The Best Of Everything: Maxim’s Definitive List Of The 47 Best Things Ever
We examined all 40,000 years of recorded human history and present the definitive, inarguable list of the ultimate people, places, and things that ever existed.
We examined all 40,000 years of recorded human history and present the definitive, inarguable list of the ultimate people, places, and things that ever existed. Don’t agree with our picks? Let us know in the comments. Actually, you know what? Don’t. We’re not wrong. This list is perfect, and you’re a big fat dummyhead, so shut up!
1. Best Animal: Monkey
Picture a monkey wearing overalls. Or drinking from a teacup. Or flinging its poo. Whatever the scenario is, you’re smiling, right? (Well, maybe not if the scenario is eating your face off.)
2. Best Guitar Riff: “Eye of the Tiger”
Combining the headbanging simplicity of “Smoke on the Water,” the sexual urgency of “Whole Lotta Love,” and the visceral punch of “Cat Scratch Fever,” “Eye of the Tiger” delivered a riff so perfect it inspired Rocky to embrace the once-hated Apollo Creed and punch Clubber Lang’s dick off.
3.
Best
Food: Pizza
Hot or cold, plain or with everything, square, circular, or in a cone (yes, that exists),
Italy’s greatest invention (suck it, art) is always
just a phone call away.
4.
Best
Product Name: Snausages
Sorry, Apple—you may have made it cool to just stick an
“i” in front of everything, but did you ever make a product for dogs that sounded exactly like the noise a dog makes
while eating said product?
No. No, you did not.
5. Best Century: 15th
As the world kissed the Middle Ages goodbye, it welcomed this century with bumping into America, the invention of scotch, and the use of pubic hair wigs to disguise syphilis. Age of Exploration, indeed!
6. Best Drink:Beer
Want one? Thought so.
7. Best Facial Hair: Mustache
, a catcher of crumbs,
a disguiser of ugly upper lips,
and, judging by Burt Reynolds’ and
Tom Selleck’s success, a chick magnet. Besides, “Wanna go on
a soul-patch ride?” just doesn’t
have the same ring.
8. Best Conspiracy Theory: JFK
As many as 2,000 books have been written positing various conspiracies surrounding his assassination. We’ve spent the
past 20 years reading all of
them and can now say for cetain that Lee Harvey Oswald did not walk on the moon.
9. Best President: Martin Van Buren
Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, you have no opinion of him. He unites us all!
10. Best TV Theme Song: “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”
Think there’s a TV theme
that can touch its catchiness and lyrical deftness? Yo, homes, smell ya later.
11. Best Commandment:
Number 2
“Thou shalt not make unto
thee any graven image.” Easy, peasy. Total gimme, God.
12. Best Snack: Cool Ranch Doritos
A salty chip that somehow seems refreshing and leaves multicolored disco dust
on your fingers for post-crunch licking. Yep, that sound you just heard was
us getting a snack boner.
13. Best “We Are the World” Verse: Bruce Springsteen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9BNoNFKCBI
It’s not easy to stand out in a group that includes Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, and Dan Aykroyd (what?), but the Boss did so by, apparently, taking a massive dump while recording his verse. He strained until beautiful music, and yesterday’s lunch, were smeared all over the recording booth.
14. Best Movie Villain: Hans Gruber
A classic movie villain needs a foreign accent, ideally English or German. Well, as this terrorist cum master thief, Englishman Alan Rickman’s fake German accent scares all the hair off Bruce Willis’ head. Yippee ki-yay, mofos!
15.
Best
Sex Toy: Handcuffs
In between the threatening (vibrators) and terrifying (what’s an “anal speculum”
anyway?) lies the happy middle ground of handcuffs. They’re kinky enough to
spice up your sex life and inconspicuous enough to
pass off as part of your
Halloween costume should your nephew find them.
16.
Best
Criminal: Skyjacker D. B. Cooper
In 1971 this middle-aged man managed to hijack a Boeing 727, extort $200,000 in ransom, and parachute out of the plane never to be found, all the while being described as “rather nice and thoughtful” by a flight attendant.
