The 9 Greatest Third Bananas in History

Anybody can make a list of the great sidekicks. The Sundance Kid, Scottie Pippen, bar-backs, Miss Elizabeth, and Fozzie Bear fly off the top of my head on a moment's notice. But how many of us pay tribute to key figures on the next rung of the totem pole? The time has come for us to give these third wheels the Willy Loman treatment and declare that attention must be paid. Why 9? It's the result of 3 squared, of course!

(Please Note: I don't know where this recent internet sensation of starting a list with number one stems from but it doesn't live here. It's like starting The Usual Suspects with Kevin Spacey lighting a cigarette while Kobyashi waits in the car.)

9. The Dark Knight Rises

I know it hasn't even started filming, but Christopher Nolan has yet to take a step back in quality. He'll quietly be directing with a "Kobe Bryant being reminded MJ has 6 titles" level chip on his shoulder after back-to-back Best Director snubs, so he gets to wrap up his trilogy of my all-time favorite superhero any damn way he wants. I'm calling shotgun on the bandwagon for this one now.

8. Chico Marx

Groucho was the Marx Brothers' impertinent wit and Harpo its silent heart, but Chico was the straight man on film and the true brains of their success behind the scenes, procuring their first international contract, first Broadway show, and hugely lucrative MGM contract. He also created the template for phony, over the top Italian accents used in all walks of life, entertainment and otherwise.

7. Thomas Jefferson

Our third president co-founded the Democratic - Republican Party, a cross mix of viewpoints that dominated American politics for 230 years but couldn't survive a talking head cable news segment today. He also dabbled in writing independent declarations and served as a Founding Father, which was appropriate since Jefferson procreated his way to 12 kids -- 6 from his wife before she died, 6 from the slave with whom he had a three decade love affair. But the most important reason to love Tommy J? He's the face of the 2 dollar bill, and who doesn't get excited when they come into possession of a 2 dollar bill?

6. Tom Hagen

The Corleone consigliere spent The Godfather having his heritage slurred by a movie producer, kidnapped by an up and coming drug dealer, and stripped of his position when his baby brother took the family reins. But The Godfather II was Hagen's "little engine that could" moment when he became the Don while Michael handled business with Hyman Roth and discovered Fredo had been manipulated by Junior Soprano. Hagen deftly blackmailed an unfriendly senator, talked a long-time family solider-turned rat into suicide, and asked for enough money from Francis Ford Coppola to assure he was left out of Godfather III.

5. The Letter 'C'

Quick, how many words that describe the female sexual nether region, medical or otherwise, start with the letter C? Good stuff, right? But C is in this spot as a tribute to its eternal place as everyone's favorite middle grade. Raise your hand if you did everything in college you could and graduated Magna Cum Laude? Now raise your hand if you used college as an excuse to do a copious amount of partying and put in just enough work to graduate with a 2.0 GPA - AKA a 'C' average? (By the way, your intellect is evident in the fact you just raised your hand in front of a computer screen.)

4. James Worthy

If I wanted to be more current, I could put Lamar Odom here (he did marry a Kardashian after dating her for 45 seconds, after all), but while Lamar could be the number one guy for 25-30% of the teams in the NBA, "Big Game James" could have been the man for 90% of teams during his heyday. Instead, Worthy took his third billing and parlayed it into three championships and an NBA Finals MVP. He also took Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's "alien with goggles" look and made it a "super cool alien with goggles" look, though it is unknown if he utilized the look when getting busted for requesting the company of multiple hookers.

3. Ron Weasley

The humanity of Hogwarts, Ron is our window into that fantastical world because he reacts the way we might: a bit of fear, a bit of humor, an occasional sojourn into outright cowardice, but in the end he comes through with equal parts bravery and loyalty. Besides, Harry may be the chosen one, but Ron had the sense to look at Hermoine Granger and realize she would grow up to be Emma Watson.

2. The Third Member of a Threesome

Attempting to explain the pleasure that emanates from being the center point of multiple intertwined bodies rolling around in beds made for two is much like attempting to explain the appeal of professional wrestling: if you get it, no explanation is necessary. If you don't, no explanation will do. I implore all of you to get it at least once. (You know...if I had first-hand experience in that sort of thing. What are you looking at? Let's just move on to number one...)

