No. 2 Top Thing of 2010: F**k You

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Anyone who says any song that came out in 2010 is better than Cee-Lo Green’s “F**k You” is flat-out wrong. And I recognize music is a subjective thing and all that. But this song is objectively amazing. It’s so good that the fact that it’s a Grammy-nominated single with an expletive in its title (and chorus) is not even the most notable thing about the song.

First, there’s the transcendent vocal performance. Cee-Lo, late of the Goodie Mob and Gnarls Barkley, wails out a pitch-perfect breakup song, mixing funny lyrics and believable emotion. The end of the bridge, when he belts, “I still love you!” then segues back into the chorus, that’s… I don’t really have a point to make about that except to say it’s awesome.

The production is sweet, too. The tune is catchy as anything, a modern take on a classic upbeat, summery Motown feel. Nothing fancy, just funky gleeful soul.

It’s so enjoyable and so perfectly poppy that I have to imagine even the parental-advising Tipper Gores of the world would be hard-pressed to react to it any way but tapping their feet and whistling along, ignoring Cee-Lo’s frequent use of the titular four-letter word. Then when it ended, Tipper and her cronies would probably listen to it again, because it’s just that catchy.

And then, the song’s success is in itself a testament to new means of distribution, via downloads and Internet and satellite radio. F**k You could never have become popular on broadcast radio alone because its censored version — “Forget You” — sucks in comparison. Why, if the song is so good and the performance is the same should one little word make such a difference? Because people don’t say, “aww, forget you,” after a bitter breakup. The explicit version feels more authentic, and the juxtaposition between the angry lyrics and the poppy tune is lost when the former are softened.

The song is a monument of awesome weirdness, and its success represents the rare instance when some truly amazing music catches hold in the mainstream. It is nominated for the Grammy for Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Normally, I could hardly care less about the Grammys, but if F**k You wins I’ll gain a lot of respect for the awards.

Oh, and it’s got a sweet video.

No. 3 Top Thing of 2010: Ricobene’s Breaded Steak sandwich

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On Sept. 5, 2010, my life forever changed. I ate a breaded steak sandwich from Ricobene’s in Chicago. Here’s what I wrote a few days later:

When I finished, I stumbled out to the curb, dizzy and delirious. A couple of cops pulled up, and instinct told me to run — I felt like I had just done something illegal. I couldn’t, though. I couldn’t bring myself to leave the front of the restaurant.

I knew I had to leave Chicago the next morning, but I tried to consider ways I could have another breaded steak sandwich before I did. I thought about walking back in and ordering another right then even though the coma was already setting in.

Not knowing what else to do, I tweeted a few nonsensical things. Playing with my phone gave me an excuse to keep standing there.

It started raining. I kept standing there. I knew I probably looked like a crazy person. I didn’t care. I was a crazy person. I was standing outside a restaurant, right next to a live-poultry market and under the freeway overpass, in some odd area of a city I don’t know because I couldn’t tear myself away after eating an inconceivably good sandwich.

Some three and a half months later, my mouth still waters whenever I remember that sandwich. The tender breaded steak, the sweet marinara, the fiery giardiniera, the cheesy cheese. Just thinking about it frustrates me now because I can’t have one whenever I want. I try to think of excuses to get back to Chicago. I’m pushing my wife toward pursuing a residency there. The sandwich was that good.

Sometimes I wonder if I could reproduce it myself at home. I have a deep fryer, after all, and certainly I can make marinara. A bunch of places online will deliver hot giardiniera. After bbilko suggested in the comments section that I make Sept. 5 a TedQuarters holiday, I targeted that as the date I should attempt the sandwich. Problem is I want one sooner. Could I pull it off? Would it even come close to the original?

Doubtful. That was one hell of a sandwich, the best I ate this year and among the best I’ve ever eaten. The only reason it fell to No. 3 on the Top 10 Things is that I only had one of them and I destroyed it so quickly, fleeting wonderment. Also because it set the bar for other sandwiches unreasonably high. Someone please open a Ricobene’s franchise in New York.

