I Like Crap

[Rich Engle]

That's right...Mike Stone, not Lewis... I was confusing my Kenpo guys. Yeah, that was quite a scene. As I recall the Memphis Mafia did some pretty quick damage control on that one. In any event, I'm telling you Elvis didn't have good karate. If you see footage of him working out it's just awful. It would have been easy to kick his ass. I liked when he got his DEA badge or whatever...the Nixon meeting, all that. Elvis used to traffic stop people. Hah! All jacked up on pills, pulling people over. Imagine...you're reaching for your license and realize The King is walking up to your car window. Uh...

Good point on "King Creole." Actually, Jailhouse Rock isn't bad for me either, just because I like the choreography.

I guess Elvis isn't really crap. Elvis is Elvis, There Can Only Be One. I just always liked Tom Jones better. I'm not saying Tom Jones has Elvis Power<tm> but he's definitely one of the heaviest showbiz hitters ever: he just keeps going, and going, and going...

Edited March 17, 2007 by Rich Engle

[Victor Pross]

Playing a young punk with a chip on his shoulder, I like a lot of the sardonic lines Elvis has in Jailhouse Rock. In that one scene when he tries to make a move on a girl, she rebuffs him: “Do you think those cheap tactics would work on me? Elvis, under heavy hooded eyes, retorts: “That’s not tactics, honey, that’s the beast in me."

Of course, he does have his way with her. He's the king! ” Whooo-hoooo!

Edited March 17, 2007 by Victor Pross

[Rich Engle]

That's my favorite line in the movie, and one of my favorite scenes ever. Funny, I was just talking about that with someone not a day ago. It's so...James Dean like.

[Victor Pross]

Oh, pulp culture is a real hoot. High art has its place, but there is so much goddamn fun in pop culture. I like crap, kitsch and almost all things that appeal to the “folks next door.” B)

Edited March 17, 2007 by Victor Pross

[Chris Grieb]

I have never seen King Carole but I heard it is the best Elvis film. Of the ones I have seen Jailhouse Rock is the best. The love interest Judy Tyler died in an auto accident shortly after completing the movie. She had played the Indian princess on Howdy Doody.

[mikelee999]

I especially like stuff that most people think is crap but it really isn't.

Like the Howard Stern Show and the Adam Carolla Show and the Tom Leykis Show. Each of them has had huge ideological impact on America, all of them for the good.

I like Crystal Gayle, back when Allan Reynolds was producing her. That is some of the most sublime, soulful country music ever created.

I love Taco Bell. Half of their stuff is really good and the other half is really good crap. My brother likes crappy Mexican restaurants that he thinks are better than Taco Bell. A while back, I coerced him to go to Taco Bell because the kids were getting defcon4 cranky and there was no Los Margaritas in sight. He was like, damn! If you haven't made a run for the border in a while, the steak grilled stuffed burrito rocks. And I always palm a pocket full of fire sauce packets. I have a glass pasta holder full of them in case TB doesn't have enough next time I go.

Next post: I hate stuff that is crap but people think it's great. First on my list: iPods and Sony.''

P.S. for the poster confused by the final paragraph of my post that initiated this thread:

Mac Davis was a B-movie actor who got famous in the early 70's for being in football comedies and writing wonderfully crappy country songs. He also had his own TV variety show at the same time Sonny & Cher and Donny & Marie were getting similar shows. His biggest hit for himself was "Baby Don't Get Hooked on Me." Another hit was "One Hell of a Woman." Segue: Mac Davis wrote a song called "Watching Scotty Grow" which was covered by Elvis but the biggest hit version was Bobby Goldsboro's.

Bobby Goldsboro made a career of singing songs about only 2 subjects: (1) the bliss of ordinary family life (e.g, Watching Scotty Grow), and (2) male nobility in the face of romantic disaster. His biggest hit was "Honey" which combined both his major themes into a gloriously crappy masterpiece about a man mourning his frisky-like-a-cute-little-puppy wife. "Summer, the First Time" is a deeply dramatic romantic song about a little kid getting knocked off his bicycle and diddled by a horny housewife. Segue: Kind of like in the Mary Kay Latourneau case, only a one-afternoon stand instead of a passionate september-february romance that has stood the test of time.

