December 24, or, The Top Five Versions Of “Blue Christmas”

5) Elvis Presley

Obviously, the most famous of all renditions. Elvis kind of sets the schmaltz standard on this one. This is a depressing song, but everyone from Johnny Cash to Bruce Springsteen have handled it like some kind of joke in the wake of the King’s Hawaiian-tinged take. The “whoo-oo-oos” in the background are pretty great though.

4) Banjo or Freakout

One man band covers it in frost and mist, sings it from inside the dream you just woke up from, maybe, you think.

3) Low

Slowcore. Sounds like it’s echoing out of an ice palace.

2) Bright Eyes

If there’s one Christmas song tailored for a young, miserable Conor Oberst, it’s this one.

1) Ernest Tubb & His Texas Troubadours

The original. Slide guitars, fiddles, and a cowboy on the mic. Sounds like he’s singing it out on the range and there’s nothing but empty echoing back. Can’t find an mp3.

December 23, or, The Top Five Things I Want For Xmas

5) David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest

Forgot to ask for this. Forgot to ask for anything at all, actually. It comes very highly recommended. Maybe I’ll pick it up on Boxing Day or something. Like there’s any chance I’m venturing out into the shitstorm that is Boxing Day.

4) A plane ticket

Somewhere warm would be nice. I’ve been thinking about Cuba lately. On the other hand, I’d be ok with London. Could get to some places I’ve been meaning to see from there easily/cheaply. New York, sure, yeah. Let’s get stuck back in. Man, I’d even be all right with a bus ticket to Revelstoke, as long as there’s a comfortably authentic mountain cabin waiting at the end of the trip. A-frame. Log fireplace. Lot’s of brown. Thick carpets, decades out of fashion. Worn-out leather couches. Smoking inside a plus. Whiskey, neat, or a cube of Pilsner.

3) Down pillows

Oh, look. Already got’em. New sheets, too? Wow. Thanks Amy.

2) Snow

If it’s going to be cold, it may as well be snowy out. I go away for 8 short months and miss all the fun of last year’s blizzard. Then I come back and it starts dumping all over New York. I’m thinking about that ‘trick’ where, if you get up to go to the bathroom when you’re at a restaurant, by the time you get back your food is there. Except I got back to the table and someone ate all my food.

1) World peace & happiness for the bros

I don’t really need anything, but I think this would make life better.

an festive aside

Banjo Or Freakout – XMas Album

Highly recommended.

Banjo Or Freakout – Blue Christmas

And if you don’t have The Eggnog Experience yet, go get it.

December 21, or, The Top Five Ideologies Of The Decade

5) Yoga

The logical conclusion of various movements towards an easy-out layman’s sort of transcendentalism. Previous stepping stones include Tai-bo, Strippercising, Pilates, etc. Good for heart, mind, body, and whomever is charging you too much to squirm around on a gym mat while listening to elevator music.

4) Kabbalah

Mystical Judaism endorsed by famous people. Red ‘members only’ string bracelets became the must-have fashion trend of 2005, usurping Lance Armstrong’s ‘Live Strong’ rubber band’s claim on the title. Notable celebrity endorsers include the historically non-Jewish but ever-cutting-edge, such as Madonna, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, et al. Lost some steam in the latter half of the decade following the uprising of the mightly Church Of Scientology.

3) Scientology

Ideological principles more vague, celebrity endorsers further ‘out there,’ capitalistic greed more overt even than that of Kabbalah. Tom Cruise ‘jumping the couch’ often cited as reference point for general understanding of the cult. After finding out Jason Lee is a Scientologist I just haven’t been able to watch Mallrats again, and I think Video Days is probably ruined forever, too. And I always suspected there was more to My Name Is Earl than met the eye…

2) Christianity/Islam

Way to go, guys.

1) Nihilism

When the only thing that makes sense is that nothing makes sense and the only thing that’s true is that nothing is true and the only thing that’s real is that nothing is real and the only thing to believe is that there’s nothing to believe… or something. Maybe I should have saved this one for next decade, when we’re really up Fuck Creek.

