Completely independent of one another (this is not sarcasm, it was actually just an unfortunate coincidence), both the bulldogs and the roughriders will be performing the same play.

Roosevelt High School’s drama program is considered one of the most extensive in the nation, producing a string of high-production-value performances each year. Indeed their Drama Club’s own non-profit corporation is known as Associated Friends of Roosevelt Drama (AFORD).

Roosevelt turns out yearly blockbusters in part because they can AFORD to do so. They can AFORD to hire private tap-dance tutors, and they can AFORD to spend tens of thousands of dollars on sets. But when you peel away the five figure budgets, the drama clubs of Garfield and Roosevelt are both just groups of talented kids working hard and making great theater.

Curtains is a loving parody of the musical who-dunnit,  set in Boston on opening night of the less-than-stellar musical Robbin’ Hood of the Old West. The star of the show, the spectacularly untalented Jessica Cranshaw, is murdered, and one detective must solve the crime and help save the show.

Garfield’s production stars Nat Bennett as Frank Cioffi, the detective who also happens to be a huge fan of the theater, and Molly Sharpe as Niki, the understudy and love interest.

Also featured are performances by Audrey Musselman-Brown, Aly Jean Lykken, Jake Alhadeff, James Squires, and Francis Lin.

Garfield’s performance of Curtains is supported by an incredible level of student involvement offstage. Almost all crew work is done by the students: costume designer Megan Turner is in charge of threads, choreography is being largely handled by Savanna Milton and Jasmine Ramgotra, and lighting and sound are directed by Peyton Smith.

Already, the Garfield production of Curtains has developed a close-knit community, and musical veterans have joined with drama newcomers to form passion-filled bonds of friendship.

The awkward tension between the Garfield and Roosevelt programs has expressed itself in subtly ways; the Facebook walls of both productions contain light jabs at each other. Yet the pokes are mostly in jest. Many Garfield and Roosevelt drama students are openly excited to see the other school’s production.

Perhaps this unexpected competition has turned out better for both schools’ drama programs: interest has certainly peaked.

“Musical actors are sexy!” says Garfield sophomore Anna Jacobson.

It’s not an original joke. It’s not a funny joke. It’s not even a tolerable joke. But is it true?

Most people want access to their information in bite-sized fragments. They don’t have time in their lives to catch up on both sides of every major world problem; people want to sit down, hear someone simplify the issues, then forget about it five minutes later.

What was supposed to be a tool to educate and empower has become one to make the populace fear Al Qaeda and learn about breaking developments in Tiger Wood’s marriage.

So, where did the “idiot box” go wrong?

In 1980, media mogul Ted Turner founded Cable News Network (CNN). CNN was the first of its kind; the first network to provide 24-hour coverage of world events.

Other 24-hour cable news stations such as FOX NEWS and MSNBC followed suit. A redefined news cycle revolutionized the way we get our information.

Before CNN, all news programs aired around the same time slot each day: every evening, after suppertime. Competition between programs was fierce, yes, but it was a competition of quality. News shows that got a reputation for reporting accurately became the market leaders.

With the advent of 24-hour news, however, quality was no longer the determining factor. People now receive news from countless sources: it has become the groups that report most quickly, not most accurately, that succeed.  This new philosophy of news has created a “shoot first, ask questions later” mentality that is dangerous to journalism.

Another danger that the “idiot box” poses to our society is best exemplified by the downfall of the Discovery Channel. Discovery was once a fun, informative learning-based station that educated viewers about dinosaurs, pharaohs, and space.

No longer. Although Discovery occasionally throws a bone to the science enthusiasts in the form of a Mythbusters segment, or to the marijuana enthusiasts in the form of Shark Week, the channel is otherwise filled with boring, uninformative drivel in showings of “Deadliest Catch,” “American Chopper,” and freaking “Ghost Lab.”

Yes, Ghost Lab. Ghost Lab. Ghost Lab. Maybe if I repeat it enough times, it will sink in that these are two words that do not go together. Discovery has gone from making science programs about pharaohs to making “science” programs about paranormal entities that, by definition, are not a facet of science.

One horrific example of this effect can be seen on the front page of the Discovery. Channel’s website. When I navigated to www.discovery.com, I was greeted with a giant ad announcing the upcoming show “19 Kids and Counting.”

The same thing that happened to Discovery happened to MTV. Although MTV began with 24-hour music, it eventually degenerated into teen life shows that have nothing to do with art.

