Official "Top 5 favorite" list thread

I'm going to have to completely concur with the No. 1 choice. There is not a more excruciating drive in the country than I-10 from San Antone to El Paso.

I have made that drive twice, once each way, and the highlight of both trips was getting pulled over by a state trooper, once each way. (Ft. Stockton on the first trip, and Kerrville on the second one.)

If I never make that drive again, it will still be too soon.

And at No. 5, that I-75 trip from Atlanta to Florida is fairly numbing, but at least it's a quick 250 miles, can be reasonably done in about four hours. That S.A. to El Paso trip is a god-awful 550 miles. You take a whole day to drive, and you're not even out of the damn state yet ...

 

My Top 5 guitarists

5. Derek Trucks
4. Ed Van Halen
3. Joe Satriani
2. Jimi Hendrix
1. SRV

 

I'd put Jimmy Page at No. 5, or possibly Steve Vai, but otherwise a very solid list.

 

Five great songs about love not working out:

1. Gone for Good, The Shins
2. Black, Pearl Jam
3. Song For The Dumped, Ben Folds
4. Lost Cause, Beck
5. Yesterday, Paul McCartney Beatles


Five versions of Christmas Songs that don't suck and (as of right now) are not overplayed:

1. All That I Want, The Weepies
2. Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, Jack Johnson
3. White Christmas, Otis Redding
4. Let it Be Christmas, Alan Jackson
5. Marshmellow World, Dean Martin

Honorable mention: The Christmas Song, Stevie Wonder and India.Arie; Jingle Bell Jamborie, Keb Mo', O Holy Night, Tracy Chapman; Children Go Where I Send Thee, Natalie Merchant;


Five books, all published after 1980, that every writer should read:

1. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien
2. Jesus' Son, Denis Johnson
3. CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, George Saunders
4. Seven Types of Ambiguity, Elliott Perlman
5. Straight Man, Richard Russo


Five great books by female authors, which I don't read enough of:

1. Cowboys Are My Weakness, Pam Houston
2. A History of Love, Nicole Krauss
3. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
4. Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant, Anne Tyler
5. On Beauty, Zadie Smith


Five (current) TV characters I think are awesome:

1. Miranda Bailey, Grey's Anatomy
2. Bunk Morland, The Wire
3. Alan Shore, Boston Legal
4. Seth Cohen, The O.C. (This one is on life support, and even Bill Frist says pull the plug.)
5. Michael Koors, Project Runway

Five Favorite Sopraons Episodes:

1. Whitecaps
2. Unidentified Black Males
3. Long Term Parking
4. Employee of The Month
5. College

(And yes, I left Pine Barens off on purpose.)

 

My next 5 would, in no particular order be:

Page, Vai, Jeff Beck, Buddy Guy and Joe Bonamassa

 

I'm not quite the guitar-phile, but any list I would construct would have Steve Hackett. I don't listen to numerous guitarists, but his stuff continues to impress me.

 

Top 5 guitar players

1. Jimi Hendrix
2. Neil Young
3. Keith Richards
4. J. Mascis
5. David Gilmour

 

Need to build off my theme...

TOP 5 SONGS WITH A US CITY IN THE TITLE (Springsteen original division)
1. NYC Serenade
2. Pittsburgh (A Good Man is Hard to Find)
3. Streets of Philadelphia
4. Sandy (4th of July, Asbury Park)
5, tie. Reno, Darlington County

TOP 5 SONGS WITH A US CITY IN THE TITLE (Springsteen covered in concert division)
1. Kansas City
2. Get Out of Denver
3. Detroit Medley (aka Devil With a Blue Dress Medley)
4. Tallahassee Lassie
5. Memphis, Tennessee

 

I have driven the Palm Springs to Phoenix drive a number of times, and that is awful. People talk about the beauty of the desert but after 50 miles you just want to scream "enough, already".

I have never driven from El Paso to San Antonio, so if people say it is worse than Palm Springs to Phoenix, I'll have to take your word for it but it is a horrible thought that a drive in the USA can be worse than that.

The most beautiful drive I have experienced is through the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee.

 

When people talk about the beauty of the desert they're not talking about Blythe or Quartzsite, or any other point on that stretch. It's pretty ugly.

Having said that, I'll happily drive I-10 from Phoenix to Palm Springs instead of I-5 from LA to Sacramento. That drive blows.

 

E Street Joe -- No love for Youngstown? Atlantic City? Santa Ana (not about the city, but it still couns)

 

Top 5 Non-Fiction Baseball Books

1. The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter - An oral history project about players from 1900 to 1920, and the players speak in their own voices. I say this is the best because even if you had never heard of baseball, this book would give you a great idea about what life was like before World War One and would provide a lot of insights. The book is old, but I really don't think it loses anything.

2. The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn - In addition to being a great story, it really shows what a young journalist originally thought and how he reflected on this 20 years later. Roger Kahn's book with Pete Rose might have been one of the worst baseball books ever, but more on that later.

3. The Long Season by Jim Brosnan. When Ball Four came out in my junior year in high school, a friend let me borrow his copy. My friend was a sophomore and was on the JV baseball team. His mother was widowed and they were fairly poor, so for him to spend money on a hardcover book back in 1970 or 1971 was significant. I read it in one day, probably because I read it behind textbooks in a couple of my classes.

I say all this because later in the 1970s, Brosnan's book was re-released with a new introduction. This book was even better than Ball Four. It doesn't have the four-letter words and doesn't deal with partying, but the book gives a better idea what it was like to be a major league pitcher - it showed tension with Brosnan's first manager and ends up with him having a successful season after being traded. This book upset a lot of baseball executives when it first came out. It is also written better than Ball Four, in my opinion.

4. Confessions of a Baseball Purist by Jon Miller. I was not able to put this book down, except in a couple of parts where I damn near split my side laughing. Even if you don't like Jon Miller as an announcer - and I am a fan - the book is great.

5. Bill James Baseball Abstract from 1982 to 1988. A friend of mine met Bill James and told James that he wrote the second greatest book in world history, and it was second only because God wrote the best book in world history. I don't know if I would go quite that far, but these were great books because it offered a perspective which was completely new. This book broke all of the rules - he would just go on rants and tangents, he would get off the subject, he would do things sports writers would never do. And you just kept reading. He wasn't afraid to be different and he wasn't afraid to be wrong. Some of the history books he has done since that time, while I enjoy reading them, don't match his annual abstract.

I know some people aren't Bill James fans, but he should be honored for this reason: his annual books forced Elias to open up their stats. Before Bill James, what somebody did in road games or against left-handed pitchers was not as easily available. It is due to Bill James that we have a lot of the information we now take for granted.