A Whole Lotta Cracked(.com)

A few Weekly Wrap-ups ago I added a new feature: “This Week’s Cracked”. As I kid I not only liked the little Mad Magazine knock-off (I kid), but I preferred it to Mad. The parody comics I found funnier, the janitor didn’t scare me as much as Alfred E. Newman, and what passed for articles in both magazines were only bonuses, and not the reason I wanted the magazine.

Today the magazine, the parodies, and Sylvester P. Smythe are gone. The articles continue, only not in comic form but in the form of Top # lists. We may not always agree philosophically, and I could do without the cursing, but some of the lists are rather informative, such as what science and medical practices work in Hollywood (and occasionally in the comics) but not in real life. (It’s how Michael Moore and Dan Brown have kept their careers.) There are others that aren’t really in keeping with the BW Media Spotlight’s theme that are also interesting.

I blame Chris Sims for getting me hooked on this site by linking to a few articles he wrote. You see, on the sides and at the ends of the article are links to related articles that keep you trapped longer than TV Tropes. In the short time I’ve been doing this feature, I picked up over 45 articles I could link to and that’s not even a quarter of what they have. I’ll never catch up with them all and they keep writing more. So to give me some extra time to work on that “test comic” and to clean out my folder a bit, here are 6 articles chosen at random during my travels (all from one day’s searching) that might be worth a read.

• 5 Things Hollywood Thinks Computers Can Do: Oh sure, nobody now believes War Games was possible, but they think it could be now. One thing they didn’t mention are all the fancy interfaces every law enforcement group in Hollywood seems to have. Nobody would bother programming that much flashy stuff into an operating system. Even I know you’d have to overclock the memory (or whatever) beyond what’s capable.
• The Insane True Stories Behind 6 Cursed Movies: Since I’m considered a comics blog by people who link to me, I assume most of you are aware of the infamous “Superman curse”. Well, there are 5 others, mostly involving supernatural thrillers, constantly brought up by people who never heard of coincidence. Or life.
• 7 Classics Star Wars Characters Who Totally Dropped The Ball: Personally, I would have put Jabba higher on the list (unmentioned: Jabba didn’t get the money Han owed him in the first place), but that’s just me.
• 7 Movies Based on a True Story (That Are Complete BS): Sure, we expect a few minor changes for the sake of a good movie, but #1 involves a murder being let off and being treated as a hero by the filmmakers.
• The Five Most Needlessly Complex Terror Plots In Film History: Any more complex, and they could challenge Cobra Commander and Serpentor. WARNING: SOME RATHER SICK IMAGERY ABOUT MOUNT RUSHMORE IN THE #4 SPOT
• The 6 Best 2010 Apocalypse Theories (That Are Total BS): I find it interesting that people who doubt the Book of Revelation will grab on to these prophecies that not only come with a date stamp, but make even less sense.

You’ll be seeing plenty more in the “Weekly Wrap-Up”. Just keep an eye out for “This Week’s Cracked.