There are many different ways to quit smoking. These range from hypnosis to herbal medications. However, not all methods are suitable for everyone. One method that works for one person might not be the best approach for the other person. For this reason, I am going to describe five effective ways in this article that ARE possible for almost every person who is suffering from the most crippling addiction of all the time - SMOKING.

Cigarette smoking mainly involves two factors, namely:

Nicotine addiction

Psychological addiction

Any approach to permanently quit smoking must address these two components in order to be successful. The five proven ways that follow this philosophy are:

Wean yourself out of this habit by using nicotine replacement products, such as nicotine patches or nicotine gum. These products are easily available over the counter (without a prescription). This method works best when you combine it with cognitive therapy that addresses the emotional aspect of the addiction.

Wean yourself off of nicotine through “nicotine fading.” This approach involves progressively switching over to cigarette brands that contain lower and lower nicotine levels before quitting altogether — a recommended plan is to switch over once a week for 3 weeks to brands with 30%, 60%, and then 90% less nicotine than you started with. One advantage to this system is that you can gradually get rid of the ill effects of nicotine without having to experience a full blast of with-drawl symptoms, since your body is incrementally introduced to the changes in the chemical levels.

One effective approach for addressing your smoking habit is “relapse prevention.” This typically involves identification of your personal “triggers,” or “situations” for smoking, and then coming up with “coping behaviors” for dealing with them. Triggers can be a wide multitude of things — people, places, events, emotions, etc. Some instances for these triggers are anxiety, parties, stress, and anger. Once you've identified the instances that are prone to put you at risk for relapsing after you've quit, you can come up with ways to cope with them. For example, if you smoke while you are anxious, you can remind yourself to relax by counting from 10 to 1 instead of heading for a cigarette. If you tend to dive into your pocket for a cigarette when you are bored, you can keep a list of things that you can do in your spare time, and do these in order to distract yourself. If you have a will, the possibilities for these coping strategies are endless!

One effective approach to address your smoking habit is to propose a quit smoking contract with yourself — Schedule to give yourself small rewards for every successful day, and larger rewards for longer periods of time, that you don't smoke.

One more proven strategy to quit smoking is to form some sort of a support system - ask a non smoking friend or a family member to be your companion, who can help you stay on track and encourage you on your way independence.

Last but not the least, the most successful approach to quit smoking is to combine all of the above methods simultaneously. This way, your journey is most likely to lead to the much anticipated destination. If you fail once, it's OK. Keep trying. Never give up, and it's only a matter of time before you are smoke-free.

Take me back to the place that I know… a perfect Summer's day, clear, blue sky, perhaps the occasional fluffy cotton-wool cloud that dissipates within moments of its formation as the sun's heat burns through, evaporates the moisture in the air. Not yet ten am, and already the temperature registers as hot, no need to check the mercury level in the thermometer to confirm the fact. The kind of morning when you wake up and it feels good to be alive, where the draw of the beach really tales hold. The sound of the gentle waves lapping at the golden sand, the water, cool and clear, such perfect tranquillity. The fresh, gentle breeze and the sand warm and soft beneath your feet, it's a complete, multisensory experience. Everyone has such a scene in their memory, a picture they can conjure in the mind's eye… try it. Feel the sun warm on your shoulders: you start to relax and feel the tension ebbing away.

It was this coastal idyll that Mark held in his mind when he awoke, uncommonly early for a Saturday. He got up feeling enormously and unusually refreshed after his night's sleep. Having avoided he usual heavy Friday night, the inaugural piss-up that traditionally marked the boundaries between the working week and the weekend - although not entirely through choice: his drinking buddies, Dave and Steve were both on holiday, independently of one another, overseas - he noted the conspicuous absence of a hangover almost immediately. Dave and Steve were both big drinkers, and mark's new-ish, sort-of girlfriend, Chloe, considered them to be a bad influence. It was this opinion that caused the greatest number of arguments between the two of them, and was perhaps the reason why she and Mark remained only a sort-of item.

Dave had a girlfriend who was a good laugh, which is how he was now in Ibiza with her for a dirty fortnight of drinking, dancing, sun, sea and shagging. Steve was single and making the most of it: right now, he was having it large in Magaluf with a bunch of guys from his previous workplace. Mark didn't really enjoy clubbing - or rather, he didn't really enjoy the music the play in most clubs - he much preferred indie to dance - and being skint had tipped the scales in his decision against accepting Steve's invitation to join them. But he had been beginning to regret this decision when the British summertime had played out true to form and he had found himself with no one to hit the pub with at lunchtime on Wednesday after a particularly grim and gruelling morning at the office.

