So It's Come to This: Honorable Mentions

I had a birthday recently, and my best friend gave me the most fantastic present. It's a Nintendo mini that includes every game in the NES library. Every game has four save slots, making it a lot more possible for a B- level gamer like me to conquer Nintendo-hard classics like Ninja Gaiden and Adventure Island. Dudes, the Castlevania trilogy--wow, this is euphoric. A few days ago I beat the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Now I know this triumph, which had eluded me since 1989, and I'm putting it on my goddamn resume. 

I mention this because at my birthday party, my best friend heard about the top 40 lists I had made to neurotically honor the occasion. He read the preface, noted the exclusion of Honorable Mentions, and said, "No, I disagree. I think you should include Honorable Mentions." 

Which would totally ruin the number structure of the lists to commemorate 40 years of Nick Olig life. 

But again, this gift was outstanding. Like, later today, if I'm feeling cute, I'm gonna fire up Double Dragon II, and at long last get past those damn vanishing platforms on Mission 6--even if it takes 50 tries--and I owe that to my best friend. Was he just being contrarian because he knows he can get away with it? Maybe, but it doesn't matter. If my best friend is clamoring for some Honorable Mentions, taking into account the ultimate birthday present, knowing that we both know none of this matters, then so be it. I'm lifting up the velvet rope and allowing HMs into the club. 

So, in this entirely different entry which must always be kept separate from the official top 40 lists (keeping in mind that none of this matters), here are some Honorable Mentions of bands, movies, books, and video games. 

Bands/ Singers

Deftones, Vampire Weekend, A Tribe Called Quest, Daft Punk, Beach Boys, Elliott Smith, Green Day (before that awful song "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"), Weezer (95% blue and Pinkerton, cliched but true), My Morning Jacket, John Prine, Hum, Pixies (it took so long for me to get into them but they're great and they influenced some of my favorite bands). 

Movies

A Beautiful Mind, Matchstick Men, Stranger Than Fiction, Tommy Boy, La Bamba, Spaceballs, American Hustle; Everything, Everywhere, All at Once; The Life Aquatic, Nope, The Menu, As Good As It Gets (hot take: Nicolas Cage in Matchstick Men portrays someone suffering from OCD more expertly than Jack Nicholson in As Good AIG.) 

Books

Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque by Joyce Carol Oates, Beastie Boys Book by Diamond and Horovitz, The Beatles: The Biography by Bob Spitz, Born Standing Up by Steve Martin, Born on the Fourth of July by Ron Kovic, Ordinary People by Judith Guest, A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe (his writing style is cringey but the story he tells is a fascinating piece of drugged-out history), 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King, Hell's Angels by Hunter S Thompson (Hunter was such a charmer and a virtuoso that he made me love a book about motorcycles and biker gangs, stuff I'm not into at all--that's what a great writer can do--I love that man), Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams 

Video Games

Mariokart: Double Dash- Nintendo Gamecube, Tiger Woods Golf '04- XBox (Shoutout to my college roommate Pat, who usually beat me in this one, I miss your musk--haha), God of War- Playstation 2 (I'm a retro fucking weirdo but basically any God of War game is great, the combat is like a beautiful, brutal ballet), TMNT1- Nintendo, Duck Tales- NES, Mortal Kombat II- Super Nintendo, Tecmo Super Bowl III: Final Edition- SNES, Contra III: Alien Wars- SNES, WCW/ NWO Revenge- Nintendo 64, NFL Blitz-N64.