The obvious motivation is money. Television networks are expensive to maintain, and informative, interesting shows don’t always boost ratings. Because nobody wants to watch shows that aren’t enticing, networks turn to less educational and more entertaining programming.

This sensationalism in modern media is unhealthy for America. If we, as a country, are to shed the perception the outside world holds of us as uninformed, we must inform ourselves. As the next generation of American society, we youth must create a smarter version of the idiot box.

We can start by getting rid of Ghost Lab.

This might make for good popcorn fare, but it’s been done before. Kick-Ass brings us a new superhero story in which the hero loses his mother not to a crime syndicate but to a brain aneurism, the villain is your run– of– the– mill mafioso, and the only clear victor is Youtube’s visitor count. Kick-Ass is both great fun and a well-done deconstruction of the modern superhero.

Whereas most comic movies inhabit a separate universe where superheroes are unheard of, Kick Ass takes place in our world. Typical high school loser Dave Lizewski  (Aaron Johnson) spends his time reading Ultimate Spiderman and making donations to the spank bank in the name of his third period Language Arts teacher. His obsession for comic books and his lack of any interesting goings-on in his life lead him to don a green wetsuit and fight crime as the superhero Kick-Ass.

Dave goes onto the street a total karate novice. A video of him fighting muggers winds up on the internet, and Kick-Ass becomes an international sensation.Instead of patrolling the streets, Kick-Ass takes crime-fighting requests on Myspace.

One such plea leads him to the apartment of a drug dealer where we are introduced to father-daughter crime fighting duo Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and 11-year-old Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz). The pair are everything Kick-Ass isn’t: smart, athletic and willing to murder people.

Their actions eventually come to the attention of the local Mafia boss, and the three of them team up to kick some ass.

Yes, the plot is familiar, but that’s exactly how Kick-Ass wants it. The film is an exploration of how the story would play out were this real life.  All the clichés are present, but have a twist to them that is often hilarious.

One hero of the film, Hit Girl, has rustled up a lot of controversy among blowhard movie critics. The 11 year old girl’s introductory scene shows her straight up murdering an apartment full of drug dealers. Nothing is held back as Hit Girl stabs, shoots, and slices her way through full-grown adults.

Do not let the trailer fool you; this is not Spy Kids 4. It is brutal, horrific violence, and it is genius.

From Catwoman to Batgirl, female superheroes have always been associated with sexuality. By putting an 11 year old in such a role, Kick-Ass creates a discordant character that does more to make the viewers think about the violence going on than any scene of angstful remorse could.

But once you reconcile the fact that it is a child doing the killing, Kick-Ass’ action is unrealistic, unbelievable, and freaking awesome. Three fight scenes have stuck in my mind as some of the absolute coolest I have seen. Without giving anything major away, the fights include brilliant use of a surveillance camera, a strobe light, a bazooka, and a rope.

Special mention must be given to Nicolas Cage’s performance in the film. As Damon Macready, the alter ego of Big Daddy, Nic Cage portrays the twisted father who won’t let his daughter be a kid. Instead of playing catch, Damon spends his time with Hit Girl shooting her in the bulletproof vest so she knows how it feels.

Although this goes without saying in almost all adaptations, the comic that Kick-Ass is based on is a much better rendition of the themes that are on display. What is odd about this case is that there is no time factor for most differences; the eight issue comic book takes less time to read than the movie does to watch.

Instead of focusing on the psychological implications of Hit Girl, director Matthew Vaughn inserts a strange twist to the romantic subplot that is not really necessary. Fortunately, the faults of the film are relatively minor, enough to give Kick-Ass a recommendation. But read the comic too, it’s really good.

At 9:02 AM, the man is four blocks away from the Murrah building. At 9:02 AM, a fuse ignites the 4800 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer contained within the truck; the resulting explosion rips through the building, causing 168 deaths and over 700 injuries.

The government’s theories on who committed this act were the usual suspects: Muslim terrorists or drug cartels looking to get revenge on the DEA headquarters located inside the building. As it was discovered within 24 hours, the Oklahoma City Bombing had been commaitted as an act of domestic terrorism by a white Gulf War veteran. Timothy McVeigh claimed to be acting out of anti-government views and a sense of indignation for the way the government handled conflicts with similar rebels in Waco and Ruby Ridge.

The event happened fifteen years ago, too early for most Garfield students to remember. McVeigh was executed for his crimes in 2001, but his voice lives on in the audio interview tapes he recorded while awaiting his death, interview tapes that were recently released by MSNBC on the program “The McVeigh Tapes: Confessions of an American Terrorist.”