And now, waking up to a postcard-perfect summer's day and feeling like a new man, Mark saw an opportunity for him to compensate himself, if only on a small scale, and to make himself feel as though he had not missed out entirely. He didn't much feel like going on his own, though, so decided to give Chloe a ring. However on-off or casual they were, he did enjoy her company most of the time, and liked being seen with her, and he hoped to get her in her bikini if she was up for a trip to the coast

“'Lo?” She sounded sleepy, groggy, a tad rough.

“Clo, 's me,” Mark chimed chirpily.

“What time is it?” the girl at the other end of the line croaked.

Mark pictured her, half-propped up in bed in her pyjamas, her biscuit-blonde streaked hair tousled, holding her pink mobile to her ear. His mental image was pretty accurate, but didn't feature her clothes from the night before strewn about the floor and the foot of the bed, the crumpled fag packet and half-empty wine glass on the bedside, and didn't take account of her rotten cigs and Bacardi Breezer post-clubbing breath.

“Er, quarter to ten.” Replied Mark, himself a little shocked by his punctuality.

“It's Saturday,” she groaned, “and you've just woken me up at quarter to bloody ten? What the hell's wrong with you? You know I don't…”

“I know, I know you don't get up before half eleven on a weekend,” he cut her off. “But it's such a lovely day…”

“Wha..? Are you alright?”

“Yes. I thought you might fancy coming out for the day. To the seaside.”

“Eh?”

“I just thought…” Mark hesitated. He was beginning to think that phoning Chloe at this hour, with this proposition, had perhaps been a mistake.

“Ye-eah…” Her signal that he should go on made him realise he had hesitated for longer than he had first appreciated.

“Well, 'cause it's so nice, I wanted to head down to the coast, spend a few hours on the beach an' that, y'know, and I was wondering if you might, like, like to join me, a spot of sunbathing and maybe lunch or summat…”

“Ok.”

“Yeah?”

“Why not?”

“I'll pick you up in about forty-five?”

“Make it an hour, I need a shower and to dry my hair.”

Take a walk with me onto the beach… just out of reach. Mark was in a buoyant mood as he shaved, gelled his hair and cleaned his teeth.

He grabbed a towel and slipped his trunks on beneath his knee-length shorts. A dip could well be in order. He hummed Hard-Fi's 'Living for the Weekend' as he pulled a four-pack of Carling from the fridge and put it into the cool-bag he had got free with some other lager a couple of years back. He liked that song, and felt that it quite summed up his life since he had landed his job at the call centre where he had now been for over two years. He wanted a change of scenery, but there wasn't much that paid as well that he was qualified to do round his way.

Fifty minutes later he was pulling up in front of Chloe's house, the windows down and the Arctic Monkey's first album blaring full tilt on the stereo. He was raring to go, but Chloe wasn't quite ready when he rang her doorbell. She had managed to dry her hair, but had only just finished getting dressed: there was makeup to be done and she had to get her belongings together, and should she bring a towel?

It was another twenty minutes before they set off, and Mark had been getting impatient, but seeing Chloe beside him in a light summer dress with the wind blowing through her hair as they cruised down the motorway to the sound of the Kaiser Chiefs made everything alright. He'd get a couple of beers in him - but not enough to prevent him driving, and safely - maybe throw the Frisbee around a bit and paddle, between stints of simply relaxing, chilling, soaking up some sun.

The journey took a little longer than Mark had anticipated. It seemed that half of the south-east England had had the same idea as him. He'd decided against heading for Brighton, despite the fact he loved the place, because he figured it would be crowded, and because he wanted sand, not stones. And besides, Brighton really required at least an overnight stop: you can't go to Brighton and not hit the pubs and clubs, he thought, that would be just wrong. And so, stuck in a procession of slow-moving traffic, all coastward bound, while Chloe made busy texting and phoning various friends, Mark found himself drifting off into his own perfect world, the one he anticipated on arrival at that pure shore… Can you hear, what I hear, it's calling you my dear…

They arrived at Mark's chosen destination a little after twelve thirty. The car park was rammed, and some bozo was making a very bad job of slotting his Ford Fiesta into a space big enough for three cars, straddling the space in a manner that prevented Mark from parking his car. The other driver looked to be abandoning his vehicle like that, so leaning out of his window as the guy started to open his door, Mark called out to him.

“Hey!”

The Fiesta driver didn't respond.

“Hey, you! Yes, you!” hollered Mark as the drip looked up. “You can't just leave it like that!”

