Television. In the last 10 years, it has warmed our hearts, fed our minds, fueled our imaginations and triggered our gag reflex.
It has been a decade that included saying goodbye to “Friends” and hello to the 22nd season of “The Real World” and 19th season of “Survivor.” A period of time in which “The Shield,” “Monk,” “The Closer” and “SpongeBob Squarepants” proved cable could draw viewers and, with them, real Nielsen ratings. When “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City,” series that debuted in the late-late ’90s, came into their own in the last decade and drew droves to premium cable where it wasn’t just TV. It was HBO.
When the explosion of reality TV and its cheaper production costs started filling network schedules with shows that ask the questions - so you think you can dance, sing, survive, scheme, design, back-stab, swap and win the money or the grand prize or the girl and 15 minutes of fame. That move portended the decline of scripted programming on broadcast TV.
And in return, this decade has broadcast television experiencing it first true decline in viewership. “M*A*S*H” drew 52 million for its series finale in 1983. “American Idol,” a behemoth by today’s viewing standards, finished its last season in May 2009 with a little over 28 million.
Viewers are continuing to be drained off by the ever-increasing number of cable channels that spend much less to create niche programming instead of trying to create shows for the masses.
To help cut its financial and viewer losses, the networks began to buy anything cheaper to produce so viewers can now dance with the stars, yearn for that final rose or receive parental instruction from rocker Ozzy Osburne. A remake of anything British, toned down of course for American sensibilities, was also snapped up by American producers.
Last fall, NBC - home of what once was “Must See TV” - launched its own bold experiment. It began stripping “The Jay Leno Show” five nights a week. But, even though Leno’s show has kept roughly the same audience as it did in late night, prime time is a different ballgame. The network has seen a 28 percent drop in viewership for its 9 p.m. weeknight prime time slot.
Even cable is having its own difficulties. Since Oprah Winfrey first announced on her talk show that she used TiVo to time shift her viewing, the rise of digital video recorders has created viewers who want TV on their own time and without commercials. And the aforementioned 9 p.m. time slot has become the go-to time to watch previously recorded programs.
Adding to TV’s woes, there’s a whole new generation who aren’t watching cable or broadcast at all.
Instead, if these younger viewers hear buzz about a show, they opt to buy or rent an entire season on DVD. Or they watch TV via the internet by connecting the TV to a computer or on a digital phone whenever they please. It’s the reason networks including ABC, NBC and Fox are among the owners of the ad-supported Web site Hulu.com and Comcast, which is purchasing 51 percent of NBC as we speak, has Fancast.com and is planning to launch an online channel where viewers can see premium channel fare, according to Newsweek.
This month, according to TVWeek, figures from the Television Bureau of Advertising, using Nielsen Media research, reported 29.3 percent of the United States receives TV from non-cable sources such as satellite services and over the internet.
Last summer’s switch from analog to digital signals also didn’t help broadcast TV.
In June 2008, the FCC required broadcast TV stations (except low-power stations) to operate with a digital signal. A move, it said, would provide viewers with more viewing options - up to four digital channels per station with a better picture. All that was required was a $40-$50 digital converter box and or a cable or satellite connection.
But cable and satellite systems aren’t required to carry all the those digital channels. So what most viewers ended up with were mainly channels filled with old movies, old TV shows or, in some cases, missing a local channel because of poor signal strength.
For the future, where the first decade of the 21st century marked the deconstruct of television, the next decade will see other changes because of technology. It’s almost impossible to predict what technology will be available (holographic TV, anyone?) and what kind of impact it will have. And new means will require new methods of making money. What will be the paradigm for producing product? How will financing evolve in a world where the old network formula for selling advertising is already in decline? And, the age-old question, how do owners get the internet to pay?
Read previews and reviews of television shows and more at tulsaworld.com/ontv.
The Best TV 2000-2009
Drama: "Friday Night Lights,” “Lost,” “Mad Men,” “The Sopranos,” “The West Wing,” “The Wire.”
Comedy: “30 Rock,” “Arrested Development,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “The Daily Show,” “Everybody Loves Raymond,” “The Office.”
Voted by members of the Television Critics Association
Associated Press
Emmy Awards
Outstanding Comedy Series
2000: Will and Grace 2001: Sex and the City
2002: Friends
2003: Everybody Loves Raymond
2004: Arrested Development
2005: Everybody Loves Raymond
2006: The Office
2007: 30 Rock
2008: 30 Rock
2009: 30 Rock
Associated Press
Outstanding Drama Series 2000: The West Wing
2001: The West Wing
2002: The West Wing
2003: The West Wing
2004: The Sopranos
2005: Lost
2006: 24
2007: The Sopranos
2008: Mad Men
2009: Mad Men
A trip to the movie theater has always been an escape, a respite from real-life concerns, but the past decade has seen audiences increasingly drawn to stories that have little or nothing to do with life as we know it.
