Top Fifteen Babes of the Decade

I need a post for this week, so I started on a Bill Belichick column. Four paragraphs, two funny pictures, and some variation on "Bill Belichick is America" later, I realized I wasn't saying anything concrete or original, and I trashed it. You can ask P.T. or Jelly--there are a bunch of half-finished columns lingering on the TANBR profile, and I have a lot of half-baked theses that I never return to. (One of these includes the lines: "Don't you see, man? Electronic picture frames! We are in the future.")

Toiling on the best of lists, I found myself pretty naturally ranking babes of the decade as well--not girls or hotties or anything like that. Babes. Every age has its own babes: women/objects who reach down and define what is desirable or captivating, whether those babes were Raquel, Marilyn, Farrah, or Pam. Is this shallow? Yes, of course it's shallow, and of course it's subjective. There are girls who have fallen off the map dramatically as of late but probably still belong on a decade list (Heidi Klum), and there are chicks I have become obsessed with for a week and then forgotten about. And of course this is going to be cheesy and fratty. And of course I'm worried that this post with minimal commentary reveals more about me than anything else I've written. And of course I've probably spent too much effort on trying to justify this. Here are the top fifteen babes of the decade.

15. Keeley Hazell- She was neck-and-neck with Yvonne Strahovski and Eva Green for the last spot. Although, to be fair, I've never really looked above her neck. (What did I tell you about cheesy frattiness?)
14. Charlize Theron- She's finally starting to show her age, and her body type is a bit more athletic than what I normally like, but few this decade could match her mixture of raw sexuality and elegance.
13. Jessica Biel- We're beginning a run on really predictable entries, but what can I say? The point of this is summing up the zeitgeist. I'm sorry to admit that as far as thickness goes, she's pretty much the Blackest chick on this list. There were some in the honorable mention, I swear.
12. Adriana Lima- I kind of hate myself for being so attracted to her over-the-top sultriness. One commonality among a lot of these broads? I like belly-button rings. Or, to be more accurate, the long torso that would accentuate a belly-button ring. The belly-button ring itself is sort of incidental.
11. Alexis Bledel- Finally, one that women can't argue about. It's been said before that there are two types of attractive: the modest, classically beautiful type that other women have to accept (see number seven) and the fake, wanton sex objects that get something thrown at you. (Number 12 is a sore subject with my wife.) Bledel is definitely in that first camp with eyes that would look fake if they weren't so unique. I'll also admit that part of my fascination with her has to do with the indie cindy she played on eight seasons of Gilmore Girls. (I told you this would be revealing.)
10. Christina Hendricks

I promise that the list is not completely populated with zaftig bombshells. But number 10 is another one.

9. Rachel Bilson

We don't see much of her anymore, and she doesn't have the best smile. She does, however, have the best smirky fake-frown.

8. Mila Kunis

This might be a bit high for her, but, again, this is a girl we've spent the better part of the decade with, and she's gotten 7% hotter each year as she's grown into herself. No ceilings.

7. Anne Hathaway

First off, I like pale chicks. Moreover--and I've used this corollary before--if you ran into Anne Hathaway at an Ikea and invited her to a party you were throwing, there's a small chance she might show up. There's just something approachable about her, as beautiful she is. I've got to be down to ride for a woman like that.

6. Angelina Jolie

Fading fast due to increasingly skinny arms (and kids), you can't deny how powerful her sexy has been this decade. Consistent and one-of-a-kind.

5. Laetitia Casta

For about a year, she seemed poised to become the biggest supermodel in the world. Now only French people know who she is. I have no idea why this is.

4. Zooey Deschanel

Terrabull.

3. Diora Baird

Diora Baird actually belongs on the top fifteen babes of next decade list. You'll hear from her; she's like Catherine Deneuve with bigger hooters. Good twitter follow also. By the way I got this picture on chickipedia.com. I'll stop now.

2. Bar Refaeli

She's taking over.

1. Scarlett Johansson

Never any doubt. You can start making fun of me in the comments now.

The Essential Tyler Hansbrough: Air Quotes Edition

Tyler Hansbrough makes jokes about the food quality of cafeterias. The term "mystery meat" is usually involved.

The only verb Tyler Hansbrough associates with computers is "download."

According to Tyler Hansbrough, "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas."