No. 4 Top Thing of 2010: Galarraga’s imperfect game

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Baseball’s 2010 regular season featured two perfect games, but arguably the most memorable pitching performance came from 28-year-old righty Armando Galarraga.

Galarraga, you’ll recall, retired the first 26 Cleveland hitters in order on June 2. The 27th, Jason Donald, slapped a soft grounder to the right side of the infield. You know all this: Miguel Cabrera handled it cleanly and fired it to Galarraga, covering first, beating Donald by a step. Umpire Jim Joyce called Donald safe, robbing Galarraga of a perfect game.

Galarraga didn’t argue the call. He smiled instead.

Armando Galarraga is not a great pitcher by Major League standards. He’s not even a good one; he’s just a guy. He won’t make the Hall of Fame, he won’t win the Cy Young Award, and he probably won’t ever make an All-Star Team. But thanks to the whims of the sport and small sample sizes and in part to a brutal Indians lineup, Galarraga had a shot at baseball immortality.

I don’t know Galarraga personally, but I know he was signed by the Expos out of Venezuela when he was 16. And I know he spent seven years kicking around the Minor Leagues before settling in to the Tigers’ rotation in 2008. And then on June 2, he saw before his eyes the culmination of all the work he has certainly endeavored and all the physical toil he has doubtlessly endured: perfection, the ultimate single-game accomplishment for a pitcher. Then it was taken from him, and he only smiled.

Joyce, for his part, watched a replay of the call immediately after the game, admitted he blew it and apologized to Galarraga. Galarraga said he understood.

In the end, Joyce and Galarraga shared something perhaps as rare as a perfect game: Two apparently decent and reasonable human beings behaving in a civilized and understanding manner despite an awful situation.

Roy Halladay’s perfect game further confirmed my knowledge that Roy Halladay is really good. Dallas Braden’s perfect game further exposed Braden’s Happy Gilmore-esque silliness and introduced me to his smack-talking grandma. Armando Galarraga’s near-perfect game reminded me of the human capacity for dignity. It’s hard to imagine a more impressive performance on a baseball field.

No. 5 Top Thing of 2010: I meet Shaq

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I mentioned here that I was meeting Shaq, but I’m not sure I actually confirmed that I met Shaq. I did. It was awesome.

After I reviewed Shaq’s debut as an art curator, an exhibition at the FLAG Art Foundation in Chelsea, someone from FLAG called me and asked if I would come to a walk-thru of the exhibition hosted by Shaq. Duh. Of course I would. They told me the only condition was that I not ask about Shaq’s injured wrist, since he was there to talk about art.

Wait, I thought: Who the hell would ask Shaq about his injured wrist when he’s guiding a tour of his first gallery exhibition? I want to know what Shaq thinks about art!

Turns out the Big Aristotle is something of a post-modernist, and just sort of kept repeating, “Everything is art.” Because — not sure if you’ve noticed — Shaq is extremely tall and speaks in a very low voice, he is extraordinarily difficult to record on a hand-held voice recorder, so I don’t have many more direct quotes. I asked him if he had thought of an art-themed nickname for himself and he said, “Shaqasso.”

Of course, a reasonably prominent ESPN reporter did ultimately ask Shaq about his wrist injury. Though I realize the guy was just doing his job, it annoyed the crap out of me. Here’s one of the sporting world’s most interesting personalities discussing perhaps his most interesting pursuit yet, and you’re asking him a question you can be almost certain he won’t answer in anything more than vagaries. And I recognize that Shaq’s only famous for basketball and if he were just some massive dude curating an art exhibit who hadn’t been one of the top NBA players of the last 20 years I likely wouldn’t have gone. But c’mon, guy. Shaq’s talking about art. Just, c’mon.

All that said, the moment that deserves merit in the TedQuarters Top 10 Things of 2010 is not that reporter’s question, or mine, or even the walk-thru of the gallery. The No. 5 Top Thing of 2010 is stepping off the elevator into the gallery and having one of the FLAG folks say, “Shaq, this is Ted Berg,” and having Shaq shake my hand with his massive left and subwoof, “Hi, Ted, nice to meet you.”