December 20, or, The Top Five Things I’m Bored Of Seeing On Facebook

5) Stupid groups, i.e. “I Like Sunny Days,” “Blondes Have More Fun,” “Let’s Beat Cancer,” etc. Example A is an exhibit of perhaps the worst aspect of Facebook, that is, the celebration of mediocrity. Example B is the type of catch-all sloganeering meant to give people with few or no redeeming qualities something to cheer about in their meaningless lives. Example C is symptomatic of confused upper-middle class guilt, wherein people find ways to make themselves feel as if they have contributed by really doing nothing at all. It’s kind of like buying a hybrid car. You’re not going to save the planet by buying a new car every few years, no matter how low its emmisions. You’re not going to beat cancer by joining a Facebook group, no matter how many names are on the list.

4) Pet photos. Everyone thinks their dog or cat is the best dog or cat in the world. No one has any sense of relativity.

3) Photos of two or more girs with their faces close together, looking at the camera, smiling ‘pretty girl’ smiles, in the setting of a bar/party/get-together, in the same pose, again and again and again, throughout an entire album, displayed in such a way so as to make you suspicious that maybe there was no point during said engagement when those portrayed were not acting in the way depicted.

2) Banal status updates, including but not limited to: anything to do with being warm/inside/cuddled up with your significant other, drinking wine/eating good food/watching a notable movie; anything to do with how good the party you’re at is, or how good the party that you are going to be at later is going to be; anything about the weather; anything about your upcoming vacation; anything…well, pretty much anything. The access to status updates has somehow conviced the Facebooking population that the meaningless minutae of their shitty lives is somehow something somebody somewhere could possibly give a shit about, when the fact is that even the updater is so bored by the crushing insipidness of their own existence, the only way they can think of to justify the shit is by glorifying it. It’s grotesque.

1) Me.

December 17, or, The Top Five…i dunno. fuck the decade.

5) Getting older

No problems with this. I get better every day.

4) Partying.

Not real concerned about the frequency of this. May as well do what yr good at. The trick is to turn ‘hangover’ days into ‘days of guilt, panic, & minor accomplishment.’ ‘Minor accomplishment’ includes anything from eating breakfast to getting your shit together enough to get drunk again that night.

3) Bros

A few days ago I went to an old bro’s Xmas party. Besides me, none of our high school bros were there because they were all playing a hockey game. So I chilled with my bro and his new bros from work or that he had met over the years through his wife. He’s married. Six out of the ten people there were married, actually (and one of the girls was pregnant). Two more were engaged. Of the remaining two girls, one was teetering on engagement and the other was an idiot. I left at 10 to head back downtown.

The next night I was at my parents’ place to decorate the Xmas tree. They asked me about the party. I made a comment about “six married people, a couple engaged, a preggers, and a copy of Kitchen and Bath on the coffee table,” then I said something about how that “has nothing at all to do with my reality.” Then my mom said, “Um, should we be concerned about this?”

I dunno mom. When I thought about it, right then, I started to realize that my reality is becoming more and more my reality. Like, just mine. In, like, a way, uh, I dunno…doesn’t matter.

(Any of you babes want to go to Van Dusen gardens with me?)

2) Writing

When I remember myself as a 19 year old beginning my undergrad – steering myself towards getting an English degree, arrogantly answering “I don’t care” to some idiot’s “What are you going to do with that?” thinking to myself, ‘These idiots, who can’t think of anything, besides how to make money, with no idea of art, or of living, or of the intrinsic value of being able to speak knowledgably about Ulysses, or what it feels like to get choked up just thinking about For Whom The Bell Tolls, whose children all have the same haircut, have owned cars since they were 16, justify their lives through consumption, without an original thought in their bones,’ and dark was the night, etc – when I remember myself as a 19 year old, I think about that kid and I think, ‘Yeah, bro. Good call. Thanks. It’s looking a little bleak right now, but we’re gonna ride this motherfucker out.’

1) Me

And Shakespeare said:

“Thou wast a pretty fellow when thou hadst no need to care for her frowning. Now thou art an O without a figure. I am better than thou art now; I am a Fool, thou art nothing.”

And Eliot said:

“Shall I part my hair behind? And do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.”

