14 posts tagged “top 10 list”

When historians one day take a look back and criticize us for our barbaric ways, they’ll have to give us credit for at least raising workplace safety standards somewhat from the days of kiddie chimney sweeps and railroad dynamiting duty. With most people safely ensconced in office jobs that will leave them without a muscle in their bodies, put them at risk of stress-related illnesses, and give them the flexibility of giant crabs, at least the risk of awful death on the job is quite low. Indeed, aside from bumping your head when attempting a push-up under a desk, the odds of injuring oneself in the workplace these days are far lower than  back in the days when your job was likely to leave you with one less digit to hail a cab.

That’s the case for most of us. There are others, however, who really should not use the playing of workplace safety videos as an excuse to smoke a joint in the emergency stairwell. Their workplace hazards go far beyond an expired egg-salad sandwich in the vending machine. In honor of Labor Day and our heady joy at the fact that “writer” was not included on the list (yet), we salute those who are, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, working in the the 10 Most Dangerous Jobs in the US, (in order from “likelier to kill you than unemployment insurance” to “grim reaper-riding-shotgun dangerous”):

10. Garbage Men. A rule of thumb when it comes to dangerous jobs is that if you have to wear a reflective vest and you’re not in a chain gang, well you might consider night school. Since most of us are at work or — more likely — asleep when they do their morning rounds, we usually don’t take notice unless they get fussy about disposing a hollowed out grand piano that goes on to become a curb decoration or if they throw a strike and bring a major city to its knees with insane demands like having their unused sick days converted to cash and tacked onto their retirement payout. But given the stuff we’ve thrown out after particularly good parties, we do not envy them their jobs — or the fact that the best representation of their work in the arts was on the sitcom Roc.

Cost Benefit Analysis:

Cons: Everything.

But On the Plus Side: See above. Get in a particularly good union and a public health crisis will be in the making as crap gets dumped into city parks while you refuse to work and squander the goodwill of the public. AND they get to use hydraulic lifts to haul the trash. What’s next? Potpourri in the glove box?

9. Farmers and ranchers. Some of the contents of microwave food boxes stuffed in your refrigerator that will still be edible when the sun blinks out comes from the toil of the honest farmer. These good folk are the salt of the earth, and apparently the fathers of some very promiscuous young ladies if the jokes about them are to be believed. Whether it’s a cow that objects to your cold hands on its udder giving you a kick in the head or a piece of heavy machinery putting an end to being able to test which way the wind is blowing on a fairway, farming is hard and dangerous work.

Cost Benefit Analysis:

Cons: You inspired some of Steinbeck’s drearier work. According to the Insurance Journal, it’s more dangerous than even mining, which, had it inspired Steinbeck instead, would’ve meant a Hemingway-like end.

But on the Plus Side: Workplace casual means shit-kicker boots. Plus Willie Nelson loves you.

8. Electrical repairs. This is another occupation taken for granted unless the power goes out while you’re under anesthetic. When Fluffy the Siamese cat meets a transformer — the kind not under the hackneyed direction of Michael Bay — the first one on the scene, or maybe the second after the fireman with a putty knife for feline scraping, is the electrical technician. While window washers, construction workers, or the guy teetering on the top rope in a WWE pay-per-view need only fear gravity, electrical workers scale power lines during inclement weather at all hours of the day or night and risk not only falling but electrocution and encounters with rabid squirrels.

Cost / Benefit Analysis:

Cons: Don’t need to commit pre-meditated murder in the United States to know what the electric chair feels like.

But on the Plus Side: Panoramic views, stealing cable  and getting mileage out of jerking around like you’ve just been electrocuted to scare passersby.

7. Roofers. If you’ve ever wanted to inhale tar during the warmest months of the year and instead of holding the sign that says ‘Slow’ on a seldom traveled overpass for union pay, you’d rather risk plummeting off a roof (and have just been released from a stint in the state pen), have we got the lax background check occupation for you. Comprised of minds more warped than the than the cut-rate shingles they slap on for an inflated price, this is the place to drop off an application once you’ve stashed the orange jumpsuit.

Cost / Benefit Analysis:

Cons: Mostly ex ones do this job.

But on the Plus Side: Minimal background checks, you get to be outdoors after all that time spent scratching out the days on your cell wall, and you can wave hello to your parole officer as he passes by on the street.

FOR MORE CLICK HERE!!!!!

As anyone who’s been stuffed into a locker knows, athletes are bigger and stronger than anybody else and there is no better example of this than basketball, where even the average player can set a drink on top of the head of the biggest guy you know and if he objects, punt him in the ass with a giant shoe not seen outside the confines of a circus big-top.

