Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Back Up and Run Over It Again: TOP FORTY TIME
You knew it was coming. Like tsunamis, colonoscopies and Broadway revivals, there’s really no stopping it. At the appointed hour on the appointed day, fate will fulfill itself. All you can really do is brace yourself, because baby, fate don’t come with airbags. It hardly even comes with funbags. But it does come with THE ANNUAL CHUCKLEHUT TOP FORTY REGURGITATION!
Regular readers know the score, which is currently, I think, 40 to 6 - six years I’ve done a “top 40” review of my least-execrable posts. New readers, to the extent such things exist (and I’m the guy who is pretty sure that the Lord of the Rings trilogy was based on actual events from a Star Trek prequel novella), should carefully peruse the following Articulation Of Criteria, so that they can appreciate just how random and arbitrary the following list is:
The “Top 40” is “like” “obscenity,” in that I know it when I see it, but not in the sense that it is actually obscene, which to my best understanding, it is not. Mostly.
So now you understand my ratings system, n’est-pas?
Perhaps a bit more detail would be appropriate. This is, after all, a critical annual endeavor. Nations wait breathlessly, pundits pant pendent and big dollars ride on the outcome of these deliberations. It’s the Oscars, the Emmys, and the meaningful half-dozen of the People’s Choice Awards, all crumpled up into a single indistinguishable ball and sent through the clothewasher by mistake. People want to play along, make their best guesses and see how their picks stack up against those of our panel of expert - of which there is, as it happens, only one, who is myself. I’ve worked solo ever since that Jimmy the Greek death-match fiasco a few years back. My point being, here’s a few other criteria I try to keep in mind when selecting my Top 40:
* They’re from the period 24 to 12 months ago - not the immediately-expired year. Some wounds are just too fresh to re-open.
* They’re relatively well-written - decent sentence structure, interesting vocabulary, clever wordplay, thematic consistency, provocative story development if that sort of thing applies. It’s writing, in short, that doesn’t make me overly-confused and cringey to discover that I’ve produced and posted it.
* If they’re not meaningful and touching, at least they’re good for a cheap laugh. You should take something away from the reading, be it only a juvenile giggle sometimes. Don’t underestimate the juvenile giggle. It’s what keeps me young, or at least, what keeps me juvenile.
* There are FORTY of them, randomly distributed across the identified reporting period. FORTY. Get it? This is a tricky one. Think “two-score,” or perhaps “Fifty-four-THIS-or-Fight.” Memnonics can help. Anyway, they helped Memnon. And look what happened to him.
That’s enough prologue. Let’s get to the good stuff: DAN’S TOP FORTY POSTS FROM JULY 23 2007 THROUGH JULY 22 2008:
Coronets and Kings
Crispy Ham Sandwiches - The Powersnak
Sheeting the Bed
A Sack Worth Grabbing
Parke and Go
Heaven Forfend
Giggidy Giggidy
Shipshape
Use Deadbolt for Safety
The Moralizing Brownie, or the Dessert of Repentence
Scoping Things Out
Drumhead
Punkakes
Bored Games
Lassitude
Mortality: Coiled and Ready to Strike
Hoppy Days
New Change
Smiles, Everybody - Smiles!
Playback - Remastered
Pop Star
Badass
Boatman of the Badlands
The Limalchemist
Going Postal
Shmuel and the Tallis
Valentines Greetings from the Artist in Residence
Shady Character
The Straight Line, plus Bonus Photo Delite Goodies
Trans It
Looking Quite Well Preserved, Anyway
Inside the Animated Children’s Actors’ Studio
Miscellany, Braindribbles, and the Tahoe Pix
The Devil and Mr. Johnson
The Devil and Mr. Johnson, Pt II (I’m counting this two-parter as a single post, because I have authorial privileges and an aristocratic bearing and embrace the chaos of modern life and I’M A FREE SPIRIT, MAN)
The Alien Next Door
Word on the Street
The Wet Fish
The Turning of the Tide
A Fraud in the House of Cool
Pigmental Monday
I think that’s enough for now. Remember, you have to finish them all before you get dessert. Enjoy, if you can. Otherwise, I’ll just catch you later with more of the same. I know, I know. But it’s what I do!
And here’s a little preview of upcoming Fairyland photos, just so you don’t get too burned out on the wordosity....
