the most beautiful basketball player: Michael Jordan
Who: You know who. Why: Two of my other contenders for this designation are entering the Naismith Hall of Fame today, as is one of my contenders for Most Beautiful Basketball Coach. It doesn't matter. A larger auditorium was needed to enshrine Michael Jordan in the Hall, and that doesn't happen for megastars John Stockton, […]
the most beautiful reason to go outside: geocaching
What: The use of GPS receivers to seek containers called geocaches in a multitude of outdoor locations. When geocachers find a cache, they sign a logbook which certifies their find, then virtually log the find on geocaching.com. The cachers often will take an item or leave an item, many of them trackable online. Why: Born […]
the most beautiful typo: “Dawizard”
What: The global replacement of the word “mage” with the word “wizard” in 16 pages of the 1994 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons book Encyclopedia Magica, Volume 1. Here is the entry for the Cube of Frost Resistance. Why: 1994 wasn’t a good year for the legendary roleplaying game company TSR, Inc. With its player base […]
the most beautiful rappers: Jurassic 5
Who: The Los Angeles-based rap group Jurassic 5, featuring the MCs Akil, Chali 2na, Mark 7even, and Zaakir, and the DJs Cut Chemist and DJ Nu-Mark. (Yes, that’s six members. If you’re outraged, take it up with Timbuk 3, the Thompson Twins, and 10,000 Maniacs.) Here they are with the song “What’s Golden,” from their […]
the most beautiful stage direction: the Steinkirk scene
What: In Act V of Colley Cibber’s 1704 comedy The Careless Husband, upon finding her husband asleep beside her handmaiden, Lady Easy [Takes a Steinkirk off her Neck, and lays it gently on his Head.] Why: Following up his popular sex farce Love’s Last Shift, in which the moral is “a wife is as good […]
the most beautiful candy bars: Japanese Kit Kats
What: The seemingly infinite flavored varieties of Nestlé’s Kit Kat bar available solely in Japan. The ones here (yanked from the best gallery on the internet, Fried Toast’s “Kit Kats of the World”) are, left to right: fruit parfait, Universal Studios brown and white, mango, green tea, apple, I-stick (to be eaten frozen), Nasu-Kogen milk, […]
the most beautiful outburst of teen angst: Hermione’s bad hair day
What: At a key moment in the 2004 film Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry and his friend Hermione Granger have used a time-turner to travel back three hours to free the hippogriff Buckbeak and rescue Harry’s uncle Sirius. In the middle of a life-threatening series of events, Hermione sees a previous version […]
the most beautiful internet meme: the Grass Mud Horse
What: The cǎo ní mǎ (in Mandarin, “Grass Mud Horse”), the alpaca-like symbol of a peaceful and creative response to the Chinese government’s internet censorship campaign. Here is the wildly popular children’s song that commemorates the creature’s lively, intelligent, and tenacious nature. Why: The cǎo ní mǎ first appeared on a Chinese wiki site called […]
the most beautiful arcade game: the BattleTech pods
What: The fully enclosed BattleMech cockpits used in futuristic multiplayer combat in Virtual World Entertainment’s BattleTech Centers. A ‘Mech pod features a huge viewscreen, a virtual map, a throttle, a joystick for firing a dozen weapons, movement pedals, heat sensors, and other bells and whistles. Here is a demonstration of a ‘Mech in action: Why: […]
the most beautiful music video dancers: Michael Jackson’s zombies
What: The zombified Michael Jackson and his undead line-dancers doing a herky-jerky shuffle in John Landis’s 1983 music video “Thriller.” Below is the sequence itself. In the full video, this occurs between 4:30 and 7:00. Why: Since the dawn of rock ‘n roll, musicians defined their songs by signature dance moves. Chuck Berry’s duck walk, […]