Not just in sports but in life, being taller has its advantages—better pay, a greater likelihood of becoming president than if you were a leading light in the airborne half of the national dwarf tossing circuit, a magnet to attractive women, but all of these benefits are literally short-lived — you’ll notice there are no 8-foot-tall geriatrics. At some point your knees give out, and you spend the rest of your short life being carted around in a giant sled by a grumbling lot of the aforementioned dwarfs, now retired.

In every other sport, being tall is, much like our stock market investments of late, an issue of diminishing returns. Big fighters have to punch down, then face the embarrassment of being bested by someone who looks like they shop in the children’s department, too tall baseball players have a massive strike zone and giant tennis players, like the vending machine that’s stolen your quarters, lack lateral mobility. In basketball however, the sky (and the constraints of modern eugenics) is the limit and players can enjoy a lengthy career if they’re tall enough— even if their posteriors climate control the end of the bench for league minimum.

Being able to put your teacher in a headlock, shave and duck under subway doors in 7^th grade has got to make those formative years tough— but when you combine being the gangly ostrich who people are always asking for piggyback rides along with a name that does what would have seemed impossible and makes you stand out even more, well we’re surprised that these guys didn’t end up in prison, or say professional wrestling.

Like our Best NFL Names list, rather than careful examination of hard-court minutiae, which you could get from the bore at the end of the bar, but only if you promised to buy him a round (a conversation which would glaze over the eyes of even the most habitual dope smoker, i.e., any starter on a typical NBA team), we figured we’d highlight one of two areas over which ballers had no control—not their pituitaries, but their names. We’ve scanned current rosters, examined every bench and have dubbed the following the Best Names in the NBA!

10) Roko Ukic (Rock-o Ooh-Kitsch) (Toronto Raptors)

A custom coffin would be required for this stiff, an obscure backup on the Toronto Raptors, who, in keeping with their name, are perennially on the verge of extinction. The Dinos once boasted the worst sports uniforms (right) since the Houston Astros of the 1970 / 80s (Warning: turn down the glare on your monitor first. Clearly, Nolan Ryan got all those strikeouts by dazzling the batters with his terrible duds).

Roko Ukic sounds like dialogue from Quest for Fire and his middle name ‘Leni’, the guy slurping cream of mushroom down at the soup kitchen. Not to be confused with Beno Udrih. His name is satisfying to pronounce and could be used as a mantra for meditation. “In with the good air: Rock-o. Out with the bad: Ooh-Kitsch.” He was given the No. 1 to wear in what must have been an ironic slight on the part of Raptors management as empty beer containers chucked from the stands after an inevitable Toronto loss see more court time than this guy.

9) Royal Ivey (pronounced Roy-AL) (Philadelphia ‘76ers)

Ivey was given what we’d think would be one of the worst nicknames you could get that wasn’t describing a bodily function — “Cheese” by his teammates. The name had little to do with body odor or the fact that he pairs nicely with crackers and a good bottle of wine –it was derived from the infamous bit of Pulp Fiction dialogue involving a Royale with Cheese. As usual, we prefer the Simpsons parody:

Lou: at McDonald’s you can buy a Krusty Burger with cheese, right? But they don’t call it a Krusty Burger with cheese.

Chief Wiggum: Get out! Well, what do they call it?

Lou: A Quarter Pounder with cheese.

Chief Wiggum: Quarter Pounder with cheese? Well, I can picture the cheese, but, uh, do they have Krusty partially gelatinated non-dairy gum-based beverages? An Ivey League name here.

Royal also has the benefit of having two first names to choose from. Depending on who is on the other end of the line — be it girlfriend, wife, or creditor — he could go by Roy, or Al. This is to be preferred over hyphenated names like Billy-Bob etc.

8) Travis Outlaw.(Portland Trailblazers)

In a league dominated by more gunslingers than an NRA banquet (where if the food arrives cold, you don’t have to tell the waiter twice) it’s fitting that there’s a guy running the court who sounds like they’d say ‘this town ain’t big enough for the both of us’, which might be true as he’s 6′9 and well over 200 lbs. Like many on this list, Outlaw seems to have a hang-up when it comes to some good old fashioned law-breaking, though we’re hoping one day he lives up to his excellent moniker.

7) Stromile Swift / Rasual Butler (Stro-mile and Ra-sue-uhl) New Jersey Nets/New Orleans Hornets

During Muhammad Ali’s famous pummelling of poor Ernie Terrell he taunted, ‘what’s my name?’ and if Stomile or Rasual goaded their opponents similarly the answer would be ‘huh’? Our names, Noel and Christopher are derived from the nativity of Christ and one who carried him (origin French and Greek, respectively) but it’s great that there are parents unbound by historical/cultural precedent (and what might be typos at city hall) to spirit lists like these, although pound for pound, nobody can touch the ones in the NFL. [For our Top 10 List of NFL Names, click here]. Stromile’s name sounds like a constipation treatment, while Rasual (unfortunately does not rhyme with Casual, otherwise it might be No. 1) Butler once appeared in a music video by the rapper Trina, in which he thankfully, given his size, did not dance.

