Today, with Avatar and Carrie Underwood's Christmas Special still unseen, the first lists are in. Time Out New York gets ahead of the pack with a Top 50 Movies of the Decade list and the Hollywood Reporter is calling it a wrap on the ten best TV series of the past ten years.

What early conclusions can we draw about our decade based on the first two lists? Well, we may not have liked to see entertainment about the Iraq War, but it would seem our entertainment was a lot like the Iraq War: long, drawn out and very dark. And for the listers of Time Out, not filled with two many words.

On both the film and TV lists, big, heavy, bleak slow-moving dramas dominate: There Will Be Blood, Dogville, The New World, Zodiac, The Sopranos, The Shield, 24, Damages. A lot of fine works in that list but the citizens of tomorrow will certainly look back on the artists of the 00's and say, boy, that must've been a fun crowd to hang around with.

On the other end of the pendulum however, when the decade tried to lighten up the results were almost more depressing. The lists are heavy on the affected zaniness that passed for free-spirited in the past decade; movies and shows which were distinguished by their uses of trippy twists and free-floating design and characterization. Mulholland Drive, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I'm Not There, I Heart Huckabees, Inglorious Bastards, Modern Family. Again, some fine works in that list but the collective sense our outer space visitors will take away when they find them is, these people really were trying to hard to be "special" weren't they?

But this is just where the list-making begins and its hard to judge a decade by its first two Best Of Lists. The next five weeks may reveal untold wonders from the depths of our past ten years.

They ranked Fresno the stupidiestest:

"These people are here living their lives and doing the very best they can. They shouldn't be put down like this," said a lady in a bookstore.

They ranked my hometown, Vegas, right above Fresno. They haven't won any Pulitzers in the last few weeks, but they do have a UNLV professor who thinks The Daily Beast is right.

An English professor at UNLV, the 70-year-old Hickey considers those criteria and says, "Well, honestly, (the low ranking) is because the school graduates losers. It graduates people to middle management.

Go Rebels. San Antonio was next:

The Mensas at The Daily Beast are banking that you will get bent, click through to their site, read the rankings and let the Daily Beast reap the harvest of epic page views. They make you mad, you give them page views, and they scoop up the ad revenue. Trouble is, I didn't include the link, and I'm not going to include it. The Daily Beast can bite my ass. If they think I'm sending page views their way, they're not that smart.

Power to the people (and Google). Further up the list, Phoenix proved how astute they are with this cynical assessment of The Daily Beast:

The Daily Beast is one of those websites that summarizes what's on the internet on any given day.

while Houston trotted out some issues. The headline: "The Daily Beast: Houston — You Are 'Mildly Retarded.'"

Raleigh-Durham was cited as America's supreme genius city; profoundly retarded Fresno, with an IQ of 6, was listed as the dumbest. Austin was the highest-ranked Texas city, but you probably knew that already. It always comes out on top in these kinds of things.

What about the "winners?" In Raleigh, the mayor trotted out a press line. One comment on a website:

Obvious from this story that our diversity-driven schools are a complete failure.

Not much else. Seventh-place Seattle, pissed:

It's hard not to suspect some brainless methodology — considering the facts.

And New York, you're lucky number 13. A Google News search for reactions turned up virtually nothing, locally.

The lesson? America's slightly insecure, but we're not exactly a country divided. A general consensus proves that lists like these are inaccurate, pro-perception, anti-reality, useless, and that we—and I—are stupider for dignifying them. Sorry.

[Jasper Johns' Map, 1963, via MoMA]

Lists like these, which Forbes' crack researchers based on "visibility—by press mentions—and the size of the organization or country these women lead," are a priori useless linkbait. But this particular iteration, which separates the two female Supreme Court justices by six slots (why? Ruth Bader Ginsburg's longer tenure doesn't grant her more votes than Sonia Sotomayor), is particularly hilarious.