Fantasy, comic books and computer-generated animation took control of the multiplex in the first decade of the new millenium, as the studio system became a small group of entertainment conglomerates like Sony and Disney, and all of them — seeking to squeeze shareholder-pleasing profits to the max — becoming increasingly infatuated with developing the perfect franchise.
Something like the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, perhaps, with nearly $3 billion in international grosses between three films, and with the finale capturing the best picture Academy Award among its record-tying 11 Oscars. Or maybe the “Harry Potter” series, with the acclaimed wizard tales making more than $5 billion worldwide to date.
The popularity of these so-called “event pictures” drove fans to fanatical states of attendance on opening weekends in unprecedented numbers. Gone were the days of films playing for months at a time (as the period between theatrical and DVD release grew shorter), or even of 1997’s “Titanic” finishing first at the box-office for 15 consecutive weeks.
Where blockbuster status was once bestowed upon films making more than $100 million, the real story became when pictures approached or even exceeded that once magical figure in the first three days. “The Dark Knight” is the current champ in this regard, with $158.4 million collected in July 2008.
This Batman story was the No. 1 movie in the country for just four weekends, playing into the idea of heavily hyped pictures becoming more disposable as crowds awaited the next-big-thing creation that Hollywood had to offer (frequently vampire-related in 2009, following the “Twilight” books and movie craze). Media outlets became primed to release weekend box-office figures that could instantly dub a film a hit or a dud, worthy of seeing for many based on dollars rather than quality.
Accordingly, this corporate franchise-packaging during the 2000-2009 period resulted in studios devoting fewer dollars and film slots to dramas and personal stories that traditionally might become high-profile Academy Award nominees. With a shift in moviegoer tastes, the films honored with critical acclaim in recent years have seen declining audiences in a continuing art vs. commerce struggle.
On the Tulsa film front for the last decade, the city became home to the state’s first Imax theater at Cinemark Tulsa in March 2000; the nonprofit Circle Cinema, the city’s oldest standing theater, reopened in 2004 as an arthouse theater showing the best in independent, documentary and foreign cinema; and native Tulsan Bill Hader became one of the best-known comedic film actors in the world, starring in blockbusters like “Superbad” and “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” in the last four years
As usual in Hollywood, the more things changed, the more they seemed to stay the same.
Horror movies looked the same because they were the same: remakes of 1980s slasher flicks abounded. The process of 1950s fad 3-D filmmaking saw improved technology, and studios saw a way to charge extra money for the privilege of wearing funny glasses.
Black actors (Halle Berry, Denzel Washington) won Oscars for leading roles for the first time, both in 2001, while an actor became governor of California (Arnold Schwarzenegger this time, stepping into a role previously played by Ronald Reagan).
The VHS market gave way to DVD copies of movies for sale and rental, a market now in decline as on-demand movies make inroads and consumers watch movies on their computers and electronic gadgets of varying shapes and sizes.
Among the oddities that stood out in the last 10 years were film sensations like “The Passion of the Christ,” Mel Gibson’s brutal religious blockbuster, and “My Big, Fat Greek Wedding,” an unassuming little movie that became the most popular romantic comedy in history.
The bottom line for the decade: The average movie ticket price of $5.39 in 2000 rose to $7.18 in 2008, the year for which the latest figures are available.
Read all of the Tulsa World's movie reviews at tulsaworld.com/movies and read Michael Smith's movie blog at tulsaworld.com/iseemovies.
Winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture
2000: “Gladiator”
2001: “A Beautiful Mind”
2002: “Chicago” 2003: “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King”
2004: “Million Dollar Baby”
2005: “Crash”
2006: “The Departed”
2007: “No Country for Old Men”
2008: “Slumdog Millionaire”
2009: Top candidates: “Up in the Air,” “The Hurt Locker,” “Precious”
Associated Press
The Oscar for Best Actress
2000: Julia Roberts, “Erin Brockovich”
2001: Halle Berry, “Monster’s Ball”
2002: Nicole Kidman, “The Hours”
2003: Sean Penn, “Mystic River” 2004: Hilary Swank, “Million Dollar Baby”
2005: Reese Witherspoon, “Walk the Line”
2006: Helen Mirren, “The Queen”
2007: Marion Cotillard, “La Vie en Rose”
2008: Kate Winslet, “The Reader”
2009: TBD
Associated Press
The Oscar for Best Actor
2000: Russell Crowe, “Gladiator”
2001: Denzel Washington, “Training Day”
2002: Adrien Brody, “The Pianist”
2003: Charlize Theron, “Monster”
2004: Jamie Foxx, “Ray”
2005: Philip Seymour Hoffman, “Capote”
2006: Forest Whitaker, “The Last King of Scotland”
2007: Daniel Day-Lewis, “There Will Be Blood”
2008: Sean Penn, “Milk”
2009: TBD
All Academy Award data courtesy of www.oscars.org
Associated Press
The annual No. 1 film at the box-office
2000: “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” — $260.0 million
2001: “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” — $317.6 million 2002: “Spider-Man” — $403.7 million
2003: “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” — $377.0 million
2004: “Shrek 2” — $441.2 million
2005: “Star Wars: Episode III — The Revenge of the Sith” — $380.3 million
2006: “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” — $423.3 million
2007: “Spider-Man 3” — $336.5 million
2008: “The Dark Knight” — $533.4 million
2009: TBD
The “aughts,” as many call this new decade, has been filled with revolution. And, even 30 years after the split of a band that’s possibly most famous for singing about just a thing, The Beatles are still one of the most influential and top-selling bands of any generation.
