chickfactor zine

it is not too late, people. deadline, schmeadline — got a list? send it to me.

excuses for not coming up with a top ten for Gail by travis elborough
1. I failed O level mathematics and have since developed a pathological fear of numbers and find that some days I am simply unable to face charts of any kind. There have been a lot of those kind of days lately. Possibly ten, even. But obviously I can’t be sure, as I was unable to count them.
2. I couldn’t think of ten things that I could wholeheartedly commit to. Three or four, sometimes. But ten. It suddenly got too much.
3. While thinking about top ten things I should write a list about, I was overcome with nostalgia for the 1990s, arguably the decade in which top ten lists really came into their own. By the time I’d got thoughts of Slacker, Generation X, So Tough, When I Was Born for the 7th Time out of my brain I was too exhausted to contemplate a top ten.
4. Phoebe, our cat, mistaking it for a mouse,a bird or something, tore up the piece of paper I had painstakingly composed my top ten list on. I lost heart after that.
5. I genuinely forgot. And having forgotten, didn’t remember until today. And, alas, inspiration didn’t exactly strike. Still hasn’t. Sorry.
6. I found I didn’t actually have ten excuses for not coming up with a top ten for Gail, so this one is in to make up the numbers.
7. God is seven, and it would be morally wrong to try and out do him/her by going in for a top ten.
8. All the other top tens were so good I just got overawed.
9. I just felt convinced that the base 10 number system had had its day.
10. I wanted to do sandwich fillings, bed-bound people in novels and Lloyd Cole songs but all of those had already been nabbed.

top ten roads in virginia by cynthia connolly
1. Route 11 (runs north / south)
2. State Route 40 (runs east / west)
3. Route 252 between Stauton and Lexington
4. Mount Tabor Road North of Blacksburg, Virginia
5. Route 231 south of Sperryville to Route 29
6. Crest Hill Road between Marshall and Flint Hill
7. Fodderstack Road between Flint Hill and Little Washington
8. Route 58 in the southern and western most part of Virginia
9. Route 42 between I – 77 and alt 16 going through Ceres
10. Route 311 west of Roanoke and then South on 635 terminating at 460

top ten reasons I am now in the eff-book herd by cf editor
yes, I know I have written on this very blog saying it was never gonna happen. I am ashamed. I am sheepish. I feel silly. happy?
1. I need a job.
2. peer pressure.
3. I was missing births, deaths and weddings.
4. every conversation I had on the old-fashioned land line (gasp!) was eff-book related.
5. to promote my new career as a TV chef.
6. to read gilmore’s london diary (see below).
7. so I could reconnect with all my cute bfs from 7th grade: will we have anything in common now?
8. nicole.
9. to be on the radar. sadly, this is the now way.
10. my real-life friend dawn sutter madell started a grassroots campaign to herd me in, flooding my private inbox, wrote this list:
top ten reasons why gail should be on facebook
1. It’s like all of your friends have blogs and can let you know what they are up to–what they are eating, taking photos of, all the mundane stuff like that.
2. It sounds so retarded and stupid, but it’s, sadly, a pretty amazing way to keep up with people.
3. All of your friends are on there. Facebook often reminds me of you when I’m on there
4. Gilmore’s London diary was some of the most amazing things I have read. Ever. EV-ER. I missed her writing!
5. You can see photos that other people post, like the ones I just saw of Dan Koretsky and Rian in high school. AMAZING. Dan looks like ducky in Pretty in Pink.
6. long chats with candice. candice. i haven’t talked to her in forever. so nice to chat with her. i’m sure you have spoken to her more recently, but still. it’s that kind of a thing. people that you have maybe fallen out of touch with, but that you REALLY like and miss.
7. oh i’m gonna stop now.
(dawn, if music supervision becomes obsolete, you can always become a lobbyist!)

