Lists. Everybody’s doing it, at least on their blog. What a great idea. Instead of trying to write a narrative or something resembling a column, I just have to create arbitrary lists that reflect my opinions, for which the world awaits with baited breath.
The other beauty of this idea is that I can trot it out anytime I am pressed for time or ideas, like now. Any idiosyncratic list will do! I tried to be original.
Limiting this to 10 lists. More exciting, craptastic content to come. This rules!
Artsy-Fartsy Lists
Top 5 Famous Works of Fiction that I Hate or Can’t Finish:
1. Middlemarch, by George Elliot
2. Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
3. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
4. Cathedral, by Raymond Carver
5. Molloy, by Samuel Beckett
Don’t get into an argument with a buncha female lit majors about Middlemarch. You’ll get slaughtered.
Top 5 Highbrow/Pretentious Intellecual Pleasures (Music Division)
1. Beethoven
2. Schubert
3. John Coltrane
4. Just about any opera
5. Dizzy Gillespie
Classical, intellectual jazz, opera: what more pretense could you ask for?
Listen to an expert
Top 5 Lowbrow/Guilty Pleasures (Music Division):
1. Spinal Tap
2. The Ramones
3. AC/DC
4. Frank Sinatra
5. “Convoy”
Actually, I’m not ashamed of any of these. Except “Convoy.”
Top 5 Books by Wm. Faulkner, Even Though I Might Not Have Finished Them:
1. The Sound and the Fury
2. Intruder in the Dust
3. Absolom, Absolom!
4. Light in August
5. As I Lay Dying
I couldn’t tell you precisely what happened in Absolom, but it’s a great book.
Top 5 Bogart Flix:
1. The Big Sleep
2. The Maltese Falcon
3. Casablanca
4. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
5. Key Largo
“Go ahead, scratch it.”
Painful Memories Lists
5 Stupidest Catchphrases Used at My Suburban High School in the early 1980s:
1. “____ totally wales!” (“Def Leppard totally wales!”)
2. “____ totally rules!” (“That Adrienne Barbeau poster totally rules!”)
3. “Choice _____, for sure” (“‘Spirit of the Radio’ is choice Rush, for sure.”)
4. “Totally awesome.” (self-explanatory)
5. “No s–t, Sherlock.”
Inane stuff, Sherlock.
5 Cool Words/Insults I Thought I Invented in High School, But, As It Turned Out, Did Not:
1. “Likmeister.”
2. “Bizzart.”
3. “Dingus.” (“You stupid dingus!”)
4. “Chucklehead.”
5. “Jabutt.” (contraction of “Jabba the Hutt.”)
My cup overflowed with brilliance.
5 Cringe-Inducing Memories From High School:
1. My hair
2. My acne
3. Profound awkwardness around girls
4. Every losing sports performance/game
5. Failing my driver’s license test the first time
See how different and special I was than every other teenage boy?
5 Worst Things Told to Me on a Date (absolutely true, NONE involving Wife):
1. “Black mothers don’t take good care of their children.”
2. “I don’t read much.”
3. “Is that fat-free?”
4. First (& last) date: “I could fall in love with you.”
5. “No, I won’t sleep with you. Never.”
Can’t do worse, except maybe what I said to dates.
Top 5 Most Painful Moments as a Sports Fan:
1. Cubs Choke in ’03 Playoffs
2. Cubs Choke in ’84 Playoffs
3. Cubs Choke in ’89 Playoffs
4. Cubs Choke in ’04 Regular Season
5. Cubs Choke in ’05 (in progress)
Can’t say why I keep going back, like a battered wife.
man, this thing takes so long to open.
that was good writin. most lists suck.
faulkner? [fante]
ramones and opera? my man.
cubs? along with wimbledon, once my cable joy of summer. and, of course, they sucked.
then, the cubs got good. and wgn, mlb, and the cubs themselves decided to fuck me out of my games.
now. i just about bust one in my boxer briefs every time the sox beat the cubs in inter/league.
anyhow. you’re a really good writer. your blog is the shiz
Boy, you and I have a lot in common.
Great lists, a fun read.
And yes, Adrian Barbeau had an awesome rack.
heh…’craptastic’ will be my favorite word for the month.
Love your lists. Definitely a new twist on a common blog thang.
roflfao @ “CONVOY”….are you serious…you are talking about the song..10/4 goodbuddy…LOL
omg i can’t stop laughing……….
wheww.. good list.
