Dec 26, 2014 3 min read

As 2015 is upon us, a bunch of year-end retrospectives will be plastered everywhere. Every news show will do their “Year in Review” segment. Even on Facebook you’ll see a “Year in Review” app, which will randomly catalog a bunch of your FB photos and slapdash them into an electronic photo book.

My personal year in review wasn’t tremendously eventful. Mostly, I ran around promoting my book, “Below Average Genius.” I did some standup comedy here and there; more here than there as I didn’t have very many out-of-town gigs.

As a contributing theater critic for ‘Burgh Vivant, I saw a bunch of plays. My favorite was called “Tamara,” which sounds like the beginning of an Abbott and Costello routine. At “Tamara,” we had to chase the actors around inside a Jewish temple. If you were too slow you missed key scenes, bits of dialogue or gratuitous nudity. Two weeks after I filmed my review, my friend Cathy came up to me and said, “You didn’t tell me there was a naked man in the show!”

I said, “I’m sorry. Were you offended?”

She replied, “No. I missed it!”

In 2014, I saw a bunch of movies. My favorite one was about a talking raccoon and a walking tree. A movie about a precocious Procyon and the ambling oak sounds ridiculous, but it was the number-one movie in America this year. My theory is that the same 50 nerds saw the movie over and over and over again, accounting for the $770 million in revenue.

The biggest news came at the end of the year when my car was totaled. After three weeks of riding around in a rental car, I am now the proud owner of a used PT Cruiser. The quirkiest thing about the car is the key ring. When the former owner handed over the keys, there was a gem-encrusted silver peacock hanging from the key ring. She said, “It kept falling off, so I super-glued the key ring shut.”

I can’t remove the bedazzled bird from the key fob. So, now I have to walk around with this huge piece of jewelry in my pocket. I feel like Liberace whenever I take my keys out.

That’s my year in a nutshell, and yes, I realize I’m the nut in that nutshell. In the words of another play I saw this year (“A Chorus Line”), “Kiss today goodbye, and point me toward tomorrow!”

Shameless plug: Tonight (Saturday) at 10 p.m. I will be part of John McIntire’s “Dangerously Live Talk Show” at the Cabaret at Theater Square in downtown Pittsburgh. McIntire’s other guests include cartoonist Rob Rogers (from some other newspaper) and Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto. In his honor’s honor, I will probably cycle there (someone’s got to use the bike lane). The theme of the show is “A Year in Review.” It is no coincidence that this column has the exact same theme. In entertainment, we call that synergy.

I will see you here next week, and we can start on a new list of random weirdness for 2015. Happy New Year!