Around and around the music industry went with its hot-and-cold, sinner-vs.-saint relationship with digital music and online sales.
Revolution, indeed. And no revolution is without controversy — or growing pains.
But one thing hasn’t changed: Fans still want music. They’re ravenous for it.
However, music delivery mediums now are more diverse than ever before. Sales move at hyperspeed. Live tours are more important than ever, and sell out in seconds. Then there are the video franchises. The digital singles and digital album sales. Exclusive retail mega-deals. And on. And on.
Fact: The sale of physical-copy CDs has indeed plummeted — nearly 47 percent since 2000. But not for all music fans — or artists. Get this: Many of the CD-sale chart toppers are much as they were 20, 30 or even 40 years ago: Michael Jackson, the Eagles, AC/DC, Metallica, Bon Jovi and — far and way — the Beatles.
In fact, Nielsen Soundscan, the company that compiles the Billboard charts, claims that the decades two biggest sellers faced off from polar-opposite genres: Rap and rock.
Nielsen reports that Slim Shady himself — Eminem — sold more than 32 million albums. The Beatles sold 30 million albums. ... Remember, the Fab Four split nearly 30 years ago.
Popsters 'NSYNC and Britney Spears and country troubadours Tim McGraw, Toby Keith and Kenny Chesney also top the list of albums sold, but not one of any of 'em launched careers in this decade.
Millions of their albums were sold via digital format.
However, the Beatles lost out in potentially millions more in album sales, as its songs and albums have yet to be sold by digital retailers like iTunes.
See what we mean? Love. Hate. Love. Hate.
Indeed, it’s a fractured fairy tale for some of the world’s biggest-selling stars and their record labels. But what about the music fans?
Remember in 2000, with metal music monster band Metallica sued — and shut down — music-sharing site Napster? Boy, that was nasty. It was also about money.
Flash forward. In 2003, its “St. Anger” album launched at No. 1 on the Billboard Top 200 chart. And, in 2009, “Death Magnetic” also debuted at the top spot with nearly double the first-week album sales of its previous release.
Through it all, digital sales, however, have spiked as high as 150 percent a year since iTunes started tracking its own music sales around 2003, say Apple reps. That’s billions of songs sold — and millions of albums — in a little over half a decade.
So, who’s the loser? It doesn’t seem to be the music fans. You say you want a revolution? Well ...
In 2008, Nine Inch Nails frontman and founder Trent Reznor released a free, straight-to-internet album, “The Slip.” It shot to No. 1 in radio play charts, and was downloaded nearly 1-and-a-half million times. It was an unquestionable hit. No record companies got a dime from the release, and Reznor himself charged as much as $300 apiece for “special edition” versions of the album. And yes, special edition copies sold out in days.
In 2009, Oklahoma psychedelic rock act the Flaming Lips streamed its entire double album, “Embryonic” on multiple Web sites before its October release date, courtesy of its record label, Warner Bros. The “try it, buy it” method paid off — it became the Lips’ first Top 10 Billboard debut in the band’s 25-plus-year career.
Maybe what we’ve learned as music fans and consumers in this decade is that all those ephemeral numbers and rankings and hype machines are more irrelevant than ever.
We buy what we like, when we like and when we want it, all the time and everywhere we go. Perhaps that’s the most important lesson of all. Are you listening, record companies?
The top album for each year, according to the Grammys.
