Beware the dangers of channel surfing: Recently I stumbled across a rebroadcast of VH-1's most recent 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, originally broadcast in 2010. VH-1 has of course appointed itself both curator and arbiter of the history of the Rock Era, and it has proved to be impressively incompetent in this regard, as should be evident from just the first hour of this five-hour televised train wreck. But just how bad could this particular countdown be?

While it might be premature to consider Ichiro Suzuki's career to be at a close—he is still the starting right fielder for the Seattle Mariners—he enters the 2012 season as a 38-year-old major-league ballplayer. In baseball terms, that's pushing retirement age—and his performance in 2012 will determine whether it becomes a forced retirement. What is not premature is determining the answer to this question: Is Ichiro Suzuki a Hall of Famer?

After a quarter-century of selecting inductees, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has been under steady criticism for its choices, as readers of this site are well-aware. So, in an exercise in extreme foolishness, I think it's high time the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was audited to determine whether its selections really are justified. It is a comprehensive task, and just as you eat an elephant one bite at a time, I am starting with the first five years' worth of inductees.

The week of January 16, which began with the observation of the birthday of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., brought news of the deaths of R&B singer Etta James and R&B bandleader Johnny Otis, both inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It is sadly appropriate first that the deaths of James and Otis should occur in the same week—it was Otis who discovered James—and that both should die during the week that marks the commemoration of the slain African-American civil rights leader.