If you started 1998 hoping that the movies would throw various objects from the sky toward the ground, where legions of pretty and clever young actors turned bodily disgust into an art form all its own; and you bet that most films with more than a shred of dignity would languish on their reels because there was hardly any screen space for them in D.C.; and you prayed that hiphop’s innovators would take over the top of the charts because most rock music, with all its digressions upon digressions, would collapse on itself while punk and jazz kept their inventions in defiant darkness; and you wagered that Washington’s demand for theater would support a record number of talented people working on area stages in productions that largely placed populist safety above literary risk; and you crossed your heart and hoped to die if arts presenters and programmers began doing anything besides following the money to a bottom-line-obsessed, pseudocultural paradise, then congratulations. This was your kind

of year. CP