“Mystery Science Theater” (and subsequently, “RiffTrax”) has changed the way in which we watch films. Thanks to the influence they have had on pop-culture, bad movies aren’t just for the $3.99 bin at your local Target, they are an EVENT. Combine alcohol, a group of like-minded individuals, and a bad movie, and you can successfully and enjoyably destroy a few hours and brain cells on any given Saturday night.

But how many of those movies that you watch drunkenly in groups are you likely to watch again? At home? By yourself? Sober? It takes a special kind of bad movie that can be appreciated both ironically and literally. That’s what this list of 50 Movies looks at today. They’re not simply bad, they’re entertainingly bad, even without the benefit of a peanut gallery. That’s why you won’t see straight-up awful movies, like Manos: Hands of Fate, The Room, Zardoz or Birdemic: Shock and Terror on this list because without the group dynamic, films like those are simply excruciating to watch.

Using a sophisticated algorithm developed by a real-life unemployed NASA scientist, I’ve endeavored to rank the Top 50 Entertainingly Craptacular Films of All Time using the following criteria: 1) How enjoyable is the movie to watch ironically? 2) How enjoyable is it to watch on cable television by single people with nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon? And 3) Is alcohol necessary for the enjoyment of the film, or does alcohol simply make it more entertaining?

This is the result of that study. Read the rest of this entry »

Oh my God, there's a sun in my nightstand!

Natural light alarm clocks: Verilux, Biobrite, Soleil, and more, available on Amazon.

Since I moved back to the West Coast, waking up hasn’t been easy.  I feel bad letting my East Coast readers wake up with nothing to read, and that means waking up pretty early.  To make matters worse, I moved into a small apartment with very little natural light, affectionately known to friends as “the jack-off cave.”

That’s when I discovered natural light alarm clocks.  Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, everybody.  It’s time.  Last fall, we all held our breath, stomped around in a circle, and threw a collective Internet tantrum after Conan O’Brien lost “The Tonight Show.”  We seethed over Jay Leno’s calculating, gutless, “I’m just a company man, I do what the bosses tell me” schtick, we cracked up during Conan’s exceptionally strong final week of shows, and we teared up when he delivered his heartfelt goodbye speech.  Team Coco was not only behind him, it was everywhere — both in the ubiquitous image in the mold of the Obama Hope poster, and in the community that rallied underneath its bright orange pompadour.  But all that emotion, from rage to love, will have been totally impotent if we don’t follow through now. Read the rest of this entry »

There are tons of movies coming out this holiday.  So, instead of worrying about how to avoid talking to your family at the theater, we’re doing the job for you; weeding out the boring dramas, kid’s movies, lame sequels, and foreign movies that are probably really good but, let’s face it, aren’t going to run in your area in a million years.  So here’s the best of what you can catch.

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There are dozens of gadgets that hit the market between now and the end of the shopping holidays, and most of them bring new meaning to the term “utterly useless”.  But, they don’t all have to hurt.  Here are five items that will actually make it a Merry Christmas, or at least help you drink enough to forget.
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Recently it feels like every production attempt at making a halfway decent (and watchable) zombie program always inevitably ends the same: horribly. In the effort to make a quick buck on the genre, studios keep turning out fart factory after fart factory, leaving loyal zombie fans cringing in their undead wake. Well, for all the fans who have survived the cheap imitations this long, it appears your reward is only a few short days away. I’m speaking of course about The Walking Dead: the proverbial “REAL DEAL” in a land of imitations. Featured as part of AMC’s Halloween Fearfest, October 31st will mark the premiere of director Frank Darabont’s (The Shawshank Redemption, Green Mile, The Mist) 90-minute pilot episode of the series.

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