Cru Jones Society

 

Holden: So, uh, what do you wanna do tonight?
Banky Edwards: I dunno. Get a pizza, watch “Degrassi Jr. High”.
Holden: You got a weird thing for Canadian melodrama.
Banky Edwards: I got a weird thing for girls who say, “Aboot.”

Whether it’s Canadian melodrama, reruns of The Golden Girls, or an Andrew Dice Clay movie; we all have something we enjoy watching that we would never tell a first date or our ball busting friends about. But this is the internet, home of anonymity, so we are going to share ours with you. And we only thought it fair that you share one of yours. So we continue Guilty Pleasure month with the question: What movie or television guilty pleasure do you have? Go ahead and read on, then you can get back to the “I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!” fan page.

Hart: I came home late one night after working my retail job and the snow was just starting to fall. I was pissed off from work and just wanted to find a movie on TV to kick back with. As I scrolled the guide I saw that Love Actually was starting in ten minutes. As soon as I saw it I knew I was going to watch it. But I wasn’t content with just watching it. I decided to go all out. So I put on soft pajama pants, made a cup of cocoa, and curled up under a blanket (if only I had a Snuggie) to watch this movie.

Despite the number of bare breast that appear in the movie, Love Actually is a chick flick. But it is one of my favorite movies. I can’t help but to love damn near every aspect of it. Generally I am bitter towards people in love, especially in the movies. But I feel so good when this movie draws to an end. I watch all the characters participate in their various embraces at the airport and suddenly I’m Jimmy Eat World singing, “I wanna fall in love tonight.”

And as embarrassing as that all may seem it still seems better than what I enjoyed a few years ago when I lived with a girl. This girl was a huge fan of the soap opera General Hospital. So if I ever wanted to hang out in the living room weekday afternoons between 2 and 3 I would be subjected to General Hospital more often than not. Because I wanted company I would watch it with her. Before I knew it I found myself sucked into the fucking show, and would watch it on days when my roommate wasn’t there.

Eventually I moved out, got a job that required me to be somewhere weekdays between 2 and 3, and haven’t found a good enough reason to get a DVR or Tivo. All these factors have stopped General Hospital to continue to be a guilty pleasure, but for about two years it was.

Dagger: Well, considering I’ve written about my the ten oddest DVDs in my collection, and dedicated an entire Monday Confessional to a philosophical question posed by the geriatric comedy Cocoon, I’m running out of tillable earth to plow here in the movie milieu. Besides, with my country’s 500^th anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Gilder to frame for it, I’m swamped. I almost never make it out to the movies, anyway.

That leaves television, which, since I live with a girl now, has a vast selection of programs I am not proud to admit I enjoy watching. Let’s break these down, shall we?

1) Flip This House When I wake up on the weekends, if there’s Saved by the Bell on, I’m watching that. If I’m up before Lady E, hello HBO and Encore! Lady E was gone Saturday so I spent my day doing housework and watching, in this order, Gung Ho, Futurama: Bender’s Game, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and the Jean Claude Van Damme thriller Sudden Death. Needless to say, it was an awesome day.

However, when Lady E does wake up, without fail we’re watching Flip This House. My favorite version is definitely San Antonio with Armando Montelongo. He’s a big fat bully who uses too much product in his hair, dresses like a complete douche, drives his giant ostentatious truck, and orders around his contractors like a big fat Hispanic Joseph Stalin. It’s incredibly fascinating television as he buys these shithole properties and bloviates his way to profit.

Am I proud that I’m supporting an industry at least partly responsible for the housing collapse in this country? Of course not. Can I stop watching? Of course not. He’s so full of his own shit, and so simultaneously cocksure and dorky, you can’t turn away once you start watching.

2) Dog the Bounty Hunter I started watching this in college late one night while surfing around before bed. Don’t ever watch this before bed because this is one of the most oddly engrossing and exciting shows ever created. And that’s strange because at its core, the show is really nothing more than watching a bunch of weird-looking people drive around in a couple SUVs, pray in a circle occasionally, and talk to a bunch of low-rent motherfuckers. I think the excitement from this show comes from a great use of the soundtrack to build excitement, but I don’t know. I might just like watching Dog dress like a bouncer at a strip club and call everyone “brudda” and “brah.” Whatever, this show is awesome.

3) The Real World/Road Rules Challenge I don’t have time to count all the ways I love this show, so you’ll just have to wait for a feature post. Suffice to say I’m watching it right now and feel both gleeful and dirty as hell. And that’s good television.

Despite what you may have thought, apparently it’s actually a couple of girls running this site. Maybe you did think that, after all one of them is wearing a dress in the group photo. Moving right along let’s get to the guilty pleasures of a couple of our regular readers.

We wonder what kind of guilty pleasures our female audience might have.

Lady E: My guilty pleasure movie is one that all the guys who read this site will say, “well duh!” at, BUT this is a female stating this, so bear with.
My guilty pleasure movies are Die Hard and Die Hard 3. I love it on a Saturday morning when I wake up and Dagger is on the couch watching one of them. They are great movies full of action, weird foreign dudes trying to blow up America, and funny as hell! They kill both time and a hang over!  I will even watch them when Dagger isn’t around!
So there it is, a small glimmer of hope for all men out there that not all women hate action movies. I cannot wait to see which reader will confess to loving Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

At least she realizes Die Hard 2 is awful. And let’s see if Keithage will not disappoint Lady E and confess to Sisterhood of Traveling Pants.

Keithage: I’m pretty addicted to cartoons.  I will watch them over regular shows.  Just the other day a friend mentioned how he was watching the Indy 500 and my girlfriend pipes in and says “that sounds like fun, we were watching Cars”.  But the show I thought was awesome and continued to watch well into reruns was Gargoyles.  You may think that’s not so bad, but I started watching it my junior year of high school and continued well into college when the reruns finally went of the air.  To date I am the only person I know who watched this show on a regular basis and can name all the primary characters some secondary and the majority of the plot lines.  Maybe one day I’ll meet someone 10 years my junior and we will have something to talk about.  Until then…

That is quite the embarrassing list. But then again whatever makes you happy. And all these movies and TV shows supply enough entertainment to do just that. All we can say is thanks for opening up to us and all our readers. So let’s keep it going with another question.

Wrapping up our guilty pleasure series, we’ve got one more. What is your guilty pleasure alcohol? Are you like JD from “Scrubs” ordering an appletini – heavy on the apple, light on the “tini” when you’re out alone? Are you a middle-aged mom who craves the sweet nectar of a King Cobra 40 oz? Tell us all about your alcoholic absurdities.

We want to know more about all our readers. So don’t hold back. If you haven’t confessed, or it’s been awhile, or even if you did it last week we want to hear from you. Don’t be shy and send us your response, along with what you want your posting name to be, to staff@crujonessociety.com and we’ll put them up next week. Thanks.

Dagger and Hart