What: The kiss between Guy Patterson (Tom Everett Scott) and Faye Dolan (Liv Tyler) at the conclusion of writer-director Tom Hanks' 1996 film That Thing You Do!:


Why: Hanks' directorial debut scored on every possible level. He taught an impressionable cast how to sing and play their instruments as the one-hit Wonders, making a band film that felt like it was about a real band. He scripted a cascade of scenes that were all, as his manager character Mr. White would say, "something snappy." He crafted a 1964 period piece while reimagining the period itself, co-composing a completely fictional musical backdrop that seemed impossibly realistic (the title song is played five times, yet is so catchy you'd hear it five more). But the film's greatest triumph is a sub rosa love story, woven deftly in single lines sprinkled in scenes about something else. Guy is the jazz-worshipping drummer of the Wonders, whose self-absorbed lead singer Jimmy Mattingly (Jonathan Schaech) is dating the lovely Faye. After the Wonders perform on The Hollywood Television Showcase, Faye dumps the heartless Jimmy with the soul-melting line "I have wasted thousands and thousands of kisses on you." As the one-hit Wonders collapse, Guy asks Faye when was the last time she was decently kissed. After her gauntlet-dropping reply ("Dave Gamelgard, New Year's Eve, '61"), Guy mans up and goes for broke. Faye's nuanced physical reaction, all furrowed brows and uncertain lips, holds the scene together to its perfect conclusion. Her next answer to Guy's question will be "Ask me again."

Impact: That Thing You Do! was a modest hit. Afterward, Hanks kept his movie director's chair in storage; Scott became a werewolf, then a perennial supporting actor; Tyler became a go-to romantic partner for any ranger, man-monster, or asteroid-bound oil driller in need. The movie itself seems to be inching toward classic status. It's hard to find anyone who can say anything negative about such a sweet and clever story; it's almost like kicking a puppy. In fact, I can only think of one truly regrettable thing about this film, and that's that it inspired this.

Personal Connection: I identify with Guy Patterson. In my school days, I was a jazz drummer stuck in a rock-band world. I used to sit at home and play routines like Patterson's homebrewed "I Am Spartacus." And I imagined that if I ever got to a place like the Hollywood Television Showcase, my bandmates would turn to me, as the Wonders' guitarist Lenny does, and ask me something along the lines of "Hey, Mike, how did we get here?" And I would say words to the effect of "I led you here, sir, for I am Spartacus." Or at least I imagine I imagined that.

Other Contenders: Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster get salty in From Here to Eternity; Katharine Hepburn gets a "Golly Moses!" liplock from Jimmy Stewart in The Philadelphia Story; Kirsten Durst and Tobey Maguire go behind the mask in Spider-Man; Tom Selleck knows what Kevin Kline needs in In & Out; Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford's hands get dirty in The Empire Strikes Back; Al Pacino and John Cazale share a heartbreaker in The Godfather Part II.

What: The "Days of Future Past" storyline from issues 141 and 142 of The Uncanny X-Men, from January-February 1981.


Why: I have extremely high standards for a time travel story. Internal logic matters more than anything. It can't involve Sandra Bullock watching a tree grow like mad or a prisoner seeing Ashton Kutcher spontaneously stigmatize or any encounter between the Fonz and a brontosaur. But X-Men writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne took temporal continuity seriously when they envisioned comics' scariest future. In 2013, North America is ground under the metal heels of the robot Sentinels, who have killed most of the superpowered beings and enslaved the humans. The rest of the world plans to nuke North America, which seven remaining superbeings—Sprite, her husband Colossus, Wolverine, Storm, Magneto, Franklin Richards, and Rachel, daughter of the deceased Cyclops and Jean Grey—hatch a desperate plan to deter. The psychic Rachel sends Sprite's mind back through time to stop the event that unleashed the Sentinels: the assassination of mutant-hating Senator Robert Kelly by the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants on October 31, 1980. Sprite awakens inside her youthful body, and leads the X-Men in battle against the Brotherhood on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Meanwhile, in the future, the surviving mutants attack the Sentinels in their Baxter Building headquarters. One by one... okay, there might be a clue of what happens on issue #142's cover. Is it enough to change the future? Only time will tell.

