Best of List 2009

For those of you who know me... or know at least one male, it shouldn't surprise you that I/we painstakingly like to compile, categorize and rank all the meaningless drivel we spend our free time accumulating and consuming. Frankly, these lists are the only way I can justify the amount of time I spend not making myself smarter, more fit or more accomplished. If it weren't for these lists, I might start feeling like a loser. Enjoy.

20 BEST MOVIES of 2009
(56 movies in the theater as of 12.26.09, 61 total )

20. It's Complicated
19. Julie & Julia
18. Paranormal Activity
17. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
16. Avatar
15. The Informant!
14. It Might Get Loud
13. Earth
12. Star Trek
11. Drag Me to Hell

10. Zombieland
09. The Hangover
08. Funny People
07. Up In the Air
06. Up
05. The Fantastic Mr. Fox
04. I Love You, Man
03. The Hurt Locker
02. Where the Wild Things Are
01. Inglourious Basterds



TOP 20 SONGS of 2009

20. Know Your Enemy - Greenday
19. The Great Escape - The Rifles
18. Run This Town - Jay-Z (feat. Rihanna and Kanye West)
17. The Midnight Rose - Willie Nile
16. The Girl Got Hot - Weezer
15. 1901 - Phoenix
14. 4 Songs and a Fight - The Sounds
13. Let Your Love Grow Tall - Passion Pit
12. Folding Chair - Regina Spektor
11. Winter Calls - The Rifles
10. Kickdrum Heart - The Avett Brothers
09. I And Love And You - The Avett Brothers
08. Seventeen - JET
07. Audience - Cold War Kids
06. Victoria - The Kooks
05. There Are Maybe 10 or 12 ... - A.C. Newman
04. The Last Carnival - Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band
03. The Static Age - Greenday
02. Tripping Down the Freeway - Weezer
01. Death - White Lies

TOP ALBUMS of 2009

10. I And Love And You - The Avett Brothers (1.692)
09. The Blueprint 3 - Jay-Z (1.733)
08. The Great Escape - The Rifles (1.75)
07. Changing Horses - Ben Kweller (1.80)
06. Street Sweeper Social Club - Street Sweeper Social Club (1.82)
05. Cosmic Egg - Wolfmother (1.88)
04. 21st Century Breakdown - Greenday (1.89)
03. House of a Thousand Guitars - Willie Nile (2.08)
02. Working On A Dream - Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band (2.25)
01. Raditude - Weezer (2.30)


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To see my previous rankings, visit the 2008, 2007 or 2006 links.

Belgium Competition Displays No Neck, Brains

I've never pretended to understand the mind of a professional bodybuilder.

All the best t-shirts would never come in my size, I could never air-guitar properly again without ripping one (or seven) of my pecs off and I'd always be slippery with grease, which wouldn't bother me so much as it would the people who sat in the same seat as me on the train.

So take my navigation through the 2009 Belgium Bodybuilding Championships with a grain of salt, will you? If you're low on salt, check out the AP Story.

Twenty nut-hugger-wearing iron-pumpers (probably grunting the Belgian equivalent of "dude" and "bro") waddled quickly out of the Arsenaal* Theater on Sunday after anti-doping officials paid a surprise visit to the infamously steroid-prone contest. How prone? Glad you asked. During last year's competition, the northern Belgium region found 22 of the 29 body builders' sample test positive with some form of performance enhancer, most showing excessive levels of anabolic steroids. That kind of prone.

*Are we all in agreement that the ARSEnaal Theater is the perfect venue name for a group like this.

So, it wasn't so much shocking as sad when the anti-doping officials arrived and witnessed the entire gaggle of muscle-men just grab their gear and run off as soon as they entered into the room. Nevermind shock, the best part of this ridiculous little story is how deadpan the anti-doping officials seem to be about it.

"The sport has a history of doping and this incident didn't do its reputation any good," anti-doping official Hans Cooman said.

