My 2007 in Retrospect, MPV Person of the Year

2008 seems quite full of promise. But I can't step into it until I take a look back at '07.

It just so happened that last year was the 20th anniversary of my HIV diagnosis. I wanted to do something grand, a big publicitity stunt of some kind. But in actuality, I just lived my life and a lot of interesting things happened along the way: I gave the commencement speech at my high school, I married two of my friends, I was included in a section about kids with hemophilia and HIV in the Children's Museum of Indianapolis (I'm a relic!), I stared my next book and almost lost it all and recorded and released a Synthetic Division CD.

Did I get obsessed with Sanjaya? Yes. But I wasn't the only man in his early thirties to fall victim to the charms of that young man, and what should be an embarrassment is also a highlight, too. Especially when I was kicked off the Vote For The Worst message boards for shamelessly plugging my book (think, "Sanjaya helps people with AIDS, because his singing shows that there are things in life worse than living with AIDS. Now, about my book on the topic..."), some of you wrote to them about not discriminating about me having AIDS.

Classic.

My Pet Virus 2007 Person of the Year: Sherri Shepherd

No one provided more joy to me, or Joy Behar, than the new co-host of the View, Sherri. From questioning whether the Earth is flat to believing that Jesus predated everything, she never wavered in her convictions. No other person exemplified the experience of being an American in 2007 more so than her, and several hundreds of years from now we'll be reading and learning from The Book of Shepherd, a collection of quotes gathered and preserved from The View which will be used to rebuild society after an asteroid destroys civilization.

Sherri Shepherd and her co-hosts celebrate the news of her Person of the Year Award.

The completion of the 20-year anniversary of my diagnosis was a milestone and cause for celebration, too, but now I'm in my 21st year of living with my pet virus: which means it is now old enough to legally drink. So imagine the fun we're going to be having this year?

But truly, I gotta thank you for reading this blog. I hope your new year is full of promise and pleasant surprises, too. Not sure what my plans are beyond finishing my next book and speaking with Gwenn, but once my man Dennis Kucinich takes the Iowa and New Hampshire caucuses, I can start planning my own takeovers for 2008, and figure out how to better contribute to the causes I believe in.

Positively Yours,
Shawn