Good riddance

Robert Berry has turned the act of being annoyed into an art form. For six years, his annual list of the year’s 100 Most Annoying Things has drawn thousands of hits to his pop-culture nostalgia Web site RetroCrush. Last year, he closed out 2005 in SN&R with a list of annoyances from awareness bracelets to Wikipedia. When many of you wrote in with similar complaints—mostly about Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl”—we knew we were on to something. Perhaps the best way to move into the New Year is to define what should be left behind, or maybe you all just like to complain. Who are we to judge? Without further ado, here are our favorite picks from the 100 Most Annoying Things of 2006.

100 Left Behind Games
Video games in which you get to kill people who don’t convert to Christianity were very controversial. What happened to good old fashioned games where you just killed hookers and ran over cops?

98 Fauxhawks
These are mohawks for people who want to show they’re edgy, but still need an exit plan if it doesn’t work out. Fauxhawks are the clip-on ties of the punk-rock world.

97 Batwoman
DC Comics reintroduced Batwoman as a lesbian in 2006, completely ignoring her established past as a tranny. For shame!

94 Miami Vice
Let’s make a movie about a classic ’80s TV show with absolutely nothing from the original series! You know a film sucks when you actually wish Philip Michael Thomas was in it.

93 Basic Instinct 2
With all the celebrity crotch shots available for free on the Internet, who on Earth wanted to pay $10 to see Sharon Stone’s?

91 Madonna
Her secret plan to adopt new backup dancers is so transparent.

87 United 93
What a depressing movie. No mile-high sex scenes or snakes during the entire film!

86 Perez Hilton
He built an empire out of drawing crude fart scribbles on celebrity paparazzi pictures. I’m just annoyed that I didn’t think of it first.

82 Nancy Pelosi
If America realized they were putting the Crypt Keeper just two heartbeats away from the presidency, the November election results would have been a little different.

81 Kid Rock
Pamela Anderson gave him the best weeks of her life, and he screwed up a perfect marriage. Luckily their prenup still gives Rock half of her hepatitis C.

79 Justin Timberlake
Just when the sexy got put away, this joker has to bring it back.

78 Nigeria
A recent audit of my e-mail files shows that Nigeria has 80 gazillionty dollars in funds from no less than 3,485 dead bankers with my last name, and I’m the only survivor. Where were these clowns when I needed Christmas-shopping money last year?

77 Lost
This show has more loose ends than some sort of metaphor with a lot of loose ends on it. Rumor has it the series finale will reveal that the DHARMA Initiative is really an elaborate ruse by the Professor from Gilligan’s Island to get some help.

75 Myspace
Even though the company is owned by News Corp., the servers are still run on old Texas Instruments Speak & Spell machines. I can’t even add two friends at the same time without crashing their server.

71 Time magazine’s Man of the Year
What a cop out! Instead of picking a single person, they cleverly said “you” were the person of the year. It’s the equivalent of telling your kids they’re all you’re favorite. If only they knew how much “you” really sucked, maybe they’d reconsider.

67 Torture movies
Why does Hollywood think we get off on seeing films like the Saw series and Hostel, where the characters are tortured and mutilated for two straight hours? Of course, this genre is slowly being replaced by films that torture the audience instead, like Nacho Libre.

64 Ted Stevens
This Alaskan senator referred to the Internet as “a series of tubes” but he may have just been looking down at his colostomy bag.

63 eBay and Paypal
These companies’ inability to address the insane amount of e-mail fraud targeted at obtaining your password is ridiculous. And honey, if you’re reading this, I assure you someone else hacked my account and bought that inflatable Hello Kitty love doll!

60 HBO
The network bends over backward to accommodate The Sopranos’ “new season every five years” schedule, but cancels Deadwood without any good reason.

56 Steve Martin
Steve Martin’s now making the movies Chevy Chase used to get stuck with. I eagerly await Oh Heavenly Dog 2 and Skid Marks of the Pink Panther.

52 Global warming
Last time I looked outside, it was pretty darn cold.

49 Terence Trent D’Arby
Who does he think he is, saying he’s more talented than the Beatles? (This annoying item brought to you courtesy of 1987.)

48 Rosie O’Donnell/ 47 Nicole Richie
You know, if these two just got married and started sharing meals, both of their problems would be solved.

46 Jesse Jackson
He asked black comedians to stop using the “N” word, but is it still OK for politicians to refer to New York as Hymie Town?

33 Holocaust deniers
This is what happens when you show Hogan’s Heroes in high-school history classes.

26 Mel Gibson
Gibson responded to the bad hype from his drunken racist tirade by making the kickass action film Apocalypto. If we’re lucky, he’ll make a drug-addled rant about Mexicans next year and give us a Mad Max sequel to apologize.

21 Spinach
Way to go, E. coli! Get all over our healthiest food instead of scaring people away from bacon or cheeseburgers. It’s further evidence that God wants us to be fat.

17 Kanye West
Another year of bitching about not winning awards was capped by getting sued by Evel Knievel for ripping off his image in a music video. Maybe Knievel should come out of retirement and jump his motorcycle over West’s mouth.

16 “Fergalicious” by Fergie
I liked this song better when it was J.J. Fad’s “Supersonic.”

6 Rush Limbaugh
Suggested Michael J. Fox faked his Parkinson’s tremors in a political ad for sympathy, but totally gave Tina Yothers a free pass. I know that doesn’t make sense, but Yothers paid me $50 to get her name in the Top 10 to jumpstart her career.

4 John Mark Karr
Though his claims that he killed JonBenet Ramsey were false, Karr made me wish it was legal to execute people for being really creepy.

3 O.J. Simpson and Judith Regan
OJ pulled off the impossible, becoming even more worthless with his book If I Did It. Thankfully, the project was yanked before hitting book stores. That former HarperCollins publisher Judith Regan green-lighted it in the first place is vomit-inducing.

1 Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears
As if Spears’ deadly baby-care techniques and Lohan’s crazy Blackberry ramblings weren’t enough, these two capped off the year by seeing how many times they could show their uncovered crotches to the press. You know you’re out of control when Paris Hilton has to pull your legs closed.