Grab a Candle and Let’s Have a Look Back at the Year That Was

The year 2000 showed that when it comes to conventional wisdom, it’s time for a recount.

It started when dire Y2K predictions proved a bust, and ended with the “new economy” looking like last year’s model.

Some highlights and lowlights of the year:

Y2K: Biggest mystery is how all the Cassandras spend their consulting fees.

California electricity: If you’re having trouble reading this, light another candle.

Movie theater chains in bankruptcy: Hey, you try selling a cup of soda for $3.75.

Ousted Mattel Chief Executive Jill Barad: New-product idea: CEO Barbie, complete with unhappy directors and shareholders as accessories.

Barbie for President 2000: Doesn’t the Constitution imply you have to be made in the U.S. to run?

AT&T;’s besieged CEO C. Michael Armstrong: Hoping his directors don’t hang up and try again.

Time Warner shareholders with AOL deal pending: You’ve got a lot lower stock price!

Priceline.com: Name your own price to buy the stock; no minimum.

Priceline spokesman William Shatner: Beam me out of this mess.

Firestone tires: New warranty: Five years or 50,000 lawsuits, whichever comes first.

Gasoline prices: Why couldn’t ‘70s comebacks have stopped with Travolta?

Internet stock options: Great for papering those dorm-room walls when you return to finish your degree.

Hollywood’s promise not to market violent movies to kids: We don’t condone what we do all the time.

Napster: And you thought your teenage son was at his computer doing homework.

Teen stock traders: Actually, he was making $638,000 in insider trading profits. . . .

Teen stock traders (cont.): . . . and disgorging $234,000 to the government while neither admitting nor denying guilt.

New decimal stock market quotes: Instead of falling $26 1/32 a share in the first hour of trading, that tech stock you sank your life savings into just fell $26.03.

German ownership of Chrysler: Ich bin ein Idiot for not selling the stock.

Razor scooters: Great Christmas gift for kids whose parents couldn’t find a PlayStation 2.

Airline delays: More legroom and free headsets if you ever get out of the waiting area.

Jack Welch’s GE successor: When Welch leaves, whom is Fortune magazine going to start putting on its covers?

Vivendi buys Seagram: Memo to executives: “You’re French toast.

Baseball owners: Somebody please stop us before we spend $250 million again for a shortstop.

“Dot-com” movie sites: Lending new meaning to the computer message “Fatal Error.”

Microsoft trustbuster David Boies: Did he use Microsoft Word to write all those legal briefs for Al Gore’s recount effort?

Quaker Oats: Nothing is better for thee than selling.

Screen Actors Guild advertising strike: Having to endure six months without hearing Donald Sutherland’s voice on a fresh Volvo commercial is too much to ask of anyone.

Chevron and Texaco merger: It used to just be Big Oil. Now it’s Big, Big, Big, Big, Big Oil.

Tribune Co.’s purchase of Times Mirror for $6.8 billion: . . . or about what Sammy Sosa wants to re-sign with Tribune’s Chicago Cubs.