Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the time of Lists, it was the time of bloggers complaining about Lists....

:: Aaron is bemused by VH1's Top 100 Songs of the Last Twenty-Five Years. (For some reason, VH1 had the entire list on the linked page, but now it's gone, and numbers 81-100 can be found somewhere by following circuitous links. I didn't look any farther for the rest of the damn thing, though. I saw it once, and that was quite enough.) I don't have anything to say, really, except to note that I can't conceive of any list other than "Songs Written By Human Beings on the Planet Earth between 1975 and 1998, Inclusive" that should include both "Another Brick In the Wall, Part II" and "MMMBop". (Just think: some music "expert", somewhere, was giving some input for this list. Thus, the words "Hey, 'MMMBop' is a really great song!" actually crossed someone's lips. Probably the same person who keeps laughing with Carrot Top instead of at him.)

:: The King of Dietary Fiber has some choice words for the folks at E!, on the occasion of their Ten Worst Sequels list. Yes, they list The Phantom Menace as number one. No, I'm not going to rant about it, because my compatriot already does. (Well, OK, just a little bit: anyone who cites TPM's opening crawl as an example of what's wrong with the film is a damn idiot, and that's that. We can't have a movie about a war that's brought on by a taxation-and-trade dispute? Well, shit, they'd better not make any more movies about the American Revolution, then.) I am flummoxed, as is my lieutenant, by the inclusion of The Color on Money. Now, this isn't my favorite movie -- I've only seen it a couple of times -- but I never thought it a bad movie by any means; actually, I recall it as being pretty good. I seem to recall Ebert complaining that the movie doesn't show the outcome of the pool-match between Newman and Cruise at the end, but as I recall, the point isn't that they're playing for it all, but that Newman is back in action. I may be wrong there, however. It's been a long time. But anyway, how can this list possibly omit the Highlander sequels (not that the first one was any good to begin with, but there it is)? Or the Superman movies (I'd include all of them, really). Oh, and not only is Speed 2: Cruise Control not as bad as everyone thinks, but Speed wasn't quite as good as everyone thinks. Both are slick action flicks, nothing more.