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Coachella 2013, Ranked
Views: 1,537 Apr 22 2013Reviews of 20 Coachella sets from Weekend 2 of the 2013 Coachella Music Festival. I'd give this year a B in the Grand Ranking of Coachellas, which I will get to one of these days, having attended all 15 of them. Photos included (mostly my terrible iPhone ...
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Best Albums of 2012
Views: 2,144 May 6 2013No stone classics this year on par with last year (Black Keys and Adele), but overall about 10 truly excellent releases, and many really good ones. In many cases I've added a video of a track to check out. Overall, a lot of good releases in the rock ...
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Best Books About Startups
Views: 1,464 Apr 25 2013The best books about startups and starting a business in today's fast-moving business environment, chosen from a long list of business books and ranked by votes from entrepreneurs and future entrepreneurs. These are the top-rated business books about ...
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My Favorite Bands As Of 11/1/82 (Age 14)
Views: 1,253 Jul 14 2012Evidence of an obsessive Ranker (and a music nerd) since long before this internet-thing existed. Written in cursive on a spiral-bound notebook (not even thin-lined . . . I was soo young . . . ). Already a big hard rock fan, I was just starting to get ...
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My Top 50 Albums Of The 80's (At The Time)
Views: 2,082 May 6 2013As-is, from late 1989. Original: ball point pen on graph paper. Someday soon I will do a proper retrospective "Top 300-ish Albums of The 80s"-ish list, in the manner of my 90s and 00s lists. This list will then include artists like Tom Waits ...
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Top Albums of 1989
Views: 1,173 May 6 2013An OK year for music - at least by late-80s standards. Writing this years later, only a handful (Dolittle, Oh Mercy, Disintegration) of these records are truly timeless and amazing all through. But at the time (before they got so overplayed) I remember ...
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Bonnaroo 2012 Reviewed + Ranked
Views: 13,817 Apr 5 2013Reviews, videos, and setlists of the Bonnaroo Festival 2012, all 25 artists that I saw. Ranking and reviewing all the music I caught live at the Bonnaroo Fest in Manchester, TN. Overall, a strong festival - not the best Bonnaroo I've been to (one of ...
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Best Songs About The Iraq & Afghanistan Wars
Views: 4,779 May 16 2013Contrary to popular belief, there have been quite a few excellent songs written about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, though very few have become popular hits. Check out these songs about the Iraq and Afghan conflicts and the U.S. and coalition ...
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Bands/Artists With Only One Great Album
Views: 8,150 May 23 2013Bands or artists who produced one great album and never came close to matching it. Vote down if you either don't agree that the one album was great, or if you think they produced multiple great albums. In the spirit of the list, don't vote on albums you ...
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Best Guitar Teams
Views: 4,836 May 7 2013Typical Best Guitarist rankings are not usually fair to the "team players" of great guitar bands. This list is for them - usually duos, but sometimes even triple-threat guitar teams. Some of these teams are "dual lead" guitars (they ...
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The Best Horribly-Named Rock Bands of All Time
Views: 1,758 Aug 24 2012List of great bands with crap names. Criteria: great band, and crap name. Greatness of band and crappiness of name are weighted equally, but mediocre names don't count - they have to really be bad names. I am almost always right about whether I will like ...
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Top Albums of 1998
Views: 1,075 May 6 2013By 90s standards, a Meh year - though pretty strong by the standards of the decade that followed. I wrote this list up quickly as I was launching my first internet company at the time - I'm sure I forgot a few faves of the day, and eventually I will ...
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The 5 Albums in My Heavy Catalog Rotation the Longest
Views: 2,580 May 6 2013Albums that have never lost favor in my rotation, ranked by their longevity since i obtained them. I will be on my deathbed and still be listening to these, probably via some implanted computer chip.Criteria - it's hard to pinpont exactly what ...
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Best Cover Songs of Recent Memory pt. 1
Views: 5,556 May 6 2013How often do you see a non hit song with a killer original version get covered multiple times, by artists in totally different genres, with the end result of 3 unique definitive versions? "No One's Gonna Love You" by Band of Horses, produces ...
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Companies I Have Founded
Views: 6,467 Apr 28 2010I am a serial entrepreneur. Ranker is my 5th startup in 15 years, and I'm not looking to start anything else for awhile - Ranker is pretty ambitious, and there is a LOT more that we will be doing with this platform, I think it will keep me happily ...
