The 2006 First Annual Most Annoying Person in New York Sand-in-the-Sandwich Awards

Vote in comments or by emailing antid_oto at hotmail dot com. Additional nominees invited; entertaining reasons for votes will be incorporated (with attribution, of course) in the post body. Voting will be open for a week. To repeat a cardinal rule from the nominations: "Most Annoying" is not the same as "most evil" or "worst." We're looking for people who set your teeth on edge for no good reason, not Bruce Ratner.

Theodora Stikes

She invited us to “rock her network,” so Solomon did and found her picture on MySpace:



But which one is her?

The one on the right is clearly "look at me" annoying, but the one on the left is "these are my crazy years before I become boring in a different way" annoying.

I'm guessing Theodora is in the Cyndi Lauper dress and cowboy boots, but it really doesn't matter. Quod erat demonstrandum.

James Panero



Panero's the one on the right. I became aware of his magazine a few months back, when his buddy Stefan Beck "derided [Solomon's] polite critique of his N+1 takedown as a 'whimpering non-response.'"

For a while I'd planned on nominating Stefan Beck himself for this award, in part for coediting a collection of essays from his college conservative rag and at the same time blasting n+1 by saying "They live the dream of getting paid (however little it may be) for their glorified term papers." But Beck is a minor figure. Panero, his boss at the New Criterion, is the annoyance-in-chief. Here he is in an interview with FrontPage Magazine.

Stefan and I were editors of The Dartmouth Review in the early Oughts and late Nineties, respectively. [OUGHTS] We’d been kicking around the idea of a Review anthology since our student days [all of two years ago]—to get together those infamous articles that saw our Review forefathers “threatened, impugned, vandalized, sued, suspended, and bitten.”
…
More remote than it ever should be, Dartmouth is a combination of Parnassus and NBC’s Survivor, with a singular, isolated campus culture that has a particular resistance to left-liberal academic assumptions. While a point of pride for many, and I believe the school’s saving grace, for decades this situation has vexed Dartmouth’s progressive leadership. Its self-selecting trustees and administration have therefore been at loggerheads over the future of the institution with more moderate rank-and-file students and alumni.

Holy crap. First of all, Solomon and I both attended the real "combination of Parnassus and Survivor," and it ain't Dartmouth.

Second, don't write like that, please. You think you're being funny, but you're not funny. Too many rich, annoying white guys take it as a mark of pride that people can't stand listening to or even looking at them.

Look at that smug punum. I can't stand it. He probably gets laid all the time. He probably also has coke on him most of the time.

Twat.


Iggy [last name redacted]

I've got nothing against the guy, but for Solomon's sake how could we forget this famous ex?

Not only did he once spit in my face at a party, but after we broke up he actually sank his fangs into my arm because I wouldn't let him steal back these cute jeans he gave me for Christmas! Almost nuff said, except that it should also be noted that he continues to email me.

Anderson Cooper



Solomon writes:

I for one don't buy the Katrina crocodile tears of this former host of The Mole and epigone of the Vanderbilt dynasty.

and

he has prevaricated and misled the public about certain elements of his personal life, despite widespread knowledge of his once-taboo-but-now-socially-acceptable lifestyle choice (yes, I'm talking about his membership in a Yale Secret Society)

He also came within an ace of stealing the Hottest Gay Journalist award from the far-more-deserving (and local favorite) Patrick Healy.

I think he’s smarmy.


Dominic Carter


Will from onNYTurf says “nuff said” about this NY1 political reporter. But I really don’t think so. I don’t have a TV, so I had to Google the guy even to find out who he was. Will, you’re going to have to elaborate.


Vincent Gallo



It's not just that he made up stories about being a ho. It's also, as the Buffalo Beast put it, that he "exists as a living caricature of the beatnik independent artist, except he’s a fucking Republican."


Mike and the Mad Dog



I like sports. When I was forced to live in DC for a couple of years, one of its few saving graces was that the sports-talk hosts were actually kind of funny. But for some reason New York radio has to suck across the board, and this is no exception. Boring, pointless commentary turned in by dumb, pompous guys with grating, clotted voices.


Ed Koch



He'd already hung around far too long, but he lost me for good when he announced during the 2004 election that "In my judgment, the Democratic Party just doesn't have the stomach to stand up to the terrorists. But Bush is a fighter."

I think we should swap him to D.C. straight up for Marion Barry.


Tricia Romano



Has anyone, anywhere ever read a Fly Life column start to finish? (Go ahead. Try.) No discernible connection from one paragraph to the next. Nothing reviewed for your benefit as a potential consumer, just a string of names in boldface, designed to let you know that Tricia Romano Is Having More Fun Than You.

I've overlooked it in the past, but some very good writers at the Voice have been expelled lately (or at least put on duty so limited it threatens their benefits), while Tricia Romano dithers on. How has she, of all people, survived the purges? It's not fair.


The guy who maybe tried to roofie my friend at a bar

I can't remember his name. If any of you do remember, remind me and I'll put it up. Apart from the possible roofying, he and his buddy were high as hell on cocaine, and kept bothering us even when we literally turned our backs on them. We had been ignoring him for half an hour or more and he'd finally left us alone when we ordered a plate of fries; he came over and started eating them without even asking.

Also, his family owns the Gramercy Hotel and he's publishing a book on its history, as if anyone wants to read that shit.


The guy on the subway the other night listening to loops on his stereo at ever-increasing volume

I wish I'd gotten a picture. He was wearing a horizontal-striped polo, a pencil-thin jawline beard that grew into an awful goatee in front, and mirrored aviator sunglasses (on the train at 12:30 am).


And finally...

I almost hesitated to enter him in this contest, for fear that his sheer awesomeness might overwhelm the other contestants. But I've been holding back for a couple of weeks now, and I have to use him somewhere. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the multitalented wonder that is Triple Edwards.




Model. Musician. Actor. And of course, gay journalist with a highlight reel. Pay special attention to the interview with Michelle Williams. Solomon had planned to nominate her for Most Annoying, but her brilliant handling of Triple's first question alone made him change his mind.



I think a little of both.


UPDATE: Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.