1. A lawyer in Miami was arguing on behalf of his client in an arson case back in March when, suddenly, his pants caught on fire. That works on so many levels.
And that was just one of the great facepalm stories of the year . . .
Papa John's released a new gluten-free pizza in August that wasn't safe for people with gluten allergies.
A guy in Russia died in June after drinking too much vodka in a contest . . . to win more vodka.
A snow park in Georgia was closed because of too much snow in January . . . and then, earlier this month, a Six Flags had to cancel the world's largest snowball fight because of snow as well.
The Boy Scouts decided to start admitting GIRLS in October, which made one organization VERY angry: The Girl Scouts.
And finally, earlier this month, a service dog interrupted a performance of "Cats" on Broadway.
2. If you're going to ruin our childhoods, could you at least get on with it?
Crayola got some press in March when they announced they'd be retiring one of the core colors from their box of 24 crayons for the first time ever.
But then they decided to drag the process out WAY too long. They slowly revealed the crayon they'd be replacing . . . the replacement color . . . and potential names.
It took them until September before they finally announced they were replacing the dandelion crayon with a blue color called "Bluetiful." Yes, it took them five months to replace a yellow crayon with a blue one.
And they weren't the only company to slowly attack our nostalgia. Hasbro announced in January that they'd be kicking out some of the classic Monopoly game tokens.
In February, they revealed that fans had voted out the thimble. Then in March, they also revealed they were getting rid of the wheelbarrow and boot to make room for a T-rex, rubber ducky, and penguin.
3. A TGI Friday's manager in England managed to set a new bar for the CRAZIEST interview question ever in February, when he asked a candidate, "Would you rather eat poop-flavored chocolate or chocolate-flavored poop?"
He wound up getting suspended when the candidate complained.
And there were plenty of other major brands that did STUPID things in 2017 . . .
On MLK Day, UPS tweeted that Martin Luther King Jr. would've made a great UPS guy.
"Cosmopolitan" magazine published an article in April with the headline, "How This Woman Lost 44 Pounds Without ANY Exercise." It turns out her secret was . . . she had cancer.
Adidas sent an insensitive marketing email in April with the subject, "Congrats, you survived the Boston Marathon!"
And in September, in Russia, a woman sued a credit company because their ads promised that paying off debt would feel, quote, "comparable to having an orgasm" . . . and the woman found that just wasn't true.
4. Our favorite study of the year came from the University of Warwick in England, where scientists analyzed 5,000 words and found the funniest word in the world is . . . "booty." Somewhere, Sir Mix-a-Lot is smiling.
And here are some of the other top-shelf studies and surveys from the year . . .
7% of husbands and 6% of wives admitted they wouldn't take a bullet for their spouse.
It turns out it's not just really attractive people who make more money than average . . . super ugly people do too.
You are not alone: 90% of people say they can't go to Target without buying a bunch of stuff they don't need.
Scientists have proven that we're not living in a "Matrix"-type simulation . . . for better or worse, this world is real.
And finally, 5% of men have had sex with a vacuum cleaner. THAT'S the hard-hitting scientific research we need.
5. A restaurant in Long Beach, California was busted in October for serving Popeyes chicken on a $12.50 chicken sandwich. And when a customer called them out for it on Yelp, they were PROUD of it.
The owner said, quote, "We proudly serve Popeyes spicy tenders . . . it has always been our goal to feature local food and guest chefs here."
Here are a few more cases of food going insane this year . . .
Five people were hospitalized with BOTULISM in California after they ate some bad nacho cheese at a gas station. And yet, I bet that cheese would STILL get better reviews than Chipotle's massively panned queso.
Starbucks created a sensation with their Unicorn Frappuccino in April, which started them on a trend of making special drinks that LOOK good on Instagram but don't necessarily TASTE good.
And a new Taco Bell in Las Vegas started performing weddings in August.
6. The total solar eclipse provided plenty of opportunities for good stupidity in August, with the best being a woman in Texas who asked a science museum if they could reschedule their eclipse event because it was on a school night.
And for more nonsense that sprung out of the eclipse . . .
South Carolina braced itself for the eclipse, since people feared it might bring out the legendary Lizard Manfrom his swamp.
A group in Kentucky protested the eclipse because they felt it was bad for coal.
And after the eclipse, emergency rooms had to treat people who put sunscreen on their eyeballs.
7. In April, a 117-year-old woman named Emma Morano died in Verbania, Italy. And that was very significant, since she was the LAST living person who was born in the 1800s.
8. No one saw the irony here? An S&M club in England was shut down in June . . . because of health and safety concerns. The big problems were an automatically locking door to its torture dungeon and lots of flammable sex swings.
Here are a few other ridiculous sex stories from 2017 . . .
A strip club in New York lost a case in May where they tried to get out of paying $3 million in taxes by claiming their dancers weren't strippers . . . they were therapists.
And a guy in Japan died in March underneath an avalanche of his massive porn collection.
9. The date of the year happened in England in September.
A woman pooped at a guy's house on the first date . . . couldn't get it to flush . . . tried to throw it out the window . . . and then got stuck in the window herself, which required a fire department rescue.
But after all of that, the guy still wanted to go out with her again.
10. A teacher's story went viral in August. Apparently he'd ghosted a woman after a three-year relationship 10 years ago . . . and now, she'd just been hired as his new BOSS. He wound up quitting the job in less than a month.
