Stuffed Pierogi Truck/Facebook

So far this week, we’ve named the best food trucks in each of the 23 northeastern and southeastern states. So far, none of those truck owners has contacted us with an offer of unlimited free food, but nonetheless we persist. Today, we’re moving on to the Midwest. That’s right, we moved from trucks where they call it “soda” to trucks where they call it “Coke.” Now we’re clearly in “pop” territory.

Though this part of the country has been slower than the rest to develop a thriving food truck culture, it is studded with awesome nosh just the same. In some cases, the difference between the best truck and the second best one was infinitesimal, and we will concede that a good strong talking to might make us reverse a few decisions. We’d like to lie to you about how strong we are in our convictions, but there are some mega-tasty mobile kitchens in the Midwest. It’s touch and go.

Read the list, grow uncomfortable because the best food truck in Wisconsin isn’t a grilled cheese purveyor, and leave some comments about Nebraska or, you know, food trucks. Then, check back tomorrow as we list the best food trucks in the southwestern United States.

Gastro Grub/Facebook

North Dakota: Taco Bros. Food Truck (Fargo)

North Dakota has not traditionally been food truck friendly. In fact, in Williston — in the state’s oil patch — there’s even an active ban on them. However, the trend has begun to take hold in the Fargo-Moorhead area in recent years. Launched in 2012, Taco Bros. Food Truck is a consistent presence behind the Empire Tavern in downtown Fargo. A bit of a regional favorite at this point, the truck offers up fresh, authentic Mexican street food to hungry diners between mid-spring and mid-fall. But, the truck didn’t make the smoothest entrance to the mobile food scene.

At the outset, the truck was owned and operated by brothers Octavio and Raul Gomez, and it sat on the property of the High Plains Reader, of which Raul was the publisher. Two weeks after the truck opened, the business’ Facebook page directed fans to a dramatic blog post detailing the demise of the truck. Written by the sister of the taco brothers, the post itemized a series of sibling conflicts that culminated in an argument that closed the truck. What was the fight about? The best way to prepare chorizo. After a week, Taco Bros. was reborn, minus Raul.

The pair did not communicate again for a full five years. Chorizo giveth and chorizo taketh away.

Octavio draws from his culture in making the recipes served on his truck. His aunts, for instance, taught him to make salsa and his step-mother covered beans and rice. And because his grandfather was vegan, the truck serves a few items completely free of animal products, too. The menu is straightforward, offering items like corn and flour tacos with either beef or chicken. Customers can also grab a traditional taco al pastor. The Big Mike Taco is beloved by locals, who can’t wait to dig in to a butter-fried flour tortilla loaded with their choice of seasoned chicken or beef, lettuce, sauce, authentic queso, and chipotle mayo. But, the best option is probably the Trust You Bro Platter, which is literally whatever they feel like serving you.

South Dakota: Swamp Daddy’s Cajun Kitchen (Sioux Falls)

In the 2000s, Del’Inkka Beaudion and her mother-in-law Gwendolyn Beaudion arrived in Sioux Falls for a visit with family and they never left. These former Louisiana residents declare their food is full of soul, and their aim is to bring faithful southern cooking to the streets of Sioux Falls. The triumph of their business suggests they are succeeding.
Gwendolyn started serving her Cajun cooking to Sioux Falls residents when she was running her Louisiana Gumbo-to-Go business out of a kitchen in a local church. When the church was sold and she lost her space, she partnered with Del’Inkka to launch the truck. They keep their menus simple and focused on the classics. That means diners can get down with items like fried chicken po’boys, crawfish hush puppies, shrimp tacos, jambalaya, four cheese baked crawfish mac n’ cheese, and fried pickles. Customers love their thick, strongly spiced gumbo, with its andouille sausage.

Customers from Louisiana with a lifetime of Cajun eating experience rave over this food truck, declaring its dishes authentic representations of the cuisine. However, the Beaudoins know that South Dakotans aren’t renowned for their love of spicy food, so they do tame the heat. Louisiana hot sauce is offered as a side for customers who need their Cajun ragin’.

Minnesota: Tot Boss (Saint Paul)

We are striving to find the best food trucks in the state, but we would really have been willing to bend the rules for a food truck that served lutefisk, the Scandinavian dish made from dried cod reconstituted in a bath of water and food-grade lye. Sadly, despite its popularity in the state, no one is rocking some trendy version of it for hip food truck customers. Instead, let’s focus on another Midwestern fave: tater tots. It’s illegal to live in Minnesota and not feel emotionally attached to tater tot hotdish (casserole for you east and west coasters). This is probably why the viewers of WCCO, a CBS affiliate in Minnesota, voted Tot Boss the best food truck in the state.

Dan Docken, a North St. Paul native, spent the bulk of his career as a cabinet maker, but when he got into cooking, family and friends invited him to cater their events. He wanted to transition that experience into restaurant ownership and decided to go the food truck route. Sticking closely to the advice of a mentor, who urged him to pick one thing and do it well, he created a menu entirely centered on the noble tater tot.

Customers can enjoy Chili Tots: golden, crisp tots smothered with a thick Coney Island-style chili, a house-made cheddar cheese sauce, and rich sour cream. Or, they can celebrate their neighbors to the north and grab some Poutine Tots, which use a savory beef gravy and white cheddar cheese curds from Ellsworth Cooperative Creamery in Ellsworth, Wisconsin. And, yes, Dan’s mother’s classic tater tot hotdish is an option too. Her recipe includes green beans, corn, ground beef, and both cream of chicken and cream of mushroom soups.

Also, Docken is completely fluent in sign language, which is pretty frickin cool for his deaf customers.

Michigan: Hero or Villain (Detroit)

The brainchild of Richard Zemola, a former events management consultant, Hero or Villain launched in summer of 2014, after raising the last bits of capital needed through Kickstarter.

This superhero-themed “mobile gourmet deli sandwich vehicle” specializes in classic sandwiches that are well-known and beloved, as well as those using bold and sinister flavors intended for the most wicked of palates. And, it’s not some sort of gimmicky cash grab; the people running this truck freaking love comic books and adjacent pop culture. In 2016, they released a cosplay calendar showcasing local Detroiters in character.

On the hero side of the menu are items like the Captain Planet (the Earth’s greatest champion), a veggie delight featuring sautéed portabellas, creamy mozzarella, tender caramelized onions, roasted red peppers, and a house-made pesto aioli all served on a hoagie roll. Their most popular hero is the Wolverine, a play on Michigan chicken cherry salad. They begin with cherry walnut bread and add slices of rotisserie chicken, crisp romaine lettuce, fresh tomato, and gorgonzola cheese before topping it with from-scratch spicy cherry sauce. Yes, that sandwich could survive being steamrolled by the Punisher (thanks, Garth Ennis).

The villains are where things get a little wild. The sweet and savory Frieza (you know, the Dragon Ball Z antagonist) starts with fresh sourdough and piles it high with a tart blueberry mascarpone, fresh spinach, creamy mozzarella, and crispy bacon strips. The Dark Phoenix (which is arguably one of the best X-men stories) riffs on the Rueben. Rye bread is grilled until golden and crisp, then a sandwich expert layers on house-made sesame ginger kale slaw (it’s a side they call Riddler). Honey maple turkey and mozzarella are grilled separately before being placed atop the slaw, and the whole thing is drizzled with mayo and sprinkled with oregano.

Wisconsin: Stuffed (Milwaukee)

Milwaukee is home to Polish Fest, the largest Polish festival in the nation, but there were years when a hungry Wisconsinite could only score fresh pierogi on a regular basis from a single restaurant, Polonez. That changed when married couple Gosia and Stephen Glazer opened Stuffed, metropolitan Milwaukee’s first pierogi truck.

Born and raised in Lublin, Poland, Gosia Glazer wasn’t able to find the comfort food she craved, so she had to start making it for herself. Her grandmother taught her the art of making the filled dumplings, and every Christmas season, the women in her family would come together to make heaping batches of them. She has literally never used a written recipe for them. When she carried on the holiday tradition, the people she shared them with began placing orders for more. A food truck was a natural next step.

The pierogis at Stuffed have a thin, soft dough made of salt, flour, and water. Once jam-packed, they are boiled, cooled, and fried in butter. The fillings rotate. Often, they are traditional savory flavors like sauerkraut and mushroom, lentils and bacon, mushroom and leek, or potato with onion and farmers’ cheese. But, there are also modern flavors like cabernet braised beef short rib with horseradish cream, duck and pear, Black Butte Porter braised short rib and Brussels sprouts, chorizo and corn with cilantro cream, or chicken, charred tomatillo, and jalapeno. And, don’t forget about the sweet options: blueberry and cream cheese with sweet cream or Biscoff cookie spread.

Constant experimentation means the menu is always getting new items. And, adding a Polish sausage to your order is always encouraged.

Illinois: 5411 Empanadas (Chicago)

OK, it feels a little weird to hand the title of best in the state to a business with five Chicago storefronts and outposts in Houston and Miami, but eight years ago, this was just a project Argentinean natives Nicolas Ibarzabal, Mariano Lanfranconi and Andres Arlia were running out of an apartment. The success of 5411 Empanadas is the result of their popular food truck and some bomb ass empanadas. Ibarzabal, Lanfranconi and Arlia missed the popular street food of their homeland and decided they needed to show their Chicago neighbors a good empanada. They started experimenting and perfected five flavors: spinach, corn, chicken, beef, and ham and cheese. The game-changer came when they purchased a food truck — generating lines down the block.

Now, 5411 Empanadas (the name is a reference to the international calling code for Buenos Aires, Argentina) serves a variety of flavors. There are breakfast empanadas, meat empanadas, vegetarian empanadas, and dessert empanadas. Fillings are enveloped in dough and baked until crisp and flaky. Each empanada type is folded differently, which is a really cute way to differentiate them from each other.

People love the Malbec Beef, a mélange of tender, shredded steak, onions, and carrots in a wine reduction. The Bacon, Date, and Goat Cheese marries crispy, salty bacon with toothsome, sweet dates and tangy chevre. Go sweet with the Banana Nutella empanada, tender pastry wrapped around brown sugar bananas and hazelnut cocoa spread. They also serve a house-made chimichurri on the side for dipping. It’s a traditional Argentine sauce made from a blend of herbs, olive oil, and garlic.

Indiana: Beast (Indianapolis)

In June of 2015, chef Dyke Michaels and his friend Casey Alexander changed the Indiana burger scene when they opened their food truck Beast. People took immediate notice of the Game Changer burger: an Amelias’s brioche bun, spicy Asian slaw, a quarter-pound Fisher Farms grass-fed beef patty seasoned with Chinese five spice, and a smear of Speculoos Cookie Butter (pureed Belgian cookies enhanced with a little ginger). The burger won them the People’s Choice Award at Indiana’s 2015 Hottest Kitchen Entrepreneur Challenge.

The truck specializes in gourmet burgers and hand-cut fries, with an evergreen menu and weekly specials. The produce is fresh and whatever they aren’t making in-house, they are purchasing from local businesses. The Game Changer is still on the menu, along with a classic cheeseburger and the IRV — made with house pickle, their tangy IRV mustard, slow-cooked onion, and smoky beer cheese. But, the specials are where Michaels gets creative, and they are entrancing.

People are still talking about The Dills Have Eyes, which topped a thick beef patty with black eyed pea hummus, beer-battered fried pickles, and creamy cucumber dill sauce. And who could forget the Nacho Man Randy Savage: a sriracha-seared beef patty topped with jalapeno beer cheese, scratch guacamole, house tortilla chips, and pico de gallo?

The pair are really committed to their east side Irvington neighborhood where they are headquartered. This is why they use local business partners like Amelia’s and Lodge Design, who created their logo. Their signature burger, the Beast Burger, uses Smoking Goose bacon, Local Folks habanero barbecue sauce, and the beer cheese they craft with Fountain Square Pale Ale.

