If life is about taking the time to look down, shake your head and laugh through the pain, then we were livin’ large in 2004. Here are some of my favorite people and events of the year. Some are laughable, some regrettable, but they’re all unforgettable:

On Martin Luther King’s birthday, Howard Dean, the front-running Democrat, let out a yell that made my dog dive under the bed and quiver. He (Dean, not my dog) had just conceded his Iowa primary loss and decided he was going to scream his way to victory in New Hampshire. That was the day Dean got my vote for a tracheotomy.

The tempest in a C-cup revealed that Michael’s not the only Jackson that likes to expose himself to children. The real issue wasn’t nudity but harassment. A man rips off a woman’s clothes without her consent while menacingly boasting, “I’ll have you naked by the end of this song?” Please.

We’re a nation of hypocrites. We’re shocked by breasts, but not by the violence that exposes them.

Actually, I think she prefers them sautéed, but what do I know? I’m the only gay man who cheered her incarceration (I have this thing about greed being punished). Plus, I love a woman who can reduce Leona Helmsley’s death glare to an eye-roll. Now Martha can teach those of us who’d rather know how to make bail rather than quail the truly useful things in life: How to get ink off our fingers, how to wear stripes without looking fat and how to know when our goose is cooked.

Who knew San Francisco’s mayor, a smirking frat boy who looks like he’d lead gay bashings, would lead gay wedding bashes instead? The images of all those couples lining up to consecrate their love for each other were breathtaking. Alas, the judicial courts of the Homophobic States of America thwarted his good intentions. When he said he was searching for justice, they told him what a librarian told me when I said I was looking for Mr. Right: “Look in fiction.”

Nobody in the history of porn got blown like the state of Florida this year. Four hurricanes had 2.2 million people smoking cigarettes afterwards – and filing insurance claims. I called one friend right before a storm hit and all he could do was tell weather jokes (“Why is a hurricane like Christmas? At some point you know you’re going to have a tree in your house”). When I expressed concern for his safety he said, “Shut up. It’s a gay tradition to laugh in the face of tragedy.”

The most trusted name in fake news gave the most boring name in real news a lesson in journalism. After sparring with CNN’s I’m-too-gay-to-be-gay Tucker Carlson, Stewart let loose and created a rare moment of television magic.

The Daily Mirror ran a front cover so howlingly funny and true it ranks right up there with the New York Post’slouching Through gomorrah

s classic headline of a murder in a titty bar (“Headless body found in topless bar”). The headline? “How can 59,054,087 people be so dumb?”

How do you spend $155 million and make history’s most colorful personality boring? Yes, Stone showed him conquering the world but he didn’t show Alexander’s true, gay-as-a-goose personality. Carson Kressley would’ve had nothing to do if they filmed “Queer Eye for the Macedonian Guy.” Alexander waged brutal war during the day, but took scented baths at night. When warriors wore their beards long enough to double as toilet paper, Alexander started a fashion revolution by shaving. He did drag, pitched hissy fits that would take Naomi Campbell’s breath away and named more things after himself than Donald Trump. How do you make a boring biography out of that? l