A List a Day

Happy New Year
Like most in the blogosphere, we've been taking some time away the last week or so. Don't worry, we'll be back next week, if not sooner. In the meantime, go see "Big Fish," skip "In America," if you have HBO, watch "Angels in America" and don't foget "Curb Your Enthusiasm" starts this Sunday. Set your Tivos for a new "Harvey Birdman" on Cartoon Network tonight and also if you haven't been watching "Arrested Development" on Fox, they're having a marathon tonight. >

Oh, That Russell Crowe
Think LVG needed to pad out his Arts Briefing in today's Times?

It's a boy for Russell Crowe, the star of "Gladiator," "A Beautiful Mind" and "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," and his wife, Danielle Spencer. The baby, Charles Spencer Crowe, born on Sunday night, weighed 6 pounds, 2 ounces, The Associated Press reported.

But there is a list item here. Check out the first item in the Briefing for a list of people who have turned down "honors offered by prime ministers on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II since World War II."
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The Stars Look Very Different Today
Take a look at some of the Space Oddities in Space.com's Top 10 Astronomy Images of 2003.>

Avast!
I guess anyone who could make it cool again to talk like a pirate deserves to be at the top of USA Today's Pop Candy's 100 People of 2003 List. (As Jessa points out: "Not 100 'superlative adjective' people, like most interesting, craziest, nor most frequently arrested. Just 100 people.")
Looking over the past lists that date back to 2000 is a great reminder of the fleeting nature of celebrity as both Angelina Jolie and Winona Ryder have claimed previous top spots, which can only mean the Pop Candy column has some kind of unhealthy obsession with "Girl, Interrupted.">

O-K-L-A-Ummm-H-Errr-O, No, U, Wait, It's O, Right?-M-M-A-H
Of the list of 56 Bowl teams in college football, the student-athletes from Oklahoma rank near bottom in terms of graduation rates, with only 33% of Sooners feeling they need a diploma for their laters. Arkansas and Fresno State were even worse, graduating only 26% of their players.
At the top of the list? The Northwestern Wildcats at 83%, followed by Boston College (79), Virginia (76), Tulsa (66) and Oregon (64).
For those Sooners not fortunate enough to make it to the NFL, they might some day in the future end up on this year-end list.>

Sin Bin
From Albom to Easterbrook, the LA Times' David Shaw makes a list of this year's journalism lowlights. Included is this gem from the Paper of Record (which had a record-breaking year of missteps, but still, as Shaw notes, kicks the butt of every other paper around):

"The Times story that said a prominent Harlem photographer was so close to his twin brother that when the brother died of testicular cancer, he 'had his own testicles removed'--except that, as a subsequent correction acknowledged, the first brother died of prostate cancer and the second brother did not have his testicles removed."

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Cuming in 2004: "The Chronicles of Big Dick"
Linsay's got the year in mainstream movies translated into porn titles.>

Just in Time for the Holidays
Mohammed's holiday shopping list just got reduced by one as Saddam Hussein has now been officially removed from the list of the prophet's descendants. >

Oprah...Uma
The New York Post tries its hand at comedy with a top ten list of reasons David Letterman Bailed on Oprah, while Uma Thurman, among others, makes the list of Golden Globe nominees. And remember when people got their panties all in a bunch over the gayness of the Tonys last spring? Well, said people may want to avoid tuning in for Category No. 24.>

Sadly Taco's Groundbreaking Music Video Failed to Make the Cut
While future generations may miss out on ever seeing the perhaps the finest rendition of "Putting on the Ritz," the Library of Congress has ensured that our children's children will be able to see Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle's close second, as "Young Frankenstein" was among the list of 25 motion pictures added the National Film Registry. Other notables include "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "Patton," and the cartoon short "One Froggy Evening," starring current WB pitchman Michigan J. Frog.>

Polite Company
Every now and then when our commitment to this blog starts to flag, along comes a list that reminds us of just why we started this whole ridiculous exercise in the first place. This list of 2003's Best-Mannered People, as selected by the National League of Junior Cotillions, is one such list. Really, I could endlessly mock the story about the list, but that would be a disservice to not only Clay Aiken (this year's best-mannered person), the NLJC, and the poor wire-service reporter who had to pen the piece.

Incidentally, for those of you in need of a etiquette refresher, besides bastardizing pop standards, here are some other ways to improve your manners:

1. When being approached by a blood-hungry predator, don't be selfish. You have four limbs, so why not offer one to the predator as a sign of friendship
2. When in doubt, wage war.
3. If that fails, blame the Jews.
4. Make sure your injury is absolutely, completely, 110% healed before even thinking about taking the field again, paying no heed to the fortunes of your teammates, coaches, or the fans.
5. Swallow your L's.