6) Luther Head.Houston Rockets

His assistant coaches and agent have probably unfortunately said “You’ve gotta give head a chance”. We really need to stop this one here.

5) Rudy Gay / Quincy Douby - Memphis Grizzlies/Sacramento Kings

Some might say that putting a guy on this list because his last name is “Gay” or his surname is 70s slang for a joint is both childish and cheap. Well some of the greatest laughs of our lives were had on the schoolyard at other people’s expense, so we don’t mind being called childish, and as for cheap, the extra-value meals at Denny’s are also cheap and they, quite frankly, are delicious. Rudy Gay is 6′8 and weighs 222 lbs, which makes him big enough to be his own float at a pride parade. Out of all the players in the NBA, YouTube inexplicably sought him out for a promotion that has the most questionable name of any sporting competition we can think of: The Rudy Gay Slam Dunk Contest.

The film Rudy, meanwhile, is about a runt with negligible athleticism who lands a spot on the Notre Dame football team, an inspiration to Mr Gay if he’d been born short and white—which would crush anyone’s NBA dream. According to Josh Howard, meanwhile, ‘most of the players in the league use marijuana’. He didn’t specify if it was during the game, but that would explain the basement crawlspace-dwelling Oklahoma City Thunder.

4) OJ Mayo Ovinton J’Anthony Mayo.Memphis Grizzlies

A decade ago, Michael Jordan famously made the life of Bryon miserable, hitting a game-winning shot over Mr. Russell and during the series, erroneously referring to him as ‘Byron’ during interviews, (which was Bryon Russell’s own fault for not using a more conventional spelling of his name). The same thing would never happen with Mayo, as if you were matched up against him, you’d think ‘Oh yeah, there’s that (finally) convicted felon, French condiment guy’. Anyone named OJ should have a killer crossover and knife their way through the opposition, and with this, we’d like to finally bid adieu to all those cheap gags relating to OJ Simpson (for now…). And then there’s his surname, that jar of spreadable fat that will send you to an early grave. All in all, a tough handle to handle.

3) Von Wafer Houston Rockets

First, we did not needlessly truncate the name of a European player just to save on keystrokes. This guy’s complete name is Von Wafer, not Albrecht Hapsburg Wafer of Saxony. A wafer is a very thin, dry biscuit that crumbles easily, not exactly a name that’ll strike earthly fear into opponents in the western conference unless they have horrible memories of Holy Communion. ‘Von’, is short for ‘Vakeaton’, which sounds like something that was trimmed out at the editing phase when L Ron Hubbard wrote Dianetics.

2) Nene (Born Maybyner Rodney Hilario) Denver Nuggets

One word names are mostly uncommon in professional sports because no sane athlete would want to be associated with the primadonnas — and in one case a Madonna –  who go by only one name like Cher, Enya, and the worst offender of all, Sinbad. (Even worse are those who have a repeated first name. We’re talking to you Zsa Zsa Gabor and Boutros Boutros Ghalli). But we can understand perfectly well why “Nene” did it. He was born with the name Maybyner Rodney Hilario, and even if you move different parts of that name around, it still doesn’t improve it. ‘Nene’ then is a huge improvement, even if it’s voiced with a tongue sticking out on the schoolyard after pelting the fat kid with snowballs at recess.

1) Carlos Boozer Utah Jazz (in first pic)

We reckon this name might have come up when we were thinking of alternative titles for our book The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death: and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery. Certainly it’s a thematic fit for us and while we have no idea whether Mr. Boozer lives up to his name, we’d like to think he does. Basketball needs more spare-tire sporting, slow moving tipplers who might not be the first one’s to the ball, but who will make your eyes water with the 100-proof seeping out of their pores.

Amazingly, CB is the second ‘Boozer’ to have ever played in the NBA, the first being Bob Boozer, who has the interesting distinction of having a street named after him in Omaha, Boozer Drive — which we don’t encourage you to do [Check out our Top 10 Driving and Driving Songs of All Time: Contents May Shift in Transit].

Honorable mentions to Thaddeus Young (Thaddeus Griffin, from the Family Guy pictured here), Rajon Rondo, Cuttino Mobley…this is not an exact science.

Honorable mentions to the ALL RESTAURANT NBA TEAM: OJ Mayo, Morris Almond, Von Wafer, Brian ‘Veal’ Scalabrine (actually a scallopini) , Royal (”Cheese”) Ivey, Brandon Bass, Brian Cook, Eddy Curry, Channing Frye, Corey Brewer, Ronnie Brewer, John Salmons, and Calvin Booth.

