You all know the story: God handed Moses the first top-10 list ever, and the rest was history. Now, we’re not saying that our top 10s should be taken quite as seriously, but the next time you’re out at night, trying to act like a big shot, and someone says, “Hey, how about The Further Adventures of Lord Quasimoto and you have no idea what they’re talking about, and the derisive laughter begins, and the next thing you know you’re fetal on the floor of your shower muttering “unclean, unclean” while desperately trying to scrub away the stench of rejection with a Brillo pad—well, don’t say that you weren’t given the chance to say, “I obey, and I hear.”
TELEVISION
Arrested Development (FOX) — It’s been lauded for its breakneck pacing and brilliantly intricate plots, but we love FOX’s perennial underdog for its blink-and-you-miss-it profanity. We’re not even talking about its major plotlines—gleefully dark riffs on incest, dismemberment, alopecia, frozen semen and Saddam Hussein. We’re talking about those double entendres (“I came home and blue’d myself,” says Blue Man Group-wannabe Tobias), so whiz-bang they escape network censors and prove entertainment can be smart and juvenile at the same time. EMILY FROMM
The other nine: Chappelle’s Show (Comedy Central); The Colbert Report (Comedy Central); Deadwood (HBO); Entourage (HBO); Family Guy (FOX); Six Feet Under (HBO); The Daily Show (Comedy Central); The O.C. (FOX); The Office (NBC).
BOOKS
Home Land, by Sam Lipsyte (Picador) — Lipsyte’s protagonist, Lewis Miner (aka “Teabag”), is as salty as Yosarian, as bitter as Alexander Portnoy and as maniacal as Humbert Humbert. The book, in the form of a series of blistering newsletters to Teabag’s fellow high school alumni, feels less like a novel than one long caustic rant, a courageous journey of existential deep-sea diving into the darkest waters of the human psyche. Just listen to this guy: “Newly infatuated couples are repellent. They can’t decide whether they want you to disappear or stand witness to their giddiness…. Plus they stink of nookie.” Utterly sublime. SHANA LIEBMAN
The other nine: Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro (Knopf); Epileptic, David B. (Pantheon); The London Years, Rudolf Rocker (AK Press); Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights at Wal-Mart, Liz Featherstone (Basic Books); Runaway: Stories by Alice Munro (Knopf); Willful Creatures: Stories, Aimee Bender (Doubleday); The Design of Dissent, Milton Glaser and Mirko Ilic (Rockport); I, Fatty: A Novel, Jerry Stahl (Bloomsbury).
MUSIC
The National, Alligator (Beggars) — The National’s fourth record may at first sound effortless and offhand, but with each repeated listen, this rough, shimmering gem unfolds into complex characters and transcendent instrumental subtleties. Alligator successfully finds the meeting point for Joy Division, Wilco, strong whisky and great literature. This is a quintessential American document of unpretentious greatness. Trust us, this Alligator’s got teeth. ARYE DWORKEN
The other nine: Sufjan Stevens, Illinois (Asthmatic Kitty); M.I.A., Arular (XI/Beggars US) ; Stars, Set Yourself on Fire (Arts and Crafts); Quasimoto, The Further Adventures of Lord Quasimoto (Stones Throw), Antony and the Johnsons, I am a Bird Now (Secretly Canadian); Low, The Great Destroyer (Sub Pop); Ari Up, Dread More Dan Dead (Collision); Edan, Beauty and the Beat (Lewis Ent); Bloc Party, Silent Alarm (Vice Records).
ART
“Greater New York,” (PS 1, Queens) — On the opening weekend of PS 1’s Greater New York show, people packed into the hallways, stairwells, former classrooms and auditoriums of this deconsecrated school for a glorious graduation ceremony. The ratio of quality to hype was just right, like the egg white fizz on a retro cocktail. Some pleasures were room-filling events, like Matthew Day Jackson’s ten-foot pirate ship ferrying a fallen biker to his Viking funeral. Others were private peeks: Yuken Teruya’s miraculous little trees, each cut and folded from a paper shopping bag. ANYA KAMENETZ
The other nine: “Beautiful Losers” (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco), “Something is Somewhere” (Monya Rowe Gallery, Manhattan), “Jules de Balincort: This Is Our Town”(LFL/Zack Feuer, Manhattan), “In Practice” (Sculpture Center, Manhattan), “Martha Cooper,” (Powerhouse, Manhattan), “Sigalit Landau: Forthcoming” (Tel-Aviv Museum), Tim Gardner (303 Gallery, Manhattan), “Tim Hawkinson: Uberorgan” (Whitney Museum of Art, Manhattan), “John Grimoprez: Looking for Alfred” (Photographers’ Gallery, London).
FILM
Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle (New Line Cinema) — We know, we know: Our favorite film of 5765 first hit theaters at the end of 5764. But the DVD came out this past year, and so we couldn’t resist bending the rules a bit. In the tradition of the great Cheech & Chong movies of the 1970s, this film is a Garden State Parkway of earthly delights: Neil Patrick Harris (“The NPH”) doing blow, the greatest Holocaust joke ever uttered (believe it or not it involves Katie Holmes), the first pube-trimming scene in the history of Western cinema, a fantasy marriage to an enormous bag of weed, and, of course, the quest for the perfect meal—what’s more Jewish than that? JOSHUA NEUMAN
The other nine: Kung-Fu Hustle (Sony Picture Classics); Vera Drake (Fine Line Features); The Incredibles (Buena Vista Pictures); Tarnation (Wellspring Media); Oldboy (Tartan USA); Me and You and Everyone We Know (IFC Films); Or (Kino International Corp.); Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (Magnolia Pictures); Save the Green Planet (Koch Lorber).
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