#20 "So Bad That It's Good" -- Don

I’m tempted to start off by riffing on the Platonic/Socratic discourse that separates “what is truly good from what is merely pleasurable.”  Plato, in several of his dialogs, has his teacher, Socrates, ramble on and on about how life offers us plenty of things that are bad for us that are nonetheless very pleasurable.  For instance, we might all enjoy it when someone flatters us, but Socrates would say the truth is more beneficial.  But, I’ll save my philosophic lectures for when I’m waxing eloquent about rhetoric in English class, and here in today’s blog, I want to stick to those things that are aesthetically not very good, but somehow, because of some weird gravitational effect, they rebound off the side of The Wall of Terrible and bounce back squarely into The Playground of Awesome.

Musically, it would be hard to find a better example of something that is “So Bad That It’s Good than this gem from The Lawrence Welk Show:

During my childhood, The Lawrence Welk Show was one of those TV shows that seemed like it was alway on.  Even as a child, I could not understand how anyone could watch this show and not notice how desperate the producers seemed to be to depict all American music as sanguine and banal.  While The Munsters and The Addams Family were parodying what was supposed to be creepy in America during the 1960's, I say the show that really gave me the creeps was this one.  One of my favorite SNL skits demonstrates this attitude perfectly as Kristen Wiig performs with doll hands and a massive forehead while her singing sisters work to appear as normal as possible.  Here's a link to the video, I don't have the mad blogger skills to figure out how to embed it like I did with the previous video above.

As far as movies go, I can think of plenty of films that somehow uses it's self-awareness of being second-rate material to move it somehow passed all those films that want to be great but can't quite make it.  One of my all-time favorite bad movies that just happens to be amazingly good is Mothra vs. Godzilla.  Seriously, as if the giant lizard fighting the giant moth does sufficiently satisfy the weirdness quotient for a movie, you have to admire the filmmaker's willingness to incorporate two Barbie-doll sized twin fairy girls who plead with the evil corporate executives to return an enormous egg to their homeland "Infant Island."

  

In my humble opinion, nobody can take material that is so weird that it makes you wonder if the writers were stoned when they cranked out their story and present it in a style that acts as though it's all as common as Wonder Bread as the Japanese can.  Yes, I know Lewis Carroll, Rolad Dahl, and Tim Burton can all do terrifically mad and beautiful work exploring this literary territory, but even as good as Alice in Wonderland, James and the Giant Peach, and Edward Scissorhands can be, they all pale in the exquisite shadows of Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away:

With its bouncing disembodied Russian heads, its child abandoned because Mom and Dad have been turned into swine, and the creepiest giant baby ever portrayed on film, Spirited Away couldn't have been weirder if the ghost of Walt Disney had showed up tripping on LSD.

In the category of reading "So Bad It's Good," I'd put the series of pulp novels by Tarzan-creator Edgar Rice Burroughs about the prehistoric world that lies at the center of the Earth as my favorite.  

You can get a free ebook of At the Earth's Core here.  If you've never had the fun of reading any of the Doc Savage pulp novels (mostly written by Lester Dent) then as soon as you finish At the Earth's Core, you should jump in a read The Man of Bronze (most of the Doc Savage books are available as free ebooks from here).  

If you get an ebook reader for Christmas (such as a Kindle or a Nook), then you should know there are tons of free and awesome books waiting to be had; I particularly recommend the sci-fi and mystery pulp writers of the 30's and 40's including Robert Howard and H.P Lovecraft.  These writers are more accurately described as "So Bad They're Hard to Beat."

As I wrap this blog up, I think I'd be remiss if I didn't say something about food.  Ruth is always giving me a hard time about my dietary choices (as well as she should, it's her job to keep me on the straight and narrow), and know that their food is especially bad nutritionally, but in the category of "So Bad It's Good" I think it would hard to beat the delicious choices that are available at Speedway.  

Not only is their coffee the best deal anywhere, I'm a sucker for all the delectable delicacies that are in perpetual rotation on their spinning hot dog cooker.  If you haven't tried one of their meat and cheese pastry filled Tornadoes, then what are you waiting for?  Permission from your doctor? That'll never happen.  Be sure to use your Speedy Rewards Card because if you survive a few meals, they'll give you a free sandwich after you accumulate a few points.

Okay, Christmas is next weekend.  So Ho-ho-ho and all of that.  Don't overindulge too much (just overindulge enough not to get ill from it afterwards).