Sunday Top 10: Best Everythings of 2006 - Ciara, Gawker, Lesbian Teevee, My Friends, NPR

Because I'm cooler than you, I'll be roasting like a little chestnut at the O'Donnell condo in Vermont for New Year's Eve, watching movies and drinking and playing Cat's Cradle with my friends and perhaps watching other people ski/snowboard and thinking about how cold their fingers are in comparison to our fingers, although actually my fingers and toes get cold pretty fast even in hot rooms. (Though we're staying at a "ski resort," none of us intend to go "skiing." One time, Lewis and Dad and I went skiing in Vermont and Lewis fell off the mountain. It was AWESOME. Also, one time Scot and I went snowboarding at Brighton (which is a landfill-turned-mountain in Michigan) and by "snowboarding" I mean that by the time we got our shit together and got there, it was closed, and so we just went to Big Boy's. This is gonna be kinda like that.)

I feel like I need some sort of grand Sunday Top Ten though, for the last day of the year? I am so tired, I think I am going to poke my eyes out with chapstick except I can't find any goddamn chapstick!!!????

SUNDAY TOP TEN: TOP TEN OF 2006


10. The Music Video for "Promise" by Ciara

If there was a channel that showed this video over and over again, 24-7, I would sit in my bed and watch this channel for the rest of my life, until I died, and I would still be happy and snug as a bug in a rug.

9. Images from the Permanent Collection, Part One.

Janet. Me. March 06.

Me. Lo. July 06.

Me. Tara. Feb 06.

8. The Debut of Automatic Win Into the Public Eye
On May 22nd, 2006, Automatic Win Made it's Debut on Gawker. That seems so far away now, like Chutes and Ladders and learning to read. I was so young then, so naive, so new.

Yes, this chart landed me, for the first time in my young life, on Gawker.com:


We can't decide whether we think it'd be thoroughly terrifying or thoroughly amusing to owe one's entire life to Craigslist. But one Williamsburgian realized this weekend that she owes everything to the listings service, and she constructed this intriguing chart to prove her point. As for us, all we can owe to Craigslist is the successful sale of some old furniture and, for a few weeks a few years ago, a painful burning sensation when we peed. We think it best to leave that uncharted. (Gawker.com)

7. Images from the Permanent Collection, Part Two

Lainy/Baby Spice. Me/Sporty Spice. May 06.

Me. Haviland. May 06.

Me. Jenny. Feb 06.

6. Rosie O'Donnell on The View. And South of Nowhere, Workout, The L Word, America's Next Top Model, Imagine Me and You, Ellen, Top Chef, Degrassi: The Next Generation, and seriously, y'all: Britney F***n' Spears.
You don't even have to love Rosie like I do to love what she's done for the show. It is funny now. And the press is eating it, like wolfing it down. You can have your haterade with Donald Trump, but I love the hell out of this woman and I always have, since A League of Their Own, and I still have my sweaty-palmed ticket stub from when I went to see her in "Grease" in 1994 in Detroit with my Dad and I remember sitting there thinking "I am in the same room as Rosie O'Donnell," even though our seats were in way way back.

But the fact is that things are fucking CHANGING, guys. The fact is that G.W hates gay people so much, and has used the whole gay marriage debate to get his way with the right wingers and so now what he has done is actually made it really totally uncool to be homophobic. I mean, do you really want to be in cahoots with the dude who is staying the course in Iraq? We've got two women on daytime television who are out lesbians and one of them is on there every single goddamn day talking about her kids and her family without any apologies, and she is humble and honest and good and she can flounder or fly like the rest of us, is human, is human, is just like the rest of us, but funnier, better informed, with cooler art, and more to say, and the fact is that there is a show on The N right now and it's called South of Nowhere that teenagers are turning on their TVs and just seeing it as if this relationship between Spencer and Ashley is just as valid, just as real, just as possible as Donna and David were to us when we were kids, and maybe the finale sucked, I don't know, I didn't see it, but when Tara and I were dissecting the many threads of the confusing ridiculous spectrum that is "Bisexual Identity" and figuring out where did it come from and what do we see and what have we been socialized to do and what is how we feel what comes really, really from the very deep inside core of us, something for us to pull out and believe in and trust as we tumble in and out of beds and hearts and loves and swoon in dark rooms for people who are all wrong for us and overanalyze voice mails with an attention we can never bring, really, to our schoolwork or work-work, to anything that doesn't get us laid or loved, and she said "You know, if South of Nowhere had been on when I was a teenager? That would have blown my mind!" People are turning on their televisions and seeing that hot girls just like me are lesbians and are bisexuals, and, just like Will and Jack and Dawson's-Creek-Jack and Rickie Vasquez and the Queer Eyes and all of the beautiful stylish gay men who have crossed our screen, I think that lesbian and bisexual women have, really, now, actually, arrived, and that's good, and it can only get better from here, because it's changing really fast, because that's what women do, we make things change, and we make it happen fast.

5. Images from the Permanent Collection, Part Three:

Me. Lo. March 06.


Me. Steph. November 06.

Maggie. Me. December 06.

4. NPR's This American Life: Now in Podcast.
I am, at this point, more or less an unbearable person to be around, as I am constantly having anxiety attacks if I am not accomplishing at least three things at once. Walking is one of the things that seems to be particularly wasteful in terms of time, which is why I often read as I walk. Doing laundry also feels spectacularly unproductive, which is when I first started looking into Podcasts to begin with, so that I could do SOMETHING other than just like, fold, and I can't imagine anything better that I could be doing while walking/folding/pretending to listen to you talk than listen to IRA GLASS, who is the LIGHT OF MY LIFE. As of like, a few months ago, you can download This American Life to your ipod, and that, my friends, is real, true, honest, old-fashioned American democracy in action.

3. Images from the Permanent Collection: Part Four

Christina. Haviland. Me. Karen. September 06.

Cameron. Me. Michelle. August 06.

Susan Powter. Haviland. Me. Joy. June 06

Steph. Me. We Have No Idea. September 06.
(as seen in TIME OUT, y'all!)

2.Agent Cameron, In the Flesh, Susie Bright, The "Bigger the Better" Editors at Seal Press, Suspect Thoughts, the very existence of Stephen Barbara, RKB, the Big Bi Survey, nerve.com, blogger, bloggers, myspace, technorati, marie claire, blogrolls, NYCB, the cruise, maasagency, the reading where i met saw shane, marie claire, curbed, gawker, mediabistro, this macbook, and all that shit that rocked my virtual world this year.

1. My BFF, Haviland Stillwell

I just think she's really good as The Factory Girl, that's all.