guilty pleasures

I just read this week's Entertainment Weekly and they had a list of 16 Guilty Pleasures. I agreed with some of them. Well, only 4 of them. Those were Kevin Costner (but only Field of Dreams!Costner, not Waterworld!Costner), Bronson Pinchot (c'mon, who doesn't love Balki Bartokomous), 1980s James Spader (specifically in Pretty in Pink), and Flowers in the Attic, but really V.C. Andrews as a whole is a guilty pleasure of mine. I used to read all those books in junior high. They're so bad.

If it were my list I would have added a few others. These may just be my guilty pleasures, though.

Grease. I love that movie. It's so cheesy, but I'll watch it whenever it's on TV. And I own it. I think part of the reason I love it so much is because when I was little I'd watch it with my mom and sister. My mom had the soundtrack (on a record, of all things) and we'd play it while we were cleaning or something and sing along. Even more pathetic? Grease 2. Now, Grease may be cheesy, but the sequel is just blindingly awful. Yet I watch it when it's on TV. Every. Single. Time.

People magazine. It's like one step up from National Enquirer. I feel kind of guilty when I look at the pictures of startled celebs, but the guilt never lasts long because there's always another equally juicy picture on the next page.

Lifetime movies. Talk about a guilty pleasure. It doesn't get much better than My Husband is Gay and my Daughter is on Drugs plus my Boss Raped Me and also I'm Being Stalked by a Psychotic Killer and I'm Having an Affair with the 15-year-old Boy Next Door: the Judy McMann Story.

And Chick Lit is in the same boat. You know the books. Heroine is looking for love, trying to lose weight, quitting a bad job and getting a new, exciting one, moving from London to New York City, moving from New York City to London, or all of the above. Then she chases after a man and ends up with the one she thought was all wrong for her. Those books are addicting, even if they are pretty much all the same. I'm not including Bridget Jones's Diary in this category, although it has a lot of the same elements. Mostly because it came first (well, it was the first one I read) and it is a classic. Ok, it's not a classic, but it is based on a classic (Pride and Prejudice) AND it was made into a movie.

That new Ashlee Simpson song. I want to hate it. I tried to hate it. I changed the station whenever it came on, but it still got to me. Little Miss Ashlee Double E, No Y won me over. Now if the song comes on I just turn up the volume and make sure all the windows are up.

I don't know if this counts, but sometimes when I can't sleep I'll turn on Fox News, and, it never fails, I always end up getting riled up (ha, what a great phrase) because of something Bill O'Reilly or some other jackass says and I want to fight with someone but I can't because it's 3 AM and all the sane people are sleeping. I think I watch it to make sure I can still get angry about things I think are wrong, because that means I still care.

Finally, it's a guarantee that I'll watch pretty much any late-night dating show. Elimidate, Blind Date, The Fifth Wheel, they're all fascinating. I can't imagine why anyone goes on those shows. Those are total D-level reality shows. If you're misguided enough to think that being on a reality show is going to make you famous, at least go on something like Survivor that's on when most people are awake.