Here's how Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and the Queen of England stack up against Susan Chambers, the executive vice president in charge of Wal-Mart's "global people division":

Also, Bill Gates' wife Melinda is more powerful than both Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

If you're going to just make up a list like this based on nothing, shouldn't it at least make intuitive sense? Here's the thinking that went into it:

Forbes' Power Women list isn't about celebrity or popularity; it's about influence. Queen Rania of Jordan (No. 75), for instance, is perhaps the most listened-to woman in the Middle East; her Twitter feed has 600,000 followers.

Kim Kardashian has 1.9 million Twitter followers. WHY WAS SHE DENIED? Does Angela Merkel even use Twitter!?!?

While the increasing likelihood that someone has eschewed new music in favor of retreating into the nostalgic coziness of her iPod has made the idea of a genre-spanning "summer jam" less and less likely through the years, New Yorkers do have a somewhat dubious advantage when it comes to songs of the hottest season: Our lack of reliance on cars, which results in us actually having to hear ambient noise that we haven't picked after endless scouring of file-sharing sites our completely legally acquired musical libraries. Below, seven tracks that you will likely be subjected to should you decide to spend headphone-free time in the city's agora.

1. Flo Rida, "Sugar"

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The Sunshine State-repping MC has figured out a way to escape one-hit wonderdom: Egregiously "interpolate" the most annoying hits of the past, and employ singers almost more anonymous-sounding than Flo while doing so. Mr. Rida has followed the success of "Right Round," which rode the hook of Dead Or Alive's "You Spin Me Round" to record sales on iTunes, pretty ingeniously, releasing a track will have sane people everywhere on an as-instant-as-possible hunt for its hook's source material, so as to eradicate it from their brains / answer their synapses' incessant braying of "what was that?" And you thought you'd never have to think of Eiffel 65 again.

2. Kris Allen, "No Boundaries"

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Sure, the American Idol coronation song is dreck that newly minted judge Kara DioGuardi probably penned in hopes of finally severing ties with the show, which put her through a season-long hazing that ended in her revealing her ribcage to America on Wednesday night. But the playlists of the adult-contemporary stations that blare into your local Duane Reade are notoriously sclerotic, and new songs have to generally have a non-musical hook—hello, shiny crown sitting on the head of this year's sweetly smiling Idol victor—to even make it onto even the wee hours' playlists. Get ready to climb hurricane mountains and travel nowhere roads every time you need deodorant!

3. Jeremih, "Birthday Sex"

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R. Kelly's recent efforts have been subpar—hey, he's distracted—but this track from R & B newcomer Jeremih, which centers on the idea of giving good loving in honor of one's natal anniversary, can certainly, ahem, slide into the "Ignition (Remix)" void.

4. Black Eyed Peas, "Boom Boom Pow"

You are probably already sick of the Black Eyed Peas' minimalistish new single—and its remixes, and its attendant HP-advertisement video, and Pepsi's insistence that lead Pea will.i.am is our generation's Bob Dylan, and Fergie's crazed eyebrows, and that whole dumb hologram thing. But that's the whole point of the Black Eyed Peas, really. In that way, they represent America in 2009 better than any other pop-cultural entity.

5. Cobra Starship feat. Leighton Meester, "Good Girls Go Bad"

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Previous efforts by these dayglo-drenched synth-rockers have been too smart for the degraded landscape of late-decade pop by half, but the presence of Gossip Girl's Leighton Meester on this track should at least attract the ears of people waiting for her star vehicle's season-three premiere. (Personally, I prefer her co-star's efforts, but I also thought L7 was better than Roxette back in the day.)

6. Passion Pit, "Sleepyhead"

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Sure, it's more likely that you'll hear this in a bar than at your local Fresh-blaring bodega—but then again, it's only been 10 years since LeN's "Steal My Sunshine" ruled the pools, and it sure would be nice for a similarly left-fieldish hit to make an inroad or two into the black pits of yarl that are rock radio's everyday playlists.