“What? You got a problem?”

“Yeah. I can't get my car in. Can you move yours over a bit?”

“I'm not being funny, but why can't you just park somewhere else?” The bloke was getting a bit aggressive for Mark's liking, but he would stand his ground.

“Mate, it's packed. I've just driven round for the past ten minutes and there aren't any spaces.”

“That's your hard luck, innit? Ask someone else to budge,” the Fiesta driver sneered.

“Oh, c'mon, man,” Mark pleaded, struggling to keep his cool. He wasn't keen on confrontation, but sometimes he lost it. This guy out to watch himself: he was hardly well-built, and Mark fancied that he was asking for a punch if he didn't watch out.

Chloe was making quiet noises about the Fiesta driver being a wanker, but was also whispering to Mark that he should leave it. Fortunately, after some huffing and puffing and cursing under his breath, the man - who was probably only in his early twenties, like Mark - got back in his car and straightened up, making room for Mark to pull in beside.

Down on the beach, the sight of two seas - one of water, another of people - greeted Mark. He and Chloe took their towels and bags to an unoccupied spot not too close to the sea - they didn't want to have to move straight away if the tide was coming in - but not so far that to paddle would be a trek. Chloe had brought her portable radio and tuned it into Atlantic 252, which was usually too poppy for Mark's liking, but he was feeling the summer vibe and it seemed somehow appropriate here. Pulling off her t-shirt to reveal a small halter-neck bikini top, she took out the latest edition of Heat and, lying on her back, began to read. Mark stripped off his shirt and, cracking open a can, sat and surveyed the scene. And he saw that it was good. The stresses of the working week, the argument with the bozo in the car park, the envy of his friends away on holiday, all slipped away. Upon a summer wind there's a certain melody. Children splashed in the clear blue water, while others made sandcastles. Young couples, lying, still, calm, soaking up the rays, tanning, tanning… a bunch of guys, probably about Mark's own age were kicking a football about, just enjoying being lads. Another group, of mixed sex, in their mid to late thirties, firing up a disposable barbecue. The aroma of sizzling sausages and flame-grilled burgers was making Mark hungry. But he was easily distracted and thoughts of food were immediately replaced by the girls… yes, tall girls, short girls, brown hair girls, blonde hair girls, big girls, skinny girls, carrying a little bitty weight girls…

Later, Mark and Chloe went and got some food, then they lay, replete, silent, enjoying the day. Later still, as the heat of the sun reached its height, they went for a paddle. Mark couldn't resist splashing his girlfriend, and then carrying him over his shoulder before launching her into the sea. She looked so hot wet! She feigned irritation at first, but within moments was completely into it too, throwing water at him, laughing, tickling and slapping him playfully. He wrestled her a bit, pinching her arse and almost succeeded in unfastening her bikini top: she retaliated by pulling his bathing shorts down, exposing a buttock to the world. No-one was looking, of course; just two more daytrippers larking about in the water. Drying off, Mark lay back and smiled to himself; Chloe was topping up her tan a little more before they had to head home. Yes, he thought, it's a perfect day…

He didn't see the fat middle-aged women with their sagging atrophied breasts, the fat, middle-aged men with their chests, red-raw with sunburn, covered in thick, grey hair, the spoiled bratty children fighting, throwing tantrums and kicking down the sandcastles of the little freckled children…

He looked through the litter on the beach, the cans and wrappers abandoned by other visitors on this and previous days…

He didn't see the dead fish washed up on the shore, with mutated gills and stunted fins, didn't notice the bedraggled, oil-covered gull flapping desperately over a clump of seaweed and a broken, moss-covered fishing net…

He didn't consider the possibility that someone may report him to the police as a suspected paedophile as he watched the children playing in the sea, skipping over the waves as they broke, or as their parents stripped them in the middle of the beach to towel them dry…

He didn't for a second think that, while he was checking out the girls as they passed by in their stringy bikinis, swinging their hips, that Chloe might be eyeing up the young guys on the beach as they flexed their muscles on their tanned, toned torsos…

As they drove home, Mark felt a lightness of being. The image in his mind's eye confirmed it all. It had been a perfect day. Take me back to the place that I know….

billboard after improvement

billboard before improvement

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 27, 2010
San Francisco

The Billboard Liberation Front (BLF) is honored to announce a new marketing partnership with Philip Morris (PM) that finally brings together the rugged sense of American independence with your most important choice as a consumer: your death. The message of “My Life. My Death. My Choice.” informs and empowers the consumer to choose, as their god given right, how they want to die. Philip Morris brings this message to the consumer to remind them that some rights are inalienable in life as they are in death.

