100 things I hate about you

Since 2000, I’ve had fun skewering pop culture with the annual 100 Most Annoying Things list on my entertainment Web site RetroCrush (at www.retrocrush.com). As a longtime Sacramento resident, I often find local items of anguish I want to spotlight, but they would be lost on the national crowd that reads my site. This year—after begging, coercion and a promise to scrub out the SN&R toilets—I’m finally able to share a special locals-only list of Sacramento’s most annoying things (see the sidebar, “No place like home”), as well as a random sampling of 2005’s 100 Most Annoying Things list. If I haven’t already convinced you that I’m more annoying than everything in this piece, feel free to visit RetroCrush and see the rest of the list.

100 Wikipedia
The world’s best online encyclopedia—if you want to learn that Bigfoot got Hitler pregnant in 1876 while writing the Little House on the Prairie series and shooting JFK with a bullet made out of Charles Lindbergh’s teeth.

96 Fred Phelps
If this extremely homophobic Baptist preacher read the original Hebrew scripture more carefully, he might find the exact translation of his favorite phrase is actually “God hates Fred!”

94 Anna Nicole Smith
Putting Anna on this list is like saying lemons are sour. She lost a ton of weight with TrimSpa, but unfortunately her special celebrity formula with souvenir razor blade and mirror isn’t available to the general public.

92 Johnny Cash’s death
Sure, it happened two years ago, but it still doesn’t make it suck any less. Though he did an admirable acting job in Walk The Line, Joaquin Phoenix is no substitute. Rock on, Johnny!

90 Anne Rice
Having finally exhausted the vampire genre, she’s moved on to writing books about 2,000-year-old zombies.

88 Bluetooth earpieces
Watching legions of undead corporate slaves walk around with cellular-phone Borg implants hanging out of their ears is a sad thing indeed.

86 iPod accessories
Though I can understand paying $300 for a top-of-the-line iPod, I draw the line at paying $30 for iPod Socks to put them in! When your iPod is dressed more warmly than some homeless guy, something’s very wrong.

82 Black Eyed Peas
These hacks are bigger sellouts than the Xbox 360. Enjoy their upcoming CD, Songs that Will Be Used to Advertise Crap.

79 Doom
Why the never-ending quest to make movies out of video games? Before long, we’ll be watching Pong: The Motion Picture.

76 MySpace.com
Because there just wasn’t enough room at LiveJournal.com for self-obsessed attention whores to show off to the world.

74 Nick and Jessica
A thousand years from now, archaeologists will look at our news publications and figure this celebrity duo was king and queen of the world. Why anyone is interested in these empty-headed morons is a mystery. I’m against the Patriot Act, but I’d be willing to sacrifice some civil liberties to permit the government to put anyone who ever bought a Jessica Simpson record on a special island and do some bomb testing. Not only would it collectively increase the nation’s IQ, but also we’d stick it to Wal-Mart by getting rid of 80 percent of its customer base.

72 Cedric the Entertainer
Why hasn’t somebody sued him for false advertising yet?

69 Orlando Bloom
If he’s not a gay elf, I don’t want to see him in an action film! Ridley Scott trading down from Russell Crowe to Orlando Bloom with Kingdom of Heaven is like recasting Spartacus with Burt Ward.

67 Corey Clark
So you slept with Paula Abdul. Get in line, buddy!

64 Cellular-phone contracts
We’ve become a nation of indentured servants, signing gigantic two-year deals with ridiculously high fees for early cancellation. All for a shitty camera phone with Hilary Duff ring tones.

63 Supermodels
I’ll never understand the obsession with these skinny freakish zombies. In comic books, you need special powers to be called “super.” Apparently, the power to live on a diet of cocaine and saliva is enough for these gals to achieve that status.

62 50 Cent
Nothing says gangsta like your own flavor of Vitamin Water. Maybe it’s better to die tryin’ after all.

61 Kabbalah
When your religion gets an energy drink named after it, perhaps it’s time to rethink your beliefs.

60 Nicole Richie
You know you have issues when your autobiography weighs more than you do.

59 Automated campaign calls
Also known as “robo calls,” these prerecorded messages from politicians and celebrities pollute answering machines across America during election time. I never thought I’d see the day when I missed telemarketing calls.

58 Survivor
After 11 seasons and no deaths, it’s time to up the ante on this formulaic bore. CBS needs to spice things up and set the next episode in Iraq.

46 Philip Morris anti-smoking commercials
Want kids to stop smoking? Stop showing commercials with kids saying how uncool it is and show Bea Arthur in a thong smoking a pack of Newports and exclaiming how cool cigs really are. Either that or stop making cigarettes.

41 Enzyte ads
When a guy has trouble getting erections, he should deal with it the old-fashioned way and buy a new Hummer.

40 Rob Schneider
It saddens me to think there were people looking forward to seeing Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo. On opening weekend, it was out-grossed by an art film of Jm. J. Bullock playing solitaire.

38 The Six Flags guy
Is there such a shortage of real old guys that Six Flags has to use this latex-makeup-covered freak in its commercials?

36 Adult Harry Potter fans
The Harry Potter books are fine to read—when you’re 12 years old! Actually, I just put this here to see how much hate mail I’ll get from stupid people who just skim the list. I enjoy reading the books and wish J.K. Rowling was my sugar mommy.

35 Customer-service voice-response lines
Not content with letting you push buttons, most company-service numbers require you to shout answers at a menu of options. “Wait a minute … I think you said, ‘Yuck Foo.’ … Is that correct?”

33 Dakota Fanning
One of my biggest laughs this year was hearing that a local film critic shouted, “If I have to watch one more movie with that ugly, no talent, bucktoothed jack-o’-lantern, I’m going to scream!” She’s a fine enough actress, but she’s managed to guest-star in every single film of the year. I think I even saw her in my 1987 high-school-graduation video.

32 Movies about giant-sized families
I don’t get the fascination with movies like Cheaper by the Dozen 2 and the 18-kid remake of Yours, Mine & Ours. Look for Disney’s upcoming Sweet Lord, My Uterus Exploded! (starring Dakota Fanning, of course).

26 Thanksgiving news broadcasts
This just in! Airports are crowded, and traffic is really bad on Thanksgiving Day!

17 Awareness bracelets
Whoops! The yellow dye in those LiveStrong bracelets causes cancer. Sorry folks!

10 “Hollaback Girl”
I liked this song better the first time, when it was called “Mickey!”

8 Bird flu
Frankly, they’ve crapped on my car one too many times, so I’m all for it! Watch for Fred Phelps’ extreme followers to explain that this is God’s punishment for gay birds.

7 Biased flood coverage
Much was made about the black “looters” and white “gatherers” in the media’s coverage of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath, but why wasn’t there outcry about the unfair portrayal of failed lesbians as the source of the flooding? Calling them “dykes” on national TV was pretty harsh.

4 Brad Pitt
How good are things going for you when you have to choose to stay with Jennifer Aniston or hook up with Angelina Jolie? Of course, hooking up with the ex-lover of Billy Bob Thornton without consulting a hazmat crew is asking for it.

3 Aruba kidnap victim Natalee Holloway
The media were never more racist than when covering this missing white Alabama teen. News channels reported her disappearance around the clock, while Hispanic woman Carmen Sandiego remains missing with no media attention whatsoever.

1 Hurricanes
They proved to be mighty inconvenient this year, to say the least. Hopefully next year’s deadly locust plagues and rivers of blood will help us forget it all.