7. Cage The Elephant, "Ain't No Rest For The Wicked"

Anyone who has nostalgia for the 1990s to the point where they wish that the decade would "come back" would do well to listen to this effort by Kentucky outfit Cage The Elephant, which sounds kind of like what would happen if the Butthole Surfers' "Pepper" were rewritten by members of Asher Roth's frat. Between this and the double-barrelled reunions of Limp Bizkit and Creed, we might be better off looking toward the future as a rule.

Honorable Mention: Journey, "Don't Stop Believing"

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What was that about looking forward? Oh, right. Well, this track was just resurrected by the cast of Glee—and let's face it, it pretty much trumps every other song on this list.

The British Home Office released a list of 16 people banned since October so that everyone knew exactly what sort of things the English don't cotton to.

"If people have so clearly overstepped the mark in terms of the way not just that they are talking but the sort of attitudes that they are expressing to the extent that we think that this is likely to cause or have the potential to cause violence or inter-community tension in this country, then actually I think the right thing is not to let them into the country in the first place. Not to open the stable door then try to close it later," Ms Smith said.

Now it may seem a bit odd to place right-wing talk show host Michael Savage on a list with the leaders of a Russian skinhead gang who've killed at least 20 people, but just because in our nation he is considered perfectly acceptable for nationally syndicated radio doesn't mean he's not just as extreme and bigoted as your average workaday Hamas MP. And Savage tends to be just a bit nuttier than the rest of the talk radio pack, though Glenn Beck is really trying his best.

But here in America we give you a pass on this sort of thing if you say "just kidding I am but a mere entertainer" every so often.

Before reading the list of the magazine's Top 25 (helpfully transcribed by Slashfilm), we advise you to take a deep breath and maybe finish off that rum and coke you've snuck into your Diet Pepsi can. Ready?

1. Steven Spielberg
2. Peter Jackson
3. Martin Scorsese
4. Christopher Nolan
5. Steven Soderbergh
6. Ridley Scott
7. Quentin Tarantino
8. Michael Mann
9. James Cameron
10. Joel and Ethan Coen
11. Guillermo del Toro
12. David Fincher
13. Tim Burton
14. Judd Apatow
15. Sam Raimi
16. Zack Snyder
17. Darren Aronofsky
18. Danny Boyle
19. Clint Eastwood
20. Ron Howard
21. Ang Lee
22. Paul Thomas Anderson
23. Paul Greengrass
24. Pedro Almodóvar
25. Jon Favreau

We told you to finish that drink. Yes, indeed, that is Zack Snyder and Jon Favreau you see up there. "How could we not include the man who gave us Zooey Deschanel and Will Ferrell singing 'Baby, It's Cold Outside'?" EW asks in its writeup of Favreau. Oh...by, say, not putting his name on the list, maybe? Don't get us wrong, we liked Iron Man too, but this Top 25 is so heavily weighted toward action and fantasy directors that it might as well have been compiled by a thirteen-year-old from Boise whose mom just started letting him watch rated-R movies.

We were surprised that EW didn't include the worthy choice and absolute, obvious gimme of Sofia Coppola in its Top 25, and then we heard that there was an extended list of the directors ranked 26-50. Pour a little more rum, why don't you?

26. Woody Allen
27. Brad Bird
28. David Cronenberg
29. Sofia Coppola
30. Bryan Singer
31. Sam Mendes
32. Mel Gibson
33. The Wachowski Bros.
34. J.J. Abrams
35. Alfonso Cuaron
36. Hayao Miyazaki
37. Mike Leigh
38. Oliver Stone
39. Roman Polanski
40. Spike Jonze
41. Richard Linklater
42. Spike Lee
43. David Lynch
44. Wong Kar-Wai
45. Wes Anderson
46. Mira Nair
47. Andrew Stanton
48. Michael Moore
49. Mary Harron
50. Sidney Lumet

Oh look: foreigners! They do exist. Also, apparently you can be one of the greatest working directors today (greater, at least, than David Lynch or Wong Kar-Wai) if, like J.J. Abrams, your only feature credit thus far is Mission: Impossible 3.