The witching hour is soon upon us, when ‘hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world’, kids are tucked in by Michael Jackson, Donatella Versace wakes up to greet the day as usual and other ghoulish things.

Halloween marks the end of the harvest, or its modern exemplar, snagging a boxed butter chicken before the 7-Eleven closes up shop and even those who are known to wring the last droplet out of that wet blanket, can’t help but get into the otherworldly spirit; even if it means dimming the lights, hunkering down in a basement and carpel tunneling their way through Black Sabbath Guitar Hero and pretending not to hear the knock at the door.

When it comes to costumes, some have withstood both the ravages of time and Second Life avatars, the devils, sexy nurses, vampires, ninjas, Batman & Robin (it’s not difficult to tell which of these pooches is the submissive one and there are few experiences more frightening than the prospect of sitting through the eponymous movie) and for parents stingy with a dollar, ghosts. If you haven’t glanced at a calendar recently and find yourself at a loss for costume ideas, here are a few simple suggestions.

Osama Bin Laden

This culturally insensitive classic is relevant until he’s caught (at this point, when Satan snowmobiles to work) and even a few years after Borat’s catchphrases have outworn their welcome.

Twist: Obama/Osama. This one will likely be popular, especially with the catchphrase, courtesy of the Wasilla Whackjob’s supporters, ‘The only difference between Osama and Obama is BS’ [and at this point, with devotees like this, McCain wishes he could raise his arms above his shoulders to slap himself on the forehead]

Tip: Always on the cutting edge with Times Square hooker references, even though they haven’t been seen there since the mid 90s, the spirit of the comedically deceased David Letterman can also be conjured up with crack about “being found driving a New York City taxicab’

 Polluted Body of Water

This one’s easy, if you’ve managed to master the complexity of ‘ghost’. Grab a blue garbage bag, poke a hole for your head and hang soda cans, wrappers, syringes and whatever else you can scrounge out of recycling and go as your favorite polluted body of water, say Lake Ontario or of course, the East River.

Twist: Say you’re the Potomac and make political jokes so obvious, they’d be crumpled up into a ball during Jay Leno brainstorming sessions (and then flattened out and used that same evening). Be prepared for ‘Hey, I can make out Jimmy Hoffa on the bottom’ if you’re the East River.

FORE MORE CLICK HERE!!!

!!!!!!!DISCLAIMER!!!!!!! First off, let’s be clear that the authors in no way condone drinking and driving, unless it’s done on a closed course by professionals while filming a car commercial or approaching a club house where you’re not a member and the descent isn’t too steep. Drunken go-karting is to be judged on a case-by-case basis.

The same could’ve been said about our other lists, The Top 10 Cocaine Songs of All Time or the litany of other vices we’ve chronicled here, however unlike someone who’s taken to the nose candy like an anteater grazing, who can at least be forgiven for the occasional indulgence, drinking and driving, or as it’s sometimes called, ‘how the hell else am I gonna get home, walk?’ is quite rightly considered a very serious offense (unless you’re an actor or some kind of celebrity). However, this doesn’t prevent us from hopefully one day earning a Wikipedia entry on the subject of DUI Songs and cornering our little piece of pop culture real estate by tracking down a few of these and saving you restless nights poring over Time Life hits compilations from the 1970s–or hours that could’ve been better spent finding novel ways to waste your company’s time.

In this list, we focus on songs whose origin (much like our Top 10 Bar Songs of All Time) came about when someone put pen to paper, mused ‘hmm, maybe I should write what I know’, and thought about that time they tossed a can of Schlitz out onto the interstate. We figured brunch reservations with Pol Pot or whatever else would be on the itinerary should a place be set aside for us in hell, would be our just desserts if we were to say, compile a list of songs TO LISTEN TO WHILE DRINKING AND DRIVING; but since we aren’t, it seems the road ahead is clear (unlike that same road if you’ve been pulled over and trying to explain to the arresting officer that you’re not really drunk, you’re heavily medicated and having one of your ’spells’).

Without further ado, in hopes of being handed editorial reins for Blender’s ‘Moral Decay’ issue, or at least landing a free monthly subscription here are the Top 10 Drinking and Driving Songs of All Time!

[!!!! Disclaimer!!!! Again, we advocate that NOBODY get drunk and get behind the wheel, unless you're on the set of a Michael Bay movie in which case feel free to take out the director's chair and use a fruit stand for brakes]

10. Lovin’ Cup as performed by the Rolling Stones

During the recording of their seminal Exile on Main St album, apparently so much heroin was flowing through the French mansion where recording sessions were taking place that Keith Richards had to direct his creative energies elsewhere–to songs extolling the virtues of heavy alcohol abuse. What he left us is arguably one of the finer songs on the album and a great one to kick off our list here.