1. George Harrison

How important were The Beatles to the culture as a whole? I just put their third banana ahead of a flippin' threesome, for crying out loud! The classic question is always John or Paul, but amongst fellow artists, George's musicianship as a guitarist reigns supreme. (The guy got people to care about the sitar. I know it was the 60's and mind altering substances led people down some roads less taken, but seriously...THE SITAR!) Despite this appreciation, his significant songwriting skills were relegated to one or two tracks per album (Though let's face it, if Emmitt Smith joined a team with a starting backfield of Jim Brown and Walter Payton, he's not getting a lot of playing time, either.)

Harrison had the last laugh though by being the last Beatle to have a solo number one with Got My Mind Set On You, and what has been The Beatles most downloaded single since their music finally became available on iTunes last year? Here Comes the Sun. Its writer and lead vocalist? George Harrison.

Final Fantasy III Released for the iPhone; iPad version coming in April 2011

Any time a console or handheld game receives a port onto the iPhone or iPad, I get a little more excited every day as that means another fantastic game has made the jump to iOS to be enjoyed by a whole new audience. Today is another one of those days as Square-Enix has announced that Final Fantasy III has just been made available for the iPhone.

In Final Fantasy III, you play as Luneth who is embarking on a journey, along with three other like-minded adventurers, to search for powerful crystals in order to help their fight against the darkness that slowly consumes the land. Final Fantasy III was the first Final Fantasy title to issue jobs to its adventurers rather than giving them a specific class and locking that character down to that class. During your adventure, you’ll be able to switch the jobs of your characters depending on the situation. This adds a whole new level of strategy that the previous Final Fantasy I & IIdidn’t have.

As we assumed in our previous article, Final Fantasy III is a port of the Nintendo DS version of the game that was released in 2006. The iPhone version of Final Fantasy III includes improved 3-D graphics that takes full advantage of all of the extra horsepower under the hood, as well as a smooth, intuitive touch-panel controls which promise to make the game easier to play than ever before.

Square-Enix also revealed that an iPad version of Final Fantasy III is currently being worked on and is planned to be released next month. This will mark the first time a Final Fantasy title has officially been ported for the iPad, as Final Fantasy I & II never received any iPad love. We’re hoping this means Square-Enix continues releasing future Final Fantasy games, and any other old-school RPG remakes, on the iPad.

Clock is Ticking for Justin Bieber

In 2008, Scooter Braun came across some YouTube videos of a young boy singing and, based on what he saw, became his manager. That boy ended up in a bidding war between Usher and Justin Timberlake, with Usher winning out. And just like that, Justin Bieber was launched in the world of pop music.

Bieber's EP My World was released in November 2009, followed by a full album, My World 2.0 (look at that title -- where does that creativity come from?) in March 2010. In February 2011 he came out with his own movie called Never Say Never, which opened to $29.5 million. All this begs the question: when will he finally go away?

One can only dream...

Every few years pop music spits out a new phenomenon that has little girls screaming and clawing their own eyes out as if they've just witnessed the second coming and are not worthy of gazing upon it. Before Bieber, the most recent infatuation would have to be The Jonas Brothers. But Bieber is bigger than the Jonas boys. His record sales top theirs and his shows sell out wherever he goes. It's one thing to be crazy about a certain pop star, it's another to spend all your money on them, and Bieber has managed to get kids to do both. This sort of craze happens every decade or so. Remember New Kids on the Block in the late eighties? And the Backstreet Boys and N Sync in the late nineties?

Think back to first hearing NKOTB. Their music was pretty dopey (they were, after all, "Hangin' Tough"), but regardless what you thought about their lyrics, they could carry a tune and had some decent dance moves. Same with N Sync. Justin Timberlake (who was arguably the lead singer of the group) proved he could make decent pop music when he went solo. Bieber, on the other hand, just sucks. He cannot sing and his dance moves look like a thirteen year old kid attending his first Bar Mitzvah party.