By the way, Jane Campion hates you, EW. And she never liked Twilight, either!

• Woody Allen and Miyazaki Not Included on EW's 25 Greatest Active Film Directors List [/film]

Will Leitch - "rose to fame as the editor of Deadspin, the world's biggest independent sports blog"

Owen Thomas - "best known as the editor of Valleywag...infamous [!]"

Brian Lam - "man behind the curtain at one of the biggest blogs in the world—gadget site Gizmodo"

Our writers appear with other Internet notables and fameseekers: Matt Drudge, Seth Godin, Perez Hilton, Kevin Rose, etc.

Number one is Paul Krugman, who is so influential that he never supported Obama in the primaries and continues to use his blog to impotently push for a bigger eceonomic stimulus plan without tax cuts. The Obama Economic Team has steadfastly ignored the Nobel-winning economist, which is why Krugman is a guy to watch this term!

Hah, and number four? It's Flat-Earther Thomas Friedman, the third-grader who somehow ended up with a successful career as a pundit and author. The Forbes summary of his importance is perhaps more correct than they realize, in a scary way:

Behind the seemingly glib sound bites lie opinions that are genuinely influential among the educated, tome-reading public and the Washington establishment.

Simple-minded powerful people enjoy the simple-minded work of this mustachioed free-trader, which is why we are doomed. At least Tommy now cares about the Global Warming, or something, apparently.

We're shocked. America elected Barack Obama for one reason and one reason only: it was impossible to place his name in a list of names of disreputable people, without context, and get away with it. It turns out, though, that is is very possible to just rattle off a list of scary and bad names of people and pretend they all have relevant connections to our president-elect that we should be concerned about! That's not change you can believe in! That's change you can make insinuations about without having to provide any evidence of wrongdoing! So please enjoy this video of Chris Matthews, Ann Coulter, what's-her-head from The View, Rudy Giuliani, Hannity's neck, and others.

Now you try: Obama, Khalidi, Richardson, Burris, Wright, Ayers, Blagojevich, Kraven the Hunter, Hussein, Malia, Pelosi, Bush, Mxyzptlk, Shmoo Snook.

(Video: Brian Colgan)

1. Mark Penn The world's worst pollster delivered Bill Clinton the White House in 1996, you know, when he ran against a literal wooden board in a suit named Bob Dole, so obviously Penn was well-qualified to organize the series of damaging turf wars that was the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, a squabbling joke of smears and slap-dash message reinvention. He charged her a zillion dollars to lose and everyone in the world hates him. Of course he is releasing a book about these little demographic groups he makes up and he is also a columnist at a famous newspaper, the Wall Street Journal.

2. Bill Kristol Bill is also a columnist for a famous newspaper, the New York Times. He invented Sarah Palin. He is a sad pathetic moron whose shame at his own intellectual dishonesty occasionally threatens to break through the surface of his constant lying, to himself and to the nation, about everything. He will probably not be a columnist at the Times for very much longer but he does still have his very own Rupert Murdoch magazine, and his last name.

3. Mark Halperin Mark Halperin used to write a little blog for ABC called "The Note," and it was a terrible thing that was in some part responsible for how bankrupt and idiotic the beltway press was during the late '90s and early 2000s. Then he left to go write a blog for Time and now no one pays attention to him, thank god. But he still writes bad books, like his one a couple years ago about how The Way To Win was to worship Matt Drudge and Karl Rove and Be a Republican. The week John McCain said "the fundamentals of our economy are strong," and finally lost the damn election for good, Halperin blogged that Senator McCain "http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/18/mark-halperin-somehow-con_n_127512.html?page=3">won the week. He will keep his well-paying job at Time forever, or until somewhere else hires him to do the same thing, which is be wrong 100% of the time. Also he'll release a book with someone smarter than him and he'll go on conservative talk radio to fellate Hugh Hewitt as Hewitt bloodies him with a bullwhip, sexily, again.