“We’ve always said that the only two things in life that are unavoidable are death and taxes,” commented Michael E. Szymanczyk, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Philip Morris. “This campaign drives home that message where, if you are gonna die, might as well do it on your terms. Just like our Marlboro Men did.” According to Patrick B. Smelt, Chief of Marketing, “This bold message of independence and demanding life and death on your terms fits with the current zeitgeist of anti-establishmentarianism and post-post-modern rage at the repressive state demanding a healthier you and your environment.”

The BLF was honored to accept this exciting challenge. “We have no comment on President Obama’s health care reform, but many consumer of Philip Morris’s products do. We felt that this campaign picks up on a widespread rage that some nameless, faceless bureaucrat might give them cheaper health care, preventative treatment, and maybe deny them the sweet release we are all seeking,” said Rico T. Spoons, BLF Director of Offense as he idly drew a razorblade across his wrists. “This oppressive political climate and fascist approach towards health raises the comforting question of ‘how will you end it all?’ I like to think that we are just giving some poor folks a reminder that Philip Morris will always be there to help kill you.”

All former Marlboro Men, Wayne McLaren, David McLean and Dick Hammer, were unavailable for comment due to their rugged, manly choice of death by lung cancer.

The improvement can be viewed on Howard at Van Ness in San Francisco.

Major League Manager Dies

James Gammon—the manager from Major League and a lot of other stuff—died over the weekend after a long battle with cancer. Everybody smoke a pack of Marlboro Reds and talk like him in his honor.

Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. See you tomorrow morning.

Send an email to David Matthews, the author of this post, at david@deadspin.com.

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Today my wife and took our grandson to Bladensburg Waterfront Park in Bladensburg Maryland. There I read a placard describing Dr. William Beanes and his role in the creation of our national anthem. When I returned home I did a little research at a web site dedicated to the flag of the United States.

In general everyone knows the story of the creation of our national anthem. Francis Scott Key watched the bombardment of Ft. McHenry in Baltimore harbor. Most people think that he was on a British warship but he was on the deck of a sloop behind the British fleet. He was so inspired by seeing the stars and stripes flying proudly through the attack that he wrote what would become our national anthem.

Did you ever wonder what Francis Scott Key was doing behind the British fleet during the battle? He was a loyal American and he wasn't captured. I am proud to tell this story because it starts with a handful of men from my town of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, but let me start with a little background.

The United States and Great Britain were engaged in a war that started over shipping rights. It seems that Great Britain was in a conflict with France and they wanted to control any shipping heading in that direction. The United States would have none of it. This sounds pretty obvious to us in this day and age but you have to remember what the United States was like early in the nineteenth century. It had been a little over thirty years since the end of the Revolutionary War. We did not soundly defeat the British then; it was more of a political victory. Like most revolutions we outlasted them. Now here we were hardly recognized as a country and with a military feared by no one in the world and we were once again getting in the face of a perennial power. This time the power had a score to settle. You have to admire the nerve of our forefathers; they refused to be pushed around no matter what the risk.

When the British came, they came with a vengeance. The British entered the Chesapeake Bay on August 19, 1814, and in less then a week they had captured Washington, DC. There they exacted their revenge. They sacked and burned the city. The flames rose so high that they could be seen forty miles away.

On August 26, 1814, the British army marched through Upper Marlboro and continued moving while frustrated citizens watched them go by. Later in the day a few British stragglers wandered into town. An older man named Dr. William Beanes and a few friends decided to act. They captured the stragglers and held them as prisoners. This infuriated British General Ross so much that he immediately sent troops back to free his soldiers and to capture Dr. Beanes and his friends. The general agreed to let go all of the Americans but Dr. Beanes. They took the doctor with them and they boarded their ships and headed for Baltimore.

The people of Upper Marlboro were very upset. Dr. Beanes was their town physician and a man that had endeared himself to his community. From the tone of the British command, they feared that their good doctor would be hanged. They called upon a young but well respected lawyer from Georgetown to intercede in their behalf. The lawyer's name was Francis Scott Key. Key went to American authorities who pointed him to Colonel Skinner. Colonel Skinner was an American agent for prisoner exchange and Key asked him to be his escort to the British.

