The Top Six Sixes

Here it is, your first top six. It's like your top five, only one better. You get one for each miserable day of the workweek, plus one to sleep in with on Saturday morning. Take them in good health. No charge, this round’s on me.

For our maiden voyage, why not pay a salute to some great sets of six that help us live our happy and fulfilled lives?

#1 The six-pack of beer – ah the six-pack of beer. Was there ever a creation more versatile in the American landscape than the ice-cold six-pack? Whatever your brand of choice, the six-pack is your friend, your ally. Going to a party? Six pack. Good game on TV? Six pack. Swinging by the beach with your friends? Need I say more?

The mighty six-pack stands by us thru thick and thin, providing that malt and barley zest that our busy, stressful lives often demand. Here's to the Buds, the Coorses, the Harps, the Sams, and the Miller High Life’s. As a people, we shall not forget to ice you, carry you, crack you open, drink you, spill you, and periodically burp you up when you don't play nice with the taco dip. Yes, it could be said that the six-pack is the unheralded chariot on which many of us ride into the sunset of indignity. But honestly, who can say, let alone think, the word "indignity" after six beers?

The bottom line is: We’re Americans. We like beer. Especially in packs of six.

#2 The six-pack of abs - and what could be more fitting to follow the six-pack of beer than the six-pack of abs? Or should I say more ill fitting, much like the pants of the noble beer consumer. Everyday, millions of dedicated, hard-working people rack their brains for a prodigious solution to one of the most meaningless questions in recorded history. How do I get 6-pack abs? Ho ho, it's so easy. Simply quit your job and start eating, sleeping, and exercising like your body image determined your after-tax take-home pay. Day after day, run, row, crunch, and eat celery dipped in no-fat yogurt in your helpless pursuit of a vain-glorious status symbol…

Hang on one second. No one eats celery. That’s just a total lie. The only people with six-pack abs are models and professional athletes (paging David Wells). But the truth is, six-pack abs are nice to touch. They’re ripply and hard. Yeah, who can deny that’s sexy? Maybe they really are worth suffering over. No! Just don’t! Let the athletes and paid media whores work out. We can’t touch them anyway. We should just continue to covet them from afar and enjoy our cheeseburgers. Mmm cheese.

The bottom line is: We’re Americans. We like abs. Especially in packs of six.

#3 The six gun. Someone once said, you can get further with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word… I think it was Socrates or Keanu Reeves, whatever dude. Either way, it was a thinker. Never has society been more painfully honest than when the concept of the great and mighty gun comes up. Like it or not, the gun gave man an edge. It was an edge over animals, over enemies, and over loose-fitting trail pants that desperately needed a functional belt. The one-shot pistol was pretty good, but when it turned into the Peacemaker and Big Iron it became, for lack of a better term, balls out. And come to think of it, you could have your balls out if you were talented enough with a gun. Who’d mess with you?

“Gee, why’s Clarence walkin’ around with his grapes hangin’ out?”

“I dunno. Why don’t you ask him and end up with an ass full of .44s?”

Yes, over a hundred years ago a wiser man than I figured out a way to put a revolving chamber of chambers in what was formerly a one shot Show. Any avid hockey or futball fan will tell you that the more shots you take, the more likely you are to score. Could depend on your concept of scoring, but the principle remains.

This cute device spawned what can only be described as the most streamlined and impressive history of one-upping the next guy until the nuclear arms race. And even that was more of the same. And in 1911, when some self-important windbag called Colt decided to change the whole Show and make it semi-automatic, what happened? Nothing. Those who know better still pack the six-gun. It won’t jam. And you can hammer nails with it all day and it'll still shoot straight. For goodness sake, if Murtaugh carries one, that’s good enough for me.

The bottom line is: We’re Americans. We like guns. Especially the kind with six bullets.

#4 The pick six. No, not that feeble scratch-ticket lotto game you fool. We’re talking about the interception returned for a touchdown. This sheer break in the space-time continuum is perhaps the most demoralizing and simultaneously invigorating moment in all of professional sports. Of course, that somewhat depends on which team you’re rooting for. Yes, as that schoolgirl tight spiral rises on its crest over the offensive line and straight into the waiting, outstretched arms of a charging defensive back, your world Stops… All things are frozen. All time has paused. Even the rippling, peaceful tones of your living room’s freestanding waterfall are halted in momentous stasis as the inertia of the game abruptly shifts from This Way to That Way. It is, in a word, chilling.