top ten ways to avoid work, waste hours, be inspired. in no particular order by dawn “agoraphone” sutter madell
1. oh man. she has a great aesthetic.
2. so thorough and great. who needs martha?
3. great story teller. not to mention designer.
4. yummy veggie recipes. no, i don’t cook.
5. design-y. crafty. kids. i like it.
6. obvious.
7. sewing and knitting crafts. i sew, don’t knit.
8. again, i don’t cook. but i find this to be enthralling.
9. a potpourri of great things.
10. cosmetics database (for the paranoid in you)

Ten books you should read before you say you’ve read the most beautiful book ever by “louis philippe” auclair
1. Philip Larkin – The Whitsun Weddings
2. Antal Szerb – Journey by Moonlight
3. WG Sebald – Austerlitz
4. Alexandre Dumas père – Le Vicomte de Bragelonne
5. Kingsley Amis – The Old Devils
6. Guy de Maupassant – La Maison Tellier
7. Haruki Murakami – Sputnik Sweetheart
8. Albert Cohen – Belle du Seigneur
9. Mikhail Bulgakov – The Master and Margarita
10. Boris Pasternak – Dr Zhivago

Fifteen films you should see, etc. by philippe auclair
1. Ingmar Bergman – The Silence
2. Jean Renoir – Une Partie de campagne
3. Preston Sturges – Sullivan’s Travels
4. Terence Davies – Of Time and the City
5. Howard Hawks – Only Angels Have Wings
6. Carl Dreyer – Ordet
7. Michael Powell & Eric Pressburger – I Know Where I’m Going
8. Michael Powell & Eric Pressburger – The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
9. Orson Welles – Touch of Evil
10. Chris Marker – La Jetée
11. Billy Wilder – The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
12. Albert Lewin – Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
13. Jean Vigo – L’Atalante
14. Lars von Trier – Idioterne
15. Andreï Tarkovsky – The Sacrifice

Ten mushrooms I look for in autumn by philippe auclair
1. Shaggy Parasol
2. Chanterelle
3. Beefsteak mushroom
4. Charcoal Burner
5. The Deceiver (laccaria amethysta)
6. Oyster Mushroom
7. Penny Bun (boletus edulis)
8. Lawyer’s wig
9. Horn of plenty
10 Woodland agaric

10 Lloyd Cole songs people don’t appreciate enough. each described in 10 words by joe pines / foxgloves
1 Don’t Look Back: Morning breaks, open roads, wide-eyed stoic, Grand Canyon guitar
2 What He Doesn’t Know: Crickets chirp, delicacy, nocturnal tendresse and regret, a lost standard
3 Rain On The Parade: Weeping guitar, smouldering stories: mixing again formality and rainy seediness
4 The ‘L’ Word: Alternate take sounds live, casually cool, Quine burns it down
5 A Long Way Down: Old New York, space, daylight, cruising drums, Lloyd on lead
6 Man On The Verge: Astor Place, D arpeggios, Quine blows the place apart again
7 Minor Character: Touchingly melodic drama: 1985 strings, histrionics, strain, 12-string, motion, closure
8 Alright People: Fresh picking, skyful of sound, guess what? Quine on fire
9 Shelf Life: Lengthy closer, hypnosis repetition riffs, piano echo, life’s time passes
10 Wild Orphan: Controlled verses, leaping choruses: Jodie Foster, twanging air, true joy

may we present round two of the non-2008-music-related top ten lists…

Top 10 Easy Pasta Dishes by stella marrs
Note: I do not give amounts- it’s cooking!
All start in a large cast iron pan. (Except #9)
For these recipes, the sautéing starts with a generous amount of the best olive oil. Sea salt, fresh ground pepper, organic pastas, fresh basil, and Romano or Parmesan cheese are the defaults for the most satisfying results.

