A List of Lists of the Decade

The decade isn’t over.  If you are a numbers purist, you know it won’t be over for another year.*  How-ev-ah, I don’t math, and most of you don’t math, either.  Or grammar.  So let’s do some “Best of Decade” lists!  This is inspired by my fraternity brother Bill S. Liston, Esq. 

Most Underrated TV Shows of the Decade

5. West Wing. How can a commercial and critical success be underrated?  Not only was the show a great poly sci lesson (and not nearly as liberal as it is remembered), but it was incredibly prescient.  The Josh Lyman / Rahm Emanuel similarities alone are amazing – former White House understudy takes unknown minority congressman and turns him into presidential material and then President.  I actually thought about doing advocacy for a career, and it started with West Wing.

4. Glee. You say sarcastically – great list, Reynolds – everyone knows of #5 and #4 is not only a smash hit, it has already led to its own Idol-esque reality competition.  The reason Glee is underrated is not enough guys get past their macho predilections to give this show a fighting chance.  And it is worth it.  The music has already revitalized the concept of Glee Club across America. Jane Lynch plays the role of Sue Sylvester so masterfully that she deserves to be damed (sp?) like Judy Dench.  I don’t LOL much at TV, but “Sue C’s it” is the best Alpha Female antihero we’ve seen in a long time, and her understated dialogue is truly laugh out loud. 

3. Rome. Out of this world acting, scripting, choreography, etc… If you netflix (yes, I just used it as a verb), netflix Rome and watch it after you put the kids to bed.  Talk about an emotional investment in characters.

2. Deadwood. Poor HBO shows.  Deadwood is hard to watch, unless you love the grimy moral turpitude that defines the wild west.  I want to say that Deadwood is authentic as it gets, although not being 250 years old I have no frame of reference.  Best dialogue ever – beautiful prose, sometimes in old english, interspersed with enough f-bombs to make a frat boy blush.  Which I am, and did, on many occasion.  Al Swearengen is my favorite character of any medium ever. Note – the show is the single most NSFW or most other places of anything on this list.

1. The Wire. Maybe the finest show ever made. Problem was, the creators went out of their way to give it as little mass appeal as possible.  The story revolved around the city, not archetypal characters.  The actors were unknown brits, aussies, and african-americans, none of which sell well to the flyover states.  The dialogue was so authentic, it was hard to follow.  And they killed off everyone’s favorite characters, seemingly on principle.  But believe me when I say – it is the best show ever, and if you can make it until the end of the first season, you’ll be an acolyte, too.

Best Video Games of the Decade (that I played – I only had a Xbox & 360)

5. Grand Theft Auto Vice City. Nothing better than stopping a rich guy driving a Corvette, jacking his ride (ala the game’s title), running him over, changing the radio station to whichever one is playing Billy Jean, and then doing a little vehicular mayhem. Maybe I should stop talking now…

4. Guitar Hero 2. First great “guitar game”.  The genre’s best was Rock Band 2, but Guitar Hero 2 was the OG, and everyone wanted to play it, regardless of whether they liked video games or not.

3. Modern Warfare 1. The Halo killer.

2. World of Warcraft. They call it World of Warcrack.  Married guys call it the Marriage Killer. I put 450 hours into this game IN GRAD SCHOOL.  I gained 20 lbs and lost 6 months of sleep and am lucky Lisa didn’t kick me out of the house.  On the upside, my level 60 dark priest was always in high demand. I can’t ever play another MMORPG, so maybe it was a lesson well learned.

1. Knights of the Old Republic. Better than any of the Star Wars movies. The music was totally epic, and the fact that you don’t get a light saber until almost 10 hours into the game sets the tone for method and patience rather than pwning foolz with the sabrez.

(Disclaimer  - Dragon Age may end up on this list, but I’m still too early into the game)

(Disclaimer 2 – The Old Republic, a PC MMO version of #1, will be #1 for the 2010s but I won’t play it, upon court order and threat of wife and child)

Best Things That Happened to Josh of the Decade

5. Getting shut out of all 12 Clinical Pysch PhD programs I applied to. It was like Hubris myth without the falling to my death thing. It made me think about what I really wanted to do with my life.

4. Muhammed Yunnus’ autobiography Banker to the Poor. Changed my life and gave my career some focus.

3. Hitting 2 homeruns in softball. This really shouldn’t be on the list, but I’d been trying to hit one since I was 4.

1. Lisa said yes. Sucka!  Actually, there is a cute story behind the proposal and acceptance.

1. Ava

Best Trends of the Decade

5. Connectivity. 

4. Using movie lines to have entire conversations – effectively.

3. Everyone has a voice.  See #2.  Mostly a good thing. Anyone can become super-empowered, to borrow from Tom Friedman, which in itself acts as a democratizer.  Yes, I just might have made that word up.

