Lesbian Pop Culture Reviews

The Whole 9 Yards: Year in Review

We associate the number nine with extremes: highs (cloud nine), lows (the ninth Psalm, predicting the coming of the Antichrist), good luck and bad. Considering the spectrum of events we lived through in 2010-2011—from the greatest victories to the worst tragedies—the number nine seems a particularly apt symbol for the past twelve months’ happenings. On the plus side, DADT was repealed; on the minus side, a near-apocalyptic disaster devastated Japan. Last year, we opened our Annual Year in Review with the crisis in Haiti, which proves again that life is fragile.

27. BEDBUGS!!!

OMG, eww! If you’re like us, you’ve skirted a wide berth around any mattresses lying on the sidewalk awaiting trash pickup. New York erupted into an all-out panic over bedbugs, those hard-to-see, harder-to-get-rid-of insects that infested large swaths of the five boroughs and beyond. Terror-filled accounts of bedbugs infiltrating the Empire State Building, a Times Square movie theater, the Hollister store in SoHo and other high-traffic areas dominated the headlines last year. The only upside: cute bedbug-detecting beagles will come to your apartment if you’re forced to call an exterminator. Even so, we’re zipping ourselves into a plastic cocoon and hoping for the best. Just let us know when it’s safe to come out.

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