tenth of December.
February
• The Baltimore Ravens defeat the San Francisco 49ers 34 – 31 in Super Bowl 47. A watchdog group says it wants the FCC to act after CBS aired audio of Baltimore Ravens game MVP quarterback Joe Flacco using the F-word and another player using a curse word.
• AMC’s hit The Walking Dead set a series record Sunday night with 12.3 million viewers.
• “Somebody That I Used to Know,” by Gotye featuring Kimbra wins Record of the Year at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards.
• The “Harlem Shake” arrives on the web. We still don’t get it.
• Argo wins Best Picture at the 85th Annual Academy Awards.
• Michael Jackson’s brother legally changes his name to Jermaine Jacksun.
• A Florida man was killed after a large sinkhole suddenly engulfed the bedroom of his suburban Tampa home while he was in his room sleeping.
• Master Fangsmith Father Sebastiaan visits the Everhart Museum for A Vampyre Evening in conjunction with The Blood is the Life: Vampires in Art & Nature exhibit.
March
• On March 15, The Times-Tribune celebrates Ed Rogers Day. We eat cake and Rogers cracks jokes about his 60 years of service.
• Carrie Fisher confirms she’ll be back as Princess Leia in Star Wars: Episode VII.
• Jimmy Fallon is named to replace, Jay Leno on The Tonight Show.
• Pope Francis, the first non-European pontiff of the modern era, revealed himself to the world from a balcony at the Vatican two weeks after the resignation of Benedict XVI.
• Cesar Chavez Day is celebrated in a lot of places, but not NEPA.
• Lita Ford rocks out in the Times 5th floor Radio Theater and performs later that evening at the Rock 107 Birthday Bash at the Woodlands Resort.
“My grandmother could string together a set of curses that would make a 19th century sailor’s ears seal shut like a tulip in reverse time lapse. She wove together with all these profanities the pantheon of saints, so you were never quite sure if you were listening to the most foul protestation or the most amazing prayer.”
— Jim Bosha, Scranton StorySlam winner.
April
• Deaths: Roger Ebert, Margaret Thatcher, Richie Havens, George Jones.
• Rush and Public Enemy get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
• Bombs detonate some 10 seconds apart at the end of the Boston Marathon — just four hours into the race.
• Neil Diamond wows Fenway with a live performance of “Sweet Caroline” during the Red Sox home game against the Kansas City Royals.
• On April 9, Rep. Matt Cartwright tweets: “The yearly pay gap between a man and a woman adds up to $11,084. That is 3,000 additional gallons of gas.” #equalpayday
• Rachel Kusher’s The Flamethrowers is released.
• The Northern Lights are visible in NEPA (April 19).
• Pulitzer Prize winners include Adam Johnson for The Orphan Master’s Son (fiction), Ayah Akhtar for Disgraced (Drama) and Sharon Olds for Stag’s Leap (poetry).
• Newspaper reporter is ranked as the worst job by CareerCast on April 23.
May
• Deaths: Ray Manzarek, Jean “Edith Bunker” Stapleton
• Lindsay Lohan checked into a California rehab center.
• After 25 years, Cops is dropped by Fox-TV and the show will move to Spike-TV.
• HBO’s Behind the Candelabra, about famed pianist and showman Liberace, gets glowing reviews. It stars Michael Douglas and Matt Damon as “author” Scott Thurson.
• Angelina Jolie announces that she had a double mastectomy to reduce her risk of breast cancer after discovering a rare genetic mutation that dramatically increased her risk. Her mother died of the disease at age 56.
• Series finale of NBC’s The Office: “Go after what you want. And act fast because life just isn’t that long.” — Pam Beesly Halpert
•Everyone likes Daft Punk more than you.
• Burlap and Burbon opens in downtown Scranton.
June
• The longest German word is officially dropped from the language. Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz was a 63-letter long title of a law regulating the testing of beef.
• The Supreme Court handed down two rulings bolstering same-sex marriage by ruling part of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional and allowing a lower court ruling to stand that struck down California’s Proposition 8 ballot initiative, which defines marriage as between one man and one woman
• Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are parents of a baby girl. Her name is North West.