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In Other Blogs
Weisblogg has a cynical take on the news that Beatles' "Let It Be...Naked" has landed at No. 1 on the latest CMJ top 200.

With Time and Newsweek predictably featuring very similar covers this week, Rexblog has a list of all of the other clone covers from this past year.

Low Culture amusingly compares the list of somewhat crazy writers who go by the first initial J (think recent Nobel laureate J.M Coetzee, J.D. Salinger, and J. Lo) to the relatively sane authors who use the first initial A.

The Morning News lists its top 10 CDs of the year.

I love the name of this list: The top 10 Books I Did Not Read This Year.

And the Black Table has posted another version of it's always fun The Black List.>

East vs. West (of Far East) vs. Middle Earth
What are the odds that the Boston Society of Film Critics would name "Mystic River" its film of the year? Meanwhile the same story notes that the San Francisco Film Critics Circle went with "Lost in Translation." And in New York, the pick was "Lord of the Rings," which (caution: inner-geek speaking) I can't wait to see this week. I never read the books, but I have loved the films. I actually got to see "Mystic" this weekend, thanks to an inch of snow and a lack of salt on the roads. It was in fact, very good, impeccable acted, but I can't say I was completely wowed, which I think in part had to do with me figuring out the mystery part early into the film. Saw "28 Days Later" on DVD, too, which means I can maybe now do a top 10 list because I have seen about 10 2003 films.>

Smooth Move, Ex-Lax
Grady leaving Pedro in...The Nets signing 'Zo...Sammy putting a cork in it...Those are just three of ESPN Page 2's worst sports moves of 2003. Not mentioned is Steve Bartman's decision to go after a certain foul ball.>

An Earful
This one slipped through the cracks, but the AFI, a body we respect just because they are so damn obsessed with nonsensical list making, is back at, this time determined to pick the top 100 songs in movie history. Songs can be written specifically for a movie like say "Singin' in the Rain" or they can just have been used prominently in a film like say "Wonderful World" in "Witness." The list of 400 songs from which the top 100 will be picked seems to be pretty exhaustive, running the gamut from pabulum like "You Light Up My Life" from the Didi Conn star-making vehicle of the same name (a 45 which I still proudly own) to "Stuck in the Middle With You" from Resevoir Dogs. Any of your favorites get left off the list ("Girl You'll Be a Woman Soon" from "Pulp Fiction" and "Oh Yeah" from "Ferris Bueller" come to mind), well, that's what the comments are for.>

The Waiting…

...Is over. This ought to keep you list fan’s busy for awhile.

1. Curious how P. Diddy's NYC Marathon time of 4:15:54 stacks up against other celeb runners? Chicago Tribune columnist/blogger Eric Zorn has a list of the competition, which ranges from Diamond David Lee Roth's staggering 6:04:43 back in 1987 (hard to run in those assless chaps) to Billy Baldwin's breakneck 3:24:29 in 1992. Diddy finished in the middle of the pack, between Zorn's own 4:22:54 and Merideth Baxter's 4:08:30.

2. Local music critics continue to get mileage out of Rolling Stone's recent list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Times. The Memphis Commercial Appeal looks at the Bluff City's contribution to the list (who knew Memphis had a nickname?). And just up the mighty Mississip, St. Louis Post-Dispatch critic Kevin C. Johnson (so you don't mistake him for the former Phoenix Sun great?) makes the same old argument--it's too white, too '70s, not enough jazz and country, no Norah Jones(!) or "Private Dancer"(!!).

3. Seeing as I lost my day job last month and am trying to get my freelance career in full gear, I was relieved to see that my city did not make Forbes' list of the country's most expensive zip codes. The town bordering to the north and the four consecutive suburbs to the south are there, though, so I suspect we are just a few more teardowns away.

4. Low Culture's featured columnist God has posted another version of his wildly popular (at least amongst those who don't appear on it) Smite List.

5. Trying to drive away those last few stragglers at your holiday party? Try putting some on some selection's from Jim Nayder's list of the 12 Most Annoying Holiday Songs. Nothing says "go home" like the San Francisco 49ers singing "Winter Wonderland" or the Rev. Glen Armstrong's ode to the infectious nature of holiday spirit even among the criminally insane, "Even Squeaky Fromme Likes Christmas."

6. Amongst Splendid's 24 Ways Record Geeks are Different from Other People: Record geeks dream about making love to the sounds of Spiritualized and Sigur Rós; other people have actually had sex.