1. The Syracuse. Caramelize onions, add can of whole tomatoes, add brown sugar- cook for many, many hours. Finish with garlic and fresh basil toward the end.
2. Fresh Roman. Mushrooms browned in olive oil. Thyme, garlic, parsley, pepper. Tossed into linguine with olive oil and lemon.
3. San Francisco. Sautéed garlic and bitter greens and hot pepper flakes, tossed with linguine and chopped anchovies. Splash of balsamic at the end.
4. Ancient Rome. Sauté red pepper flakes and garlic and breadcrumbs until golden. Toss with spaghetti.
5. Easy Italian. Sautéed garlic, red pepper flakes and broccolini. Add sliced black dried olive bits and lemon juice when tossing with the pasta.
6. The Olympian. Sauté tofu. Add a splash of soy sauce at the end and leave in pan on low. Add straight to the cooked linguine in this order and tossing after each addition: olive oil, sea salt, mustard, brewers yeast, and hot sauce. Top with the golden brown tofu.
7. The New Yorker. (Breakfast at midnight) Cook bacon and crumble it into a big bowl. Add several eggs, shakes of paprika, snips of parsley, lots of ground pepper. Add the just drained pasta and mix and toss, toss, toss. Extra cheese on this one.
8. The Portlander. Caramelize onions and red peppers and garlic. Add a well-rinsed can of white beans and basil and parsley. Finish with a splash of balsamic.
9. The Northwesterner.Cooked linguine gets coated with sour cream, capers, finely minced white part of the green onion, and smoked salmon.
10. The Buffalonian. Sauté garlic, onions, and sliced Italian sausage. Add a can of tomato sauce. Finish with oregano, basil and Franks! (A local hot sauce)

Top Ten things (in no particular order) that helped me survive 2008 by john woo / the magnetic fields
1. Nephews
2. Sigma DP1
3. Capilene
4. The Economist
5. Lonely Planet
6. Free Wi-fi
7. LIRR beach packages
8. Press 195’s pork sandwiches
9. Woorijip’s hot buffet
10. Earbuds in a pocket of every jacket I own

Top Ten Books About the Lost Generation (in no particular order), or, How I Spent 2008 by lisa “cf” levy
1. Malcolm, Janet. Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
Gertrude and Alice and Janet Malcolm and Nazis and the vagaries of Stein scholarship and the ABT Cookbook and those hints about S/M and odd Leo Stein and what it is like to be so convinced of your genius that nothing and no one can really touch you, and nothing really matters but the work. Could not be better.
2. Douglas, Ann. Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s. New York: FSG, 1995.
One of the best histories ever written, Douglas covers New York in the 1920s with astonishing breadth while spinning a number of impressive thematic plates. She writes about jazz, Freud, Fitzgerald, anthropology, railroads, hardboiled fiction, advertising and photography with style and panache. A book study, to use, to be cowered by, and to emulate. The bibliographic essay alone is so good I weep. I tremble at the thought of her next book, about America in the Cold War (and her previous one, the Feminization of American Culture, which argues for the intellectual and spiritual collusion of the clergy and female authors in the 1890’s to remake gender roles, is also fantastic).
3. Wilson will write better books than Axel’s Castle: A Study in the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930 (1931. New York: FSG, 2004), but this is really the book that made him as a critic. Far from perfect, but brash and a nice reminder that even Bunny Wilson was once young.
4. Page, Tim, ed. The Diaries of Dawn Powell, 1931-1965. South Royalton, VT: Steerforth Press, 1995.
She shoved herself into the Lost Generation photo in Esquire as a joke, but her diaries have the same sensibility as all the folks who were “there” (and were her pals later on anyway) with a lot more color. Also instructive to see how the other half lived–that is to say, a woman burdened by a loutish drunk husband and a son with Down’s Syndrome who really had to write for a living. Pair it with one of her novels for some levity–I love A Time To Be Born (1942), a parody of the life of Clare Booth Luce–or just admire her for doing what Dorothy Parker never could, just keep at it when all the odds were stacked against her.
5. Time for the hard stuff: ease into Stein with The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and then, only for the intrepid, get the Dalkey Archives The Making of Americans. Follow Malcolm’s lead and rip the book into portable pieces. Stein would have been delighted.
6. Your reward is a visit to the Fitzgerald’s. No biography is better than Scott on himself, so get thee a copy of The Crack-Up and ride the ride again. No one has written his own rise and fall any better—poignant, but honest. Nancy Milford’s Zelda is a landmark in feminist biography and it holds up damned well. Her character is as rich as any in biography before or since.
7. Now that you are in the party/crash mood, I highly recommend a whirl with Harry Crosby via Geoffrey Wolff’s brilliant Black Sun (Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby. 1976. New York: New York Review Books, 2003). It’s got everything–sex, drugs,suicide pacts, astrology, murder, jazz, gambling, shell shock, a burning hatred of Boston, whippets, and solid rants against previous theories about the era. You won’t be disappointed.
8. Next is an introduction to a couple of my favorite Lost Generation characters, Gerald and Sara Murphy. The first book, Calvin Tomkins’ Living Well Is the Best Revenge, an expansion of his New Yorker piece about them, is too slim and evasive.
9. It will leave you wanting more, and there are two easy ways to get it: one is Linda Miller’s Letters from the Lost Generation (Letters from the Lost Generation: Gerald and Sara Murphy and Friends. Expanded Edition. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002), and the other is…
10. Deborah Rothschild’s essay collection assembled for the exhibit about the Murphy’s that travelled across the country in 2007, Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy. You will only regret that you live in a time where the dollar is weak, artists are so often silly, and style is something relegated to–sigh–magazines and the upper reaches of your digital channels, with the world “life” shoved ridiculously in front of it. Once upon a time style was a matter of some urgency, life (especially given the stakes of a war that was supposed to end all wars) was supposed to be lived to the hilt, and money was incidental, not the point of a day’s work but a byproduct of it. My wish for 2009–for all of us–would be to try and keep these ideas in our consciousness, if not as our goals.