 “Oklahoma City [was] a counter attack,” McVeigh claims in the tapes, “I was only fighting by the rules of engagement that were introduced by the aggressor.”
The two hour special is chilling in almost every way.

Computer enhanced images place McVeigh’s face on the heads of reenactment actors, inserting the man into all the steps of the planning process for which real photos do not exist.

McVeigh’s coldly calculating voice punctuates analysis by psychologists and journalists, as so many people attempt to understand what exactly could lead a man to do such a thing.

15 years later, Timothy McVeigh’s anti-government sentiments are relevant once again, as grassroots movements spring up, some of which aim not to reform the government, but to overthrow it. “The McVeigh Tapes” show us that although danger from foreign aggressors will always exist, danger from within remains clear and present.

The 90s and early ’00s brought a slew of new sitcoms to the fray, and though not all of them were bad, all of them were certainly formulaic. “Will and Grace,” “Dharma & Greg,” and “Frasier” were done in an almost indistinguishable style. All went for the cheapest laughs, were shot with three cameras at a time, and used the dreaded laugh track.

Then, 2003 brought us “Two and a Half Men,” the sitcom that goes past “so bad it’s good” and hits bad again. Seriously, the show used so many sitcom clichés it almost works better as a parody than as an actual sitcom. You can see the jokes coming from space, the characters are bland, and the premise is just safe and too familiar. In short, it’s terrible. In long, it’s terrrrrrrrrrrrrrible.

What saved America from its slippery slope back into “Full House?” A little show called “Arrested Development.” You’ve probably heard raving about “Arrested Development” in every issue of the Messenger since the show premiered, but it needs to be said: “Arrested Development” brought wit back to television. The show builds in upon itself with each episode in such a fantastic way that it gets better with each repeat viewing.

“Arrested Development” revolutionized the situation comedy. The style created by Arrested Development has come to categorize the modern sitcom: single camera (as opposed to soundstage with three cameras) a wide cast of characters, and brilliant writing.

One show that exemplifies the virtues of the single camera format (and indeed one of the smartest shows on right now) is Tina Fey’s brainchild (she writes, produces and stars in it) “30 Rock.” The show is sort of a reimagining of the nuclear family. Tina Fey as a writer for a sketch comedy show and Alec Baldwin as the network executive act as mother and father to dysfunctional writers and actors. The show features consistent, absurd humor as well as some hilarious performances.

All of these evolutions have brought us to ABC’s new show “Modern Family.” In many ways, “Modern Family” is the type of show I really should hate. Following three related families in the suburbs, the show’s concept of family love is almost sickeningly sweet. One of the families is exactly the type of nuclear sitcom families I thought we had grown out of: Doofus dad, slightly naggy mom, daughter who hates the parents, stupid son. It’s a tired idea with unoriginal character archetypes, and I couldn’t love it more.

Despite that some of it is familiar, “Modern Family” succeeds. The show acknowledges the roots it has in older family sitcoms like “All In The Family” and “I Love Lucy”, and uses them to its advantage. It flirts with cliché the whole time while still remaining fresh, excellent, and just plain hilarious.

The father of the larger family is one of the most well-written characters of any television show possibly in history. He is given line after brilliant line, and is the high point of every single episode. The rest of the cast performs well too. The gay couple with the adopted Asian baby is just plain awesome, and the eight-year-old hopeless romantic is hilarious.

With everything so good on these days, there’s no excuse not to be watching, unless you’re one of those people who doesn’t own a TV just so you can sound cultured, in which case God help you.

“Modern Warfare 2” is the war video game genre’s gold standard, with tense, heart-racing action, epic set pieces, and a competitive multiplayer mode that keeps gamers coming back for more. Once many people start playing “Modern Warface 2”, the game becomes an addiction. But now, hoping to dethrone Modern Warfare 2 comes a new title: “Battlefield: Bad Company 2.” Although the game has some flaws, it’s the best way to kick the Modern Warfare habit.

The first option you come to when booting up “Bad Company 2” is the single player campaign. Unfortunately, the single player disappoints. The levels in Bad Company 2 are linear and repetitive, with almost no variation. The one mission that is repeated ad nauseum essentially consists of fighting on the street to get to a rooftop, then taking down the helicopter that comes to murder you.

