Tag: lists (Page 1 of 5)

Ranking Shit: Old Man Stuff

August 24, 2023 / DB

Time for another entry in the (very) occasional Ranking Shit series. This time I’m going to rank a few of my Old Man Tendencies that have popped up, or grown stronger, in recent years.

5 – Fussy About the Dishwasher
I’ve set some very clear standards on how our dishwasher should be loaded. But the other three (sometimes four) people who live with me just refuse to follow those guidelines. To be clear, if you are a guest at our house and you are kind enough to load the dishwasher after a meal, I do not care how you do it. I will appreciate the gesture. I may correct your effort later in secret, but I will not be annoyed by it. But my immediate family? They all know better.

4 – Fussy About Clothes
It’s a real Larry David situation with me and clothes. If a shirt is off by even a half inch, it can drive me crazy. This includes being a half inch too long, too short, too wide, too narrow. Anything that doesn’t seem to fit perfectly will make me fidgety and cranky. Don’t get me started how one brand’s large is another brand’s extra large is a third brand’s medium…

3 – People Who Get Confused About Trash Day And Holidays
Our trash comes on Tuesdays. I die a little each time I see a neighbor dragging their cans out on Memorial Day, Labor Day, etc.

To be honest, I revel in the smugness that comes with always knowing the proper trash day way more than I get perturbed by those people who can’t get it right.

2 – People Driving Without Headlights When It Is Dark
Seriously, you’re going to kill someone! And headlights are automatic these days: you have made a choice to turn them off. Which makes you an asshole.

This could be a whole section about traffic in general, but this point in particular really gets me going.

1 – I Report A Shitload of Potholes to the Indianapolis Department of Public Works On Their Official App
And then I brag to my daughters when ones that I flagged get repaired. They really love that.

Ranking Shit: Most Watched Movies

June 8, 2023 / DB

When I watched part of Real Genius a week ago, it got me thinking about the movies I watched the most between 1985 and 1994.[1] These were the glory days of movies on TV, a time when there was a great chance you would find one of, say, 40 different movies playing on one channel or another. There was no better way to waste time than flipping through your cable dial to find one of your favorites, then not moving until it was over.

I’ve always argued that was cooler than today, when you can stream pretty much any movie you want at the time of your choosing. There was the sheer randomness of coming across Just One of the Guys or Airplane! on a rainy Saturday afternoon. There was the joy of tuning in just in time for your favorite scene, or the agony of missing the line you love the most by a few minutes. And then the utility of knowing that Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was on TBS while you were watching football on NBC, allowing you to flip over during commercials.[2]

Anyway, here’s my best guess at the movies I watched the most during this period. Once again I’m wishing we could access the metadata in our brains so I could get exact counts. I will include one of my most quoted lines from each movie as a little bonus content.

Beverly Hills Cop
“Is this the man who wrecked the buffet…”

Real Genius
“You know, you’ll rue the day!”
“Rue the day? Who talks like that?”

Naked Gun
“Nice beaver!”
“Thank you. I just had it stuffed.”

Sixteen Candles
“No he’s not retarded.”

Better Off Dead
“Now that’s a real shame when folks be throwing away a perfectly good white boy like that.”

“Gee I’m sorry your mom blew up, Ricky.”
“Lane Meyer, the kid from Green Bay…”

“You’ll make a fine little helper, what’s your name?
“Charles DuMar.”
“Shut up, geek!”

Caddyshack
My top two picks are very tough to select a quote from, as I recited damn near every line of them endlessly with my fellow cinema aficionados. It seems like this is the one we did most from Caddyshack.

“I want you to kill every gopher on the course.
“Check me if I’m wrong, Sandy, but if I kill all the golfers they’re going to lock me up and throw away the key.”
“GOPHERS YOU GREAT GIT, NOT GOLFERS. THE LITTLE BROWN FURRY RODENTS!”

Fletch
My unobtainable metadata might show that I quoted another movie more (although not much more), but I would almost guarantee I watched no movie more during those ten years than Fletch. This quote is the one that even people who never saw the movie used on a regular basis.

“It’s all ball bearings nowadays.”

I pick that range because we first got cable in 1985, and capping it at ten years seemed about right. Swingers and Office Space would enter the conversation if we extended the range out further. And I’m obviously not including Christmas movies. ↩
RIP Picture in Picture, one of the greatest inventions ever that was, for reason, largely killed off when the world moved to digital cable. Now PIP means being able to watch the NCAA tournament while still working on your TPS reports on your work computer. ↩

Ranking Shit: Alternate Hoops Programs

April 4, 2023 / DB

As mentioned awhile back, I have a few of these in various stages of development. With the college basketball season complete, seems like a good day to dust off this one.