7. Whether you think Entertainment Weekly ripped off the Old Hag in its recent list of the Top 50 Tearjerkers (and I'd say the evidence is somewhat convincing, considering my entry included the unusual pick of "Rudy," which just so happened to show up at No. 50 on EW's list), we can all thank Donna B. Stinnett of the Henderson (Ky.) Gleaner for taking the time to reproduce EW's entire list (and eat serious column inches), which is protected behind Time Warner's cone of secrecy unless you are subscriber. [Not knowing how long the Gleaner keeps its content up, here's the whole list:

1. "Terms of Endearment" (1983); 2. "Bambi" (1942); 3. "Sophie's Choice" (1982); 4. "An Affair To Remember" (1957); 5. "It's A Wonderful Life" (1946); 6. "Longtime Companion" (1990); 7. "Brian's Song" (1971); 8. "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982); 9. "Ghost" (1990); 10. "Field of Dreams" (1987); 11. "Old Yeller" (1957); 12. "Brief Encounter" (1945); 13. "Kramer vs. Kramer" (1979); 14. "Life Is Beautiful" (1998); 15. "Titanic" (1997); 16. "Glory" (1989); 17. "Love Story" (1970); 18. "Ordinary People" (1980); 19. "Stella Dallas" (1937); 20. "Steel Magnolias" (1989); 21. "Gallipoli" (1981); 22. "The Joy Luck Club" (1993); 23. "Charly" (1968); 24. "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" (1939); 25. "The Great Santini" (1979); 26. "The Deer Hunter" (1978); 27. "To Kill A Mockingbird" (1962); 28. "The Way We Were" (1973); 29. "Tycoon" (1985); 30. "Romeo and Juliet" (1968); 31. "West Side Story" (1961); 32. "Imitation of Life" (1959); 33. "Philadelphia" (1993); 34. "Jerry Maguire" (1996); 35. "The Wizard of Oz" (1939); 36. "The Yearling" (1946); 37. "The Iron Giant" (1999); 38. "The Champ" (1979); 39. "Umberto D." (1952); 40. "Little Women" (1933 and 1994); 41. "Now, Voyager" (1942); 42. "Sounder" (1972); 43. "Dead Poets Society" (1989); 44. "Truly Madly Deeply" (1991); 45. "Sense and Sensibility" (1995); 46. "The Sixth Sense" (1999); 47. "Moulin Rouge" (2001); 48. "Cinema Paradiso" (1989; 49. "Parenthood" (1989) and 50. "Rudy" (1993).]

8. I'd say No. 11 is the best definition of blogging I've seen.

9. And speaking of navel gazing, congrats to our favorite anonymous blogger and an early champion of this blog, TMFTML, for making The New York Observer's list of Power Punks of New York: 50 Baby Bigshots 35 and Under.

10. And finally, we leave you with this cautionary tale of entering a police station to see if your name is on its wanted list while you have some heroin in your ear.

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I Am a Liar
I've got a ton of lists, but I wasted my time constructing the Best of 2003 thing to the right. Enjoy that, and I promise, for real this time, that tomorrow will be chock full o' lists.>

Lists To Come
Working on some assignments this morning, as I try to recover from the cold I caught whilst recovering from the flu. One advantage of working from home: the coffee pot and my bed are equidistant from my desk. I'll have some lists for you this afternoon, though, so please check back. Until then, this recipe for rice balls looked incredible at 1:45 a.m. last night, but this morning I'm not as sure.>

Keep Your Feet on the Ground...So We Can Knock Them Out From Under You
One of America's most venerable list-makers, Casey Kasem, the America's Top 40 countdown maven and voice of Shaggy, is getting 86'd. According to the NY Post, Kasem is being replaced by "American Idol's" Ryan Seacrest.>

Five for Monday
The end of the year list season is kicking into high gear and I'm not sure how I will deal with the onslaught, but if you spot an intriguing one, or any list for that matter, don't be shy about passing along the link via the practical email address up in the right corner.

On to the lists...

1. Director Neil LaBute provides The Independent with his list of his
10 favorite black comedies.

2. It's primarily NSFW, but Playboy, in honor of it's 50th Anniversary Issue, lists its 50 most memorable photos. Plenty of celebs make the list, including Marilyn at No. 1, plus Bo, Madonna, Cindy, Ursula, Farrah, etc., but its some of the earlier non-famous pix (Nos. 16, 22, 30, etc.) that made us long for those more innocent times when pictures of farm action didn't show up with disturbing frequency in out in box. There's no Carnie Wilson, by the way, but John Candy is represented, fully clothed, thankfully.

3. Rolling Stone's Peter Travers picks his top 10 movies of the year, with "Mystic River" getting the top nod. Most notable are his last two picks, "A Mighty Wind," which we are on record as being big fans of, and "Angels in America," which is sitting upstairs on the Tivo itching to be watched.