Ohio: Challah (Columbus)

Co-owners and partners Catie Randazzo and Shoshanna Gross Randazzo started wowing Columbus eaters with their Jewish-inspired comfort food in 2013. Randazzo had known for years that she wanted to launch her own mobile kitchen, but she had to wait for the scene in Columbus to catch up. When it did, she had to pick a concept. Inspired by a Jewish cookbook her sister had given her and fully aware that there were no other Jewish food trucks in the area, she opted for Jewish deli food with a farm-to-table sensibility. The pair believe traditional Jewish deli is all about wholesome, soulful food and hope that it gives customers the same sense of home that it gives to them.

They prepare a lot of sandwiches served on challah or rye and brunch items (which are also frequently sandwiches), and use a lot of the pickling, smoking, and slow cooking that goes into Jewish cuisine. Brunch includes items like the Seventh Sun (named for the brewery where they park the truck): juicy braised brisket, fried green tomatoes, house mustard, pickled onions, and a runny fried egg. One of the most popular items is the Smoked Whitefish Sandwich; Randazzo takes a whole whitefish and puts it in a smoker for eight hours (until it’s all buttery and smoky), then the skin is removed and the fish is taken off the bone. Next, she adds house-made mayo to the whitefish, along with fresh dill and fresh horseradish. The fish mixture joins a freshly fried latke and pickled beets on a buttery challah roll. Also, they serve fried Brussels sprouts made with brown sugar and prosecco.

Last year, Randazzo competed on the Food Network program Cutthroat Kitchen — inspiring the menu item “Cutthroat Kitchen Redemption,” a smoked lox sandwich with avocado, a runny egg, and a potato latke.*Drool*

Iowa: Gastro Grub (Des Moines)

Sean Gleason and Andrea Cunningham left Des Moines in 2010 and headed to sunny Los Angeles. While there, Gleason attended Le Cordon Bleu, graduating with honors before being taken on board at the gastro pub The Village Idiot. Cunningham, meanwhile, was working at Katsuya, a prestigious sushi restaurant. The whole time, the pair were honing their craft. When they made the decision to return to Iowa in 2014, it was with the intention of putting their vast range of culinary skills to work. But, it wasn’t until Des Moines decided to allow food trucks on the streets that they were able to fully realize their dream, a gourmet food truck serving new American cuisine.

Gleason changes up the offerings on the daily, but the Gastro Grub’s website always features a current menu. The truck predominantly serves sandwiches, like the Italian Meatball Slider with scratch meatballs, smoked provolone, and a roasted tomato sauce. But, it’s the Grab n’ Grub portion of the menu that is really fun.

For some reason, foodies with food trucks love putting savory comestibles in a waffle cone, and that includes Sean Gleason, who serves one packed with fried chicken and mashed potatoes. When toying with the waffle cone recipe, he found reducing the sugar difficult, so he compensated by adding black pepper and cayenne for a spicy cone. It is filled with mashed potatoes made from Yukon gold potatoes, cream, butter, salt, and garlic that has been roasted for hours. Customers have their choice of either barbecue sauce to top the taters or a rich white gravy. And the final element is the all white meat chicken that has been marinated in buttermilk for 12-24 hours, dredged in seasoned flour, and fried until crispy and golden.

Sometimes, the menu includes savory fried doughnuts smothered in meaty chili, sharp cheddar cheese, diced red onion, and sour cream. You probably didn’t even know how badly you need that until just now.

Nebraska: Big Green Q (Omaha)

Nebraska is another state that came to the food truck party late. In the summer of 2015, there were about half a dozen trucks total in all of Omaha. Now, there are ten times as many. Among them is contemporary barbecue truck Big Green Q. Kevin and Gail Wyatt are taking the BBQ basics updating them with environmentally friendly products and practices. The truck is run on natural gas, unlike most trucks that fuel all of their kitchen equipment with liquid propane. Compressed natural gas is a clean-burning fuel, and everything from the truck’s fuel to its generator uses it. This is why they are backed by The Nebraska Environmental Trust Fund. Further, ninety percent of their servingware and to-go containers are compostable.

All this attention on eco-friendly practices extends to the food, as well. The cooking is done on Big Green Eggs, high-quality ceramic kamado-style grills that are stoked with locally sourced woods. The proteins are first-class local ones, free of antibiotics and hormones, and the produce is locally sourced. If anything, these choices improve the quality of the food.

They make everything in house at Big Green Q. Every one of their delicious sauces — from the basic red BBQ to the yellow Carolina with its sweet, tart mustard base — is made from scratch. The same goes for sides like the decadent white cheddar mac, creamy coleslaw, and golden tater tots. That’s right, scratch tots. And how is the brisket? It’s rich in flavor and the meat is melt in your mouth. It’s remarkably tender without being mushy. Omaha is a beef town and this truck is doing it proud.

Kansas: The Flying Stove (Witchita)

Born and raised in West Wichita, Jeff and Rob Schauf each felt the pull of Los Angeles in their youth. Jeff, who takes care of the business aspects of the truck, worked in the film industry after establishing and running a SoCal gardening business. Rob, who is the bright culinary mind behind The Flying Stove, spent time in the California fine dining scene after he completed culinary school in Austin, Texas. When the brothers decided to open a food truck together, they proposed to do it in Australia, but the 2008 economy quickly foiled that plan. After re-evaluating, they decided to come home to Kansas, where they stood apart from the other mobile kitchens. They were the first truck that used a rotating menu and served what they call “gourmet street cuisine.”

The menu changes each month. However, they always offer truffle fries tossed with parmesan and fresh thyme. Sometimes the fries are the foundation of other menu items. The Beef Stroganuffle Fries load the customer favorites with braised beef, a deep mushroom gravy, and caramelized onions before adding lemon sour cream. Right now, they offer Mexican Flag Fries, a generous bed of truffle fries with pesto, cheese sauce, and chile sauce on top. You can see the California influence in dishes like Beets by R.O.B.: house marinated beets, organic quinoa, a fresh kale mix, crispy brown rice, charred green beans, hazelnuts, feta cheese, and a creamy miso dressing. Vegetarians are seduced by the truck’s Veggie Tacos — which use fresh corn tortillas as a vehicle for charred cauliflower, squash, red potatoes, tomato, basil, garlic, and cotija cheese.

Missouri: Pie Hole (Kansas City)

Neighboring couples Tim and Mary Moore and Laura and Chris Knowles joked around about opening a food truck that sold the meat pies Chris had become known for sharing with neighbors. As time passed and they continued talking about it, the idea ceased to be a joke. A business plan was drafted, a logo created, and a 1978 Ford truck was purchased on Ebay for $800 and retrofitted. Kansas City was going to be introduced to Aussie meat pies.

Like American pies, Australian ones are hearty comfort food. The bottom is a doughy crust filled with gravy, meat, and cheese. The top is a flaky layer of golden brown puff pastry. The ingredients used by Pie Hole are sourced locally when possible. For example, the meat comes from Stuart Aldridge at Broadway Butcher Shop. There are three pies from which to choose. The Swagger Daddy is filled with tender steak, mushrooms, onion, and a thick, rich gravy. The Choopercabra is filled with savory pork shoulder, green chile, tomato, onions, and a complex, layered gravy. And, The Mojo is filled with perfectly seasoned steak, tons of bacon, cheese, and a savory gravy. They also make pork, fennel, and garlic sausage rolls.

Knowles and Moore continue to be stay-at-home dads with five kids between them, but now they are also responsible for bringing and slinging pies. Knowles bakes, and Moore sells. They usually sell-out, but when they don’t, their families get the pie. That’s the sort of incentive that keeps a family supportive.

Fun fact: Each of the pies is named for one of their children. Yes, there is a little boy in Kansas City whose middle name is legally Swagger Daddy and a little girl whose legal middle name is Mojo. Choopercabra appears to be a nickname.

Sony

While their affection for one another was (usually) clear, the Study Group on Community also had a penchant for withering one-liners. While they usually adopted the sibling mentality of “just because I can insult this person doesn’t mean that outsiders can,” that didn’t stop them from roasting the ever loving hell out of each other. Yes, it’s mean, but when the insults are so well-crafted, who are we to stand in the way of verbal annihilation?

While Community was one of those shows that had an insane ratio of jokes per minute, a few choice burns manage to stick out in a sea of quips. Stroll through the halls of Greendale once again as you relieve the sting.

10. “I can hear her armpit hair growing from here.” — Jeff

NBC

Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) has plenty of issues with women, but even the male gaze can be manipulated for laughs. It’s easy to forgive Jeff’s unneeded commentary on a woman’s bodily autonomy when directed at Tiny Nipples Vaughan (Eric Christian Olsen) and his constant throng of adoring women. When you’re that oblivious and douche-adjacent, you deserve whatever cracks are thrown your way.

9. “Do you mind that your face make up doesn’t match your neck? When I squint you look like a circus clown.” — Abed

NBC

In his heart of hearts, Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi) is a gentle soul. He just wants to be left alone with his movies and pop culture references. However, when he discovers that he has a real gift for very specific cattiness, he temporarily turns into a one man burn unit. While he ultimately shuts down that part of his personality for the sake of humanity, one can’t help but wonder what kind of damage Abed could do if he really let loose.

8. “Shut up, Leonard. I know about your crooked wang.” — Britta

NBC

Want to really damage a man? Make fun of his dick. Britta (Gillian Jacobs) may Britta the situation more often than not and she may be more used to being on the recieving end of sick burns, but at least she landed this hot one on Leonard (Richard Erdman).

7. “He’s like God spilled a person.” — Troy

NBC

Good comedy is all about punching up, so it almost feels unfair to pick on the tragically uncool Garrett (Erik Charles Nielsen). However, the accuracy of the comment cannot be denied. Garrett will always be a hopeless nerd, and his unpleasant personality makes him a fairly easy target. As long as Garrett is around to bumble his way through the next paintball war, someone will be taking the piss out of him.

6. “You’re just a good grade in a tight sweater.” — Jeff

NBC

Jeff has a gift for eloquent cruelty, and while he usually leaves Annie (Alison Brie) free from his most cutting retorts, sometimes he seemingly can’t control the words erupting from his mouth. By belittling her academic abilities — which, honestly, everyone should reconsider if they end up at a place like Greendale — Jeff cuts through to the heart of her insecurities: failure and an inability to be taken seriously. Cruel? Definitely. Effective? Also definitely.

5.”You waste of a soul-shaped hole forgotten by God.” — Matt Lundergarden

Yahoo

Jason Mantzoukas only appeared in one episode of Community, but within that 30-minute span, he managed to land one of the most devastating insults ever on the show. Chang alternates between pitiful and despicable episode to episode, but Matt manages to encapsulate both sides with just a few words. Harsh barley, but bravo.

4. “You devious clump of overpriced fabric and hair product.” — Annie

NBC

Jeff can dish it out, but can he take it? Usually not. Jeff’s affinity for douchiness is often adjacent to his unspoken desire to be the beloved hero (you don’t give that many speeches if you don’t, deep down, want to inspire people and be liked), so Annie was quick to remind him that those two qualities are not going to go hand in hand.

3. “You’re more of a fun vampire. Because you don’t suck blood, you just suck.” — Troy

NBC

For being such a kind, childlike person, no one could match Troy for the specificity and hilarious cruelty of his comebacks. The classic “you suck” can seem like a juvenile attempt at an insult, just like comparing the desecration of a Britta party to spoiled poop, but in the right creative hands, it can be molded into a work of art. Dress it up a bit, see how it works for you with a little finessing. If you have a Britta in your life, this may be the best way to handle them.

2. “You are the AT&T of people.” — Troy

NBC

This may be one of those jokes that don’t age well because the cultural references will eventually be irrelevant, but anyone who has dealt with the customer service of the massive conglomerate knows exactly what this savage burn means. They’ll drain your motivation to live, take your money, and waste your time. Basically, Britta in a nutshell.