This is in contrast to the various things “Modern Warface 2” has its players do. In the course of the (albeit short) game players spend their time sneaking through a blizzard to take down an enemy base singlehandedly, becoming a double agent trying to stop a terrorist attack, and joining a last ditch effort to protect Washington D.C from invaders.

It’s not hard to tell that the meat of the game is in its multiplayer mode, and it is here that “Bad Company 2” becomes a must-buy. The amount of sheer freedom that the game gives you is immense. Every object in the environment is destructible, and there is no shortage of things to destroy them with. Rocket Launchers, C4, Anti-Tank Mines, Mortar Strikes, and Attack Helicopters all cause an appropriate amount of awesome destruction. This aspect really ruined other games for me; after you’ve played Bad Company 2, you will stop to wonder why your RPG doesn’t blow up the wall you shot it at.

Although it’s probably not what you’d buy a game for, the audio of “Bad Company 2” is fantastic. Whereas Modern Warfare’s weapons sound like they’re taken from a day playing paintball, Bad Company 2 gives its weapons a much more dramatic feel. Voices and gunfire echo slightly indoors, and nearby explosions dampen nearby sounds as your avatar’s eardrums recover.

The actual gameplay of Bad Company 2 is much more strategic than the twitch-based run-and-gun of Modern Warfare; whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is debatable.

If you don’t play the game with friends you’ll often wind up being matched with a bunch of people who don’t ever communicate with their team. There’s no straight up deathmatch in the game, meaning that all those people who are sitting up at the top of a mountain sniping instead of defending the objectives aren’t helping at all.

But with friends there to join the battle, Bad Company 2 delivers one of the most solid, truly awesome video game experiences out there. Various classes have different abilities to help the team, and when used to their full potential, they can be extremely rewarding to use.

Awesome moments occur in the game almost constantly, from running through enemy fire as a medic to revive a fallen comrade with your magical defibrillator, sniping an enemy out of a strafing helicopter, sneaking into the enemy’s base to blow up their vehicles, collapsing a building (with enemies still in it), or piloting an UAV unmanned drone and firing missiles into the crossfire.
The amount of stuff to do in the game overwhelms at times, and it skews the balance of play pretty heavily in favor of those who wield explody things. You could play the entire game almost without using your gun and end up just fine.

The word “epic” is thrown around a lot these days. It’s used to describe fails, wins, and other things that it shouldn’t be used for, but Bad Company 2 might just be an appropriate usage.

As long as you bring a friend or two along, Bad Company 2 will have you saying “wow,” “holy crap,” and other, more unsavory things the whole time.

On a trip to Mali, Albarn saw a landfill inhabited by a all kinds of wildlife, despite the area being littered with plastic.

“I’m trying to get across on this new record,” he says, “the idea that plastic-we see it as being against nature but it’s come out of nature. We didn’t create plastic, nature created plastic…It was a strange kind of optimism that I felt.”

And so came the concept for Plastic Beach, Gorillaz’ vision for the future. All of the songs work together to build the idea of a future where things turned out differently than we expected, but not necessarily in a bad way. . Throughout the exploration of this world, Gorillaz take the listener on a journey through the natural and artificial, with orchestral interludes, synthesizers, drums, and megaphones.

The album opens (after an orchestral intro, as all albums seem to start with) on “Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach,” a Snoop Dogg feature. Snoop performs excellently on the track, but the ethereal beat just doesn’t quite fit the rhythm of the song.

“Rhinestone Eyes,” the fourth track on the album, is the most similar to classic Gorillaz style. A grooving electronic beat meets Damon Albarn’s melancholy vocal style, with excellent synth breaks and vocal samples the whole way through.
One of the standout tracks on the album is “Superfast Jellyfish.” The song features De La Soul, and manages to get across a message without sacrificing catchiness. “Superfast Jellyfish” uses fast food as a metaphor for what our musical culture has become. The point Albarn makes is that “pretty packages of frosted delights” and “crunchy carrots” that taste “just like chicken” have come to replace the genuine article of “Momma’s homemade from scratch,” and the point is made in an incredibly captivating way.

Despite the presence of some very good songs, Plastic Beach lacks radio-friendly singles like “Feel Good Inc.” or heavy hitters of the same caliber as “Dirty Harry.” No single track is quite as enthralling as Gorillaz’ past work. Fortunately for Plastic Beach, the album is much better than the sum of its parts. Each individual track perfectly encapsulates the feeling of the album as a whole. The album is more pop oriented than its predecessors, but for a first step towards a new sound, Plastic Beach hits the mark.