This kid is the next Bieber (photo via emilio labrador)

The N Sync phenomenon ran for roughly 4 years, from 1998 until the group went on "hiatus" in 2002. They still hold the record for biggest first week sales of an album when No Strings Attached sold 2.42 million in its first week. NKOTB hit their peak from 1989 - 1993 (although they have recently regrouped and will hit the road with Backstreet Boys this summer). So it seems that there is a four year limit on this sort of pop music fodder, which means I should only have to put up with Bieber until 2013.

None of these guys (NKOTB, Bieber, N Sync) are revolutionizing the music business and you have to take them at face value, which is why I did like some of the N Sync songs. "Tearin Up My Heart" was a catchy pop song and "Pop" made you tap your feet to the beat, but I find Bieber to be lacking any and all talent. It seems to me that people have become more infatuated with his hair and his look than wondering if he has any true talent at all.

5 Countries the U.S. Should Invade Next

Ah, Libya. We always knew we'd get around to military action in your deserts too. See, we can't, so to speak, "invade" you the way we'd normally do because we've got all of our troops over in Iraq. No, Afghanistan. Wait, is it Egypt? Well, we've got 'em committed somewhere in the world, and we've got their backups helping out in Haiti and now Japan, and we've got their backups still working in New Orleans, so yeah, we're stretched a little thin. We're just going to be part of this U.N. front instead of lead it, and by "part of it" we mean we're going to send over credit card debt and infomercials, since that's all we manufacture anymore.

But once we've won all those wars and cleaned up all those messes, here's our itinerary for future invasions.

1. Canada

This one's a complete no-brainer. They've got no armed forces to speak of, we don't even have to use ships or planes to get our troops there, and dammit, they've got oil! They've also got this crazy national health plan that's got to be quashed immediately before the American citizens get wind of it, so that'll be the first thing. And then we'll jack up the prices on those cheap pharmaceuticals. Oh yeah, we'll give 'em democracy right up the maple leaf.

2. Australia

G'day, new Americans! Lemme see those hands! The biggest problem with Australia is that they don't know how to use their country properly. Almost all of the people live on the coastline, leaving a huge central section just sitting there doing nothing. Do you have any idea how many Wal-Marts we could fit in there? How many Targets, how many Applebee's? The obvious disadvantage is how freakin' far away Australia is, but no worries. We've got our top scientists and engineers working out how to build a bridge from Honolulu to Sydney. Then think about how many Best Westerns and Exxons we can put along that drive. Swoon.

3. Tuvalu

Never heard of it? Well once we invade and make it our own, you'll hear plenty about it, buster. Why does Tuvalu make the list? Because it's the least populated country on the planet! Less than 11,000 people! And no military! We could invade and secure it before the morning coffee gets cold. It doesn't have any resources we can strip, but it is a Polynesian island, so it would be an ideal place to send our troops for some well-deserved R&R, and it's also midway between Hawaii and Australia, so it'll be a good stopping point along that bridge we discussed.

4. Ireland

Okay, this whole Ireland/Northern Ireland thing needs to stop, and since they can't settle it among themselves, it's clear that the good ol' US of A has to invade and put in our own government to keep things cool as a fool. If the Protestants and Catholics can't get along, we'll put in a Lutheran governing body. Or maybe some Jews; we'll see how it all plays out. But once we invade, we'd have the market cornered on four-leaf clovers, Lucky Charms cereal, and thick cable-knit sweaters. We'll also have access to leprechaun pots of gold, which will help us pay down our national debt.

5. Iceland

Come on now, really, who's going to fight us for it? There's ice and snow, and rocks, and ... well, that's about it. Come to think of it, why would we even want it? Oh that's right, because we want everything. So yeah, maybe we can put in a Disneyworld or something, make it more appealing to visitors and squeeze a couple of bucks out of it. At the very least, it'll be a good spot for us to claim the winter Olympics over and over again. Disney! Olympics! Cha-ching! Oh, and to make it family-friendly, once our invasion is complete, we'll rename it Niceland.

Which will be more popular, the United States of Canada or the United States of Australia?

United States of Canada

United States
of Australia

OR