1. “You are human tennis elbow. You are a pizza burn on the roof of the world’s mouth. You are the opposite of Batman.” — Troy

NBC

Hello? 911? I’d like to report a murder. In just a few sentences, Troy managed to both come to the aid of his best friend while also encapsulating the worst elements of Britta’s personality. “You are the opposite of Batman!” will surely go down as one of the best insults in sitcom history, and a zinger that you should definitely inflict on your enemies if you want them to feel true sadness.

HBO/Uproxx

The world may be ending with either a mad queen or army of ice zombies on Game of Thrones‘, but that doesn’t mean that some in Westeros aren’t down to have a good time. For many characters, this was never going to be an easy task (Brienne and Jaime really should see whatever the Westeros equivalent of a shrink is), but a lucky few have swaggered across our screens with an excess of charisma. Whether they use their next level flirt skills for personal or political gain, these characters make it clear that to win the game of thrones, you’ve got to have game.

12. Podrick Payne

HBO

Early on, Podrick (Daniel Portman) was revealed to be a skilled pleasure giver (if brothel freebies are any indication), but in later seasons, his seemingly prodigious lovemaking talents have been left unexplored as he and Brienne (Gwendoline Christie) hit the road as platonic pals. With all that time spent together, though, is it possible that a crush has developed? Are those looks of awe or adoration?

It’s hard to see Podrick making progress (if that actually is what he’s after). Brienne’s lifetime of rejection has led to a stoic dedication to duty and honor. Besides, even if she was looking for love, Podrick doesn’t have Tormund’s (Kristofer Hivju) animal magnetism or Jaime Lannister’s (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) jawline and bad boy aura. He does, however, have Brienne’s trust and he’s just… there. Always. Perhaps he’s waiting for her to think of him as something more than a sparring partner. There are worse plays. Maybe good things really do come to those who wait.

11. Davos Seaworth

HBO

After years of serving a stoic crank and learning to read, the optimism of being on Team Stark seems to have given Davos (Liam Cunningham) a boost of confidence and a spring in his step. Between his flirting with the spoken for Missandei (Nathalie Emmanuel) and trying to bro out with Jon (Kit Harrington) over Dany’s (Emilia Clarke) “good heart,” season seven has seen Davos embrace his inner charm. He may not be the most powerful man in Westeros, but sometimes a good grammar joke and a kind hearted twinkle in your eye goes a long way.

10. Euron Greyjoy

HBO

Find yourself someone who looks at you like Euron Greyjoy (Pilou Asbæk) looks at a conquest. The murderous pirate, freshly-minted Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) ally, and potential incest sex fest breaker-upper loves trying to sidle into the Queen’s bedroom chamber as much as he loves tweaking Jaime Lannister. The lustful fire in his eyes makes it easy to see the appeal. It’ll probably never work on Cersei, who knows Euron would kill her as soon as he got the chance were he to be crowned king, but it’s still fun to watch him showboat, flash that winning smile, and blow kisses as skillfully as he blows up enemy ships.

9. Daario Naharis

HBO

Because of the magic of recasting, this entry deserves a caveat: the first Daario (Ed Skrein) was definitely that Eurotrash f*ckboi all your girlfriends warned you about, with his fabulous Fabio hair and a demeanor that made it seem like Dany was little more than a notch in his bedpost. However, Daario 2.0 (Michiel Huisman) was a completely different animal.

Daario settled into the role of sexy subordinate pretty quickly, always content to let Dany take the lead as both queen and lover. Sure, he led armies and had a rocking’ bod, but that doesn’t mean he can’t respect a powerful lady. However, what may have started as just sex turned into feelings for the Tyroshi, which eventually came back to bite him in the ass. Daario should have known that he was never marriage material, but the shock of being left behind in Dragon’s Bay still stung. He should probably ask Ser Jorah (Iain Glen) for some advice about getting over the Queen of Dragons.

8. Ygritte

HBO

How could we leave off the woman that finally taught Jon Snow something? Getting a brother of the Night’s Watch to break his vows is basically like corrupting a monk, so we have to give Ygritte (Rose Leslie) props for persistence. The chemistry between the two was apparent from the beginning — What? You’re dates don’t start with a sword fight? — and that fiery wildling made the bastard of Winterfell into a man. She also had a gift for busting Jon’s chops, and getting put in one’s place has its appeal. Sadly, the tragedy of their story’s end (rot in hell, Olly!) diminishes the fun of their flirting. But for a while, Ygritte proved that loving a redhead can be the best (and worst) thing to happen to you.

7. Missandei

HBO

Missandei is the Westeros equivalent of the girl next door. Despite a horrific childhood, she remains one of the few truly good people left on the show, and that kindness mixed with moral fortitude is a pretty desirable mix. Look at Grey Worm. That guy is a goner. In a very dark world, Missandei is truly a light. Add in her amazing hair and ability to wear leather for any occasion and you’ve got yourself a keeper. She’ll whisper sweet nothings in your ear in a dozen different languages, and if there was ever a girl to bring home to meet your mom, it’s Missandei.

6. Tyrion Lannister

HBO

Jaime may look like a fairy tale prince, but the younger Lannister (Peter Dinklage) is the one with the moves. Sure, many of his conquests are paid, but that doesn’t mean Tyrion lacks charisma. Part of what makes him so appealing is that he seems to like the women that he sleeps with, which isn’t always the case with the misogynistic bent of Westerosi society. Tyrion has admittedly had some terrible luck with the ladies (R.I.P. Shae, you traitor), but he could still charm the pants off of just about anyone and show them a good time before, during, and after making love to them. Plus, who doesn’t love a good story about a donkey and a honeycomb in a whore house?

5. Tormund Giantsbane

HBO

Tormund is an amazing warrior, leader, and physical specimen. He doesn’t need any kind of artificial or polished approach, he has that eye-catching and awe-inducing fire beard and an eyebrow that can arch to the heavens.

And that strut…

HBO

And that hunger…

HBO

Tormund is, first and foremost, a wildling. There’s no such thing as thrilling repartee in the wild kingdom. It’s all about presentation and Tormund has that part of the game down.

4. Daenerys Targaryen

HBO

One of life’s undeniable truths is that people will always be attracted to power. And what is more powerful than having three dragon children? Dany’s adult life was jolted when she was sold to be a walking womb by her duplicitous brother but she quickly learned that sex could not only be enjoyable but also a pretty great weapon. By the time she took Daario as a lover, Dany knew what she wanted and she was definitely going to get it. There’s no hemming and hawing out of politeness; she’ll tell you exactly what she wants and you damn well better get on board. Bend the knee indeed.

3. Yara Greyjoy

HBO

She’s basically a pirate, so it’s no surprise that Yara Greyjoy (Gemma Whelan) has an undeniable swagger. She definitely had the Queen of Dragons questioning her previous dudes-only proclivities during their first meeting, because the woman has a fleet at her back, a double entendre at the ready, and the best stance in the business. While she should probably stop attempting to include Theon in her conquests, it’s safe to say that Yara has left many a broken (yet satisfied) heart behind at every port.

2. Margaery Tyrell

HBO

The craftiest Tyrell managed to snag herself three different kings, so she has undeniably some of the greatest game in the business. Margaery (Natalie Dormer) knew how to use charm as a weapon better than anyone else, with her desire to be The Queen not just a queen serving as her driving force. While her flirting may have been practical, that didn’t make it any less effective. A well-cut dress, winning smile, and a few compliments would leave anyone a total goner. It’s not a complex method of seduction, but it certainly was a profitable one.

1. Oberyn Martell

HBO

Despite only being around for a handful of episodes, Oberyn Martell (Pedro Pascal) managed to cram an insane amount of charisma into his ill-fated stay in Westeros. A lover of women, men, who made an impression on all who got caught up in his inescapable torrent, the Red Viper radiated sex and passion wherever he went. Everyone in Westeros is usually so grim, and Oberyn brought a sense of fun even though he was on a quest for revenge. He didn’t really belong to anyone other than his main hang, Ellaria, but he’d be your champion for the best night of your life.

“As soon as this awesome trailer is over, it’s popcorn trick time.”

No matter how awesome or terrible a movie may be, one thing will always remain true – we f*cking love when brand new trailers come out. There’s no greater evidence of this than the fact that studios now release as many as five different trailers for their films to help get word of mouth going on the Tweeters and Cat Tubes, not to mention all of the different clips that we’re offered as well. We love trailers because they’re basically two-minute sales pitches to help us decide which movies we’ll help become blockbusters and which will be added to a list that will eventually become my Pulitzer-nominated Worst Movies feature.

The movie trailer concept turned 100 years old in November, as it marked the anniversary of Nils Granlund’s debut of a trailer for a musical entitled The Pleasure Seekers, but it wasn’t until 1914 that Granlund would actually introduce a movie trailer for a Charlie Chaplin film. Either way, thanks to his efforts, 100 years later we celebrate these stupid, short clips more than the actual movies the majority of the time.

“That is never the intent, but I guess it happens,” says Bill Neil, a trailer editor whose 20-year career includes recent promos for The Wolf of Wall Street and The Conjuring. “I see trailers as little movies, so quality will vary. Some are going to be better than others. Some will become classics.” (Via USA Today)

Of course, some of us actually see trailers as an important part of the art of storytelling, because nobody wants to see a trailer that ruins the entire movie for us.

“Movies are a key part of our media DNA,” says Jon Vlassopulos, founder of Trailerpop, whose app uses more than 20,000 trailers. Coming attractions, he says, “highlight the best parts of a movie.”

Or spoils them, says film historian Leonard Maltin.

“A trailer, when it’s done well, is truly memorable,” he says. “It’s thoughtful and has the pizzazz of the director. Unfortunately, so many of them today give away the whole movie.”

Interestingly, because studios recognize just how much the public loves a good trailer, YouTube has conquered Apple and Yahoo! in recent years as the go-to site for trailer premieres. According to The Wrap, YouTube’s trailer views increased 100 percent between 2011 and 2012, during a time when those other sites were kings of the mountain. Even Yahoo! has transferred its exclusive trailers to YouTube, making them more accessible to everyone.

History lessons and statistics aside, there’s really no better way to honor the art of movie trailers than by ranking the greatest of all-time. Here are the 10 greatest movie trailers ever been made, according to my very scientific team of researchers.

(Banner via Shutterstock)

One of the best things about Parks and Recreation is the effort showrunner Mike Schur and his staff put into building the show’s fictional world. Like Springfield on The Simpsons and South Park on, uh, South Park, the town of Pawnee has been colored-in and shaded to the point that it feels almost real, thanks in large part to the dozens and dozens of recurring and one-off characters the show has tossed into the pot to pair up with the regulars. There are so many characters on the show, in fact, that even though I limited these rankings to the top 50, I still had to make some really tough cuts. Sorry, Frank Beckerson. Them’s the breaks.

This has the potential to tear us all apart.