• James Gandolfini, who played mobster Tony Soprano on HBO’s seminal drama The Sopranos, died of a heart attack while visiting Italy at the age of 51.
• Paula Deen of the Food Channel dropped by FOOD Network, Wal-Mart, Sears and K-Mart due to the fallout pertaining to her using the “N” word a “long time” ago.
• A 29-year-old computer technician Edward Snowden leaked details of a top-secret American program that sifts through reams of data from telecommunications companies.
• Cyndi Lauper’s Kinky Boots wins six Tony Awards, including Best Musical. In a rare event, women also win the awards for directing — Diane Paulus for Pippin and Pam MacKinnon for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
• Modish opens in downtown Scranton.
• The Pocono Singles and Marrieds Club changes its name to Pocono Dance and Social Club.
July
• Deaths: Eileen Brennan
• Glee’s Cory Monteith (Finn Hudson) overdoses on heroin and alcohol in a Vancouver hotel room.
• Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi is disposed by military coup; violence follows.
•The “A” mysteriously disappears from ‘merica. No one is sure who to blame.
• Anthony Weiner sexting name revealed: “Carlos Danger.”
• Prince William and Duchess Kate’s first baby, a future monarch, was born. The announcement said the baby weighed 8 pounds, 6 ounces, and William was present for the birth. Later, the baby is named George.
• Sharknado debuts.
• Lauryn Hill begins her 3 month prison sentence in Connecticut for tax evasion. The 38-year-old was sentenced in May for failing to pay tax on $1.8 million of her earnings between 2005-07.
• Rolling Stone magazine gets in trouble after featuring terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover. Several outlets pulled the August edition including Walgreens and CVS.
• Lindsay Lohan out of rehab.
• A Florida jury finds George Zimmerman not guilty in Trayvon Martin’s death. The verdict caps a case that has inflamed passions for well over a year, much of it focused on race. The six jurors — all of them women — deliberated for 16½ hours.
• Shortstop Derek Jeter returned to the Yankees after a frenzy fueled visit to NEPA. Jeter was spotted visiting local pubs, restaurants, signing autographs at coffee shops and was generally receptive to the constant stalking.
• Jenji Kohan (Weeds)’s adaptation of Piper Kerman’s memoir Orange is the New Black debuts on Netflix on July 11 in its season entirety. The 570 joins the nationwide binge watch.
• The Bridge, based on the Danish/Swedish series Broen/Bron and starring Mexican actor Demián Bichir and German actress Diane Kruger, debuts on FX.
August
• Deaths: Elmore Leonard, Marian McPartland, Seamus Heaney, David Frost.
• Bradley Manning acquitted/convicted.
• Memorial Service for Governor William Warren Scranton is held at Covenant Presbyterian Church on Aug. 14. The former congressman, United Nations ambassador and Republican presidential candidate passed away in July in California at the age of 96.
• Just one month after bidding adieu to Elisabeth Hasselbeck, The View said goodbye to one of the show’s original co-hosts, Joy Behar.
•Michael Douglas, 68, and Catherine Zeta-Jones, 43, are separating. The star couple is splitting after almost 13 years.
• MTV Video Music Awards features a performance by Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke in which Cyrus practically strips down and makes nasty with a foam finger. Alicia learns the word Fremdschamen.
• Britain votes against military action in Syria after suspected use of chemical weapons.
• Valerie June, Pushin’ Against A Stone is released.
• Anis Mojgani performs his poetry at TwentyFive Eight Studios in Scranton.
September
• Breaking Bad was seen by at least 6.4 million viewers, the biggest audience in the show’s history
• Diana Nyad completes a record-setting, 103-mile weekend swim from Cuba to Florida with no shark cage.
• Retired US basketball player Dennis Rodman has arrived in North Korea for his second visit this year to meet leader Kim Jong-un. Before landing in Pyongyang, Rodman said meeting “my friend Kim”, who is a basketball fan, was part of his “basketball diplomacy tour.”
•Yankees end their season and pitcher Mariano Rivera ends his final career game with emotion at Yankee Stadium.
• Stephen King releases his sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep.
