Take one down, pass it around:

47 songs that contain lists

#26 Things Alanis Morissette mistakenly believes meet the dictionary definition of “ironic”:

a death-row pardon two minutes late, good advice unheeded, traffic jam when you’re already late, meeting the man of your dreams… and then meeting his beautiful wife.

Whoa:

6 Keanu Reeves movies somehow not ruined by Keanu Reeves

#4 The Matrix

Reeves’ legendary lack of expression found its magical apotheosis in The Matrix, where he’s largely called upon to serve as a pale, polished mannequin messiah modeling a series of leather costumes and stylish shades. The movie is all flash, effects, and killer style, and doesn’t require anything as complicated as acting out of its star. Reeves obliges with a glassy-eyed, cold performance that matches the film’s glassy, cold aesthetic perfectly. The Matrix is about the junction of man and machine, and the legendarily robotic Reeves naturally comes across at both.

You got your Moog in my keytar!:

10 highly pretentious music instruments

#4 The Pikasso guitar

Pat Metheny challenged guitar-maker Linda Manzer to build him a guitar with “as many strings as possible.” The cubist three-necked monster she spawned sports 42 strings crisscrossing the body, producing everything from regular guitar tones to harp-like effects. It even featured a pickup for his guitar synth. Manzer’s design is a work of art—just ask Boston’s Museum Of Fine Arts, which once put it on display. But when Metheny takes it on tour and drags it out for only one or two songs, it’s just spectacle, the equivalent of smashing a watermelon with a sledgehammer.

Pie fights and the suicidal fetus:

6 happily discarded alternate endings

#5 Clerks

You know how not to end a bawdy, goodhearted comedy? By having its hero die a meaningless death, shot down during an attempted robbery. But that’s how Kevin Smith’s debut Clerks originally wrapped. The final sequence offered a painfully literal take on the notion that the film’s hero was living a dead-end existence behind a convenience-store counter. Fortunately, cooler heads—if that term can ever be applied to the Weinstein brothers—prevailed. And with just a few seconds shaved off the end, Clerks went from tragedy back to comedy.

Guest list: John Hodgman:

6 mysteriously unheralded character actors

#3 Buddy Dorp

The tall, double-jointed, rubber-limbed goofball of the ’50s comedy ensemble “The Gutter Boys” (a.k.a. “The Ethnic Kids”). Famous for his incredible, gymnastic trombone routines, which might pop up in a Gutter Boys film at any moment, even when they’re just hanging around the stoop, playing poker with shards of broken glass. He actually was a very fine trombonist, playing with the Dallas Symphony for many years before finally losing control of all his limbs.

No seriously, I am Superman:

11 beloved songs sung by secondary singers

#7 Kiss, “Beth”

A case of the B-side trumping the A-side, “Beth” was first pressed as the flipside to “Detroit Rock City.” A string-drenched ballad on which no members of Kiss play, the song gave drummer and “Beth” co-writer Peter Criss a rare moment in the spotlight. Pretty much the source for every icky power ballad of the next decade, the song became a huge hit in 1976, sending out a plea for understanding to a woman left neglected for rock’ n’ roll.

Quick, man! Cling tenaciously to my buttocks!

21 children’s TV shows that found adult audiences

#15 The Tick

It’s probably more surprising that The Tick gained any traction with kids than that it appealed to adults. The animated version of Ben Edlund’s superhero spoof reached levels of stupid-silly absurdity more familiar from current Adult Swim shows than from a Saturday-morning children’s programming block. However, the big blue bug of justice and his moth-costumed sidekick Arthur appealed heavily to the big kids who watched it on reruns on Comedy Central and still parrot the show’s eminently quotable randomness: “Spoon!”

Not dead yet:

8 great films made by directors after they turned 70

#8 Charles Crichton, A Fish Called Wanda

At age 77—and after 20 years away from directing feature films—Charles Crichton collaborated with John Cleese on a throwback farce full of the kind of criminal capers and broad characters that populated Crichton classics like The Lavender Hill Mob. On the film’s DVD commentary track, Cleese deftly explains how Crichton lets scenes play out with a minimum of cutting and only a few economical camera moves, so the actors can build a comic rhythm. That’s one of the virtues of senior-citizen directors: They’re never in much of a hurry.

Talking at the movies:

15 common types you meet on DVD audio commentaries

#9 The indifferent cast member

There’s a law of diminishing returns to group commentary tracks, because while two or three people in a room can make for a lively conversation, four or more often prompt awkward silences, as everyone waits for their colleagues to say something. The worst participants are those actors who probably shouldn’t have agreed to appear on the track in the first place. Distracted, reticent, even pissy, these contract-fulfillers are usually the first to poop the party by grumbling, “Who listens to these things, anyway?”

She don’t lie:

15 songs about the positive side of drugs

#6 Peter Tosh, “Legalize It”

Peter Tosh doesn’t spend a ton of time talking about how good weed feels in this classic, but he does note—over a gently loping beat, of course—that doctors, nurses, judges, and lawyers all smoke it. And that it’s good for flu, asthma, tuberculosis, and “umara composis,” which is apparently menstrual pain. If that isn’t an endorsement, nothing is.

I watched the needle take another man:

15 songs about the negative side of drugs

#4 Grandmaster Flash, “White Lines”

Written at the peak of the coke frenzy of the ’80s, “White Lines” became a huge smash thanks to its numerous hooks and unforgettable bass riff. It perfectly balances its warning message (in the nagging sample of “Don’t do it!”) with a frenzied energy that re-creates the impatient, jumpy buzz of a cocaine high.

Achtung BJ:

9 lyrics from U2’s Achtung Baby that might be about oral sex

#9 “And you can swallow or you can spit / you can throw it up or choke on it.”

Click here for severed face:

30 disturbingly specific Internet Movie Database keywords

#28 Coma rape (Kill Bill, Talk To Her)

Shoot the whole day down:

22 great songs inspired by heinous true crimes

#9 The Boomtown Rats, “I Don’t Like Mondays”

Given the increasing number of calamitous school shootings, it seems likely that Brenda Spencer’s decision to open fire on an elementary school in 1979 would be largely forgotten if Bob Geldof hadn’t written a song about it. Geldof read the reports of the San Diego spree—the teenage Spencer wounded eight children and killed two school employees—and was struck by her blunt, remorseless, almost whimsical answer when asked why she did it: “I don’t like Mondays,” Spencer told a judge. “This livens up the day.” Using her chilling words as his chorus, Geldof penned a tune driven by arch, hyper-dramatic piano swells, and a true crime classic was born.

Chicken salad between the knees:

16 film and TV characters who know exactly what they’d like to eat

#12 Hank Azaria in The Simpsons’ “The Dumbbell Indemnity”

Poor pitiful bartender Moe can’t get a date to save his life, so when he finally lands one with the girl from the flower stand, he wants to impress her with his ordering skills. “Hey, hey Sabu. I need another magnum of your best champagne here. And bring us the finest food you got, stuffed with the second finest.” (Joke’s on Moe, of course, as the waiter promises lobster stuffed with tacos.)

Got me a movie, I want you to know!:

18 songs about specific films

#8 Harvey Danger, “Carlotta Valdez” (Vertigo)

Harvey Danger’s frenzied, fun look at Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo is also completely unsubtle: It basically re-tells the story (“Kiss Kim Novak where the redwoods grow / I’ll bleach her hair and pretend she didn’t die”) and even hits its high point with the film’s title. “I’ll follow anywhere / that is, until you climb too high / ’Cause I get vertigo.” Not original, to be sure, but it’s fun nonetheless.