On September 7, 1814, Key and Skinner boarded the Tonnant and had their first conference with General Ross. Initially General Ross refused to listen to any pleas from the Americans. Then Skinner and Key produced letter after letter describing the good and humane treatment given to wounded British troops by American doctors; one of them being Dr. William Beanes. This changed the general's mind, but he would not let the Americans leave. He claimed that they had seen too much of his battle plan and that they would be released after the battle. The Americans were placed on a sloop behind the British fleet and that is where Francis Scott Key penned the Star Spangled Banner.

There is one more part of the story. General Armistead commanding the American forces in Ft. McHenry specifically ordered the biggest American flag in existence to fly during the battle. It was this flag, and the spirit that kept it flying, that inspired Francis Scott Key.

The Bestest 2009 - Filmmage
There seemed to be fewer films that will stand the test of time this year than in the past, but that is not to say there weren't a handful of gems. For me the most important filmic discovery was jaw dropping accessibility provided by Netflix “Watch Now.” I started the year with a Roku box, which was cheap and easy to use. Hooked on the drug, I upgraded to Netflix over Xbox Live. Not only can you watch a seemingly infinite number of films instantly and on a whim, the release window is incredibly fast for indie films. In fact five of the films on this list are already available on demand and by the time I get around to finishing this list I'm sure there will a few more.

1) The Hurt Locker - Dir. Kathyrn Bigelow (Jeremy Renner, Ralph Fiennes)
Rarely does a movie that is so intrinsically political make such lucid points without seeming the least bit preachy or biased. Even more remarkable is that the film is set in a war that is actually still ongoing (Iraq) but is so focused, on one small specialized unit tasked with doing something most people know nothing about, the bomb diffusing unit, that it could be any modern war.
Despite high profile cameos by Ralph Fiennes and David Morse, the film belongs to Jeremy Renner, who like the bombs he is charged with diffusing, seems ready to explode at any moment. The only time he seems calm and at peace is when he is encased in his heavy futuristic protective suit carefully dismantling the sketchy homemade bombs strewn throughout the city. There is very little downtime in the film; it all seems filled with a relentless intensity. This is a small masterpiece, about a big subject, executed with a precision of a surgeon. When eventually the dust settles I'm not sure there will be a more compelling film about this war.

2) Crazy Heart - Dir. Scott Cooper (Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Robert Duvall)
It's hard not to love watching Jeff Bridges act. In part he often picks likable characters, but often he just makes them far more likable than they actually are. His role in “Crazy Heart,” as a banged up fading country singer, Bad Blake, is, without a doubt, the strongest and most compelling of his career. In it he is channeling his inner Kris Kristofferson but mashing it up with a “Barfly” era Bukowsky. For much of the film, watching him struggle to breathe through Marlboro lungs, and steady himself after a full day of drinking is almost too convincing. You nearly worry for the actor, not just the character.
As much as you hope the story will avoid a quasi-predictable storyline, you really know where things are heading. No matter. The always exceptional Maggie Gyllenhaal, is quite wonderful as Bad's live or die forcing function, but the show is all Bridges. He becomes this character, very much like Mickey Rourke's “Wrestler,” even proving himself a capable singer. This is that magic small film that make you laugh and cry, grateful that someone, somewhere, picked it up off the floor and gave it a chance be seen on theater screens.

3) 500 Days of Summer -Dir. Marc Webb (Zooey Deschanel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt)
This film features two of my favorite young actors and a non-linear story about love that isn't meant to be, even though you spend the whole movie wishing that is were. Our protagonist, Tom, played by David Gordon-Levitt, somehow ended up writing greeting cards despite his original dream of being an architect, and the irony of a professional iterating on clichés, sets the tone for a romance that refuses to be lifted from the world of the predictable.
Zooey Deschanel (Summer) is the everything you want her to be: smart, clever, cute, but also brutally honest to a painful fault. But what separates this film from something hopelessly inevitable is the inventive and occasionally frustrating craft of the film. Built on a gimmick, in a good way, the film starts near the end and winds its way to the beginning, exposing shards of the pair's 500 days “together” in an uncommonly engaging manner. I guess we're all still wondering what love really means, and whether the hindsight we all wish had been foresight when we were young would have made life any better.

4) An Education - Dir. Lone Scherfig (Peter Sarsgaard, Carey Mulligan, Alfred Molina)
There is a wonderful texture and sense of time and place about this film. The swinging pre-Beatles London captured on screen, circa 1961, from the physical locales to the music and costumes transports you not just into a physical geography but even deeper into the minds of the characters who effortlessly draw you in. Adapted crisply by Nick Hornby, the film is a kind of modern Lolita but with an older victim, 16, and a younger “predator.”
This is largely the tale of a precocious high school girl (a career launching performance by Carey Mulligan) who is seduced by an older man slickly and slimily played by the consistently great Peter Saarsgard. But unlike the hundreds of similar seeming stories that have come before, this fast moving screenplay is thick with tension and a beautiful rhythm and a startling surprise twist that adds just enough spice to make it great. All of this is even more remarkable considering that the director is a Dane who manages to access the zeitgeist with an incredible acuity and authenticity.