Mary Kay Latourneau was a Seattle schoolteacher who had an affair with a 12 year old boy in her class. His name is even harder to spell than hers, so I won't even try. (Disclosure: I went to grade school with MKL's brother at a little whackjob Christian fundie school near Washington DC. I am so freaking bummed I never met her, though she probably wouldn't have liked my Aryan average looks since she's pretty obviously hot for islanders with unpronounceable names. Her father was a bigtime GOP conservative congressman from California, John Schmitz--she got him back, but good!).

Anyhow, after MKL got knocked up (She's Having My Baby! -- how could I have forgotten Paul Anka in this thread?!), it all went public and she went to jail. Every time they let her out the cops would follow her and catch her smooching with Island Boy in some steamed up car.

Even after IB was an adult, MKL and IB were under court order to knock it the eff off before we turn a hose on you, and they refused. If they put MKL in a half-way house, IB would climb through the window and knock her up again.

A year or two ago, all legal remedies to remedy this depravity expired and MKL and her IB-toy tied the knot and are living in secluded bliss. By the way, she was kind of a hottie, a real hottie, not like that plastic blonde chick schoolteacher on the motorcycle in Florida who got away with banging boys for no reason last year.

In this candy-assed, politically correct, x-rated is ok as long as you're zoned for it culture, MKL is a predator, despite the fact that her putative prey kept leaping back into her arms. MKL and IB are serious sexual outlaws and deserve our respect and applause.

She's my final example of someone everyone thinks is crap that isn't.

Mike Lee

Wild Thing!

[Chris Grieb]

Mike; You mentioned John Schmitz. Congressman Schmitz was from Orange County, California. He was a member of the John Birch Society. In 1972 he ran for President on the American Independent Party. He got over a million votes. He was always being called a Nazi. Which leads to my favorite story: He was at some function in Orange County. There was a man there wearing a brown shirt Schmitz walked up to the man and said "If I had known we were going to be in uniform I would have worn mine."

Edited March 28, 2007 by Chris Grieb

[BAMF]

Like the Howard Stern Show and the Adam Carolla Show and the Tom Leykis Show. Each of them has had huge ideological impact on America, all of them for the good.

I like Adam Corolla too, but I only like the radio show he did with Dr. Drew called "Loveline." I like Dr. Drew much better though.

I love Taco Bell.

Me too, I don't know why everybody hates on it. I mean, so long as I don't know that there are feces in my taco meat, I'm fine. :sick:

Next post: I hate stuff that is crap but people think it's great. First on my list: iPods and Sony.''

Uhhhhh, say WHAAAAT!? iPods and Sony are the best things on the face of the Earth *exaggerates* I really do love iPods (and also Sony Playstation). Have you ever even had an iPod? If not, dude, you don't know what you're missing. What are the reasons you hate iPods and Sony?

Anyhow, after MKL got knocked up (She's Having My Baby! -- how could I have forgotten Paul Anka in this thread?!), it all went public and she went to jail. Every time they let her out the cops would follow her and catch her smooching with Island Boy in some steamed up car.

Island Boy? How charming. :getlost:

[Kat]

Mike Lee, loved your post. You can even manage to put a fresh spin on "crap."

My crap...hmmmm.... reading trashy Ayn Rand novels, seeing men in drag such as Robin Williams as Mrs. Doubtfire, Frankenfurter in Rocky Horror Picture Show, and seeing my old graphic design teacher in drag queen competitions. I liked Little Miss Sunshine despite Michael's protests. I like odd movies like Being John Malkovich and Magic Christian, British humor like AbFab, Monty Python and Bean and cartoons like Family Guy and Futurama. I also like 60s rock and I am a huge Beatlefreak and I looked a lot like Janis Joplin in my younger partying days. Now that I'm old and fat, I do exercise videos with Richard Simmons and Tony Little. Not that I like crap or anything. Its all in the eye of the beholder. FREEEEEEBIRD!!!!

Kat

[John Dailey]

~ Princess Summer-Fall-Winter-Spring is...dead? SHE CAN'T BE ! Poor Howdy. Poorer us Peanut Galleries :no:

~ Crap

~ Finding out that Clarabelle was gone was bad enough, but...

~ Back to subject: can't say that there's any 'crap' I like; indeed, if I 'like' it, then it ain't.

~ I really LIKE cotton-candy, and, really, THAT's what this thread is about, no? 'Guilty (why?) pleasures' as they're called? Worthless of value other than 'fun time-kill' (as long as the time isn't too consuming.)