Ten best lines from New Kids on the Block songs by emma straub
1. “Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.”
2. (Heavy sigh)
3. (Softer sigh)
4. “(sigh) Sounds good to you, don’t it?”
5. “Huh!” (Accompanied by a pelvic thrust)
6. “Girl!”
7. “Ooh, girl!”
8. “Didn’t I blow your mind this time.” (Okay, fine, it was a cover.)
9. “We’re five bad brothers from the Beantown land.”
10. (Heavy breathing, due to dancing in unison.)

Family Movie Night in the Davol Household: 10 Most Recent Films Watched by sam davol / the magnetic fields
1. Home Movie (2002)
2. The Way Things Go (1987)
3. The Best of The Electric Company (1971)
4. The Films of Charles & Ray Eames: Powers of Ten (1977)
5. Wild Wheels (1992)
6. Top Hat (1935)
7. The Life of Birds (1998)
8. Creature Comforts: Season 1 (2004)
9. That’s Entertainment (1974)
10. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: Live in New York City (2001)

“With our tape recorders and our disheveled girl friends” (three lists by shawn belschwender)

Pre-Eliminator ZZ Top in order, from most awesome to least awesome
1. Tres Hombres (1973)
“Soundin’ a lot like they got House Congressional / ‘Cause we’re experimental and professional.” – Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers. I thought this song was an ode to being a numbskull, until I Googled the lyrics. I’m not sure what “got House Congressional” sounds like, but “experimental and professional” exactly describes themselves.
2. Rio Grande Mud (1972)
This thing opens with an ode to a thirteen-year-old girl (“Francine”) which is only right in rock ‘n roll. It is wrong in every other context. This thing contains “Just Got Paid” and the instant good time that is “Bar-B-Q.”
3. ZZ Top’s First Album (1970)
“And soon we’ll be all breathin’ out of tanks
if somethin’ ain’t done about the squank.” – Squank
I can’t think about pollution without imagining it how they painted it so graphically, as monstrous “Squank.” So where’s their Nobel Prize? They wrote their own “Brown Sugar” that is pretty crazy-good. About a minute and forty seconds in, it kinda blows up and rolls over you. This album doesn’t have the hooks and the hits, but it’s hard rocking from end to end, with only “Old Man” as the speed-bump.
4. Fandango! (1975)
“Ladies and gents, the fantastic ZZ Top!” Every DJ set, mixed tape/CD and playlist should kick off with this sample from the live “Thunderbird” on this album. Why don’t yours?
5. El Loco (1981)
I enjoy the whipcracks during “Party on the Patio” and the space guitar solos throughout, and even some of the tiresome car/lady analogies (“I Wanna Drive You Home”) they’re partial too. But really, this thing is less like a collection of solid songs than a space guitar delivery system. Like boogie guitar solos NASA would produce. Try “Ten Foot Pole” if you don’t believe me. As everybody knows, NASA had a space center in Houston, so it all makes perfect sense.
6. Degüello (1979). This is better than Tejas, but it still kind of bores me. “I Thank You” is the best, “Manic Mechanic” the worst.
7. Tejas (1977)
The only Tejas I know is the one they remixed with the 1980s-era mechanical drum sound. And it doesn’t bother me. I mean, I guess they had to do something with this thing, although it’s not as terrible an album as I’d expected it would be. It’s actually not bad. “Ten Dollar Man” my fave track here. Oh, it’s probably to do with whores and pimps and brothels, you know.