Tyler Hansbrough is a woman who describes herself as "expensive."

Tyler Hansbrough defines "denial" as a river in Africa.

When his phone rings, Tyler Hansbrough claims that he's "blowing up."

Tyler Hansbrough spells "breakfast of champions" K-I-N-G V-I-T-A-M-I-N.

The Changing Back of Michael Jordan

I help to coach a high school basketball team, and last week we passed out this season's jerseys for the first time. The jerseys were hung up in numerical order, and I braced myself when number 23 came around.

Anyone who has played organized sports can tell you that, as silly as it is, a lot of significance and inspiration is wrapped within the folds of whichever number you wear. I usually asked for 34 because I modeled my undersized but aggressive play after Charles Barkley. Most kids, however, fought over 23, looking to share a small piece of Michael Jordan's leadership, competition, and clutch performance. Based solely on my own experience, I expected all of my players--mostly fourteen and fifteen year-olds--to jump for Jordan's number. If anything, it's LeBron James' number too, so there's an added incentive to share in the tradition of the jersey.

Much to my surprise, the jersey is still hanging in the closet. Things have changed. For the first time, boys that age experienced more of Jordan as this:


than as this:



I've written about the changing legacy of Michael Jordan in this space before, but this experience showed a different side of him than either the negative anecdotes circling about his reputation or his delusionally petty Hall of Fame speech. In judging the futures of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, William Goldman once wrote, "The greatest struggle an athlete undergoes is the battle for our memories...it begins before you're aware that it's begun, and it ends with a terrible fall from grace."* Since I'm thinking about it, that struggle has begun for Michael Jordan. The difference between his fall and Magic and Larry's falls is that he brought it upon himself.

Many contemporary celebrities speak of "building their brand," and the example set for them is Michael Jordan's infiltration of our culture. As the face of an expanding sport in a westernizing world, with countless endorsements to his name, Jordan became more famous than any other athlete before or since. What those other celebrities are talking about is having their name be synonymous with an idea or a logo, and MJ did it first. He was so successful, in fact, that the Jumpman--legs outstretched, arm reaching high above his head--has survived without him.

See, these kids spurning the 2-3, many of them were even wearing Air Jordans. However, instead of wearing them because they're hoping that the air in them will help them to jump from the free throw line, or that the aerodynamic sole will help them cross over Byron Russell, they're wearing them because Chris Paul and Dwyane Wade do. Jordan still gets their money, but it's no different from Phil Knight getting their money. The symmetrical dunking symbol might as well be Adidas' three stripes. To paraphrase as big a Jordan acolyte as any: "He's not a business man; he's a business, man."


Another thing that has gone out of style? The hoop earring. Come on, Mike. You can't afford a makeover?

Because teenagers didn't experience Jordan's greatness first-hand, they don't have a connection to it. That's no surprise. I didn't grow up with, say, George Mikan and only know about his dominance from other people's memories. The difference here is that Jordan gets the short end of his own legend. All the expectations of his own myth are there, but none of the acclaim.

For example, all of my players have done time in AAU or summer leagues, and they have played with or against the kid wearing 23, and that kid is always a dickhead. He's delusional and petty enough to fight for the number. Then he has lent himself expectations that he never lives up to. (Because who can?) This has gone on for a generation until the guy who originally wore it has been marginalized as much as any billionaire demi-god can be.

Wearing 23 is a cliche. It's derivative. It's the wrong type of brand: a knockoff. And LeBron? He's just another dickhead whose downfall we're presaging. There's a lot more to be made of a number than there is to be made of a man.

* Bill Simmons quotes this in his Book of Basketball. That's where I saw it.

#16 Album of the Decade and #40 Song of the Decade- Death Cab for Cutie

#16 Album of the Decade- Death Cab for Cutie- Transatlanticism
Death Cab for Cutie- "Title and Registration"

#40 Song of the Decade- Death Cab for Cutie- "Transatlanticism"

I work at a Catholic school whose religion department employs several dudes who dropped out of the seminary. Apparently, this is more common than I ever knew. Men devote their lives to modest, poor, celibate lives serving the Lord until they meet a woman who shows them that teaching high school religion is a compromise they can live with. They always word this decision the same way though: "God brought X into my life to show me that He has a different plan for me. I can serve Him just as well by being a good Christian husband and father." It's impossible that their love for a woman could be an obstacle to God's true plan, a temptation and impediment to the goal toward which they're still supposed to be striving. They assume that they're supposed to give into it. It's God's new will.

