Monday, November 26, 2007
Humor / Internet PopSmart's fave lists: The 5 best lists from Cracked.com
Posted by Curt Holman @Curt_Holman on Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 5:57 PM
(Image courtesy Cracked.com)
There are certain things that the Internet seems to be innately made for, like cute cat pictures and pornography. Add to that pop media lists, which are proliferating online at remarkable speeds. You can seemingly find detailed rankings of every subject, no matter how obscure or niche-oriented. At PopSmart, we'll be contributing plenty of pop lists of our own, but we'll also be compiling other fun lists that we run across.
First, here are our favorite lists from Cracked. You could say that I grew up reading Cracked, but it wouldn't be true: I grew up not reading Cracked, identifying it as a second-hand imitation of Mad magazine when I was surprisingly young. Cracked was first published in 1958, held on for decades and, in 2006, reinvented itself as a glossier, laddish, media-spoof magazine, inspired by Maxim and Spy. The print magazine went defunct in February of 2007, but the website continues -- and you know what? Some of it's really funny!
5. Ridiculous Overseas Rip-Offs of American Films. In fact, the category includes not just movies, but television shows, music videos and an imitation Harry Potter book, but the more the merrier. Anything that can point you to clips of Turkey’s jaw-dropping imitations of Star Wars and "Star Trek" is a valued resource, and kudos to anyone who combs the Internet for the likes of these.
4. The 10 Most Terrifyingly Inspirational ’80s Pop Songs. Cracked has many amusing music-related lists, such as the worst band names, rapper names and album titles. Maybe it's because I came of age in the 1980s, but I appreciate the way this piece at once embraces and lampoons the preposterous genre that brought us "The Final Countdown," "Eye of the Tiger" and more. You can also simply laugh at the video descriptions, such as Pat Benatar’s “Love Is a Battlefieldâ€: “A bunch of whores dance-fighting a Raul Julia look-alike while shaking their boobs in a menacing fashion.â€
3. The Six Most Terrifying Foods in the World. Perhaps this piece could benefit from a little less snarky attitude and a little more culinary insight, but it's still disgustingly fascinating. Plus, it gets points for creatively imagining the products repackaged for American consumers, ex. pitching Mexican “escamoles†(ant eggs) as a Taco Bell snack: “New! Zesty Antcheros!â€
2. Seven Movie Deaths That Would be Awesome to Have on Your Tombstone. The category idea alone is hilarious, and this piece not only includes the YouTube clips of the death scenes in question, but has (presumably) Photoshopped versions of the actual tombstones. So, for instance, for the death of Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Deep Blue Sea, the epitaph reads, “Bitten in half by a supershark. While indoors.â€
1. The World’s Most Ridiculous Sports Names. The piece doesn't just single out lame names, but makes categories for the different types of lameness. The Atlanta Thrashers get a shout-out in the category for teams named after “non-threatening animalsâ€: “We can easily picture some team executive hearing 'Thrashers’ and, picturing fierce teeth and razor-sharp claws that thrash things, saying, ‘Yes! Go with it!’ That guy was probably fired the first time somebody bothered to crack open an encyclopedia.†I think the piece takes the prize, though, for coming up with the following image to represent the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters:
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