4. USA Today's Edna Gundersen aims to list the top 40 albums of all time, with the emphasis being on the album as a cohesive whole. That means "history's most frequent list-topper, The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club, has been excluded, as have live albums (James Brown's Live at the Apollo), formal concept albums (The Who's Tommy), soundtracks (Superfly, The Harder They Come) and greatest-hits sets." That said, the list is about as revelatory as you might expect from such a radical, cutting-edge publication.

5. Among the list of entities involved in this lawsuit (which sadly looks like it won't be argued in front of the Supreme Court): Outkast, Rosa Parks, Johnnie Cochran, Big Boy restaurants, Dr. Suess, Barbie, Othello, the Temptations, Bobby Seale, Johnny Carson, Ginger Rogers, Tom Waits, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Again thanks are owed for some of these links, but I lost track, so just visit some of the fine sites listed to the right>

Play "Mystic" for Me
Clint's film takes the top spot on the National Board of Review's list of the top 10 films of 2003.
The full list is:

1. Mystic River
2. The Last Samurai
3. The Station Agent
4. 21 Grams
5. The House of Sand and Fog
6. Lost in Translation*
7. Cold Mountain
8. In America
9. Seabiscuit*
10. Master and Commander

With starring roles in Nos. 1 and 4, Sean Penn gets the nod as best actor, while Diane Keaton is best actress for that movie where she mistakenly takes her sweater off in front of Jack.

*Indicates I was able to drag my ass to the theater to see it.

Thanks to Grambo for the link.

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Mossy
I finally picked up the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time issue of Rolling Stone yesterday, but for those of you inclined to save the $5, the entire list is now online and you can even read the essays on the top 50.

Meanwhile, Chris Riemenschneider of the Minneapolis Star Tribune weighs in on the top 500, noting that among those artists not meriting a single album on the list are: Tupac Shakur, Wilco(!), Missy Elliott, Ice Cube, Nick Cave (!!), Yo La Tengo and Dwight Yoakam. He's also got some good lists of the most overrated and underrated albums in the top 500 and some that tragically were left off the list.

And Country Music Today rightfully laments the dearth of country albums on the list.>

Back With a Vengeance
Lacking a better way to get back into the swing of things, how about I go meta on you and present a list of lists?

10. Brad Pitt's character from The Fight Club, a movie which I have embarrassingly never seen, has been picked by Hotddog magazine as No. 1 on the pub's list of the 50 coolest movie characters of all time.
9. Pitchfork revisits its Top 100 Albums of the '90s, with Radiohead's "OK Computer" getting top honors.
8. Speaking of the '90s, Bill Clinton has released his list of his 21 favorite books. Ah, remember when we had a president who had read more than 21 books in his lifetime? Why 21? We're guessing it was his top 20 and then someone mentioned it might be nice to include his wife's book on the list.
7. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced its list of 2004 inductees. You knew George Harrison was going to get in and Prince, thankfully was a slam dunk, and we'll even admit to a soft spot for pre-"Shakedown" Bob Seger, but ZZ Top? Jackson Browne? And even worse, Traffic? At the expense of Sabbath, the Sex Pistols, Gram Parsons and the Stooges? Not to mention, by my math, both Squeeze and XTC were eligible for the first time this year and didn't even make any of the cuts. Next year, the Cure is eligible, with U2 coming in 1995's class.
6. Zach Randolph joins the long list of Portland Trail Blazers arrested for drug or alcohol-related offenses in the last year. And that doesn't even take into account Bonzi Wells problems with authority or Ruben Patterson's anger-management issues. Got to love them Blazers.
5. Here's a list of 25 albums that never should have been made, including works by the the Clash, Lou Reed, Neil Young, and Hammer.
4. Looking to relax and rewind in this frenzied holiday season? How about a list of the 10 best albums to fall asleep to? I usually fall asleep every night to the soundtrack of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" coming through one baby monitor and selections from the Fisher-Price Snooze 'n Slumber coming through the other.
3. According to this list of the most affordable destinations for business meetings, you better hope your company isn't on a strict budget this coming year.
2. A special audio link: NPR's Alex Chadwick speaks to Maxim Magazine editor Charles Coxe about the list of the 50 funniest moments in movie history.
1. And finally, tonight, this should be No. 1 on your list of things to do.

Numerous thanks are owed for these links, but I lost track of whom for what, so if you have the time just visit some of the fine sites listed to the right>

Back in Business Tomorrow
Ever had to clear six years worth of clutter out of a cubicle? It ain't fun. But I stole my electric pencil sharpener. So any of you in the suburbs north of Chicago with drawers full of dull pencils, I'm your man. Drop me a line and we can set up an appointment. We'll be back tomorrow, I promise.>