2000: “Two Against Nature,” Steely Dan
2001: “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” Various, soundtrack 2002: “Come Away With Me,” Norah Jones
2003: “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below” Outkast
2004: “Genius Loves Company,” Ray Charles and Friends
2005: “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb,” U2
2006: “Taking the Long Way,” Dixie Chicks
2007: “River: The Joni Letters,” Herbie Hancock
2008: “Raising Sand,” Robert Plant and Allison Krauss
2009: Nominees: “ I Am … Sasha Fierce,” Beyonce; “The E.N.D.,” The Black Eyed Peas; “The Fame,” Lady Gaga; “Big Whiskey And The Groogrux King,” Dave Matthews Band; “Fearless,” Taylor Swift
Courtesy
The Best Newcomers, according to the Grammys:
2000: Shelby Lynne
2001: Alicia Keys
2002: Norah Jones
2003: Evanescence
2004: Maroon 5
2005: John Legend 2006: Carrie Underwood
2007: Amy Winehouse
2008: Adele
2009: Nominees: Zac Brown Band, Keri Hilson, MGMT, Silversun Pickups, The Ting Tings
RICK DIAMOND/CMT
Top one-hit wonders 1. “Bad Day,” Daniel Powter, 2006
2. “Lean Back,” Terror Squad, 2004
3. “Butterfly,” Crazytown, 2001
4. “This is Why I’m Hot,” MIMS, 2007
5. “Laffy Taffy,” D4L, 2006
6. “You’re Beautiful,” James Blunt, 2006
7. “Crazy,” Gnarls Barkley, 2006
8. “Hit 'Em Up Style (Oops!),” Blu Cantrell, 2001
9. “Inside Your Heaven,” Bo Bice, 2005
10. “He Loves U Not,” Dream, 2000
Source: Billboard online
The year 2000, by all accounts, should have been 365 days spent rebuilding a technological world torn asunder by the plague of Y2K. Instead, the big triple-zero began a decade of change measured at the velocity of high-speed Internet.
Or better yet, it could be measured by simply looking around your home or office, then imagining a world without technological innovations that make life easier, more entertaining and bridge the divide between family and friends.
At the outset of this decade, the dot-com bubble floated round and fat on a seemingly never-ending jet stream of possibilities.
Then, sometime in March 2000, the shimmery bubble popped.
After parachuting into an online landscape dirty with failed dot-coms, the likes of Amazon and Google continued to gain mainstream popularity.
As the years passed, computer nerds, who were the first to cruise along light rails of high-speed Internet, were joined by regular folks. Once aboard, millions of ordinary users left behind their slow dial-up connections to zoom into the Information Age.
Upon arrival, the Information Age offered means to Google a myriad of queries, or Wikipedia, say, the capital of Maine.
Plus, the online universe began competing, and oftentimes, shutting down conventional services and goods.
Whereas a person might have frequented a record store for the latest hit CD, the Internet offered the same tunes via illegal Napster downloads. Later, the iTunes store, among other Web sites, offered legal tunes at the push of a button.
The iTunes store also became the place to purchase an array of iPhone apps, which allow users to do everything from pick a restaurant at random to find their way via global positioning system (GPS.)
Before, someone might have only shopped at conventional stores, but, soon enough, Amazon, eBay and Craigslist rivaled the brick and mortar establishments for customers.
Speaking of brick and mortar stores, there was a time when movie rental stores ruled the industry. But then Netflix, and others, began offering thousands more videos all mailed straight to the user. Bye-bye, late fees.
Traditional movies and television also gained a new foe in the Information Age. Once YouTube entered the mainstream, it gave rise to Web phenomena like the all-time most viewed YouTube video “The Evolution of Dance,” which finds one man shimmying through five decades of dance in a matter of minutes.
Although there were many technological innovations that emerged during this decade, one of the most important is online social-networking.
This decade, Myspace, Facebook and Twitter offered users the ability to add their thoughts and personality into a global community interested in the minutiae of life - “I’m getting my nails done” - all the way up to debating the hot topics of the day. For instance, “What will the next decade have in store for a world so much smaller than it was a decade ago?
Top Web sites
These are the sites that made us laugh, informed us and gave us something to talk about during the decade.
1. Google
2. YouTube 3. Facebook
4. Myspace
5. Twitter
6. Wikipedia
7. Newsblogs: The Huffington Post, Drudge Report, TMZ.com
8. LolCats
9. Fail Blog
10. Rotten Tomatoes
Top applications for the decade:
1. iTunes
2. Amazon
3. Craigslist
4. Skype
5. YouTube
6. Pandora
7. Social networking sites turned applications: Facebook, Myspace, Twitter
8. Flickr
9. Netflix
10. Hulu
Cream of YouTube
Some of the most popular videos of all time on YouTube, which was created in 2005. The site is responsible for the virility of many videos, and has brought some classics from early days of the 'Net back into the fold. These videos have received millions of hits and become part of pop culture. Here are 10 of these videos no particular order.
1. Peanut Butter Jelly Time. It's a dancing banana singing "It's peanut-butter jelly time, peanut-butter jelly time, peanut-butter jelly time" to a funky beat over and over. It makes no sense. Yet it's been parodied by everyone, had a cameo on "Family Guy" and is so infectious it should be outlawed in all offices. This was one of the original memes that made it big on sites like Albino Black Sheep, but YouTube made it big again. Its view count? Past 20 million.
2. Numa Numa Kid. What happens when a geeky guy (his name is Gary Brolsma) turns on a camera, lip synchs to a really weird song and then uploads it to YouTube? About 34 million views. This kid is web gold. And he never left his seat. The song is Dragostea Din Tei, and the band, the CDM project, probably loves this kid forever.