Impact: This riveting storyline jammed a stake in the earth and said, "Take comics seriously." At that time, it wasn't common for good guys to die in Marvel's comics. But just three issues earlier, Claremont and Byrne killed off Jean Grey in the most shocking comics death since Gwen Stacy. With "The Dark Phoenix Saga" and "Days of Future Past," the two laid a strong claim to the greatest writer-artist run on an ongoing mainstream comic. This run was commemorated some years later when the first X-Men film was based on "Days of Future Past" (minus the time travel), the third was based on "The Dark Phoenix Saga," and the second... well, that's a column for another day.

Personal Connection: "Days of Future Past" was the first X-Men comic I bought. Until then, I was solely a DC reader, amassing quite a collection of Batman titles. But the cover of X-Men #141 leapt off the rack at Golden Age Comics and told the 13-year-old me, "Kid, you're an X-Men fan." How could it not? Now widely acclaimed as the one of the greatest covers ever, the startling image of Wolverine and Kate Pryde spotlit in front of a superheroic body-count poster has been revised and parodied multiple times since. But you never forget your first genocide of mutantkind.

Other Contenders: that X-Men storyline's spiritual godchildren, the first and second films in the Terminator franchise; Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut Jr's novel about a man who becomes unstuck in time, but doesn't mind much; "The City on the Edge of Forever" and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, showing the range of Star Trek's greatness; the spine-tingling Doctor Who episode "Blink", which will forever change your opinion about looking at statues of angels; Donnie Darko, a glimpse through the lookingglass; Groundhog Day, a holiday in Hell, Pennsylvania; 12 Monkeys, in which science isn't an exact science; Peabody's Improbable History, the timeless adventures of a dog and his boy.

What: Making an after-dark stopover in a local graveyard on All Hallows Eve.

Why: I'd like you to meet a friend of mine. She just turned 121 this month. In 1880, her father, John C. Monster, secured a donation claim in the Renton Valley, down the hill from my home. He and his brother Frank Jr. raised some 50 head of cattle along the railroad that cuts the lowlands, down past the Four Cows Wide underpass. Never did the Monsters lose a single cow to the coal cars that rocketed through the valley, quite a proud accomplishment. Sadly, John's family fortunes were not so pleasant. In late October of 1888, as the sky turned that comforting shade of grey it would not relinquish for six moons, John's wife Louisa gave birth to a baby girl. Within four months, before seeing the clouds part, the child was dead. No pastor ever came to christen her, and so she never gained a proper Christian name. Thus, in a forgotten cemetery occluded by the Winco overlooking Highway 167, Baby Monster lies buried with her father, the namesake of Renton's famed Monster Road. I have just returned from a past-dusk visit to Baby Monster's gravesite, where I patted her headstone and promised her that her friends would think of her this Halloween.

Impact: If there is any one action that defines "human," it's caring where our dead lie. Animals note another's passing, suffer disorientation, and move on. Humans rarely surrender our dead to the elements without a fight. We cluster them in cabinets as we clutched them in life, walking among them when they can walk no more. In our waking dreams, we see them caught between here and our various not-heres. One night a year, some of us even dress like them, perhaps to tell them we'll be along soon.

Personal Connection: Some of you have chosen, in your mind's eye, to vanish. You will be cremated, perhaps, and kept in a jar or scattered in the air. For you expect that you will either be someplace, and thus not need your remnants in this mortal realm, or noplace, and thus need nothing at all. But I shall not be among you. I will tear a chunk from this earth, and claim it as mine. I will proudly display for all who are willing to know: I was here. If I beat you out of this temporal world, come visit my tombstone. You never know, I might just say hello.

Other Contenders: go to a kickin' costume party; crank Oingo Boingo's "Dead Man's Party" till your speakers bleed; curl up under a heavy couch blanket and watch the greatest tale of faith ever, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown; sit by the door and wait for trick or treaters to beg for candy; eat most of said candy.