The Ratings:
★ — Prune Nut
★★ — Fudgesicle
★★★ — Rocky Road
★★★★ — Phish Food

King Deli
★★★
For $2, the soft serve cone you get is enormous. There’s not really much you can do to mess up soft serve, and King Deli hasn’t found a way. The price is right, and it makes a great pairing with ridiculously cheap hot dogs.

Walgreen’s 
★★
Not a very impressive showing, although the store does have fudgesicles and its own brand of ice cream. The ice cream is decent and cheap, though not up to snuff for a discerning ice cream snob.

Cold Stone Creamery
★
The ice cream is pretty good, and it’s hard to say no to mashed up candy bars in a creamy treat. Unfortunately, the ice cream alone is not enough to redeem Cold Stone for their inhumane business practices. I am talking, of course, about how they make their employees sing. They make them sing songs for everything. They make them sing songs when you put bananas in your ice cream. They make them sing songs when you put peanut butter in your ice cream. They make them sing songs when you tip a dollar. A single dollar. Cold Stone Creamery has to be the second most depressing place a person can go to while carrying a stack of ones.

Ben & Jerry’s
★★
Ben & Jerry’s is great, but you can’t find their stores anymore in Seattle; the Broadway and U Village locations both closed. You can still get Ben & Jerry’s in pints at the store, and it’s still delicious, but the experience is significantly less awesome. Still, Stephen Colbert’s Americone Dream flavor is one of the best grocery store-bought pints out there.

Molly Moon’s
★★★
The original gourmet ice cream eatery, Molly Moons is leading the pack on Capitol Hill with lines that take half an hour to wait in, even in the dead of winter. Maybe it is the anticipation that is leading to the incredible hype around this place. Molly Moon’s is just okay. It’s not bad by any measure, but it certainly isn’t the second coming of Christ in ice cream form as some suggest. The freshly made waffle cones are very tasty, but the ice cream itself is a little bit bland. Molly Moon’s does have a selection of interesting offbeat flavors, but this is little more than a gimmick. However, their coffee is classically scrumptious, and their bacon maple ice cream is worth a try. Most of the fun in Molly Moon’s isn’t really in the ice cream, though; both locations attract a microcosm of their neighborhoods. People are encouraged to spend some time making their ice cream choice, making Molly Moon’s a leisurely experience with decent ice cream.

Bluebird Homemade Ice Cream and Tea Room
★★★★
Bluebird takes the concept Molly Moon’s started and runs with it effortlessly. The weird flavors are done well; they serve up a snickerdoodle ice cream that tastes like the real thing. Bluebird is next door to the Elysian brewpub, and utilizes this location to make a beer flavor that is actually quite delicious. If you have to choose between Bluebird and Molly Moon’s, choose Bluebird; everyone likes an underdog and the ice cream is just better.

Healeo
★★
This vegan health food store makes hemp ice cream. Instead of milk, Healeo uses a mixture of hemp seeds and water for their base. It sounds weird, and yes, it is weird, but it’s also pretty good. The hemp seeds give it a unique, almost nutty taste. It’s a good option for the lactose intolerant and the lactose unwilling.

Old School Frozen Custard 
★★★★
Old School makes frozen custard that is simple, creamy as hell, and yummy. They don’t have a wide variety of flavors (in fact they only have three at a time: chocolate, vanilla, and a rotating flavor of the day), but it’s so good that vanilla is all you need. The store is furnished with historic pictures of local high schools from the city: Roosevelt, Franklin, and even the now closed Broadway High School. The only one that’s missing? Garfield. Make sure to harass them about this when you stop by to pick up a cone of delicious custard.

Scoopy’s Ice Cream and Deli
★★★
I can’t exactly give this place a recommendation from firsthand experience, since it just opened, but from what I hear, it’s going to be a promising addition to Seattle’s ice cream selections. Plus they’re offering free cones to anyone who stops by next week; hit it up.

Youth Speaks Seattle was founded in 2002, based on a similar program in San Francisco. The driving idea behind YSS is that empowering people to express them­selves from behind the mic will lead them to speak up in their offstage lives.

The quality of a spoken word perfor­mance starts with the writing. YSS helps with this step through their writing cir­cles. Held every Thursday from 5–7 pm in the Central Library, the workshops are led by Youth Speaks interns and local mentors who are active in the scene.

One such mentor is Aaron Counts. Aaron got involved with Youth Speaks Se­attle through his experience with a simi­lar youth program. “Once these kids did creative writing, like stories, essays, and poetry, they started making these connec­tions,” he tells me.