5) Gomorrah - Dir. Matteo Garrone (Salvatore Abruzzese, Vincenzo Fabricino)
Between The Sopranos and the films of Scorsese, the American mafia genre has such a high ba, that most attempts at something new will suffer badly. In part this is why the gritty, Italian take on the subject is so refreshing, despite its consistently overt bleakness. This is a documentary-feeling tale about the Camorra system that seems to control every inch of Naples- a place where there are no heroes, and no victims, only a ruined landscape and an endless cycle of acquiescence and surrender.
Among the handful of interconnected stories, each leads to the same place and seems to paint the picture of a society stuck behind the bars of something too powerful to escape. From the young kids who have the naïve arrogance to try to chart their own course to the withering elders who are just trying to hold on, this is the least sentimental film in quite a while. The film swims in violence, but none of it is remotely gratuitous. It feels real, and sad just like the people walking on glass that we know will, in the end, always shatter.

6) Summer Hours - Olivier Assayas (Juliette Binoche, Jérémie Renier, Charles Berling)
This is a quintessential French film. It is beautiful and contemplative, artfully filmed and perfectly paced. At its core this is a film about family, specifically the three siblings who gather at their gorgeous French country estate to celebrate the birthday of their mother. Over the years she has filled the house with rare and beautiful paintings, sculpture and one of a kind furniture. For her each piece is cherished for its intrinsic beauty and even more the emotional significance it holds. To the rest of the family the collection is the passion of someone else, beautiful perhaps, but someone else's memories.

Shortly after the matriarch dies, the film becomes more a meditation on the meaning of material things. As the siblings, who are now dispersed throughout the world, China, Paris and New York, debate what to do about the estate and the collection, the film asks us to consider what globalization has done to the concept of family and tradition. As I watched it made me think about my own collections, and specifically the massive collection of music (vinyl, cassettes, CDs) now packed away in boxes, replaced by digitized copies and stored on tiny hard drives. For me, collecting, the endless discovery, provided a journey, and the music a way to remember the moments along the way. 'Summer Hours' is a tranquil, subtle exploration of what is important. In the end it is about those things that enable us to bring back memories and what helps us to create the new ones.

7) The White Ribbon - Dir. Michael Haneke (Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Tukur)
There was not a bleaker more beautiful film this year, than the Bergmanesque German art film “The White Ribbon.” Like most prior Haneke films (”Funny Games,” “Cache,” The Piano Teacher”) the film paints a crisp picture of mankind's instinct towards cruelty and hate. But this time the perpetrators are likely the children living in a stark, isolated pre-WWI northern German town.
Although very much a European film in the sense that there are many loose ends and ambiguous resolutions as you watch the credits roll, the story moves along briskly as told by a narrator recalling vague incidents from 50 years earlier. The epidemic of tragic events that afflict the town seems both the product of the feudalism that is still a part of the society at the time, which spills directly from the cold, Puritanism of the towns' elders. It is rare a film is able to maintain a level of unease as consistently as “The White Ribbon.” It is not exactly the edge of your seat you are feeling, but a kind slow burning emptiness. Great films make you “feel” something, but for most people this film won't make them feel great!

Adventureland - Dir. Greg Mottola (Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Ryan Reynolds)
In some ways this film so closely mirrors my own experience that it is hard for me to judge it objectively. It doesn't really matter though, because like a light beer on a hot day, this one goes down so easily. The film is set during the summer of 1987 primarily at a lame Pittsburg amusement park (I spent that same summer making snow cones at a lame Cleveland amusement park for $3 an hour). The story focuses on the always lovable Jesse Eisenberg who was supposed to have been traveling around Europe using his college graduation money, which he never got because his father lost his job, and instead mans a game booth with the same insufferable music blaring all summer long.

Unlike the endless films of its kind, where a geek falls for a beautiful girl who is in love with the wrong guy, this film feels more like swan song from the late John Hughes. The film's hugely appealing cast stretches the thin plot into something nostalgic and authentic, with the pitch perfect soundtrack and the kind of nerdy naiveté from the 80's now seen from a distance. Perhaps this isn't a masterwork like Sixteen Candles or The Breakfast Club but there haven't been many since then that capture a moment in time so carefully.