What: Bill Cosby's three-part comedic exegesis "Noah," from his 1963 appearance on The Tonight Show and his debut album Bill Cosby Is A Very Funny Fellow...Right!, from which this version comes.


Why: Let's see: a black man in 1963 mocking the Bible on national TV. Yeah, that guy had better be damn funny. And turns out, he was. Bill Cosby had been on The Tonight Show the show before, but in Carson's first season, Cosby floored America with a slightly non-canonical version of the Flood. Cosby's eponymous carpenter is sawing away ("vroobah, vroobah, vroobah") when he is tasked by God ("ding!") to build an ark in his yard. After some confusion over who he's talking to and what exactly a cubit is, Noah starts in on the ark, to the ridicule of his late-for-work neighbor. While Noah deals with the last animal pairings, the Lord notices a flaw in his hippo allocation, leading to an argument over gender-reassignment surgery and the validity of divine prophecy. But a few raindrops enlighten Noah to the Lord's point of view, and the destruction of civilization can begin apace.

Impact: "Noah" anchored Cosby's debut album, catapulting him into the highest strata of standup comedians. In 1965, Cosby became the first African-American to star on a TV drama, NBC's I Spy; later he starred in three of the most popular shows of all time, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, The Electric Company, and The Cosby Show. But he never left the stage, creating memorable routine after memorable routine. Now he's the choice interview on the sideline of a football game, or the trustworthy father figure telling kids to stay in school. That's how national treasures are made.

Personal Connection: I seem to have had the 1969 compilation album The Best of Bill Cosby when it came out, well before I could recognize the alphabet, and certainly before I perceived of anything called "the Bible." So it's at least statistically possible that Bill Cosby was the first person to teach me of the putative existence of God. If I ever meet the Supreme Being, my first sentence will likely be, "Okay, Lord, me and you, right?"

Other Contenders: Bob Newhart chronicles Madison Avenue's invention of Abe Lincoln; George Carlin contrasts the differences between baseball and football; Steve Martin suggests how you can be a millionaire and never pay taxes; Eddie Murphy wants some ice cream, he wants some ice cream; Eddie Izzard wonders if you'd prefer cake or death?; Bill Hicks has a question for fundamentalists about dinosaurs.

What: The 2004 American League Championship Series between longtime rivals the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. Here's the back page of the New York Daily News, on the left after Game 3, and on the right after Game 7.


Why: Over the decades, what kept Yanks-Sox from standing alongside great team sports rivalries as Celtics-Lakers, Leafs-Habs, Bears-Pack, and Huskies-Lady Vols was the lack of postseason encounters. Before the introduction of the wild card, it was impossible for the Sox and Yanks to meet in the postseason. Since 1994, though, the bitter rivals have met three times in the ALCS. In 1999, the Yanks prevailed easily. In 2003, in a series marred by a brawl in which Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez faceplanted Yanks bench coach Don Zimmer, the Yankees squeaked out a 4-3 series victory. So in 2004, the Red Sox hired even-keeled manager Terry Francona, and supplemented Martinez with a second ace, Yankee-killer Curt Schilling. The Yanks countered by stealing reigning MVP Alex Rodriguez from his Sox suitors. In the ALCS rematch, it looked like the Sox would wait at least one more year to shake the Curse of the Bambino, as the Yanks ran off to an insurmountable 3-0 series lead, destroying them 19-8 in Game 3. This looked even less surmountable when, in Game 4, the Sox were down a run in the bottom of the ninth, with sandman Mariano Rivera on the mound. And then Dave Roberts stole second. Then Bill Mueller drove him home to tie it. Then David Ortiz bombed one out in the 11th to win it. Then he won the next one in the 14th. Then Schilling took his team name literally, bleeding through his sock from a ruptured ankle tendon. Then Rodriguez slapped Bronson Arroyo, sealing the Boston win and A-Rod's lifelong reputation problems. But all this did was tie the series, to be broken in Yankee Stadium. Surely the Yanks couldn't lose there, not against the team they had kept down for 86 years, right? Yes they could, Boston, yes they could.