Yes, the homers of the world shriek to the high heavens and wake the gods when their QB hands the lead over to the opposition on a silver platter, but let’s get serious for a moment, the pick six is tremendous. All the world of football is turned on its head for a few bold seconds of the day. Wide receivers become tacklers. Linebackers become blockers. O-linemen run!!! And quarterbacks get one sexy opportunity to demonstrate how uncoordinated and inept at tackling they truly are. Run! Run! Chase after the bad man who took your football. Upset? Well maybe you shouldn’t have given it to him so easily, Tommy.

No, the pick six doesn’t always crown the winner of the game. And the gloating after the TD is often unfounded. But there is something supremely cherish-able (and that’s a word now) about a player being savvy enough to not only break up the opposition’s play, but create an entirely new one of his own. And as they say: if D-backs had hands, they’d be Wide-Outs. Well there’s the beauty of it, Bubba. When a DB actually makes the interception, he ascends to mighty heavens of hallowed football highlightsville and becomes the Wide-Out of the Return. Ho ho, the Return. Sounds mighty good don’t it?

The bottom line is: We’re Americans. We like INT’s. Especially when they get six points.

#5 The six degrees. Fourteen years ago, Will Smith showed us that he is actually a talented actor. He has not made the same mistake since. In the film Six Degrees of Separation, we learned that rascally queer fair-skinned Black hustlers are not all always looking to simply impress us with their wit. Some of them are desperately sensitive drug-addled scam artists and they should be dealt with swiftly and firmly. Ha ha, firm.

Yeah, the truth is that we all wish we were famous and important. But we’re not. We all want to be recognized when we step lightly into the new “It” club downtown. But we’re not. And if we can’t each individually be mega-awesome stars in the deep sky of pop culture, then hot-dammit, we can be relatively closely connected to someone… Who is also relatively slightly more closely connected to someone… Who is really almost close to being famous and who knows someone… Who IS actually famous.

So I may have only met Kathleen Turner once but I’m sure she would remember me. And she was on that show with Courtney Cox-Arquette who’s related by marriage to that actual actor called Rosanna, who was in Pulp Fiction with Harvey Keitel, who was in Mean Streets with Bobby DeNiro, who was in Sleepers with Kevin Bacon! Yeah! Eat that!

All day and night you’re racking your brain trying to connect yourself to that walking god of “Tremors,” Kevin Bacon. Butcha can’t, can you? Yeah well, I can. And that makes me better than you. And you know what, that’s not my only connection to the Baconator. Ho ho, I got another. You know, just in case that one wouldn’t hold up in court.

The bottom line is: We’re Americans. We like Kevin Bacon. Especially if he’s fewer than six people away from us.

#6 (Eeeyeah number six!) The sixth sense. Please please please, refrain from uttering the following to yourself when you think about your sixth sense: I see dead people. Ugh, Shymalan is a hack but he gets us hooked, and for that we must tip our caps. But I digress.

Without a doubt, everyone has his or her own version of a sixth sense. We’ve all got one. The beauty of the concept is that there is something pure and magical about every single person’s personality and soul that gives him or her a leg up on everyone else in one specific situation. Take Dr. Phil for example. Now this is a learned man. He always seems to know when some sad, pathetic, impressionable, redneck soul out there is in need of an overwhelmingly obvious and overly simplified answer to an incredibly problematic conundrum that will probably, in the end, lead him or her to suicide. That guy truly knows when and where he’s needed, and that’s a gift.

Which brings me to polo shirts, ladies and gentlemen. There is at least one guy in every group of friends who is firmly convinced that he is the lone pioneer discoverer of the uniquely-colored collared T-shirt. This guy is typically named Greg, and he loves the Dave Matthew’s Band but doesn’t “get” the drug culture. Yes, Greg is really into reading the Wall Street Journal daily but doesn’t invest and he still works as a rental real estate agent in the summers, runs B-list ski training sessions in the winters, and bartends on Thursdays. Greg is always a fan of whatever NFL team won the Super Bowl two years ago because he’s not “a bandwagon fan.” And Greg has no idea what an ascot is and doesn’t own cufflinks, but has a subscription to Details, GQ, and Maxim because he “takes style really seriously.”

Yes, you know Greg. You’ve met Greg. Hell, you might have invited Greg to your wedding. And, ladies, you’ve probably danced slutily (oh yeah that’s a word now too) with Greg at Stratus, or Avalon, or whichever heavenly body-named dance club is located in your particular congressional district. Greg is a jerk. Greg is an annoyance. Greg is probably a massive unneeded dose of swine. Your sixth sense compels you to slap Greg in the head. No, not too hard. Not in a 60-day suspended sentence misdemeanor conviction way. Just in a “let’s get it together, ass” kind of way. You and your friends know better. Make sure he does too.

The bottom line is: We’re Americans. We like… well that one makes no sense. Ha, sense. God bless America! And welcome to The Six figures.