This idea comes from a KU-centric podcast I listen to regularly. During the holidays they had a segment where they selected an elite program they would choose to be a fan of if KU was not an option. This came on the heels of Indiana’s visit to Lawrence in December. All of the hosts were at the game and mentioned how great the IU fans were: very respectful and interested in the history of KU hoops and Allen Fieldhouse while being passionate about their own team.

So today I’ll rank three big time programs that I could support, and three I would never cheer for, if I had not been #blessed to be born in the Jayhawk state.

Programs I Could Follow

3 – Arizona. The Wildcats have been good for the better part of 40 years. They tend to dominate the Pac-Whatever the way KU has dominated the Big 12. They have a fun, loud home court environment. They generally have really good players, many of whom go on to play in the NBA. Good weather if I were to visit for a game. Usually have solid uniforms but they’ve also had some missteps in recent years.

2 – UCLA. My dream school as a kid. One of the absolute coolest athletic programs in all of sports. Tons of history. Peaks and valleys in the modern era, but they really should be decent most of the time. A typically bandwagon LA fanbase so it seems like if I went all-in I could get pretty good season tickets easily. Cool uniforms, which is always a bonus.

1 – Indiana. Kind of a cheat since I live in the Hoosier state, my wife went to IU, and I have a graduate degree from the school. I’ve not liked IU at any point of my 20 years here, so it would take some work. Still, the Hoosiers are in many ways the most similar program to KU. A top five history. Midwest fans who are knowledgable and intense but have an appreciation for good ball no matter who plays it. KU and IU fans are arrogant in very similar ways, too. Assembly Hall is ugly and strange, but is a real monster when the Hoosiers are playing well. Plus odds are at least one of my kids will go there.

HM: Villanova
Pre-Jay Wright retirement they had a cool combination of small, local school with big time national success. Cool uniforms. Not sure if that will be sustained with him gone.

Programs I Could Never Follow

3 – Baylor. I’m not sure there are many actual Baylor hoops fans. Sure, a lot of Baylor alums enjoy the success of their team. But it’s Texas: all they really care about is football. I’ve seen way too many big games in their arena between two ranked teams with a ton of empty seats. For a religious institution, they sure have had a lot of really, really bad scandals, ones that go way beyond paying a power forward to enroll. The school has always shirked any responsibility for the issues inside their athletic programs. Which makes Scott Drew the perfect coach for them. Just like the institution, Drew is, and always has been, a giant phony. He’s as dirty a recruiter as there is but camouflages it behind the shield of Baylor, the Baptist church, and the Bible. He co-opted the success of the Baylor women’s program until he won a title of his own. He has a lot of “Look At Me” to his personality. The shade of green they use is a terrible color for uniforms. Don’t get me started on their neon yellow ones. Chip and Joanna need to go away.

2 – Kentucky. UK fans are a true mixed bag. I’ve met some incredibly nice ones who are a delight to talk hoops with. I’ve met others who are embarrassments to the concept of fandom. You can say that about every fanbase, whether the program is good or bad. But it feels like more Kentucky fans than any others will go out of their way to tell you how good they are and diminish anything your school has done. There are a ton of UK fans in Indianapolis, which is super annoying. More of an NBA than a college feel about every aspect of the program. The Rupp Arena crowd is a weird combo of rich, horse people and Kentucky rednecks, neither group being one I would hang out in. Rupp is loud but it has no charm. Cal is an ass who has been wasting great recruiting classes for nearly a decade.

1 – Duke. Even with Coach K gone, the air of superiority and entitlement around this program is unmatched. I don’t think Jon Scheyer, or any future Duke coach, will ever have any interest in removing the sanctimonious stink of the K era. Most of their “fans” had no chance to be admitted to the school. They use Duke’s academic reputation to hide that the program is exactly the same Nike-fueled basketball factory that Kentucky is. They defended Greyson Allen. Paid Zion’s dad but KU will get punished for it. K colored his hair for years.

Ranking Shit: Wasted Items

February 28, 2023 / DB

I’ve not been very good about continuing with this concept. It seems like I mostly think of it in relation to music, and I figure I have enough music content here already. Or when I get a decent, non-music idea, I have enough other posts lined up. I have a few of those ideas sitting in my drafts folder and will try to share them plus add some new entries so this can be a more regular feature.

Today I’m going to rank the things that get wasted the most in our house. These are in no particular order.

