A brief list of some lists of 2008

I love this time of year: When everybody comes out with their lists of the best and worst things of all time, or at least 2008. Or at least in very recent memory. Without preamble, here’s my list of the best lists out there. Well, perhaps not the best. But they are definitely lists:

1. The 10 Best American Movies by Stanley Fish. Surprising for its inclusion of Groundhog Day, which certainly belongs on some list. The rest of them … meh. I don’t want to see Double Indemnity on any more best-movie lists. I watched it in 2008 and it seems like a parody of itself. Ditto with Shane. That Joey kid was annoying in 1953, and he hasn’t gotten less so.

2. The Best of 2008 by Malu Fernandez of the Manila Standard, which, in the manner of most lists, weighs in with the most recent moment the writer can remember: the profane rant by Kathy Griffin against a heckler in Times Square — a pivotal moment in celebrity history that shall surely outlive us all. Malu also considers Kath & Kim the best TV show of the year, so you may want to take the rest of his list with grain or two of salt.

3. Time Magazine’s list of everything that occurred in 2008. Actually, they missed that time I was rear-ended by a cell-phone using driver in April, but everything else is there, collated in convenient list form. Sometimes the categories seem a bit narrow as a result: Couldn’t Top 10 Campaign Gaffes, Top 10 Campaign Video Moments and Top 10 Open Mike Moments have been combined into one Big Political Embarrassment category? Note to Malu Fernandez: Check out the top 10 TV series. Kath & Kim is not on there.

4. The Quigley Poll’s list of the top money-making movie stars, in which Will Smith comes out on top and Tom Cruise doesn’t place. This is news you can use. But whatever the hell happened to Chuck Connors?

5. The Religion Newswriters Association’s list of the top 10 celebrity meltdowns. Just kidding, it’s really a list of the top 10 religion stories of the year, starting with our friend the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and concluding with the thousands killed during the free exercise of religion in Iraq. Conclusion: It’s been quite a year for religion. At least there were no hajj stampedes.

6. Yahoo’s list of the Top 10 searches. Leaving aside the question of who uses Yahoo to search for anything these days, it will come as no surprise that the number-one search term is actually two words, and those words are Britney Spears. Moving down the categories until we come to Influential Women, we find that the most influential woman of the year is … Angelina Jolie. Followed by Sarah Palin. I want you all to think about that for a moment.

And that’s enough of that. Who ends a list at six? I do. But I’m not getting paid for this and I have other irons in the fire, so to speak. See you tomorrow.