The SBIGs: The "So Bad It's Good" List

One underrated element of the NBA playoff coverage on TNT has been those pregame shows which have featured the return to national TV of Magic Johnson. Johnson's analysis isn't half bad, but for hardcore Magic fans like me, it's hard to see him and not be reminded of his short-lived talk show, which was one of the all-time examples of something that was so gawdawful, such a pluperfectly bad idea, horribly conceived and terribly executed, that you couldn't take your eyes off it. "The Magic Hour" was one of those rare forms of entertainment that it was So Bad It's Good. And when you've witnessed such a thing, it's hard to ever forget it. Here's one man's list of his favorite "So Bad It's Goods" of all time. The Dirty Dozen of SBIGs:

12. "Blind Date"/ "5th Wheel"/ "Cheaters"
(NSFW language):

Perhaps worried that TV ratings were dropping due to an increase in American's intelligence level (yeah, right) producers came up with brilliant scheme. Make dating shows which will bring really stupid people together (and a show like "Cheaters" to keep them in line) in order to mate them, thus breeding a super race of really stupid people who will watch dating shows. Like a self-sustaining ecosystem of stupidity. It's ingenious, really.

11. Showgirls

You'd think a movie with full-frontal Elizabeth Berkeley and lesbo make outs with Gina Gershon would be so good it's good. But with lines like "I want my nipples to press, but I don't want them to look like they're levitatin' " and literally dozens of others even worse, Showgirls is the Gone With the Wind of SBIGs.

10. Dan Shaughnessy Columns

Not all Shank columns, of course. Some are so bad they're simply bad. Some are mediocre throwaways. When the CHB is at his awful best is when he's doing one of his classic "Picked Up Pieces" articles, which are perfect for the career sportswriter who can't be bothered to come up with a coherent theme or make a cogent point. "PUPs" gets a slight edge over his other mainstay, the "Detroit has Ford and GM/ Boston has Harvard and MIT. Edge: Boston" playoff series previews. Did anyone else notice that last week's "The Celtics need to be tricked into thinking Cleveland is Boston" columns was just one of these in disguise?

9. Battlefield Earth

John Travolta used his re-established clout to produce this magnificent disaster which put an end to Hollywood ever paying for some stars vanity project forever. The next time some nutjob box office draw wanted to make a movie promoting his religion, Mel Gibson had to put up his own money. And unlike Travolta's movie, there was no line in the New Testament that can stand up to the classic "I am going to make you as happy as a baby Psychlo on a straight diet of kerbango."

8. "Dance 360"

Otherwise known as "Dancing With the Delinquents," this short lived show deserved a chance to leave its mark on our culture. Wikipedia credits "Dance 360" for giving the world such unforgettable catch phrases as "Yo, Fredro, where you at?" "Three six oooh," "Tag Your Man," and "Head To Head." But tragically, hosts Fredro Starr and Kel Mitchell couldn't agree on their vision for the show, and it was cancelled in its second season.

7. The Day the Clown Cried

You probably haven't heard of this movie, and definitely haven't seen it. Very few people have, as it was never released. With good reason. The movie starred Jerry Lewis and he played a clown in Germany during WWII named Helmut Dorque (pronounced "Dork"... that's the first joke) who works in the concentration camps leading children into the gas chambers. You read that correctly. Clown. Children. Gas chambers. While doing Jerry Lewis "Hey Laaayydeee!!!" schtick. One of the few people who has seen it is Harry Shearer of "The Simpsons" who said "this film was really awe-inspiring, in that you are rarely in the presence of a perfect object. This was a perfect object. This movie is so drastically wrong, its pathos and its comedy are so wildly misplaced, that you could not... improve on what it really is." If TDTCC ever becomes available on DVD I shudder to think how much I'd be willing to pay for a copy.

6. VH1 Celebreality Shows

Pick any one: "Flavor of Love," "My Fair Brady," "Rock of Love," "Hogan Knows Best," "I Love New York," "Celebrity Rehab," "Celebrity Fit Club"... Just like the plot to breed stupid anonymous people, except this one uses semi-famous train wrecks on the downside of their careers who first have to be sobered up and gotten in shape before the mating takes place.

5. Hasselhoff Sings

Fun fact: The Hoff had a pay per view concert back in the early 90's. 99.9% of such events are ordered the night of the show. The night of Hoff's concert OJ Simpson decided to get in hisI Bronco and lead the LAPD on a low speed chase that was watched by the entire world. I can't confirm this, but I believe I heard Hasselhoff's concert had 12 subscribers. It wasn't a total loss though as nowledge of this won me huge points in Barstool trivia this year.

4. Sanjaya

You could make a case that William Hung belongs here, but he was a won-hit wonder. Relative to Hung, Sanjaya had a career like Muddy Waters. Around him the grassroots "Vote for the Worst" movement was born, and it died with him as well. Though it kept him alive long enough to foist him on the "American Idol Tour" ticket-buying public. I have no idea if the audiences had to squirm through "Cheek to Cheek," endure "You Really Got Me," or suffer the Faux-hawk hairdo, but I'm certain he made 11 year old girls cry again.

3. Road House

The best movie ever made about a philosophy grad from NYU who studied "man's search for faith" so that he could become a bouncer who takes on "40-year-old adolescents, felons, power drinkers and trustees of modern chemistry" and in the process brings down the greedy powerful business tycoon and saves the town.

2. The "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go" Video
(clip unavailable)

The quintessential 80's song deserved a video so awful it was good, and this one was genius. Sadly it was just a "live" performance clip (no acting or plot) but it still did the song justice. One of my proudest moments involved this video. I was at the old Channel in Southie on a night the club was filled with bikers, thugs and criminal lowlifes. There was a room out back that was packed with these barbarians and had a huge video jukebox that was playing nothing but hardass Southern rock. ZZ Top and the like. So I quietly backed over to the jukebox, slid a quarter in, and surreptitiously punched the buttons for "Wham." By the time George Michael was lit up in black light, giving a day-glo shine to his feathered hair, big white gloves and lip gloss, the place was bedlam. So my friends and I opted to "Choose Life" and bolted out of there.

1. "The Magic Hour"

Magic Johnson. Talk show. Nightly comedy monologue. Interviewing celebrity guests. How it could possibly not work? Magic's foray into late night talk literally had a negative effect on my health. I became so obsessed with it in the days before the DVR, that I lost sleep almost nightly staying up to watch. I would drag-ass myself into work every morning and my co-workers could tell how much I stayed up to watch by how horrible I looked. But try as I might, I couldn't pull myself away. I saw the first episode, when the writers had Magic's sidekick Craig Shoemaker (a very solid comic) kick off the show with a Rodney King joke, which assured the audience would hate him forever. I was watching the night Arsenio Hall came to the couch to find Shoemaker gone and asked Magic "Where's Shoe?" only to find out the next day he had been fired in mid-episode. I stayed through to end the night Howard Stern (another huge fan of the show) came on and was only willing to talk about Magic's sexual history. I watched the brilliant improv of Magic where he brought two women out of the crowd who were having birthdays, sang "Happy Birthday" to them and then... nothing. No punchline, no joke. That was the bit. Ingenious minimalist humor you had to be a regular fan of The Magic Hour to appreciate. More than anything I wish they would've shown a video of the meeting where some producer said "Letterman does it, why can't a point guard?" Now that would've been comedy.