1 – Fresh fruit/vegetables
I feel bad about this one. It seems like we’re always throwing away at least one apple, banana, or orange that sits on the counter too long. But worse are the berries and veggies that get put into the fridge. I’ll remember to take them out for dinner one night then not think of them again for a week, when they are either moldy or mushy. Big time consumer/parent fail here.

2 – Notebooks/notebook paper
I wonder what percentage of notebooks I’ve purchased in my life that were more than 60% used when I chucked them into the trash or recycling. And each spring the girls hand me their leftover loose leaf paper, which goes into a stack that is so tall it will likely never be exhausted.

3 – Ice cream
My family loves to eat about two-thirds of a tub of ice cream then shove it to the back of the freezer where it sits, growing freezer burn crystals, until I toss it two months later.

4 – Leftovers
The girls are not huge fans of leftovers. We try to have one dinner per week that is made up of whatever we ate the previous 2–3 nights. But I still toss far too much food I’ve cooked to clear space before I make a big trip to the grocery store. I feel like most of my recipes don’t result in huge portions, either. I try to do my part, but I have a hard time eating leftovers more than a couple times.

5 – Magazines
I was struggling to think of a fifth entry. Then I looked at our coffee table. I get one golf magazine that I don’t pay for but keeps arriving every month. I never read it. We got Indianapolis Monthly for years without ever doing more than checking the restaurant listings. It looks the they finally stopped auto-renewing it for us, but we still have a stack of them. And S gets several medical journals each month. She flips through a few of them, but a couple are related to her previous speciality and go straight into the recycling. I still love getting a magazine or two before we take a trip, but I rarely get through the entire volume. They’ll join the pile until my twice-yearly purge.

A far cry from when I got Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, and a few more magazines regularly and almost always read them front-to-back.

Stats

January 1, 2023 / DB

As I do every January 1, a slightly different accounting of my listening habits.

December 2022

Bing Crosby – 79
Frank Sinatra – 76
The Jackson 5 – 57
Burl Ives – 37
Otis Redding – 36

2022

The War on Drugs – 362
Gang of Youths – 326
The Beatles – 298
Eddie Vedder – 249
Wet Leg – 166

All Time [1]

Frightened Rabbit – 3678
Pearl Jam – 3641
The War on Drugs – 3214
The Beatles – 2589
Ryan Adams – 2297

Checking my totals from 1/1/2022, Frightened Rabbit gained one point on Pearl Jam over the past 12 months while The War on Drugs knocked off over 150 plays from the #2 spot. I’m sure no one else cares about these numbers.

Complete stats available at my Last.fm page.

Since February 14, 2005 ↩

Ranking Shit: SNF Songs

September 21, 2022 / DB

Today I unveil a new style of post. Who knows how regular these will be, or how long they will last. But let’s give it a shot.

As the title suggests, in these posts I will be Ranking Shit. Five things I will place in an order with just a few words of explanation.

To kick us off, I will rank the top five songs on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Why am I ranking songs that are 45 years old? Great question! Over the past week I’ve heard a bunch of these, either on SiriusXM or an iHeart Radio American Top 40 replay. So they’ve been in my head.

5 – “More Than A Woman”

There should an asterisk on this one, since there are two versions of the song on the soundtrack, one by the Bee Gees the other by Tavares. They are both very good, although I was partial to the Tavares version as a kid.

4 – “Stayin’ Alive” – Bee Gees

THE song most people remember when they think of the movie and the soundtrack. Not many things in my lifetime have been cooler than John Travolta walking through Brooklyn to the beat of this.

3 – “Disco Inferno” – The Trammps

Burn, baby, burn. My favorite song on the album when I was a kid and my parents were spinning it endlessly. The only entry on this list not written by the Gibb brothers.

2 – “How Deep Is Your Love” – Bee Gees

A perfect ballad.

1 – “If I Can’t have You” – Yvonne Elliman

Maybe the archetypal crying in the club song? Elliman does an amazing job injecting her vocals with pain without ever going over-the-top.

Thoughts on “The Number Ones” of the ’80s

September 1, 2021 / DB

Tom Breihan passed a notable milestone this week in his The Number Ones series: he finished the 1980s. Most days I just glance at the comments. But Monday, as Phil Collins’ “Another Day in Paradise” closed out the decade, I read deep into them, enjoying commenters’ various picks of favorites, most hated, most overlooked, etc tracks.

I don’t participate in the comments section, so I’ll share some of my picks here.