3. Star Wars Kid. Most of us have known – or have been – the awkward kid. This kid defines awkward. Wonder how he felt when he became a web phenomenon? Probably pretty Jedi-ish. It's basically a kid trying to do Star Wars moves with a metal pole. And the innocence around it kind of defines YouTube's allure. Sure, we'd love to see that. (Eyeroll… nudge, nudge). Still, it's been viewed 15 million times.
4. All Your Base Are Belong To Us. This is poke at the awful Japanese-to-English translation from the game "Zero Wing." It's a Flash animation that wound up on YouTube, and has been seen more than 3 million times.
5. Charlie the Unicorn. It's been seen more than 43 million times (that's just one upload) and it's got two sequels. And it's very strange. Charlie the Unicorn is the story of a gruff unicorn named Charlie who finds himself in odd situations thanks to two seemingly innocent pink and blue unicorns. They turn out to be just short of bloodthirsty. It's cooky. And wonderful. Parts 2 and 3 are also classic. Shun the nonbelievers! SHUN!
6. Leeroy Jenkins. This one's hard to explain, and even to "gamers," makes no sense. But it's still been viewed nearly 15 million times. It goes like this: A group of friends are playing World of Warcraft, an online role-playing game, and they've cooked up a strategy to defeat a group of monsters. One of the group members has a character named Leeroy Jenkins. That particular person (the real guy, not the character) isn't in on the planning. He comes back while the plan is in action, kills everyone in sight, and angers his friends. Maybe you have to be a gamer. If so, there's a lot of gamers who loved this video.
7. The Evolution of Dance. It's been called the MOST popular YouTube video of all time. And it's been seen 132 million times, so yeah, it's pretty viral. It's a guy on stage (Judson Laipply) who demonstrates dances through the ages. It's petty cool. And pretty straightforward.
8. Charlie Bit Me. Two kids in a black leather chair. One about 3, one about eight months or so. The bigger kid sticks his finger in the baby's mouth, who bites down. It doesn't sound like something that would attract 140 million views, but it did.
9. Leave Britney Alone. A dude named Chris Crocker unleashes a profanity-laced tirade against the media for their depiction of Britney Spears. He's really, really, really into Brit. He tearfully tells us to leave her alone. It's web gold, again. And it's been seen about 25 million times. In ONE DAY, it got two million hits. Wow.
10. Windows Sounds. A guy with a lot of time on his hands (and tons of computer knowledge) took all the Windows sounds and made a pretty awesome song. It's been viewed more than 6 million times. And it's catchy, too.
Wizards-in-training, love-sick teenaged vampires and killer albino monks.
Oh my.
By JAMES D. WATTS JR.
World Scene Writer
These were the things Americans most wanted to read about in this decade that had all the zeroes in the middle.
The phenomenon known as Harry Potter really began to take off with the 2000 publication of “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” the fourth in the seven-book series that has sold upwards of 400 million copies.
In 2003, a one-time teacher who was having trouble giving his books away, much less selling them, cobbled together a twist on the Holy Grail legend and suddenly Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” was on its way to selling more than 80 million copies.
That same year, a Mormon mom had a dream that she then turned into a novel about love-sick teenage vampires, and Stephenie Meyer was on her way to dominating book sales with her “Twilight” series for the rest of the decade, with some 85 million books sold.
The obvious question is: “Why?” Why - of all the 3 million or so books that have been published over the last 10 years - are these the most popular?
Search me. But for millions of people these stories were the reason to step into a book store - or actually stroll down the “Books and Magazines” aisle at the local Wal-Mart, or log on to Amazon.com.
But it wasn’t all fantasy and escapism. This might also be thought of as the Decade of the Memoir - or the Decade that the Memoir was Revealed to Be Just Another Kind of Fiction.
Actually, memoirs have always employed a measure of fantasy. After all, no two people remember the same event the same way, much every word of every conversation. But every so often someone comes along who goes a little too far in making his or her life seem less ordinary.
The most egregious was James Frey. Frey couldn’t get a publisher to look at what he called “A Million Little Pieces” when it was shopped around as a novel. Once he said it was a memoir, it received the Oprah Seal of Approval - until it came out that all the really good stuff was made up.
Oprah was embarrassed, her book club lost some of its cachet - and Frey’s book continued to sell.
Some people found new ways to say obvious things and make piles of money doing it, as typified by Malcolm Gladwell, whose books include “The Tipping Point” and “Blink.”
People also found new ways to perform the act of reading a book, from Stephen King lending validity to the concept of the “e-book” with his “Riding the Bullet,” to the development of gadgets such as the Sony Reader, Amazon’s Kindle and the most unfortunately named Nook from Barnes & Noble.
There may come a time when pixels will completely replace pages, but not anytime soon.