Generally speaking, when a competition's competitors all flee the competition before competing, it usually means the gig is gonna get canceled. And while I'd love to tell you that some smart-assed pip-squeak from Brussels hopped onto the stage and flexed like 80s-era Hulk Hogan to grab the trophy (or whatever), it didn't happen. Nothing happened.

And it sounds like nothing will happen in he future because, nothing has happened in the past. Many of these competitions have taken place off-shore so as to avoid drug testing. Because of the testing laws in Brussels, the event had been moved across the Dutch border to Vlissingen for the weekend competition in hopes of dodging "the man."

This time around, the best Cooman can do is report the case to the Flemish disciplinary committee, which will rule on whether it can sanction competitors who refused to be tested.

Can someone be punished for not taking a test? And if you can punish them for agreeing to be tested, isn't it just a quick hop toward taking samples without a competitor's knowledge. Just sneak under them in the bathroom, they'll never know. When's the last time those goons were able to move their necks enough to look down?

And even more to the point, if everyone in the competition is cheating, is it still cheating? The playing field seems awfully even to me.

Men Are Talking About Women Fighting

Kentucky Oaks winner Rachel Alexandra almost got held out of Saturday's Preakness Stakes in Baltimore, mostly due to a cheap and perhaps sexist owner (can one be sexist against a separate species?) Dolphus Morrison and Mike Lauffer decided the filly shouldn't compete against the males, despite burning the best fillies by more than 20 lengths.

But with the second jewel of horse racing's Triple Crown come and gone, Rachel Alexandra proved that the stable that bought her, co-owners Jess Jackson and Harold McCormick, knew what they were doing entering her to race. She won. She beat the best in the field and became the first filly to win the Preakness in 85 years, all without even bringing her 110 percent best, according to her jockey Calvin Borel.

“She’s the greatest horse I’ve been on in my life,” Borel said. “She struggled and still won. It’s such a narrow track I had to give it to her. The more I did, the more she struggled.”

Rachel Alexandra is the field's best. She's not the best filly, she's the best race horse. And perhaps, she's the most important step in gender equality since...well, since ever.

There's no need to go over the myriad reasons women and men aren't able to compete side-by-side in most sports. Most arguments begin and end with the natural strength capability difference between men and women. And maybe that's why Rachel Alexandra is so special, because mares and filly's aren't so obviously different and the races don't always come down to strength.

NASCAR and golf are two sports that have also flirted with breaking the gender barrier. None of the females have ever achieved nearly as much as their hype suggests, but those sports are far closer to it than say, boxing.

But what about fighting? The idea of pitting a woman against a man immediately seems offensive and cruel. Men are never supposed to hit women, right? They're the fairer sex, delicate flowers, unable to exhibit the same brute force as the men. And for any self-respecting man, winning a test of strength and endurance is expected and if didn't happen, it was the man's shame, not the woman's triumph.

But what if there were ways to change that? Currently, the mixed martial arts world has two bankable names without contracts. They're so good that they only have each other to fight with, which can be bankable once or twice, but not every month. I bet you've already figured out the problem: they're women.

Both Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos and Gina Carano have established themselves as the Rachel Alexandra's of their sport, but whereas Rachel has the ability to test her skills against the best, the same would be unthinkable in MMA.

There's nothing that can be done about our social queeziness about watching a woman get hit by a man. Most of us are programmed to feel any such fight is unfair and barbaric. But what if we started quantifying mixed-gender fights differently than regular fights? Regualr fights categorize fighters by their weight, not their power or agility.

Clearly a 210-pound heavyweight would never fight a 135-pound woman. Even a 135-pound man carries an advantage over a 135-pound woman, because the pounds are packed differently between the two body types and because force isn't simply a matter of muscle, but of how those muscles are used.

