Similarly, it's not worth the trouble to go into some huge rant about how the only thing stupider than putting Madden Football way down at No. 50 is putting The Things They Carried way down at No. 31. Nonetheless, enormous lists like these, made by a magazine determined to mix highbrow and lowbrow, yield some really hilarious pairings — list entries that we call head-slappers, because No. 14, say, is so obviously a million times better than No. 13 that it makes you slap your head. After the jump, the ten biggest head-slappers in EW's 1,000th issue.

Photo: Getty Images

"It was magical. We were on ESPN for weeks. It was a gay song?" —Robert "Icebox" Smith, Oakland Coliseum security guard

"'Y.M.C.A.' is a gay song? Honestly, I had no clue." —Kyle Smith, director of stadium operations, Brevard County Manatees

"Not sure what you mean about it being a gay song … I know the Y is a healthy place to exercise." —Cameron Harris, Wally the Warthog mascot, Winston-Salem Warthogs

"We were once on a television show in England, and the hostess said, 'Now, this is a gay song, isn't it?' And I said, 'No, actually it's a Christian song — the Young Men's Christian Association.' I mean, honey, isn't it obvious?" —David Hodo (the Village People's construction worker)

"Y.M.C.A." (An Oral History) [Spin via Deadspin]

Photo illustration: Getty Images, Courtesy of New Line

After the jump, find out if actors from Lord of the Rings will return, if Peter Jackson will direct any of The Hobbit, if the second movie will be a 60-year history, and why the dragon in The Hobbit should be even more awesome than Vermitrax Pejorative from Dragonslayer.

Photo: Getty Images

1. Calling for a hit on Flavor Flav: "He needs to be killed. Flavor Flav must be killed. I'm serious" — because he worries that Republican operatives will try to use Flav to bring down Obama. "Would you vote for somebody who has anything in common with Flav?"

2. On his neighbors: "[My only three black neighbors are] Mary J. Blige, one of the greatest singers of all time, Denzel Washington, one of the greatest actors of all time, and Jay-Z, one of the greatest rappers of all time." His white neighbor? "A dentist. And he isn't like the greatest dentist in history either. I had to host the Oscars to get that house — a black dentist in my neighborhood would have to invent teeth."

Photo: WireImage

We would like to call your attention to one crucial detail, however, which is in the section of the profile just after Frey hit bottom. Post-Oprah, Frey was a pariah — constantly attacked in the media, scorned by the publishing world, the recipient of angry e-mails from fans, the target of a handful of lawsuits. How did he get his groove back? Well, in part from a visit to Norman Mailer, who broke out the boxing metaphors to tell Frey, "You should prepare to take huge shots every time out because they’ll never stop."

But Frey also found courage from … New York's Approval Matrix!

Photo: Getty Images

Vander Ark burst into tears when asked about his relationship with the Harry Potter online fan community, which has mostly shunned him since Rowling filed a lawsuit against his publisher last fall. And that's not the worst — the worst was having his haircut made fun of in the New York Times. Which New York paper was the meanest to Steven Vander Ark?

Photo: Getty images

Maybe it's the way that Leatherheads ended up being such a dog that the ostensible peg for the profile had to get shuffled off to a paragraph more than halfway through, with the final line, "The reviews, when they came, were unenthusiastic"?

Maybe it's the line, written by author Ian Parker about Clooney's predilection for elaborate practical jokes but sadly relevant for other reasons this week, "There's no doubt Clooney has a taste for directing comic dramas that have an audience of just one or two"?

Maybe it's the part where Clooney attempts, with middling success, to apply his laugh-it-off charm to an anonymous phone call telling him to "Dump the bitch"?

Maybe it's the impression of Clooney as a compulsive host, the line beautifully drawn between the guy who plays those practical jokes and the guy who organizes themed weeks for friends at his Lake Como villa?

Maybe it's the de rigueur moments of traditional New Yorker-profile oh-my-God-that's-exactly-right description? (Among the finest in this case: Parker noticing that thing Clooney does with his face — "a gyration in the lower jaw suggesting something being moved around under his tongue" — and a description of Clooney's persona as that of "a man on his way out to a party, feeling pretty good about his hair.")

Murakami's Tan Tan Bo Puking, a.k.a. Gero Tan (2002)©2002 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris and Miami.

Today's Times review of Takashi Murakami's landmark show at the Brooklyn Museum, "©Murakami," illustrates two things very clearly: Takashi Murakami's art is growing in quality and character every year, and Takashi Murakami's art is really hard to describe. Roberta Smith makes a valiant effort to boil down several chaotic, crazy-ass Murakamis into words, and the results are telling:

A Daliesque apocalypse: Mr. DOB in his death throes with globs of brilliant color spilling from his jagged teeth, and strange protrusions, at once foul and gorgeous, erupting all over his enormous head. One culminates in a golden hand that meets another hand in a flash of light. And in the lower right, the Kiki stands among four Shinto staffs dangling with sacred paper that signal the soul crossing to the afterlife.

We feel sorry for Smith; not even with the fabled thousand words could you really describe Murakami's work. No one on earth would read that description — though it's entirely accurate — and come close to imagining how awesomely crazy the painting itself, Tan Tan Bo Puking, is; we've reproduced it above. After the jump, we match Smith's frenzied descriptions with the frenzied artwork she's reviewing. (Thanks, nytimes.com slideshow!)

Daniel WatersPhoto by Irfan Khan; courtesy of latimes.com

The question is not Is Daniel Waters bitter? Rather, it's What is Daniel Waters bitterest about?