9) Inglourious Basterds - Dir. Q Tarrantino (George Clooney, Christoph Waltz)
With every Tarrantino effort I tend to lose track of the fact that most of his films never really find a mass audience despite the technical finesse, incredible dialogue and near perfect performances. With Basterds of course there is violence, but this time around the focus seems to be more about the thick air of tension that surrounds individual scenes versus the blood and gore of previous efforts. At the most basic level, this is a WWII movie, where a gang of rogue Americans, “the basterds” is unleashed on the evil Nazi's. This film is about revenge, but it succeeds in part because the Nazis, represented by the Oscar worthy Christoph Waltz, are even more evil than you might have thought, and the rampage that the Basterds undertake occasionally don't seem cruel enough.

The film is told in chapters, and with the exception of two which seem flatter and slower than the rest, each scene can almost be appreciated in isolation as a complete work. Tarrantino is a master, but this time around it almost feels like he wields a collective hatchet for all the victims of the Nazi's terror. Never has rooting for vengeance felt so right. I'm not sure why it increasingly seems that Pulp Fiction will go down as Tarrantino's opus, despite a handful of better, deeper films since then. This one and Jackie Brown and Kill Bill 2 are classics, made by the Kubrick of the modern age.

10) Sin Nombre - Cary Joji Fukunaga (Paulina Gaitan, Edgar Flores)
In the wake of the great Mexican cinema of the past decade (Amores Perros, Et Tu Mama Tambien) comes the grittiest, most riveting journey for freedom in a long while. Produced by Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna and directed by an American first-timer, Cary Fukunaga, Sin Nombre tells the story of a family of Honduran immigrants who jump on a rusty train and travel north through Mexico en route to America with hundreds of others, camped out on the roof, grasping onto the same dream.

More than any other the film this year, it is both a love story that you know will end badly, and an exploration of the brutal Central American gangs that cover the country by way of a network of cell phones and spotters. This is a different kind of road movie, but a road movie nonetheless, where the voyage is less about self-exploration than it is about survival. To consider a film like this is to remember that in a country not all that far away, chaos, violence, and poverty are a way of life, not just occasional headlines. This might be best debut film of the year.

11) The Cove - Dir. Louie Psihoyos / Food, Inc. - Dir. Robert Kenner
Two of the scariest movies of the years had nothing to do with alien prawns or paranormal activity but were obviously one-sided explorations of how we humans treat animals (or mammals). The first was Food, Inc. a kind of documentary version of Eric Schlosser's book Fast Food Nation. In it we are exposed to the “real life” practices of the poultry, beef and pork business.' Beyond the obvious hard to watch clips of slaughterhouses and overcrowded chicken farms the film spends as much time analyzing the global business of food, controlled by a handful of massive multinationals. The business of food is almost harder to watch than the frightening story of getting food from a farm to table. It is not just eating animals that will forever seem a dangerous voyage after watching this, food as innocent and healthy seeming as soy has, if you believe the filmmakers, an ugly back story as well. Best watched without snacks.

The second film cut from the same cloth is the eco-thriller doc. The Cove. This documentary is a much more creative piece of filmmaking, with a story that seems somehow even more gripping. The film follows the man largely credited with inadvertently starting the multi-billion dollars dolphin park business, after bringing Flipper to living rooms. The story ultimately follows a crew of explorers to a small town in Japan where 23,000 dolphins a year are slaughtered for food in a heavily guarded hidden cove. There is more to the story than this, including how the team captured the grizzly footage of one day's slaughter. You can't help but feel an incredible sadness. a guilty shame, watching this film, much of it because it appears that dolphins have a considerably higher intellect than the pigs, cows and chickens who appear in “Food,Inc.” Either way, I suppose the idea of natural selection, no matter how brutal, is much better exposed in these films than it is on the Discovery channel. Again, this film is best watched on an empty stomach.

12) Goodbye, Solo - Dir. Ramin Bahran (Souleymane Sy Savane, Red West)
No one saw this film. This is a sad fact, but not a surprise. It's a story about two ordinary people who meet under imperfect circumstances and have the kind of short of intense human interaction that delves much deeper than most longer, seemingly more intimate relationships. The story is a simple one in which a crusty old man, played with a quiet power by Red West, steps into a cab in a southern town and effectively commissions a ride in 30 days to his own self-inflected funeral from the infectiously optimistic cabbie, Souleymane Sy Savane.
Over the course of the days that follow the two begin to build something resembling a friendship different than anything either could have ever anticipated. But this isn't a Hollywood film, and the story that plays out is real. It is neither happy nor sad. The two characters are moving through time- one with an eye on the future, the other reflecting on the past. There something sublimely calming about Goodbye, Solo which reminds you that time never stops.