~ Presley's movies certainly come under that (as someone said: '90-min commercials for his albums.') Except for KING CREOLE. There, was a worthwhile movie (based on a story from some noted author of then I think.) I always loved his song in that "If you're looking for trouble (ba dum, ba dah dum...)"

LLAP

J:D

[Chris Grieb]

John; Judy Tyler was killed in a car accident right around the time of the release of Jailhouse Rock.

[mikelee999]

RANT ALERT: If you keep reading you can't say you weren't warned.

Why is the iPod crap? It is certainly a thing of beauty. I'd never even seen one till about 18 months ago, and as soon as I saw it, I knew what it was. Georgeous design, it feels great in your hand, clever interface. It is truly a triumph of form over function.

Can't change the battery yourself. Why? They didn't want to ruin the sleek lines with a battery door. No extra battery for you on an international flight. And what a bitch to hard boot. (My first iPod exposure was because my stepson's girlfriend's iPod had locked up. I had to do a Google search to figure out how to reboot the gd thing.)

Limited feature and menu set. Why? They didn't want to confuse stupid people.

Doesn't work like a hard drive when you plug it into a computer. Why? DRM considerations.

I have a Creative Muvo2FM. It has a 5 GB micro-drive in it. It looks like a little crackerjack toy. I've used it an hour or more every day for about 3 years now, and it's going strong. Extra batteries are teeny and can be changed in a second. It has an FM radio, unlike an iPod. I often listen to the radio on airplanes, just to flip off the FAA, and to hear what public radio sounds like in Nebraska (the same as everywhere, by the way).

When I jack the Muvo into my computer it appears as a hard drive. I've copied entire install flats to it rather than having to burn a DVD. I've even copied DVDs to it. When I want to reload music, I use simple copy commands rather than having to use someone's idiotic idea of a sync application. I think it cost me $80 after rebate.

I know that most people could care less about these features, and I completely understand why most people like iPods better. I wouldn't trade my Muvo for an iPod, even to get 6x the storage.

Oh, and another thing: iPods don't play .WMAs. I just finished ripping all my music to nearly a terabyte of .FLAC files. Then I converted them to .WMA for my wife's Zune (a somewhat, but not dramatically better, music/movie player than the iPod). WMA is way better than MP3 for a portable music player in terms of sound quality per mb. I also simultaneously ripped everything to VBR MP3, a little better quality than the WMAs, admittedly, and it took 130 MB. Bottom line: a 30GB Zune can hold a lot more music than a 30GB iPod, and the Zune plays both Mp3s and WMAs. AC3? Don't even get me started on AC3...Which brings me to why Sony sucks.

iPods I just don't consider optimal. Sony is the devil.

There is a Sony 5 disc SACD/DVD player sitting in my bedroom, unplugged since I got a Squeezebox for the bedroom. It will soon move into my office, when I clear some space and when I figure out how to rip 6 channel .WAV files in Audtion so I can put all my SACDs on the Squeezebox.

There is a Sony Dream Machine clock radio in the bathroom, and most days I listen to Adam Carolla in the shower on it.

When she was about 7, my daughter broke my first Sony CD changer a week after we bought it for $399 by pushing in the tray manually instead of using the right button. The manual had warned about this. Voiding the warranty, I took it apart to fix it and was delighted at the precision and tight tolerances of the mechanism. Of course, designing a CD tray that can't be loaded by pushing on it is sucky and typical of Sony.

I can't count the number of Walkmans and Discmans I've owned. I've got an MD player around here somewhere. With a good external stero microphone, it's awesome for live recordings, except that effing Sony won't let me download them except in analog, which doesn't matter much for quality really, but means you have to do it in real time, meaning it takes forever. There's a USB external Sony drive sitting over my head and under a newer Philips drive that has done me yeoman service for several years now in violating silly copyright rights supported by Sony.

All the above is to establish my bona fides as an experienced Sony consumer.

More often than not their stuff breaks faster than most other brands. They enforce silly restrictions (the MD player) and strange design choices (the buttons are not where you'd expect). The manufacturing is topnotch, but with mediocre components. Fit and finish are great, but real world experience is not. Another example: my travel speakers are Sony, about the size of a paperback book, and able to fill a hotel room with decent sound. But I have to take the battery cover off when I use them without batteries or else the bass port design makes them buzz like they're blown. I loaned them to a friend and she was about to buy me new ones because she thought she'd ruined them, because I forgot to warn her.

Sony is clever and lazy.

