The Year In...
City Paper's writers go beyond the categories and pick even more top tens
Wendy Ward
Published: December 8, 2010
Top 10 “Jobs” in Movies, Women’s Version
By Wendy Ward
1 Rose Byrne as a famous/rich hot shit/mess in Get Him to the Greek.
2 Julia Roberts as a “writer” in Eat Pray Love.
3 Anna Mouglalis as fashion designer extraordinare in Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky.
4 Cher as Cher (!) in Burlesque.
5 Kristen Bell as a modern art curator in When in Rome.
6 Cameron Diaz as the owner of a body shop in Knight and Day.
7 Michelle Monaghan as Robert Downey Jr.’s baby mama in Due Date.
8 Ginnifer Goodwin as the fun aunt and ex-sweetheart of Josh Duhamel in Ramona and Beezus.
9 Jennifer Aniston doing god knows what for that apartment in The Bounty Hunter.
10 Viola Davis as a book editor in Eat Pray Love.
Top 10 Ways to Injure Your Ankle and/or Knee
By Andrea Appleton
1 Running, despite your flat feet.
2 Running (with your flat feet) on a trail through an unmaintained section of Druid Hill Park, eyes on the distant horizon.
3 Falling off the rolling office chair that you now use to get around the kitchen because it’s impossible to cook while on crutches.
4 Buying your first pair of heels in New York City and insisting on wearing them to explore the subway system.
5 Kung-fu sparring with your best friend who fights just like you, which means that eventually you are going to bang shins.
6 Taking out the recycling at night, when potholes are present.
7 Missing a step in clogs, with an entire class of second-graders watching.
8 Fucking Supta-Vajrasana.
9 Slipping on a mossy rock with a 40-pound pack on your back, early in the trip during which your boyfriend was planning to propose.
10 Hopefully nothing to do with weddings or aisles.
Top 10 financial outrages of 2010
By Ed Ericson Jr.
1 Mortgage fraud morphs into foreclosure fraud. Turns out the crooks who dummied-up all those fraudulent loan docs are just as adept at dummying-up bogus foreclosure papers. But—ruh ro!—this might mean that loan servicers and trusts lack standing to foreclose. The higher up the food chain this goes, the more money people made by not doing their jobs. If only everyday unemployed folks could do so well by doing so poorly.
2 Income tax rates for the wealthiest are lower than yours. And the plutocrats got five times richer just last year: God Bless America!
3 “ObamaCare” becomes law/myth, simultaneously. As patriots everywhere exclaimed, “It’s health care at GUN POINT!” Too bad it’s not health care for all, or affordable. But, hey, at least it’s not single-payer, right, patriots?
4 Financial “Reform” law passes. The big banks opposed it, but that doesn’t make it effective. Especially since the big banks also dominate the rule-making process.
5 IRS audits more small companies, fewer huge ones. Small fry are easier to catch: better for auditors’ careers.
6 Supremes: “Honest Services” not a requirement for pols, bankers, CEOs. Because, really, who knows what that even means?
7 Goldman Settles Fraud Charges. Yeah, $550 million is the biggest fine the Securities and Exchange Commission has ever levied. But Goldman Sachs “earned” about $13 billion last year. Goldman doesn’t get to deny guilt, which is kind of good, but its co-conspirator is as yet unindicted.
8 Lehman Bros. Boss Dick Fuld Lies to Congress; no one cares.
Hey, it’s not like he got a blowjob or something important like that.
9 Too Big to Fail Administrator informs world there is no such thing “Too Big to Fail” Because irony-deafness is a prerequisite for this job.
10 The Federal Reserve told AIG not to disclose payments to Goldman. Yes, we found out that U.S. taxpayers gave $13 billion over and above what was necessary to the world’s wealthiest people. But all for a good cause: We saved the system that makes those people unaccountably wealthy.
Top 10 Things Heard by the Person Inside City Paper’s Besty™ Mascot costume While Walking the Mayor’s Christmas Parade
By Besty™ THE CP MASCOT
1 “City Paper!”
2 “Hey, City Paper box!”
3 “Yay, City Paper!”
4 “City Paper!”
5 “It’s City Paper!”
6 “Look, the City Paper!”
7 “City Paper, all you do is print stuff about people who get killed!”
8 “Hey, it’s the City Paper box!”
9 “City Paper! I love you!”
10 “Hey, City Paper, you suck!”
Top 10 mainstream companies with soul-crushing marketing campaigns, new in 2010
By Laura Dattaro
1 Burger King: You are forever condemned for using a flute-playing hippie mimicking Jimi Hendrix’s immortally awesome onstage guitar burning to hawk some new shitty frozen meat something-or-other.
2 Windows: No mother should want to use your new photo-editing software to change her children’s faces to have a family perfect enough to be proud of on Facebook.
3 State Farm: You sucked twofold this year: No, man with no soul, saving money is not America’s favorite pastime...
...and no, twentysomethings, your agent cannot appear out of nowhere and pull a sexy, custom-made partner out of his ass.
4 Domino’s: Yeah, OK, you redid your pizza based on what Americans wanted. Thanks. But did you need to gang stalk a customer—“completely plaster his hometown”—with personalized billboards, tractor trailers, and lawn signs to get him to order a pizza?
5 Kia: Gangster hamsters will not reach any demographic, much less its ideal one. They are neither cute nor badass, and we are not idiots.
6 Miller: A man who orders a different light beer than Miller doesn’t necessarily wear a skirt/carry a purse/have no balls.
7 Victoria’s Secret: Of course your half-naked models can say “I love my body”—they’re fucking Victoria’s Secret models.
8 Kohl’s: Degrading holiday shopping commercials abound, but you really effed up on this one—women of America, we are bonded, beyond everything else, by three simple words: “After Thanksgiving Shopping.” Hear us roar.
9 Pizza Hut: A pizza is just a pizza. It is not “more one-on-one time with your daughter,” “the reason people come to your budget meeting,” or “what guarantees you a second date.” Unless you/your budget meeting/your choice in dates sucks.
10 Apple: I know I’m a copy editor, but come on—the iPad can’t simultaneously be “delicious,” “learning,” “bought,” and “fantasy.”
Top 10 Places To Get Jumped On a Bike
(Based on Baltimore City’s reported attack statistics from 2008 -’10, and estimated volume of cycling traffic in the area.)
By Michael Byrne
1 North Charles Street, North Avenue to 25th Street.
2 Guilford Avenue, North Avenue to 25th Street.
3 33rd Street, between Greenmount Avenue and the Alameda.
4 Gwynns Falls Trail, Leakin Park.
5 Jones Falls Trail, from the North Avenue bridge to Stieff Silver building.
6 Druid Hill Avenue, between Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and North Avenue.
7 Gwynns Falls Trail, Westport.
8 York Road, between Cold Spring Avenue and Northern Parkway.
9 The Inner Harbor
10 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, between Lombard and Mulberry streets.
Top 10 Entertaining Baltimore Tweeps
By Lee Gardner
* The name of this Twitter account was initially mispelled; City Paper regrets the error.
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