And while schlock and “ugh!” might tend to dominate various best-seller lists, there was a great amount of excellent books that appeared in this decade. Any list is going to be arbitrary and subjective and incomplete, but anyway:
“White Teeth” by Zadie Smith. “The Corrections” by Jonathan Franzen. “Antonement” by Ian McEwan. “Austerlitz” by W.G. Sebald. “Netherland” by Joseph O’Neill. “Out Stealing Horses” by Per Petterson. “The Plot Against America” by Philip Roth. “Gilead” by Marilynne Robinson. “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” by Michael Chabon. Anything by Alice Munro.
Then there were the books that were not best-sellers, but were subjects of intense discussion in the world of words and books: Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, beginning with “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “2666” by Roberto Bolano, Dave Eggars’ memoir “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion, “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins.
This decade also produced a unique work of literature that one hopes will never have a sequel: “The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States,” a government document that read like a thriller, and was nominated for the National Book Award.
Best Books of the Decade -- People’s Choice
1. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” by J.K. Rowling (2007)
2. “Twilight” by Stephenie Meyer (2005) 3. “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown (2003)
4. “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini (2003)
5. “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
6. “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (2006)
7. “Freakonomics” by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (2005)
8. “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
9. “The Shack” by William P. Young (2007)
10. “Dead Until Dark” by Charlaine Harris (2001)
Best-selling novels by year
2000: “The Brethren” by John Grisham
2001: “Desecration” by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye
2002: “The Summons” by John Grisham
2003: “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown
2004: “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown
2005: “The Broker” by John Grisham
2006: “For One More Day” by Mitch Albom
2007: “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini
2008: “The Appeal” by John Grisham
National Book Award winners
Fiction
2000: Susan Sontag fo r “In America”
2001: Jonathan Franzen for “The Corrections”
2002: Julia Glass for “Three Junes”
2003: Shirley Hazzard for “The Great Fire”
2004: Lily Tuck for “The News from Paraquay”
2005: William T. Vollman for “Europe Central”
2006: Richard Powers for “The Echo Maker”
2007:Denis Johnson for “Tree of Smoke”
2008: Peter Matthiessen for “Shadow Country”
2009: Colum McCann for “Let the Great World Spin”
Nonfiction
2000: Nathaniel Philbrick for “In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex”
2001: Andrew Solomon for “Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression”
2002: Robert A. Caro for “Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
2003: Carlos Eire for “Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy”
2004: Kevin Boyle for “Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age
2005: Joan Didion for “The Year of Magical Thinking”
2006: Timothy Egan for “The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl”
2007: Tim Weiner for “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA”
2008: Annette Gordon-Reed for “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family”
2009: T.J. Stiles for “The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt”
Young people’s literature
2000: Gloria Whelan for “Homeless Bird”
2001: Virginia Euwer Wolff for “True Believer”
2002: Nancy Farmer for “The House of the Scorpion”
2003: Polly Horvath for “The Canning Season”
2004: Pete Hautman for “Godless”
2005: Jeanne Birdsall for “The Penderwicks”
2006: M.T. Anderson for “The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to te Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party”
2007: Sherman Alexie for “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”
2008:Judy Blundell for “What I Saw and How I Lied”
2009: Phillip Hoose for “Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice”
Pulitzer Prize winners
Fiction
2000: “Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri
2001: “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” by Michael Chabon
2002: “Empire Falls” by Richard Russo
2003: “Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugenides
2004: “The Known World” by Edward P. Jones
2005: “Gilead” by Marilynne Robinson
2006: “March” by Geraldine Brooks
2007: “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy
2008: “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Diaz
2009: “Olivia Kitteridge” by Elizabeth Strout
General nonfiction
2000: John W. Dower for “Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II”
2001: Herbert P. Bix for “Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan”
2002: Diane McWhorter for “Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climatic Battle of the Civil rights Revolution”
2003: Samantha Power for “’A Problem from Hell:’ America and the Age of Genocide”
2004: Anne Applebaum for “Gulag: A History”
2005: Steve Coll for “Ghost Wars:
2006: Caroline Elkins for “Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya”
2007: Lawrence Wright for “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11”
2008: Saul Friedlander for “The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945
2009: Douglas A. Blackmon for “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II”
Drama
2000: “Dinner with Friends” by Donald Marguilies
2001: “Proof” by David Auburn
2002: “Topdog/Underdog” by Suzan-Lori Parks
2003: “Anna in the Tropics” by Nilo Cruz
2004: “I Am My Own Wife” by Doug Wright
2005: “Doubt, a Parable” by John Patrick Shanley
2006: no award given for the year
2007: “Rabbit Hole” by David Lindsay-Abaire 2008: “August: Osage County” by Tracy Letts
2009: “Ruined” by Lynn Nottage
Biography/autobiography
2000: Stacy Schiff for “Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)”
2001: David Levering Lewis for W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963”
2002: David McCullough for “John Adams”
2003: Robert A. Caro for “Master of the Senate”
2004: William Taubman for “Khrushchev: The Man and His Era”
2005: Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan for “de Koonig: An American Master”
2006: Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin for “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer”
2007: Debby Applegate for “The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher”
2008: John Matteson for “Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father”
2009: Jon Meacham for “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House”
On The Rise
Fiction
"Skeletons at the Feast," Chris Bohjalian, Shaye Areheart, $25. The 12th novel by the author of “The Double Bind.”
