Top 19 Excuses For Not Posting In Forever

You. Guys.

So the other day, I got an email. It was from Barack Obama. Now, we don't know if it was THE Barack Obama. (And who really is Barack Obama anyway? Think about that.) This email was in the form of a comment on our most recent post--if early September can be called recent. The comment said, in effect, "Hey, please post, you nerd-jobs." This marked the third such comment in a short span of time... the second was from a commenter named Professor Remix and the first was a postscript in an email from my mom.

Barack Obama, Professor Remix, and my mom.

Is that not the raddest fucking superhero team of all time? So rad, in fact, that I was inspired. Inspired with such fervor, that on this, my 24th birthday, I am posting once more. And as Barack Obama requested, it's a list of excuses for not posting for so long.

1.) The Obvious, Pt. I: I started grad school at Princeton in early September, so... yah. At first, I was just way over my head, but I'm starting to get a grasp, so I think there's plenty of listing in my future. THIS I PROMISE YOU, PARMLOTTERS. (All six of you. And that includes the League of Professor Remix, Barack Obama, and Mom.)

2.) The Obvious, Pt. II - Rob is doing his thing in LA and his thing involves twittering about his dinner and shit, which, though technically in list form, is not just not the same. THERE. I said it. Also, I miss you, Rob. THERE. I said that too.

3.) You guys, THIS is how I wanted to commemorate September 11th this year, did you not get it?!

4.) Yeah, see, the time between September 11th and my birthday is known as The Troubles. It's this whole big thing... there's fasting and rituals and you're not allowed to post on blogs.

5.) Wait, did you not buy your Troubles calendars?

6.) They're like Advent calendars, but instead of with ornaments inside, it's pictures of me giving the thumbs up.

7.) Anyway.

8.) Oh! Oh! This one is real... early in October, I wrote a bunch of lists, actually. They were all about the Mountain Goats, in honor of the October 6th release of The Life of the World to Come, their new album.

9.) 'Cause, y'know, I talk a lot about how I love the Goats, but I never actually list about them.

10.) That's kinda messed up. It's like I'm not pullin' my weight! But then it was a like, a week later, and it seemed too late. Eh. I'll put up a few soon.

11.) Anyway. (Again.)

12.) Um... Brett Favre. Oh wait, we're done blaming Brett Favre for things, cool!

13.) While we're at tt, 6-0 BABY!? The last time the Vikes were 6-0 on my birthday, it was 2003. The Darkness was on the radio, the whole country was wondering if Frodo would evvvver make it to Mordor, and I was totally a senior in high school.

14.) I WAS HIDING IN THE ATTIC AND WE DID IT FOR THE SHOW HAHAH TOPICAL!!!

15.) Jersey has a no-blogs allowed law, on account of all that blog-corruption.

16.) Every list I think up lately is about some combination of Bon Jovi, acid wash, and face perception.

17.) This whole grad school thing was a big lie and I have been on a 41-day PCP vision quest. The good news is, I won! The bad news is, there is no bad news! I was just joking.

18.) I was actually just waiting for Barack Obama to email me.

19.) OKAY. I still got it! Sorta. Now back to reading...

Top 2 Boys Who Are All Grown Up Today!

2. Rob Trump
Today is the day that Rob Trump graduates from Columbia College and enters the exciting-slash-crippling phase of real life they call "Real Life"! (If I were in his shoes right now, I'd probably go off and watch Kicking and Screaming a whole bunch. Also, if I were in his shoes right now, THOSE WOULD BE SOME CROWDED SHOES, HUH ROB!?)