50. Millicent Gergich/Gayle Gergich
49. Brett and Harris from Animal Control
48. Tammy I
47. Lawrence from the town meetings
46. Tinnifer from Eagleton
45. Shauna Malwae-Tweep
44. Detlef Schrempf
43. Linda Lonegan
42. Mark Brendanawicz
41. Dave Sanderson
40. Derek and Ben
39. Garth Blundin
38. Justin Anderson
37. Brandi Maxxxx
36. Dr. Saperstein
35. Diane/Diane’s kids
34. Tammy Zero
33. Marlene Griggs-Knope
32. Morris
31. Councilman Fielding Milton
30. Crazy Ira and The Douche
29. Marcia Langman
28. Mona-Lisa Saperstein
27. Jennifer Barkley
26. Craig
25. Ken Hotate
24. Bobby Newport
23. Chris Traeger
22. Ann Perkins
21. Tom Haverford
20. Dennis Feinstein
19. Councilman Bill Dexhart
18. April Ludgate
17. Orin
16. DJ Roomba
15. Joan Callamezzo
14. Jerry Gergich
13. Tammy II
12. Ben Wyatt
11. Sewage Joe
10. Champion
9. Ethel Beavers
8. Councilman Jeremy Jamm
7. Donna Meagle
6. Jean-Ralphio Saperstein
5. Leslie Knope
4. Andy Dwyer
3. Perd Hapley
2. Lil Sebastian
1. Ron Swanson

Photo credit: NBC

Longtime readers of this site know that we love dogs as much as the next group of Internet nerds, and in many ways the Westminster Kennel Club’s Dog Show is like our Super Bowl. But this year’s show, the 138th of its kind, has really struck a chord with a new audience, because mixed breed dogs were allowed to compete for the first time ever, and proud mutt dads like myself finally got to daydream that it was our beloved pooches winning the Agility Trials.

Tonight’s coverage of the second day of the 138th Westminster Dog Show is still airing on USA, and the big winner has yet to be named. That matters little to me, though, because I would make the worst dog show judge on the face of the planet. Ultimately, I’d want to roll around and give delicious cookie treats to all of the doggies in the middle of the arena, so I could throw my arms in the air and declare all of them the winner.

So instead of waiting for the actual Best in Show winner, I’m just going to go ahead and rank 25 of the dogs based on the adorable photos that have been taken since the festivities began last weekend. I’m scientific and fair if anything.

Side note: Before you dive into my meaningful photo essay on the elegance and cultural importance of the Westminster Dog Show, I’d like to reiterate how awesome it is that the mixed breeds are involved now. For example, Millie in the banner image is a rescue dog, as is Emma, who was the subject of a story in the Globe and Mail, and I urge you to go read it now. It will melt your heart, and if you, like me, adopted a dog from a near-death situation, I guarantee you’ll hug it harder than ever.

Other side note: I’m very, very biased to bulldogs. That is all.

25. Look at this tiny dog being brushed!

24. This goofy dog looks like Judy Greer!

23. Haha, someone’s getting his hair did!

22. This dog should lick that grumpy guy’s face.

21. Corgi legs are about the cutest damn thing on the planet.

NBC

Like most people in my coveted demographic, I probably watch as many Seinfeld reruns on TBS and my local stations as I do brand new shows, despite the fact that I’ve seen every episode dozens of times and constantly quote them when I’m telling stories to my dog. What can I say? Even the 75th viewing of “The Serenity Now” is still funnier than anything that has ever happened on Two and a Half Men.

But possibly unlike most people, I overanalyze almost everything about the ridiculousness of Seinfeld, and I try to rationalize a lot of what happened to Jerry and the gang as if it happened in real life. How many ways would Joe Davola have chopped up Kramer’s body once he kicked him in the head? At what point would Jerry have decided that enough was enough and moved without telling Kramer? When would Elaine finally settle into a loveless marriage with a wealthy man? How old would George Costanza have been when his heart finally exploded?

The one question that came up in a conversation with a friend, though, was “Who was Jerry’s best girlfriend?” That friend – we’ll call him Bob Sacamano – eventually challenged me to make a ranking of Jerry’s best girlfriends. “But not just one of those ‘Who was the hottest’ lists with no detail,” he demanded. “I’m talking a thorough, scientific analysis based on everything that we look for in a woman.” Later, he’d say that he was joking, but it was already too late.

My mind began racing and my fingers began typing, as I watched old episodes yet again and went through detailed breakdowns of every episode. Thus, I decided that I’d rank the 50 best girlfriends that Jerry dated on Seinfeld, using 1-10 scales for the following categories: Personality, Intelligence, Looks, Cleanliness, Sense of Humor, Compassion, Fidelity, and an overall “Gaga” factor. I call this scoring system the Kavorka Score, and the results will forever be locked inside my safe because this system is too powerful to fall into the wrong man hands.

The only girlfriend not considered in this ranking is Elaine, because she was the first and a core part of the show. Plus, we never really talk about it, but Elaine was as lousy at commitment as Jerry was. In fact, I’m surprised she and Jerry didn’t have their own tractor stories by the time the show aired its finale. Otherwise, every girlfriend over the span of all nine seasons has been considered, and with that said, I give you this very scientific ranking of Seinfeld’s girlfriends.

The Women that Didn’t Make the Cut

Sandra (“The Cheever Letters”): I understand that she was turned off by Jerry’s terrible sex talk –“You mean the panties your mother laid out for you?” – but she didn’t have to rat him out to Elaine.
Bridgette (“The Diplomat’s Club”): She was very attractive but barely on the show. I still could have made a case for her to be No. 1 based on that.
Gail Cunningham (“The Shoes”): She wouldn’t kiss Jerry. That’s pretty messed up.
Margaret (“The Big Salad”): She dated Newman and wasn’t “his type.” That’s a damning statement.
Angela (“The Good Samaritan”): Jerry should have just turned her into the cops for the hit-and-run so he could date Becky Gelke.
Corinne (“The Marine Biologist”): Carol Kane might have been Jerry’s absolute worst love interest.
Naomi (“The Bubble Boy”): The awful laugh was one thing, but I hold grudges against everyone that was involved with Caddyshack II.
Sue Ellen Mischke (“The Caddy”): Sure, the braless wonder was a great candidate, but they didn’t actually date. It was just infatuation.
Shelly (“The Doodle”): After Fletch, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson should have been at least a B-list actress. I’d like to know what happened to her career that made her so unsuccessful.
Lisi (“The Sentence Finisher”): She was awful.
Keith Hernandez (“The Boyfriend”): I still think they could have had one season that featured Keith in the gang as Jerry’s best friend.

50) Amy “The Glasses”

I’m sure the Breaking Bad faithful would want Anna Gunn to get a little more credit on this list, but Amy barely scores well in any of the categories, mainly because she could be confused for an overweight cop kissing a horse that looked like Cousin Jeffrey. Kavorka Score: 3.5

49) Gwen “The Strike”

The “Two Face” was the only of Jerry’s girlfriends that actually scared me. She looked like a Faces of Meth poster child in the car, and I know that this is more superficial than it is scientific, but nobody’s going to win this contest by scoring a zero in looks. Kavorka Score: 4.7

48) Sheila “The Soup Nazi”

That’s a zero on the Personality factor for any adult woman who uses cutesy nicknames in my book, and it should be a negative score for convincing the man to do it as well. Realistically, Sheila was Jerry’s lowest point in terms of his dating life. Kavorka Score: 4.87

47) Gillian “The Bizarro Jerry”

Gillian had the looks of a supermodel, attractive enough to get George to the other side and in with women he had no business speaking to, but the hands of George “The Animal” Steele, as Jerry so kindly put it. It’s a shame, because she could have been a Top 5er if not for her ability to crack the top on a beer that isn’t a twist-off. Kavorka Score: 5.01

46) Jeannie “The Foundation”

Janeane Garafolo’s character was the female version of Jerry, and while we certainly loved watching him each week, it’s clear that Jerry was a horrible human being. In all, Jeannie was a pretty average entrant in this battle, but her lack of compassion keeps her on the lower end. Kavorka Score: 5.15

45) Sophie “The Burning”

Oh Sophie. Poor, sweet, gorgeous Sophie. Rock bottom scores in Intelligence and Cleanliness have ruined what should have been a title contender. It’s such a shame that she got gonorrhea from riding on a tractor. Kavorka Score: 5.82

44) Meryl “The Wife”

Young Courteney Cox could have been a contender for a repeat girlfriend, but the thing that always bothered me about Jerry’s relationship with Meryl was how eager they were to say, “I love you.” And she kept score? That’s a red flag and drops all of her scores by several points. Kavorka Score: 6.11

43) Marlene “The Ex-Girlfriend”

If this had been a ranking based on my own personal opinions and not on precise scientific measurements and theories, Marlene wouldn’t have made the cut because she never made sense. Why would Jerry ever chase George’s ex-girlfriends? Because of her sexy voice? Puh-leeze, this is just pure nonsense and my scientific ranking process agrees. Kavorka Score: 6.17

42) Jodi “The Masseuse”

Long before she was Stifler’s mom, Jennifer Coolidge was perhaps Jerry’s most unlikable girlfriend in terms of personality. Sure, George has always been obnoxious and was far less endearing for it in the show’s early seasons, but she was just flat out mean to him. Her refusal to give Jerry a massage – despite the fact that he was forcing her hands upon his shoulders and neck – was far too suspicious. But why would Jerry want to continue a relationship with her knowing that she’s had her hands on Kramer? This whole situation was gross. Kavorka Score: 6.49

41) Audrey “The Pie”

It’s like my scientific grandfather always said, “Never trust a girl who won’t try your apple pie.” Additionally, while Audrey may not have known that “Poppie’s been a little bit sloppy,” she should have been disgusted enough for the sake of cleanliness to forgive Jerry for seemingly mocking her in Poppie’s restaurant. That she didn’t shows some extremely poor character flaws. Kavorka Score: 6.56

'My guts just fell out.'

WrestleMania XXX is less than a month away. Wait, seriously?

If you’re like me, you’ve sat through 29 WrestleManias now and are ready for something special. To help celebrate the big event, With Leather’s taking a look back at 30 years of blood, sweat and ridiculous chairshots with a new WrestleMania retrospective each Monday. This week we’re using a tried and true scientific process to officially and definitively rank the WrestleMania main events, from Mr. T teaming up with Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania I to The Rock trading finishers with John Cena at WrestleMania 29.

Each match recap on the list is accompanied by a few paragraphs of thoughts and explanations, but if you want a look inside our theorem we’re judging them based on in-ring action, historical significance and (mostly) whether or not we liked them. It’s totally objective and there’s no room for error. You are not allowed to correct the list. It’s already being submitted to literary journals.

But no, seriously, take a look at what we thought were the best Mania mains ever and let us know what you think in the comments section below. Share this with your friends and get the conversation started.

Let’s see what’s worst! (Spoiler alert, it’s The Miz.)

Little known fact: The Undertaker is undefeated at WrestleMania.

Okay, most known fact, but still, the guy has won 21 matches at WrestleMania and lost zero, so today’s very scientific pro wrestling analysis will rank the matches of The Streak from worst (#21) to best (#1). Each ranking comes with an explanation for its placement, but if you need a shorter answer, it’s “science.”

For additional examples of science, consult:

– Ranking all 29 WrestleMania main events
– The 29 worst WrestleMania celebrity guests

Share these findings with everyone you know, and let us know if your findings are a little different in our comments section below. Science isn’t perfect, after all. Even when we’re dealing with The Streak.

We’ve done a lot of hard science over the last month to help you get ready for WrestleMania 30. So far we’ve ranked:

– The 29 WrestleMania main events, from worst (The Miz) to best
– The 29 worst celebrity guest appearances in WrestleMania history
– All 21 of The Undertaker’s matches in his WrestleMania undefeated streak

Today we take a look at the 29 best wrestlers to have only had one official match at a WrestleMania. They might’ve appeared during a Hall of Fame induction, as a manager on the outside, as a guest, as a commentator, but they are either officially 1-0 or 0-1 in the record books. Criteria for inclusion included

1. Was this person important outside of their one WrestleMania appearance?
2. How badly were they treated?
3. How BAD were they, because if we’re talking Jerry Lawler vs. Michael Cole that should be dead last
4. “The It Factor”

Of course, “The It Factor” means nothing, and means I just ranked them randomly. Knowing this, please consult my data regarding the 29 best wrestlers to have only wrestled at one WrestleMania and share your thoughts and further analyzation in the comments section below.

