I noticed the clock yesterday morning... at 4:20 AM, on 4/20... I thought to myself... I feel a great disturbance in the Force.... as if millions of bags of cheetos suddenly cried out in terror and were silenced.

Suggested new mottos for South Dakota:

Rape? Relatives? Ready? We just don't care!

South Dakota: Where babies are as plentiful as the rights we ignore.

South Dakota: Coat hangers aren't just for closets anymore.

South Dakota: We don't really approve of incest, we just want to see what happens.

South Dakota: You're a whore, and you deserved it anyway.

South Dakota: Clogging the child protective services, one unwanted baby at a time.

South Dakota: The Forerunner for trampling women's rights.

South Dakota: You're gonna push that sucker out.

South Dakota: The Uterus in Chains State.

South Dakota: Civil Rights are for Pussies

South Dakota: No liberty, yet welfare for all.

No... I was watching porn, I swear!

The other night I got out of school a little early, so while I was waiting for Futurama to start I was surfing the cable channels looking for something to watch in the meantime. I came across Independence Day, which I had watched just a few days earlier in its entirety, and decided to leave it on. This got me thinking about guilty pleasure movies; I freely admit that I enjoy this flick every time I watch, but I admit just as freely that it is basically a giant steaming turd. Although I thought the effects were pretty good, and the concept itself pretty interesting, the story is completely predictable, the dialogue hammy and riddled with clichés, and the acting about as engaging as a scorching case of crotch rot. So why do I continue to watch it when it comes on?

One reason may simply be that to me there is a difference between a film and a movie. Films are artistic and have messages. Movies are fun. That doesn’t mean that artistic message films can’t be fun and movies can’t have messages, but in general I think most motion pictures fit into those two categories. Although I consider myself a movie buff, I’m not enough of a snob that I can’t enjoy a crappy movie purely on the basis of entertainment. This would explain my fascination with 70’s Blaxploitation flicks. In my collection are such gems as Shaft, Blackbelt Jones, Blacula, Coffey, and the Dolemite boxed set. Where else can you find such wonderful dialog such as “Get out the way and let me pass, before I break off my Hushpuppy in yo’ muthafuckin’ ass”? Some movies are just SO bad that they actually end up being good.

Another of my guilty pleasures (and coincidentally another Sci-Fi flick) is Starship Troopers. This movie is bloody awful. The acting is atrocious, the story downright silly, and there’s a plot hole at the end that you could drive a semi truck through. Still and all, I simply love this piece of shit. For one thing, it is incredibly gory, which I didn’t expect upon first view. It also was slightly reminiscent of the wonderful series of books about Ender the Xenocide by Orson Scott Card. It’s another one of those where the concept is pretty damn cool even if the story doesn’t quite live up to the potential. And to top it all off you get to see Doogie Howser playing a psychic colonel with no moral compass. Make no mistake, I would never force or even suggest that any of my friends actually watch this movie, but if I’m at home and it comes on cable, I know what I’m doing for the next hour and a half.

So what are some of your guilty pleasure movies?