Anyway, in honor of the man/the day/the moment, here is a brief history of Rob:

198? - Rob is born.
1989 - Rob learns to rant.
1991 - Rob makes his first million.
Later in 1991 - Rob loses his first million in a risky "exciting opportunity" investment.
1993 - Rob is drafted by the San Diego Chargers.
Later that day in 1993 - Rob refuses to play for the San Diego Chargers, his rights are traded to the New York Giants for two first round draft picks, a third rounder, and a fifth rounder in 1994.
1994 - Rob sweeps the Latin Grammys.
1997 - Rob publishes his first memoir, A BRIEF HISTORY OF PAIN.
1999 - Rob dies.
The next day, 1999 - Rob is buried.
The day after that, 1999 - On the third day, Rob rose again, in fulfillment of predictions made in his first memoir, A BRIEF HISTORY OF PAIN.
2000-2006 - Rob wanders the earth in search of one that is pure of heart.
2007 - Rob attends Space Camp, is granted his release from the New York Giants, and admits to using performance enhancing drugs. His Latin Grammys are forfeited.
2008 - Rob co-founds Peter and Rob Make Lists of Things.
2009 - Rob wins?!

1. My Dad
It's my Dad's birthday! Happy Birthday, Dad! This is the only time when it is okay for the Yankees to sweep the Twins. Also, congrats on beating surgery! Surgery came a-callin' and was all, "Hey Peter's Dad, I'm here to ruin your day." But my dad is too cool for that; he just goes, "LET IT BEGIN!" and then lightning crashed and everything. True story.

Here is a brief list of Medals of Excellence that my father has won:

1951 - Presidential Medal of Fitness Excellence
1957 - Town of Tonawanda All-Around Swell Guy Medal of Excellence
1964 - Our Lady of Czestochowa's Annual Pierogi Bake Medal of Piety (and Excellence)
1968 - The Students for a Democratic Society's Pancho Villa Memorial Medal of Excellence
1969 - The Beard Club of America's Medal of Barbaric Excellence
1972 - Medal of Honorary Excellence, presented by The Paratrooping English Professors' Brigade
1979 - The Ford Pinto Survival Club's Medal of Excellence
1982 - Medal of Fervor, presented by the National Congress of Poetic Ballplayers and Ballplaying Poets
1985 - Medal of Consistent Excellence, presented upon the birth of his fifth son by the National Society for the Protection and Promotion of Men
1989 - United Nations Medal of Diplomatic Excellence, presented upon his single-handed unification of Germany
1993 - The Western New York Mothers Against Youth Curveballs' Medal of Excellent Reticence
1995 - Snazzy Prof Mag's Annual Medal of Earring Excellence
1998 - The National Fiction Council's Medal of Excellence for Lifetime Achievement in Fiction and/or Story-Telling, presented following a month-long ruse regarding a pair of gold corncob holders I was supposed to receive for my birthday
2000 - The National Sawdust Council's Medal of Excellence for Lifetime Achievement in Pounds of Sawdust Produced
2003 - Rutherford B. Hayes Lookalike Club Medal of Excellence
2006 - Medal of Most Valuable Excellence, Buffalo Old Guy Hockey League
2009 - Medal of Total Friggin' Excellence, presented by Peter and Rob Make Lists of Things, for telling his class to visit our site.

Top 13 People Celebrating Birthdays Today

Hey! Today is a great day to be born! There sure were some great people born on this day! And if by chance you happen to be turning 23 and are in any way doubting the fact that 23 is a great number, here is proof that it is, in fact, the GREATEST number!

13. Craig David
Hey, remember Craig David! (Craig David sure does...)

12. Bernard Pivot
This is the French journalist who inspired James Lipton to start using the Proust Questionnaire on Inside the Actors Studio. His last name is also basically the Russian word for beer.

11. Brian Williams
NBC Nightly News anchor, SNL host, frequent guest on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, makes $10,000,000 a year... dropped out of college. So, kids, if you're looking for a slam dunk closing argument to your "Mom and Dad, college and I aren't working out" speech, look no further than Brian Douglas Williams.

10. Tammy Wynette
Here is a secret. I have a deep love for country music. Like, real country. Like Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, George Jones. And the First Lady of Country Music, Tammy Wynette. There. I said it. I feel better now. PS, yeah, "Stand By Your Man" is iconic (and depressing), but it's not like Tammy didn't sing about the flip side of the coin in "D-I-V-O-R-C-E". Oh man, that song rules (slash kills me)...

9. Roger Rees
Wow, there's gonna be a bunch of Brits on this list. Brit-list. Neat. Roger Rees is an actor who I like for two reasons. Reason One: he played Robin, that British tycoon dude on Cheers. Reason Two: he played Lord John Marbury, that British ambassador dude on The West Wing. That alone is deserving of some sort of award/castle/castle-shaped-award.

8. Tina Yothers
Played the youngest Keaton daughter on Family Ties. (The one that wasn't Justine Bateman.) I have some thoughts. A) Family Ties had one of those once-in-a-lifetime casts... Baxter-Birney, Gross, Bateman, J. Fox, and Yothers? Yeah... try getting that together today. IN THIS ECONOMY!? B) Family Ties, as I was recently reminded, had a seriously great theme song. C) These sentences, from Tina Yother's wiki-article, are sad: "After a nine year absence from acting, Yothers was given the lead role in Lovelace the Musical, a 2004 stage show based on the life of former pornographic movie star Linda Lovelace. She followed that up with a stint as a stock player in the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theater in Boca Raton, Florida from 2005 to 2007."

7. Michael Palin
Um, way to have the coolest career, Michael Palin. You were part of Monty Python, you wrote the Spanish Inquisition Sketch, you were in Brazil, and Time Bandits, and A Fish Called Wanda, and now you're a travel writer. PLUS YOU'RE IN TALKS TO PLAY DON QUIXOTE IN THE RELAUNCH OF THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE!?!?!

6. Danielle Fishel
You don't remember Danielle Fishel? What is wrong with you. Were you not alive in the mid to late 90's, while our nation had fallen madly in love with Topanga, the sometime-girlfriend/all-time-ridiculous-named-girl of Cory Matthews on Boy Meets World. This was our youth, America. (BTW, Tina Yothers was no Danielle Fishel.)

5. John Rhys-Davies
More Brits! John Rhys-Davies is one of those dudes who is constantly called upon to play things that he is not... like an Arab archaeologist (Sallah, Indiana Jones films), a Russian general (Pushkin, The Living Daylights), and a dwarf (Gmili, The Lord of the Rings trilogy). Well done, John, you ethnic chameleon!

4. Soren Kierkegaard
Sure, he was the father of Existentialism, but did you know that he was ALSO the uncle of Discordianism, the second-cousin of Libertarianism, and the great-great-great-grandmother of Emo? (I originally typed that as "Elmo" and considered leaving it that way for about four seconds.)

3. Karl Marx
Here are three things about Karl Marx. One of them is a lie. First, of the six kids he had, four were named Jenny. Second, Karl Marx invented the beard. Third, back in the day when I was a bigger loser than I am now, I would walk around with quotes in my wallet, things I found particularly true or incisive or whatever. Anyway, I always liked this one: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways—the point, however, is to change it."

2. Nellie Bly
Nellie Bly is legit one of the coolest people of all time. At the age of friggin' 23 (23!?!), she convinced Joseph Pulitzer to let her go undercover in the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island to expose the injustices and atrocities being committed there. She PRETENDED TO BE INSANE for the sake of JOURNALISM! Then, she made a trip around the world--setting the record in the process, of course; she completed the journey in 72 days. THEN, she married a millionaire, became the president of a steel company, and invented a better steel barrel. Oh, also, Abby Bartlett gives a super-impassioned speech about her on The West Wing. (Because it all has to come back to The West Wing somehow.)

1. Lakshmi!
Happy Birthday, Laksh! We here at PaRMLoT hope you have both the best day and the best year!

Top 8 Things Paul Rudd Has Ever Done (AKA, Happy Birthday Paul Rudd!)

Attention, the Internet. (Especially you, Parmlotters!) Paul Rudd--noted man among men and PaRMLoT hero--is 40 years young today. Because I am the kind of guy who can admit to a healthy, non-threatening, "I bet that famous guy would totally get me" mancrush, I present you eight of my favorite Paul Rudd roles. (Sorry Anchorman fans, I left off Brian Fantana because Rob doesn't like that movie and mentioning it in a positive light would probably incur a Merkin Muffley Exclusion level cataclysm.)

Oh, also... baseball is here! (Just in time for the Twins to lose their opener to the Mariners. Goddammit. Is Seattle even a city? Whatever. 161 and 1 is not SUCH a bad record.)

8. "Nick Carraway" in The Great Gatsby

Hear me the frig out, America. This is not a good Gatsby adaptation. I will grant you that up front, no money down. But Rudd gets Nick, he gets him in a very quiet, honest way—he’s subtle without being a cipher, a little lost without being emo.

7. "Peter" in I Love You, Man

Mostly for this quote in a recent Times article: “Mr. Rudd, who sees a little of himself in Peter, said he happily occupied a middle ground between macho and metrosexual. ‘I can talk about sports and stuff,” he said. “But I have a season pass for ‘Antiques Roadshow’ on my TiVo. And I can talk to you about all the seasons of ‘Project Runway’ and do it without any shame.’” 

6. "David" in The 40 Year-Old Virgin

I like watching people meltdown on screen… it’s not a sadistic thing, I just love the moment when the meltdown ends and the redemption starts. This character is one of the most desperate takes on hopeless romanticism and it’s start-to-finish gold. 

5. "Jack" in The Oh in Ohio

Have you seen this movie!? You should. I pumped for it back in ‘05, mainly because of the cast—Rudd, Parker Posey, Danny DeVito, Keith David—and then when I sat down to watch it, I was all, “Aw man, this is a ladies movie about lady parts.” But then Paul Rudd and his beard show up and it is ON. This is a guy at his cynical, beard-wearing, brown-bag-drinking, Mischa-Barton-screwing best. (Well, that last bit is gross, to be fair.)

4. "Adam" in The Shape of Things

This is a crazy-good play and if nothing else, it filled me with the unshakable fear that I would one day be betrayed by an artist. I suppose it happens to everybody in one way or another, but… oh man, in this one... I felt for you, buddy.

3. "Josh" in Clueless

Aw man, remember when no one knew who Paul Rudd was? Those were the days. Clinton was in the White House, Counting Crows was on the radio, and we all cheered the coming Robotocalypse as Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov at chess. 

2. "Andy" in Wet Hot American Summer

This is when I full-on realized the genius of Rudd. (This is also when I full-on realized how cool denim jackets look.) Andy is simply one of the most lovable assholes ever captured on film, an absolute testament to how much fun it is to watch this guy work. He spits “Fuck you, dyke!” at his semi-girlfriend one second, lets a kid drown the next, and tops it all off by throwing another out a moving van… and you still want to hang with him.

1. "Pete" in Knocked Up

Every once in a while, I go off on a thing about how Paul Rudd legitimately deserved a nomination for this role. You don’t want to be around when this hurricane starts a-blowing. Dude was the heart and soul of this film—the angry, snarkier than thou, hey-check-out-my-baller-Tom-Waits-tee-shirt heart and soul. That scene in the playground with the bubbles, where he says that his children’s smiling faces remind him how he can’t manage to find happiness in his life… killer. And that’s totally his actual Tom Waits tee. I bet that guy has some of the best tee shirts in the world. (Not the best, though. The best tee shirt in the world, of course, is Laksh’s Bon Jovi shirt from some tour back in the 80s. It’s just his face with like, crazy hair and ice-blue-fire eyes. It is the coolest thing imaginable.)

Top 31 Deleted Chapters from Nietzsche's "Ecce Homo"

Oh man. Have you nerds read Ecce Homo? It is ridiculous. It's basically a look back at Nietzsche's career as a philosopher/baller-extraordinaire and it boasts the greatest chapter titles of any book ever. Here's a taste: "Why I Am So Clever"... "Why I Write Such Good Books"... and my personal favorite, "Why I Am a Destiny".

Anyway, that got me thinkin'...

31. Why I Am Basically the Coolest

30. Why I Rock Harder Than You Can Even Dream

29. Why I Can Type Faster Than You

28. Why I Have Superpowers

27. Why I Have Razor-Sharp Claws

26. Why I Have a Four-Octave Vocal Range

25. Why I Jump Higher and Farther Than Most People

24. Why My Heart Is Made of Metal and My Brain Is Made of Heart

23. Why Batman Is Actually a Documentary About My Life

22. Why I Am In Your Base, Killing Your Dudes

21. Why I Am Totally Free to Just Take All Your Money

20. Why I Came Up With the Idea for Legends of the Hidden Temple--(Happy Birthday, Kirk Fogg!)

19. Why I Can Go All Night Long

18. Why I Can Shoot Bullets Out of My Hands

17. Why If You Prick Me, I Actually Don't Bleed

16. Why I Can Play Like, Seven Different Instruments

15. Why I Am Quite Good Friends With Several Television Stars

14. Why My Other Car Is Your Car

13. Why I Have Yet To Be Prosecuted For Stealing Your Car

12. Why I Am the All-Time "All-Time Quarterback"

11. Why I Can See the Future and Change the Past

10. Why I Can Talk to Animals

9. Why I Can Listen to Plants

8. Why I Am Such a Baller

7. Why I Declined a Lucrative Contract from So So Def Records (and thus did not appear in the Philosopherz Rap)

6. Why I Invented the Phrase "Hanging Out"

5. Why I Am Frequently Mistaken for a God

4. Why I Am Not Exactly God, but Am Still Totally Just as Good as He Is

3. Why God and I Are BFFs

2. Why God Gave Me an Enormous Penis

1. Why God Sometimes Calls Me For No Reason, Just to Talk

The Top 23 Interesting Facts About the Number 23

23. First and foremost, I genuinely hope there actually are 23 interesting facts about the number 23.

22. Twenty-three is the ninth prime number, as well as the smallest odd prime which isn't a twin prime. So... y'know. That's pretty intense.  

21. The first 6 digits of pi are 3.14159 which all add up to 23. WHAAAAAAT. (PS: If you recite pi to Rob, he gets all hot and bothered.)

20. The atomic number of vanadium is 23. One of vanadium's most prominent usages is in lacrosse shafts, therefore making it the bro-iest metal alive. (Note: Elements are not actually alive.)

19. Normal human sex cells have 23 chromosomes. HOTT!

18. Psalm 23 ("The Lord is my shepherd, etc etc etc...") is basically the best, most holiest psalm ever. Let's chat about our faith sometime! (Note: Actually, please let's never do that.)

17. In a group of at least 23 randomly chosen folks, there's a more than 50% probability that some pair of them will have the same birthday. This is called "The Birthday Paradox". Frankly, it's not much of a paradox, as far as I'm concerned. Kinda kooky, but I'm not seeing the inherent contradiction here.

16. In Islam, it took 23 years for the entirety of the Qur'an to be revealed to Muhammad. (There is a decent possibility that it will take Future Ted even longer to tell his children who their mom is on How I Met Your Mother. DJANGO! By the way, "django" is going to be the new "zing"... get the word out!)

15. According to Principia Discordia, the sacred text of the fake religion Discordianism, 23 is the sacred number of Eris, the goddess of discord. But so is 5. Also, nothing is actually sacred. Kids, a really good thing to do in your free time is to invent a fake religion.

14. A good number of great athletes have worn the number 23, including Ryne Sandberg, Don Mattingly, and of course, Michael Jordan. Unfortunately, there were no Space Jam-type films for Donnie Baseball or Ryno. Oh my gosh, someone invent a time machine and go back to 1993 and write a script in which Mattingly and Sandberg have to team up across American League/National League lines and fight aliens. YESYESYES! 

13. Last year, Blonde Redhead released a quite excellent album titled 23 that included a very good awesome song of the same name.

12. Julius Caesar was stabbed 23 times when he was assassinated. 

11. The Number 23 is just about the worst film ever made.

10. A good number of ridiculous people are convinced that everything that happens ever is related to the number 23. Yes, there are actually people who think that a number is capable of carrying on a conspiracy and influencing world events.

9. In 1923, the Yankees won their first World Series, William Butler Yeats won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and a storm of large hailstones killed 23 people in Rostow, Soviet Union. (OMG 23 PEOPLE THAT IS LIKE A THING OR SOMETHING!!)

8. There were 23 problems on David Hilbert's famous list of unsolved mathematical problems, presented to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris in 1900. As of today, 4 of the problems have been left totally unresolved. Unfortunately, Dr. Hilbert had an additional list of 23 unsolved problems in David Hilbert's life, ranging from lost socks to lost loves to his bizarre love of socks. None of these problems are currently resolved.

7. In 23 AD, some fascinating things happened. Pliny the Elder was born... it was really weird having a baby whose last name was "The Elder". He wrote a book called The Natural History, which was basically a list of everything people knew during the Roman Empire. I haven't read it and am basically too lazy to give the wikipage a full rundown, but from what I can gather, it was mostly about dolphins and gems. Also, over in India, Maka Dan-Dang became the first person ever to be strangled by an elephant. (CLOSED CASKET FUNERAL ALERT!) Finally, Wang Mang, throne usurper and owner of the fifth coolest name ever, died in battle, restoring the Han Dynasty to power.

6. According to the song "What's My Age Again?" by Blink-182, "nobody likes you when you're 23." Perhaps someone should have told me this earlier!!?!

5. 23 is one of "The Numbers"--4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42--featured on "that show" Lost, enjoyed by "those people" who scare the frig outta me. 

4. Dr. Pepper has an alleged 23 flavors. (Although, it still just tastes like Dr. Pepper.)

3. 23-skidoo was a thing old folks used to say. (It is slang for dick pills.)

2. 23 is the number of years old I am today! That was an awkward sentence! I'm gonna stop typing now!

1. Also, as a special bonus, here's a mini-list of other amazing folks born today:

a.) Mickey Mantle

b.) Snoop Dogg

c.) Ryan North

d.) Arthur Rimbaud

e.) John Krasinski

f.) Christopher Wren

g.) Margaret Dumont

h.) Charles Ives

i.) Bela Lugosi

j.) Viggo Mortensen

k.) The Empress Michiko

l.) Jomo Kenyatta

m.) Jelly Roll Morton

n.) John Dewey

...

...

...

AND ME!

Top 11 Birthdays Today, August 12th

11. Peter Krause

Hey, it's Peter Krause's 43rd birthday today! And he's from Minnesota! (Note: Peter and Rob Make Lists of Things unapologetically declares Minnesota the best state in the union.) I'm going to go ahead and admit that I haven't seen him in a lot of stuff, basically just the Six Feet Under pilot, which I thought was pretty great. Actually, that reminds me, I want to borrow the first season of that and watch it. Thanks, Peter Krause, your birthday reminded me to do something as well as reminding you that yo' gettin' old!

(a few minutes of imdb-ing later)

OH MY GOD THIS WAS THE GUY IN THE SEINFELD EPISODE "THE LIMO." I LOVE HIM SO HARD NOW!

10. Takanohana Koji

Takanohana Koji is the Japanese sumo wrestler pictured above, and was the 65th wrestler to reach the rank of yokozuna. According to Wikipedia, "He had a solid but aggressive style, looking to get a right hand grip on his opponents' mawashi and move them quickly out of the ring." Haha, Takanohana! How come whenever I try to grab my opponents' mawashi, I end up with a restraining order???? Okay I don't know what mawashi means. Happy birthday, big man!

(a few minutes of imdb-ing later)

This guy was not in any episodes of Seinfeld. What a pain in the mawashi.

9. The Shoe Bomber

Another year with America at #1. How does it feel, shoe bomber? What's that, shoe bomber? How do I know that America is #1? Becuase I just signed up for a website and selected my country from a drop-down window. And we're #1. Alphabetically. Right before "Afghanistan," motherfucker.

8. Jacques Tits

Hahahahaha tits. Also, the tits group is named after him. You can't make this shit up, people.

7. Sir Mix-a-Lot

Thank you, Sir Mix-a-Lot, for providing thousands of white teenagers with a way to be almost criminally unfunny on the way to devaluing the Grammy awards by winning "Best Solo Rap performance." This is 1992, the SAME YEAR AS Dr. Dre's The Chronic, which was both incredibly successful and one of the best hip-hop albums of all time. There is truly no justice in the world. I hope you die on your birthday, Sir Mix-a-Lot. Just kidding. I hope you actually died yesterday, and I haven't found out yet.

6. Casey Affleck

Good job, Casey Affleck! You've successfully completed another year as a hanger-on! I hope that Ben doesn't forget to wish you a happy birthday. The more I think about that the more it sounds plausible and sad. Especially because you know that Casey prepares for Ben's birthday weeks in advance and rents out entire arcardes and stuff (Ben loves the games where you are like on the skis and it seems like you are actually skiing but it is just an arcade game.) Oh, you graduated from Columbia. Good for you.

5. Cecil B. DeMille

Happy 137th, birthday, Cecil! Pretty cool how God granted you immortality for The Ten Commandments, wasn't it?

(a few minutes of imdb-ing later)

Oh my God, he was "Impossibly Old Guy #3" in the Seinfeld episode "The Old Man"! The one who falls on his mawashi!

4. Pete Sampras

Pete Sampras was pretty great at tennis. Sometimes I like to pretend that the Sampras-Agassi rivalry extended into their personal lives, and they were also fighting for the love and hand of tennis princess Steffi Graf throughout their careers. Then, Sampras won the 2001 U.S. Open, which was clearly the final battle for her love, but in a third-act twist, we find out that it was never about the sports and Graf's heart had belonged to Agassi the entire time. Sampras sulked off sadly and married an actress from Adam Sandler's golden age.

3. Mark Knopfler

Mark Knopfler is the frontman and guitarist for the band Dire Straits. In the words of Douglas Adams: "Mark Knopfler has an extraordinary ability to make a Schecter Custom Stratocaster hoot and sing like angels on a Saturday night, exhausted from being good all week and needing a stiff beer." But he's not only connected to pretty awesome and pretty nerdy authors, he's also connected to really awesome and really nerdy authors. And man, "Romeo and Juliet" in Empire Records is one of the best uses of a pop song ever in a movie.

2. Rachel Leopold

Happy birthday, Rachel! A Google search for your name will now return a profanity-laden and infantile website of lists. That is my true birthday present to you. Also, sorry you aren't number one, but...

1. Michael Ian Black

Michael Ian Black is a very famous celebrity. You, Rachel, are not. Also, he recently accepted my Facebook friend request, which made me very happy. You, Rachel, are also my Facebook friend, but that's been true for a while and therefore less interesting. Michael Ian Black has also released a very solid album of stand-up comedy, was a member of The State (one of the best sketch groups of the last twenty years or so), and created another very funny group along with a funny but ratings-challenged show (Stella) with two other State members. Also, he was in Wet Hot American Summer, which is awesome. You were in that movie, too, Rachel, but you had a very small part. Oh, and if that all not enough, he recently challenged Tucker Max to a fistfight, which I hope beyond hope that he somehow wins. All in the name of promoting his book, which you should now buy.