NBC

According to a scientific study that I just made up, every person currently alive on this planet and several others has seen at least one episode of the beloved NBC series Friends. Thanks to syndication and endless reruns on local affiliates and networks like TBS, Nick, DIY, Telemundo, ESPN, Spike TV, and Playboy, Friends has become the most available sitcom in TV history, and while I have no evidence to support that hyperbole, it just sounds like it’s true. The fact is a lot of people still watch and love Friends very much, as it is regarded as one of the most popular sitcoms of all-time.

I, too, have watched my fair share of Friends, as I’ve probably seen each episode at least 20 times. I’m not bragging, mind you, as I don’t particularly like Friends. Then why, you’re probably asking the air around you, have I watched this show so much? Because I’m fascinated by how horribly the show’s characters were written. On the surface, the core characters of Friends were supposed to be a lovable and relatable group of 20- and eventually 30-something guys and girls who experienced the same life problems that most people faced in the 1990s. Except their problems were always a little more goofy and ridiculous than ours. Last time I checked, Joey never ate rice as a meal for three weeks at a time because he couldn’t find work, Ross never had to tell Ben why his mommy liked his other mommy more than his daddy, and Chandler never had to explain to anyone why he withdrew $1,000 at two strip clubs in one weekend, despite being one of the loneliest bastards to ever make us laugh on NBC’s once legendary Thursday night lineup. But that’s the advantage that TV characters have over us.

The reason that I decided to undertake this latest scientific experiment as a follow-up to my Pulitzer-nominated piece on the girlfriends of Jerry Seinfeld is because I’ve been upset about something for a while. In the Internet’s neverending love of nostalgia for the 80s and 90s, I’ve seen plenty of retrospective features and listicles written about Friends, and one theme that has always stuck with me in a bad way was the idea that Ross Geller was the worst character. I’ve always agreed that Ross was pretty terrible, but on a show with so many awful male characters, was he actually, truly the worst of them all? That’s a really bold statement.

Was he a terrible character whose friends should have shoved into traffic when he shouted, “PIVOT! PIVOT!” as he forced them to move his couch up multiple flights of stairs? Should he have had his teaching license revoked and been shunned by the scientific community when he dated and slept with one of his students? Did he deserve to be fired on a rocket into the sun when he started hooking up with Janice simply because she empathized with his status as a single, divorced dad? Yes on all accounts. But does that automatically make him the worst? That’s up to science.

Via via

Known as the UNAGI process, I have examined a very long list of the many male characters that appeared on Friends during the Emmy Award-winning show’s 10 season run. This scientific process uses characteristics such as loyalty, confidence, trustworthiness, career, generosity, impact on other characters, kindness to animals, and general appearance in order to rank each character from 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest and 10 the highest. Again, this is science, so you cannot get mad at me. Only science, okay?

Not all of the male characters were terrible enough that we would have loathed them if they were real and in our own lives, but the good ones were few and far between. In fact, here’s the very brief list of the show’s so-called “good” male characters:

NBC

Roy the Stripper – Played by Danny DeVito, Roy was just a male exotic dancer trying to make some money to get by. So what happened when he showed up to a gig that he was booked for? The women treated him like he wasn’t even human. Why is there so much bullying today? Because of Friends.

Mr. Treeger – The superintendent of the building that Monica, Rachel, Chandler and Joey lived in could and should have tossed all four of them out on their asses because of their violations. Instead, because Joey agreed to help him dance, he let the fact that the guys had pets and Rachel was clogging the garbage chute with pizza boxes slide. Maybe he doesn’t deserve to be excluded, since he should have been fired for not doing his job.

Mr. Zelner – This was the boss that gave Rachel the job after she first kissed him and then yelled at him when he tried to point out that she had ink on her lip. Later, she’d even “accidentally” grab his crotch after he gave her the job. I put accidentally in quotes because Rachel was a bit of a tramp. Look, slut-shaming’s not cool, but neither is dating while you’re pregnant.

Larry the Health Inspector – This was one of Phoebe’s many, many boyfriends, and she used his status as a health inspector to shut down certain establishments that she didn’t like. But when he tried to reprimand Gunther for taking the trash out through the front door of Central Perk, Phoebe stopped him. I can only assume that customers of the coffee shop went on to contract a number of diseases.

Mr. Heckles – He just wanted to live in peace, and Monica and Rachel wanted to be loud and obnoxious. Even after he died because of them (citation needed), he left them all of his belongings.

The Singing Man – He was the random singing neighbor in the season 4 episode, “The One with All the Haste.” I think he was also only one of three black men who ever appeared on the series.

Mike Hannigan – He was played by Paul Rudd, so he was pretty much the best character on the entire series.

And now, I believe I promised you a scientific study. Remember, SCIENCE did this, not me.

Paramount Pictures

As you may have heard by now, the iconic Lindsay Lohan-Tina Fey teenage comedy Mean Girls  turns ten today (!!!!). What’s most notable about Mean Girls is that almost all of the young stars still have fairly notable, if not successful careers — even though just about all of them aside from Lohan were virtually unknown prior to the film.

So instead of putting some kind of “where are they now,” I thought in this case it would be more appropriate to rank the careers of the core Mean Girls cast based on highlights and low-lights, which I then have tabulated to produce a 1-10 ranking to see which cast members have been the most successful by UPROXX standards. Here we go!

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Jonathan Bennett (Aaron Samuels)

Career Highlights: Uhh, it looks like he was in a couple of episodes of Veronica Mars during the 2004-2005 television season?

Career Low-Lights: His IMDB page is a veritable who’s-who of TV movies I’ve never heard of, and he also had a part in Van Wilder: Freshman Year. I guess plus side: At least he’s been consistently working?

Overall Ranking: 2.4

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Daniel Franzese (Damian)

Career Highlights: Looks like a bunch of low budget indie flicks over on IMDB and straight-to-DVD stuff. Bonus points for writing a sweet coming out letter to his Mean Girls alter-ego Damian.

Career Low-Lights: I Spit on Your Grave (2010). Ick, really dude?

Overall Ranking: 2.9

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Lacey Chabert (Gretchen Wieners)

Career Highlights: Maxim cover girl in November 2013. Since Mean Girls, other than a TV movie here and there, she’s done almost entirely voice-over work — which is tragic for obvious reasons.

Career Low-Lights: Beverly Hills Chihuahua 3: Viva La Fiesta! (2012).

Overall Ranking: 3.2

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Lindsay Lohan (Cady Heron)

Career Highlights: It hasn’t been all Peanut Butter ‘N Sh*t with Lohan, since her downward spiral didn’t really start spiraling until a year or two following the release of Mean Girls. Let’s remember: Herbie Fully Loaded (2005), A Prairie Home Companion (2006), Georgia Rule (2007), and a critically acclaimed stint on Ugly Betty in 2008.

Career Low-Lights: I Know Who Killed Me, (2007) Labor Pains, (2009) Liz & Dick, (2012) The Canyons, (2013) guest-starring roles on Anger Management, (2013) 2 Broke Girls, (2014) her Oprah reality show, and pretty much her entire personal life which I’m counting because it’s impossible to not weigh that into the factors of her overall career trajectory.

Overall Ranking: 4.8

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James Franco and Robert Evans at the Spider-Man 2 premiere. They had to drain the hot tub that night.

With Spider-Man, Sony basically booted Sam Raimi and started remaking their own movies. The diabolical genius of the move is that, instead of responding with mass apathy, they’ve gotten us to distract ourselves by playing fantasy casting director and arguing over rankings while they charge us four times for essentially the same thing. God help us, we can’t not argue over quantitative rankings. But to deny the impulse to stick numbers next to things and argue with each other is to deny that which makes us human or something. If you cut us, do we not bleed? I you give us comic books, do we not argue over who could beat up who???

Therefore, I give you my rankings of the Sony Spider-Man movies, which are far superior to your rankings of Sony’s Spider-Man movies. KNIVES OUT!

1. Spider-Man 2

This is the easiest choice of this entire list. Raimi’s second Spider-Man movie is not only head and shoulders above the rest, it’s one of my all-time favorite superhero movies. Almost all of Sam Raimi’s movies have this odd ability to seem borderline sarcastic and intensely earnest at the same time, where characters always seem right on the verge of breaking character… but then they don’t. It’s that weird tightrope dance between parody and schlock that works perfectly with comic book material. Raimi doesn’t try to soften the inherent silliness of the story (like Chris Nolan), he just bathes in it. I realize Sam Raimi’s style is intensely polarizing, but if you don’t like Dr. Octopus’s giant sentient robot arms smashing cars while lighting a cigarette and a superhero movie that ends with an 80s sitcom-style freeze frame, I just don’t know what to tell you. I wholeheartedly love this movie.

2. Spider-Man

Raimi’s first Spider-Man came out in 2002, in a post 9/11 world where everyone had American flags on everything and even your company softball team jersey seemed weird if it didn’t say “United We Stand” on the back. You can see a lot of that in Spider-Man, weird, crowbarred-in elements of New Yorkers standing tall and coming together to fight evil. Nothing wrong with that, except that you can tell it kind of got dropped into the movie at the last minute, and it sort of cuts against the otherwise gee whiz quality of the whole thing. The last third of the movie doesn’t really work, but I could watch Willem Dafoe argue with his own reflection for hours. When it comes to mixing schlock with parody and always being on the verge of breaking character, Willem Dafoe is the perfect Raimi actor.

A lot of people defend Amazing Spider-Man, which was basically a recast version of Spider-Man, by saying they always hated Tobey Maguire. I get it, Tobey Maguire is a dorkus malorkus. But he’s supposed to be. When Tobey Maguire was getting melvined by bullies and having to dry the splashed up gutter water from their sports cars off his taped up glasses, I believed it. Andrew Garfield is a great actor, but he’s also this tall, lanky, handsome outsider type with great eyebrows and a hot chick who loves him almost from the first second of the movie, yet we’re still supposed to feel sorry for him and believe that he’s getting picked on by bullies. Hey, remember when he jumped over a guy’s head and smashed the backboard with a dunk and no one talked about it again for the entire movie?

Garfield also plays Parker with a New Yorky accent which I think we can all agree is intensely dislikable.

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"Five corndogs, please."

3. Spider-Man 3

No, this one wasn’t good. Spider-Man 2 is the lone unqualified “good movie” of the bunch, as far as I’m concerned. I remember precisely two things about Spider-Man 3: Thomas Haden Church playing a villain made of sand, and Tobey Maguire’s emo bangs when he turned evil. But at one point, when emo Spidey knocked down Mary Jane during an argument, the audience in my theater got real quiet and then a black guy said, “Awww, shit,” and the whole theater exploded in laughter. That alone puts it above either Scarfield Spider-Man movie for me.

4. The Amazing Spider-Man 2

This one’s fresh in my mind and on my site, so I don’t think I need to go over every reason why it’s kind of a disaster. Bloated and messy though it may be, it doesn’t do EVERYTHING badly. The fight scenes and special effects look a lot better than in the first one, and Paul Giamatti amping up the hamminess to critical levels is always fun to watch. The acting is capable, the fights are well shot,  and the score is less overbearing than in the first one. It’s a bloated, horribly-written mess, but at least it’s not boring.

5. The Amazing Spider-Man (original review)

People like to defend this one for the aforementioned reasons, but there are few things I hate as much as someone trying to convince me that the brooding, sexy outsider is some kind of nerd. It reminds me of Chasing Mavericks, where all the high school bullies are making fun of the main guy because he’s a big wave surfer. Ha! Loogit this friggin loozah, always doing death-defying extreme sports stunts like an ace hole! Then there was the villain, a guy who discovered the regenerative properties of lizard genes and naturally wanted to turn everyone into a lizard for some reason. He’s so much of a step down from Willem Dafoe’s snarling, schizo scientist that I don’t even want to think about it.