“Yes I’m fumbling and I know my car won’t start.
Yes I’m stumbling and I know I play a bad guitar.
Give me a little drink, from your lovin’ cup. Just one drink and I’ll fall down drunk.”

FOR THE REST OF THE LIST CLICK HERE!

Bon Jovi’s baffling popularity has continued unabated for two decades now, as this weekend’s Central Park concert shows, however in our minds, there is nobody more deserving of both a solid punt to the arse, or a safe dropped on them from a sufficient height, than these crap-rock poster boys, whose music is so middle of the road, their tour bus should have its own dedicated lane.

If only we could lace ‘em up and kick ‘em when they’re down, but they’re never down, churning out the same Springsteen-lite cacophony year after year.

To honor the band, and also in the spirit of celebrating the worst of everything, we’ve decided to put together a tribute, of sorts, to Bon Jovi, the world’s most famous Bruce Springsteen tribute band/wimp rock quartet.

Unlike some bands, the core group has remained relatively intact. This has enabled the Jersey boys with Swiss watch- like reliability, to consistently put out unspeakably awful music year after year.

The sole exception of course, the booting bass player Alec John Such (the ’soul’ of the group in that he sported soul patch facial hair), because he ‘couldn’t play his instrument’—a requirement obviously forgotten as few of the remaining members actually know how to play theirs (with the exception being David Bryan, the band’s keyboard player, who actually trained at the Juilliard School of Music, and judging by his current gig tickling the ivories with the Jersey dunder-heads, is about as overqualified as the ‘Ice Man’ Chuck Liddell doing security detail at a Girl Scouts Jamboree)

Their intrepid leader Jon Bon Jovi, of course, is Bruce Springsteen— if Bruce had a tin ear, Meg Ryan’s hairstylist, and penned gems like ‘Tomorrow’s getting harder make no mistake, Luck ain’t even lucky’ instead of great songs like Born to Run, Highway Patrolman or Thunder Road.

It is not hyperbole to say that BJ represents everything wrong with modern music, or at least, modern horticultural hair band music that became more bankrupt, creatively speaking, than Bear Stearns, and peaked around oh, 1987, unbeknownst to the band.

Bon Jovi is a church-basement rummage sale clearing house version of The Boss. Their ‘rock-lite’ is more sanitized than a trauma burn unit and their Forest Gump libretti induces more projectile vomiting than the elimination round at a chili eating contest. If this wasn’t enough, and from our vantage point here it certainly is, their news anchor bobs will guarantee they’re a shoe-in for the next installment of ‘Old Men who Look Like Lesbians’.

The only thing worse than an actual Bon Jovi song, however, is Bon Jovi doing a version of someone else’s, automatically better original. Worse still, would be someone actually COVERING a Bon Jovi song, but to the best of our knowledge, the likelihood of this occurring is about as probable as a meteor the size of the state of New Jersey striking the earth.

Since their own music wasn’t bad enough, here is Bon Jovi doing what they do best—spilling their own REO Speedwagon / Journey / Three Dog Night / Springsteen-lite effluent on some of the world’s most well-beloved songs. Luckily for all concerned, these are so popular that nobody would mistake them for Bon Jovi originals and mislead any future generations. Here, in no particular order, because the pork rendering plant stench emanating from each, is indistinguishable from the other, is our 10 Worst Bon Jovi Covers of All Time:

10. Save the Last Dance for Me, Pomus and Shuman. Among the ‘better’ song on this list, only in the sense that it’s better to have testicular cancer than say, lung.

FOR MORE CLICK HERE!

(Editor’s Note: The following blog appeared first on Cracked.com. To see it there, complete with welcome jab at Dr. Phil, click here. Below is the first part of the original submission. Part Two can be found here. Reader feedback on brands that we may have missed is as welcome as a free round… almost) :

For a booze-maker, giving your hooch the right name can mean success, even if you are hustling a product that could be put to better use in the gas tanks of a fuel-hungry nation. Malt liquors like Wild Irish Rose, Night Flight, and Schlitz fall into this category, but their respective names hearken to the splendor of the Irish countryside (or a prostitute in the Irish countryside named Rose, which is still not so bad), getting high in the evening/the adrenaline that comes from sprinting away from a crime scene, and, well, Schlitz doesn’t really signify anything but it seems like it would be a fine name to give one’s first-born son – “The proud parents are thrilled to welcome little Schlitz Rasmussen into the world”. Like putting a silk hat on a pig, it’s a way of sprucing up your product and fostering a loyalty that is completely divorced from product quality – in other words, the kind of loyalty that lasts.

