There are in life days when you get out of bed and you wonder why you even bother. There are other days when you never even get into bed, and when 4:30 AM rolls around you realize that there really definitely is no reason to do anything, ever. And then there are days that are exactly identical to the one described above, but at around 11 AM your roommate comes home for lunch and tells you that your Top Five List assignment for the day is some lame shit like “rivers.” I’m living the third type of day today.
Rivers? Seriously? I am a goddamn depository of pop culture knowledge, and for some reason he keeps insisting on going for topics that revolve around nature. I don’t know what his deal is.
My first thought is that he was clearly trying to gaslight me. He’s trying to sink the fucking ship here by forcing me to write about things that are way outside of my wheelhouse. But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that maybe, just maybe, he was trying to challenge me, to force me to grow. I could write a Top Five List of the Best Pornos with the greatest of ease, but that would be just more of the same. I would be covering subjects I’ve covered many, many times.
However, the more I thought about that, the more I realized that I’m probably giving this far more thought than Nicky Gifts ever had.
“What you need a topic? I don’t know. Why don’t you write about rivers? You don’t like that? Fuck you, I lug heavy things up ladders all day for a living. I don’t have time to spout off my retarded theories on the internet. I’ve got bills to pay, and it takes work to pay them. Get a job, you fucking bum.”
Well, whatever his motivation for the assignment may be, it’s time to get started. Here it is, the Top Five Rivers, let’s get it on.
5) Glenn “Doc” Rivers
I liked Doc Rivers when I was a kid, and why not put him on the list? His team just won the NBA Championship, for Christ’s sake. Little known Dan Friesen fact: I had three copies of the basketball card pictured above.
4) Billy Joel’s “River of Dreams”
In the world of mid-nineties easy listening music, “River of Dreams” is in a class of its own. For a very significant period of my life, I thought Billy Joel was blind because of the line “it can only be seen by the eyes of the blind.” I know that’s ridiculous, but I was like ten, and I’m pretty sure every time I’d ever seen Billy he was blindingly drunk.
3) The River Styx
What a great river! The river Styx not only is the boundary between Earth and the Underworld, but water from the Styx was used to bind the gods when they made an oath. If the god were to break the oath, they would fall into a coma for a year, then be banished from Mount Olympus for ten years. That is a fucking powerful river.
2) Good Charlotte’s “The River”
As powerful as the River Styx may be, “The River” is ten times as powerful. Those rocking chords, the power vocals, the vaguely religious lyrics; it all adds up to one wicked rock track.
1) The Meramec River
I’m not sure if it’s white trash of me to love nothing more than getting my buddies together, buying a ton of cheap beer, and float down a river. Truth is, I don’t care. I’m a classy dude, but I’m also from the Midwest, and that’s how we have fun around here. You people in LA can go to the beach, you people in Colorado can go skiing, we can slowly and drunkenly drift down a lazy river. And no river is lazier than the Meramec. It’s the highlight of my year, going on a float trip. It’s just two days of good friends, good times, and bad beer. It’s heavenly. I would write more about how much I love floating and how much I love the Meramec, but this blogger is fucking tired.
Midterms are done, my Top Five assignment is done: it’s bedtime.
(Photo credit for Meramec shot: Mattmatt Crawr)
Yeah-ha! The three dudes who comment the most on your blog! In one pic!
And, that beer is not always “bad.”
Stag?
I’m lovin these top fives. golden.
First, Stag is what society would call a bad beer. I love it, you love it, and that’s all good and well. I think our world would call almost all domestic beer that costs less than 7 bucks per twelve pack a “bad beer.”
Second, thank you, Ben. I’m trying to keep doing these lists, but at the same time, keep writing other stuff. We’ll see how it works. If you have a request for a list topic, you should tell Nick. I think he needs a little help.
How does Matt get photo credit if he’s in the shot?
I wasn’t so much giving him credit for the picture, as much as I was blaming him for the “lolz” type stuff.
we should probably actually give the internet and the bizarre culture that it has spawned credit for the “lolz” type stuff, but I’ll take what I can get.
and I second Ben’s comment, these top-5’s are truely golden. Doc Rivers almost made me choke up my drink.
oh wait, you were “blaming” me for the LOL stuff.