Then there was Spider-Man discovering his powers by skateboarding in a warehouse. Jesus Christ that was an awful scene. Like I said in my review, I don’t want to watch Superman rollerblade. Gee, let me see, broody Spider-Man skateboarding in a warehouse like some outtake from Footloose, or Spider-Man fighting “Bonesaw McGraw” played by Macho Man Randy Savage in an amateur pro wrestling cage match announced by Bruce Campbell? I get it, some people hate Tobey Maguire, but Taylor Lautner could’ve played Peter Parker and Raimi’s Spider-Man would still be better. Honestly, if you like this one better than the first Raimi Spider-Man you should probably be institutionalized.

Vince Mancini is a writer and comedian living in San Francisco. You can find more of his work on FilmDrunk, the Uproxx network, and all over his mom’s refrigerator. Fan FilmDrunk on Facebook, find the latest movie reviews here.

Via TWITTER

With great power comes great responsibility. With peanut butter comes jelly. With your mom comes an entire biker gang behind an Arby’s, and with every new installment of a superhero movie comes the opportunity, nay, the RESPONSIBILITY, to rank all of those installments numerically. So it is, on the eve of the release of X-Men: Days Of Future Past, that we find ourselves with the task of ranking all of the previous X-Men movies. Just know: I didn’t choose this blog life, this blog life chose me, and thus it is I who will create the infallible, indefatigable, ecumenical, undisputed X-Men movie rankings for all eternity, for it is both my birthright and my birthduty. KNIVES OUT!

It’s more difficult to rank X-Men movies than it is to rank, say, Spider-Man movies, because whereas the Spider-Man movies range all the way from amazing to atrocious, the X-Men movies mostly only range from solid but unspectacular to the Brett Ratner one. At its heart, X-Men is really the story of a rocky bromance between a disabled psychic and a Holocaust survivor, and most of the movies thus far have been in the B range, with various mixes of good and bad. Except, of course, for the Brett Ratner one, which is inarguably terrible. So on that note, let’s just start at the bottom.

X-Men: The Last Stand

One thing that’s always struck me about the X-Men is that the best mutants have powers that are really well thought out (he can heal fast and has an indestructible metal welded to all his bones!) while the worst ones all have powers that feel like someone screamed them out while being hung upside down and being beaten with sticks. “His mutation is that he’s uh… kind of like a toad! Oh God please make it stop!”

On that note, X3 gave us “I’m the Juggernaut, Bitch,” a gay angel, some ill-defined street punk mutants, and a dude in the forest whose mutant power was throwing sticks. It’s easy to forget how terrible this movie was, mainly because the entire movie is entirely forgettable. We also have it to blame for spawning the whole “and a CGI version of the Golden Gate Bridge gets destroyed for some reason!” trend, for that scene where Magneto rips off the entire Golden Gate Bridge in order to… get his buddies from Alcatraz to San Francisco. Right, so the giant set piece of the entire movie featured a guy who can control LITERALLY ANYTHING METAL ripping off a famous bridge to use it as… ANOTHER F*CKING BRIDGE (only much shorter). It’s not so much that it doesn’t make sense (and to be honest, I do wish they established some ground rules for exactly HOW MUCH metal Magneto can control, because otherwise he could just make planets crash into each other and destroy the whole Solar System and– MOM I NEED MY INHALER!) it’s that it throws all logic out the window in order to do something TOTALLY MUNDANE AND BORING. He used a bridge as a bridge. Jesus Christ, you’re all fired.

Never forget.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I debated whether or not to include this in the rankings since it’s technically a Wolverine spinoff and not an X-Men movie, but it does have “X-Men” in the title so I guess I have to. The best thing you could ever say about X-Men Origins: Wolverine is that it wasn’t as bad as X-Men: The Last Stand, and that’s all you should really ever trouble yourself to remember about it. Taylor Kitsch as Gambit! Danny Huston stealing Brian Cox’s Stryker role! A mute Deadpool! Three Mile Island is the landmark that gets destroyed!

Oh, and remember how Will.i.am. was in it?

20th Century Fox

'Cause tonight's gonna be a bad, bad night.

Trust me, it’s better forgotten.

X-Men 1

I remember liking this when it came out, but that was 14 (!!!) years ago now, in a pre-9/11 world of frosted tips, pooka shells, and pure innocence. I rewatched the whole thing the other night, and while I still enjoyed it overall, mainly it reminded me of how in 2000, Wolverine basically had to keep apologizing for being in a superhero movie. He makes fun of the X-Men name, the X-Men lair, the tight leather X-Men uniforms… “What would you prefer, yellow spandex?” Storm asks. (*CUE KNOWING AUDIENCE LAUGHTER*) META.

Also, remember when Wolverine always smoked cigars and could smell danger? There are at least two scenes in the first two X-Men movies where Wolverine is seen smelling something fishy right before they get attacked by baddies. Was an acute sense of smell one of his powers in the comic books? The movie never addresses it.

Other things I was reminded of during my rewatch sesh :

1. How hot Famke Janssen was. Do I need to move to Holland? Because boy, she does it for me.

2. How awful Storm was. Halle Berry was (and is) hot like fiyah, but whoever told her to play Storm as some slow-speaking oracle of the supernatural like Guinan from Star Trek TNG… that was not a good choice.

3. Aside from Magneto and Mystique, the villains really sucked. Could we really not have done better than “a guy who’s kinda like a toad” and “a guy who’s kinda like a sabre cat?” Toad may be the worst X-Men character ever to have a decently sizable role.

4. For a British chick Kiwi, Anna Paquin sure has a bad Southern accent a lot.

5. Cyclops. Getting on 30 Rock really did wonders for my view of James Marsden, because I really hated him in this. I know Cyclops is supposed to be kind of a preppy douche, to contrast Wolverine’s leather-daddy biker roughness, but is he also supposed to be worthless and completely ineffectual?

And, this wasn’t something I noticed upon rewatch, it’s something that I could never forget: “You know what happens to a Toad when it gets struck by lightning? Same thing that happens to everything else.”

Probably the second worst line in the entire X-Men universe behind “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!”, it  combines the worst good guy with the worst villain into a Voltron of shittiness that’s somehow shittier than its shitty parts.

Also, X1 and X3 are the only X-Men movies to have Stan Lee cameos, and boy do I haaaate me some Stan Lee cameos. Any jackass who claps to prove that he recognizes Stan Lee during a Stan Lee cameo in a Marvel movie should be summarily throat-punched. Seriously, it’s like recognizing the Ghostbusters logo at this point – you’re not special, shut up.

X-Men 2

I’m still wishy-washy on ranking X2 so low. It has more sex than any other X-Men movie, and I like sex. Every guy watching that scene where Mystique sneaks into Wolverine’s tent as Jean Grey and then keeps changing into different hot chicks – “I’ll be whoever you want me to be” – secretly wishes his girlfriend had that power. But if she did, would she get mad at you for wanting to role play, or would she be into it? So many questions.

I also enjoyed Alan Cummings as Nightcrawler and appreciated the lack of Toad or Sabretooth. Instead we got Brian Cox as William Stryker (not his best role, but it’s still Brian Cox) and Pyro. Pyro didn’t do much, but “a guy who can manipulate fire but can’t create it” is still a thousand times better than long tongue or throws-pointy-sticks guy. There’s also a great scene where Wolverine goes full aggro and starts stabbing soldiers in the heart when Strykers men break into the school. He’d been trying to be a nice guy up until that point, so when he started shish-kebabbing f*ckers all of a sudden, it actually seemed pretty metal.

The only things keeping X2 from being higher on my list are the fact that it was too long, there was a big stupid set piece at the aquaduct that took way too long to set up and seemed to exist only to exhaust the CGI budget, and once again there was far too much Storm and Cyclops.

Cyclops crying over Jean Grey’s death is pure unintentional hilarity.

Hahahahaha, oh man, I want to watch Marsden and Patrick Stewart rehearse this scene over and over for hours.

X-Men: Days Of Future Past

20th Century Fox

Get some.

It was a tough choice deciding to put this before or after X2. Without spoiling my soon-to-be-published review (can you believe I’m still under embargo when everyone else is posting theirs? I can’t), there are a lot of good things about it on a premise and ambition level, and a lot of bad things about it on an execution level.

What gives it a slight edge over X2 for me is that there’s a slow-motion fight sequence in it with Quicksilver that’s probably the most impressive, beautifully shot and choreographed sequence in all of the movies, and possibly in any movie of the past five years. A lot of Days Of Future Past is confusing and/or doesn’t work, and the fact that they cast BooBoo Stewart makes me want to rank it at the bottom, but that one Quicksilver sequence is nothing short of incredible. Also, no Stan Lee cameo.

X-Men: First Class (original review)

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Is it coincidence that my top X-Men film is also the one with the most Michael Fassbender? Probably not. It’s not perfect, and the whole “born this way” theme was a little heavy handed, but with Magneto roaming the Earth murdering Nazis (I would watch an entire film of just a guy wandering the globe murdering ex-Nazis, the more elderly the better), and an alternate history that presupposes that one misanthropic mutant caused the entire Cuban Missile Crisis, Matthew Vaughn just knew the way to my heart.

But Vince, What About The Wolverine?

20th Century Fox

Ugh, aren’t we done yet? Look, it’s better than X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and probably worse than X1. It had a cool fight scene on a train, but that ending suuucked. Also, there is not a single X-Men movie where a woman doesn’t fall madly in love with Wolverine, and in The Wolverine it happens like five times. He’s just so vascular!

Vince Mancini is a writer and comedian living in San Francisco. You can find more of his work on FilmDrunk, the Uproxx network, and all over his mom’s refrigerator. Fan FilmDrunk on Facebook, find the latest movie reviews here.

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For the past week or so, the Internet has been having a blast arguing over the vocal range chart released by the folks at Concert Hotels, as it compared the vocal ranges of “today’s top artists with the greatest of all-time,” and ultimately declared that Axl Rose has the greatest vocal range in the history of modern music. “But what about Mariah Carey,” people shouted from the mobs lighting buildings on fire in major cities, as others stole the nuclear launch codes to end this world in the name of Faith No More’s Mike Patton. And yet, even as science jammed on the brakes of things like cancer research and building moon colonies to bring us these rankings, the man whose voice needed to be heard had remained silent.

That is, until today. Rose sent a statement to Spin that thanked everyone involved for the honor, but he ultimately believes that there are just a lot of really good singers who should all be recognized for their accomplishments and talents.

Big thanks to all the fans and media for the props reacting to the Spin top vocalists article.

From what I could tell, the original article was for the most part only talking about the professionally recorded vocal range of the singers they compared calling the entire group “The World’s Greatest Singers.” It’s very flattering and humbling to be included in such an illustrious ensemble.

If I had to say who I thought the best singers were, I’d say first that I don’t know there’s a definitive answer as in my opinion it’s subjective, and second that my focus is primarily rock singers.

That said, I enjoy Freddie Mercury, Elvis Presley, Paul McCartney, Dan McCafferty, Janice Joplin, Michael Jackson, Elton John, Roger Daltrey, Don Henley, Jeff Lynne, Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Scott, Etta James, Fiona Apple, Chrissie Hynde, Stevie Wonder, James Brown and a ton of others (predominantly 70’s rock singers) and would rather hear ANY of them anytime rather than me!

Peace!

Axl

(Via Spin)

I don’t like to stick my nose into business that isn’t mine, but there have been two exclusions on each list thus far, from the Concert Hotels original to Rose’s humble name-dropping, and those names are Matthew and Gunnar Nelson. These brothers provided the angelic vocals on “Love and Affection,” which has been voted the Greatest Song in the History of Everything by at least 12 billion different people*.

*Citation needed.