Love and Christianity actually have a lot in common. You know those crackpots on Facebook who list their religion as "love"? They believe that the world would be a better place if everyone loved everyone else, just as Christians sometimes believe that the world would be a better place if everyone else were Christian. Love makes everything possible. Everyone would be better off with a little TLC. But honestly, TLC can't change the world; TLC doesn't even advocate the chasing of waterfalls.

Look, I'm not making fun of either of these groups. It's human nature to believe that love is a freeing blessing instead of an obstacle. But sometimes it is. We've all known people who have made terrible decisions and ruined their lives for love, who have ignored time, distance, and good-old-fashioned reasoning for a fleeting, pie-eyed ideal of amore. Looking at love as an irresistibly destructive force isn't natural. But Death Cab for Cutie's Transatlanticism is about this exact notion, and that's what makes it so unique.

Of course, I realize there are parts of the record that are mawkish--"emo" for those who write love as their religion on Facebook. When Ben Gibbard's songwriting isn't being melodramatic, it's being too-clever-for-its-own-good. Sometimes, however, a work of art comes along poised for maximum personal impact, and Transatlanticism arrived at just the right time for me to consume it. I screamed along with this album headed east on a road no one ever heads east on, one time when love became too destructive in my own hands. I would give you more details, but I don't want this to become that type of blog.

Death Cab for Cutie has confessional lyrics like, "I should have given you a reason to stay...this is fact not fiction/For the first time in years." Luckily, they don't care that they're that type of band. In fact, this album, obsessed over love that was and could have been, made them a pretty girly band. Usually, that designation is handed to bands that are cloying and cute. This album is something else entirely.


I never said they were immune to photographic cliches.

Sydney Pollack once said that filmmakers "can show people falling in love for an hour or can show people breaking up for an hour, but you can only show people in love for ten minutes." That's exactly what Gibbard's lyrics do: chronicle the spaces bookending love. They suggest love as a fulfilling salvation, but it's always "a love that could have been if I'd only thought of something charming to say." There are details that make it seem real, ("With every Thursday I'd brave those mountain passes/And you'd skip your early classes/And we'd learn how our bodies worked") but they're always in the past tense. The lyrics and the sometimes martial, assiduous rhythm section lend an elusive quality to the album that is always present, no matter what tempo the band is working in.

Across the album, there's a motif of tangible distance representing the emotional distance of lost love. The opener, backed by chords as major and windmilled as Chris Walla's lead guitar gets, laments: "I wish the world was flat like the old days/Then I could travel just by folding a map/No more airplanes or speed trains or freeways/There'd be no distance that could hold us back." But the nearly eight-minute centerpiece of the album, the title track, takes that wish fulfillment one step further.

Structured around searching piano chords, "Transatlanticism" begins as a pity party for that well-worn distance territory. It continues with slides and more resolved guitar, as if taking tentative steps, and it builds with resolve until the understated refrain of "I need you so much closer" takes the song into a trot. By the halfway point, the song has transitioned into a gallop, and by the time the rest of the band joins in with a harmonic "so come on," the distance does indeed "feel quite temporary."

The usually astute Stephen Thomas Erlweine once called this marathon "long for length's sake," and he was more correct than he realized. Often used as the closer to live shows, the song is as much of a solution as Gibbard can find to the problem of an uneasy memory of love. The distance is the song itself, and listening and understanding is its bridge. Like the seminary dropouts, we have to accept a new path for ourselves, and "Transatlanticism" is Gibbard's way of assessing that.

Two albums removed from Transatlanticism, Death Cab for Cutie has become something like the new R.E.M.: stalwart, literate, rainy day adult contempo for all the thirtysomethings who let people assume they're twentysomethings. They can open for Springsteen and get referenced on teen soap operas. "I Will Follow You into the Dark" off Plans is practically a standard by now. It would seem as if they're conquering the world as we speak.