One of the sad things about the combination of getting older and having this job, I think, is that I’ve become a bit jaded about meeting professional athletes. They’re just dudes and all, even if they’re dudes that are really awesome at sports. But because he has been an NBA star since I was 11, because he is that guy that raps and acts and actually works as a sheriff’s deputy and summons people on Twitter and conducts the Boston Pops, and because he is physically so much bigger than me, Shaq made me feel like a giddy grade-schooler. F@#!ing Shaq, bro. It was sweet.

No. 6 Top Thing of 2010: Albert Pujols’ continued existence

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In 2010, Albert Pujols led the National League in home runs, RBI and runs scored. He finished third in on-base percentage, second in slugging and second in OPS and OPS+, and placed second in the National League MVP Award voting. It was something of a down year for him.

I will keep this short because there’s little I can say about Pujols that can’t be told more eloquently by his baseball-reference page. He created some sort of stir this season by showing up at a political/religious rally, but I’m not here to quibble with or judge Albert Pujols for his beliefs. I figure if I were as good at anything as Albert Pujols is at hitting, I’d have a wildly different outlook on just about everything.

Just how good? He is tied with Mickey Mantle for sixth all time in park- and league-adjusted OPS+. The men above him? Ruth, Williams, Bonds, Gehrig, Hornsby.

Pujols will be 31 when 2011 opens, so it’s safe to argue his career rates will ultimately drop off a little bit. Frank Thomas, after all, had a 174 career OPS+ at age 30 and finished his career (some 5000 very good plate appearances later) with a still totally awesome 156 mark.

And Albert Pujols didn’t earn his way onto the TedQuarters Top 10 Things of 2010 by showing signs of his decline. Instead, he maintained his excellent and remarkably consistent level of performance. I could list stats to show the clock-like regularity with which he dominates Major League hitters — he has finished in the top 3 of MVP voting eight times, he has never hit fewer than 30 home runs or driven in fewer than 100 runs, he has only once finished a season with an on-base percentage below .400 (and it was .394) — but again, it’s easier and more effective to defer to the back of his baseball card.

Pujols is in the inner circle of greatest hitters of all time, and we are lucky to be able to enjoy his prime in thrilling HD. Historically great hitters don’t come around all that often, so though it’s safe to say we might see a couple more hitters as good as Pujols in our lifetimes, we probably won’t see a few.

No. 7 Top Thing of 2010: R.A. Dickey

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Duh.

Dickey will be the last Mets-related entry in the TedQuarters Top 10 Things of 2010. I considered including the hiring of Sandy Alderson somewhere, but it seems inappropriate to bestow such a weighty honor upon the decision (and the general manager) until we see the team Alderson constructs play some ballgames and everything.

And R.A. Dickey, certainly the shiniest bright spot in a mostly dark season for the Mets, deserves recognition here. A 35-year-old journeyman with no ulnar collateral ligament, Dickey harnessed the mesmerizing powers of the knuckleball and enjoyed a career season: He posted a 138 ERA+ in 174 1/3 innings, induced a ton of groundballs and kept runners off base. Mixing speeds with his signature pitch, He flummoxed Major League hitters from May to September.

Dickey’s on-field contributions didn’t end there. A ferocious competitor, he swiftly established himself as an excellent defensive pitcher. And at the plate, Dickey posted a .296 on-base percentage, equaling or bettering the season line of five position players in the Mets’ Opening Day lineup (!). Got the bunts down when he had to, put the ball in play when he had to, even smacked a couple of doubles. Just a good baseball player.

All of that, in sum, probably would have been enough to help Dickey crack the Top 10 Things of 2010. We like redemption stories, after all, and in a purely baseball sense his is a great one. Former first-round draft pick develops a knuckleball late in his baseball life, figures it out, dominates.

But then on top of all that, there’s R.A. Dickey the dude. Turns out the Mets’ knuckleballer himself recognizes the universal appeal of the knuckleball. He loves literature and poetry, and he reads before games. His last name is “Dickey.” He would like to be a ball boy at the U.S. Open, but he’s unwilling to part with his beard. He makes an awesome face when he throws. He is accessible to blogger and Burkhardt alike. The guy is a fan’s dream; great story, obvious dedication, interesting fellow.