Impact: One pro forma sweep of St. Louis later, the Red Sox reversed the Curse. Hardly a championship-starved city (the Celtics had won 16, the Patriots 3, and the Bruins 5), Boston greeted the Sox as if they'd never seen a victory before, parading the team down the dirty water of the Charles River. (Curse reversal was contagious: After its own half century drought, the other Sox would join that company the next year. The Cubs? Not so much.) The win also solidified the misguided expansion of "Red Sox Nation," which turned into one of the most obnoxious fan bases on the planet. But don't fret, Red Sox fans. In this regard, you will always be second to the Yankees.

Personal Connection: Like with the McGwire-Sosa home run chase of 1998, the 2004 championship threatens to be swallowed by its stars' connection to steroids. At least seven of the series' marquee names (Yankees players Rodriguez, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, and Kevin Brown, and Sox players Ortiz, Arroyo, and Manny Ramirez) have been linked to performance enhancing drugs. And there's the sad reality that a postseason series between the two highest-salaried teams is hardly shocking given baseball's economic insanity. All this caused me to debate whether to give this series the spotlight. For about a tenth of a second. The fact is that two great teams, both playing with significant unfair advantages, clashed in the most riveting games I've seen as they occurred. You can asterisk records, but you can't delete memories.

Other Contenders: the 1987 Eastern Conference Finals between the Boston Celtics and the Detroit Pistons, featuring Larry Bird's famous steal; the 1991 World Series between the Minnesota Twins and the Atlanta Braves, with five games decided by one run, three in overtime; the 1993 Eastern Conference Finals between the Chicago Bulls and the New York Knicks, the most bruising NBA series ever played; the entire heart-stopping 2003 NHL postseason, featuring a slew of shocking upsets and 38 overtimes; the 2003 Western Conference Semifinal between the Los Angeles Lakers and the San Antonio Spurs, redefining the phrase "last-second heroics"; the 2009 Eastern Conference Semifinal between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Washington Capitals, in which Ovechkin and Crosby scored hat tricks in the same game.

Who: Alton Brown, the host of Food Network's shows Good Eats, Iron Chef America, Feasting on Asphalt, and The Next Iron Chef. Here is Brown from Season 4 of Good Eats, in an episode delightfully titled "Mayo Clinic."


Why: For starters, I hate mayonnaise with the passion of a thousand convection ovens. So what could get me to watch a show about my culinary nemesis? The chemistry lesson, of course. Good Eats combines regular depictions of chemistry, physics, and history into a smorgasbord of knowledge. But it certainly isn't boring. The Bill Nye the Science Guy of food, Brown makes education both mouthwatering and funny: Mayonnaise's emulsification process is painstakingly illustrated with thumbtacked styrofoam balls hanging in a macroscopic mobile while Alton whisks away. In a world of pompous personality cultists like Emeril and Bobby Flay, Brown is too confident for such bombast. He's as comfortable with doing a show on corn dogs as on edamame. Heck, he doesn't even need food to make a show, having done brilliant episodes on kitchen knives and even water. What is there to say about water? Alton knows, and you want to.

Impact: With his shows and books, Brown has become Food Network's most bankable star. His acting skill and eye for production values changed the requirements of a cooking show. No longer would a single camera in front of a three-walled kitchen satisfy viewers. Brown put Dutch-angled cameras everywhere: in the cupboard, under glass countertops, inside the oven. He also introduced the concept of a clever script to the cooking world, creating a horde of fictional characters, including his evil twin Anti-Alton and Lactose Man. (Brown is lactose-intolerant, which I imagine is like a house painter being color-blind.) In short, he made food television more like television. Now any chef worth his kosher salt has to try to hold a viewer's attention better than Brown. That's not a challenge I'd be interested in.