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FYF Fest 2011 Review- FYF Festival Rankings
Views: 2,538 Aug 31 2012Reviewed FYF Fest 2011 in downtown Los Angeles on-the-fly liveblogging as it happened, ranking the highlights. Videos and setlists of the performances to hopefully be added as well. The show went off incredibly well - no hassles, great setup where you ...
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The Best At What They Do
Views: 20,481 May 23 2013I give Maximum Respect to all on this list. Each is, IMHO, the best alive at What They Do. Note: at present, this list is almost all Americans. As it grows, that will change, though it will likely always slant towards the U S of A for a number of ...
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Why Do "Supergroups" Have Such Crap Names?
Views: 5,453 May 2 2013List of horribly-named Rock Supergroups. Why this trend? Do they not have access to a thesaurus? Is it because the bandmembers don't have shared-life experiences and can't agree on anything cool? Do they all just completely lack a shred of a clue living ...
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The Most Beautiful Eel In The World
Views: 3,525 Oct 11 2012Until recently I never understood the bond people had with their pets. Let's be honest - I have openly mocked it. I have scoffed as friends had to decline a last minute weekend trip because of their precious little pooch. Etc. But now I understand. I ...
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18 Reasons Why 'Exile On Main Street' Deserves Its Rep
Views: 15,997 Mar 14 2012"Exile" is one of those rare records where every year or two a different song on it will become a special talisman to be played when I really need a fix of something deep. This list explains why this 18-song masterpiece deserves every bit of ...
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Ronnie James Dio's Greatest Album Moments
Views: 29,056 May 6 2013The best Dio albums, spanning his full career. For about a 10 year period from the mid-70s into the mid-80s, Dio fronted prime years of 3 of the greatest metal bands to ever walk the earth. Ronnie Dio recorded quite a few records in a long career, but ...
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Fave Bands to Ski To
Views: 2,487 May 8 2013I have a very carefully chosen skiing playlist w 100s of diverse tracks. But this year I didn't get to update it quite enough, and God forgive me if I would listen to the same song over a 3 day period, so I found myself going back and listening to albums ...
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Coachella 2011 Review - Coachella Festival Rankings
Views: 18,636 Sep 4 2012Reviewing Coachella 2011 on-the-fly liveblogging as it happens, and ranking the highlights. Videos of the performances as well. Friday's Coachella was pound-for-pound the best day of music at Coachella yet, and I've been to them all. Overall the 2011 ...
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Best Albums of 2010
Views: 4,006 May 6 2013For the first time, I'm going with an unranked year-end list. Worst year for albums in ages (perhaps in my lifetime). There is always good new music though, and I did add streams to a few highlights you may not have heard (check out the Sufjan EP for the ...
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Alltime Best Bands from Illinois
Views: 11,751 Jun 26 2012Chicago bands and Illinois bands in general. As a native Chicagoan who went to school in Champaign, i feel entitled to weigh in on this matter. That said, i'm probably missing the boat on some less prominent Chicago bands of the late nineties and ...
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Rocktober 2010
Views: 4,607 Aug 29 2012For some reason, probably related to Global Tour Routing Schedules + The Weather, the month of October is always filled with more great pound-for-pound rock shows in LA than any other month. This has been the case since I moved to Los Angeles in 1992, ...
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Bonnaroo Review and Rankings: 2010
Views: 11,226 Sep 5 2012Manchester, Tennessee June 2010: Reviews of all the sets I could manage to catch at Bonnaroo 2010. Except for the first Bonnaroo in 2002 I have attended, and loved, every Bonnaroo Music Festival. 2010 lineup was not as strong as previous years line-ups, ...
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Tiger Blood.
Views: 13,588 May 17 2013List of famous men most likely to test positive for what Charlie Sheen refers to as "Tiger Blood" in their veins.
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Celebrities W/ Dishes Named After Them at Dan Tana's
Views: 7,680 Jun 26 2012Dan Tana's history is not just in the walls but on the menu. Dan Tana's restaurant, in West Hollywood on Santa Monica Boulevard, is an "Old Hollywood" institution. A number of old-school celebs or prominent entertainment industry execs have ...
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My Top Albums of 2009
Views: 4,221 May 17 2013UPDATED in early 2011. In retrospect, 2009 was a decent year, especially compared to the rock debacle that was 2010. The Top 8 records on this list all have turned out to be more consistently strong than ANY album of 2010, though there are a few 2010 ...
