Straight Bangin': Ten People Whom We Saw Far Too Much of in 2006

Or anything, really. Instead, we just consume and consume some more, eventually stopping when things have run out, when something better comes along, or when someone uses an ethnic slur. And even then, we'll worship your sitcoms and make your culturally exploitative ultra-violent movies .

We have Wal-Mart; we go along with it as Sacha Baron Cohen make the same Borat jokes in interview after interview (really, it got to be a little much, didn't it?); and we let any old person with a set of ears, bad taste, no self-awareness, and a last name starting with "B" and ending in "reihan" write about hip-hop. It should be no wonder, then, that as a people, we regularly celebrate the idiotic, the tasteless, the annoying, and the everything in between--we just can't really help ourselves.

People like Carrot Top, Shaun White, Dane Cook, and Fergie are rich because of this sad condition. Doesn't that make you hate yourself just a little?

In 2006, there was no shortage of evidence that we continue to make horrible choices, as entirely too many people benefited from the misguided group-think that makes chatch flashing an acceptable device for reputation resuscitation and bitch-ass quarterbacks who can't take a hit presumptive top picks in NFL drafts.

What follows below is not a list of the ten people whom I hate most or a list of ten people whom are destined to fall off. It's just a list of ten people whom we saw too much of, heard too much from, or read too much about in 2006*. I hope that next year, we can all do a little bit better.

But you know that we won't.

Oh, and this is what last year's list looked like: . Now then.

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10) People doing the chicken noodle soup dance

I'm pretty certain that a white person came up with this dance. At least, I'd like to think that.

If this assumption is borne out, the chicken noodle soup will go down as one of the great contemporary ideas of insidious oppression, another crowning achievement in the history of white people doing bad things to other groups. I mean, I can't imagine that a black person said to him- or herself, "What's the best way for me to get everyone dancing like minstrel shows are still in vogue?" I'm all for creativity and dancing, regardless of skin color, but there is something a little unsettling about the particulars of this dance.

Watching people happily perform the chicken noodle soup is almost eerie.

9) Barbaro

Look, it's a fucking horse. It won one race that an ever dwindling group of people actually care about, and it was always destined, regardless of other outcomes, to spend its retirement getting pimped out to Saudis and other rich people who enjoy seeing horses have sex.

This is a topic for endless conversation? A fucking horse? I think that the entire Barbaro episode represented a new low for sports journalists, but I guess that it also shouldn't have been a surprise given that this is a group of people who think Danica Patrick is a news story, won't shut up about which DVDs Terrell Owens watches before bed, and has made Steve Nash the reigning two-time MVP.

Still, it wasn't just the media. -- ! What is that?

I mean, they know it can't read, yes? Imagine if Barbaro had fallen down a well. I honestly think that people would have taken time off from their jobs to go lower food and money and jewels and books to it.

What an embarrassment.

8) Jay-Z

Jay-Z was everywhere, again, in 2006-- beefing with the Dip Set; ; putting on gimmick concerts; ; appearing on crappy Rick Ross remixes and other Def Jam marketing stunts; kissing babies; runnin' with Coldplay; taking in Nets games. The only places he wasn't were the meetings in which they decide how to promote the artists signed to his label.

But why get bogged down in trifling details like that when you have mediocre albums and boring rhymes to drop, right Jay? Who cares if ? I mean, it's the Mike Jor'an of recor'in'.

The tie is loosened up and Superman is back in the booth. Yippee!

The sad part, of course, is that Jay's album was probably his weakest (or just about), and that while Def Jam artists riding the zeitgeist wave did well in stores, too many of their deserving label mates got half-ass promotional pushes (something made clear when set in relief of the campaign that the label mounted for Jay).

You'd hope that a talented, charismatic fellow like Jay would establish goals that were both economical and altruistic--like expanding his roster of commercially successful artists while facilitating the vitality of true hip-hop practitioners--and that was obviously not the case during a year that was selfishly all about him. I'd even be more tolerant of the situation were Jay-Z still making the best music around, but his last two records have been mediocre at best.

7) Samuel Alito

We really haven't heard much from Sam in a while, but he started out the year with a bang, dominating political discussions leading up to his confirmation in late January.

That was enough for me, seeing as how the Supreme Court's swing vote was placed in the hands of a Republican Party operative and legal lightweight whose approach to jurisprudence is alarmingly unconcerned with justice. Did I mention that he's anti-choice and generally contemptuous toward an individual's rights? Were you following the news in January and February, there's now way that you would have missed that.