And they're the devil, as I will now prove with these simple exhibits:

1. Betamax vs VHS; SACD vs DVD/A, and soon, Blu-Ray vs. DVD-HD. Any standard Sony gets behind is doomed. Why? Because Sony is greedy and arrogant and sure they're right no matter what, and not in good Objectivist way either. I didn't mention before my Sony betamax. Smaller tapes, higher quality, and they rested on their laurels and let VHS run past them on tape length and eventually quality. Let's face it, form factor-wise, VHS tapes are one of the ugliest, unwieldiest things ever made. And Sony still managed to lose.

SACD. For those unfamiliar with SACD (Super Audio CD), it was to be the next leap (or at least hop) forward in sound quality after regular CDs. 6-channel sound, higher bitrates and all that jazz. SACDs are created on DVD media. So you can do dual layer. This means you can make an SACD that plays in a regular CD player and in an SACD player. You can play the disc in your car and then take it home, pop it into the surround system and get your socks blown off. Sony, to prevent piracy, committed to doing single-layer SACDs. As the biggest producer and booster of the format, this meant that their discs couldn't be played in a car stereo, couldn't be ripped to your iPod--could only be played in $1000+ (until recently) DVD players.

SACD is truly glorious. It can make you want to listen to Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are" again and again, that's how good it is. Ella and Louie--oh.my.god.

Sony, in their infinite arrogance, did everything they could to betamax SACD, and they've succeeded. By worrying about whether someone who paid $25 to get Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell on SACD might share the old CD layer version with their friends, they've effectively killed yet another great format. There's still some slight debate over whether SACD or DVD/A sounds better. Buy DualDiscs is my advice--That's a DVD/A disc where one side plays in your car and the other in your home theater.

Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD. The jury is still out, but my verdict is in. Sony will intercourse the canine again. Current HD-DVDs are better quality, and Blu-Ray DRM is far more annoying and intrusive. They reserve the right to disable your player if they think you've played copy-protection-cracked discs in it. Eff them both. Unless you have a 12 foot diagonal screen, the difference between standard DVD and these new Hi-Def police state DVDs isn't that much.

2. Rootkits. A rootkit is a virus on your computer that attacks at such a low level that there's hardly any way to defend against it. It's the Manchurian Candidate of viruses. It's a huge threat to all systems. If Al Quaeda ever gets anyone smart enough to do a good rootkit, o.m.g.

On hundreds of Sony CDs, if you tried to play them in your computer, they would install a rootkit. The Sysinternals heroes busted Sony on this, because they were developing anti-rootkit tools and couldn't figure out how their test computers kept getting infected, until they realized that the common denominator was they were listening to Sony label music while working. It was a pretty big geek scandal, but most other people were as bored and baffled as by why Michael Milkin got sent to jail for peddling junky prostate bonds.

Trust me, it's a big deal. Here's what you need to know: Sony did the moral equivalent of installing a webcam in your bathroom. They'll say, we weren't going to look unless we heard somebody say "Eff Sony!" Oops, the sound of your toilet flushing sounds just like "Eff Sony!" they're listening!

I haven't bought a Sony product since the rootkit thing. That was the final straw. I keep using the Sony things I've still got that still work. I may be crazy, but I'm cheap.

I wrote them a letter. To make my letter better, I went through my CDs and DVDs and figured out that my boycott costs them about $1000 a year, going forward from the last couple of years.

Anyhow, if you're picking a movie in a video store, and you can't decide, look and see whether one is Sony, and pick the other one. I'm not asking people to take on undue hardship to defeat the devil, just to let it be the deciding factor when you can't otherwise decide. Even Satan listens to consumer preference.

Mike Lee

We are the world

[Fran]

Thanks for the insights Mike. Not being a geek myself, I like learning about this kind of stuff.

[John Dailey]

~ Did I miss something, or were my FAVORITE 'crap' thingies not yet mentioned?

~ BEAVIS&BUTTHEAD (reruns, of course) and, the crappiest of all: SOUTHPARK !!! (gahd, I love those kids...especially Kenny)

~ Honorary mention: THE SIMPSONS (but, lately they've become a bit blase.)

~ Then of course, there's AMERICAN IDOL...but, even *I* don't bother watching that, Simon nwst.

~ But, the 'real' crap? No one's mentioned (regardless their/your locale!) 'local news.'

LLAP

J:D

[Chris Grieb]

I was told I should be proud of the fact that I have never seen a whole episode of American Idol. Bevis and Butthead I have never seen. My problem with South Park is I can't understand although I was able to follow the episode with Tom Cruise in the closet.

