Culture Blues

Listmania 2011: Biggest Badasses of the Year

As pop culture aficionados, your friends at Culture Blues are not immune to the end-of-year lists currently overwhelming the internet. Welcome to Listmania, where Culture Blues ranks their favorite shit in a handful categories. The first, and most likely to stomp your face - our list of the Biggest Badasses of 2011.

(10) Manny Horvitz

Asked by Nucky Thompson “do you know something I don’t?” the gravel-voiced Manny Horvitz dryly replies “the question answers itself.” Outwardly a charming Jewish butcher with a fondness for giving his gangster colleagues Yiddish pet names, Horvitz has an icebox filled with pieces of guys that tried to fuck him over. Horvitz is at his most badass when he buries a meat cleaver in the forehead of a would-be assassin, right in front of his deli’s “fresh killed meat” sign. For all his papa bear sweetness and long-suffering schlemiel humor, Horvitz is not a man to be taken advantage of. Just ask Angela Darmody. (Jeff Hart)

(9) The Paranormal Activity Ghost

Heaven sounds great and all, but as far as afterlife choices go, have you ever considered haunting someone? To death! The Paranormal Activity ghost/demon/entity thing (or “Toby” as he is tentatively named in the third installment) really knows how to execute a game plan. You start off easy, moving around chairs and things, and slowly ramp up the terror until an entire household is reduced to insanity. Most horror movie villains are not badass because eventually we have to see them and they hardly ever live up to the hype. Toby does not have that problem. It’s an unseen, playful, malicious force that seems to have a thing for killing entire families. Merry Christmas! (Ben Van Iten)

(8) Ndamukong Suh

There are people who just don't give a fuck, and then there is Ndamukong Suh. Frankly, being suspended two games for stomping on someone's arm isn't even really all that badass. Trying to rip off Jake Delhomme's head is though. So is punching Jay Cutler in the back of the dome with your forearm. Even James Harrison thought that was excessive. Suh's lack of fuck giving is remarkable, and at this point nearly approaching a Chris Brown level of apathy. (Jason Arican)

(7) Gus Fring

Ah, the reigning chicken and meth kingpin of New Mexico. This season on Breaking Bad we finally got a chance to know Gus Fring. We really got inside his head, if you will. From his humble entry into the drug game to his cold-blooded revenge against a Mexican cartel years later (a revenge that involved Gus intentionally poisoning himself), Fring’s season was filled with backstory and badassery. At some point, between emotionlessly cutting a subordinate’s throat and cavalierly stalking toward an enemy sniper, Fring developed near supernatural levels of badassness. His only weakness? Walter god damn White. (Jeff Hart)

(6) Siri

She's smart, sassy, and can help you stash a dead body. This year, Apple introduced the world to Siri, a software program labeled as a personal assistant but more akin to a professional fixer. Siri is uniquely able to help you determine how large Central Park is, while in the next breath able to help you find a strip club. But don't take her wealth of knowledge as a weakness, Siri is quick to put you in place. When setting an alarm for a 6AM flight, Siri reluctantly fulfilled my request, but added "don't wake me up too." She's not only badass, but she's also kind of gangster. (Jason Arican)

(5) John Price

In 2016, after nearly three years of imprisonment, John Price will be rescued from a Russian gulag. As World War 3 rages, Price, who at this point in his legendary military career is an erroneously disgraced former member of the SAS, has two goals: revenge, and saving us all. Fortunately for him, both objectives can be achieved by killing one man, Vladimir Makarov. Price eventually completes his missions, pulling Makarov out of a helicopter and punching him through a glass ceiling before hanging him. Best of all, when it’s done he lights a cigar. (Giovanny Caquias)

(4) Megan Ellison (right)

After helping to fund last year’s True Grit, this twentysomething heiress has moved on to a plethora of much talked about projects from some highly respected names: Kathryn Bigelow’s Bin Laden assassination movie, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Scientology expose and his adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice and John Hillcoat’s bootlegging drama Wettest County just to name a few. She’s like a one woman MacArthur Fellowship. Of course, all that prestige didn’t stop Ellison from also snatching up the rights to the Terminator franchise. With discerning taste and boatloads of daddy’s money, she could be ushering in a new era in film, where accomplished filmmakers are less reliant on marketing-obsessed studios. (Jeremiah White)

(3) Chael Sonnen

Of course Chael Sonnen is a badass. He beats the shit out of people for a living. It’s not so much his skill that earns the self-proclaimed people’s champion a place on this list – although he’s far from lacking in that department – it’s the way Sonnen conducts himself. The only UFC fighter capable of riffing on home invasion as trash talk, Sonnen is like a cross between a professional wrestling heel and a hyper-articulate internet troll. After winning his first fight following a 14 month layoff, Sonnen tried to goad middleweight champion Anderson Silva into a rematch by proposing a ‘loser leaves town’ stipulation. So far, Silva is still ducking him. (Jeff Hart)

(2) Khal Drogo

For a story set in a medieval fantasy world where arguments are settled by sword fights that usually end up with someone dying, any number of characters could have made this list. Even with that being the case, only one of them melted down a chain and poured hot gold on someone's head. Only one of them referred to his unborn son as "the stallion that will mount the world" and promptly tore a dude's throat out. R.I.P. Drago. Damn that witch. (Jason Arican)

(1) Michael Fassbender

An on-screen portrayal of Magneto in his angry youth days before he became a sardonic fop with a goofy helmet wouldn’t normally be enough to get Fassbender the coveted top spot on our badass list. However, Fassbender closed a year of super heroics by whipping out his peen and delivering one of recent cinema’s most bracing performances in Steve McQueen’s sex addiction horror show Shame. Describing a performance as “brave” has become such a cliché, but there’s really no other way to summarize Fassbender’s NC-17 odyssey. It made Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant stand up and applaud. Give nude Magneto his Oscar. (Jeff Hart)