And Joyce said:

“Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.”

And Miller said:

“Beyond despair and disillusionment is always the absence of worse things and the emmoluents of ennui.”

And Thompson said:

“It was almost noon, and we still had more than a hundred miles to go. They would be tough miles. Very soon, I knew, we would both be completely twisted. But there was no going back, and no time to rest. We would have to ride it out.”

And Hemingway said:

“Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with the grain flailed out and the chaff blowing. Living was a horse between your legs and a carbine under one leg and a hill and a valley and a stream with trees along it and the far side of the valley and the hills beyond.”

And I said:

December 16, or, My Five Favorite Albums Of The Decade

I wrote my top five albums of the year list for Supreme (with the same list probably going up at ION, as well, because I can’t see the point in making two separate top five lists just for the sake of journalistic integrity or whatever. Especially at the rate i’m getting paid at [$0.00/word]), and I’m feeling a little drained tonight. I figured I’d do this at some point anyhow, so it may as well be now while I’m in the groove. Top five favorite albums from a decade where I probably listened to 500. It’s a silly fucking undertaking and the list is probably completely predictable to anyone who knows me, but I don’t really care. The only reason I’m writing this introduction is to give something more interesting to read than whatever I have to say about the albums. No?

5) Titus Andronicus – The Airing Of Grievances

I just got the advanced copy of Titus’ new album today, and it’s insane. I mean, I was just happy to hear the band was actually going to do another album. When I saw them in Brooklyn last June it sounded like it might not happen, Patrick Stickles saying something like “Uh, if you see two English dudes around, they’re from XL records, and if you could tell them you’d like them to please put out another record by us, that would be great, because the reason they’re here tonight is to help decide whether or not they want to do that.” But I was nervous to listen to the thing, because I couldn’t really imagine how a band would go about following up something as brilliantly, fist-pumpingly, beautifully nihilistic as The Airing Of Grievances was and is. I still get chills when “No Future Part 2: The Days After No Future” tears it’s way in.

Oh, along with the new record was a press release, which is pretty standard fare for these sort of things. In this one, though, was a letter from the frontman himself – an indulgence which could go either way, were it not for the fact that Stickles is a brilliant writer and too smart to fuck it up. My favorite part of it is when he describes the band’s music thusly: “Blah blah blah Springsteen blah blah blah beer blah blah blah beard blah blah blah Shakespeare yadda yadda yadda Seinfeld blah blah blah Conor Oberst in a vat of acid blah blah blah books.”

4) The Libertines – The Libertines

Up The Bracket is arguably the more viscerally captivating album, but the Libertines’ self-titled second – and last – album is where I really got into the band. And regardless of widely-held opinions about what sort of a shithead Pete Doherty is, and in the face of the sort of backlash-incited disdain that some seem to feel towards the band, I stand by my love, goddamnit. This album is a documentary about a band being torn apart at the seams and two bros loving each other to the point of hating each other, from “Can’t Stand Me Now” to “What Became Of The Likely Lads.” But I mean, that’s all there if you feel like digging around in the lyrics. If you just wanna put it on while getting thrashed, it’s a Libertines album, and they manage to throw a pretty good party in these 42 minutes.

3) The Strokes – Is This It

I could get all lofty and start talking about the way in which I felt like my life was gonna change from the first moment I heard the opening jangle of “Last Nite,” or how the Strokes might be the last rock and roll band to blaze in and so completely and so effortlessly change the landscape of music, or how the kids in Williamsburg have only recently given up on trying to one-up the sort of ‘cool’ Jules and co. seemed to have crawled out of the womb with, but instead I’d rather just say that this is a perfect album and it sounds as good today as it did on July 30, 2001. Now if these bastards could just give us something like it again (I’d settle for Room On Fire 2 at this point, really), we could all be happy.

