But baseball became America’s Pasttime before television was even invented. How could it have been made for TV commercial breaks?
Harry Potter is crap. Crap writing, crap story, crap. Every time I considered joining in the phenomenon, I’d read a page of the most recently released book and looked at it from a purely “Can I tolerate this crap, ham-handed, amateurish prose for 700 more pages?” The answer was, inevitably, “No, I cannot.”
I watched the first movie because of the Riff Trax and my sister owned the DVD. At one point, I said wistfully, “I wish I was watching The Phantom Menace right now.” (Incidentally, Star Wars is crap, too. All six movies are varying levels of craptastic. ) Yes, ladies and gent, George Lucas’s shitty pod-racing was more exciting and engaging than anything in the HP movie.
I just cannot comprehend why something so bad on so many levels was so overwhelmingly popular.
Not sure if it was popular enough to be seen as a sacred cow, but I though Chocolat was offensively crap, not only from both an artistic point of view but a political one: it invited the audience to congratulate themselves on their tolerance of gypsies, when the news suggests that the reality is likely to be much more complex.
I’m going to echo people upthread and say Shakespeare. All of it. I’ve studied Shakespeare up to the age of 18, watched it live and seen it in film format - and it is all impenetrable wank. I don’t understand why Shakespeare is considered to be the greatest playwright who ever lived, nor do I get how his works are supposed to have permanently influenced all English drama and literature since. Don’t even get me started on the “that can’t be a woman, she’s wearing a hat” and then when she takes it off “No!” rigmarole that happens in every other one of his plays.
Opera - it’s a bunch of totally meaningless stories with the dialogue sung to music that has no harmonic resonance at all. And what are they singing?
Chorus: “He’s coming down the road the road the road, he’s coming down the road”
Lead: “Oh how bright is this day, how briiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!”
Chorus: “Bright is the day!”
:rolleyes:
And finally, football (soccer for you muricans). IT’S A BUNCH OF MEN KICKING AROUND A PIECE OF LEATHER FOR FUCK’S SAKE. Yet some of these people earn more in a week than a doctor does in a year.
While it’s a stretch to say baseball was ‘invented’ for commercial breaks, it did become widely broadcast on radio because (among other factors) it did lend itself to commercial interuptions.
Futurama is poorly animated and too dependent on lame gags.
Though that didn’t stop me from buying them all on DVD.
I consider baseball to be a harmless eccentricity (and now a den of vice, apparently), but american football bugs me. It’s slow. It’s stupid. It’s boring–change some of the rules: no more 4 downs, how about instant death or similar?
The players are bloviated, overpaid entitled morons (I’m sure there are some intelligent ones) who make bad personal choices due to being given too much too soon.
Ditto hockey–yawn. Go watch wrestling on TV if you want to watch some people fight. Ditto wrestling–it’s scripted violence for no greater purpose than to watch someone “suffer”–how is this entertainment?
American Idol–where to start? Wailing is not singing; brashness is not wit.
This thread reminds me of Bukowski (I forget which book it was in) picking up his copy of War and Peace to read a few pages and remind himself that it’s crap…which reminds me, Bukowski is over-rated too…
The Godfather was boredom punctuated by violence and was about an hour too long. There wasn’t a single character who I didn’t want to kill, which probably explains why the whole movie involved them all killing one another.
Seinfeld wasn’t nearly as funny as people make it out to be. There were a few good episodes, but most of them were incredibly dull and repetitive.
The Straight Dope sucks. Especially the message board.
Wes Anderson makes crappy movies.
Whippersnapper. Wait’ll you have to start paying our Social Security. That’ll learn ya. 
Seconded.
TV shows about lawyers, such as Law & Order, The Practice, Boston Legal, LA Law, etc., etc. Why do people hate jury duty so much, yet they make sure to watch every single episode of these boring courtroom dramas?
South Park is completely unfunny.
I think Stone and Parker would be pretty upset to have their show considered a sacred cow.
I have to wholeheartedly agree with Pepperlandgirl’s brilliant earlier post about the Harry Potter phenomenon. It’s a sacred cow I could butcher along with Star Wars.
The other sacred cow I’d mention has seemed to become one only recently: Rap, hip-hop, etc. Seems its the in-thing now to claim how good it all is (Let’s give the pimp song an Oscar and show how we understand Black culture! Let’s expound on how talented Kanye West or Ludicris or whoever is when its really all crap. The emperor has no clothes people! And I’m not a racist for saying so.
Now granted this is based off of somewhat limited knowledge of the inner workings of the game itself, but WoW for some reason REALLY gets under my skin, but perhaps it’s because I’ve seen people kick crystal meth with greater ease than World of Warcraft.
They say to me (as they used to do with Everquest) “Just try it man, it’s fucking great!”, but after watching more than a few of them don headsets and begin “immersing” themselves in the game, I have to say that it sounded to me like a gaggle of 14 year old Halo kids arguing over gameplay mechanics in a way that would completely pull me out of the world, which I think is a big flaw for any MMO.
Also, since sports has been mentioned more than a few times, I’ll make it more specific and say sports BARS…eghhh. We have one around here called “The Draft” that is nothing but 30 televisions, Budweiser on tap, and more early twenties, baseball cap wearing, cat-calling, frosted hair copies of one another than I would care to shake a stick it. Unless it was a REALLY big stick, with say, a +4 to some pertinent stat.
Also…American Idol
what a fantastic thread!
I feel lukewarm toward Joss Whedon’s works. I’ve tried to love Buffy and Firefly/Serenity, but the heart wants what it wants, and my heart just doesn’t want Joss Whedon’s stuff very much, I guess.
Preach it, preach it brother!
Stands up in the choir stalls and throws hat in the air
I’ve played WOW, I quit playing, I didn’t find it particularly hard to do so as I was bored (although saying that some junkies come off heroin pretty effortlessly, doesn’t mean it’s not addictive for the rest). But the bit that particularly got my goat was, as you say, the whole discussion over this spec being inferior for mages because the DPS over time was 4% less than the other spec which had a higher change to crit blah blah blah. So that’s my experience of being immersed in a fantasy world fairly ruined then - if I wanted to crunch statistics I’d go to work.