Recently, however, news came out that Gibbard has become engaged to resident manic pixie dream girl Zooey Deschanel. (Apparently, my hair needs to be set further on the Gram Parsons side of the dial for her to take notice.) For a guy who used to capitalize on the futility of a divergent love, this might be a challenge. Instead of singing, "It seems by the time that I have figured what it's worth/The squeaking of our skin against the steel has gotten worse," he might have to switch to, "My girl has great skin and a naturally colorful complexion/She also has a really cute laugh." She might be the death of one of our great songwriters.

But what can I say? Love can be destructive.

#26 Song of the Decade- "Soul Survivor"

#26 Song of the Decade- Young Jeezy feat. Akon- "Soul Survivor"

In any metal retrospective you'll ever see, each interviewed party rhapsodizes over Black Sabbath. You'll have to wait an entire commercial break before any other musician is mentioned, and there's never enough hyperbole to go around. "It was like I had never heard music before blah blah blah," some bald guy with creative facial hair gushes. There were a lot of hard rock bands who seemed dark but were really mama's boys, but Black Sabbath was clearly something different from the rest of the dirge-like English rockers in the way they fully embodied their own witchy mystique. They were a lone dissenting voice with a sound more discordant and uncompromising than anyone else. We could be talking the same way about Young Jeezy's verisimilitude, if only he stood out as much. He's just as much of a master of reality, but that reality is so unrelentingly dark that he's become the mainstream. His Machiavellian solipsism is not a shock to the system, it's representative of it. Black Sabbath changed the world; the world changed Young Jeezy.

If he and Akon hooked up on a song today, it would be an event; but in 2005, neither was particularly well-known. The unique tone of Akon's tongue-depressant warble is what first got the song on the radio, but it will be remembered as our entree into the hopeless outlook of Jeezy. Rarely has a rapper condensed his entire ethos into one verse the way the man born Jay Jenkins does here, particularly in one couplet:

"A hundred grand on my wrist, yeah life sucks
Fuck the club, dog, I'd rather count a million bucks"

At the time, musicians were first feeling the squeeze of the record industry's collapse and doing whatever they could to branch out and become more palatable to the mainstream, whether that was starring in Budweiser commericals or making entire albums for the ladies. Here, Jeezy at once glorifies the hustle and casts it as meaningless. He's not interested in anything else like, you know, socializing with people in public, but his only pastime of money chasing is just as hollow, just as much of a reminder that life sucks. In his debut single, Young Jeezy seems to be saying that even ambition itself is hopeless. And the really disturbing thing? In one of his patented ad-libs, he even laughs at the notion.

That's the black cherry on top of the rest of Jeezy's performance, in which he prays against/for his own inequity, conflates dreams with nightmares, and threatens an anonymous spoken-to with clenched teeth. Akon's weary spritualizing and foreboding beat, matching claustrophobic string stabs with wandering twinkles, do their best to match Jeezy's hoarse futility, and in neither the music nor the lyrics is there any celebration to rival the dread and paranoia.

Here's the real significance of the song though: it sounds as if I'm exaggerating. Rather than reading those lyrics for their inhumane cynicism, the majority of critics heard this track and found it not irredeemable, but rather typical. We are immune to the landscape Jeezy's describing and the persona he's reporting from. As far as hip-hop gloom goes, he's not the minority. He became a star, and the song became an anthem for the faceless grind because we live in a society that he blends into when he isn't holding a mirror. He's bellowing that "we're livin' in hell," and we "just keep on movin' now."

20 Best Movie Trailers of the Decade

The criteria for these decisions is hazy in my own mind, but it usually just comes down to how much the trailer made me want to see the movie it was promoting. I had different reasons for choosing each of these previews, and the videos vary in quality and are so wide in some cases that they mess up the rest of this page. I did my best. Also, this ranking has nothing to do with the quality of the final film: I'm only judging the trailers. Allow me to explain each:

20. Finding Forrester

Throughout high school, my friends and I went to the same movie theater every Friday. For about six months, the trailers before every screening were the Pearl Harbor teaser (a great trailer in its own right) and Finding Forrester. This is a pretty standard trailer, but it is responsible for the Sean Connery lines "Punch the keys," "Bolt the door...if you're coming in," and "You're the man now, dog." I have ruined friendships by over-quoting those lines. Hell, they inspired an entire website. Which is just silly. Who names a website after an innocuous line from the trailer of a forgettable mainstream movie?