2) Bright Eyes – Lifted, or, The Story Is In The Soil, Keep Your Ear To The Ground

Conor Oberst’s magnum opus. Fatally-flawed, overly-ambitious, unhinged and desperate, sarcastic and vitrolic, reaching for the moon while crawling around in the dirt, and always aware of it’s impending failure, the closest thing I can compare Lifted to is Born To Run. It’s the last will and testament of a young man’s youth, a paean to the fading days where fucking it all up was nothing if not expected. And just as Springsteen resigns himself to the hopelessness of it all by the time the end of “Jungleland” rolls around, so too does Oberst, the last lines of “Let’s Not Shit Ourselves” coming “How grateful I was then to be part of the mystery / To love and to be loved / Let’s just hope that is enough.” Yeah, bro. We’re still hoping.

1) Interpol – Turn On The Bright Lights

I don’t know if I can say exactly why this album stood out as the one I wanted to put at the top (bottom?) of this list. And maybe that’s the reason why, in itself. There’s still something mysterious, still something exciting about Turn On The Bright Lights, and I feel like it’s something that might never go away. Carlos D may have become the subject of that nagging herpes rumour and Paul Banks may smile on stage now and Daniel Kesler may have talked in interviews too much and Sam Fogarino may be old, but when I hear the first echoing notes of “Untitled” I still feel like I did the first time I heard it, crouched forward in front of a desktop computer, staring at the WinAmp screensaver, wondering how on Earth anything could sound so scarily cool. Even the cover art gives me butterflies.

I never did get around to getting that finely tailored suit I really wanted for a while there, though. But, from what I understand, their upcoming fourth album is supposed to be using Bright Lights as a template, so maybe I’ll be inspired again next year.

December 15, or, The Five Top-Selling Artists Of The Decade & The Socio/Cultural Implications Thereof

There’s all sorts of disclaimers I could start this list off with, but I’d rather just let it stand alone. (US sales figures, I think.)

5) Britney Spears – approx. 23,000,000

Releases (albums) – Oops!…I Did It Again (2000), Britney (2001), In The Zone (2003), Blackout (2007), Circus (2008); (compilations) – Greatest Hits: My Perogative (2004), B in the Mix: The Remixes (2005), The Singles Collection (2009)

Releasing seven collections of music in a decade seems like a pretty good way to ensure some sort of sales. Dating JT, dating Fred Durst, starring in a terrible movie, playing with snakes, getting married and divorced a couple times, having some kids, shaving your head, attacking people with umbrellas, kissing Madonna, going to rehab, getting fat, getting skinny, having custody battles, dating paparazzi, checking in and out of hospital, and (whatever else she got up to in last ten years) seem like pretty good ways to make yourself either A) an inscrutable, unexplainable, mentally unstable-seeming object of ridicule, or B) a martyr-like hero to legions of blindly wide-eyed young – and not-so-young – girls. (Note, here, how her album titles mirror her career arc.) But if we’re going to be fair here, “Toxic” is an undeniable jam. And now that Brit seems to have her shit back together, I realize I kind of feel for the poor girl; trying to maintain any sort of wholesome or religious bent while being ground under the sinful wheels of the entertainment industry…she was fucked from the start. (Then I feel guilty about feeling bad for her when I remember that time she said “We should just trust our president in every decision he makes and should just support that.” Come on.

Socio/Cultural Implications: The American teengirl market contiues to exhibit a rabid thirst for prefabricated schmaltz. It will, however, be interesting to note how the subversive effects of certain media phenomenon (Gossip Girl, The Twilight, Solange/Beyonce/Jay Z) moving towards linking their brands with more ‘authentic’ ‘indie’ artists will effect the tastes of traditionally ‘mainstream’ America. The 20-tweens should be illuminating.

4) Toby Keith – Approx. 24,200,000

Releases (albums) – Pull My Chain (2001), Unleashed (2002), Shock’n Ya’ll (2003), Honkytonk University (2005), White Trash With Money (2006), Big Dog Daddy (2007), That Don’t Make Me A Bad Guy (2008), American Ride (2009); (compilations) – 20th Century Masters: The Millenium Collection (2003), Greatest Hits 2 (2004), 35 Biggest Hits (2008)

Holy shit. I thought Britney was busy.