The Best American Film Critics, in order of birth
1. Cecilia Ager (1902 – 1981). The only Ager I can find is contained in an anthology edited by Phillip Lopate, called American Movie Critics. I would love to read more. Wrote extremely witty short film reviews for PM, and entertainment pieces for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Described Joan Crawford in The Last of Mrs. Cheyney as having “deafening poise.”
2. Otis Ferguson (1907 – 1943). Wrote for the New Republic, was killed in WWII. See The Film Criticism of Otis Ferguson. “I never again expect to see so much ham crowded into one smokehouse…” – Ferguson on A Tale of Two Cities (1936). Wrote a great piece about the experience of attending a movie in the 1930s before start times were listed in the newspapers and everyone showed up whenever they just felt it, and climbed all over you to get to an empty seat. I would put Ferguson, Pauline Kael and William Pechter in my Big Three of favorite film critics.
3. James Agee (1909 – 1955). See Agee on Film.
4. Manny Farber (1917 – 2008)
“One of the desperate facts about being part of movies today is that every thirtieth word might be ‘Truffaut-Moreau-Godard,’ a depressing, chewed-over sound, and that a heavy segment of any day is consumed by an obsessive, nervous talking about film. This is often a joyless sound that couldn’t inspire anybody, but it suggests that modern moviegoers are trying to possess the film or at least give it a form or a momentousness which it doesn’t have.” Farber’s “Afterthoughts” on the 1968 New York Film Festival, describing a time long-gone. From a collection titled Negative Space. Was a painter, had painter’s eye; famously championed B-movie directors without being an auteur knucklehead.
5. Robert Warshow (1917 – 1955). The Immediate Experience: Movies, Comics, Theatre and Other Aspects of Popular Culture. Is good on Westerns, Gangster films, and Charlie Chaplin. Also, decimates Arthur Miller (The Crucible, Death of A Salesman).
6. Pauline Kael (1919 – 2001). Everything of hers is worth reading, even the collections of her work that cover movies in the 1980s. Don’t settle for that giant anthology. Hunt down all her collections. The best writer of this bunch.
7. William Pechter (b. 1936)
“Liza Minnelli, singing, is, not to put too fine a point on it, the ne plus ultra of tastelessness, a load of loud-mouthed showbiz schmaltz. Like her predecessors in the tradition, Minnelli isn’t a singer but a belter; she doesn’t sing a song, she sells it; and whenever she opens her mouth to sing, in Cabaret or out, it’s strictly Las Vegas. To say that a little of Garland (outside her movies) or Streisand or Minnelli sends me rushing for the antidote of some Irene Kral or Sarah Vaughan or Billie Holiday is unfairly to load the comparison; one need hardlly go to jazz to find a musical style and level of musicianship to use as a stick to beat Minnelli’s and Streisand’s with. The fact is their music is less musical than histrionic: every song becomes either a big, get-happy production number or a miniature tragedy. Nor is it a question of unfairly judging one style by the standards of another. The Garland-Streisand-Minnelli style, trading as is does in trumped-up emotions, is, in itself, an artistically corrupt one.” – 1972. There are two collections of his work, Movies Plus One and Twenty-Four Times A Second. My second favorite film critic, after Kael.