4. Jeff Jarvis The entertainment journalist who got internet famous for blogging about batteries or something is now the official overpaid consultant of saving the newsmedia, even though he doesn't really know what reporters do (he is pretty sure they should blog about batteries or something). If you give him $1,000 and fly him to Qatar he'll save your newspaper, with a panel discussion.

5. Wolf Blitzer and everyone else at CNN. Wolf basically represents everything wrong with CNN. He just makes noises. Meaningless syllables. He fills up time, so much time, with these nonsense syllables, saying nothing, at all, ever. And CNN this year sucked. Anderson Cooper's show is ratings-grabbing fluff nonsense. The Magic Wall iPhone election map thing is stupid. The fucking holograms! Campbell Brown accepts no bullshit, stop bullshitting Campbell Brown. Oh, and they still let Lou Dobbs fear-monger every day for what seems like three hours of hate. Ugh. Go away, CNN.

6. Steve Schmidt This is kind of a no-brainer, because he lost a presidential election, which is a sure way to make it on one of these lists, but the extent of his failure is still kinda under-appreciated. He destroyed the brand of the Republican party's formerly most sellable asset, Senator Johnny Maverickseed, and hence crippled the party for at least two years. Hah. He is the man on this list most likely to be at least underemployed in 2009, though he won't go hungry.

7. Jimmy Fallon Jimmy can stand in for Jay Leno and Ben Silverman and everyone else at NBC. They have two good scripted sitcoms, and the rest is nonstop garbage. And now this once-forgotten nobody gets Letterman's old show! And national nightmare Jay Leno will be on every day at 10 pm! And Conan will be shipped out to LA in order to become bland and unappealing! 2009 will be a bad year for not wanting to shoot your television set.

8. Robert Rubin and everyone who has ever worked for him. Rubin broke the economy, and trained a new generation of democratic finance-wizards who helped break the pieces of the economy into smaller pieces, and then he went to work for Citigroup, where he still draws a nice fucking salary, after shepherding through legislation that allowed for the creation of Citigroup, a massive financial services conglomerate that also broke the economy, this year. Everyone who worked for him will now fix the economy with their fancy new jobs in Barack Obama's administration.

9. Michael Bloomberg Go away, old man, we're sick of you.

10. Everyone in New York By "everyone in New York" we mean, obviously, the type of people who actually think they represent "everyone in New York," which means people in media, finance, the "arts," publishing, and whatever the hell people who read blogs do all day, for a living. Not the "everyone in New York" that includes people who live in, like Staten Island or whatever. No, the ones who watch Gossip Girl. Basically all of these people should be unemployed, next year.

Special Bonus "Never Ever Get Fired" Award

Tribune Company Innovation Chief Lee Abrams He is an insane person and every dollar spent on him is a dollar wasted, by a bankrupt company, but he is a treat, and we would miss his memos.

10) The Hills, MTV's reality muck about TV and the sad things it does to young people, is full of faux-existential angst that's fun to write about, to be sure. But it's also terrible, terrible, terrible and worst of all doesn't seem to show any signs that it's ending, ever.

9) The Mentalist—a show about a fake psychic (he's really just super-observant!) that's a rip-off of an even terribler show, Psych—was this season's only new breakout hit TV series. It's on CBS of course. Sigh.

8) The Office kind of stopped being as funny. I mean, didn't it? Do you worry about things like: How sustainable is the credibility of the idea that this "documentary film crew" has been following these people for four years? I try not to. But, y'know, Ricky Gervais mighta been onto something with that whole two seasons only thing.

7) John Leguizamo and Jeremy Piven not knowing their lines on Broadway. They were both in David Mamet plays—Leguizamo as the fast-talkin', foul mouthed Teach in American Buffalo; Piven as the fast-talkin', foul mouthed Hollywood suit in Speed the Plow—and it was such an agony watching them struggle to find their words. Like, they're being paid a lotta money here. To not bother to learn the script is just rude.

6) Kath & Kim. Not that it's awful, that you're not watching it. It's actually kind of funny once you get used to its weirdness.