Still, I’m certain that the most endearing thing about Dickey, to fans, is the outstanding performance in 2010. Moving forward, if Dickey regresses a little bit as the league catches up to him, it will be interesting to see how fans react. Naturally some of us will always have a soft spot in our hearts for a pitcher/poet, but I wonder if, at some point after two lousy starts happen to fall on consecutive outings for Dickey, we’ll have to suffer WFAN callers and incensed Tweeters demanding Dickey take his head out of his Dumas and start watching more game film, or something stupid like that.

For now, though, we can hope that never happens, and that Dickey only continues to baffle opposing hitters and enthrall adoring fans.

No. 8 Top Thing of 2010: Jimmy McMillan

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Fun fact: I hate politics. The whole thing. I sometimes pay attention to it because there are a few current political issues I actually care about and it seems responsible to keep up on them. But if I spend too much time thinking about politics or watching pundits on TV, I grow disgusted. It seems almost certain to me that the large majority of politicians are spineless dirtbags, that our political system is structured to reward spineless dirtbags, and that it is enormously difficult to succeed in politics if you are anything but a spineless dirtbag.

You can say plenty about New York gubernatorial candidate and founder of the Rent is 2 Damn High party Jimmy McMillan, but he’s definitely not spineless and he might very well not be a dirtbag. He’s a guy who believes — accurately — that the rent is too damn high, and who set out to change that. That’s admirable, I think.

But that’s not what places him among the Top 10 Things of 2010. There will be no other well-meaning but ultimately doomed political candidates on the list, and lord knows there are plenty of them to choose from.

Jimmy McMillan is honored here for the gusto he brought to his obviously ill-fated candidacy. First and foremost, the amazing Civil War-era facial hair. The rhyming. Referring to himself as a karate expert. The black gloves. The too-good-to-be-true web site.

McMillan provided us the slim hope that politics might be anything but impossibly boring, bureaucratic and soul-crushing. He somehow made a gubernatorial debate one of the most entertaining televised events of the year.

And, perhaps more than that, he gave us hope. Not hope that someone like him could ever get elected governor, because that’s patently absurd. No, Jimmy McMillan gave us hope that someone like me or you or the craziest person you know might somehow get enough signatures to get our own place on stage at a New York state gubernatorial election, where we can proudly wear ridiculous facial hair and broadcast our karate expertise to the world.

Full disclosure: I voted for Jimmy McMillan. I did it partly because I vote for third-party candidates whenever I can justify it, but mostly because I knew if he got enough votes, the Rent is 2 Damn High Party would be guaranteed a place on New York state ballots for the next four years. And I would like to someday run for president on the Rent is 2 Damn High ticket.

Sadly, McMillan fell short of the 50,000-vote threshold. Doesn’t make him any less awesome, though. And he’ll bounce back. He is, after all, a karate expert.

No. 9 Top Thing of 2010: Luis Hernandez’s tragic home run

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Look: In reality, there were a few solidly awesome Mets moments in 2010, but this will be the only one that makes the TedQuarters Top 10 Things. I could have gone with one of the Ike Davis catches over the rail, or any number of amazing things Angel Pagan did, or Carlos Beltran’s first homer after his return to action. But somehow this seemed a fitting way to eulogize the end of the Omar Minaya Era.

Haters will point out that Luis Hernandez probably shouldn’t have even been playing on Sept. 18. They’ll show you all the evidence that Hernandez wasn’t anything like as deserving of a roster spot as Justin Turner, or anything like a credible Major League hitter. And they’ll complain that in spite of that evidence, Jerry Manuel made the diminutive Venezuelan his de facto starting second baseman for a short while due mostly to one good game in which the Mets scored 18 runs in Chicago.

Haters could also point out that, in fact, Hernandez might not have even been a better hitter than young Ruben Tejada. And they’d say that since Tejada was merely 20 at the time and still could play some role in the Mets’ future, he deserved at-bats to adjust to Major League pitching and audition for 2011.

Haters gonna hate, as they say. And Hernandez’s home run, one pitch after the foul ball that broke his right foot, was tragically heroic. With his front foot broken and Tim Hudson on the mound, with the Mets down 3-1 in the game and long out of the pennant chase, a 5’10” backup infielder with two home runs in 289 prior Major League plate appearances positively crushed one.