Here are some other stories from this year of insane modern love . . .
A guy in D.C. tried to pull off an '80s sitcom move in August and go on dates with six different women in one night at the same bar . . . but they caught on, ditched him, and became friends.
A woman from London was catfished a few years ago . . . tracked down the male model whose photos were used . . . and they met up this year and fell in love.
In July, Tinder gave a free trip to Hawaii to two people in Ohio who've been chatting on-and-off on their app for three years but never met up.
A woman in England found out her hotel manager fiancé was cheating on her in May when she read TripAdvisor reviews of the hotel.
And a couple broke up in February when the woman caught the guy cheating based on a comment he left on one of Burger King's Instagram photos.
11. Fashion took a WEIRD turn in 2017, with top designers and brands seeming to get into a race to make the UGLIEST item. Here's just a handful . . .
Jeans with a zipper in the back so you can expose different amounts of butt crack . . . crotchless jeans . . . $425 jeans that are pre-stained with mud . . . totally see-through jeans . . . and completely cut up thong jeans.
Rompers for men that raised over $350,000 on Kickstarter.
A $2,100 Calvin Klein sweater that's just sleeves.
Luxury Crocs that sell for over $200 a pair.
A dress that looks like a plastic dry cleaning bag.
"Pre-destroyed" sneakers that cost $1,425.
And socks with sandals, which were featured during a Louis Vuitton fashion show in Paris.
12. The airlines went from financially abusing their customers to physically abusing their customers this year. In April, United had three police officers drag a passenger off the plane when he refused to give up the seat he'd paid for.
After they got a barrage of negative publicity . . . and quietly settled with the passenger they beat up . . . they changed their policy on bumping. Now you could get up to $10,000 to leave an overbooked flight.
The second-most notable moment in flight this year? In July, an American Airlines flight was grounded in North Carolina when a passenger's flatulence made other people get sick.
13. The fidget spinner was the biggest fad of the year. And after they become a huge hit this spring, we learned that the woman in Florida who invented them hasn't made a dime from them . . . because she let the patent lapse in 2005.
But they really were EVERYWHERE for a few months . . . including PornHub, which saw 2.5 million people per day hunting for fidget spinner porn during the height of the fad.
14. The tech companies of the world got BOLDER this year, as it became clearer and clearer that it's their world and we're just living in it.
We found out last month that Apple has secretly been cataloging photos of you wearing a bra.
Facebook came up with a new plan to stop revenge porn last month too . . . by having you preemptively send them all of your nude photos.
And a porn site called CamSoda launched a new feature where you can log in using a picture of your junk.
In other tech stupidity, in March we learned about a 21-year-old woman in New Jersey named Alexa Seary is finding it hard to live a normal life . . . and in September, a woman's parrot managed to order a bunch of stuff using Alexa.
And a guy from Nevada tweeted to Wendy's in April, asking how many retweets he'd need for them to give him a year of free nuggets. They responded 18 million.
He "only" got 3.5 million . . . THE most retweets ever, even more than Ellen's famous Oscars selfie a few years ago . . . so Wendy's gave him the nuggets in May.
15. In a great moment of random chance, a 19-year-old woman was working as a dishwasher at a Chipotle in Texas this summer . . . a modeling agent spotted her . . . and within a month, she was one of the top models in the world.
And in another great bit of randomness, in April, a guy in England who lost his wallet 14 years ago learned that the people who found it throw a giant drinking event in his honor every single year.
16. Maybe nothing sums up the next generation of kids better than this. In May, a survey of kids between six and 17 found that the number one thing they want to be when they grow up is . . . a YouTube star.
Maybe they're all just too tired to come up with a better answer. A study in September found that if we let kids sleep in more and had school start at 8:30 A.M., it would add $9.3 billion a year to the economy.
17. Pumpkin spice mania probably went TOO FAR this year, and should be on the decline from this point on. And nothing sums up the inescapable madness of pumpkin spice quite like this one story.
In October, a high school in Baltimore was evacuated and a hazmat team was brought in when some students got sick from a strange smell. And it turned out to be . . . a pumpkin spice air freshener.
Here are a few other cases of mistaken identity from the year . . .
A mall in South Dakota had an emergency scare in January when a strange substance was found in a department store's dressing room. It turns out someone had been using LUBE to squeeze into leather pants.
People in Thailand freaked out over a ghost in the water in July . . . which turned out to be a pale tourist skinny dipping.
And the cops were called for a domestic situation in Oregon in October . . . but it was just a couple speaking German, which inadvertently always SOUNDS angry and confrontational.
18. '90s nostalgia stormed back hard in 2017. The best product revival was Zima, in July . . . but Jolt Cola came back in September . . . and Tamogotchi virtual pets hit stores again last month.
Meanwhile, Mattel went the opposite direction and may've modernized Ken dolls TOO much . . . in June, they rolled out Kens with man buns, cornrows, and dad bods.
19. We got the biggest good news/bad news situation of the year in October. The good news: Archaeologists in Turkey proved Santa is real! The bad news: It's because they found Saint Nicholas's long lost tomb.
20. And finally, our story of the year. It comes from England in October, when a woman who MARRIED HERSELF two years ago publically admitted that she's been cheating on herself with a guy.