Guilty pleasures

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I kind of like I Dream of Jeannie.  That's the 1960s sitcom about astronaut Larry Hagman opening this old lamp and finding himself master of Barbara Eden, a genie who goes by the name Jeannie.  It wasn't very PC, of course. Sometimes I imagine what I'd do if I had a genie...

Another guilty pleasure of mine is The Phantom, a comic strip about a masked vigilante who lives in the jungle in Skull Cave among a tribe of pygmies.  He comes from a long line of Phantoms, starting with an ancestor 500 years ago who swore an oath on the skull of his father's killer to devote his life, and his descendants', to fighting pirates and criminals.  The job's been handed down so smoothly that most people thinks they've been one continuous immortal hero, and they call him The Ghost Who Walks!

Back in my early twenties, I used to like Arnold Schwarzenegger movies like Conan the Barbarian.  One particular guilty pleasure is The Running Man, where he gets put on a violent TV game show, hosted by real-life game show host Richard Dawson.  When Arnie says "I'll be back!" Dawson says "Only in reruns."

Another guilty pleasure movie of mine is the 1963 slapstick comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.  Someone called it vulgar, cynical and cruel, and it is, but it succeeds through sheer relentlessness. (And I like any movie with Terry-Thomas!)

My guilty pleasure western is the 1963 Cinerama epic How the West Was Won.  It's cheesy, vulgar triumphalism, yet I've watched it again and again!

In more recent years, there's the 1997 Jerry Bruckheimer comedy-thriller Con Air.  It's the sort of movie that starts with a fight scene at night in the pouring rain with a revolving oil well machine in the background because, well, it looks cool!  In one scene Nicolas Cage has to kill this guy so he starts a fight by saying, "Put--the bunny--back in the box!"