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Coachella 2010 Review - Coachella Festival Rankings
Views: 11,931 Jun 7 2012Overall, an excellent Cochella, though the huge crowds definitely added a bit more strain to the experience. Adding Coachella videos to the reviews as soon as they arrive on YouTube - great to see so many fast uploads. List is ranked by how much I liked ...
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Must Read Newspaper Pundits
Views: 2,612 Aug 23 2012These are columnists whose editorial opinions I find most interesting, whether or not I always agree. Requirement: they must publish regularly, ideally once a week or more. This list is only loosely ranked; I find that people writing regular columns tend ...
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Phish Festival 8 Set-By-Set Review
Views: 5,404 Jun 26 2012Reviewing Phish Festival 8; a live review of the Phish festival. Liveblog is ranked by Set Quality. Full coverage and wrapup of Phish Acoustic Set. for additional coverage: Jambase http://www.jambase.com/articles/story.aspx?storyID=20251
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Bonnaroo 09 Liveblog
Views: 3,288 Aug 23 2012"Liveblog" of Bonnaroo 2009. Bonnaroo 09 Reviews, some Setlists, etc. Listed in order of preference, not schedule order. Continually updated. 5PM Sat update: In the middle of a no-win situation; that would be the combo of Mule>Wilco>Volta ...
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My Coachella 2008
Views: 2,546 Sep 10 2012A terrific, diverse year. Ranked them in order of preference but there were many highlights.
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My Bonnaroo 2008
Views: 2,252 Apr 5 20132008 Bonnaroo Review (sorta - mostly just rankings). 2008 was one of the alltime best Bonnaroos - huge headliner firepower, 2 days of Phil, and much more.Ranked in order of awesomeness.
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My Lollapalooza 2008
Views: 2,242 Sep 10 2012My Lollapalooza 08 rankings and mini-reviews. Powerhouse lineup - great year, especially for the headliners.
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Women Who Have Gotten Hotter With Age
Views: 63,137 May 23 2013I suppose you could call this a CougList. But it's not just all Cougs, it's women that have not just kept it up but improved- at least for awhile. Impressive. And it's not all MILFs either. The definition here is that she has to have gotten noticably ...
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My Lollapalooza 2007
Views: 2,472 Sep 10 2012An enjoyable festival, to be sure, but there just weren't many jaw-dropping sets compared to other fests. Ranked in order of preference, and including in many cases video footage from the show.
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My Bonnaroo 2007
Views: 1,306 Apr 5 2013This was a Bonnaroo that I probably anticipated more than I actually enjoyed, mainly due to The Police being just OK. Ranked in order of enjoyment.
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My Coachella 2009
Views: 2,892 Sep 4 2012As good as any year- maybe the best ever. was like a Bonnaroo as far as me cramming tons of different sets into 3 days. Definitely the most music I've seen at a Coachella to date, and I've been to all. Perhaps the best thing of all was that for my tastes ...
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2008 My Top Albums
Views: 2,381 May 6 2013NOTE: these are the rankings as they stood at the end of this particular year (typically produced in January, because it's important to give Q4 records a chance to breathe and i am not one to listen to a record over and over again right when i get it (i ...
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My Coachella 2007 Review and Rankings
Views: 3,535 Apr 5 2013Not my fave lineup overall, though the Rage Against the Machine reunion was the all-powerful draw for me at the time.Lotsa bands on this list that I am not a fan of and only saw becuz I was with people who wanted to see them, or there was nothing else to ...
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Movies I Saw Too Many Times Growing Up
Views: 3,753 Sep 9 2012ranked by how many times i saw them not by quality.
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2002 My Top Albums
Views: 3,569 May 6 2013NOTE: list is "as is" at the end of 2002; my opinions have definitely changed a bit since then and I will update a revised version of this at some point. There were a TON of damn good records this year, but I didn’t find any that completely ...
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2003 Albums of the Year
Views: 2,673 May 6 2013My original 2003 list was a top 25 which i have pasted below - I decided in this case to rank the full list as I currently (late 2009) feel. Most of the mini-reviews or notes about the records are from the original list. In retrospect, a solid year of ...
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1999 - My Top Albums
Views: 2,956 May 6 2013This is my list (and my notes) from the time - in retrospect I would certainly disagree with at least some of my summary about the year (not a lot of quality releases, BUT at least 6 or 7 EXCELLENT ones) as well as some Rankings, but the "revised ...
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2000 My Top Albums
Views: 3,255 May 6 2013NOTE: this is my list "as it stood" at the end of the year - time has updated my opinions since then and I will probably at some point publish a "revised" list (in retrospect, there are like 12-15 killer records that came out this ...
