Top 10 Hell: What Hath Letterman Wrought?
As David Letterman camps out in San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts, a mere chopper ride from Silicon Valley, or spitting distance from Multimedia Gulch (p.s. what is a gulch? Webster's: a steep-walled valley cut by a swift stream), it's time to ponder the putrifying proliferation of Letterman's trademarked Top 10 list. You can't turn four newspaper pages, make three Web clicks, open two email messages, or run into one wisecracking co-worker without getting a Top 10 funny ha-ha list pushed under your nose.
With origins probably dating to the 10 Commandments ("thou shalt not commit adultery"?! what a knee-slapper!) or maybe the Bill of Rights ("right to bear arms"?! how about semi-automatic assault bazookas?), the Top 10 list was created for late-night Letterman watchers of yore, and was used sparingly. Now that Dave's made the big time, we get a list every night, and pretenders create their own lists about everything from Top 10 Wedding Gifts for Bill Gates to Top 10 Web Sites For the Color Blind. 3MR couldn't possibly be left out of the Top 10 orgy.
The 3-Minute Roast's Top 10 Reasons for Banning Top 10 Lists
10. We could start counting from 1 to 10 the right way.
9. Less junk email from friends who spend too much time finding jokes on the Net.
8. The numbers 9 and 11 could feel important again.
7. Humorists could make fun of things without having to think of 10 jokes every time.
6. Billboard could say an artist made the Top 10 without getting smirks from readers.
5. Much less ink for Microsoft, including Gates, Bob, Win95, and Bill's palatial digs.
4. Less bottlenecks on the Internet, freeing up space for cannibalism forums and exploding pop tart experiments.
3. Fewer jokes about Madonna, Cleveland, Newt Gingrich, and the Unabomber.
2. Increased listlessness.
1. For a few brief moments, Letterman is speechless.
Who Are We?
To get the FBI off of our backs (they seem to think we're part of the Freemen Conspiracy), we've decided to familiarize you with the previously faceless entities that create the 3-Minute Roast for your satirical pleasure. This week we'll tell you about our esteemed editor-in-chief, Max Schlickting.
Schlickting -- often accidentally called "shit-king," but only by his closest associates -- has a long history in the chip industry, as an analyst and advertising consultant. He was a driving force behind the Pringles ad campaign, "No Grease Inside," and then jumped ship for arch-rival Lay's, helping them reverse-engineer the chip into a Pringles clone, now dubbed Baked Lay's. Backed into a corner during a trade-secrets lawsuit brought by Pringles, Schlickting is known for his courtroom rebuttal: "No single manufacturer should have the right to monopolize all the chips that go inside each human stomach system, especially since they routinely upset said system, and include annoying people wearing bright colors in their ads, not to mention the tacky duck mouth created with the aforementioned chips." We applaud his heroic stance.
Alta Vista Celebrity Name Search-Off, Round 1 (cont.) This week's matchup: Mel Gibson vs. William Gibson
You know the deal: We're trying to find the most popular person on the Web by using Alta Vista's search engine (now being spun off into a line of software and action figures). This week we pit newly crowned King of Hollywood and ozzie heartthrob (esp. when wearing a skirt) Mel Gibson with the neuromancer (or is that new romancer?) himself, and no relation to Mel, William Gibson, the person we can all blame for creating the overused expression "cyberspace."
The Tally:
William Gibson: 6,000 documents; 7,000 word matches
representative site: script for Alien III
http://www.why.net/ftp/users/gspurr/alien3.htm
Mel Gibson: 4,000 documents; 5,000 word matches
representative site: "Most Desirable Male" MTV Movie Award nominee
http://mtv.com/tubescan/mawards/desmale.html
Mel, who was born in upstate New York and moved to Aussieland at age 12, has a questionable accent and even more questionable talent, now being trounced by Vancouver writer and lingo-ist William. Vive le cyberspace!
"3-Minute Roast" is a weekly, advertisement-free, opinionated rip on anything that strikes our fancy in the online world.
Max Schlickting - Editor-in-Chief
Barbara Yalpsid - Online Editor
Lefty Periwinkle - First Amendment Expert
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