Illustration by James McHugh

Top 5 of the Moment

by Daniel McQuade

For a product almost every human over age 3 uses, people don’t seem to care what brand of toilet paper they wipe their ass with. No one writes reviews of toilet paper. That means I can be the Lester Bangs of toilet paper. Okay, let’s do this: Cottonelle Ultra Double Rolls is simply fantastic. It doesn’t chafe. It’s two-ply, but doesn’t clog the toilet. It might be the greatest item in my apartment. Cottonelle Ultra Double Rolls really brought me through a dark period. Now all I need is a reader to correspond with me on a regular basis and grow up to be a filmmaker. And then a future Academy Award-winner can portray me in a movie 30 years down the line. Awesome.

Cab Drivers Who Listen to NPR

A week ago I hailed a cab with my friend. When we got in she grabbed my arm. “NPR,” she whispered. This was the second ride in a row where the cabbie was listening to National Public Radio. We’d already discussed what makes NPR the best background noise (with the possible exception of Harry Kalas) for a cab ride. Maybe the soothing drone makes the drive a little safer. Maybe we just want our worldview affirmed. But whether it’s Marty Moss-Coane, the fantastic Marketplace or just plain old Morning Edition, listening to NPR in a warm cab during winter might be the best transportation experience in existence.

Joe Mathlete Explains Marmaduke

Scientists have been baffled for years by the existence of Marmaduke. Despite more than 50 years of the same gag (Marmaduke sure is a big goofy dog!), the cartoon appears in more than 600 newspapers around the world, including the Daily News. Is there a more subtle subtext? Joe Mathlete writes a blog (marmadukeexplained.blogspot.com) where he deciphers Marma-duke for the rest of us. Okay, so lots of times the explanation is simply, “Marmaduke is an asshole” (T-shirts are coming), but that doesn’t stop Mathlete’s blog from being the funniest on the Internet.

Wario Ware: Smooth Moves

This is rather simple. The video game has disco-dancing kitty cats and puppy dogs. It is, to my knowledge, the first game with both disco-dancing kitty cats and disco-dancing puppy dogs. (Galaga had only kitties.) Disco-dancing kitty cats and puppy dogs have been proven by independent studies—conducted by me, in my apartment, with a buddy—to be the cutest thing ever. Therefore Wario Ware: Smooth Moves is a logical purchase for any Nintendo Wii owner. It’s science. The game is a series of “microgames,” which last less than three seconds or so, done in succession. It sounds kind of pointless, but once you use the Wii remote to count to 10 as the referee in Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!!, shake up a bottle of champagne and then uncork it, you’ll realize just what a treat this game is. Along with Wii Sports, it’s one of the first games for the new system to really take advantage of the Wii’s innovative controller for a whole new, ridiculously fun gaming experience. But whatever. I know I had you at “disco-dancing kitty cats and puppy dogs.”

Y: The Last Man

It’s the classic male daydream: What would you do if you were the last man on earth? Usually the answer is some sort of half-joking reply about having sex with everything that moves. (Though I guess you could afford to be picky.) But what about a last man on earth who doesn’t have sex with his pick of supermodels? That’s the idea behind Brian K. Vaughn’s monthly comic Y: The Last Man. It follows Yorick Brown, a failed magician who inexplicably survives when every other living organism with a Y chromosome dies instantly. While Yorick isn’t celibate, he’s mostly concerned about his girlfriend Beth, who’s in Australia. This is a typical guy response: All the women in the world to himself, and Yorick wants one who’s halfway across the world. But Y isn’t really about sex; it looks at our entire culture through the eyes of the last man. As the book heads toward its conclusion—it’s slated to end at about 60 issues, which should be sometime at the end of this year or the beginning of next—it’s gotten stronger. Vaughn is really starting to hit his stride.