13) Up In The Air - Dir. Jason Reitman (George Clooney, Vera Farmiga)
Yes, this film is easy to watch. It is slick, clever, and just deep enough to make you feel okay about loving it. Jason Reitman is now 3 for 3 (Thank You for Smoking and Juno) and has such a light touch, adding just the right amount of emotional spectrum, cool music, and perfect casting to insulate his films from any real criticism.

The thing I appreciated most about Up In the Air is the nuanced attention given to getting into the mindset of serious traveling. As someone who flies often, the subtle, unconscious, ultra-efficient decisions at security checks, airport lounges and hotels seem as perfect as the often irrational brand loyalties. Sure there are flaws, but in the end they are hardly worth acknowledging. This film is an obvious joy, and you don't need me to tell you that.

14) Avatar - Dir. James Cameron (Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver)
There is not much I can offer about this movie that hasn't already been said. It is a mesmerizing, magical thing of beauty to watch. It is technically and artistically paradigm shifting in the way that Star Wars was while also sharing a kind zeitgeisty philosophical, neo-religious world view. Sure the story is really nothing new, albeit updated with a topical eco-friendly theme, complete with a predictable love story and obvious good versus evil polarity, but the film is more a visual feast than a character study. I could go on, but why. This film is a masterpiece that, more than any film in years, needs to be seen on a massive screen, in 3D, and with a large bucket of popcorn.

15) The Messenger - Oren Moverman (Woody Harrelson, Ben Foster, Samantha Morton)
16) Sugar - Dir. Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (Algenis Pérez Soto, Rayniel Rufino)
17) A Serious Man - Dir. Joel and Ethan Coen (Michael Stuhlbarg, Fred Melamed)
18) The Maid - Dir. Sebastian Silva (Catalina Saavedra, Alejandro Goic)
19) The Informant - Dir. Stephen Soderburgh (Matt Damon, Scott Bakula)
20) A Single Man - Dir. Tom Ford (Colin Firth, Julianne Moore)

This is officially my 17th annual 'Bestest' list. As always, to follow the assembly of this list throughout the year feel free to follow the action on http://twitter.com/ruxputin or visit www.snoozebutton.com where you can find Bestest lists dating back to 1996 under the “best of” category. Enjoy.

Only two bird watchers in history have ever seen more than 8,000 of the approximately 9,600 species of birds found on our planet. Phoebe Snetsinger, of Missouri, was one of the two. Her father, Leo Burnett, was the ad exec who helped bring the Jolly Green Giant, the Marlboro Man, Toucan Sam, Charlie the Tuna, Morris the Cat, the Pillsbury Doughboy and Tony the Tiger into our lives. Why is that important when discussing a birder? Easy: money! Only 900 species are found in the US and Canada, so a serious birder needs to have enough dough to travel around the world.

To give you some perspective on just what an fantastic accomplishment seeing 8,000 birds is, consider this:

Only 250 or so people have ever hit the 5,000 mark. Only 100 people have made it to 6,000 and only 12 or so have seen more than 7,000. In addition to money, serious birding requires time and strict adherence to the rules. There are birders who’ve been blacklisted for cheating and others that have fought over what actually constitutes a sighting (some birders say if you “hear” a bird, you’ve seen it.)

Phoebe Snetsinger (with a name like that, you’re a born birder, eh?) only became a serious bird watcher after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given six months to live. It’s quite possible that counting, or listing as it’s sometimes called, actually helped her beat that diagnosis; she lived not just another year, but another 17 years! And she would have lived longer, no doubt, were birding not such a dangerous hobby. Yes, on top of the financial independence and time, one also needs a certain amount of courage to trek into the wild, deep into jungles and forests of enormous size.

In 1999, on a birding trip to Madagascar, as she prepared to see her 8,500th bird, Snetsinger was killed in a freak car accident in the middle of nowhere. So, in the end, cancer didn’t do her in, but her obsessive hobby did.

Not that many moons ago, if you asked an ornithologist how many species of birds there were, s/he would have said about 6,000. Five years from now, they expect there will be more like 18,000. It’s not that birds are evolving, it’s more that we’re changing our definitions of what we call a species. Who knows how many of those 18,000 Snetsinger could have crossed off her list.

Any serious birders out there? How many have you counted? What’s your best birding story?

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