2. Social Media. Which you’re consuming right now.

1. Going Green.

Best Random Happenings of the Decade

5. Larry’s couch, 2003.  Between graduating college and starting grad school (or for some people, law school, which I call the Great American Postgraduate Babysitter), there is typically 6-12 months of uncertainty with life, love, future, and even living arrangements.  For the threadbare postgraduate sojourners of Delta Upsilon, there was a respite, an oasis if you will, at Casa Larry Dizzile.  (That’s not his real last name. I feel comfortable using first names but not last names.  It’s complicated.)  In the span of 3 months, 3 different brothers lived on his couch, including myself for 6 weeks or so.  The further away we get from that time, the more the legend of the couch grows.

4. Hottest girl on beach, 2000.  We went to Spring Break in Panama Beach in 2000.  Among the good times that ensued, one afternoon we were walking to Subway and some random drunk group of guys drives by, rolls down their window, and yells at Lisa “you’re the hottest girl on the beach!” She was mortified, but everyone else thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard and some still repeat it to this day. Obviously, I take no umbrage with the phrase. You probably had to be there to realize how incredibly random and funny it was. 

3. College fights, 2000. We had one in college, and it was glorious. In our minds. We didn’t start it, but we ended it.  Actually, like all fights, it kind of ended on its own.  The second fight wasn’t a fight so much as me getting randomly punched in the stomach by the captain of our softball team before the championship game.  You see, I was giving a “win one for the gipper” speech to the team (the bawdry college version of the speech) and stopped to spit, which baseball managers are known to do.  There was a very strong wind, and the spittle flew onto the leg of the captain, who summarily punched me in the stomach.  He was very strong, so I just kind of bent over and everyone looked around for a minute and then went to their positions.  Needless to say, we lost that game and I had digestive issues for 3 days.  The real fight is a much better story.

2. Bachelor party love, 2004 & 2007. We did my bachelor party on the semi-cheap and went to New Orleans, which of course was riotous fun.  The party was just dying down and we’d all gathered in my room to *fall asleep* while regaling each other with stories of our heroics on Bourbon Street. Then all of the sudden, Larry (he of the #5 fame) bursts into the room with 2 enormous pizzas and the place went crazy like the Rockets just won game 7.  Larry looked like Super Mario with big greasy pizzas. You really had to be there. But this story isn’t about love between men and pizza, it’s about a more traditional form of love. Later that night (well, that morning, but you know what I mean), Brad went out on the town and happened to come across a bachelorette party from Houston.  There was one girl he liked, so he kept asking her out. 6 times she said no, and on the 7th she said yes.  They were married 2 years ago and had their first child about 8 months ago.  

That was the first.  The second story is much better, but I can’t tell it here.

1. Lightning strikes twice, 2008. Lightning struck Lisa and then our AC unit within 2 weeks of each other. No joke. We found out soon after that Lisa was pregnant with Ava. What are the chances of even one of those two strikes happening, you might ask. 1 on 240,000.  Not as low as I would have thought, to be perfectly honest. And go ahead with the “Zeus is the father” jokes – we’ve made them all.

Best Songs to Run to of the Decade (NSFW)

5. Lose Yourself & Till I Collapse – Eminem.  Till I Collapse is a far superior song, so of course everyone thinks Lose Yourself as the new Eye of the Tiger.  

4. Walk it Out Remix – DJ Unk, Andre 3000, etc.  Andre 3K justifies the size of his posse by rapping “even Jesus had 12 disciples”.

3. Put On Remix – Young Jeezey.  I myself try to Put On for H-Town.  

2. Jesus Walks & Never Let Me Down – Kanye West.  For the sake of this list, these songs are one – one flows directly to the next anyway.  If you haven’t heard Never Let Me Down, it’s one of the best rap songs ever made.  Just like #5, the song that is more popular is actually the worse of the two.

1. Hustlin Remix – Rick Ross, Jay Z, and a bunch of other rappers.  

(Disclaimer – A number of other Kanye songs almost made the list, and the best running music is Outkast’s stuff from the late 90s)

Best of Youtube of the Decade

5. Chocolate Rain.

4. The Hamster. I never got this, but everyone else thought it was hilarious.  Maybe I should have put the various Single Ladies videos here.

3. Keyboard Cat. This is my fav, but there are plenty.

2. Star Wars Kid. You feel bad for him until you realize he’s famous and rich and we’re not. Here is the best remake, by far.

1. Numa Numa.  The original, and still the best.

Best of JBJs of the Next Decade

5. Seeing where this social media thing goes.

4. Becoming fat and happy.  Or fit and unhappy.  Gotta choose one, right?

3. Learning a lot.  About a lot of stuff.

2. Financial products and services to help low-income folks lift themselves out of poverty.  Microfinance FTW!

1. Ava’s first everything.  Hay ride, fireworks, t-ball, day at school, cannonball off the diving board, first book read to Daddy and Mommy, etc…

Thanks for reading my rambles.

*Apparently there isn’t one right answer to this question.  But every time I try to add links to the different points of view, my browser crashes.  Don’t know what that means, but it means something.  So if you’re interested, google it yourself so your browser can crash.

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