So what are your personal guilty pleasures as far as entertainment? For example, what song, Tv show, etc. do you enjoy even though you know it’s utterly mindless, disposable crap?
A few examples of my own:
“Livin’ La Vida Loca” by Ricky Martin. You know, some songs annoy you right off, but you know you’re going to be hearing them everywhere, so you have to make a choice: let it continue to annoy you or surrender to it and enjoy the ride. I surrendered big time on this one.
TV: Honestly, I know everybody says this, but I really don’t watch much TV. However, there is this soap opera (on NBC, I think) with this little midget guy (actually, I’m pretty sure he plays a doll brought to life on this show)called (possibly) “Passions”. The tiny freak absolutely mesmerizes me. The show is so campy nobody, including the writers and actors, could even remotely take it seriously. Also, if I get sucked into watching daytime shows like Jenny Jones or Judge Judy, I usually become enthralled. The opiate of the masses indeed.
Movies: Corny and stupid as they are (which becomes even more glaringly apparent when watching them with my 22 year-old girlfriend, who missed them the first time around), I still crack up at “Airplane” and “Better Off Dead.” Classics.
Well, I must be more shallow than I thought, 'cause I’ve noticed I spend a lot more time in this forum than GQ or Great Debates. Oh well. Any other shallow dopers got any guilty pleasures to share?
Those awful Roger Corman Poe movies. I loved them as a kid and it carried over into adulthood. Sure they’re low-budget. Sure they bear as much resemblance to the works of E.A. Poe as “Starship Troopers” bear to Heinlien. But where else do you get to see the likes of Price, Rathbone, Lorre, and Karloff hamming it up in cheesy costumes with Jack Nicholson and the anonymous heaving-bosom-du-jour on the same castle set they used int he last three films. Give me a bottle of red wine and a vidoetape of “The Raven” and I’m a happy person.
I watch “COPS”.
I watch “Worst Worst Drivers”.
I watch “World’s Wildest Police Chases”.
I watch [“Insert title variant of the above”]
[“Oh #&@^%$, the cops, let’s make a run for it in this stolen vehicle, let everyone see our faces on camera and tell everyone we ran from the police 'cause we were scared.”]
[Not to mention most of the footage is re-hashed into another “World’s International Police Rescue Emergency Escaped Drivers Caught In the Act on Film”]
I like watching stupid people. [“Then don’t take the car in the first place, brainiac!”] Makes me feel good about myself in comparison.