So what if that's what the league's started looking at: how much force and power certain weight-classes exerted? Look at all the tests Drago went through. You don't think some of those could be adapted to figure out how many pounds of force Gina Carano' mui-tai kicks stacked up?



My apologies, but everything I've ever learned about competition stems from Rocky IV. We're only talking about men versus women here. THAT movie showed man's ability to defeat machine.

Isn't it possible to have genuine stars-in-waiting like Santos and Carano fight better competition without turning it into a circus? If Santos can kick with the force of 350 lbs. and punch with the force of 170 lbs., isn't it possible to match her up with a man exhibiting the same numbers? Yeah, yeah. Mixed martial arts is not just kicks and jabs, but arm-bars and ground 'n' pound and sleeper locks and so-on, but isn't that all quantifiable? And if it is, can't these organizations use those quantifications to showcase their talent?

Scrapping bottoms of various barrels ain't working so far and without the ability to parade their commodities in front of fans, they have only a faint gasp of hope for other female fighters to develop into real challengers.

Right now a filly is the fastest race horse in the world and it only happened because she was given a chance she was very close to not having. Is it unthinkable to give these same chances to human females?

To Be Or Not To Be Like Mike

Robo-Olympiad Michael Phelps returns to the pool this week after being sent to his room for three months to think about what he did.

And what did he think about in that time? USA Swimming probably hoped Phelps pondered the foolishness of hitting bongs around cameras. Maybe they hoped he would realize that there are anywhere between 10 to 18 children hoping to become swimmers when they grow up and that those nerdy kids are looking up to him.

Now what do you suppose Michael Phelps actually spent his three months thinking about? If I had three guesses, I'd guess this, this or this occupied his mind. And let's get real, the USAS gave him a three-month suspension with the same fervor a proud papa punishes his son for winning a fight, only because his wife demanded he do so. USAS didn't want to be in dutch with the morality police calling for the 14-time gold medal winner's head on a pike. The USAS wants their golden boy to swim, they don't care if he hit the party pipe outside of the pool.

For the record, Phelps is a bonehead. But he's 23-years-old, I expect him to be a bonehead. My frustration lies in the moral watchdogs who pretend (at least I hope they're pretneding) to be surprised that a 23-year-old mega-star is a bonehead.

Suddenly, the golden boy lost his sheen and it became of the utmost importance to examine every dull spot in his facade. As if he had been trying to fool us along along. He hadn't. For a reputation to be tarnished, it had to have been spotless in the first place. It wasn't. And the world faking the veneer and then faking that the veneer had vanished is just...baffling. He was Michael Phelps, the ungodly perfect swimmer from Maryland. That was it. That was all we really knew (that and that his mother was a bit of a ham). So yeah, okay. Shame on Michael Phelps for inhaling an illegal substance and shame on him for getting caught (especially for getting caught). But shame on us for everything that happened after that.

Michael Phelps was dragged through the mud over this. He lost a Kellogg sponsorship (because the irony of a stoner gracing packaging of most stoners' favorite foods was just too rich) and even faced possible prosecution from a South Carolina county sheriff with a hard-on for the limelight.

It happened, yes. But let no one sell you on the fact that it happened in the name of truth or in the name of "impressionable children." Those reasons are as bunk and antiquated as telling and kid to not ever have sex and then congratulate yourself on doing such a fine job educating that kid on sex.

He wasn't using substances that enhanced his performance (quite the opposite) and for all intents and purposes, Phelps was in private when he did what he did. If we didn't want Phelps' action to make an impression on children, perhaps parading it in front of them on every news cast , web site and magazine article wasn't the best path to take, whaddya think? And just as we demanded the truth to out, we then demanded the truth go right back in its cubby hole by forcing Phelps to apologize for something he couldn't have been sorry for doing. The demand to rip down the veneer of Michael Phelps' untarnished character was voided the minute we decided a bullshit apology and a bullshit punishment were all we needed to make things right.

