I love lists. They're intense, they're simple, and they share the best
of the best.
At our webzine 10 Zen Monkeys, we've run several lists collecting the "top five" video clips. Here are five of my favorites.
Top Five Muppet Videos. "Star Wars Muppets" featured Miss
Piggy and Gonzo mingling with the real R2D2, Luke Skywalker, and Chewbacca. Also included: Elmo singing a surprisingly good version of "Slide" with the Goo-Goo Dolls.
I got to watch a lot of muppet clips while pulling this together. It made me realize that Jim Henson had an amazing career -- and, that there are lots of people who love the muppets!
Top 5 Sexiest Apple Videos. People are passionate about Apple
computers. Apparently, they sometimes express that passion with a sexy online video. Can you really combine these two impulses in a single visual medium? To explore the answer to that question, we created this list of the 5 Sexiest Apple Videos. (My favorite is the guy iChatting with four sexy women at the same time!)
Top 5 'Animal vs. Reporter' Videos. It's an age-old struggle: the authoritative versus the primitive. And in these videos, the primitive wins every time. Pay special attention to that worker at the animal shelter who's trying to get you to adopt Pinky the Cat. He's about to learn that Pinky the Cat really hates being on a leash -- and when the claws come out, he's in for a very nasty surprise.
5 Lamest Charlie Brown cartoons. I love Charlie Brown -- but his gentle sincerity sometimes led him in strange directions. Like the time Snoopy became the disco-dancing "Flashbeagle." Or the time Linus visited battlefields from World War II. Or the time Charlie Brown appeared in a brochure for Metropolitan insurance
called "Surviving the Loss of a Loved One."
This is another collection that makes you recognize an amazing career. As a young man Charles M. Schulz served in World War II -- and thirty years later, he was able to tapped his experiences for an animated cartoon.
The 5 Faces of Bush. The media tells secret stories. That's not a conspiracy theory; it's a conclusion we reached after reviewing photos selected for their articles about George Bush.
Blogger Josh Marshall first noticed the pattern, and wondered if news editors were signalling a change in tone -- and possible changes to come. As Bush's team presented pessimistic findings from the Iraq Study Group, a series of photographs were taken. But were they cropped in different ways, making Bush look even more worried, even more nervous, or disturbingly un-serious?
George Bush doesn't have anything in common with Charlie Brown or the Muppets --
except this:
They all showed us how fun it was to pull together our own Top 5
lists!