Summer. Historically, when it comes to entertainment, it is a time for stupidity. Sure, the occasional quality project slips through, but the pop-culture powers that be usually assume that the hot weather and vacation time makes our brains more receptive to idiocy. We get movies whose only redeeming features are explosions and/or abdominal muscles, burned-off mediocre TV shows the networks decided not to air when people were paying attention, and summer anthems musically engineered to appeal to drunk people on inner tubes. While we will continue to exhaustively bring you news of the good, we would be shirking our duty if we ignored the rampant silly and stupid. So, for the duration of the season, we will be keeping a running ranking of the summer’s stupidest things, updating and re-ranking regularly as new buffoonery emerges. Come Labor Day, we will declare a winner, and we promise: It will be stupid. As a starting point, we’ve assembled a list of the current top ten stupid things that have already happened this summer, and we welcome your suggestions and nominees in the comments below. Remember, when it comes to being dumbed down, we’re all in this together.
1. The Vengaboys, the Dutch outfit responsible for the song that ruined 1998, “We Like to Party†a.k.a. “The Vengabus†song, are back with the not so subtly named “Rocket to Uranus,†which features Perez Hilton chiming in to remind us all, “Uranus is so pretty, it feels like home.†This one will be tough to beat.
4. The Showgirls 2 trailer. Again, elaboration unnecessary.
6. The A-Team answers a question we didn’t know we didn’t know the answer to: How many writers does it take to write a mediocre screenplay? Eleven.
8. Marmaduke.
1. The Vengaboys, the Dutch outfit responsible for the song that ruined 1998, “We Like to Party†a.k.a. “The Vengabus†song, are back with the not so subtly named “Rocket to Uranus,†which features Perez Hilton chiming in to remind us all, “Uranus is so pretty, it feels like home.†This one will be tough to beat.
6. The A-Team answers a question we didn’t know we didn’t know the answer to: How many writers does it take to write a mediocre screenplay? Eleven.
9. In order to win back hearts and minds, Tom Cruise dresses up as a grotesque, foul-mouthed movie producer who was new and only slightly hip back in 2008, and then threatens to make a movie about said character. We really hope this is not the summer of Les Grossman, because that would be stupid.
7. Had Coolio just gotten a Juggalo tattoo, it would have been enough. (This, by the way, is the missing verse of “Dayenu.â€) Coolio getting a misspelled “Jugalo†tattoo, however, puts him ahead of Marmaduke on this list.
3. Ke$ha’s “Your Love Is My Drug†may very well be a song of summer, but not thanks to the rapped lyric, “My steez is gonna be affected if I keep it up like a lovesick crackhead.â€
10. Spike TV brings us all the culturally enriching television program about dwarf wrestlers Half-Pint Brawlers.
Stay tuned for updates as new summer stupidity emerges!