Netflix

Inspired by Burnsy’s fantastic and epic Scientific and Important Ranking of Jerry’s Girlfriends on Seinfeld, I turned to one of my own all-time favorite shows, The Wonder Years. For a teenage boy, Kevin Arnold had quite a few romantic interests over the six seasons we knew him — not an insignificant feat considering he was in variable stages of going steady with his best girl Winnie Cooper throughout about half of them — so I thought the series was ripe for a definitive romantic interest ranking.

“But … But … You’re a WOMAN!,” I’m sure more than a few of you out there are saying right now. Yes, this is true. But all the more reason why I can objectively rank a bunch of teenage girls, and in some cases, adult women. My ranking is not just based on looks, (although it is partially based on looks) but also personality, kindness, sense of humor, and overall dateability.

Here’s the rules: This list does not include just requited love, but also instances in which Kevin was romantically interested in someone unattainable or vice versa. Also, for brevity’s sake, I listed just the first episode that the character appeared in, since several of Kevin’s love interests span beyond single episodes. I also kept it to the top 20, with the women who didn’t make the cut listed below:

Honorable mentions:

Cindy – Season 5 (“Full Moon Rising”): Kevin has a date with Cindy but breaks it when his friend Ricky Halsenbach gets his driver’s license, with some bullcrap excuse about his grandmother getting sick. Cindy later catches Kevin at the drive in and that was the end of that.

Gina Pruitt – Season 3 (“The Pimple”): Gina was a hot little number, the daughter of Kevin’s parents friends. He freaks out because he gets a pimple before her impending visit, only to discover that she’s got one too. Yuck — zits are gross. Off the list!

Waitress – Season 5 (“Broken Hearts and Burgers”): Clip show. Winnie loses her sh*t because she thinks Kevin is flirting with their waitress — who was actually trying to flirt with him.

20) Julie Aidem – Season 5 – “Of Mastodons and Men”

Julie was the WOORRRRSSSSST. Julie of the collar-fixing, and the smothering personality, the stupid foo-foo dog, and the family full of insufferable garbage women who emasculated her poor dad. Let’s hope Duke is still out there, somewhere.

19) Alice Pedermier – Season 6 – “Alice in Autoland”

After Kevin’s friend Chuck’s girlfriend Alice Pedermier dumps him, Alice connivingly tries to get with Kevin by dangling a “new” car in his face from her dad, a used car dealer. When Kevin rejects her she goes back to Chuck, claiming that Kevin came on to her and Kevin gets punched in the face. Alice was pretty awful.

18) Lisa Berlini – Season 1 – “The Phone Call”

Lisa Berlini was Kevin’s rebound crush after kissing Winnie Cooper in the pilot episode. Kevin finally gets up the nerve to ask Lisa to the dance and she originally says yes, until a better deal comes along in the form of a young Mark-Paul Gosselaar. Got dumped for Zack Morris? Sucks for you, brah.

17) Sandy – Season 5 – “Triangle”

I originally had Sandy, played by Carla Gugino, much higher on the list, but I don’t know why. Sandy was the devil. Yeah, Sandy was cute and liked making out as much as any red-blooded teenage girl — which is more than I can say for most of the prudes Kevin dated — but she was also Wayne’s girlfriend. You do not get in between brothers. That sh*t is diabolical.

16) Cindy Fleming – Season 6 – “Wayne and Bonnie”

Kevin meets Cindy (the second one on this list) at a diner where his newly estranged girlfriend Winnie is hanging out with some guy. Partly out of loneliness, partly out of jealousy, he invites her to his father’s work picnic but something seems off. As it turns out, Cindy was only in seventh grade. Whoops!

15) Inga Finnstrom – Season 5 – “Double Double Date”

Kevin recruits the help of Winnie Cooper to ask Swedish exchange student Inga Finnstrom out to the school dance, in return for Kevin helping her land a date with some guy named Matt. As it turns out, Inga wasn’t very smart. On the plus side? Neither was Matt. So after a failed attempt at a double date, Kevin and Winnie end up back together after their dumb dates ditch them for one another.

14) Susan Fisher – Season 3 – “Don’t You Know Anything About Women?”

There was really nothing wrong with Susan — kind of a dipsh*tty southern belle — who Kevin agrees to save a dance for only after he already agrees to go to the dance with his lab partner Linda. But there was nothing really remarkable about her either, other than nice hair. Typical Kevin.

13) Miss Hasenfuss – Season 4 – “Courage”

Because Kevin is too much of a giant pussy to get a cavity filled in the presence of his dentist’s foxy dental hygienist, Miss Hasenfuss, he asks that she not be there during his filling. He later has a change of heart after learning that Hasenfuss is taking his advice on going back to school to become a dentist.

12) Debbie Pfeiffer – Season 4 – “Little Debbie”

Aww, little Debbie Pfeiffer. I almost didn’t include Debbie in this list, the younger sister of Paul Pfeiffer. Kevin reluctantly takes Debbie up on her request to accompany her to her cotillion dance, only act like a huge dick, cruelly ditching out on her halfway through. He eventually comes back and makes up for it, so good job there, I guess.

11) Mimi – Season 4 – “Growing Up”

“So what’s Soleil Moon Frye been up to since Punky Brewster went off the air? Oh, you know, just growing enormous boobs.” Even though she was the daughter of the assy guy who got a promotion over Kevin’s dad, I don’t think I’m going to get many arguments ranking her this high.

Netflix

With just three days until the new season of Orange is the New Black dropping on Netflix, I thought it would be fun to go through and rank the inmates of the Litchfield Correctional Facility as to whom I’d most want to have my back if I were incarcerated. (For some kind of glamorous jewel heist, I imagine.)

I only included the top ten, at my discretion, so if I missed someone it was probably intentional. Which is, for example, why I omitted Lorna — because all she’d do is mope about her fake wedding and nonexistent fiancee, if you can even imagine being stuck in prison with that.

So, here we go with the top ten:

10) Pennsatucky

Netflix

Religion isn’t so much my thing, and let’s face it: Pennsatucky is just plain crazy. And not even like, “good” prison crazy, just gross, trashy meth crazy — which is good for nothing if you even get your ass handed to you by Piper Chapman. Pass.

9) Crazy Eyes

Netflix

Crazy Eyes would definitely be good to have your back in prison, since she’s insane and everyone is kind of terrified of her. Other side of the coin? You have to be Crazy Eyes’ wife. Not so much worth it.

8) Dayanara

Netflix

Dayanara really can’t be trusted. She comes off all innocent, but then — BAM — she’s screwing her mom’s boyfriend and having sex with a guard to pin her pregnancy on him. Is that really the kind of person you’d want looking out for you in prison? No thanks.

7) Piper Chapman

Netflix

Piper would be great to have in prison to discuss quiche recipes and peplum tops, and have on hand to smack down the threat of midget attacks — but when it comes down to it, Piper is constantly f*cking up. It would only be a matter of time before some of her sh*t would end up sticking to you.

6) Nicky

Netflix

Under Nicky’s surly, sarcastic demeanor, she’s got a heart of gold. Nicky’s also kind of a free agent, though, sleeping around with half of the female inmate population — so I don’t know how loyal she’d be over the long haul.

Columbia Pictures

On Saturday, the beloved comedy classic Ghostbusters turns 30 years old, and it will undoubtedly prompt many of my peers to proclaim things like, “OMG we’re so old!” because nothing reminds us of our own mortality quite like 80s movies. On June 7, 1984, the world was first introduced to Drs. Peter Venkman, Raymond Stantz and Egon Spengler, as well as a cast of other colorful characters, when Ghostbusters debuted at a theater in Westwood, California. The next day, it would open nationwide, and three decades later, fans still go bonkers any time someone mentions “news” about Ghostbusters 3. You know, despite the fact that Ghostbusters 2 was a stinky puddle of ectoplasm (read this outstanding history of the filming of Ghostbusters from Vanity Fair for more about the difference between the first and second films).

However, I come here today not to bury Ghostbusters 2, but to praise and honor Ghostbusters as one of the finest and most original pieces of American cinema from that decade of cocaine-fueled nonsense. It’s a movie that propelled Bill Murray to outright stardom, and it also serves as a reminder that Dan Aykroyd was once a comedy icon, and not a sad, possibly insane man who still says things that make people think, “Aw, someone lock him up.” Also, Ghostbusters provided us with what I consider the second greatest toy that any kid could have had in the 80s – the proton pack. I only had the ghost trap, because it was cheaper, so when my friends and I would play, I’d just wear a normal backpack and roll out the trap, but I still remember the proton pack as one of the coolest things in the world.

(The greatest toy of the 80s was the A*Team machine gun that could be broken down into a sniper rifle and handgun. It was pretty rad and also probably a terrible idea for a toy in retrospect.)

Like most people, I’ve watched Ghostbusters more times than I can remember, but I feel like I notice new things every time, like when Dr. Venkman visits Dana Barrett’s apartment for the first time and she says, “That’s the bedroom, but nothing ever happened in there,” and Venkman responds, “What a crime.” You just don’t get jokes like that when you’re a kid. Also, I had never (at least that I can recall) noticed the painted sign on this wall before:

Columbia Pictures

Not like it really makes a difference, because the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man doesn’t need to be explained. He’s a giant walking marshmallow delivered to this realm to enslave and possibly exterminate mankind, and he’s absolutely adorable. But Mr. Puft’s attempt at human genocide reminded me of how much these ghosts, no matter how harmless and funny, scared me so many years ago. They weren’t as terrifying as, say, the ghosts that made me afraid to sleep without the light on when I was 10 years old and watched The Shining, but a ghost is a ghost, you guys.

I’m older now, and the only things I fear are tax hikes and osteoporosis, so I thought it would be fun to watch Ghostbusters one more time and use my time-honored scientific method and crack team of researchers and analysts to rank the ghosts, ghouls, spooks, spirits, monsters and gods featured in this movie that we still love so much 30 years later.

Honorable Mentions

Columbia Pictures

The Sexy/Horny Ghost Lady

In perhaps the most random and unnecessary scene of Ghostbusters, Ray is basically seduced by a female ghost, who removes his pants and proceeds to cross his eyes. I don’t count her in this scientific ranking because 1) she seems pretty cool, and 2) this was a dream sequence. Ultimately, Ray was a pervert, and I like to believe that this scene only made the cut because Aykroyd wanted people to see his bulge.

Columbia Pictures

Walter Peck, the Man with No Dick

He wasn’t a ghost, obviously, but he was a monster in a figurative sense. Mainly, I’ll take any chance I can get to talk about how William Atherton was one of the best dickhead character actors of the 80s. Between his role as the EPA-hole in Ghostbusters, Richard Thornburg in Die Hard and Die Hard 2, and especially Professor Jerry Hathaway in Real Genius, Atherton was in a league of his own back then.

Columbia Pictures

10) Slimer

Slimer’s not scary. Hell, he was the adorably gross face of the Ghostbusters brand for everything from the cartoon series to the amazingly delicious Hi-C Ecto Cooler drink. A tribute to Jim Belushi, Slimer was probably the only ghost in this movie that we wouldn’t have minded haunting and sliming our homes. You know, as long as he didn’t eat all of the hot dogs.

Columbia Pictures

9) Vinz Clortho

Rick Moranis rarely gets enough credit for how hilarious his character, Louis Tulley, was in Ghostbusters, especially when he became possessed by Vinz Clortho via one of Zuul’s giant dog/frog monsters. The juxtaposition of Louis’s possession to that of Dana Barrett might help explain why Gozer’s grand plot to take over this realm fell apart so easily. A god is only as strong as her pets.

Columbia Pictures

8) Stay Puft Marshmallow Man

On one hand, the Stay Puft man seems about as harmless as Slimer, because he’s so adorable and cuddly, and he’s made of marshmallow fluff, which almost everyone loves. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that even if he was a fair and just god-like ruler, his calorie count must have been obscenely frightening. In fact, I assume that Walter Peck didn’t return for Ghostbusters 2 because he died of diabetes after he was doused with the fluff blood of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man’s slaughter.