17.
Best
War: Trojan
There’s something romantic about a mythological war waged over the most beautiful woman in the world, and something funny about the Trojans falling for that wood
en horse trick. Schmucks.
18.
Best
Item of Clothing: Toga
It worked for the Romans, and it also worked for you that one night in college when you ended up passed out in the Dumpster outside the regis
trar’s office. Bonus: No fly to get your wang caught in.
19. Best Movie: Goodfellas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQhBfRDd6GM
Other movies might have more quotable lines (“You talkin’
to me?”), dark twists (“I am your father!”), or cryptic references
to sleds (“Rosebud”), but nothing else ever committed to
celluloid has the same combination of action, humor, story,
and razor-thin garlic as Marty’s 1990 masterpiece.
20.
Best
Sneaker: New Balance 574
You first saw them on
your uncle in 1988. Initially, you shunned them for Chucks, Jordans, and Air Force 1’s. Then you grew up and found fat-foot paradise.
21.
Best
Smell: New Car
We love the aroma of bacon as much as the next person with a pulse, but frying swine’s
got nothing on the odor-borne orgasm that accompanies
breathing in the combo of
leather, plastic, and chemi
cal sealants of a brand-spankin’-new ride. So what
if it’s probably toxic?
22. Best Letter: X
X marks the spot for our favorite letter of the alphabet: It’s a Roman numeral, it’s worth eight points on the Scrabble board, and if you X out a cartoon character’s eyes everyone knows they’re supposed to be dead, no matter how shitty an artist you are.
23. Best Athlete: Michael Jordan
Photo: Jonathan Daniel / Allsport / Getty Images | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2013
Consider this: If he hadn’t taken a two-year hiatus be
cause of gambl—uh, to play baseball, he would have
won eight straight titles.
You can bet on it.
24.
Best
Video: “Sabotage,” Beastie Boys
This three minutes of fucking awesomeness made mustaches, ’70s cops, and short-sleeve dress shirts the coolest things in the universe. If there is a better moment caught
on film than Ad-Rock jumping into a pool and his wig coming off, we haven’t seen it.
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25.
Best
Spanish Number: Catorce (14)
Keep counting till you find a number more fun to say out loud. Reached infinity yet?
26.
Best
Book: Roget’s Thesaurus
It’s the best! Inimitable! Unsurpassed! Transcendent, paramount, and second to none! Primo!
27.
Best
TV Cop: Det. Phil Fish (Abe Vigoda, Barney MIller)
Photo: Everett Collection | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2013
Just look at him.
28.
Best
Hairstyle: Side Part
29.Best Number: 69
Say you’re at the DMV or in line at a bakery or playing bingo. When 69 gets called out, someone is giggling and someone is getting high-fived.
30. Best Video Game: NHL ’94 for Sega Genesis
Sure, games today have insane graphics. But sometimes you want athletes to look less like they stepped out of
The Polar Express
and more like a pixelated, mulleted blob that sort
of looks like a human. GOAL!
31. Best Cereal: Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries
Grape-Nuts may sandblast your colon, but we’re
partial to the sweet (but not too sweet) crunch of these morsels of corn, oats, and…whatever Crunch Berries are. By the way, did you know
that Cap’n’s full name is
Horatio Magellan Crunch? Thanks, Wikipedia!
32.
Best
Holiday: Memorial Day
You don’t have to buy presents or spend any portion of it with relatives. All you have to do is show up at your friend’s backyard with a six-pack and drink till your face falls off.
33.
Best
Invention: Fire / iPad (Tie)
One keeps us warm and cooks our food. The other allows us to play
Temple Run
while taking a dump. Too close to call.
34.
Best
Sex Position: Doggy Style
Photo: CYNOCLUB / iStockPhoto | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2013
It’s consistently ranked as the ladies’ favorite in our annual sex surveys, and who are
we to argue with a position that allows an unobstructed view of the game?