I’m kind of conflicted about Toby Keith. I thought he was just a big, dumb, raghead-hating conservative knuckle dragger, but I did a little research and it turns out he’s a ‘conservative democrat’ who ‘loves his country,’ has been married to the same woman for 25 years, and spends a lot of time travelling around visiting American troops in different parts of the world. Which changes…nothing, really. I was just surprised he supports Obama.

Dude is responsible for songs like “Get Drunk And Be Somebody,” and “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American).” Though the former may as well be linked with an addendum that says (The Chad Buchholz Story), if it comes on at a bar I happen to be unlucky enough to be at, it turns every last douchebag in the place into…I dunno, what’s beyond douchebag? The latter contains the lyric “And you’ll be sorry that you messed with / The U.S. of A. / ‘Cause we’ll put a boot in your ass / It’s the American way,” which I would actually kind of like if it wasn’t the mindset that got them (all of us) in this trouble in the first place.

Socio/Cultural Implications: In my mind, Toby Keith has always seemed like dumbed-down American ideal. He’s built like a football player, drinks Bud by the gallon, sings country music, believes in the good fight, and says whatever he damn well pleases. I feel like Toby Keith himself is much more conscious of of what he epitomizes than his audience likely is. I feel like the average Toby Keith fan listens to “(The Angry American)” and gets riled up to the point of having to go down to the range and blast off a few rounds. I’m crediting his success to a lack of widespread knowledge of online music retailers/filesharing outlets among his principle fanbase.

Tim McGraw – Approx. 24, 300, 000

Releases (albums) – Set This Circus Down (2001), Tim McGraw and The Dancehall Doctors (2002), Live Like You Were Dying (2004), Let It Go (2007), Southern Voices (2009); (compilations) Greatest Hits 1, 2, 3 + various ‘collectors editions’

I don’t know much about Tim McGraw. He seems pretty benign to me. He got married to Faith Hill sometime in the late 90s, which was probably a good publicity move for the both of them. I think he played the Merrit Mountain Music Festival one year, which seemed to have a legitmizing effect for everybody who I knew was just going up there to try and get laid/bjs/blackout drunk. Bad personal style; saw some photos of him dressed up in his ‘cowboy goes to the city’ gear (poor boy hat, fashionable coat). I’m of the belief that the cowboy lifestyle did – and should always – entail sleeping with your boots on and a revolver under your pillow.

Socio/Cultural Implications: Strikes me as being a ‘universal’ draw. I can imagine people getting drunk and bro-ing down to some songs while their parents clean the suburban house where the bros still live while listening to some other songs. The inclusion of two country & western singers in the top five of the decade makes me lean ever more heavily towards the belief that the demographic most inclined to purchase this music has yet to discover the freedoms offered by the online purchase/thievery of music.

The Beatles – 27,600,000

Releases – uhhhhhhhh fuckkkkkkkkkk

An English rock band active from 1960-1970 who made their name by stealing vociferously from American R & B performers such as Chuck Berry, The Everly Brothers, and Buddy Holly, having shaggy haircuts, and sleeping with Yoko Ono. Recent resurgence in public interest credited alternatively to the band’s cited influence on Brit Pop sensations Oasis, or to a recently released video game containing some of their songs.

Socio/Political Implications: The only ‘band’ in the top five (Linkin Park next closest at number 8). Unsure about what this means for music. I guess it can’t be a bad thing if people still flock in droves to purchase music by the ‘greatest rock and roll band in history’ or whatever. Listening to “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” right now. Super high.

Eminem – 31,150,000

Releases (albums) – The Marshall Mathers LP (2000), The Eminem Show (2002), Encore (2004), Relapse (2009); (complilations) 8 Mile (2002), Curtain Call: The Hits (2005), Eminem Presents: The Re-Up (2006)

I might have known from the start I would one day regret being into Eminem, so I kind of never was. That seems like an awfully defensive way to go about living one’s life seeing as how I can’t think of any time when I would have had to defend myself for liking the dude, but I’m ok with it. I liked “Drug Ballad” from the start, though. Unapologetically. Song shreds.