Non-Fiction
"Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea," Chelsea Handler, Simon Spotlight, $24.95. Hilarious essays by the author of “My Horizontal Life.”
By CARY ASPINWALL
and KIM BROWN
World Scene Writers
It was the decade no one really knew what to call
We invented words and terms for plenty of pop-culture trends and moments that raged from 2000 and 2010 — sexting, frenemies, tweeps, locavores, going green, bromance, tramp stamps, shooties, fauxhawks, Brangelina, cougars and soccer moms.
But the aughts? Never really caught on.
Plenty of other things did.
Paris the heiress became more famous than the city — a household name associated with parties and salaciously addictive scandal.
The original “Gossip Girl,” Paris Hilton and her frenemy Nicole Ritchie starred in the 2003 reality soap “The Simple Life,” and tore through the fly-over states with their aloof, rich-girl ways and silly quips, such as “That’s hot.”
Soon, everybody wanted to be “famous for being famous.” Reality competition shows, such as “American Idol” and “Survivor,” didn’t quench our thirst for overnight fame and instant riches.
Viewers ditched traditionally scripted shows for cleverly edited and almost as scripted reality TV series about spoiled teens, offspring and their D-list aspiring parents. “Laguna Beach” begot “The Hills,” which gave birth to the penultimate fame courting couple: Spencer and Heidi.
People clucked at the tastelessness of it all while gobbling up every morsel of gossip from tabloid magazines, blogs and gossip sites such as US Weekly, Perez Hilton and TMZ.
Water cooler chatter morphed into Myspace messages, Facebook wall posts and Tweets. Suggestive photo texts replaced love letters (and then got leaked online).
Common sight of the aughts: A cell phone (now iPhone) chirps with the latest, must-have ringtone jam (probably Flo Rida), and the guy in front of you at Starbucks pauses from ordering a grande gingerbread soy latte to answer.
He argues with his friend about whether he needs to change his Facebook status to “in a relationship” because he’s been hooking up (possibly sexting) with some girl.
His designer skinny jeans cost $200 and he just spent $4 on coffee, but he complains there’s no free wifi so he can’t work on his blog dedicated to obscure soda pop. His actual favorite movie is “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” but his Facebook page says it’s “High Fidelity.”
He’s studying marketing through college — that is, until he gets accepted to compete on “The Amazing Race.”
It was a decade of technology excess, spoiled “housewives” and credit meltdowns, but who has time to stop and reflect? One scandal turns into another and we are all gawking for the minute-by-minute via our computer screens.
Michael Jackson morphs into Jon and Kate into Tiger Woods.
And that’s how the so-called “Decade of the Celebrity” will turn — not with a bang, but with a Tweet.
Some are still together or married, others fizzled quickly. We’re listing them by the year they snagged the most headlines.
2000
Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton
Renee Zellweger and Jim Carrey
Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan
2001
Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake
Jennifer Lopez and Cris Judd
Tom Green and Drew Barrymore
2002
Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey
Jay-Z and Beyoncé Knowles
Kid Rock and Pamela Anderson
Chris Martin and Gwenyth Paltrow
2003
Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston
Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck
Sienna Miller and Jude Law
2004
Britney Spears and Kevin Federline
Madonna and Guy Ritchie
Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony
2005
Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher
2006
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes
Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban
Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen
2007
Fergie and Josh Duhamel
David Beckham and Victoria “Posh Spice” Beckham
Eva Longoria and Tony Parker
2008
Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon
Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal
Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi
Jessica Simpson and Tony Romo
2009
Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart
Chris Brown and Rihanna
Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag
Kate Hudson and Alex Rodriguez
Celebrity Deaths
Those we lost during the last decade.
2000
Alec Guinness, actor
Charles M. Schulz, cartoonist
Walter Matthau, actor
2001
Aaliyah, singer
George Harrison, member of The Beatles
Jack Lemmon, 2001, actor
2002
Rosemary Clooney, singer
Eppie Lederer, aka Ann Landers, advice columnist
Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, 2002, TLC rapper
Dudley Moore, 2002, actor
Layne Staley, Alice in Chains singer
Billy Wilder, director
2003
June Carter Cash, singer/songwriter
Johnny Cash, singer/songwriter
Katherine Hepburn, actress Fred Rogers, “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood”
Gregory Peck, actor
Bob Hope, entertainer/actor
John Ritter, actor
Associated Press
2004
Marlon Brando, actor
Julia Child, chef/author
Christopher Reeve, actor
Tony Randall, actor
2005
Anne Bancroft, actress
Johnny Carson, comedian/talk show host
Sandra Dee, actress
Peter Jennings, news anchor
Richard Pryor, comedian
Hunter S. Thompson, journalist/author
2006
Ed Bradley, journalist
James Brown, singer
Don Knotts, actor
2007
Anna Nicole Smith, model/reality TV star
Deborah Kerr, actress
Evel Knievel, stunt man
Norman Mailer, author
Ike Turner, singer
2008
George Carlin, comedian
Issac Hayes,, singer
Bernard McCullough, aka Bernie Mac, comedian/actor
Paul Newman, actor
Sydney Pollack, director/actor
Tim Russert, journalist
2009
Bea Arthur, actress
Walter Cronkite, news anchor
Farrah Fawcett, actress
John Hughes, director/producer
Michael Jackson, singer
Patrick Swayze, actor/dancer
That’s about all you can say about the last decade in Tulsa’s entertainment world.