Clark Benson's ReRanks
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Best U.S. Presidents in the Past 50 Years
Views: 1,398 May 9 2013Interesting list concept and really tough to rank - though I am a stauch Democrat, and respect Carter a lot as a man (probably the greatest ex-President ever), it's kinda hard to think of many great things that he accomplished in office, hence the low ...
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Best Current Dramatic TV Shows
Views: 74 May 9 2013Basing my weightings heavily on the most recent season that I have watched (hence the lower rankings for Justified, Downton, Boardwalk, all of which I found really disappointing in their 3rd season (maybe this one is the 4th for Justified, i forget, but ...
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Best Shows Currently On the Air
Views: 1,207 May 9 2013Or, basically, all the shows i watch, with the exception of late-nite and news shows.
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The Funniest TV Characters of All Time
Views: 2,213 Mar 25 2013A tough, tough list to rank. Do you treat supporting characters like Leon Black or Moe Szylak equally if they crack you up whenever they are on? Fringe characters (Towlie, Dr. Spaceman)?
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Best Singing Drummers
Views: 392 Dec 13 2012Ranked by vocal talent not drumming talent. Grohl is kinda cheating because he doesn't really sing when he drums that often...
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The Most Influential Contemporary Americans
Views: 451 Aug 24 2012For better or for worse.
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The 50 Greatest Led Zeppelin Songs
Views: 306 Apr 3 2013There is no such thing as a bad Led Zeppelin song. I can't think of any other musical artist with a large catalog that I could say that about. I will admit some slight bias in the rankings here - I'm 45 years old, and by the time I was 15 and a MASSIVE ...
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The Very Best of Premium Cable Original Programming
Views: 1,341 May 9 2013
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Best Albums of 2011
Views: 4,865 May 6 20132011's releases easily topped the Best Albums of 2010, but that is faint praise indeed. 2011 was a slightly sub-par year by recent (the last 5 years) standards, but IMHO new rock (and related) music has been ebbing for quite some time (see the best ...
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The 400 Best Albums of the 1990s
Views: 26,345 May 6 2013The Nineties were a glorious decade for music. I will never again consume as much music as I did in the 90s and the 00s (and I still listen to a LOT of music). It's pretty clear now how much better the 90s were than the decade that followed - not only ...
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My Coachella 2012
Views: 1,775 May 23 2012Short reviews and rankings of all the bands I saw at Coachella 2012 (I went the 2nd weekend).
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The Best AC/DC Studio Albums
Views: 891 May 6 2013I almost went out on a limb and put For Those About To Rock ahead, because it's by far my personal fave. But in fairness, Back In Black is a perfect hard rock album, and the only reason I don't listen to it much anymore is because it has been so ...
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Top 500 Musical Groups/Artists of Alltime
Views: 199,961 Nov 11 2012Top 500 Rock Bands isn't 100% accurate as this includes solo artists, and though it does not include jazz or blues it does include soul, R&B, Americana, reggae, and classic country (yes, that is somewhat arbitrary, but for whatever reason i listen to ...
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The 300 Best Albums of the 00's
Views: 23,452 May 6 2013The rock album theme of the 00s? Consistency. There were unquestionably less amazing records this decade than any other decade in rock. I probably listened to 3-4000 or so discs that came out in the "oughts" and gave just 3 *perfect* scores.
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The Best Martin Scorsese Movies
Views: 1,503 Aug 24 2012Ranking this list simply brought home that although he is my favorite director of all time, I really need to re-watch some of his late-70s and early-80s films (for example - King of Comedy, After Hours - both of which I may have been too young to truly ...
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30 Bands/Artists Who Deserve To Be In The Rock Hall Of Fame
Views: 3,945 Aug 24 2012Well, they deserve to be there more than many who are in . . . I based my rankings not just on personal preference, but also on the type of criteria that the Rock Hall of Fame supposedly is about - being influential and breaking ground. As well as just ...
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The Greatest Film Actors & Actresses of All Time
Views: 1,541 Feb 24 2013Admittedly skewed towards the last 40 years as I'm not an aficionado of old movies.
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The Greatest Science Fiction Novels of All Time
Views: 1,735 Aug 24 2012My actual rankings for this list aren't particularly airtight as most of my reading of "classic" SF authors was when I was an adolescent or teen and I just don't remember the nuances of how much I loved some of those books. But Stranger In a ...