I don’t think there’s an easy way to summarize what Eminem did to and for music in the last decade. Actually, and for better or worse, I think it’s safe to say that the coming of Marshall Mathers to the rap scene in the late 90s changed not just music, but the whole fabric of society across the Western world. And maybe further than that. Looked at objectively, now, from this position, 11 some odd years after “My Name Is” first dropped, I feel like I can finally appreciate the enormity of it all. I don’t especially like all of it, but I have to accept that it’s all happened. Whatever it all is.

Socio/Cultural Implications: White thuggin’ ok. Thug huggin’ Elton John ok. White thug huggin’ Mariah Carey not ok. Perscription drugs for thugs ok/not ok. White thugs with mean mugs giving bro hugs in da club ok. White thug giving his daughter love + questionable role model ok. Black thug offering white thug a spot under a tug whereto dispose of wife ok. Etc.

December 14, or, The Top Five Pete Doherty Moments Of The Decade

5) Pete Sings ‘Children Of The Revolution’ With Elton John – Live 8, June 2, 2005

Critical opinion on this duet generally lands somewhere on the scale between ‘disgraceful’ and ‘unimpressive.’ Unfortunately for Bob Geldorf, this also means that this is pretty much the only meme anybody still gives a shit about from the whole intercontinental affair (unless you’d like to put down Will Smith spearheading a ‘Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air’ theme song sing-along or Robbie Williams covering Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’ as defining moments in music history). Pete is clearly fucked up, forgets the words, staggers around the stage staring wild-eyed into the crowd, and generally acts like a dickhead in light of the fact that he’s supposed to be trying to help save Africa. My favorite part is when Pete and Elton kiss at the end. Decedent.

4) Pete Gets Banned From The City Of London – August 7, 2007

After compiling the sort of rap-sheet for burglary, drug, and driving charges usually only possessed by the likes of a Surrey local meth head, it seems the authorities in London pretty much got sick of dealing with the dude in 2007. Pete was banned from being in London for a month while he was to await sentencing after getting busted with crack, heroin, ketamine, and weed. All at once. On Kensington High Street. Doi.

I’ve heard of certain cities giving the junkies/homeless people the option of a free ticket to some other city in order to try and pawn their problems off on some other poor jurisdiction, but I don’t think there’s a big legal precedence for making it illegal for a person to hang out in his or her hometown. Pete ended up getting let off this time, only to get arrested and charged again in April 2008 for breaching probation, which I think came after the time  a video of him shooting heroin turned up the night after he played the MTV Europe Awards and declared himself _____ months sober in a pre-show interview. I think. It’s hard to keep track of.

3) Pete Gets Caught On Tape Doing Coke With Kate Moss – October 15, 2005

This happened about a month after I moved to London, and did a pretty good job of introducing me to the sensationalism of the British press. Moss was hereby dubbed ‘Cocaine Kate,’ indignant commentators spat fire and brimstone over Pete’s corruption of the poor girl, and for a minute everyone pretended that they didn’t think Kate Moss had probably been an enthusiastic cokehead since she broke into modeling at 15 or whatever. Getting off easy in the whole thing was former Clash guitarist/singer Mick Jones, who was also caught doing blow in the video. Dude was 50 at the time. Time to hang up the silver spoon, bro.

2) Pete ‘Burgles’ Carl Barat’s Flat – sometime in 2003

I guess it made sense; if you know exactly what you want to steal from a place and you know exactly where that place is and you know just when the caretaker of the place is going to be away, it seems like a no-brainer. Pete stole a guitar and some other shit and sold them for drugs. Pretty standard junkie fair, except for the fact that one of the frontmen for what was on its way to becoming the biggest band in England was robbing the other. Looking back, I feel like this whole escapade did nothing but accelerate their fame. If it happened today I’d be suspicious it was some sort of advertising stunt.

1) Pete (with Carl) Steals A Copy Of ‘The Libertines’ From The Virgin Store At Picadilly Circus – August 18, 2003

In the video for ‘Don’t Look Back Into The Sun,’ above, you can watch Pete and Carl each steal a copy of the single for, uh, ‘Don’t Look Back Into The Sun,’ uh, above. Silly red tunics, good-natured roughhousing, and some petty theivery whilst promoting your latest single; the Libertines were all sorts of fun back in the first half of the 00s.

