Relive Every Day of 2021 With One Journalist’s Ultimate Pithy Media Diary

Paige Skinner's minimalist year-in-review reminded us of several bizarre happenings ... many of which involved Ted Cruz

A digital billboard truck with an image of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) sits in a parking lot near Senator Cruz's home on February 19, 2021 in Houston, Texas. Ted Cruz is facing criticism after he left Texas to go to Cancun, Mexico with his family during an unprecedented winter storm that brought freezing temperatures and widespread power outages throughout the state.
Remember when Ted Cruz fled to Mexico? A new Google Doc will help you remember.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Journalist Paige Skinner kept a Google Doc highlighting one big event every day throughout 2021, and wow, did we forget a few things.

Looking over the doc — which we discovered via Digg — is surreal. Jan. 2? Bean dad. Jan. 6? “Coup attempt/Georgia blue,” a rare double shot. Well, at least until Jan. 10, which gets “SATC reboot/armie hammer cannibal.” (Note, those two aren’t related, but neither has been getting good press this year.)

You can read the list for yourself here. We kind of like the minimalist approach here; it serves as a counterbalance to Dave Pell’s day-by-day recounting of the very bad year of 2020 in his new (and recommended!) book Please Scream Inside Your Heart.

A few highlights and lowlights from the year, as copy-pasted exactly from Skinner’s diary:

  • Jan. 19- trump’s last day/ cookie monster rock (the latter was this)
  • Jan. 26- reddit makes gamestop stocks go up
  • Jan. 27- gamestop stocks still
  • Jan. 28- robinhood limited buying gamestop stocks
  • Feb. 12- ted cruz weird haircut
  • Feb. 18- AP reports ted cruz flew to cancun while texas freezes
  • Feb. 24- where have all the lesbians gone? (probably a reference to this)
  • March 24- cinnamon toast crunch shrimp guy bad ex bf/ doctor krispy kreme/ chrissy teigen leaves twitter

Honestly, that’s just a few things from the first three months of a year that, much like 2020, we don’t care to remember that much. But if you’re stuck at home and in the mood to remember when “israel tweets abt bella hadid” (that was May 16), have yourself a happy look back at a very, very weird year.

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