So here he is making a comeback from something that he shouldn't have been absent from in the first place. His comeback begins with the five events he will swim over the three-day Charlotte UltraSwim trial and will continue with the World Championships in Rome this summer. I can't help but feel the secret nature of his new freestyle stroke is an ace he's hoping to play if the bong talk follows him past his suspension. It shouldn't, but then again, here I am discussing it. And if the new stroke isn't enough to take weight off of Phelps' love of ganja, then perhaps all that noise he made a month ago regarding his sudden lack of passion for swimming was a result of finding anything else for he media to discuss.

"I still have four more years and then I'll be done," Phelps said.

Even this feels like a depressed high schooler making small wrist cuts then wearing a t-shirt to show 'em off. I can feel Phelps clamoring to be talked about and clamoring to shape the topic.

"I did make a mistake. It was stupid," Phelps said. "There are also some important lessons that I've learned. It is all about recognizing that I used bad judgment and it's a mistake I won't make again."

Smoking bongs at dorm parties maybe, but he's 23-years-old. Does anyone really believe he's an upstanding young man who's rid himself of all poor judgment? Okay smart guy, how do you explain her then? If you think Phelps is somehow better than the average 23-year-old, then you probably also believe he was the only one at that U of S.C. party hitting that bong.

Not to get all Chris Crocker here, but leave Mikey alone. In are search for truth we made him pretend he was something he's not - perfect. And everyone who demanded that action be taken against Phelps was also guilty of pretending that they don't know this type of thing happens. Pretending that any punishment or public atonement, no matter how trivial and unnecessary, will somehow make Phelps come to Jesus.

Forget going to Jesus. Let's just work on not going to Columbia after Charlotte.

Real Fans Let it Hit Them in the Head

It wasn't that long ago that Tropicana Field couldn't fill its park, nor was it that long ago that the fans who were in attendance were rooting for the other team.

Those days are gone and these days, the Rays seem comfy hanging blame on their newly swollen fan base , such as they did at the end of the Rays' 5-3 loss to the Red Sox on Sunday.

With two outs in the ninth inning, Boston's Jacoby Ellsbury hit a pop-fly near foul territory on the third base side. Rays third baseman Evan Longoria made a play for the ball that would have ended the game and given Tampa the win. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on the team logo embroidered on your hat) a fan stood up, arms outstretched and snagged himself a souvenir to put on his desk at work.

Former Rookie of the Year and butt of millions of "Desperate Housewives" jokes, Evan Longoria was unable to catch the ball and replaced the out he failed to make with a hissyfit directed at the fan who stopped him from making it. On top of that, Rays manager Joe Maddon, without being asked about it by a reporter, took time out of the normally rote postgame press conference to call out the Rays fans who paid money to watch his team compete:

I'd like the fan to understand, the one on the third-base side, you don't do those things. Really. Our fans need to know that. In a game like that, you're in our ballpark, you let our fielders field that ball, because once the fielder reaches in [to the stands] the fan can catch it and there's going to be no interference called.

And this is where I got pissed off.

Look at the pictures of the play above. Who's leaning into who's territory there, Joe? The Rays ended up winning the game several pitches later, making Maddon's postgame response all the more...ahem..."Maddonning." Going back to Steve Bartman in the 2003 NLCS Game 6 or in 1996 when Jeffrey Maier nabbed Derek Jeter's ball in the outfield in the eighth inning of Game 1 of the ALCS, there has long been a disconnect between the ballplayers' expectations of the fans and the fans themselves.

If I'm shelling peanuts and someone who works out for a living hits a ball at me giving me less than three seconds to react, here is what I'm thinking:
1. Drop the peanut! No, seriously there's more in the bag. Just sacrifice it!
2.This thing isn't actually heading toward me, is it? Holy shit, it is!
3.If I don't catch it, everyone is gonna boo me. Strangers, small children, Floridians...the hot girl three seats over, everybody.
4. How bad is this gonna hurt my hands?

