Twenty Ten: Fin.

In blogging terms, Humungus finished 2010 like a bottle of wine in the cellar.  Silent but fermenting.  I've been brewing thoughts even though I haven't posted them to the interwebz.  I see that I haven't written anything since the beginning of November.  Most of you probably don't care all that much, but that news makes me grumpy.  So let's pop a cork and let this baby breath.

"Best Of" lists are very popular this time of year.  Well, popular about a week ago, if I'm being precise, but being so tardy only makes me more grumpy, so forget precise.  Stick to Best Of.  Best TV Show of 2010.  Best Sporting Event of 2010.  Et cetera.  I'm not much in the mood for a Best Of today.  I'm gonna roll with a Worst Of 2010 list for y'all.

1.  Worst Sports Fans (as experienced by me firsthand):  New York Mets.  I don't understand how this could possibly happen with such a great stadium providing a spectacular atmosphere for a baseball game.  I loved the venue.  But from the time I got off the train in Queens until the final pitch, I didn't encounter a single person that exuded one shred of positive energy.  Men, women, children, they all sucked.  Rude.  Yelling obscenities at the opposing team or opposing fans, and they weren't even playing the Phillies or Yankees.  It's not that they made me angry or hate them.  I just wish sucky people like that didn't exist. 

2.  Worst Music Occurrence, "Male":  Justin Beiber.  The hair.  The voice.  The fans.  Grown women singing along, straining to make their voices go that high.  Teenage Hearthrobs happen all the time.  I can't hate on some prettyboy with a nice voice who's maybe just a little too sweet for me.  Someone evidently likes that sort of stuff.  But this kid is like pouring battery acid in my ear canal.  How much worse can the music industry get?

3.  Worst Music Occurrence, Female:  Ke$ha.  When did they start a Special Olympics for singing?  They must have plucked her right out of her finger painting class and handed her a mic.  Bully for her.  She won the retard lottery without being nearly as loveable as actual retards.  It would be nice if someone would cut her tongue out.  It may actually improve her diction.  Boys want to touch your junk?  News flash Ke$ha:  boys want to touch any girl's junk that is on offer.  Slob. 

4.  Worst Movie (again, as experienced by me firsthand):  The Last Airbender.  Heaven knows there were plenty of others BEGGING to be chosen for this.  Salt.  The American.  Morning Glory (saved by Rachel McAdams' cuteness).  Plenty movies that I didn't see that had the potential to knock Airbender off the winners block.  Clash of The Titans.  Karate Kid.  Jonah Hex.  And that's not including movies where they weren't even really trying for "good."  Furry Vengance.  The Last Song.  Sex and the City II.  Marmaduke, for heaven's sake.  No, The Last Airbender takes home the hardware because of the combination of failures across the board.  Actors that can't act.  A director who very obviously shot his wad on his first movie, Sixth Sense.  Special effects that are outdone by Star Wars (yeah, the one filmed in 1978.)  Plot/dialogue written by a 15-year old.  Romantic subplots written by a 14-year old.  Do Not see this movie unless you are one of those masochistic connoisseurs of bad cinema.  This means you, Dirty Harry.

5.  Worst Federal Agency:  Federal B.I.  They love you, they hate you.  They want you, they spurn you.  They wait until you've packed your car to move on to the next city and next opportunity and then, as a sick joke, call you up two hours out of town to invite you back for the final round of testing.  A week after classes start, they inform you that they'd like to make you a contingent offer of employment.  Sorry Federal B.I.  It's your turn to wait.

