It was the Year of the Troubling Question.

The most troubling one was: What the heck happened to all those weapons of mass destruction that were supposed to be in Iraq? Apparently there was an intelligence mix-up. As CIA director George Tenet noted recently, ''Our thinking now is that the weapons of mass destruction might actually be in that other one, whaddycallit, Iran. Or Michigan. We're pretty sure the letter ''i'' is involved.''

Some other troubling questions from 2003 were:

• If Californians hated Gray Davis so much, why did they elect him governor TWICE? Did Gray have photos of the entire California electorate naked? Can we see them?

• Why did Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck -- whose sole achievement in 2003 was to costar in Gigli, a film so bad it was used to torture suspected terrorists -- receive more media attention than the entire continent of Asia, and nearly as much as Kobe Bryant?

• Who's watching all these ''reality'' TV shows? Nobody admits to watching them. Everybody agrees they're even stupider than those infomercials wherein Ron Popeil spends 30 minutes liquefying vegetables to the rapturous delight of a live, if half-witted, audience. And yet ''reality'' shows keep getting ratings. Who are the viewers? Have houseplants learned to operate remote controls?

• Can young people wear their pants any lower? Their waistbands are now at approximately knee level. Where will this trend end? The shins? The feet? Will young people eventually detach themselves from their pants altogether and just drag them along behind, connected to their ankles by a belt?

We don't know the answers to any of these questions. All we know is that 2003 is finally, we hope, over. But before we move on, let's put our heads between our knees and take one last look back at this remarkable year, which started, as is so often the case, with: