Top Ten: Music

I am not educated enough in the realm of music to speak intelligently about it, so there will be little commentary in my list.

• Stay (Shakespeare's Sister).  I'm not even sure what the lyrics are about, but I love to listen to this song.
• Ring of Fire (Johnny Cash).  A rugged voice, a pleasure to listen to him sing.
• Fur Elise (Beethoven).  My favorite piece of classic music.  I hum or whistle it all the time.
• Born Slippy (Underworld).  Great travelling music when driving around Europe.
• Tears From the Moon (Conjure One).  Introduced to me by a friend.  Lovely music.
• Why (Annie Lennox).  An amazing woman and an amazing performer.  I love all her music.
• Carry On Wayward Son (Kansas).  Kansas, Pink Floyd, Boston, Journey
• Cat's in the Cradle (Harry Chapin).  It always reminds me of my father and the differnce that he as a father dictated our relationship and how me as a father dictates the relationship I have with my sons.
• Wind Beneath My Wings (Bette Midler).
• Extraordinary Way (Conjure One).

Top Ten: Television/Web Cast

This was a really difficult list.  There is not much in television programming that I think deserves recommendation.  It is mostly all garbage.  I'll just get right into it I guess.

• Good Eats.  Science and cooking.  Natural partners, great show host.  Watched 10 seasons but the show is ending this year, after about 250 episodes.
• Farscape.  One of the best ever science fiction series.  I disliked the main character.  The human.  Remember, if you are ever cast to the other side of the galaxy, you are an ambassador of your race.  Don't make us look bad.
• The Guild.  Felicia Day shows us the life of a World of Warcraft addict.  Funny as heck.
• Mythbusters.  Two stunt men set out to prove or disprove everything!  I love science.
• Welcome Back Kotter.  An oldie but goodie.
• I Love Lucy.  Another timeless oldie.
• Columbo.  Best crime show every.
• The Daily Show.  I hesitate to add this one.  For years, Jon Stewart poked fun at 'the man'.  And pretty much poked fun at everything else.  Then Obama became president.  Stewart seemed to reverse his role and became a government apologetic and rationalizer.  I was so disappointed that I stopped watching the show for a couple of years.  I have noticed that even he is becoming disillusioned enough by our current regime that he has started poking 'the man' once again.
• Bill Whittle.  The host of a couple of political commentaries, Bill Whittle provides us the with reasoned, intelligent and elegant monologues that I wish all political show hosts used, left and right.  Debate would be so much more meaningful.  Watch something, anything at all by Bill and tell me you don't agree.

Top Ten: Food

My favorite top ten subject! It is said the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. It's a shame that such great home cooking was unappreciated as a child. I always wanted fast food. Now I can't stand fast food, at least in America where everything from cheese to onion rings are sweetened to make them more alluring to children.

I've been exploring nutrition and cooking ever since I had children of my own. First, for their sake, now for a true love of the science and art of food.

• Savory Cheesecake. I want to start of with this one as something I discovered before I even realized their was a difference between good food created by someone who cared for their craft and garbage pushed out as cheaply and quickly as possible. I was stationed in Germany and my girlfriend bought a wedge of cheesecake and some bread from a roving bakery truck, knowing that I enjoyed both of those foods. The cheesecake was the best I ever ate. I have looked hard for something as good in America, even trying expensive specialty shops. No one seems to make cheesecake as well as a Germany bakery.
• Rib-eye. I don't go much for meat in my diet. Deli sandwiches, Thanksgiving turkeys, baked ham, I could do without them all. But I cannot resist even the smell of a charbroiled rib-eye. Just the right balance of meat and fat, the taste is irresistible. I might happily forgo sirloin for a salad, but I would beg for a rib-eye!
• Lobster. Well, add all those cretaceous arthropods. Crabs, shrimp, crayfish even. If you can keep from cooking them into rubber, the taste and texture are delicious and they are quite healthy for you.
• Oranges. As a juice, a snack, made into a sauce or as part of a strict diet, oranges are manna from heaven!
• Apple Cider. Apples are amazing. Their fruit, their trees, their biology, their history, their taste! The most iconic apple taste, for me, is apple cider.
• Fresh Home Made Bread. For comfort food, nothing hits the spot like bread. I've eaten breads from all over the world and I love them all. My favorite, I think, is probably the flat bread I ate in Turkey.
• Corn. Thank you natives of the Americas for this treasure! Boiled, steamed or grilled on the ear. Cut of the ear as kernels. Creamed. Ground into cornmeal and eaten as porrige, cornbread, cakes. Or, if your not hungry, made into medicine, fuel, or used as fodder.
• Artichoke. Who looked at a thistle and said "I want to eat that."? Give that guy a medal. High faluten food. You might not think of eating it with fried chicken, but it is yummy no matter what else you are eating.
• Cheese and Butter. A good deal of fat and a great deal of yummy.
• Dates. These are so delicious that I don't understand why they are not everywhere in the U.S. I specially enjoy dates stuffed with pecans or walnuts.
• Mushrooms. I called oranges 'manna from heaven' but historically mushrooms carried that moniker. Some people have an aversion to them and I suspect that is from corporate advertising. There is a financial interest to convincing people that the most abundant food available to them free might be toxic and they should only pay for one or two varieties and forgo all the rest.