My top 10 Number One songs of the 1980s:

1 – “Let’s Go Crazy” – Prince & The Revolution, 1984. Not my favorite of his songs (my favorite peaked at #2), but my favorite of his number ones.
2 – “Open Your Heart” – Madonna, 1987. Just a perfect little pop song augmented by a fabulous video.
3 – “Out of Touch” – Daryl Hall and John Oates, 1984. Another tough choice from many H&O choices. Like “Let’s Go Crazy,” it’s not my favorite H&O song, but it is a very close second to a track that also peaked at #2.
4 – “Miss You Much” – Janet Jackson, 1989. This feels more like a ‘90s song since most of the singles off Rhythm Nation peaked after the turn of the decade and they were so influential on the music of the ‘90s. But this hit in late 1989, so it’s a legit ‘80s track.
5 – “Down Under” – Men at Work, 1982. Maybe THE essential song of the MTV era.
6 – “Billie Jean” – Michael Jackson, 1983. Again, tough to choose from many options. This suffers just a bit because I’ve never been sure if I like it or “Beat It” more.
7 – “West End Girls” – Pet Shop Boys, 1986. I’m always a little surprised and pleased when I remember this hit number one.
8 – “Owner of a Lonely Heart” – Yes, 1984. An odd song, both in general and in Yes’ discography. It was odd in a good way, though, and remains an absolute jam.
9 – “When Doves Cry” – Prince, 1984. One of the first songs I can remember that haunted me after I heard it for the first time because it was so good.
10 – “Don’t You Want Me” – The Human League, 1982. This along with “Tainted Love” were massive songs to me as I shifted toward picking my own music rather than just listening to what my mom played.

Just missed: “Like a Prayer,” Madonna; “Time After Time,” Cyndi Lauper; “Beat It,” Michael Jackson; “Bette Davis Eyes,” Kim Carnes.

Biggest surprises from reading through Breihan’s 1980s entries:
1 – How freaking huge Phil Collins was. I remember him having a ton of songs, but did not remember him being as massive as he truly was. Seven number ones as a solo artist, with two more top tens. A number two hit in “Easy Lover” with Phillip Bailey. Another number one and five top tens with Genesis. That’s nuts! It’s easy to make fun of Collins for a variety of reasons. And some of those songs are true crap. But a few are still pretty solid. He deserves to be in the pantheon of ‘80s artists whether or not he is your cup of tea.
2 – A new appreciation for George Michael. I was never a huge fan. It was interesting to read about his development as an artist, how he was one of the few white artists to make Black-influenced music that came off as authentic rather than a rip-off of Black culture, and how visionary he was in carving out his career.
3 – The Heart song “Alone.” I had always thrown this in with all the other crappy power-ballads of the era. After reading Tom’s write up I was convinced that it is a freaking beast of a song. I’ve cranked it way up the two or three times I’ve heard it since I read about it.

Now, for balance, here are my ten least favorite number ones of the 1980s.

1 – “Kokomo” – The Beach Boys, 1988. There are a lot of legit choices for worst number one song of the 1980s. To my ears, this blows all the contenders away. This is a truly wretched track that sums up the disaster that was The Beach Boys under Mike Love’s control.
2 – “Do That To Me One More Time” – The Captain and Tennille, 1980. A song that seriously makes me want to vomit. And that’s before knowing how dark and sad their private life was.
3 – “Wind Beneath My Wings” – Bette Midler, 1989. Hot garbage.
4 – “Chariots of Fire” – Vangelis, 1982. Garbage.
5 – “Endless Love” – Diana Ross & Lionel Richie, 1981. A true piece of crap. This was somehow supposed to represent teenagers being in some kind of forbidden love? The fact it was number one for a million weeks is a crime against humanity that Lionel still needs to be held accountable for since he wrote it.
6 – “Say You, Say Me” – Lionel Richie, 1985. A song that makes no sense, lyrically or musically.
7 – “The One That You Love” – Air Supply, 1981. I will shit on Air Supply any time I get a chance.
8 – “Ebony and Ivory” – Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder, 1982. It’s is frankly stunning that two of the greatest songwriters in the history of popular music could make something this bad.
9 – “Hangin’ Tough” – New Kids on the Block, 1989. Set back white boys like 100 years with this bullshit. They might have sold more records, but NKOTB could never hold New Edition’s collective jock.
10 – “Lady” – Kenny Rogers, 1980. Guess who wrote this? LIONEL FUCKING RICHIE, THAT’S WHO.

Beatles Songs, Ranked

December 29, 2020 / DB

“Favorite Songs by Artist X” lists are a dime a dozen when it comes to certain bands. They are click-baity and unnecessary, as they’ve been done and done and done again. Still, as a music fan I will almost always read them and listen to the songs they cover if it is a band I care about.

I think that is why it took Steven Hyden so long to get to the Beatles. After doing Springsteen, Petty, U2, and the White Stripes, he finally got to the Fab Five just before Christmas.