• Tony Brooks resigns from The Luzerne County Historical Society.
• Michael Melcher is named the new executive director of the Scranton Cultural Center.
•“I always felt safe here. There was always somebody watching me. On the downside, there was always somebody watching me. I got away with nothing. Where ever I was, if there was even a hint of trouble, one of you out there would call my mother and father.” — Jessup StorySlam winner Barbara Rognoni on growing up in Jessup.
• University of Scranton demolishes Leahy Hall, formerly the YWCA, a historic building designed by architect Edward Langley near the turn of the century, in preparation to construct an eight-story rehabilitation center.
•Lily Yeh of Barefoot Artists delivers a heart-blowing keynote speech at the Lackawanna County Arts Culture and Education department’s fifth annual Wake Up with the Arts Breakfast.
• Dan and Stacy Chariton bring their film The English Teacher to the Kirby for a local screening. “There’s something universal about the idea of …being inspired to go off and follow your dreams by your wonderful English teacher, and then facing the world, finding the trajectory isn’t as smooth as you were hoping for, and then having to go back,” he tells electric city.
October
• Deaths: Tom Clancy, Lou Reed
• Government re-opens after shutting down for 16 days shutdown.
• Arts on Adams opens on the 300 block of Adams Avenue in Scranton, describing itself as “Scranton’s first art and small business incubator offering low cost month to month studio space,” also featuring a gallery and a storefront for artists.
• Balathus Cats & Girls opens at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC.
• Francois Englert and Peter W. Higgs receive The Nobel Prize in Physics for their research into the Higgs boson particle, nicknamed the “God particle.” Alice Munro, “master of the contemporary short story,” wins the Nobel Prize in Literature.
• An article by Holly Richmond in Grist connects fracking to an increase in STDs, car crashes, drug-related crimes and sexual assault in areas where gas and oil companies set up camp.
• Opponents of President Barack Obama’s health care law get quick to evoke the plight of potentially millions of Americans getting hit by cancellation notices from their health insurance companies due to new coverage requirements under the Affordable Care Act.
• Sinead O’Connor reacts strongly to online taunting by Miley Cyrus in the wake of her impassioned letter to the young singer, demanding an apology and threatening legal action for potentially damaging her career.
• Bruce and Kris Jenner break up; as well as The Jonas Brothers.
• With her hotly anticipated album Prism due out, Katy Perry’s promotional 18 wheeler gold truck was destroyed in a Wilkes-Barre Wal-mart parking lot by a drunk driver operating another smaller semi-truck.
• Dave Eggers foresees a very, very near future world in which an growing Internet/Social Media monopoly eliminates our last illusions of privacy in The Circle.
• Brian Fanelli releases his new book of poems All That Remains on Oct. 25 at The Vintage Theater.
• Little Theatre of Wilkes-Barre is chosen as one of three local theatres in the United States to stage a work in progress production of Broadway musical hopeful National Pastime.
• Fenway Park Beard Show: aka The Fall Classic or baseball’s World Series..
• Cyndi Lauper heckled at the Kirby.
• The Bon-Ton announces it will close its The Mall at Steamtown store.
• Poet Buddy Wakefield performs in Scranton.
• Construction is completed on the new Best Western Pioneer Plaza hotel in Carbondale
November
• Deaths: Doris Lessing, Paul Walker
• The latest popular musician to hit Broadway is Alanis Morissette. A new musical titled Jagged Little Pill — based off the landmark 1995 album of the same name — will hit the stage as a workshop production in 2014.
• Ted Michalowski reveals the first of two murals of live jazz musicians on the side of Carl Von Luger Steak and Seafood.
• Mayor Chris Doherty proclaims Nov. 1 as Dorothy Dietrich Day in Scranton.
• Bill Courtwright is elected the next mayor of Scranton. “Mr. Courtright is now going to be mayor-elect Courtright and we need to respect that and we need to get behind Mr. Courtright and whatever his plan is for the city, we need to step up and support him to make sure that Scranton is on the right track,” defeated Republican nominee Jim Mulligan graciously told The Times-Tribune.