Edited April 6, 2007 by Chris Grieb

[Kat]

OK, I confess....I really do like crap. Mr. Hanky is awesome and oh so cute!!!!

Kat

[Danneskjold]

This is a thread about crap so I have to go and add some I hate. When I say I hate it I MEAN I hate it.

Sanjaya, the funny looking guy on American Idol needs to get booted before he kills the show. If that guy wins I will have less faith in American Idol and people in general than I already do. I have actually used Sanjaya in a debate with a friend as an example of how just because they're the majority doesn't make them right. I think that American Idol needs to switch it so that instead of voting FOR people you vote AGAINST them like every other elimination tv show. You'd get less people going "OOO I REALLY LIKE THIS PERSON" and "OOO I REALLY LIKE THIS PERSON TOO" and then choosing one randomly and having a really good person get eliminated because they were barely worse than someone and some poppy boy band wannabe gets bumped to the next round.

That country song he sung was possibly the worst I have ever heard. Simon was right, we heard better stuff back at the beginning of the show. I only watch the show because my parents do while I'm in the living room in the first place, but when I see that guy pop up on the screen week after week it REALLY frustrates me.

[BAMF]

Jeff, there are people that are trying to get the worst contestant to win on purpose. Just to see if they can. I really don't give a shit because I don't have to listen to any of their music if I don't want to. I don't like that show. They're all quite mediocre, in my opinion, and the creators of the show make them into something they are not.

P.S. Although Sanjaya is not a terrific singer, he's not funny looking. He's a cutie pie.

[Chris Grieb]

Jeff & Kori; There is something called hatred of the good for being good. Ayn Rand wrote a couple of essays about this problem. This maybe the reason for Sanjay. I have never except by accident watched American Idol.

[Dodger]

I tivo American Idol.

I think the Navy guy with the ears is cool, but he won't win unless we put a lot more troops in Iraq with text messaging on their cell phones.

I hope Sligh and Sundance go almost all the way, and then tour together. They can't win, but they kick butt.

I was really annoyed that the blonde bluesy girl got voted off and Princess BJ got to stay. My wife was annoyed that Sanjaya survived. She thinks his hair is ridiculous and that his sister could beat him up.

On 24 this week, Jack Bauer tortured somebody again, this time a Russian embassy official. I enjoyed watching this guy get tuned up a lot more than when Jack settled his sibling rivalry issues with that mouthy guy from ER who always made the nurses cry.

Lately, I've been listening to a lot of ABBA while watching Bill O'Reilly with the sound turned down. If something interesting comes across the screen like sex but not with illegal immigrants, I switch over the sound. Bill is where I first learned about Princess BJ. Thanks, Bills, both Clinton and O'Reilly, for raising everyone's BJ consciousness. We owe you, man.

Bobby Goldsboro and Mac Davis. Has anyone ever seen them together? Summer, The First Time. I remember riding my bike up and down the block, hoping some bored housewife would suddenly Summer of '42 me. Mary Kay Latourneau, where were you when I needed you most? You're one hell of a woman.

Mike Lee

Smells like Teen Spirit to me

That post made me laugh. Very enjoyable. Perhaps it should be moved to the humour section?

[Dodger]

Jeff, there are people that are trying to get the worst contestant to win on purpose. Just to see if they can. I really don't give a shit because I don't have to listen to any of their music if I don't want to. I don't like that show. They're all quite mediocre, in my opinion, and the creators of the show make them into something they are not.

P.S. Although Sanjaya is not a terrific singer, he's not funny looking. He's a cutie pie.

Eh, can you expand your ideas? American Idol may be a waste of time to watch but I think its quite an interesting topic to discuss. Many characteristics of people in general can be determined just from this show

[Chris Grieb]

Kori; The mohawk haircut that Sanjay was funny looking.

[Danneskjold]

He's a cutie pie if you like Keating types. I don't see how you can say that the people on that show are "rather mediocre". I can see what you mean with some but definitely not all. I'd really like to hear you defend that blanket statement about them being mediocre.

[Chris Grieb]

I understand Sanjay had been voted off. Perhaps the moral center of the universe has returned.

[Dodger]

I understand Sanjay had been voted off. Perhaps the moral center of the universe has returned.

I dont even watch American Idol, so sadly, I cant really participate in this discussion. I can laugh though