The great thing about a Beatles list is you can get through it so quickly. I started listening to this one evening and finished it early the next afternoon. Compare that to his Springsteen list, which took me several days to get through.

If you need a time waster in this week between, pull up this list and get to reading and listening.

The Best Beatles Songs, Ranked

Revisiting Classic Gifts

December 21, 2020 / DB

I was digging through the blog archives last night and came across this post, from December 2004. It is an accounting of the best Christmas gifts I received as a kid, which was about as “typical 2004 personal blog post” as you could get.

I had two thoughts as I read it:

1 – If I re-did the list today I would add one adult gift: when S got me the first iPhone in 2007. That is the greatest gift I ever received. I hadn’t asked for it, didn’t expect it, and thought I was unwrapping a new cologne because of the size of the box. We haven’t purchased gifts for each other for years, generally because we both buy whatever we want/need on our own. But I think some of it is because she ruined Christmas with that gift: it could never be topped. Since she’s not super into Christmas, maybe that was her plan!

2 – Our girls are all pretty much out of that window when you get cool stuff. L is just barely in it, and she’s definitely getting the coolest gifts this year. But her sisters are both firmly in the asking for clothes and things to decorate with teenage phase. To be honest, that phase is a lot more logical. The clothes and things for their rooms they will be getting on Friday are a lot more practical and will get a lot more use that the cool toys they wanted ten years ago. But toys make Christmas mornings a lot more fun than getting a new outfit or artwork for your walls.

Classic Christmas Gifts

The Office Christmas Episodes, Ranked

December 17, 2020 / DB

My Wednesday activity, other than preparing for my in-laws to arrive tonight, was watching all of The Office Christmas episodes. As you can imagine, this was an extremely good way to spend time, especially on a very cold, snowy night.

As I watched I thought, “I should put together some kind of rudimentary list, ranking them in order of my preference.” Then I looked and saw there are approximately 8000 of these lists. And, you know, The Office hasn’t had a new episode in seven years, sooooo not exactly relevant.

However, given the show’s continuing popularity, how this has become a bit of a holiday tradition for me (based on two years), and since the show is going from the highly available Netflix to the much more restricted Peacock platform next month, I figured I should do a quick ranking in hopes of nudging some of you to tackle them over the next couple weeks.

1 – Season 3, Episode 10: “Benihana Christmas”
Offensive in sooooo many ways, but generally harmless and always hilarious. And sooooo many classic moments. Michael photoshopping himself into his girlfriend’s family photo and sending it out as a Christmas card. The lunch at Benihana’s. Pam and Karen joining forces to launch an office party rivaling Angela’s. Michael and Andy bringing replacement level waitresses back to the office. The eventual melding of the parties. It gets bonus points for the ending, when Michael finally gets a mystery woman on the phone to agree to go to Sandals Jamaica with him. It is, of course, his boss Jan Levinson, which gave the series treeeeemendous material to work with going forward, including the series’ best ever episode, “The Dinner Party,” in season four.

2 – Season 2, Episode 10: “Christmas Party”
This set down the rules for which all future episodes followed, mostly Michael doing his best to ruin the party for everyone. Plus it shows how “Yankee Swap” rules only work if people are drinking and having fun. The Bob Vance introduction is low key one of the greatest moments ever. “So, what line of work are you in, Bob?”

3 – Season 5, Episode 11: “Moroccan Christmas”
The next three could drop in about any order. And I love the common thread of Phyllis becoming such a big part of the parties. Here she chooses a Moroccan theme to spice things up, forcing Angela to do her biding to keep quiet about Angela and Dwight’s affair. Phyllis dropping the bomb at the end gives this one the nod.

4 – Season 7, Episode 11: “Classy Christmas”
Michael’s old flame Holly returns to fill in for Toby, who is off to serve on the Scranton Strangler jury. In preparation, Michael trashes the planned party for a “classy” one. Michael in his classy Santa hat just makes me laugh.

5 – Season 6, Episode 13: “Secret Santa”
Phyllis as Santa, Kevin sitting on Michael’s lap then not knowing what to talk about, and Andy sending Erin the list from “The 12 Days of Christmas.” are highlights. Also an episode that ends on a warm note.

6 – Season 9, Episode 9: “Dwight Christmas”
Belsnickle always knows if you’ve been impish or admirable.

7 – Season 8, Episode 10: “Christmas Wishes”
The first Christmas without Michael Scott and it showed. By far the weakest of the list. Dwight getting back at Jim for years of pranks comes off as mean rather than cathartic and funny. And I’m not convinced Andy could ever have a girlfriend that looked like Jessica.