The 5 Best Entertainers of Recent Memory

It used to be that at Christmastime, all of Hollywood's stars would come out to celebrate, and people would not want to pluck their own eyes out after being subjected to such detritus as only Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson could provide at Rockefeller Center with a disco ball.

What happened to those days?

Well, after watching the first five minutes of the classic Bill Murray comedy "Scrooged" (you know, with the movie where Lee Majors saves Santa, the star-studded "Christmas Carol" remake, and "Bob Goulet's Cajun Christmas"), I decided that I should pay tribute to some legitimately great entertainers. People whose worst career decisions were still more valuable to the viewing public than their absence. People who can be enjoyed by people of all generations (if not all age groups). I could condense the list down to about ten people, so here it goes.

5) Mel Brooks
Moses? The 2000 Year-Old Man? A Yiddish-speaking Indian chief? No contest! Brooks is a fantastic comic mind who has been able to be eclectic in target audience and subject matter, and in the realm of offense, has never discriminated. So from the wildly politically incorrect "Blazing Saddles" to the lighthearted Hitchcock tribute "High Anxiety" (a forgotten treasure), let's give him a hand. And a Pinto.

4) The (original) Who
If you just run down the list and read the names, this one won't make much sense, will it? But Daltrey and his fellows in The Who (Pete Townshend, John Entwistle, and Keith Moon) re-invented rock music, saving it from the stagnation of the mid-'60s pop movement and weathering all adversity (including the ever-burgeoning success of their original masterpiece, "Tommy," frequently regarded by the band as an albatross). Modern entertainment-- movie, music, poem, and elsewhere-- owes a tremendous debt to these four guys from the UK.

3) J.P. Patches
Okay, I've never been able to understand this phenomenon myself (I'm terrified of clowns), but there's no denying the impact Patches has had on the lives of millions of people, child and adult alike. To someone who can make so many people happy, this list was a cinch. 'Nough said.

2) Jim Henson
It should be a federal offense to hate on the Muppets (excluding the Fraggles, some of the characters from "Labyrinth," and a few unfortunate "Sesame Street" residents). Jim Henson-- the original performer of many of his Muppet creations, most notably Kermit the Frog-- was a man whose dream is forever reflected in the innocent exploits of his fantastically imaginative puppet characters. In fact, many of the lines in some of Kermit's "Muppet Movie" (1979) monologues are directly taken from Henson's philosophy-- he'd walk for three years straight to make unhappy people feel better. Quite frankly, seventeen years after his death, it still works.

1) Madeline Kahn
Kinda bizarre to start this list with Mel Brooks and finish with his frequent co-star Kahn, innit? Well, anyone who tells you Madeline Kahn has no chance of being known as the greatest performer ever was either lying or hallucinating. Brooks favored her, Gene Wilder, and Cleavon Little as the ideal trifecta of American entertainment. And over a decade after her tragic death, her comedy still provides satisfying jolts to the funny bone while her drama still has some intense power. A bad Madeline Kahn performance is like an ice-cream cone dancing on the sun: somehow, it just doesn't seem possible.