Columbia Pictures

7) Flying Subway Monster

I don’t like riding the subway as it is, but imagine this guy haunting you while you’re trying to squeeze into a car with a bunch of people who smell like a ghost’s b-hole. I’d probably be like, “Hey flying ghost bird or bat or whatever, you can fly! Why are you in the subway?” That might be why he was flying out of the subway, though, so I’m cutting him a break for that.

Columbia Pictures

6) Zombie Cab Driver

It’s hard enough to find a good human cab driver, but now the dude looking to get to across town in heavy traffic has to deal with this undead guy? No thanks. What I’ve always wondered about this scene, though, was that we see the ghost fumes flying into the car through the tailpipe, but we never saw if there was actually a driver in the cab. So was this cab already running and just sitting there without a driver? Or did the fumes possess the actual driver and turn him into this disgusting skeleton man? And if it’s the latter, did he turn back into a normal dude when it was all over? That would suck if the Ghostbusters won and everyone but him was fine. He’d probably be pissed about that.

Columbia Pictures

5) The Old Lady Ghost in the Library

Look, the library sucks enough as it is, between all of the homeless people using the computers for pornography and the books that people expect you to read. But now this ghost lady not only has the nerve to shush the Ghostbusters when they try to find out why she’s there, making a big old mess of all the index cards, but she also turns into an ugly monster and screams at them? Talk about a hypocrite, old ghost lady.

Columbia Pictures

4) Dana Possessed by Zuul

At first Dana looks kind of hot when she answers the door for Venkman, asks if he’s the Keymaster and starts talking all the sexy talk about making the possessed demon love. But that’s kind of the problem with her. You have to remember that she’s possessed the whole time – a good indicator in any situation that you think your lady might be inhabited by an evil spirit would be if she spins in the air, four feet above the bed – because if you don’t, she’ll probably be pretty pissed when you’re done making whoopee and Gozer doesn’t show up. You can try to use, “I swear this has never happened before” as an excuse, but I think she’s probably going to call bullsh*t.

Columbia Pictures

3) Gozer

Sure, she’s a god and that’s supposed to be the scariest out of all of these monsters and ghosts. Maybe we should take her a little more seriously because without the Ghostbusters, she’s sitting atop a throne of skulls in New York City, albeit as a giant man made of marshmallows. But we’re supposed to be scared of a god who couldn’t kill four dudes who ultimately got really lucky when they decided that crossing the streams would eliminate her? No offense, lady, but a real god would have killed the Ghostbusters when Ray admitted that they weren’t gods and not left them alive to think up their Hail Mary plan to neutralize her. Hell, what’s the point of shooting lightning bolts out of your hands if it can’t even kill a human? I bet the rest of the gods left her out of the “Gods We Lost” montage that year.

Columbia Pictures

2) Gozer’s Big Doggy Monsters

I’m a dog-lover through and through, but Gozer’s monster pooches were far scarier than she ever was. Sometimes I wonder, though, if we really ever had to fear anything from those hibernating hounds of horror or if we could have stopped them from possessing Dana and Louis by simply rubbing their tummies and giving them some cookie bones. Who’s a good guardian puppy of Gozer the Gozerian? You are! Yes you are!

Columbia Pictures

1) Dana’s Three-Armed Monster Chair

For all of Gozer’s flaws in the end, her biggest mistake was not putting her chair monster to more use in stopping the Ghostbusters. How is it that she can make three different monster arms burst out of a chair to simply grab Dana, but then when it comes to stopping the guys with nuclear accelerators strapped to their backs, the best she can do is tickle them with lightning? I’m just saying, if I’m a god and I need to beat four guys in order to take over the world and beyond, I’m going to play to all my strengths. No offense to the other gods out there doing their things, but if I have a monster chair that has three arms, I’m probably going to use it to at least subdue one of the Ghostbusters so they can’t cross all of their streams. The three-armed monster chair should have been the MVP of Gozer’s offensive, but instead he was left sitting on himself. Not cool, Gozer.

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Even at the age of 54, with a comedy career that has spanned more than two-thirds of his life, “Weird Al” Yankovic knows how to thrive. Tomorrow, the music parody icon will release his 13th studio album, “Mandatory Fun,” and to remind all of his fans and especially the new kids of the YouTube generation that he’s still the Prince of Polka Parody, Weird Al is releasing not one, but eight new music videos starting with today’s “Tacky.” The other seven will debut at 11 AM ET each day until next Tuesday, when the artist will undoubtedly put down his accordion and get to work on his next batch of wonderful ideas.

Unlike a lot of aging stars, Weird Al still doesn’t take himself all that seriously, and at the very least, he doesn’t think that he’s the only player in the game. In a new interview with NPR, Al admitted that the existence of YouTube has made his job significantly more difficult, seeing as every popular song has been parodied 10 billion times, some funny and many, many others just painfully lame. Hell, there are even fan-made videos of the Weird Al songs that never got videos. So the challenge for the master is to not only examine what is already out there and what has worked, in order to avoid stepping on toes, but to still come up with something new that will appeal to his fans. For example, on “Mandatory Fun,” he created a “Blurred Lines” parody entitled, “Word Crimes,” which takes on an all-time favorite talking point for the Internet – shitty grammar.

“Big deal, Burnsy, there are plenty of hilarious parody music videos on YouTube. Why should I care about Old Al Yankovic anymore?” Well, made-up critic, for starters he’s the Elvis of parody, and unless you’re Prince imposing a lifetime “No Parody” command on your music to protect it from Al, you need to zip it and show some respect. But far more importantly, these eight videos are basically a wonderful sign of some new things to come.

You are going to be releasing eight music videos in eight days for this album. Why did you decide to do it this way?

I wanted to really do what is ostensibly my last album with a big splash. I wanted the first week to be big; I wanted every single day of release week to be an event. I wanted a video to go viral for an entire day and have people talking about that video, and then the next day they’re talking about a new video. I just thought that would be a really fun way to do it, to make a big deal out of release week. (Via NPR)

Basically, we might be seeing a lot more relevant videos from Weird Al in the near future, but in the meantime I want to celebrate the launch of “Mandatory Fun” and eight brand new Weird Al Yankovic music videos by looking back on the hilarious videos that helped shape my warped sense of humor from a very early age. Of all the lists and meaningless rankings I may ever put together in my lifetime, I expect this one to be the most heavily debated. Weird Al has made a lot of videos during his amazing career and very few missed the mark. Off the top of my head, maybe “Gump” and “It’s All About the Pentiums” are very average compared to the best, and they’re still not bad. But there can only be 10 (or maybe 11) in a Top 10, so just suck it up and celebrate the best. (And then complain in the comments.)

Honorable Mention: “White & Nerdy”

I’m not a big fan of this hit off the 2006 album, “Straight Outta Lynwood,” and I know that’s an unpopular opinion, what with this video’s 85 million views and counting on YouTube. It’s partially because I preferred the mockery of our neighbors to the north in “Canadian Idiot,” but also because Donnie Osmond isn’t funny and I find his dancing distracting. Olivia Munn would have made a much better choice for the subject matter.

10) “One More Minute”

Perhaps one of his simplest videos, Weird Al’s “One More Minute” is proof that he didn’t always need fat suits and Dick Van Patten cameos to inspire laughs. Hell, the funniest part of this 1985 doo-wop parody is probably Al’s hair, but what has lingered in this dimly-lit light bulb of a brain of mine for so long is the graphic imagery of 1,000 paper cuts on my face. That sounds like it hurts and I would not like to experience that, please and thank you.

9) “Like a Surgeon”

Also from the legendary 1985 album “Dare to be Stupid,” which should still be given to all children on their 5th birthdays so they can begin to understand parody and humor at a very young age, thus saving them from becoming “that guy” on Facebook who turns everything into a serious argument. That said, why is one of Al’s most popular mockeries so low on this list? A very stupid reason. Madonna basically gave Al the idea for this song, and the over-celebration of her ideas is how we got to the point of her showing up to events with gold and diamond grills. We should feel very lucky that she only influenced one song, and it still yielded a pretty great video.

8) “Perform this Way”

There are a lot of stories about the original artists offering approval for Weird Al’s parodies, from the aforementioned infamous Prince ban to Michael Jackson being a huge fan, and Lady Gaga’s rumored refusal for the 2011 song “Perform this Way” is just another recent example of rumors, scandals and people in “The Business” having zero senses of humor. Gaga’s manager reportedly never let Al’s rough copy of this takedown of the pop queen’s fashion sense get to her, so the song and video were almost scrapped. But then Gaga actually saw it, and like any smart music artist, she wore this song as a badge of honor. Hopefully, her manager was fired, both in a professional sense and into the sun.

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer is, at face value, a pretty campy show. At its best, it could be an expertly crafted a mix of quirky humor and genuine creepiness, and at its worst — well, it could be downright cringe-worthy. As far as the season-long arcs and Big Bads go, while some were stronger than others, most of them achieved some level of success on the whole. The area where the series mostly fell flat was during some of the Monster of the Week filler episodes, with one-off villains could range anywhere from laughable to horrifyingly embarrassing. Here are eleven of the worst.

11) Ted — Season 2 — “Ted

This was probably Buffy’s biggest cameo in the entire series, shot only about five years before John Ritter’s death (RIP) — and although John Ritter is great, he deserved better than a sexist robot from the 1950s who wanted to kidnap Buffy’s mom and lock her in an underground bunker. Ritter would have actually made a perfect Mayor — the season three big bad — so talk about wasted opportunities.

10) A Demon Loan Shark That Was Literally A Shark — Season 6 — “Tabula Rasa”

Overall, “Tabula Rasa” was actually a pretty good episode, which left the Scooby Gang amnesiac and vulnerable thanks to Willow’s magic f*ckuppery — an overall plot arc that season. But it doesn’t change the fact that Spike was being pursued by a demon loan shark. Because he owed it kittens. What, that doesn’t make perfect sense to you?

9) A Jacket — Season 7 — “Him”

Not only was this a dumb episode, which involved a high school football player named RJ’s enchanted letter jacket which caused women to fall in love with him — but it featured Dawn at her screechiest, most awful worst. It did have one somewhat redeeming scene in a multiple panel montage that involves Willow trying to cast a spell to turn him into a girl and Anya inexplicably robbing a bank, but on the whole it was a pretty crappy episode. Especially for a final season episode.

8) Anya’s Troll Ex-Boyfriend — Season 5 — “Triangle”

Anya and Willow were fighting, because blah blah blah, Anya was Xander’s boyfriend and Willow was Xander’s best friend, and Anya ran the magic shop and Willow kept stealing sh*t to do magic, and then they both screw up and release Anya’s ex-boyfriend who she formerly turned into a troll. It wasn’t a very good episode.

7) A Reptile Demon Summoning Fraternity — Season 2 — “Reptile Boy”

As a series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer featured some pretty heavy handed messaging about the evils of drinking and addiction, and this was one such episode. After shirking her slayer duties to accompany Cordelia to a frat party, Buffy finally gives in and takes a drink — but finds herself and Cordelia drugged and chained into a basement where the fraternity plans to sacrifice them to a reptile demon. As one does in a fraternity. Unfortunately for the fraternity, they managed to kidnap the one high school girl in all of Sunnydale with super powers, so Buffy quickly ruins their plans.

6) A Giant Praying Mantis — Season 1: — “Teacher’s Pet”

When Xander, who is stupid, is presented with the following two possibilities: That A) his hot teacher is a man-eating bug or that B) a hot older woman wants to have sex with him — he stupidly goes with Possibility B despite the fact that he lives in a town full of vampires and monsters and that his teacher being a giant praying mantis is much more likely than her wanting to have sex with a dorky high school student. You can barely even see the bug but I’m pretty sure the costume came from the Halloween Adventure store. Mmm. Sexy bug.