In memory of the late Stan Isaacs, who enjoyed a long and distinguished career as Newsday’s star columnist before his death in 2013 at 83, herewith is another (pale) revival of his annual April Fool’s Day spoof, a whimsical ranking of decidedly inconspicuous topics. Each April 1, Stan published what he described as “an appraisal in areas that are generally ignored by raters”—such as bowling pins, Fred Astaire’s dancing partners, TV remote buttons, “Things that Aren’t as Good as They Used to Be.”

He called his polls IRED, the Isaacs Ratings of Esoteric Distinction, what he said was a “loving spoof of the Ring Magazine boxing ratings….a rush to respond to the unrecognized need for evaluation of quantities like the Bridges Across the River Seine.”

His delightful lampoon can’t reasonably be duplicated. But I keep trying the past few years. As he put it, “no category is too arcane to grade,” so here goes the 2022 J-Faux lists, on similarly (and seriously) judged objects that normally might seem trivial, and beginning with London-related categories, since I have spent a fair amount of time there visiting daughter, son-in-law and grandboy the last couple of years….

London Underground stops: 1, Elephant & Castle; 2, Barking; 3, Tooting Broadway; 4, Cockfosters; 5, Shepherd’s Bush; 6, Shoreditch High Street; 7, Hammersmith.

London Pub Names: 1, Laughing Gravy; 2, Boot and Flogger; 3, The Widow’s Son; 4, George and Vulture; 5, Mad Bishop and Bear; 6, The Fat Walrus.

London parks for morning runs: 1, London Fields; 2, Victoria; 3, Hampstead Heath; 4, Battersea; 5, Kensington Gardens; 6. Hyde Park.

Other topics:

Passwords: 1, Open sesame; 2, 12345; 3, Knock three times; 4, (Must contain a number but first and last character cannot be numeric; must contain only upper or lower case letters, and any of these special characters–!, +. -, _, *; must not contain your first, last or user name.); 5, Joe sent me.

Coronavirus variants dating to the SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19: 1, Alpha; 2, Beta; 3, Gamma; 4, Delta; 5, Omicron; 6, BA.2.

Good names for college fraternities and sororities: 1, (see above).

Solutions to not changing clocks twice a year: 1, Recent Sunshine Protection Act, approved by the Senate to make Daylight Savings Time permanent year-round beginning in 2023; 2, Move to Quito, Ecuador, where clocks never change and sunrise and sunset vary by roughly four minutes from the shortest to longest days.

Blues in the NCAA men’s basketball Final Four: 1, University of North Carolina “Carolina Blue” (sky blue), classified by the Pantone matching system as 278C; 2, Kansas Blue, Pantone 293; 3, Duke Navy Blue, Pantone 280; 4, Villanova Signature Blue, Pantone 281.

Blues in the NCAA women’s Final Four: 1, UConn “National Flag Blue,” Pantone 296C. (The other three teams wore shades of red—Stanford cardinal, South Carolina garnet and Louisville (just) red.

Ghosts: 1, King Hamlet; 2, Casper; 3, The Flying Dutchman; 4, The Ghost of Christmas Past; 4, Baseball’s “ghost runner,” the guy who materializes on second base in extra innings.

Goats: 1, Scape-; 2, Capricorn; 3, Billy; 4, The Moon?; 5, -Cheese; 6, Athletes who proclaim themselves the Greatest Of All Time.