Youth Speaks eventually expanded to the point where it was able to organize ways for youth to publically present their poetry. One of these ways is Youth Speaks Seattle’s yearly slam circuit.

Poetry slams are a performance format based on the idea that poetry is a thing to be judged by a jury of one’s peers. Slams are competitive, and poets are scored on a scale of one to ten (although scores rarely go below an 8.5). They focus on audience participation: feedback, whether positive or negative is encouraged.

There are four preliminary slams in the circuit, each with three finalists. The YSS circuit will end with a Grand Slam. In this, all previous finalists will gather to duke it out to see who will represent YSS at the national slam in Washington D.C.

Last Saturday was the last chance for anyone hoping to make it to Washington D.C, with the Wild Card preliminary slam. Here any poet who had previously partici­pated in a preliminary slam was eligible for one last chance at poetic redemption

Going into this, I was a slam n00b, but I immediately could tell that YSS has cre­ated a group of people that is extremely welcoming. People booed judges who gave low scores and shouted words of encour­agement whenever a poet forgot their words.

“Every single person who comes to these slams is amazed by how these young people know themselves and know the world,” Aaron Counts tells me.

The subjects the poets slammed on ranged from what it means to be a man to masturbation to an ode to chocolate. Youth Speaks Seattle operates on the prin­ciple that “the personal is political,” and this is readily apparent. The poets spoke eloquently and made connections that tied them in with their personal battles.

The following are excerpts from some of the performances that were given on Saturday.

“You laugh uncut diamonds into the atmosphere like stars. And your smile is nice, too.” –Claire Joko-Fujimoto

“I’ve had sexist female doctrines whiz by my head like billboards on a highway 19 years long … girls, remember; like your outfit, your date should be color coordi­nated.” –Lauren Head

“We listen to the harmonies of our blood flow and the human race is my fam­ily because they remind me of you.” –Ja­vonna Arriaga

For anyone who’s looking to check out Youth Speaks, the organization is holding their Grand Slam on March 19. It will in­clude the absolute best of the city’s best, including Garfield’s own Troy Osaki and Cally Shine. It is the perfect way to enter the world of slam poetry. (Moore Theater, 7PM. $10 Advance, $15 Day of Show).

It’s been said by many film snobs that great moviemaking starts when there’s a story to tell. But what happens if the story is less than original? That’s exactly what one production company is determined to find out. The Asylum churns out “mockbusters,” knock-off films clearly made to cash in on the wave of interest generated by the latest Michael Bay epics.

Since its creation in 1997, The Asylum has built a catalog of 300 such films, including oh-so-creatively titled movies “Snakes on a Train” (very loosely based on Samuel L. Jackson’s Snakes on a Plane”), “Transmorphers” (“Transformers”), and a reimagining of “Cloverfield” entitled simply “Monster.”

The ideas on display range from decent (“Transmorphers”: “A race of alien robots has conquered the Earth and forced humanity underground”) to downright bat-guano crazy (“Sherlock Holmes”: “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective faces the ultimate challenge when enormous monsters attack London”). The movies are cast with unknown actors and shot in less than two weeks.

On paper this may sound like a recipe for disaster and bankruptcy, but The Asylum manages to do pretty well for itself, bringing in a reported five million dollars in revenue per year. In addition to a distribution deal with Blockbuster, the company showcases its new films on the cable network SyFy (formerly SciFi, name changed to bring science fiction to a hipper demographic). How did such a terrible idea result in such bizarre success?

One thing that must be considered is the accidental rental potential. People hear about the craze for that new “Pirates of The Caribbean” movie, see “Pirates of Treasure Island” on the new releases shelf, and rent it . It’s no small accident that The Asylum’s cover art is of relatively high quality; indeed one of the company’s owners says that they have “always been in the pretty-box business.”

Don’t let the boxes fool you, though; the movies are utter crap. But the Asylum knows exactly what they are doing, and so do most people who rent these schlockbusters on purpose. There’s something to be said for the pure geeky joy of watching a terrible movie and looking at all the elements of it that go horribly wrong. This so-bad-it’s-good factor is what led to the cult success of movies like “Troll 2” and “Plan 9 From Outer Space.” None of these movies are good by any measure, but the awkward pauses and bottom barrel special effects are kind of awesome. So next time you’re perusing the video store racks for a late night movie, pick up one of The Asylum’s films. They’ll make you laugh, cry, and want to punch someone in the face.