December 11, or, The Top Five Real Action Heros Of The Decade

5) Steve “The Crocodile Hunter” Irwin

There was never a point where I was really that stoked on Steve – too enthusiastic, too Aussie, bad kit, etc. – but I have to admire a man who got such a kick out fingering crocs and infuriating dangerous snakes. Weird that he went out as pretty much the only human in history to get a sting ray barb to the heart.

4) Anthony “No Reservations” Bourdain

Not an action hero? Dude spends his time traveling the world, eating exotic food, writing, and getting drunk, sports a killer tan 365 days a year, and still smokes Reds well into his 50s. That sounds like just enough ‘action’ to make him ‘hero’ of mine. I know below I’m gonna say that I want to grow up and be like Terry Grant, but I feel like Tony’s life trajectory is one that might be easier for me to follow at this point.

3) Terry “Mantracker” Grant

The show’s premise is simple enough: a team of two people are given a map, a compass, and 36 hours to reach the finish line 30 or 40 clicks away before being caught by the Mantracker and his bro. Mantracker and bro are on horses but start at a different place than the ‘prey’ and forfeit some length of head start.  It’s a fun, no-frills, straightforward show. What makes it must-see viewing is Terry Grant himself. As far as I can tell, dude is the only capital ‘m’ Man left in the world, and when I grow up one day I want to be just like him. If you accidently switch the channel straight from watching some dickless loser like The King Of Queens or those two fags in 2.5 Men, the shock of realizing the patheticness of the average portrayal of ‘manhood’ on TV is disorienting. Sorry Mish, but if I see one more commercial for Canadian Tire where the all-knowing woman smiles condescendingly at her inept ’spouse’ as he fumbles with a screwdriver, I’m going to make you reno the bathroom over here at the Meat Mansion just to prove these representations accurate. Cool?

2) Bear “Man vs. Wild” Grylls

Besides having the most impossibly hilarious/spot-on name in television, Grylls (like ‘grills’) is also far and away the biggest killing machine/most unkillable dude on this list. I missed the first 20 mins of the episode today, but I tuned in just in time to watch him skin and roast the wild boar he had just finished slaughtering with his bare hands, venture blindly into and find his way out of a cave aided by a torch made out of a piece of his t-shirt doused in pig fat (and then aided by sparks from hsi flint after he fill in an underground river and put the torch out), climb his way out of a 40′ crevice, play with a snapping turtle, get stuck in and get out of sinking mud while wading across an alligator-infested river, and cover himself in mud and go running through the middle of a brush fire. Oh, and the episode ended with Bear sprinting through the woods to a road and CHASING DOWN, CATCHING, AND SKITCHING A RIDE FROM A MOVING FORESTRY TRUCK CARRYING A LOAD OF FELLED TIMBER. He goes out of way to show you what you can do – if you damn well have to do it – to say alive in the ‘wild;’ once, he drank the fluid he managed to squeeze out of a lump of elephant shit. I really wanted dude at number one, but he rolls with a camera crew. I think this really just results in Bear putting two or three peoples’ lives in danger every time he sets out, instead of just one, but it’s a bit of a sticking point for the purists.

1) Lee “Survivorman” Stroud

Surivorman’s thing is this: he gets dropped in the middle of some uninhabitable, god-forsaken corner of the world by himself with nothing to help him but what’s in his backpack and his wits, and figures out a way to stay alive for a week. When the week is up, his crew brings in the heli and flies around looking for his smoke signal or whatever. In his backpack he only takes what the average person might have with them were they to accidentally got lost in the particular locale – sometimes less than that. On top of this, he carries what must be at least 50 pounds of camera gear with him and films the show himself while ’surviving.’ This means that if he wants to, say, get a shot of himself trudging through a snowstorm, he has to set the camera up, walk however far into the distance, stop when he figures he’s got the shot, and then turn around and go back for the camera. Basically, for every survival scenario he puts himself in, he expends about twice the energy any normal person would in the same situation. I can’t help feeling simultaneously awed and frustrated as I watch that shit and imagine how tedious it must be. Not as exciting as Bear Grylls, but perhaps more ‘authentic.’