Personal Connection: Our kitchen has gradually become a testament to the wisdom of Alton Brown. A well-worn copy of his I'm Just Here for the Food lives above the stove. A cast iron skillet stays in our oven because he taught us how to cure iron. We now use kosher salt almost exclusively. Gone are the single-use items like garlic presses; now there are multitools everywhere. This is no idle change; I live in a household where I am the second best cook by a million miles, and I am a very good cook. So if Evon swears by someone, you really should be paying attention to him. This weekend, Food Network broadcasts Good Eats' 10th anniversary special. That's an excellent way to get acquainted.

Update: We met Brown this week at a book signing. He was kind enough to explain Evon's bubbling habanero jelly, using terms like "nucleation sites" and "thermal activation." It was our own 90-second episode of Good Eats.

Other Contenders: BBC1's exuberant Ainsley Harriott, shown here parodying his Can't Cook, Won't Cook on Red Dwarf; juvenile mad-scientist Duff Goldman and his Charm City Cakes crew from Food Network's reality show Ace of Cakes; the Jeremy Clarkson of the food world, hard-living journalist Anthony Bourdain of the Travel Channel's No Reservations; food and wine connoisseur Ted Allen, the rock in the center of the Fab Five on Bravo's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy; taskmaster Robert Irvine, who has to prepare an insane meal in mere hours on the Food Network's Dinner: Impossible; Shinichirō Ōta (dubbed by Bill Bickard), the hypercaffeinated floor reporter on FujiTV's Iron Chef ("Fukui-san!").

What: The Shangri-Las' song "The Train from Kansas City," written by Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry. The song was first released on the B-side of the 1965 single "Right Now and Not Later." No video of the Shangs' singing the song has emerged, but here is the studio version. Or you can watch lead singer Mary Weiss singing the song last year.

Why: As I said here, three subjects are in-the-bank guarantees for a songwriter. Here is the second. While writing about a car can get you "Red Barchetta" on a good day or "Chevy Van" on a bad one, there are no such risks when you write about a train. Musically, trains provide a thunderous driving power, and never jump the tracks. They're also emotionally evocative, as evidenced on this obscure but brilliant song by the girl group the Shangri-Las. The inversion of the Monkees' Vietnam War composition "Last Train to Clarksville", "The Train from Kansas City" is sung from the heart by a girl who pledges to marry a boy as soon as she meets the titular train. But her intended is not on the train; instead, a former love is. The train-bound boy believes his girl is true, but the ring on her finger says otherwise. And yet... The song seems intended to soothe the feelings of the new beau, who can't be feeling too good about statements like "Nothin' in this world could tear us apart" right now. It's a lyric that balances on a knife edge, propelled by the sounds of a train rumbling into the station. At the final whistle, someone's heart will break.

Impact: Surely the only band named for a mythical Himalayan utopia, the Shangri-Las were built to conquer. With two top-five hits from 1964's Leader of the Pack, the bad-girl Shangs dominated the white-girl-group corner of the pop charts, touring with the Beatles, James Brown, the Drifters, and Dusty Springfield. The success came not only from singer Mary Weiss's powerful voice and the excellent harmonies from her sister Betty and the Ganser twins Marge and Mary Ann. Behind the scenes was the most melodramatic record producer of the Sixties, George "Shadow" Morton. For his Shangs songs, Morton never met a sound effect he didn't like; there were motorcycle revs on "Leader of the Pack", seagulls on "Remember (Walking in the Sand)", frickin' Beethoven on "Past, Present, and Future". With Morton producing, the Shangs looked to be poised for continued success—and then, like the heroes of their songs, they were gone. All the girls vanished from the public eye, and when Mary Ann died in 1970, all hopes of a reunion were dashed. Mary Weiss has recently started touring and recording again, but there will never be another Shangri-Las. You don't get to paradise twice.

Personal Connection: The Shangs' Teen Anguish, Volume 2 ranks as my favorite greatest hits album, acquired when I was 15 or so. There was one thing I tried the hardest to teach myself to play: the left-handed piano part from "The Train from Kansas City." The notes I could figure out, but I could never get the sound. That signature sounded like it was recorded in a storm drain, and it was impossible to replicate. That's when I realized Shadow Morton was a genius.