Just as a catchy name with positive connotations can mean success for a product with “optimal serving conditions” listed as “best served in the general proximity of someone who drinks fast”, so too can a bad name sink the fortunes of a quality product. Many of the booze brand names below have been slapped onto products that judging by reports from beer and liquor snobs on the Internet sound pretty good, but we are not going to find out just how good because their names send us dangerously close to wanting to walk the line of sobriety.

It has become trendy among booze purveyors, particularly brewers and wineries these days to give their products deliberately jokey names like “Arrogant Bastard Ale” and “Wasatch Polygamy Porter” etc., but here we’ve stuck to those that sicken or repel consumers unintentionally for the most part (passing on Sweetwater Happy Ending Imperial Stout, however, was not an option). In some cases, these names sound terrible due to language or cultural differences; in others it’s a name that started off as perfectly acceptable but later become increasingly risible as the years passed and people looked for more words with which to form double entendres; and, in the majority of cases, it was a bad name to begin with and shit doesn’t turn to gold with age.

It’s last-call, the bar has been drained of all other brands, these names are presented to us on a menu, and we opt instead to do the unthinkable and flag down a taxi. There ought to be a law.

Sweetwater Happy Ending Imperial Stout

From Sweetwater Brewery in Atlanta, Georgia comes a beer that attempts to bottle the exotic allure of getting a five-fingered shuffle from someone who may or may not have found her way into her present place of employment as part of a barter deal for a Chevrolet.

What the Company Might Have Intended: The cartoon of the winking, cleavage-bearing sexpot masseuse on the label means this wasn’t a case of someone having failed to check out the urban dictionary before naming the beer. But the description on the label, “A huge, dry hopped stiffy, for a full figured beer, resulting in an explosive finish!” suggests that perhaps this was an attempt to celebrate the defining qualities of a good stout – full-bodied, satisfying with a pleasant aftertaste etc – in a way that would stand out on the shelves. That this quotation makes no grammatical sense may have been a play on the language difficulties that confront rub and tug patrons, or point to the need for a copy-checker at Sweetwater Breweries.

Why They Failed and Why We Want to Vomit: Beer companies often get a bum rap for glorifying alcohol abuse by producing commercials that show good looking young people having the time of their lives while in the general proximity of a crapload of their product. Someone living in a converted garage, drinking Miller Genuine Draft and spraying his shirts with deodorant so he doesn’t have to do a wash, might look at those Greek statues come to life in the Miller commercials, who seem to be preparing for a cabin orgy with the Swedish Bikini Natural 10 Extra-Beautiful Club, and think that he’s a few six-packs away from joining them. That same slob would have far less mental jogging to do to make the image that Sweetwater Happy Ending Massage conjures up a reality. Even more unappealing-sounding than “Hummer”, also put out by this same brewer, this one brings to mind the altogether unpleasant image of some naked horny fat guy in a towel overcoming a language barrier by counting off sums of money using his fingers and waving a stack of greasy low-denomination bills.

Deerstalker Scotch

From Scotland comes the perfect complement to a day spent skulking around a tranquil forest dressed up like a bush in the hopes of bagging Bambi.

What the Company Might Have Intended: A deerstalker is the kind of jaunty cap that Sherlock Holmes wears, and one that has also graced the fictitious heads of cynical low-life Holden Caulfield in “The Catcher in the Rye”, and portly truculent hotdog vendor Ignatius J. Reilly of “A Confederacy of Dunces”—lit personae you’d least like to emulate behaviorally or sartorially. In real life, most people who are able to tie their own shoes and for whom strangling by shoelaces is not a danger, don’t wear these hats. The exception, of course, are those for whom the hat is named – hunters out for a day’s drinking and shooting in the best tradition of American vice-presidents. They are presumably the target market for this whiskey.

Why They Failed and Why We Are Untying our Deerstalker Hats: This is not the whiskey to break out on a first date. First, it promotes headwear favored by those in cold climates who have severed all ties with mankind. Second, any reference to the slaughter of deer is unlikely to impress. Paired with the term “stalker”, showing up with a bottle of this falls between having BO and casually mentioning that you have a family of 10 “out there, somewhere” as a sure way to kill a date.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE!

As a captive audience for PS I Love You, and not the kind of captive audience that could at least interrupt the proceedings by shanking the warden, it seems there are certain actors whose films are more likely to be shown on commercial flights than others.

Unlike a typical movie theater audience, for whom dozing off would be a common, though unintended outcome for many of these movies, in-flight screenings are to 300 plus worn out travelers, who’d rather be sleeping before the rolling of either the opening credits or the drinks cart.

Like trains before them, the first commercial flights were long ago associated with all the glamor and prestige of a champagne and orange juice breakfast rather than today when they’re more commonly linked to microwavable butter chicken/unidentifiable protein plastic tray repasts.