19. Kill Bill, Vol. 1

With the Kill Bill diptych, Quentin Tarantino sought to prove that he could direct action, and the trailer for the first installment promises nothing but that. In fact, there's barely any dialogue, which was a pretty daring way to promote a Tarantino film. You can't beat that song either.

18. (500) Days of Summer

Bouncy music, quirky narration, cool clothes, pretty people. Teasing of some artsy, innovative visuals. Works for me.

17. 300

I didn't like the final product, but the powerful, atmospheric, otherworldly visuals of this trailer definitely made it a hit.

16. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (teaser)

Hauntingly spare and quiet, this trailer nails down the premise of the film without giving too much away. Fincher's trailers are always top-notch, and this one is no exception.

15. The Dark Knight

I watched this so many times that I was able to time it so that I clapped my hands at the same time the Joker does. It's hard for an ad to hint at the complex themes of a movie without ruining the plot, but this one does that while also showing off some great visuals. Furthermore, it's rare that a score is completed in time to match with the trailer, but this trailer gets a lot of extra mileage from the main theme of the movie. Extra points for the "Jokerized" version of the trailer that was only sent out to a handful of theaters.

14. Marie Antoinette (teaser)

Honestly, you could put "Age of Consent" over anything, and it would get me excited. This trailer presents a daring, sumptuous final product that was never really delivered to us.

13. The Hangover

This is another case of a movie's success being inextricably tied to the strength of its promotional materials. Not since There's Something about Mary had I been able to sit with an audience and guarantee from their reactions that a movie would be a hit in four or five months.

12. Little Children

As a promotional tool for the film, this trailer is kind of unsuccessful. As an art object unto itself, it's pretty beautiful. Seeking to capture the tone of the film rather than summarize any of its content, this is one of a kind.

11. Femme Fatale

Speaking of one of a kind, this Brian De Palma vehicle shows us the entire movie in super fast forward, stopping it to give us the sexier parts out-of-context. Then it kind of dares us to see it in the end. The entire movie is not as good as this trailer.

10. Red Eye

This ended up being a pretty solid movie, and what's remarkable about the trailer is how long they wait to tell us what it's actually about. This is a classic rope-a-dope. I'm sure there are a lot of first drafts of trailers like this that get focus-grouped to death. This one actually follows through.

9. The Man Who Wasn't There

The smoky, contrast-heavy cinematography of this movie is its greatest strength, so it's the focus of an elegant, assured trailer that takes advantage of heady dialogue and smooth editing.

8. Cast Away (teaser)

The full-length version of this trailer would be on my worst trailers of the decade list for giving everything away. (No really. Everything. The last shot of the trailer is the last shot of the movie.) But this one is a perfect setup, giving us everything we need to know and then leaving us at the exact spot when things get intriguing.

7. Borat (full-length)

Probably the funniest trailer I've ever seen. Again, where would this movie be without this preview?

6. Watchmen (trailer 1)

This is another one I watched over and over again. With a portentous Smashing Pumpkins song, it delivered exactly what anyone wanted from the film. It's expository enough for newcomers, but it also teases all of the things fans were wondering about. It builds and builds until it can't anymore. This is a splashy, mature trailer for a film that wasn't nearly as successful.

5. Comedian

It features absolutely no footage from the film, but this sardonic, inventive trailer still manages to get us excited about it. I wish I could go back and see an audience's reaction to this.

4. Cloverfield (teaser)

Talk about mysterious. While we're on the subject of how much or little is revealed in a trailer, this one doesn't even give you the title. Beat that. It does, however, establish the look that guides the entire film, and it ends with as provocative an image as possible. I've never been as intrigued by a trailer as I have been by this masterpiece.

3. Jarhead

Great trailers can promise a subtext and thoughtfulness and thematic heaviness that the actual film does not necessarily have, and that's the case with Jarhead. By featuring the unimpeachable stars, revealing dreamy, ironic shot selection, and using a contemporary song for once, this trailer stresses that this is not your father's war film. It gathers a whole lot of momentum in just over two minutes.

2. Garden State

There's no dialogue or explanation of a plot here. Everything about the tone is communicated through ironic, eye-popping visuals and the hipper-than-thou Frou Frou song. Unlike something like Jarhead though, this trailer actually does approximate the viewing of the film. Sometimes it's too clever for its own good, but you enjoy spending time with it and sharing in its exuberance.