Other Contenders: Guy Clark's train is a phantom primed for one last robbery in "Desperados Waiting for a Train"; Aerosmith's train is a love machine that impresses even Little Richard on their cover version of "Train Kept a-Rollin'"; Guns 'N Roses' train is a hell-bent fireball in "Locomotive"; Paul Simon's train is a lost echo in "Train in the Distance"; Curtis Mayfield's train is a last run to paradise in "People Get Ready"; Tom Waits' train is a mysterious conveyor of urbanity in "Downtown Train"; Bruce Springsteen's train is the darkest kind of love rollercoaster in "Tunnel of Love".

Off-topic note: The Most Beautiful Things is featured among the 100 essays in the new print-on-demand collection LiveJournal: The First Decade. The essay in question is the one on giving blood. I'm happy it's alongside an essay from scarlettina. If a journal could feel honored, this one would. Thanks, as always, for reading.

What: The many varieties of the onion species Allium sativum, otherwise known as garlic.

Why: I have stated for years that there are very few food dishes which cannot be improved by either the addition of more chocolate or the addition of more garlic (but not both). Chocolate is outside the scope of this category—it is often the only flavor in a dish—so I'll turn my focus solely to the sweet breath of life. Whether roasted, braised, infused, or grated, garlic is a potent culinary catalyst. Humble bread becomes the appetizer of choice; mere French fries become the centerpiece of a ballpark meal. Garlic bonds with other flavors, so it will hold a taste in your mouth better than any other flavoring. It will also stay in your blood for longer than you might abide, because the allyl methyl sulfide inherent in garlic cannot metabolize, leading to well-known aftereffects. No matter. If you want your guests to recall what you made for dinner, add more garlic.

Impact: Garlic is primarily associated with Italian food, so much so that a common slur against Italians is "garlic eaters." It may surprise, then, that almost all the garlic in the world is grown and consumed in China. Here in America, we're no pikers; we have our own capital of production in the aromatic Gilroy, California. Garlic's world-spanning appeal is based not only on taste, but on the simple fact that garlic will keep you alive, and not just because the vampires will back off. Don't believe me? Hey, just ask Dr. Mao. It'll keep your bad cholesterol down, fend off the common cold, and maybe even prevent incidence of cancer. Good health never tasted so good.

Personal Connection: To my mom's horror, I used to eat garlic raw. Like, a lot. I've laid off that habit as being socially responsible started to mean more to me. But I'm still of a mind to put garlic in just about anything. I'm not the only one: The Muddle-Headed Wombat was feeling a bit more muddle-headed than usual a couple weeks back, and wanted the gift of garlic on his birthday. So yandros, lemurtanis, and I took him southward to the Chehalis Garlic Festival. There we gutsily braved garlic pasta, garlic tofu, garlic donuts, garlic popcorn, garlic ice cream, and garlic peanut brittle. We also ran into iuztheevil, who proceeded the next day to complain that he'd had, and I quote, "too much garlic." Such an imagination, Mr. Bulmahn. I'll bet you believe in vampires too.

Other Contenders: a pinch of saffron, as good as it is expensive, especially in my stepmother's homemade risotto; habanero chilies, currently serving as the souped-up undercarriage of my wife's prize-winning spicy raspberry jelly; berbere and masala, the spice mixes that power Ethiopian and Indian cuisine, respectively; the juice of a meyer lemon drizzled over an entree; the bracing bohemian horseradish, or its honored kinsman from the Far East, wasabi.

Who: You know who.


Why: Two of my other contenders for this designation are entering the Naismith Hall of Fame today, as is one of my contenders for Most Beautiful Basketball Coach. It doesn't matter. A larger auditorium was needed to enshrine Michael Jordan in the Hall, and that doesn't happen for megastars John Stockton, David Robinson, or Jerry Sloan. While it was Magic and Bird that saved the league, Jordan defined it. Imagine having the second pick in any fantasy basketball draft from 1989-1993, or from 1996-1998. Heck, imagine having the first in 1994. (Your cardiac arrest upon Jordan's first retirement would have been understandable.) The numbers are staggering: 30.12 points per game, a record. 33.45 points per playoff game, a record. Six Finals MVPs, a record. Ten scoring titles, a record. And on and on. His fluidity on the court was legendary, and his intelligence was unparalleled. But what mattered more than anything else was his drive. There was no one who wanted to beat you more, and damned if he didn't come with all the skills to do it.