This is one Bush Administration stain that won't come out through Congressional elections.

6) Barry Bonds

He's got bad knees, he can't run anymore, he's no longer the best hitter in baseball, and everyone knows that he cheated--what more is there to say? And yet, every baseball conversation seems to still involve this dude.

I think some of it owes to the fact that the obnoxious baseball romantics have yet to accept that their beloved, boring game is kind of a joke. I mean, steroids were only outlawed ten minutes ago, everyone sort of celebrates the fact that you can cheat (doctoring balls, stealing signs, popping pills), and no one within the sport has the courage to say anything unless Congress gets involved. Whatever the case, can we all just move on from Bonds?

When he breaks that record, nothing will change--he was going to the Hall anyway, right? Enough already.

5) Everything having to do with Grey's Anatomy

There are a number of reasons to be tired of Grey's Anatomy:

A) ABC promotes this show all.

..the.

..time, which wouldn't be so bad if it didn't mean always hearing that one song about saving a life and playing the piano like some emo-rock dipshit.

Sadly, that is what the constant pimping of Grey's Anatomy means, and the world is worse off for it.

B) Women love it and talk about it all the time, treating its Thursday night airing like Shabbat-come-early. There hasn't been this kind of widespread enthusiasm and consensus since that one women's conference at which they decided that the most annoying character in the history of television, Carrie Bradshaw, was going to be nominated for sainthood.

C) Ellen Pompeo is the worst kind of cute: cutesy. She exudes this odd, annoying coyness.

D) Knowing that it's popular, the show takes itself so seriously and makes itself seem oh so precious.

Lost does this too, and it blows. Just be good and let people figure it out.

E) People refer to the show as "Grey's," which is totally irksome.

And the people who do this tend to be the people who say things like "obvi" instead of "obviously," but in earnest, not as some ironic joke.

4) Brady Quinn

Normally, when you lose every big game you play, miss too many throws, obviously can't respond to pressure, don't like getting hit, routinely come off the field looking dazed and seeming like you can't wait to find your blankey, and put up your "impressive" numbers against ten teams not named USC or Michigan that went a combined 56-66, you're seen as a work in progress. BUT, if you do all of that at Notre Dame while playing for a coach so smart that he invented Einstein, you get to be considered for the Heisman, projected as a top NFL prospect, and have offered up.

*sigh*

I will get back to this countdown once I stop throwing up...

3) Isiah Thomas

Honestly, I don't know that I can summon the will to write anything more about this incompetent, lowlife piece of shit, so perhaps you'll review some of my older invective and marvel that one man can engender so much vitriol:

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2) Beyonce

For me, Beyonce has become one of those people whom I loathe but everyone else loves, and that makes me nuts. Her music is boring; she doesn't enunciate when she talks; she can't act but gets major movie roles; her image and career choices are maddeningly transparent in their orchestration--what is so great about her? Worse for me, no one else seems to agree.

Everyone I know--my family, my friends, hip-hop fans, people with decidedly mainstream taste, people who don't know much about music--they all think she's great. She's talented; she's stylish; she's nice. She's on award shows, magazine covers--it's all too much.

I mean, she looked good in the video for "Irreplaceable," but that doesn't compensate for her many other foibles. What makes her so compelling? "Deja Vu" was a derivative snooze; "Ring the Alarm" was off-kilter yelling.

What the fuck?!

1) Britney Spears and Kevin Federline

Let's get the obvious reason why these two are number one out of the way immediately:

So for starters, the fact that Federline even put out a record--something that Britney enabled--is reason enough. But beyond that, these two were never out of the news, and their divorce was the vicarious social drama of the decade.

Plus, the fallout was simultaneously compelling and disgusting: it says something incredibly horrible about Spears that as of today, Federline seems like the one with stronger morals. But that's what happens when you spend a month of your life deliberately eschewing underwear and partying with Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. And I don't think anyone has wanted to see Britney's vagina in about 5 years, certainly not since those "I'm gonna stroll through a gas station with no shoes on" and "I'm gonna marry Kevin Federline" incidents.

All told, 2006 was a year in which two mostly untalented and mostly unlikable people stole far too much attention.

*N.B.

: George Bush and Rene Zellweger are permanent members of this list. I hope that they both die of gonorrhea.