These days, unless you’re in first class, where cherries dipped in Belgian chocolate are dangled into eager mouths, you’re more likely to encounter nose-hair singeing B.O. re-circulated throughout the cabin, howling infants who due to FAA restrictions unfortunately cannot be stowed in overhead compartments and limits on how many rum & Cokes can be downed before a stern reprimand and a dip into that duty free gin that sits in your carry on.

The in-flight movie is meant to be a two-hour diversion from such unpleasantness, not to mention the strain of patella bones jammed into eye sockets with the impromptu reclining of the seat in front, whose occupant then goes on to remove their socks, an apt sensory accompaniment to the on-screen ‘entertainment’.

The problem is, these bottom-feeding MOR vehicles don’t dare offend anyone, so what the weary traveler is left with, are some of the films listed here.

In PS I Love You, shown on a recent Amsterdam to Toronto flight and mercifully, not the reverse as well, or else the integrity of the cabin door would’ve been tested for a quick exit into space, either Jennifer Garner or Hilary Swank portray a woman haunted by posthumous letters left by her husband.
[Editor's note: it's very likely Swank and Garner are the same person, though confirmatory calls to her/their agent have gone unreturned]

These dispatches, carefully prepared by the hubbie while he knew he’d be dispatched to that great, big, airplane hangar in the sky, were designed ostensibly to help her ‘get on with her life’. This, despite what is obvious to everyone else on screen, the cockpit crew, your seat-mate who is drooling like a bull mastiff and anyone who’s stowed luggage under their seats— that it is in fact doing the exact opposite, and is undeniably creepy.

Here is a list of the top actors in Hollywood who are most likely to make you wish you’d remembered to pack a sleep mask, or decided against that Tampa time-share.

Perennial 30-something slacker, Matthew McConaughey has a film resume peppered with in-flight staples (Fool’s Gold, Failure to Launch, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Sahara), films so lengthy and wretched, you’d wish Air France would re-commission the Concorde to make that transatlantic trip in 3 hours, long enough to ensure that once meals are served, complimentary peanuts doled out, and supersonic gas fumes inhaled, there wouldn’t be time left to take in any of his rotten oeuvre.

Sandra Bullock. On a trip to Milan, Italy several years back, I was initiated into a select fraternity: not the Freemasons, which would’ve meant bypassing the lineups in the country’s finest museums and voting in their election, but along with several hundred or so of my fellow passengers, we were forced to sit through Miss Congeniality, not once, but twice. In this ostensible comedy, which guffaw for guffaw, easily matched that of the Asian tsunami disaster, Bullock plays an FBI agent who, to thwart a bombing, must go undercover in a beauty pageant despite being old enough to have given birth to all the contestants. Her latest work, ‘All About Steve’ is currently in post-production, and judging by the title alone, you’ll be treated to it on that trip to Heathrow or Charles de Gaulle sometime next year.

CLICK HERE FOR THE REST!

Unless you’re mixing your booze with a cupful of the communal Kool-Aid at a Ken Kesey-themed 60s night, it’s unlikely that getting drunk – even on absinthe as a recent study revealed – will lead to hallucinations. (Editor’s note: Spinning rooms don’t count in this regard, and neither does vision compromised because you just broke your glasses head-butting a vending machine). Only a drinker approaching last call (and not the one they ring the bell at the bar for) is likely to experience hallucinations, and thus most drinkers are denied the more mystical side of chemical enhancement that their hallucinogenic-eating peers enjoy.

This past weekend, however, one pub drinker had a religious experience of sorts while out on the piss. The Daily Mail reported on how a taxi driver from Darlington ordered a bottle of cider and “got goose pimples” when the waitress opened it and staring back at him from the foil on the neck was the face of Christ himself. “I have no doubt it is the face of Jesus. You can even see his beard and hair,” said the man of what is a decidedly more bug-eyed image of JC than the usual one.

The man gathered around his drinking companions to share in this miracle and snapped a photo of the bottle before it was taken away. (None of the other bottles that night bore the face of Jesus, though unconfirmed rumors have it that a glaring John The Baptist was seen in the settling foam of a pint of Old Speckled Hen.)

The drinker didn’t realize how crisp the likeness was until he checked the photos the next day and it was too late to retrieve it. “I’m not sure what message Jesus was sending and maybe now we’ll never know,” the man said. The message may have been “Put me up on Ebay and we’ll have many good nights on the cider together son,”; as the Mail mentions, a similar find, the face of the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich, sold for $28,000 just four years ago (Click here for “Virgin Mary (again)”, an up-to-date chronicle of sightings).

His appearance at the British pub was only the latest stop on an unorthodox tour; the Nazarene has popped in for a visit via some unlikely, and occasionally delicious, places over the past few decades. Here then is The Shark Guys’ rundown of the Top 10 Oddball Jesus Sightings of All Time!

