2006 Reader's Choice Awards

Worst Personality
You (not you, Dr. Thorpe; YOU, 2006 Time Magazine Person of the Year).

YOU made brought bad hip hop to mainstream (yes, I mean Black Eyed Peas and that gangsta "I got 4 Bentleys, a golden Glock and ten bitches" thing). Thanks to YOU, Paris Hilton is a personality, even if she's never achieved anything worth of praise. YOU sat your fat ass in front of a computer screen and watched several crappy videos in Youtube produced by morons like YOU.

YOU deserve a 2006 World Greatest Dad Award and YOU're an asshole.

-Bruno Correia

Deadliest Song
Panic! At The Disco - Lying is the Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Off Her Clothes

The award for the Deadliest Song goes to Panic! At The Disco for their "song" Lying is the Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Off Her Clothes, which is obviously another attempt to appear the exact fucking same as Fallout Boy. I can give you proof that this song is fatal, or at least near-fatal: When I first heard it I was in the hospital for possible TB. I actually started laughing because it was so bad...which set off a coughing fit that ended with a broken rib and a tear in my lung. I was spitting up blood for another week...all because of that yowling collection of cross-dressing trapeze artists. I should sue for medical expenses.

-Chloe

Worst Music Publication
Rolling Stone Magazine

For the 25th year in a row, Rolling Stone Magazine became the unequivocal winner of this category. Just like it’s hippy fore-fathers, it went from a bastion for the counter culture to a crock pot of out of touch yuppies telling other out of touch yuppies which mediocre band is hip and relevant, interspersed with adds for Sony and Chevrolet.

The cover stories of each issue is like looking at the posters on a 14 year old girl’s bedroom wall if she was raised by over-protective parents and no siblings. It’s a hodge-podge of flavor of the week bands that are popular because they say they are popular and are up for much longer than the allotted shelf life. Courtney Love is a banshee, Snoop Dogg is a Black & Decker tool and Justin Timberlake is more confused than a gay man growing up in Kentucky. They are not cool. When the writers get tired of Kanye “Rocky Road” West, they go for the staples of Madonna, Bob Dylan or the Beatles, regardless if they are dead or not or if they even did anything recently.

They need to stay away from politics. We get it; everyone hates Bush. Hell, Bush hates Bush. No one of merit will dispute that fact, but when it’s associated with Britney Spears’ crotch demon on the next page, anything you had to say about the matter is lost and reduced to the level of supermarket tabloids.

And Christ, can we have a list of bands that isn’t so fucking predictable? Hendrix is the greatest guitarist and Led Zeppelin is the heaviest band of all time. It must be great to run a magazine where you can print the same article over and over by only changing the paragraph order. The real Rolling Stones are rolling around in their graves (Fun Fact: The last member of the band died in 1988. Their latest tour can be attributed to animatronics, CGI and 12-inch scale models, just like in Jurassic Park.).

-Artie

Most Complete Destruction of a Pleasant Childhood Memory
Jack Johnson

You've written extensively on Jack Johnson before, but no criticism of Jack Johnson is ever complete. This man is so unabashedly lacking in talent that his next album should be titled 'I Can't Believe I'm Still Getting Away with This'. With 2006's 'Sing-A-Longs and Lullabies For The Film Curious George' the ever-confused sounding Johnson (or 'Cock' as I will call him) proves once again that a 2nd grade piano recital can pack more passion than his entire catalogue of lazy guitar-patting filth. Cock goes for that 'passed out in the midst of a keg stand and was shaken awake at 11 AM the next morning in a pool of my own vomit by my roommate who needed me to drive him to the airport' vocal approach, which so far has only worked for Van Morrison. And what's worse than sending the message that mumble-ridden, directionless crap can score you a record deal to college students? Why, sending the same message to the preschool demographic.

That's what Universal Studios decided to do when they picked this guy up off the floor of a fraternity basement and had him write the soundtrack to the Curious George movie in exchange for a few resin hits. I suppose the Studio wasn't completely misguided in thinking monkeys and Cock could be a winning combination. In fact, Cock's disorganized acoustic misfires would be a fitting soundtrack for, say, a monkey picking lice out of his own anus at the zoo while ten-year olds throw peanut M&M's at it. Until that script gets made, however, this guy should steer clear of movie soundtracks, especially ones that destroy pages of my childhood. On that note, I'd like to know who saw Will Ferrell eating cat poop in that deleted scene from Anchorman and thought 'Wow, this guy would be perfect for our bastardization of a classic children's book series!'. Fuck Jack Johnson.

-Scott Variano

Worst New Act
Blue October

This is some of the most spineless, lowest-common-denominator rock and roll I've ever heard. The music industry has once again managed to outdo itself by propping these jerks up and passing them off as anything other than sand filled vaginas flapping in the wind. Even RHCP managed to not make music as bad as this in 06, despite their best effort in doing so this decade. The vocal production, which is the fucking same on every song I've heard (which is their radio hits. I won't dignify being asked why I haven't heard any of the other album cuts with a response) sounds like a chipmunk and a poltergeist doing coke and having sex in your attic, but somehow less climactic. If the world thought that Nickelback had completely killed mainstream rock, they were right, but Blue October bent right the fuck over and shit all over the body's face in a glorious stream of formulaic, clichéd and overproduced diarrhea with their album Foiled. I think if you look closely at the album cover, then you've looked too closely. Run while you can, and scrub your hands vigorously in gasoline to wash away this horror of corporate rock from your hands. Never tell anyone what happened.

-Mike Z.

Most Unwelcome Testicular Imagery
Morrissey - Dear God Please Help Me

After a 20 year career in which Morrissey thankfully remained asexual and aloof he finally decides to let his audience know exactly how horny he is with the unforgettable line;

'There are explosive kegs, between my legs.'

The mental image of a middle-aged Morrissey wandering the streets of Rome with a bulging scrotum is not one I had hoped to encounter. While I can't really begrudge the man his sexual awakening, I wish he had not let us know about it with this extremely disturbing metaphor.

-David C James

Most Anticlimactic Death
James Brown

Near the end of 2006, James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, passed away. James Brown was one of the most energetic people in music - the "hardest working man in show business," even, and he had the damn gall to die of pneumonia. Pneumonia! James fucking Brown died of *disease.* If you're familiar with James Brown, you're entirely aware of the plethora of spectacular ways of dying that seemed much more likely than that. Why would James Brown, of all people, die of a non-sexually-transmitted disease instead of, say, simultaneous heroin overdose / gunshot wound while suffering an accident parachuting down to the stage? That was probably my first guess as to how James Brown would die, narrowly beating out 2) heart attack and 3) taken up in a flaming chariot to be with God. But, no, he pulled the ultimate act of party pooping and died of pneumonia. I feel like I should demand a refund for this unsatisfying exit.

-Darien K

– Dr. David Thorpe (@Arr)