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The Funniest Movies of All Time
Views: 2,196 Apr 25 2013Disclaimers:There were a number of mid-to-late-80s movies on the (excellent) master CrowdRanked list here that I did think were hilarious at the time, but since I've never seen them again, and my memory has faded a bit, I've left them off. I'm also ...
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Rock Deaths That Left The Most Great Music Behind
Views: 2,512 Aug 24 2012Following the instructions of the Crowdranked list this contributes to, I didn't include non-rock genres (sorry Hank, Billie et al)
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Alltime Best Rock Guitar Players
Views: 8,564 May 7 2013I have never played guitar. But I have listened to as much of it as any man my age, or at least any non-Guitar Center employee my age.The common thread: just about everyone on this list has a totally recognizable, distinct sound. While all of them are ...
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Fave TV Shows of Past 10 Years
Views: 8,741 May 9 2013Updated 4.15.12 - The last year or so of TV has stepped up a bit, driven by the amazing Game of Thrones, a show that may end up overtaking The Wire as my #1 over time. Additionally, big props for The Good Wife - by far the best show on network TV in ...
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Vegetables I Won't Eat
Views: 1,445 Mar 4 2013way fewer than I thought. I must be getting soft in my old age.
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Best Frequent Howard Stern Guests
Views: 1,480 Aug 24 2012Guests are my favorite part of the show, followed by Robin's News.
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The Best Punk Bands Of All Time
Views: 2,383 Aug 29 2012This is a tough one to rank - at certain peak moments, I would say all of the top 10 on this list could have been considered the best punk band on the planet. Which is what punk's all about, innit? It's also hard to decide the boundaries of punk - I left ...
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The Most Important Battles in US History
Views: 1,522 May 6 2013NOTES: I added the Vicksburg Campaign instead of Battle of Vicksburg because I felt the impact was greater for the full campaign. Yet I added Battle of Atlanta as a proxy for Sherman's March because there wasn't an item for Sherman's March. Messy ...
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The Funniest Stand Up Comedians in Entertainment
Views: 2,533 Sep 2 2012I don't pretend to be a standup expert - I'm sure there are some great talents whose standup I just haven't really seen.
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The Best Blues Artists of All Time
Views: 2,088 Aug 24 2012I tried to restrict my list to more pure blues players and therefore didn't include many blues-rock artists tho I did give SRV the nod. I noticed other lists have included artists like Billie Holiday and Solomon Burke but I would stick them in Jazz ...
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The Most Influential Politicians in American History
Views: 1,572 May 7 2013
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The Greatest Soundtracks of All Time
Views: 2,137 May 6 2013Shocked that I was the first person to add Singles to this list - one of the rare killer soundtracks all the way through, and mostly all original songs on the soundtrack for the first time.
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Oscar Nominations 2011: Rank The Best Picture Oscar Nominees
Views: 1,762 Aug 24 2012Of the 7/10 that I've seen thus far, here's my rankings of the 6 that I felt deserved to be nominated (did not like The Kids Are All Right at all). I must say some excellent films in the mix - any of my top 5 could be faves-of-the-year in lighter years.
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Top Coen Brothers Films IMHO
Views: 1,397 Aug 24 2012Gonna go out on a limb and put Grit at the top. Maybe I need to see Lebowski again but I really didn't think much of it when it first came out. Did not much care for A Serious Man and didn't even make it thru Intolerable Cruelty. The handful of others ...
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Pound-for-Pound Best Directors
Views: 2,638 Aug 24 2012I wouldn't call myself a cinefile, and also am not one who loves old movies, so my list consists entirely of directors from the '60s onwards.
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Alltime Fave Movies
Views: 4,229 Aug 23 2012Yeah, not exactly packed with surprises for the tastes of a 44 year old US male. I love a good film as much as anyone, but am by no means a cinefile. I'm sure I'm missing a few movies on here that i loved but only have seen once - for example Shawshank ...
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Books That Changed My Life
Views: 2,980 Aug 24 2012Not 100% definitive - books are a tough thing for me to Rank, but here's some high-impact ones, mostly from my formative years as I guess given the "changed my life" concept they should be. I used to devour 50+ books a year but workload has ...
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The Worst Cars Ever
Views: 2,343 Aug 24 2012I'm far from a car guy but suck is still suck. I did get to go to the AMC plant in Wisconsin on a cub scout field trip once though, so I think I'll spare the poor Pacer, though the Gremlin . . . yeah . . .
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