Now I am really hungry! It was hard to limit my list. Onions, garlic and peppercorns find their way into just about everything I cook. Snow peas, carrots, pears and pineapples can be found in my kitchen all year long. I like to keep meals simple, four or so items at the most. But each meal features different stars.

Top Ten: Movies

Another top ten list. This time I explore the movies that I love.

Movies, television and music are important parts of our culture. While they can be seen as a distraction, irrelevant and a time sink, you actually exclude yourself from American culture if you do not have at least a passing knowledge of this art that is so woven into the fabric of our life.

• Bladerunner (1982). This is a good one for me to start with. I have many copies of the movie and watch it whenever I get the itch. However, there are many things I don't like about the movie, like the constant narration that explains what is going on. I got it. I don't need it explained to me. To be honest, the only reason I watched it in the first place, and probably the only reason it stuck with me all these years is because my mom saw it at the cinema, came home and said she thought I would really love it. So I do.
• Ghost Busters (1984). "Who you gonna call?" One of those examples of how a movie is so woven into our culture. Who hasn't heard that line in advertisements, from friends, in songs or other movies? Plus it was a really fun movie.
• Princess Bride (1987). Probably the most quotable movie on my list. A movie that's got it all, except ninjas. Fantasy fairy tale with romance, pirates, revenge and magic. A family 'must see' movie. The first movie I thought of when I started my list.
• Across the Universe (2007). The only musical on my list. I can't stop watching this movie. I love the music and I am a sucker for a good tear-jerking romance. I recommend this movie to everyone but can't seem to get anyone to watch it.
• Twin Warriors aka Tai-Chi Master (1993). Another thing I am a sucker for is high fantasy martial arts. Twin Warriors is my favorite in the genre and features my favorite martial arts actor, Jet Li.
• The Restless (2006). Combines two of the three things I am a sucker for. High fantasy martial arts and romance. A Korean movie about ... well...martial arts and romance!
• V for Vendetta (2006). Set in a near future dystopian U.K. ruled by a police state, V is a revolutionary fighting oppression and getting revenge for atrocities committed to him. What is different between this movie and any other of it's ilk? Let me quote Mega Mind when asked what the difference is between being a villain and being a super villain. "It's presentation. *CHOMP*" V is cool! Elegant, intelligent, theatrical and maybe even wise.
• The Matrix (1999). A futuristic mind twisting romp. Includes all three of the things I am a sucker for. Romance, martial arts and sci-fi!
• Kung Fu Hustle (2004). Set in China in the 1940s...you won't get anything historical from this, just pure martial arts comedy. The movie stars Steven Chow, known as 'The King of Comedy'. We own many of his other fantastic movies like CJ7, Shaolin Soccer and many others.
• Somewhere in Time (1980). This is the movie that turned me on to romances. Dude actually travels back in time through sheer force of will to find his true love. His true love? None other than the beautiful Jane Seymour. I would travel back in time for her too!
• Seven Samurai (1954). Not sci-fi. Not fantasy martial arts. Not romance. This movie reflects the true art of film making.
• The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Quatermass and the Pit (1967), The Thing From Another World (1951). These movies are great sci-fi horror movies in their own right, but also serve to illustrate how our percpetions and cultural concerns shift over the years.
• 9th Company (2005). I watch war movies, but they rarely become something I want others to watch too. If you want to watch a war movie, watch this one.
• Ballad of a Soldier (1959). Although set during WWII about a soviet soldier, it is not a war movie. This is a movie about a guy you can't help liking. A young soldier full of heart, empathy and sincerity. And there is a romance...

There are so many movies deserving a mention, and many many more deserving a thrashing. I'll leave it at this but please, let me know what movies keep you coming back. I might discover a new favorite.

Top Ten: MMOs

I thought I might list some of my top tens. I am going to start with MMOs (Massively Multi-player Online games). I started making several lists on paper (remember what that stuff is?) and MMOs filled up first.