By that point, the ball has arrived. and if you're the guy who caught it at the end of Sunday's game, you didn't have time to think about your spacial relations to Evan Longoria, or the strategy involved in leaning back with your hands over your eyes.

The idea that Maddon, with time to compose himself,* decided to take the fan to task for not fleeing the scene is insulting. What should he have done? Ducked? Leaned into the lap of the guy in the second row? Covered his head hoping that the ball didn't crack the backs of his hands? Fans are not athletes, they're people who pay the athletes' salaries. That Maddon and Longoria (and perhaps Rays closer Troy Percival, who mouthed something after the non-play) are shaming fans for not "letting the fielders field" makes me wonder why that fan isn't also getting paid millions if he's just as resposible for an almost-loss as the players on the field.

* Compose himself from what, you ask? I dunno. From Longoria not getting everything his heart desired on that day?

Fan intereference was not called on the play, mostly because no fan interfered. If anything, Longo interfered with the fan finishing his beer before the end of the game. Take a look at those photos again (last time, I swear), that ball left the field.

Fans aren't there to do the job of ballplayers. If Longoria could have reached the ball, great. He might have made SportsCenter. However, if you lean into a guy's lap and expect him to keep tabs on not only where he is in relation to the ball, but where the players are in relation to him...well, that's asking too much of non-athletes.

This team has World Series talent and the fans are starting to notice. Don't forget how it used to be when Longoria would've made that catch easily because no one bothered to buy a ticket for those seats.

Kentucky Oaks 135: All the Pretty Horses

Horse-whipped: Rachel Alexandra was so far ahead in the Kentucky Oaks finale that by
the time I squared my camera and snapped a picture, she was gone and all that was left
were the losers she dusted. (Pictured: The losers)

It should have been clear that something special was going to happen during the 135th Kentucky Derby weekend the minute Scott Padgett, a Kentucky University alum and member of the NBA from 1999-2007, stepped in front of me and shot me a goofy awkward smile. It didn't occur to m then, but it should have. At the time I was holding out for a smile from such D-Listers as Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton and Peyton Manning (in New England, where I come from, you bet your ass Manning is considered D-List. He's lucky he gets that much credit).

The Kentucky Derby must be seen to be believed. Churchill Downs in the first week of May is like a Jay Gatsby party in which every woman in attendance is under the impression she's Daisy Buchanan. There's no orchestras and even less jazz (unless you count Taylor Swift as jazzy, in which case it's just as Fitzgerald imagined it).

What you need to remember is that the Kentucky Derby weekend is only about the 23 horse races to everyone outside of Louisville, KY. Inside the town, it's about hats and mint juleps. Seeing the mares and fillies are the Garfunkel to the Churchill Downs cocktail party's Simon. As someone who's fingers were inked with the racing forms 20 minutes after I arrived, I was unaware how passing the interests of most of the grandstand elite's interests were. Over the nine hours I watched the fillies run on Friday's Kentucky Oaks races, this passivity was something that revealed itself to me as harshly as an unwashed flasher.

It took longer to understand why a woman would want to spend a day moving the wid brim of her hat out of her eyes than the basics of betting on the horses. There are 12 female races during Fridy's Oaks and 11 races during Saturdy's Derby. There are anywhere between eight to 13 horses in each race accept for each day's main event, in which there are a maximum of 20 horses.

Unlike the U.K., America sets its lines based upon the betting patterns of the masses. So if June Day is a 3-1 favorite on Wednesday, but no one bets on her by race time Friday, the odds that she'll win don't remain at 3-1, they'll decrease significantly.

American odds, like the horses existence at Churchill Downs, don't really matter. The people in attendance do. It starts there. It stops there. Don't you forget it. And while you're up, go get me another mint julep. Louisville makes me hanker for drinks that taste like mouthwash and whiskey.

