On a whimsical Thanksgiving break road trip to Tempe, Ariz., my freshman year of college, my buddies and I passed the many hours by making up lists.

We came up with everything from The Best Tecmo Bowl Plays to The Former High School Teachers We’d Most Like to See Naked.

I imagine most of us have formed similar lists at least in our minds, if not with our buds.

A “Friends” episode from a few seasons ago put an interesting turn on the same list concept.

When Ross had a chance to hook up with a supermodel, he pleaded his case with Rachel (this was when they were still a thing and not so annoying), saying they should each have a short list of people whom they could cheat with based on the rare chance that the opportunity would present itself.

Apparently, my parents watched the same episode, because a few weeks later, I overheard my dad mention his list, and I knew exactly what he was talking about.

His five: Yasmine Bleeth, Pamela Anderson Lee, Courtney Cox, the chick from “The X-Files” and the Victoria’s Secret Angels.

Of course, my mom had her list: Richard Gere, Nicholas Cage, Sean Connery, some Austin guy from “Days of Our Lives” and the mailman — which my Dad strongly argued was against the rules.

A few summers ago, during my American Society of Magazine Editors internship at Vibe, a bunch of us would spend evenings making up obnoxious lists we would use in our imaginary magazine.

The Worst Pickup Lines, Food That Shouldn’t Be Food and The Best-looking New Kid on the Block were some of our favorites.

We weren’t arguing between Donnie and Danny because we had too much time on our hands; rather, we were simply reflecting on what we were learning in our seminars.

Lists, perhaps more than any trend, have surfaced in the ’90s in all media.

Not too long ago, the American Film Institute declared the Top 100 movies. Not only were they discussed and written about for months, video rental stores made special tags for the elite flicks.

Read an issue of Entertainment Weekly, and you’re likely to discover The Best Horror Movies, The Best Gross-out Flicks or the coveted It List.

Or, if we had a decent cable provider, you could turn on VH1 and check out their hot new show, “The List.”

Hosted by a different celebrity each week and including a “Politically Incorrect”-like panel each night, the show compiles a music-related list each show, from The Best Song from a Movie to The Most Influential Dresser in Music.

In the handful of times I’ve seen the show, my TV has suffered a few blows from pillows, magazines and a remote control thrown in its direction.

How can you call “When Doves Cry” the Best Rock Song of All Time?

But that is the brilliance behind lists and the reason they are more widespread than the Pamela/Tommy Lee video.

Lists get people talking. They build hype.

Since mid-summer, the High Note editors have been developing the biggest lists in Iowa State Daily history.

Sure, every December, I rank my top albums and songs of the year, and when Chumbawamba ousted Radiohead for Best Album (ouch!), I even got some feedback.

But these lists will be much more complex.

High Note wanted to take advantage of being at the end of a decade by looking back and closely examining pop culture in the ’90s.

What trends came and went? What genres defined themselves? Who mattered?

In three of the five final High Note issues of the year, we are naming the 90 Essential Songs, Movies and TV Shows of the ’90s.

We debated on whether to pick albums rather than songs, like so many magazines have done already, but we decided individual songs spoke louder than records to our wide audience.

But that doesn’t mean choosing songs was easy.

How do you pick one Pixies or Nine Inch Nails or Phish song that defined the decade? It’s like picking one “Baywatch” star over the others.

Well, we managed to compile some impressive lists that should get people talking.

The only thing I’ll say now is that “Ice Ice Baby” did not make the top 10.

But it did make the list.

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Corey Moss in a senior in journalism and mass communication from Urbandale.