5) That Fred Armisen's spot-on Barack Obama impression on Saturday Night Live was maligned because he's not black. Yes, absolutely, the show needs a much more diverse cast than it currently sports, but Armisen's take on the president-elect is pretty damn good.

4) 27 Dresses. The entirety of Katherine Heigl, actually.

3) The nickname "Sasha Fierce" that Beyonce gave herself so she could release a double album and make more money from us. Don't get me wrong, "Single Ladies" is a bodacious song, but didn't anyone in her camp tap her on the shoulder and show her a photograph of Chris Gaines?

2) The Dark Knight hoopla. For all its pomp and circumstance, the film was really only good because of Heath Ledger's insanely brilliant and scary performance as the Joker. Think about it. The Harvey Dent plotline was featured too prominently and was really over-serious (why so?). Christian Bale's Batman growl was laughable and, worse, distracting. The city didn't look anything like what Gotham should look like. It looked like exactly what it was: modernist Chicago in late afternoon. The whole "let's blow up the other boat" climax was a groaner. And, they used up two good (well, could have been good in the case of Two Face) villains in one movie that didn't need them both. The movie was entertaining, yes. But best picture of the year material? You must be joking.

1) Everything about the Twilight freak fest that came to a thundering climax when the shitty movie (didn't pay, watched it for free online) came out last month. The books, about chaste teen vampires and the sad anti-feminist teenagers who love them, are terribly written and play into some really creaky ideas about sex and gender that are probably doing some damage to the series' obsessed kid fans. Though, you know what? I might hate Twilight most of all because it lead to Caitlin Flanagan's utterly horrifying think piece crapstravaganza in The Atlantic. Read it. Become enraged.

Scarface, 1932

The Public Enemy, 1936

The Sting, 1973

The Untouchables, 1987

Chicago, 2002

Portrayal Of Obama As Snob Hailed As Step Forward For Blacks
Trenchant and sad, like all the best 'Onion' pieces.

McCain-Obama Dance-Off
Just really well edited. And who doesn't like dancing!

Governor Sarah Palin Vlog #2
Increasingly surreal and madcap, comedian Sara Benincasa's impersonation of Palin (as well as Diana Saez as the trusty sidekick) can ramble at times, but when she's on, she's On.

McCain Gets Rickrolled By Obama
Um, John McCain gets Rickroll'd by Barack Obama. That's about it.

Hollywood Director Attack Ads
The first two aren't great, but the third one is sorta funny! [via Videogum]

Crazy Tracy
This is parody, yes? [via Guanabee]

• Steve Ballmer
• Mitchell Baker
• Jeff Bezos
• Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt
• Jeff Clavier
• Paul Graham
• Arianna Huffington
• Joi Ito
• Steve Jobs
• Jonathan Kaplan
• Loic Le Meur
• Jack Ma
• Matt Mullenweg
• Rupert Murdoch
• Craig Newmark
• Gabe Rivera
• Kevin Rose
• Sheryl Sandberg
• Jon Stewart
• Peter Thiel
• Maria Thomas
• Anssi Vanjoki
• Jimmy Wales
• Evan Williams
• Jerry Yang