35.
Best
Candy: Fun Dip
Step 1.
Lick a solid stick of sugar.
Step 2.
Stick wet stick into a pocket of other sugar.
Step 3.
Lick the stick.
Step 4.
Eat the stick.
36.
Best
Photography
Point your camera at a
mountain or sunset and in
.2 seconds, you’re an artist. And imagine a world where
climbing-out-of-limousine crotch shots didn’t exist. Terrifying, we know.
37.
Best
F
inger: Index
The middle finger is rude,
the pinkie is lame, the thumb is ugly, and the ring finger puts too much damn pressure on you. That makes the good ol’ index finger—yes, we’re pointing at
you
—No. 1.
38. Best Live Concert: “Up in Smoke” Tour, 2000
If you were to add, say, Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, and Drake to Jay-Z and Kanye’s “Watch the Throne” tour, it still wouldn’t stack up to this hip-hop traveling circus featuring Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Ice Cube, and many more. Sorry to be so blunt.
39. Best Movie Gag: Spaceballs, “Comb the Desert”
It’s joke on top of joke on top of joke, culminating in the best laugh line in cinematic history: “We ain’t found shit!”
40.
Best
Sports Event: Super Bowl XLII
Photo: Drew Hallowell / Getty Images | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2013
Heading in, the Patriots were the NFL’s evil empire. Evil because of Spygate. Empire because they’d won 18 straight. That’s why no one gave the Giants a chance, especially when they were down 14-10 with 2:42 to play. But then the stars aligned, Eli hit Tyree, and the evil empire crumbled. It was like the Miracle on Ice, only with fewer Russians and more concussions.
41.
Best
Soda: Mountain Dew
Looks like bubbly Hulk piss, tastes like heaven. We’re still coming down off the sugar-caffeine high from Jimmy Franks’ 10th birthday party, where we drank a two-liter bottle and threw up in the back of Mom’s station wagon.
42.
Best
Comic Book: Watchmen
No other book has captured
the possibilities of the medium the way Alan Moore’s thought-provoking, dystopian commentary on—ow! Sorry, punched ourselves in the
balls midsentence.
43. Best Stand-Up Concert: Eddie Murphy, “Delirious”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe__A9lsVKI
“Now that’s a fire!” “Goonie-Goo-Goo.” “I’ll clench up
my butt cheeks and rip
your dick off!” Just about every word that came out
of his mouth is permanently ingrained in our brains.
The homophobic stuff is totally mitigated by Eddie “helping out” that transsexual hooker by offering him/shim a ride on Santa
Monica Blvd. in 1997.
44. Best Car: 1974 Lincoln Continental Mark IV
Photo Courtesy of LincolnGivenchy
This 20-foot, two-and-a-half-ton tank had the turning radius of a tugboat, went from 0 to 60 in who cares, and got about six gallons to the mile— and when you were behind the wheel, you were easily the biggest pimp on the road.
45. Best Team: 1986 Mets
Photo: Focus on Sport / Getty Images | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2013
Given a roster filled with nut
jobs like Gooden, Strawberry,
and Dykstra, it’s, well, amazing that the Amazin’s ended up winning a whopping 108 games…and the Series. Shout-out
to Buckner’s inability to
bend down very far.
46.
Best
Instrument: Drum Set
Guitars get all the glory, but it’s the mighty drum kit, maker of rhythm, that requires you to sit on a throne and hit things with sticks. And it’s the fastest way to make everyone within a 10-foot radius hate the shit out of you.
47.
Best
TV Show: The Simpsons, Season 5
Photo Courtesy of FOX
“Homer’s Barbershop Quartet.” “Bart Gets an Elephant.” “Homer Goes to College.” True Simpsons fans—and fans of TV in general—know that it simply doesn’t get better than the—Hello! Human fly here!
Check out the 2013 Hot 100 List and Maxim’s Food and Drink Awards.