• Eleven-year-old Timmy Walsh and his mother, Sheila McDonough, lung cancer advocates from Olyphant, join more than 50 fellow patient advocates from across the country in Washington, D.C. to call on Members of Congress to protect patient access to life-saving medical imaging and radiation therapy services.
• Twitter goes public on New York Stock Exchange and closes at $44.90 a share, up 73 percent from IPO price.
• The headlines have irritated and outraged veterans and service members and their families around the world. “Tom Cruise: making movies is like serving in Afghanistan,” said one of the headlines buzzing around social media and patriotic websites this weekend. Cruise’s lawyer says now, that the quote is a little out of context.
• Miley Cyrus smokes a joint at the MTV European Music Awards in Amsterdam. Right after accepting the best music video award, Cyrus pulled out what MTV News reports was a marijuana joint and took a smoke. “I couldn’t fit this award in my bag but I did find this, so thank you guys very much,” Cyrus said.
• Maroon 5 frontman and The Voice judge Adam Levine is this year’s Sexiest Man Alive, as declared by the editors at People magazine.
• Surviving members of the Monty Python comedy troupe will reunite for a stage show.
• MSNBC has yanked Alec Baldwin’s show Up Late for two weeks as a result of the uproar stemming from his use of a homophobic slur.
• Bruce Springsteen announced details of his upcoming LP, High Hopes.
• New York City’s One World Trade Center is now the nation’s tallest building, wresting the title from Chicago’s Willis Tower.
• Typhoon Haiyan laid waste to much of the central Philippines. Over 5,000 perished from the storm.
• Iran and six major powers agreed on a historic deal that freezes key parts of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for temporary relief on some economic sanctions.
• Chris Davis returned a potential game-winning field goal attempt 109 yards against then-No. 1 Alabama Saturday to give Auburn the 34-28 victory in an unforgettable Iron Bowl meeting.
• Hanukkah and Thanksgiving fall on the same calendar day. This won’t happen again in our lifetimes.
• Morris Mertz releases “The Latke Song” on video with hopes of going viral on YouTube.
• NOTE Fragrances opens in downtown Scranton.
December
• Deaths: Peter O’Toole
• Nelson Mandela, who rose from militant antiapartheid activist to become the unifying president of a democratic South Africa and a global symbol of racial reconciliation, died at his Johannesburg home following a lengthy stay at a Pretoria hospital, the government said Thursday. He was 95.
• A mystery South African man who acted as a sign-language interpreter at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service was a “fraud” who simply made “childish hand gestures” for hours as he stood on stage. Deaf groups say the man, who has not yet been identified, made no sense in any language to those relying on him around the world. Thamsanqa Jantjie who insists he is a qualified interpreter says he suffered from a sudden attach of schizophrenia and was terrified by the vision of angels flying in to the stadium. He was later admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
• Uruguay became the first country to legalize the growing, sale and smoking of marijuana. Presenting the bill to fellow senators, Roberto Conde said it was an unavoidable response to reality, given that the “war” against drugs had failed, the BBC reported. “What scares me is drug trafficking, not drugs,” The country’s president Jose Mujica later said.
• NBC’s gamble of filling an entire night with live musical theater paid off handsomely on Thursday as The Sound of Music — with Carrie Underwood in the Julie Andrews role of Maria — scored 18.5 million viewers. NBC has announced plans for another live musical next holiday season.
• Bob Dylan is in legal trouble in France because of a year-old interview he gave to Rolling Stone in which he compared Croatians to Nazis. Dylan, 72, has been charged with incitement to hatred for statements that appeared in the magazine’s Sept. 27, 2012 issue.
• A 1964 Fender Stratocaster guitar once owned by Dylan sold for $965,000 Friday at Christie’s, setting a new world auction record for any guitar.
• A suburban New York train derailed killing four people and injuring 63, including 11 critically. Federal investigators said the commuter train that crashed was going 82 miles an hour as it entered a 30-mph zone along a tight curve.
• Members of the band Pussy Riot jailed for “hooliganism” in Russia are released from prison.
• Prostitution is legalized in Canada.
• Vague new Steamtown Mall tenant is teased as a, wait for it…. “game changer.”