My online gaming started before there was a publicly available Internet. My dad subscribed to a dial-up bbs, Compu-serve I think. I could periodically connect to the bbs and enter 'moves' into a game.

Multi-player games played on one system gave you the enjoyment of social engagement but at the cost of control and view space. While stationed in Germany in the '90s, my friend Ron introduced me to an arcade that brought a new dimension to gaming. It was a 3-D game. 3-D was not the new dimension, however. It was a multi-player game in which each player had their own view of the world through their own goggles. Each player shared the gaming experience with their friends but also had their own content. For example, if you were playing a human you might find scribbles on a wall while your friend, playing an elf, saw legible 'elven' writing.

Modern MMOs provide us with a dazzling array of stories, IP (intellectual properties) and game mechanics. What they all have in common, though, is the ability to experience gaming on a grand social scale.

My top ten list for MMOs lists the games that I feel were important in my discovery of this genre or are games that are timeless and bring me back again and again.

• Ultima Online. This was what I consider my first true MMO. The isometric view was acceptable for it's time. The story line was familiar and fun. I still recall, decades later, some of the people I met there. Most notable was the open mechanics that allowed you to attack or steal from other players. There were few artificial limits on what activities you could engage in. It was frustrating at the time and I left the game for a while. When I came back, ready to engage misfit players, it was a great experience.
• Everquest. While I was stationed in Korea, away from family, a supervisor talked on and on endlessly about killing dragons and casting spells in some game called Everquest. He played it, he said, to stay connected to his wife. They played the game together. After I returned to America, I gave it a try and it was very engaging. The game was so addictive, research has been done on it.
• Everquest II. Following on the footsteps of it's aging but popular Everquest, Sony brought out a larger, more graphically advanced, more immersive evolution of their game. Unfortunately, it was a very empty world. It was fun to play, but without social interaction you are better off with stand-alone games. It is going free-to-play soon and I intend on revisiting the world.
• DAOC, Dark Ages of Camelot. I played this game for years without getting anywhere. I liked it. It has a unique system where there are three different factions, each with it's own races and classes. End game is endless player versus player combat between the different factions. I played for three years and never got a character above level 34. When friends started playing with us, my wife and I both leveled up new characters to the max level in a few weeks. I love the game, but most fondly recall the enjoyment of playing with friends. The end game PvP is not for me.
• EVE Online. A sci-fi game where you play a ship. Until recently, you never left your ship. It is such an amazing game, I cannot do it justice. The company pushes innovation after innovation and is advancing the state of game programming to mind blowing levels.
• Rift. A really odd game with three distinct play mechanics. You have regular player versus environment interactions. You have rift combat, where rifts open up and you battle elemental combatants. You also have faction based player versus player combat. While the different factions have different races, their classes are identical. Having said that, there is so much variety in the development of your class that you have to try to get yours identical to someone else's. What I really love about this game is that it is the most bizarre and alien environment I've seen and fun to explore.
• LOTRO, Lord of the Rings Online. My favorite IP set in the most beautifully detailed world. I love this game. I thought, at first, I might be disappointed in the very few cookie cutter classes. I still wish, from a gaming point of view, that I had more variety in my development, however they are telling a story and there are archetypes in the story to follow. No matter how I may feel about the classes, there is no end to what you can do or achieve and it never gets old. This is my all time favorite MMO.
• DDO, Dungeon and Dragons Online. I started playing Dungeon and Dragons when it first came out. Although I had stopped playing the paper and pencil game before DDO came out, I could not avoid trying a game based on IP that I grew up with. Some elements are disappointing for me, but the easy game play makes for group fun.
• ATITD, A Tale in the Desert. The game takes place in ancient Egypt. Completely strange in that there is no combat. It is a giant crafting game. It is pretty flat and one dimensional in that respect, but what they did with that one dimension! Best crafting mechanics in any game. I wish more games would take a page from this one. I don't play it any more and would be unlikely to return to it, but if you have time, you should check out the crafting system.
• Fallen Earth. Worth a mention. It is a good post-apocalyptic MMO.
• Anarchy Online. Worth a mention. A good alien sci-fi MMO.
• Voyage Century. Worth a mention. Sailing, farming, pirating in the old world.
• Darkfall. Special mention. I was really looking forward to this game. Open mechanics reminiscent of Ultima Online with good graphics. I waited patiently during it's development for what seemed like a dream game. However, when it was released I decided to boycott the game and I have not tried it.

A bit more than ten. Look forward to more top ten lists in the future.