Culinary guilt: Mother’s Taffy Cookies
Explain yourself: Yes, they are as horrid and tasteless and bad for you as any other mass-produced shelf cookie in the store. But you know that cliche about folks under stress eating a whole pint of ice cream? That’s me and Taffy Cookies. Don’t ask me why.
Literary guilt: Military Space Opera
Explain yourself: Actually, space opera in general, but slap on some military ranks and some technobabble, and I eat it like candy. Yes, I’ll take David Weber over Philip K. Dick or Kurt Vonnegut or William Gibson or Olivia Butler any day. Not that I think that the former is more thoughtful or clever or wise or profound or more likely to be read in fifty years than any of the latter — but I don’t read to be edified, I read (usually) to be entertained. My tastes are quite plebeian, to be honest.
Audiovisual guilt: Nostalgia for 60s-70s TV.
I have a great fondness for the favorite shows of my youth. Actually, they were (mostly) crap. Even the good stuff was (mostly) crap. The last decade has been the golden age of TV SF, for example. Nevertheless, I love watching reruns (or DVDs) of old favorite TV shows from that era, even when they make me cringe. ST:TOS, Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica TOS, etc. I channel the little boy I was when those came out and I just can’t help getting giddy. Even over the crap.
It’s not just genre stuff, of course. Gilligan’s Island was, at times, brilliant (and I still sing the songs to the “Hamlet” they did).
Musical guilt: Soundtracks over Music Tracks
Explain yourself: I’d rather listen to the soundtrack of a movie (or TV show) I love than listen to the latest cool tracks downloaded by my various much-more-hip friends.
Actually, that ties into my own personal taste for music, which is, “Anything I’ve heard a lot of already.” When I get a CD (and, yes, I am unhip enough that I have never bought a track via download), I tend to listen to it over and over and over until it’s oozing out of my pores. At which point it’s my faviorite, sound track or not.
I suspect there’s a bit of OCD involved.
Celebrity guilt: Old SF Genre Show Personalities
Explain yourself: For shows of my youth, trivia about the actors therein was — and is — of endless fascination. I’m more fascinated by Frank Gorshin’s appearances as the Riddler on Batman (or Commissioner Bele on ST:TOS) than on what Brittany Paris is doing with Sean Cruise, or whomever are the glitterati of the week. Which is one (sad) reason why I tend to run so many obits here.
(via Brian; LiveJournal folks, there’s a form you can fill in here)
>Military Space Opera
Hmm… Don’t know too much about the genre. I believe that I have all the Dorsai books, and Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War. Does Card’s Ender’s Game count? Most of the space opera I’ve read isn’t specifically military, though.
>Nostalgia for 60s-70s TV
If you were to spy on me, you’d hear me break into renditions of old TV themes fairly often: Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan’s Island, Spider-Man (c. 1967). And I know what you mean… I can’t hear the Habañera from Bizet’s Carmen without singing along.
I ask to be,
or not to be.
That is the question
that I ask of me.
>Soundtracks over Music Tracks
If you recall your post about what songs come up on your ipod, you may also remember that all the songs that came up on my CD player’s random cycle were soundtracks. In fact, of the 100 CDs in it, 86 are soundtracks. 12 are big band, and two are classical (4, if you count the Fantasia soundtrack).
>Old SF Genre Show Personalities
I have to admit, when watching old movies or TV shows, I tend to point at the screen and announce “He was on Star Trek,” or whatever show, even when I’m alone in the room. The other day, I saw 1965’s The Satan Bug. John Anderson: “He was on TNG!” Richard Baseheart: “He was on “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea!” Simon Oakland: “He was on Kolchak: The Night Stalker!” Anne Francis: “She was in Forbidden Planet!” Also Ed Asner and Dana Andrews, but they’re non-genre.
By the way, that was a surprisingly good movie! Catch it if it shows up again.
Great stuff.
And, yes, I had to look up the IMDB entry, though I was sure I knew the name.
On the other hand, that movie alone is a Guilty Pleasure of mine. I’ve watched it probably a dozen times in reruns. Sadly, it appears to be unavailable on VHS or DVD.
At least, unavailable via Amazon. On eBay, though …
Basic plot: Big project to tap the Earth’s geothermal energy by tapping down to its core with a nuke. But Something Goes Horribly Wrong, and the result is a volcanic fissure that starts encircling the planet …
I actually have a quote from the movie (screenplay by John Manchip White) in WIST:
AMBASSADOR: What happens when the crack reaches all the way around the world?
RAMPION: At that time, the oceans will be sucked in. The colossal pressure generated by the steam will produce a tremendous explosion, ripping the Earth in half.
AMBASSADOR: So it will mean the end of the world?
RAMPION: As we know it, yes.
I mean, who couldn’t love a movie like that? Throw in a love triangle, spectacular location footage around the world, and more pseudo-science than you can shake an Intelligent Designer at, and you have a classic.