1. Where the Wild Things Are (teaser)

Considering that writing online about your reaction to this trailer is now seen as a cliche, I'd say this is a pretty powerful piece of work. Spike Jonze and the Arcade Fire can make you cry in...two minutes. The word "melancholgia" was invented for this.

Let me know what I forgot in the comments.

#14 Album of the Decade and #31 Song of the Decade- Ben Kweller

#14- Album of the Decade- Ben Kweller- Sha Sha
Ben Kweller- "Commerce, TX"

#31 Song of the Decade- Ben Kweller- "Wasted & Ready"

John Seabrook's smug 2001 book of culture criticism, Nobrow: The Culture of Marketing, the Marketing of Culture, devotes an entire chapter to the precocity of a then-unknown Ben Kweller. Seabrook follows a teenaged Kweller and his band Radish as he's courted by major labels. At one point Kweller's at Jimmy Iovine's house freestyling with Tom Petty, and there are about ten times when an expert calls him "the next Kurt Cobain." Kweller was a songwriting prodigy mining Cobain's quiet-loud dynamics, and he could play almost any instrument you gave him. Seabrook spells out the seeming randomness of the buzz surrounding this kid from Greenville, Texas, and Seabrook captures the herd mentality of record executives flying out there without knowing anything about him. By the time the chapter ends, a lot of money and attention has been invested in Kweller, and he seems oblivious to how much is actually riding on his nascent career. Seabrook has asked "why him?" and we don't have much of an answer.

We still don't. Nine years after the events of the book, Kweller's career has stalled. He's trying to cross over to a country audience. He's known primarily as a girly type of act because of earlier bills he shared with Guster and Evan Dando. He's trapped on Dave Matthews' label, which is doing nothing to promote his talent. Worst of all, he has neutered his songwriting's more unique flourishes to fit into some idea he has of what a traveling bluesy roots-rock working man's hero should be. What made him great the only time he actually had to prove all of his promise, his debut Sha Sha, was that he was so oblivious to all of these outside factors. Perhaps a voice like his was never meant to hit it big. After all, Cobain probably wasn't supposed to either.

Sha Sha is an album a great songwriter makes when he's twenty, before he gets political, before he gets stream-of-consciousness, before he's trying to be Dylan, before he knows that what he's doing is called approximate rhyme. The lyrics here are rough around the edges. They reach for connections that aren't always there, like calling butterflies "passive-aggressive." They leave blanks for us to fill in with non sequiturs like, "Sex reminds her of eating spaghetti." "Maxed out like a credit card" isn't exactly Rimbaud, but it's better than what I was writing at twenty.

Sha Sha is a perfect storm of these eccentricities. Most rappers' first album is their best because it's their entire autobiography and manifesto delivered in one fell swoop. They say everything that has been building up inside of them for their entire lives and capitalize on the now-or-never urgency of a debut. They are able to channel their message and worldview into one album, and they aren't jaded enough to compromise that point of view. Ben Kweller, a guy who used to cover Vanilla Ice live, presents the same naive but breathless weltershaung as someone like The Game. It's all-or-nothing, and he delivers summery, indelible power-pop with an equal facility for fist-pumpers and honest, heartfelt ballads. Yes, it's a little girly, but other than maybe Is This It?, it's hard to find a record this decade that is as top-to-bottom fun to listen to. Kweller finds a way to overcome a limited, straining voice with his gift for melody, and nowhere is his exuberance and dusted-off brilliance more evident than on "Wasted & Ready."

With its wandering slides leading up to deafening power chords, "Wasted & Ready" sounds like something Alex Chilton would have written if he had been raised eating barbecue and watching Cowboys games. When I saw Kweller live in Philadelphia two years ago, it seemed as if everyone was waiting for him to wrap up the love songs and hit them with what was buried deep in their collective drunk playlists. It's a playing-dumb classic, a hit that never became a hit. Kweller's guitar playing has never sounded more muscular, and his reedy intonation has a way of making platitudes sound immediate and cathartic. Especially when he multi-tracks his own voice on the song's last fourth, we're reminded of just how far a little obliviousness can go. Kurt Cobain would be proud.