Tyranny of the Top Ten List

As I noted about this time last year, I'm hopeless at generating any sort of top 10 list. It's not that my ADHD-riddled mind starts to follow any old tangent down the surreal path of recollection, landing me at some synaptic crossroad between my grade school teacher's anything-but-clandestine flirting with the gym teacher/vice principal and the smoke-dried carcass of a rabbit hanging in the window of a butcher's shop in Oporto...OK, so yes that is my problem exactly, but...it's more that I myself don't much care past #4, and so find writing the explanations rather tortuous beyond that point.

Having said that, I truly adore other people's Top Ten Lists and consume them like sugar-coated popcorn. But, really, (Artforum, are you listening?), who can really stand to read more than one person's opinion of the top 10 within any given field at a time? Aren't multiple top ten lists of the same topics oxymoronic?

Therefore, for what's likely to be my last post of 2007 (barring some major blog emergency), I'm spanning the blogosphere for Top Ten Lists on various topics, and wishing you all a Very Happy New Year in the process. Here, in no particular order, (except perhaps the first one) are my Randomly Assigned 10 Top Ten Lists published on the blogosphere in the final month of 2006.

1. Tyler Green's Top 10 List of 2006. OK, so this one I look forward to more than most. Knowing how many exhibitions he sees coast to coast each year makes his list of outstanding exhibitions the one to note.
2. Top 10 Feminist Victories for 2006. [From Tennesse Guerilla Women] Includes Nancy Pelosi as "the first woman and first self-identified feminist Speaker of the House." Go Nancy!!!
3. Top 10 Metaphors of 2006. [From the Metaphor Observatory] Attributing the bounty of metaphors that emerged this past year to "a relatively sleepy news year where peace was no longer a destination and we had lots of time for commentary," this list includes, at number 3: "fallout - Hitting every form of press from Three Mile Island all the way to Chernobyl was the negatively-charged article "Foley Fallout". The explosive headline was scattered across several networks in the U.S. and in blogs around the world, and lasted so long on C.N.N. that they even changed the font to keep it fresh...."
4. Top 10 Better Business Beureau Scams. [via Improve Gas Mileage] Includes the year's most notorious attempts by con artists to play upon the public's sympathy/greed/ambivalence, etc. Including, at #9, The Oprah Ticket Scam, where "consumers are sent a letter or e-mail, claiming they've won a trip to a taping of the Oprah Winfrey Show in Chicago. All they have to do is send personal information to verify who they are. That information is then used to steal the consumer's identity."
5. Top 10 Astronomy Images. [From Bad Astronomy Blog] Includes (at #5) the truly astounding image of the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station shot in front of the sun:

6. Ten Worst myspace Personalities. [Via Tuna Crust] Including, at #5, "No Shirt Guy - We know you think that your bare chest is the ticket to the female promised land, but you're wrong for two reasons: 1) You're really not attractive 2) Girls hear the 'I'm an idiot' that your picture screams so very, very loudly. "
7. Ten Most Dangerous Toys of All Time. [From Another Storm] This is a nostalgic list for me. Did my parents miss buying us a single one of these? At # 6: "Bat Masterson Derringer Belt Gun–Somebody actually got paid to come up with the idea of combining a belt buckle with a cap gun. Ouch."
8. Top 10 Crazy Person of 2006. [From Jack Cantey's myspace] Highly irreverent, and spot on, IMO. Includes, at #8: "Evan Bayh. It took him an entire week of presidential campaigning in New Hampshire to figure out what the rest of the nation already knew: Who the fuck is Evan Bayh?"
9. Top 10 Sex Toys of 2006. [From the probably not work-safe Fleshbot]. OK, so this one is here because, as usual, I started to nod off while compiling this list, and, well, as #6 tells you, this one is anything but dull: "Talking Head Vibrators. Four out of five Fleshbot staffers we discussed this with expressed some discomfort with the idea; as one of them put it, 'Having someone whisper sweet nothings in my ear is one thing, but hearing my lover's voice come out of my pussy while I'm trying to get off is just plain creepy.'"
10. Top 10 Strangest Lego Creations. [From TechEBlog] Not at all sure what it means that three of these 10 reference toys (of one sort or another), but...these are too wonderfully weird not to include here:

Have a joyous New Years Eve, y'all!