6.  Worst Person in Sports:  Lebron James.  The man has a right to manage his career any way he sees fit.  Professionally, I agree with pretty much every reason he gave for moving to Miami.  Build a great team with a definite shot at winning the title.  Sacrifice the bigger paycheck to go somewhere where you can play with friends, with people and an organization that you enjoy.  Go to a city where you can get all of the most amazing looking women on the planet on a nightly basis (not a reason that he gave, but c'mon.  Miami?)  But don't leave the entire sporting press chasing the story all summer long in an attempt to bend the universe to revolve around you.  Don't schedule a one hour television special and title it The Decision just to announce where you're going to sign your next contract.  How much more self-absorbed can you be?  In the process he treated his home town fans like Clark Griswold's dog, dragging them behind his car all summer while they held out hope that he would return for another run at the title.  And then for his climactic insult, he held a televised party in his own honor in which he doused Cleveland's heart in kerosene and set it on fire in front of the sporting universe.  Take any of the biggest egos in sports history.  Michael Jordan.  Terrell Owens.  Barry Bonds.  None of them would have made such a supremely dickish move.  So there you go, Lebronica.  You've won some sort of title already.  Most Dickish Athlete.

7.  Worst Roommate Breakup Ever of 2010:  Me and Muzungu.  I don't know if I've ever had a roommate that I got along so well with.  Not sure if Muzungu would offer the same assessment, but the three years we spent as roommates were some of the best memories of my life.  Then he took a job in Africa and I went to school in Phoenix.  To split up a harmonious bromance such as that for something as trivial as "careers" is almost criminal.

8.  Worst Statistics Professor:  Housseini.  Yes, I had more than one, as I took two statistics classes in 2010.  The first was with Stark at the community college back in Virginia.  He wasn't good.  His pronunciation drove me crazy (like when 'both' became 'boaf' or 'strength' became 'stremf' or 'one' became 'wunt'.  You get the idea.)  I was never sure if he understood what he was teaching us or not, but when a student asked a question, he would spend the entire class huffing and puffing in an attempt to answer it, whether he was succeeding or not.  Housseini, on the other hand, expected us to teach ourselves.  Once I started grad school, the effort on the part of the professor to help students understand the material was negligable.  He had a set amount of material to present in his thick Iranian accent and there was very little time to stop and anwer questions for clarification.  There were times when he actually said something like, "I have to get through this lecture.  You'll have to figure that out on your own or come to my office hours."  When you came to office hours, he worked as hard as he could to shuffle you out of his office.  I was one of the lucky ones that had Thunder Lips in my class.  Thunder Lips had been an actuary before he came to Thunderbird, so he knew the material better than the T.A.s did, and he held regular teaching sessions. 

9.  Worst Overused word:  Epic.  This word was kinda cute when it first started showing up in decidedly un-epic stories.  It had an air of hyperbole, and as the regulars here may remember, I'm a huge fan of hyperbole.  But like so many good words, overusage by the masses has robbed it of its magic.  I don't understand what made this word so big this year.  One reason could be that people are getting dumber and have no idea how to use it properly.  However, I don't think this is the correct reason since its out-of-context usage has been part of its success.  Here's what I think is more likely:  people understand that its meaning conveys something heroic or extraordinarily impressive and recognize that the string of events that make up their lives are anything but.  In order to make their stories seem more extraordinary, they sex it up with words like epic to make it seem more important than it is.  Eating 12 tacos from Taco Bell in one sitting was not epic, Randy.  Just disgusting.  Runner up word:  Fail.

10.  Worst Celebrity Infidelity:  Jesse James.  So Lord Bangkok definitely provided depth and range with his infidelity.  But what Heir James did to Sandra B was...I don't know how to describe it.  The size of the anvil he dropped on her was gasp-inducing.  She is at the zenith of her career.  Nominated for a Best Actress Oscar.  Riding high on good publicity.  The week before the Oscars ceremony, she sits down for an interview with Barbera Walters in which she gushes about how happy she is with her life and how wonderful Heir James is and how they are just a perfect fit and guess what, we're adopting a baby together.  Two days later, just before the Oscars (where she would go on to win), the press breaks the story about Heir James and his dealings with some vampire stripper or some such nasty details.  Then come the pics of him marching around in Nazi regalia giving the 'sieg heil' salute.  How much of himself did he keep secret so that she could find out about it in the press?  When she should have been riding the good pub from her Oscar win for the rest of the year.  Instead, her life became a gossip rag staple for the better part of 2010.  Sometimes there is no justice.

I think I may have burned all my coal with that one, folks.  What additional worsts would you add for 2010?