Top 10 Philadelphia Tweets of 2013

Donovan McNabb! Penn cracking wise! Kim Cattrall! The Zoo Balloon!

It’s end-of-year time, and you know what that means: Lists!

Okay, most things on the Internet are in list form now, but December is still a time when news organizations dump non-stories into top 10 packages and call it news. This column will be no different! As you can tell from the headline, it’s a list of the top 10 Philadelphia tweets of the year.

Of course, I couldn’t choose just any tweet. It had to be a tweet that told a “real Philadelphia story.” (Read: It had to be a joke about Philadelphia, or at least have some tenuous connection to Philadelphia.) Also, I have really weird tastes, and I’m also going to be using randomly selected tweets from my favorite people to follow on Twitter in Philadelphia.

Unfortunately, for the second straight year, no one was able to top the No. 1 Philadelphia tweet from 2011, from Eagles wide receiver DeSean Jackson:

But there were some good Philly tweets this year! Let’s check them out.

https://twitter.com/donovanjmcnabb/statuses/349996538770108416

Former Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb just has the best Twitter account. His skills as a broadcaster make me appreciate every one of his 92 wins (and that one tie) with the Eagles even more.

Here’s the University of Pennsylvania responding to a legitimate question on Twitter with a wise-ass joke. It’s funny, yes, instead of giving him the actual square-footage of the University — it did 37 minutes later ask him to call Facilities — they made a joke! “Okay, I will look elsewhere then,” came the reply. Clever, but disappointing: This tweet is a lot like Penn graduates!

This tweet is a kitten playing in the snow sent to Fox 29. Obviously, I had to include it.

https://twitter.com/narwhalynn/status/400111919006117888

I have a love/hate relationship with West Philadelphia. Most times I go out there — to the Palestra, to Clark Park, to Fiume, to Dock Street, to see my ex-girlfriend’s cat — I have an enjoyable time, even though she doesn’t remember me anymore. (My ex’s cat, not my ex.) But when West Philly comes up in conversation all I do is rag on it as a place where people live in beautiful houses in terrible condition and talk primarily about how great it is to live in West Philly.

Anyway, this tweet is a better description of West Philly than mine. It might be perfect.

This tweet is mean about both Kim Cattrall, the terrible Sex and the City films and Mannequin! Randi Lawson is one of the most consistently amusing people on Twitter. It might be perfect.

Chip Chantry is my favorite local comedian, and not because he does work with my good pal/new father Johnny Goodtimes. He has the only good joke involving the c-word, he did that Hall & Oates parody and he wrote this tweet about the ZooBalloon I can’t stop laughing at.

https://twitter.com/usedwigs/status/409749172838236160

I was actually looking for a different tweet from Jeff Lyons, who writes the funniest running tweets of anyone I follow on Twitter, but I couldn’t find it and I’m not even sure it was from 2013. So here’s one with an excellent “Wintry Mix™” joke, always a way to get a laugh from anyone who grew up on a diet of Philadelphia local news.

This isn’t really one of the best tweets of the year, but I needed to get this incredible Daily News cover, their best of 2013, into this list somehow. This is everything — everything — a local tabloid newspaper should be. Hehe, even City Hall is in the background!

If I were to pick one person to be called out by a local athlete on Twitter this year, I would not have expected mild-mannered nice guy Kevin Cooney, a reporter for the Bucks County Courier Times. But here it was, fan fiction cover boy/Flyers winger Scott Hartnell telling Cooney to stick to baseball. Here’s my question: How did Hartnell know Cooney primarily covers the Phillies? Is he a big baseball fan? A devout Bucks County Courier Times subscriber? Eh, he probably read it in Cooney’s Twitter bio but I like coming up with fanciful ideas instead.

https://twitter.com/JoyceEvansFox29/status/387018681433083905

Yep, here it is, not just the best tweet in Philadelphia this year but the best tweet of all time in any city. This amazing tweet led to a lot of good material for Twitter comedians, to boot. Congrats, Joyce Evans. Please don’t stop tweeting.

You can follow @dhm on Twitter.