TOP 10 LISTS

Hmm. Stupid Google has changed the format on these blogs and I can't adjust my font. They must want, insist, that I "upgrade" to what they deem cool and necessary.
Who's in charge here?!
So I like lists. Top 10 lists. There is something satisfying and clean and neat about those lists. Obviously I am not the only one since people and organizations create lists of favorites and non-favorites all the time.
I remember watching Casey Kasem's ("SCOOB!") America's Top 10 on Sunday nights during the early 1980s. There was something reassuring about his voice announcing who was maintaining their place on Billboard's Top 10, in addition to something maddeningly frustrating when my favorite artists didn't attain the chart position that I thought they deserved (How dare Juice Newton's "Queen of Hearts" stall at #2?!). And what a treat when we got to see the full music video for the song!
Since then - about 30 years now - I have classified and ranked various songs, books, and movies in my mind into Anonymister's personal Top 10. Never has it been shared with anyone, including myself. This is because I never complete the list. I just think, "That's definitely in my Top 10."
I know these songs have to be in my Top 10 because of how much I love them now or the sheer number of times I have listened to them in my life. However, they are not ranked in preferential order, other than "Breeze.":
- Breeze, by Lush
- Take That Holiday, by Stacey Q
- Happy, by N*E*R*D
- Tar Baby, by Sade
- Hold On, by Dwele
- Suckling the Mender, by Cocteau Twins
- It Makes Me Wonder, by Suzanne Vega
- Incomplete Without You, by Swing Out Sister
- Prototype, by Outkast
- Eyes Without a Face, by Billy Idol
These may change in an hour.
It is also important to note that there are artists who I love much more than others on this list but whose individual songs simply did not make the cut. Madonna. Fleetwood Mac. Massive Attack. They have a catalog of songs that made my skin tingle and my heart sing, but not a song that I have listened to 400,000 times.
Now I was talking to a friend of mine earlier this week and he said that the day prior, the garbage men had collected the trash on his block. He also mentioned that after they left, it seemed that all of them had taken a shit in front of his and his neighbors' houses. The smell that lingered after the collection was simply heinous; perhaps that had wrung out garbage broth from the trash bags.
It aroused olfactory memories of the WORST smell I had ever smelled, which was a large East Coast City's garbage truck in the summer. In a car with other people, we were stuck behind it at a red light. This fucking truck smelled worst than shit. It smelled worst than the lady's breath I smelled in the department store on December 26th when I was hungover at 14-years-old after having drunk egg nog at my family's Christmas get-together (and my mother thought she was so generous that year, but I just wanted Calvin Klein's Obsession for Men cologne). It smelled worse than the hot decomposing carcasses that I saw in the city morgue during my summer job at 16-years-old. This fucking garbage truck was like the underworld, but worse. There were four of us in the car, and the three passengers screamed at the driver to turn left! turn left! When the traffic light changed and we were able to turn, we all breathed, and silence settled on the car as we realized that we had all survived a near catastrophe.
So my friend's experience got me thinking about other Top 10 lists that I never see - why aren't there lists entitled TOP 10 WORSE SMELLS? Or TOP 10 BEST ORGASMS? (I certainly can remember a few...) Or TOP 10 TIMES I WAS SO HIGH AND DROVE THAT IT WAS A MIRACLE I DIDN'T KILL OTHER PEOPLE, MYSELF, OR DRIVE OFF A BRIDGE (like that first time I snorted Oxycontin and then smoked some hybrid of pot called "Purple Koosh" or "God" and my eyes were crossed and I literally - literally - saw three of everything for 2 hours). How about TOP TEN PEOPLE WHOSE TEETH I'D LIKE TO PUNCH DOWN THEIR THROATS (David Spade. Sarah Palin. Several ex-bosses.) Maybe TOP LONGEST TURDS EVER THAT ASTOUNDINGLY CURLED AROUND THE TOILET BOWL AND DID NOT BREAK INTO PIECES. Or TOP 10 MOST EMBARRASSING THINGS EVER (I read something about someone fucking the hole in their picnic table and getting arrested - that's pretty embarrassing).
Man, there is a farrago of lists that I am missing, I am sure.