10) Fish-stick Jesus: This is the sole Canadian find on the list and appropriately enough was made when a guy was cooking up that quintessential Canadian repast: fish-sticks. Kingston’s Fred Wan had left the fish-sticks cooking for too long, a common mistake among fish-stick eaters who are not exactly your gourmet-at-home types when it comes to paying careful attention to following food preparation instructions. The fish-sticks were burnt, but while Fred examined his dinner, he noticed something that he thought could fund many more boxes of ole’ Captain Highliner’s best: the image of Christ was to be found on the burnt fish-stick. Gordon kept the holy fish-stick in his freezer for some three years (that’s usually about mid-shelf life for your average box of fish-sticks) before putting it up on Ebay. Alas, the website denied his posting.

9) The Messiah of the Molars: When Jesus is not making appearances in people’s food, he can often be found showing up in their X-rays (click here for that), MRIs (here), ultrasounds (here and here) etc. These visions are usually seen after exams related to something important, like the birth of a child (ecclesiastical sources are split on whether having Jesus’s face in the ultrasound means that you are about to give birth to a new prophet or the Antichrist. “50/50″, they say). Jesus does not usually meddle in matters of good oral hygiene, but this one was an exception. A Phoenix, Arizona dentist was stunned when he developed his patient’s X-ray and found Christ up there above the pearly whites. The man said he was a devout Christian, but that this was the first time his redeemer showed up on his dental x-rays. The reason for the visitation will remain a mystery for the ages as the man’s dental checkup revealed no problems.

8) The Pancake Prophet: Not to be outdone by the Virgin Mary grilled-cheese sandwich when it comes to appearances in artery-clogging breakfast food, the face of Jesus was said to have appeared to an Ohio man on his morning pancakes. Ohioan Mike Thompson and his wife were sitting down to breakfast when, he said, he spotted the holy visage and took it to be a “message from above”. That message was not surprisingly to take care when setting the minimum bid on E-bay — start too high and they’ll think you a fraud, too low and they’ll doubt the veracity of the miracle. Bidding started at $500 and went up to an incredible $15,000 before the listing was pulled due to a “listing infraction.”

A report by the website MrBreakfast.Com, entitled “Breakfast with Jesus” (not to be confused with the Andy Kaufman cult film “My Breakfast With Blassie”) later determined that the pancake was, horror of all horrors, not the genuine article. An E-Bay commenter had jokingly wondered, “Maybe he has a Jesus fry pan that has an image embedded in the metal so everything cooked will have Jesus on it.” The commenter was probably joking, but the pancake guy actually did have a pan that did just that. Jesus Pan.Com, maker of the pan used to create the holy pancakes, offers, for the low low price of two for $29.95 the opportunity to boost your bank account by selling your breakfast on E-bay. Their slogan: “Worship at every meal with Jesus Pan.”

7) Pizza Hut Pasta Jesus: In 1991, Stone Mountain, Georgia resident Joyce Simpson had a dilemma; she was, apparently, a good singer, and had to decide if she still wanted to keep on belting it out in the choir for free, or if it was time to move on to more lucrative paid professional work. Driving along she gazed upon a Pizza Hut advertisement for the chain’s new spaghetti lunch that it was promoting at the time and in it she found her answer: the face of Jesus was clearly visible to her in the pasta.

Skepdic defines Pareidolia as “a type of illusion or misperception involving a vague or obscure stimulus being perceived as something clear and distinct. For example, in the discolorations of a burnt tortilla one sees the face of Jesus Christ. Or one sees the image of Mother Teresa or Ronald Reagan in a cinnamon bun or a man in the moon.).” It might also explain why Joyce saw Jesus, while other passersby saw different holy men, like Willie Nelson and John Lennon.

For the rest click here

If your job description includes being able to thrash someone within an inch of their miserable lives and doing so with impunity while enjoying the odd drink on the job, you’re either a cop or a bouncer.

7) Max Baer “The Prizefighter and the Lady”: Boxer Baer famously got Hitler’s mustache in a twist by dispatching Max Schmeling at Yankee stadium, while sporting Star of David trunks. “Madcap Maxie” also laid out 6′6 Italian strongman Primo “The Ambling Alp” Carnera, who, along with former heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey make appearances in the 1933 flick, “The Prizefighter and the Lady”, about a bouncer-turned boxer who tries to not let fame, fortune and loose women get to his punching bag rattled head. Baer also famously killed a man in the ring, an achievement he appears to relish if we’re to take the Ron Howard movie “Cinderella Man” at its word. With that kind of resume, he’s the exact kind of guy you’d want to be standing at your door if you’re a bar owner to pound a hippy into the dust if need be.

For the rest, click here!