The three greatest non-fiction books in the world, according to me:
1. The Gulag Archipelago Volume 1, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The “Red” volume. Depressing. Walks you through your arrest by the Cheka. For no reason at all, other than maybe you were ratted out by your neighbor while under torture, just to make the nut-stomping stop.
2. The Gulag Archipelago Volume 2, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The “Black” volume. “None blacker.” Volume 1 ends by warning that everything is about to get worse, and he’s not kidding! I had to put together a Marx Brothers film festival (staying roughly in the time period covered) to lift my spirits. Early Warner Brothers cartoons and Marx Brothers films: the only antidote to this crushing volume.
3. The Gulag Archipelago Volume 3, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Volume 3. The “White” volume. Thrilling, and yes, depressing. Describes revolts in the prisons of the Gulag, as well as escape attempts from them. Where could anybody escape to, in Soviet Russia? Nowhere, you coddled, candy-ass Westerner. Solzhenitsyn’ description of his exile, after 8 years in the Gulag, and the day, early in his exile, when they learned that Stalin died, are some of the best sections in all three volumes.

Some of my favorite quotes. As you can see, Gulag made him cranky!

Pigs
“Pride grows in the human heart like lard on a pig”

“Both in the camps and in exile, whispered rumors of an amnesty flourished. People have a remarkable capacity for pig-headed credulity.”

Tape Recorders and Disheveled Girl Friends (!!!)
“The majority of young people could not care less whether we have been rehabilitated or not, whether 12 million people are still inside or are inside no longer; they do not see that it affects them. Just so long as they themselves are at liberty, with their tape recorders and their disheveled girl friends.”

People
“But then, only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.”

“A human being is all hope and impatience.”

Quoting I.S. Karpunich-Braven, a brigade commander in the civil war: “It is not enough to love mankind – you must be able to stand people.”

(dear readers, please post your lists in the comment box!)

we are a little tired of the top 50 albums, top 20 singles, top readers polls, critics polls blah blah blah this year — they are all the effing same! so here is round one of our non-2008-music-related lists…enjoy…

Top ten male vocalists who can melt the heart by the legendary jim ruiz
1. Marcos Valle
2. Louis Armstrong
3. Keith Girdler
4. Joao Gilberto
5. Ibrahim Ferrer
6. Dandy Livingstone
7. Georgie Fame
8. Edwyn Collins
9. Chet Baker
10. Pierre Barouh

Ten reasons to love/obsess over/stalk Peter Sarsgaard by Uncle LD
10. – 2. Smart, handsome, talented, funny, quirky, great voice, versatile, personable and has an excellent beard.
1. He’s heterosexual, and thus unavailable — and thus infinitely desirable.

The Ten Songs I Listen To Least, Not Including Songs I’ve Never Listened To, According To My I-Tunes by Daniel Handler
1. ZZ Top, “Planet Of Women” from Greatest Hits
2. Zheng Yingsun, “The Empress’s Lament” from Lost Sounds Of The Tao: Chinese Masters of the Guqin
3. Warner Brothers Studio Orchestra, “Puddy Cat Trouble Pt. 6,” from The Carl Stalling Project
4. The Shangri-Las, “Radio Spot #1: How Pretty Can You Get?” from Myrmidons Of Melodrama
5. Louis Armstrong, “Pause Track,” from The Complete Hot Five & Seven Recordings, Disc Three
6. Eric Serra, “Whispering Statues,” from Goldeneye Original Soundtrack
7. Zeena Parkins, “Acoustic and Electric Harps,” from 100 Of The World’s Most Beautiful Melodies
8. Michael Tenzer, “Situ Banda,” from American Works For Balinese Gamelan
9. Lo Pa King, “The Lonely Teal,” from Lost Sounds Of The Tao: Chinese Masters of the Guqin
10. Limahl, “Never Ending Story,” from Living In Oblivion Vol. 2