Aaron Brazell
Adam Lasnik
Alana Taylor
Alex Albrecht
Alex Williams
Allen Stern
Andrew Baron
Andru Edwards
Andy Beal
Andy Ihnatko
Anthony Citrano
Ben Metcalfe
Benjamin Higginbotham
Bhaskar Roy
Bret Taylor
Brian Shields
Brian Solis
Charlene Li
charles cooper
Charles Hudson
Chris Brogan
Chris Messina
Chris Nuttall
Christopher Allen
Christopher Galtenberg
Chuq Von Rospach
Colide81 (James)
Corvida
Craig Eddy
Craig Newmark
Cyndy
dan farber
Dan Fernandez
Danny O’Brien
dannysullivan
Dare Obasanjo
Darren Barefoot
dave mcclure
Dave Morin
Dave Taylor
Dave Winer
David Armano
David Sifry
David Swain
david weinberger
debbie landa
Deborah Micek
Dion Almaer
Doc Searls
Don Dodge
Don MacAskill
Duncan Riley
Dwight Silverman
Ed Bott
engadget
Erhan Erdogan
Eric Eldon
Francine Hardaway
Fred Wilson
Gabe Rivera
Harry McCracken
Hutch Carpenter
James Kendrick
James Urquhart
Jason Falls
Jay Rosen
Jeff Jarvis
Jeremiah Owyang
Jeremy Toeman
Jesse Stay
Jessica Guynn
Joe Wilcox
John Furrier
Joi Ito
Joshua Dilworth
joshua schachter
Justin Korn
kamla bhatt
Kara
Karim
Karsten Januszewski
Keith Teare
Ken Camp
l0ckergn0me
laura “@pistachio” fitton
Liz Gannes
Long Zheng
Lora Heiny
Loren Heiny
Louis Gray
Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins
Mark Trapp
Marshall Kirkpatrick
Mashable
mathew ingram
Matt Cutts
Mediabistro.com
michael arrington
Michael Krigsman
Michael Wesch
mike “glemak” dunn
Mike Butcher
Mike Cannon-Brookes
Mike Cassidy
Mike Doeff
Mike Fruchter
MikeAmundsen
Mitchell Tsai
Molly E. Holzschlag
Nir Ben Yona
noah kagan
Nova Spivack
Omar Shahine
Ontario Emperor
Patphelan
Paul Buchheit
paul mooney
Paul Stamatiou
Paul Thurrott
Pete Blackshaw
Pete Steege
Peter Semmelhack
Rachel Clarke
Rafe Needleman
Rebecca MacKinnon
Richard Binhammer
Rob Bushway
Robert Hof
Robert Sanzalone
Rodney Rumford
Roger Kondrat
Ryan Block
Scott Beale
ScottBourne
sean percival
seth goldstein
Shel Israel
slashdot
Steve Broback
steve clayton
Steve Garfield
Steve Gillmor
Steve Lacey
Steve Outing
Steve Rubel
Steven Hodson
Stowe Boyd
Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)
susan mernit
Susan Scrupski
Svetlana Gladkova
Tamar Weinberg
Terry Heaton
Thomas Hawk
Thomas Vander Wal
Tim O’Reilly
Todd Cochrane
Tom Foremski
Tom Merritt
Warner Crocker
Werner Vogels
Woody Pewitt
Yaron Samid
zefrank
Zoli Erdos
~C4Chaos

(Photo by Brian Solis)

• Wendi Deng Murdoch, MySpace China
• Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, MySpace
• Max Levchin, Slide
• Robin Li, Baidu
• Markos Moulitsas, DailyKos
• Elon Musk, SpaceX
• Ali and Hadi Partovi, iLike
• Mika Salmi, MTV
• Dmitry Shapiro, Veoh
• Quincy Smith, CBS
• Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times
• Peter Thiel, Clarium Capital
• Evan Williams, Twitter
• Andrew Zolli, PopTech

Alas, for every Kristi Yamaguchi who wins Dancing With the Stars, there are a dozen others whose athletic gifts fail to blossom into entertainment careers. Defamer videographer Molly McAleer has dug deep into our archives for a few of the most dramatic missteps and failures, from Bruce Jenner's ill-advised turn in Can't Stop the Music to Mary Lou Retton's less-than-convincing '80s-era battery pitch. May the limits of their championship spirit be a lesson to all those going for the gold in '08. We'll be watching. (Read more coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games.)

5. Bruce Jenner, You Can't Stop The Music

4. Mitch Gaylord, American Anthem

3. Mary Lou Retton, Energizer Commercial

2. Tonya Harding, Celebrity Boxing

1. Carl Lewis, Get My Money

• Previously: The Top 10 TV Characters Men Want To Be Like And Women Want To Be With [Defamer]