It had never occurred to me until a few weeks ago, but it is absolutely true: My life is, to an alarming degree, governed by a series of checklists. I guess I've sort of always been vaguely aware of this. What other conclusion can you draw about a guy who, at seven years old, was able to recite all of the presidents in order? I knew that at ten years old, what hooked me on baseball was not the peanuts and crackerjacks, not the home-runs and strikeouts, but the batting line-ups. Nine members of the team, each in their proper place: nothing could have made more sense to my third grade brain. (Ask me the lineup fielded by the Red Sox at the first major league game I attended in 1991. I remember it down to the starting pitcher, Tom Bolton.) At around the same time, my favorite book was probably James and The Giant Peach by Roald Dahl but a close second was probably The Big Book of Animal Records, a quasi-reference book for children, richly illustrated with busy two-page spreads featuring the 100 Heaviest or 100 Fastest Animals all, improbably, cohabiting the same environment. I got this book as a Hannukah present from my second cousins when I was about eight and I think my parents took it for granted that it would gather dust in the basement - only, it didn't. As well as I remember the talking grasshopper from the James and The Giant Peach, I remember that the tortoise lives longer than any other animal on earth. Shocking, isn't it?
But I don't think I was conscious of the role of lists in my twenty-eight-year-old life until recently. My friend visited my apartment for the first time and, after browsing around the bookshelves commented, "Wow, you are really into lists." As proof he directed me to the many "Best of" and "Top 10" style books I owned. I had to concede he was right: I have a ton of them. At the moment, sitting at my desk, I am within eye-shot of the following titles: 1000 Places to See Before You Die, 1000 Places in the USA and Canada to See Before You Die, 101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out, The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books, and two Washingtonian Issues: "DC's Best Restaurants" and "DC's Top Bars." On my internet browser, I have bookmarks for AFI's Top 100 Films and Modern Library's Top 100 Novels. Adorning the bulletin boards of my classroom (I'm a high school teacher), where other teachers have motivational posters or pictures of Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, I have "Mr. Barron's Top 25 Movies" and an unusual list I became fascinated with at some point last year: 100 Best Last Lines from Novels.
When I have a free weekend to take a road trip, a free couple hours to watch a movie, a free hour here and there to pick up a novel, I immediately consult one of several lists. Is this behavior compulsive or neurotic? I'm not sure, but I'm relatively certain I'm not alone in my fascination for lists. I have no statistics to back this up, but I always see stacks of 1000 Places to See Before You Die when I enter Barnes and Noble - sometimes alongside spin-offs that I don't own (but should own), containing lists of must-experience-at-some-point movies and books and symphonies. So here is my proposal: whenever I cross any item off of any of my aforementioned lists, I plan to document it here along with an account of my personal experience with it, and perhaps an answer to the question of whether in my opinion it deserves to be on the list. In many ways, this is a blog for the indecisive. A quick search for DC Food blogs reveals dozens of hits. Same with blogs about books and, predictably, blogs about movies. This is a blog about all of the above.
Start Blog. Check.
Oh my goodness! I think lists run in the family. One of my favorite books as a child was Richard Scarry's Best Book Ever, which is essentially an illustrated collection of categorical lists of things in a child's world, such as things in the kitchen, vehicles, animals and winter clothes. Who knew we shared this gene?
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