‘100 Best’ Lists Are Hot Topic for Valley’s 100-Degree Daze

Millennium fever.

Ignore it!

But not just yet, please, or you’ll ignore today’s offering, inspired as it is by those “100 Best” lists that have been coming out lately as the 20th century nears its 100th year.

You’ve seen the lists and you have your own opinions--opinions that you may think are even more meaningful than mine. Together, however, I think we can get started today on a new ranking: the Century’s 100 Best Unlisted Lists. But before we get to that, we should review recent events on the litany front.

The latest list to set tongues a-wagging was the century’s 100 Best English Language Novels, compliments of Random House’s Modern Library division. This came on the heels of the American Film Institute’s ranking of top 100 Greatest Movies of All Time. Just last summer, an overanxious TV Guide declared the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time. (These “All Time” rankings proved tough on pre-20th Century film and TV.)

It would be tempting here to do a comparative analysis of all these greats. Imagine a college essay question: Compare and contrast the treatment of death in James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” and “Chuckles Bites the Dust” from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

I still like to think I could B.S. with any undergrad:

Death is pivotal in all three works. Charles Foster Kane’s last word was “Rosebud”--a cryptic comment from a man who was larger than life and yet an enigma. It was said that Chuckles the Clown, a simpler man, would prefer to be remembered by this epitaph:

A little song

A little dance

A little seltzer

Down your pants

And death, so cold and gray, is likewise a profound theme in “Ulysses”. . .

Nope, I never read “Ulysses.” Never really tried. I looked at page one and that was plenty. It almost made me feel like reading Faulkner. All I know is that if “Ulysses” is so great, death must be in there somewhere. With a little help from Cliff’s Notes, I’m sure I’d have swung a B. (Is there a list of the Century’s 100 Greatest Cliff’s Notes?)

Another essay question could compare great films made from un-great novels. Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather” was ranked way up at No. 3, while Mario Puzo’s novel is seldom confused for great literature. All I know is that when I was 14 years old and got to that scene about Sonny and the bridesmaid, it was pretty great to me.

High-class B.S. is essentially what these rankings are all about, and there is sure to be something to offend everyone. TV Guide, for example, angered me with its shortage of episodes from “The Twilight Zone” and “The Andy Griffith Show.”

The best novels list had critics complaining about a panel that was, as one writer put it, “skewed toward the male, the white and the elderly.” Indeed, nine of 10 panelists were male; three were in their 80s and the youngest was 57.

More damning was the revelation that so many of the novels listed, about 40%, were Random House titles. I could only conclude that Random House must not have published “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey and “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. How else to explain their absence?

Ron the Librarian looked it up. Kesey’s was published by Viking Press, Lee’s by Lippincott. So there.

But enough kvetching. What is needed, clearly, is a series of new silly lists to distract us from the silly lists that came before. Profound lists can be silly too.

Andrew Postman, author of “Now I Know Everything,” discussed the national obsession with lists in the New York Times on Monday under the headline “Taking Inventory, Ad Infinitum.” He listed a few curious lists, such as an American Mathematical Society survey that determined the 100 Most Important Numbers of All Time.

No. 1 was No. 1, followed by 2, 3, zero and 10. This little selection left me wondering where the first negative numbers came in, and whether pi qualified. (Come to think of it, pi has inspired a movie of its own, but then again, so did 10 and 8 1/2.)

And as we approach in the fin de siecle, Postman notes that that French phrase was ranked No. 62 on a list prepared by the American Linguistics Assn.’s List of 100 All-Time Favorite Foreign Phrases Americans Like to Use to Feel More Cosmopolitan. No. 1 was “ciao.”

Such lists leave the masses wondering which lists are yet unlisted.

How, for example, would the storied San Fernando rank among the 100 Greatest Valleys? Silicon Valley gets a lot of attention these days, and the Valley of the Shadow of Death is an all-timer. But the San Fernando--or “Valley of the Stars,” as boosters would have it--holds its own on the national stage and dominates the local competition.

No doubt one list being compiled here in “Boogie Nights” land is the century’s 100 Greatest Adult Videos. But there are so many more issues that merit attention.

A colleague suggests the century’s 100 Greatest Poor Sports (No. 1 Tonya Harding, No. 2 Latrell Sprewell, etc.). Another wonders about the 100 Greatest Exercise Videos and another about 100 Greatest Pop Product Fads. (Beanie Babies are now climbing the list.)

A podmate wants a ranking of the century’s 100 Greatest Political Scandals, a subset of which would be a list of the Greatest “Bimbo Eruptions.”

Still too early to judge that one, obviously.

And now suddenly it’s time to end a column I think of as one of the 100 Best Ways to Stay Indoors on a 100-Plus Degree Day in the Valley.

What more can I say except ciao.

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Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com Please include a phone number.