Beech Tree News Network

Welcome to the 2024 installment of the Big Dummy Awards! 2024 was a very exciting year.  By exciting, I mean stupid.  Just how stupid was 2024? Let’s start with the art world.  Over the centuries, the art world has given us many beautiful, timeless masterpieces.  This year, a cryptocurrency businessman paid $6.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction for…. a banana.  He ate the banana.  “It’s much better than other bananas”, he told the press.  I should hope so! That wasn’t even the stupidest thing that happened in 2024.  The Olympics awarded a medal for breakdancing.  Fully grown adults got into fights at Target stores over Stanley brand drinking cups (they’re awesome.  The cups, not the fights). Many Americans now carry the large-capacity beverage containers with them at all the time as if they’re trekking across the Sahara.  I’m not making fun.  I’m one of the many.

Despite multiple instances of property damage, injury and even death, expectant couples continued to insist on revealing the genders of their unborn children by blowing things up instead of just telling people.  This sounds like a redneck thing to do, right? No! It’s happening everywhere!

Rather than regale you with the political mess from back in March, and picking a side as the Miami Herald clearly did in their year-in-review, I’ll just say that 2024 was unprecedented politically: Biden finally steps down because, well, you saw and heard it, Harris steps up and proceeds to step off.  Moving onto April, we heard Bonnie Tyler’s 1983 song “Total Eclipse of the Heart” more than we have in years.  Why? The nation was enthralled in a total eclipse, a rare celestial occurrence in which the earth, sun and moon align in such a way as to cause a large number of people to deliberately travel to Indianapolis (or “in the Annapolis”, as Charles Barkley would say) to view the eclipse. 

There was a 4.8 earthquake with an epicenter in central New Jersey that rattles the northeast.  New York is completely paralyzed.  It always is, but this had slightly less honking.  The Trump trial, Stormy Daniels tells of a celebrity golf tournament where Trump finished 62 and Dan Quayle finished 43^rd(do with that information what you will).  On weekends when Trump wasn’t in court, Trump continued his successful campaign for president.  I’m not even going to go over all the crazy things said.  You own a television, so you saw it.

July saw the beginning of the Olympics and an assassination attempt.  The attempt was not at the Olympics.  I didn’t intend to imply that.  August saw Kamala Harris take the reigns in the Democratic Party (not the Roman Reigns-I promise that’s my one and only wrestling reference this week), Donald Trump serves up fries at McDonald’s in October.  No really, he did.  November saw the election and. The highlight for me, the election dinner! King’s BBQ always brings it!

In non-political news(yay), there was the Justin Baldoni-Blake Lively story(boo).  She sues him for harassment.  His lawyer calls the allegations false, outrageous and intentionally salacious.  Serious case, obviously, but what I just wrote the sentence before put me in mind of Jackie Chiles, Kramer’s lawyer on Seinfeld for the hot coffee case.  Let’s just go ahead and name Justin Baldoni the Big Dummy of the Year because, well, come on.  What he did is just something you don’t do. 

That’s a wrap for the Big Dummy Awards for 2024 and my final column of the year.  Once again, no vlog this week.  I promise I’ll get back at it in 2025.  Everyone, thanks for reading and have a Happy New Year!