Today we saw a commercial on the weather channel for an upcoming show entitled "The 100 Biggest Moments in Weather." It made me think about the importance of lists and rankings in our culture, and how it's one thing to talk about a person or thing that was "pretty interesting," or "above average," or even "outstanding," but how it fails to captivate our attention as if we were to call it the greatest/biggest/tastiest/sexiest/most scenic/most substantial person or thing in the entire neighborhood/city/state/world. One word can make an item stand out, possibly much farther than it ever intended to stand out.
So with that I wondered what other lists we could come up with. What list could we create that would find an audience in the world, even if it was just for the fact that we called it the greatest? We'd need experts in each field to debate these rankings on tv of course, but do you think we could build a following for ............
Top 10 Worst Horse Stall Disasters
20 Moments in Knitting That Took Your Breath Away
The 100 Greatest Bullfighters of All Time
The World's 20 Most Important Math Problems
Top 15 Most Unromantic Flowers (and the guys who gave them)
5 Best Uses for a Lima Bean
20 Most Useful Things to Do While Debilitated by Kidney Stones
100 Most Annoying Sounds on the Planet
15 Great Moments in the History of Pet Breeding
State's 20 Most Handsome Poodles
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6 comments:
wait you were watching the weather channel?
One of the top 15 most unromantic flowers I ever gave were some plastic roses plucked from the grave of a relative on my way to a date. I should have at least sprayed them with aftershave!
I would watch a tv show on the 100 most annoying sounds of the planet. But of course I'd have the volume on mute!
How about the 25 best looking sumo wrestlers wearing spandex?
egp, that is a sad sad story.
joey, i wonder, are sumo wrestlers famous in Japan? do people know them and buy products with their pictures on them? do they do underwear commercials?
chand, yes, we watch the weather channel for entertainment purposes. we watch vh1 if we want to actually see the weather forcast.
they were going to inteview jennifer garner about at least one of the 100 most amazing weather related experiences she'd ever had... or something like that. i think they just had to put at least someone with entertainment value in the interviews to make us watch. hey, baj, did we tivo that show yet?
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