I happened to be listening on the radio when it happened, and I wish I could present Howie Rose’s call instead of the one above. I can’t remember it word for word, but he essentially used it to symbolize the Mets’ entire 2010 campaign. To me, it seemed almost a more apt description for Omar Minaya’s entire tenure: The Mets get surprising contributions from an unlikely source, only to have it ultimately go horribly and triumphantly awry.

No. 10 Top Thing of 2010: The Walking Dead

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After The Walking Dead on AMC blew up the Nielsen ratings (relatively), there was a ton of predictable backlash. Critics pointed out that the dialogue was wooden, a lot of the acting was bad, and many of the plotlines were more or less cliched in the zombie genre. Guy wakes up from a coma in the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse? That’s 28 Days Later. Saw it. Pretty good.

All that stuff is true, but the show is still ridiculously awesome, and well deserving of the esteemed ranking of 10th best thing of 2010.

First of all, zombie drama. Just when you thought great meta-zombie movies like Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland might spell the logical conclusion to convincing and unironic zombie horror, here comes The Walking Dead to breathe new life into the genre. By stretching out many of the typical zombie plot elements into a serial drama, the show can add an emotional timbre rarely felt in the inevitable now-you-have-to-shoot-your-zombie-family scenes.

Second, zombie killing. Damn. I have no idea what the makeup and effects budget for the show must be like or how they’re pulling it off, but The Walking Dead presents some downright grisly and most awesome zombie destruction. I’ve never read the comic book upon which the show is based so I’m not if this is from the original story or just an adaptation for the TV show, but making it so the zombies are attracted to loud noises is an amazing twist. If human characters are reluctant to use guns, they have to find all sorts of more creative ways to kill zombies, like baseball bats and crossbows and shovels.

The Walking Dead also nails the appropriate level of zombie competence. The zombies are still idiots and incapable of organizing or anything like that, but their numbers are great enough and they are hungry enough to figure out a way to come get you if you give them enough time. That’s important, keeping you on the edge of your seat and everything.

And mostly, despite some issues in characterization and dialogue, the plots are good enough to force you to put yourself in the same situation, like the best episodes of Lost often did. I’ve always held that one of life’s most important moral and ethical questions is when to shoot your loved one once you know he or she has been infected by zombies. Do you do it right away, because you don’t want your girlfriend to suffer the pain of becoming a zombie and because you yourself couldn’t handle seeing her like that? Or do you wait until your father becomes a zombie, risking further zombie contact but avoiding the burden of having to shoot your dad while he’s still a breathing, functional human?

Oh, the other important element it shares with Lost is the forced group dynamic. The only thing the characters on The Walking Dead have in common is that they’re not yet zombies. But they’re forced to work together, with leaders emerging and roles in the group developing, because it’s their best way to survive.

Just about every time I get on the subway, I size up everyone else in the car and imagine my role in the group if we somehow got teleported somewhere and separated from society. Could I be the leader-guy? Who would stand in my way? Who would be my love interest? I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person who does that, so I suspect the show taps into something about the way we self-identify.

Also important: Your life before the zombie apocalypse has little bearing on your position in the group, other than the ways in which it prepared you to defend yourself from zombies. You might be a crazy backwoods white-supremacist redneck, but if you know how to operate a crossbow and cook squirrel meat then you’re a pretty valuable dude to have around. The best character on the show is Glenn, a pizza-delivery boy turned dope zombie-killing strategist. Glenn’s apparently really awesome at figuring out the best routes to get places, which is probably related to skills you’d develop delivering pizzas.

And since the show has no set end date, you know eventually if it continues long enough, Glenn’s gonna turn into a zombie. That’s going to be so messed up! Will Rick shoot Glenn? Can he shoot Glenn, after all the respect he has earned saving lives and destroying zombies?

People sometimes say that the quality of television programming is declining. That’s a blog post for another day, but it’s the furthest thing from the truth. More channels means more options means more specialized programming and more competition, which means more righteous zombie kills on Sunday nights. The end.