It seems to have come out of nowhere, this heat wave of entertainment, but it actually was a fire stoked by a vote, a plan called Vision 2025 that Tulsans OK’d in 2003. Then, we sat back and waited — for the BOK Center to rise from the ashes of a downtown in desperate need of a phoenix.
But the arena wasn’t a cure-all. Indeed, it was a catalyst, something to get people talking, get that dull simmer on the back burner turned into a front-of-the-range bonfire.
People like Elliott Nelson took notice. After the passage of Vision 2025, he opened McNellie’s downtown. Have you been there on a weekend night? Nelson’s maiden restaurant is beyond success. He followed that with El Guapo’s Cantina, Dilly Deli and Yokozuna, with plans to open an eight-lane bowling alley downtown.
The already established downtown strongholds kept up their end of the bargain. The Cain’s Ballroom — a favorite of everyone from Bob Dylan to Beck — continued its onslaught of concerts in the last decade. Some notables: Willie Nelson, Wanda Jackson (in her first show at the famous ballroom), Elvis Costello, Robert Plant and Hanson, to chip the tip of the iceberg.
The Brady, haunted or not, continued as the soul of the Brady District, hosting Tom Waits, The Pretenders, Lyle Lovett, Chris Isaak and Lindsey Buckingham, among many others in the past decade.
River Parks and the Jenks RiverWalk are shopping and entertainment meccas, and don’t even get me started on South Tulsa. Try driving through there on a Saturday afternoon. It’s jam-packed with tourists and locals, clamoring for a good meal or a good time.
We might have lost a few spots to amuse ourselves (Bell’s comes to mind), but we’ve found much. First, we gained enough trust in our government to allow a one-cent sales tax to be levied for 13 years as part of Vision 2025, and we trusted that funds would be used in the right way. The fact that we broke ground on that new arena as quickly as 2005 helped. We drove by, eager to see signs of life stirring in that hollowed-out spot between Denver and Cheyenne avenues and Second and Third streets. We saw artist renderings of a building that vaguely resembled spaceships. Some doubted it would ever amount to much. But as metal spines emerged from the earth, it all started to become real.
Flash-forward a bit, and the Eagles are playing the BOK Center, christening it on Sept. 6, 2008. The first year of the BOK included a few names you might’ve heard before: Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Fleetwood Mac, Kenny Chesney, Celine Dion, AC/DC … it seemed to good to be true.
But the BOK is here to stay.
So is DFest, it appears. What started as a small gathering of local bands in 2002 — when Tom and Angie Devore-Green wanted to enter a Jim Beam/Rolling Stone contest — went big. They came up with a marketing plan, and Diversafest was born. Seven years later, they are owners of a music festival that encompasses a July weekend and drew nearly 80,000 people in 2009. In 2007, the Flaming Lips headlined (and the mayor introduced them); in 2008, Stillwater’s own All-American Rejects and The Roots were among the headliners; in 2009, we had The Black Crowes and Cake.
We also gained big exposure in the rest of the world. Oklahoma’s own Carrie Underwood won “American Idol,” then the hearts of millions, as well as a few Grammys. Her name is so big, she has earned the right to go Hollywood on us. But she hasn’t and probably never will. Her roots are deep, and why wouldn’t they be?
Bill Hader and Kristin Chenoweth became household names on the small screen, and several of our actors and entertainers hit the big time. Tulsa’s Amber Valletta had a pivotal role in the Will Smith comedy, “Hitch,” Muskogee’s Sarah Vowell made it big on the talk radio circuit with “This American Life,” and Tulsa’s Jeanne Tripplehorn found a new home on HBO with “Big Love.”
Another thing we gained in the last decade: Love of our city. Sure, we all had it. But did we have the T-shirt to prove it? Tulsa’s youth began sporting “I Heart Tulsa T-shirts. During the 2009 DFest, Cake lead singer John McCrae wandered through downtown Tulsa, and he came upon the city love T-shirts. He said he admired the pride the city has in itself and wished other cities had it.
See? Even our T-shirts have progressed.
We’ve got a lot of future living to do, Tulsa. And it might not always be easy, but it should be entertaining. We’ve laid the groundwork. Now, go have some fun.
