During parties, especially ones in designer-conscious downtown Los Angeles lofts, the couch is coveted territory. People have just spent twenty minutes making polite non-committal remarks around the kitchen island, and all anyone wants to do, at this point, is rest on the cushions and maybe squeeze an end pillow. However, the same competitive drive that applies to every other aspect of life in the city is amplified here. The people on the couch are ruthless motherfuckers.

In the spirit of the obsessive list-making that has become the traditional way to mark the end to calendar years in the first world, here is a guide to the previous 3 years ending in 9 (in no particular order). Happy 2010!

In the past, personal information existed in dusty file cabinets, spread across multiple Midwestern states. People were ashamed to be file clerks, or if they weren’t ashamed, they at least had the decency to be drunk whenever possible. The notion of privacy—something which we eagerly gave up about a decade ago, but are only now starting to miss—was sacrosanct. You could actually talk about how something was ‘an invasion of privacy’ and people would not think you were aiming to shack up in the woods and pen a manifesto.

In addition to being a fascinating preview of the emotional and spiritual complexity David Chase would later achieve with The Sopranos, the 1990’s television series Northern Exposure also offers a glimpse into what it would feel like to turn 30. As Northern Exposure’s principal character Joel turns 30, he realizes that the things that once distinguished him as a medical prodigy are now simply ‘expected’ of him. He also lugs a canoe around a pristine forest, and bitches to a shaman-in-training who dines with Peter Bogdanovich. Ripped from the headlines, I know.

In 1890, William Jennings Bryan pontificated his way into historical relevance by proposing a monetary standard based on silver. Experts roundly condemned Bryan’s choice in precious metal as ridiculous, and further derided his selection of pocket-watches. “Brings out his stomach roll,” said one oft-quoted but rarely cited Yale scholar.