I used to say ‘sillie dog’ and ‘no biggie’ all the time.
The date quotes killed me… oh lord there are some winners out there. Thank gawd you found “the wife” !
tblue: blogger is suckin’ these days. thanks for the props. i was reading a magazine article about bukowski and fante’s name came up, the signs are there for me to read him.
phoenixnyc: if you have a lot in common with me, then i worry. adrienne barbeau’s bod…totally ruled.
glitzy: “craptastic” is yet another word purloined from other sources. but thanks for the compliments. my feeling is if you’re going to copy a blog idea, at least try to make it your own.
michelle: “convoy” is the greatest terrible song in the history of man. C.W. McCall wales.
cedia: “no biggie” is a good one. “sillie dog” is new to my ears, though it sounds about right.
bees: aren’t there so many winners out there? yeah, i got lucky with Wife.
the ramones aren’t lowbrow!!! they were punk rock royalty!!!
Adrienne Barbeau? Lord…
LOL you know BF, i am still peeing myself over that Convoy song……
Being a Cubs fan is an exercise in masocism.
Two things-
Sad to say, I use the word “totally” FAR too often for my own good. It’s sheer insanity.
And “Bizzart”? What the hell does that mean? I have to know!
darth: the ramones are royalty, agreed, but they wouldn’t be the ramones if they weren’t dumb, or pretended to be.
collin: adrienne barbeau had that older-woman-next-door, looks like she’s frigid, then bam! she’s got boobs.
LBB: if being a cubs fan is masochism, being a yankees fan is sadism. being a cardinals fan is just plain goofy.
madame: welcome to our world of toys. As far as the word in question, bizzare + art = bizzart. Or say this aloud, “Bizzare art. Bizzart!” cool, huh?
Those lists were great. I’ve read at least parts of books 2-5 and would have to agree with you that they suck. How do these books repeatedly get praised as classics? I guess if they were all around one hundred years ago and if all you had to do at night was read or uhm…read they might be bearable…no, I take that back. I would blow out the candle and stare into the dark.
Okay, from the top: did you study _Moby_ and _Beloved_ in a class, or just try to get through them yourself? You’ve got to have patience with _Moby_.
Come on, you can’t cite _Convoy_ and be ashamed of it. As an English major, I proudly proclaim that “eleven long-haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus” is one of the more memorable lines ever written. ;-0
_Light in August_ is my favorite Faulkner. You can’t read _Moby Dick_, but _Sound and the Fury_ tops your Faulkner list?
I just retured from San Francisco and paying homage to John’s Grill, “Home of the Maltese Falcon.”
Great lists.
keroaced: it does mystify me why the academy blesses some books more than others. sometimes it’s a political trend; when willa cather was “outed” (not clear to me one way or the other), she became quite the rage at feminist-dominated english depts. (english prof, back me up on this! there’s nothing wrong with feminist lit depts!). for a good part of the 20th century, henry james was ignored because he didn’t reflect the needs of the proletariat. even my main man faulkner was ignored for several years. it’s all about the prevailing attitudes in academia.
english prof: did not read either beloved or dick for class, totally on my own as an adult. dick is one of those books i probably should give another chance — i didn’t loathe it, but was wearying. maybe now i’m 40 i’ll the patience. (wasn’t thrilled with billy budd, either) as far as boo to melville and yay to faulkner, nobody said i had to be consistent.
i will stand by my position that “beloved” is bad. an incoherent mess of emotion without context. commits my worst sin, which is it completely lacks wit. reads like an episode of Oprah. wait a minute…
yes, that is a great line re: “convoy,” though i’m afraid my love of the song will remain, like willa cather, in the closet.
I know plenty of people who couldn’t make it through MB; I read it as an adult because I thought I should–it would be too embarassing to me as an English major not to have read it. It might interest you to know that James is back in again; at the institutions I’ve been associated with, Faulkner never left, although Hemingway is becoming more and more scarce. Morrison is best read as a response to Faulkner–there are some really great critical works out there on Beloved that go beyond “Oooh, it’s the poor baby’s ghost.”
I wasn’t able to watch the TV adaptation of “Their Eyes Were Watching God”–did anyone see it who can tell me if it was well-done, or if Hurston is rolling in her grave?