Before each race, you can bet early or you can bet late. Technically you can bet whenever you want, but unless you want to be reading about horse betting for another six hours, let's go with the simplest explanation. If you bet on Senor Fuego in Friday's fourth race 40 minutes before she's set to race, you'll be basing your wager on the racing form, the analysis inside and your gut (if there's two things I learned not to trust on Derby weekend, it's my gut and men dressed in pink. Never trust any event that compels thousands of men to congregate together wearing pink). The early odds are based on the horse's, trainer's and jockey's history and has nothing to do with the people's wagers. Then again, if you bet on Senor Fuego at 8-1 odds 40 minutes before the race, by the time the bets windows close, the masses could have made her a 5-2 favorite or a 30-1 underdog and you'll be trapped into your bet.

Then again, if you wait until after the odds have been muddied with the gut-feeling wagers of the over-tanned wannabe West Egg socialites. The choice is up to you.

When you're in the wager lines, waiting for a chance to give a surely cashier money that you'll probably never see again, you have many chances to see all sorts of race fans. Churchill Downs is an old boys club to be sure. Men with money bring their wives who are living off of it to an event that they dare not miss. Twentysomethings and the very elderly alike arrived at Churchill Downs in costume. The ridiculousness was in the irony not on display. When a skinny woman in a bright canary dress spills her mimosa on her shoes because she's too preoccupied fiddling with te feathers on her gigantic top hat that she's clearly not comfortable wearing, the idea that all of here are classy sports enthusiasts is just as difficult to swallow as a second mint julep. Seriously, those things are awful.

At the races, showing up in a low-cut prom dresses and large hats or suits that make its wearers appear to own plantations is not only acceptable, it's expected. But taken out of context, if any of the people at the races los their way and wound up in another state in their getup, they would immediately be checked into the nearest looney bin.

Churchill Downs is a fraternity, replacing sophomoric paddles with cigars and handshakes and tourists affecting a southern cadence when they speak. Pledge week happens every 40 minutes and if you don't win money, you're just another sucker inexplicably wearing a bowtie.

On Friday, I bet the winning horse 3-of-7 times, came out of the day down $80 (I did win a hot dog from my girlfriend, which emotionally counted as about $25) and got to see the Oaks favorite Rachel Alexandra beat the field by 20 1/4-lengths, an Oaks record. Rachel Alexandra was such a fast horse that the common belief is that she could have won the Derby had she been entered into it. (Editor's note: Calvin Borel, the jockey who rode Rachel Alexandra to victory on Friday, also rode the 50-1 shot Mine That Bird to a shocking Derby victory one day later. Two days after that the cheapskates that owned Rachel Alexandra sold her to a wealthier stable and they will enter the filly to race among the mares in the Preakness Stakes later this month. Borel chose the female horse to ride in the Preakness instead of the Derby Winner. Rachel Alexandra is only the third filly to run in the Preakness and Borel is only the third jockey to switch off the Derby winner before the Preakness).

The win was breathtaking and brilliant, even for a novice like myself. Imagine your first basketball experience being witness to a LeBron James triple-double? What if all you knew of baseball was an Albert Pujols home run? I don't doubt that Rachel Alexandra's ass-whuppin' was on the same level and therefore bore a new race fan in me.

Afterwards, I heard Adrian Brody was at the race, along with various brats from MTV shows. When did I hear this? Les than 60 seconds after Rachel Alexandra's run, purloined from a text message off a young woman's iPhone. Then the conversation buzzing aroud the group to my left turned into Kim Kardashian's Barnstable party and where in the grandstands Michael Jordan might have been. Not the horse, or the nex day's derby or the spectator's winnings or losongs. None of that mattered because in Louisville, it's about the spectators, not what they';re are spectating.

And the only thing more shameful than the fans' attentionto the eent was how hard I tried to evesdrop the last conversation long enough to find out where Jordan was hiding.

You hafta admit, it would have been awesome to rub elbows with Mike.