Bob Stanley’s siesta-themed playlist
1. Love Letters – Ketty Lester
2. Wondrous Place – Billy Fury
3. He Noticed Me – Priscilla Paris
4. Missin’ My Baby – Clydie King
5. All I Wanna Do (from Sunflower, not 20/20)- The Beach Boys
6. Try – John Barry
7. Chanson d’O – Francoise Hardy
8. Sara – Fleetwood Mac
9. Oh My Love – John Lennon
10. Amore Come Dolore – Ennio Morricone

favourite cemeteries of 2008 by stephen coates / the real tuesday weld
1. nunhead (london)
2. pere le chaise (paris)
3. bunhill fields (london)
4. highgate (london)
5. montmartre (paris)
6. allied war grave (meuse argonne)
7. abney park (london)
8. postman’s park (london)
9. mausoleum of augustus (rome)
10. catacombs (paris)

Ten comics that I will always buy to give to friends when I find them in a bargain bin by clarissa cf
1. Amy Unbounded
2. Clan Apis
3. Tales of the Beanworld
4. Zot!
5. The first dozen issues of Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4
6. The issue of Batman Adventures whose plot revolves around Batman never having seen “In the Realm of the Senses”
7. Finder
8. Journey
9. Muktuk Wolfsbreath, Hard-Boiled Shaman
10. The Brendan McCarthy issue of Solo

Ten best bread-based snacks by lauren cf
1. plum tomato, avocado, and torn basil with ground black pepper on crusty
white bread
2. poached salmon and horseradish on grainy brown bread
3. hot white bread toast with lots of butter
4. vintage cheddar (irish) with branston pickle on french bread
5. manchego with quince on walnut bread
6. hummous and roasted red pepper in a ciabatta
7. crayfish, rocket, mayo and lemon juice on whole meal bread
8. gentleman’s relish on cold brown toast
9. feta, black olive and marinated artichoke hearts tomato on toasted ciabatta
10. smoked salmon with ground black pepper, lemon juice and cream cheese in
a plain bagel

favorite songs in 2008 that were not from 2008 by james mcnew / yo la tengo/dump
1. “depression,” black flag
2. “b.y.s.,” gang starr
3. “jeffrey i hear you,” the girls
4. “who am i today,” yura yura teikoku
5. “enter the mirror,” les rallizes desnudes
6. “i’ll bet you,” billy butler
7. “daniel,” tortoise & bonnie prince billy
8. “girls in their summer clothes,” bruce springsteen
9. “ah! melody,” serge gainsbourg
10. “everything flows,” teenage fanclub

the unlikely heroes crush list 2008 by gail cf
1. just like the rest of america, I cannot get enough of dr. gregory house as played by hugh laurie. he is such a jerk but you gotta love him. unlike the rest of america, I’ve seen him in his earlier work (like jeeves & wooster, where he is very funny but infinitely less crushworthy). at the moment dr house is tied with captain von trapp, my other new/old crush.
2. I don’t even remember what I’ve seen adam arkin in that got me all excited. northern exposure? perhaps. chicago hope? maybe. tv is all well and good but he’s going to waste in these small endeavors. why can’t he be a leading man for once? just look at that salt and pepper hair.
3. chris eigeman, once celebrated as the steve malkmus of whit stillman films, went missing around the same time that whit stillman did. he resurfaced on the gilmore girls (another reason to love those girls) but where is he now? someone give the man some proper work!
4. c.k. dexter haven, as played by cary grant in the philadelphia story, is very badly behaved yet you root for him. the movie’s message wouldn’t fly in this day and age but he is still more fun to watch than any of today’s romantic leads.
5. joel mccrea may have starred in many westerns over many decades, but it’s the preston sturges movies that I love. go buy the box set or at least rent sullivan’s travels.
6. okay, stop laughing. yes, topher grace did star on that 70s show, but he is destined for much greater roles. I hope! I think he has something there.
7. I got hooked on bbc productions of various classics whilst living in london and one person who stood out is the so-manly-it’s-scary actor richard armitage, who is particularly good and manly in the recent-ish robin hood among other period dramas, where he is usually dark, brooding and misunderstood.
8. matthew slaughter was my favorite character played by hal hartley mainstay martin donovan. I even got to interview marty d once when I worked for timeout newyork and he was starting a new tv show. but where has he gone? where have all the indie films like trust gone? I miss them.
9. richard jenkins played the dead, dysfunctional father on six feet under, but I barely noticed because I was too busy staring at peter krause. now krause is on a silly tv show and jenkins starred in the visitor, the film of the year or at least the american film of the year. see it.
10. I did not approve of alec baldwin’s embarrassing phone message to his daughter that got him in trouble a while back, but I believe he has tortured himself sufficiently over it (see his new yorker profile) — and plus, he has just been so damn funny on 30 rock that I forgave him. he never floated my boat back when he was younger but he even looks cute puffy (just like james spader looks cute and puffy these days). of course I wish tina fey and I were friends (tina please hire me!), but the 30 rock cast member that I actually do/did/would run into is the trucker-cap-sporting judah friedlander, who I recently waited for the toilet with at angelica kitchen. I bet he goes to max fish.