Impact: Six NBA championships, one NCAA championship, two Olympic gold medals, and a billion dollars in revenue for the city of Chicago. Jordan's biggest impact, though, was on the NBA. As big as his presence was on the court, even bigger was the void immediately after Jordan retired the second time (he made a habit of it). No matter how talented his successors were, there was no one to make the world's collective jaw drop. Basketball stayed great, but it was a little more fair, a little more ordinary, a little more human. Eventually, another charismatic aerialist wearing #23 came along, and the jury's still out on him. For now, we can consider MJ's championship years as the greatest basketball of all time.

Personal Connection: I saw Jordan play live at the United Center maybe 25 times, and a couple more in Seattle. Eventually, I could predict his moves. I remember one night when I turned to my date and said, "Watch this." I drew a squiggle in the air to show Jordan's path down the full court, through the defenders, and to the basket. Sure enough, he did it. "How did you see that?" my date said. "From up here, it's easy," I said. "The question is, how did he see it?"

Other Contenders: Utah Jazz point guard and forward John Stockton and Karl Malone, the greatest teammates ever; Lakers guard and Celtics forward Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, the best friends two men can be while being enemies; San Antonio Spurs center David Robinson, not only a dominant player but the classiest fellow ever to lace 'em up; Seattle Storm and Aussie national team center Lauren Jackson, the most versatile basketball player I've ever seen; Jason McElwain, the autistic player who made the best of a chance we would all hope to take.

What: The use of GPS receivers to seek containers called geocaches in a multitude of outdoor locations. When geocachers find a cache, they sign a logbook which certifies their find, then virtually log the find on geocaching.com. The cachers often will take an item or leave an item, many of them trackable online.

Why: Born of a Luddite activity called letterboxing, geocaching came to life when President Clinton removed a Cold War-remnant series of errors called selective availability from the Global Positioning System on May 1, 2000. Two days later, Dave Ulmer dropped a bucket in The Middle of Nowhere, Oregon. Some other fellow found it, and the virus began to spread. The activity unites three disparate key elements: First, you go somewhere you haven't been before. Second, you leave something in the cache, and take something you find. Third, you tell everyone you've been there by logging your find. If you're an explorer, a collector, or an egotist—and I know you're at least one of those—geocaching will appeal to you. Or perhaps if you're an absurdist: After all, you're using billion-dollar satellites to find tupperware.

Impact: In less than a decade, geocachers have placed almost 900,000 active caches. Wherever you are (assuming you are not reading this in the ocean or on the moon), there are some near you right now. You can find a bunch by turning on your iPhone, downloading the Geocaching app, and hitting "Find Nearby Caches." That won't satisfy you, though, because an iPhone is a poor GPS unit. You will soon want a handheld GPSr. You will want to leave your house every weekend. You will want to try harder caches. You will want to leave your mark on the world. You will want to enjoy life.

Personal Connection: Three hundred and fifty caches later, Evon and I are serious cachers. Geocaching has acquainted us with hundreds of places we would never have seen. We own a Garmin 60CSX, a very good receiver, plus two other Garmins as backup. We have wandered dark mountain shafts, crawled up 400-foot drainpipes, and hung off cliff faces. And we have placed one of our own, just near our house. So here's our offer to you: Come by, and we'll hand you a GPSr. You can find our cache, and sign the log. Whatever happens after that is up to you.

Other Contenders: Lindy bombing, the art of swing-dancing on things not typically swing-danced upon, here demonstrated by Seattleites Celeste and Lukas; birdwatching, especially if you can hang out with David Attenborough; playing a handheld video game in wardriving mode, seeking WiFi hotspots to unlock treasures, allies, and adventures; road rallying, driving a car from checkpoint to checkpoint—or, if you're puzzlingly inclined, playing The Game.