Top Reasons I Hit The Snooze Button Every Morning by kendall jane meade / mascott
1. Just five more minutes
2. Late night mindless cable watching
3. I’ll just go to the gym after work
4. Just ten more minutes
5. Attempt at creative visualization
6. Attempt at re-entering really good dream
7. Beauty Sleep
8. Late night mindless facebook crap
9. Horrible Duane Reade-bought alarm sound
10. Just 15 more minutes

Top Ten Bedridden Fictional Characters… by Dickon Edwards
1. Colin in The Secret Garden (who is much more like me than the Dickon in the book)
2. Charlie’s three other grandparents in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.
3. Michael Gambon’s character in Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective
4. Michael Gambon’s character in Stephen Poliakoff’s Perfect Strangers.
5. Virginia Woolf’s Orlando – who goes to bed for so long he changes into a woman.
6. Julianne Moore in The Hours – who dreams of drowning in bed after reading a book by the above Ms Woolf.
7. Angela Lansbury and her NON-drowning underwater bed in Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
8. Johnny Depp eaten by an unkind mattress in Nightmare on Elm Street
9. Lyta Hall in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, off to kill Dream in her dreams.
10. David Tennant’s Doctor in ‘Doctor Who: The Christmas Invasion’, saving the world with a satsuma in his pyjamas.

Ten best places to eat in Oxford by peter momtchiloff / the would-be-goods, scarlet’s well, les clochards
1. Al-Shami (Lebanese)
2. Carne (Brazilian)
3. Al-Andalus (tapas)
4. Liaison (Chinese)
5. Branca (Mediterranean)
6. Chiang Mai (Thai)
7. Red Star (noodles)
8. La Cucina (Italian)
9. Edamame (Japanese)
10. Dildunia (Indian)

Ten best things about the movie ‘Twilight’ by emma straub
1. Robert Pattinson’s gravity-defying hair.
2. Catherine Hardwicke’s creepily good eye for teenage misery.
3. Casual reference to Debussy.
4. The hot teenage vampire drives a Volvo.
5. She’s still a virgin at the end, and totally pissed about it.
6. Robert Pattinson’s completely bizarre American accent, which is neither Pacific Northwest nor anywhere else.
7. Vampires turn into glitter in the sun?
8. Mom ran off with a minor league baseball player. Really?
9. The mean vampire is also the bad seed from ‘The O.C.’, another world I loved that made little sense in its final moments.
10. Werewolves coming up next!

Ten best secret pie ingredients by candice pedersen
1. Graham cracker crumbs (crust)
2. Nutmeg for (savory pies)
3. Vodka (crust)
4. Crystalized ginger (fruit pies)
5. Orange zest (fruit pies)
6. Apple cider (apple pie)
7. Animal crackers (crust)
8. Sherry (savory pies)
9. Grated Granny Smith apple (blueberry pie)
10. King Arthur flours