Dan Harkless' Likes and Dislikes

Prior to 2020, I kept each favorites list limited to 10 items, and ranked them all most-favorite-first (or least-, for that section), but a top ten is far too limiting in some categories, and numerical rankings are just too time-consuming to keep up-to-date and always true to my current tastes.

Therefore, I'm now not limiting the list lengths, and except where specified otherwise (with numeric headings or in parentheticals), each list is simply alpha-sorted (by first name/word). Also, lists with only one item implicitly specify my #1s in those categories.

Favorites

Actors, Comedy Writer-Performers: Adam Carolla, Charles Rocket, Dana Carvey, Dane Cook, Don Knotts, Eddie Murphy, Eugene Mirman, Fred Armisen, Harold Lloyd, Heather Anne Campbell, Jason Sudeikis, Jemaine Clement, Jenny Slate, Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Carrey, John Cleese, Kate McKinnon, Keegan-Michael Key, Kristen Schaal, Lucille Ball, Margaret Cho, Maria Bamford, Maya Rudolph, Michael Richards, Mike Birbiglia, MST3K alumni: Beez McKeever, Bill Corbett, Bridget Jones Nelson, Frank Conniff, Joel Hodgson, Kevin Murphy, Mary Jo Pehl, Michael J. Nelson, Paul Chaplin, Trace Beaulieu; Natasha Lyonne, Nikki Glaser, Rebel Wilson, Sam Richardson, Sarah Silverman, Steve Martin, Taika Waititi, The Marx Brothers, The Three Stooges, Tom Green Whitney Cummings, Wanda Sykes

Actors, General: Billy Bob Thornton, Brad Dourif, Bruce Campbell, Cillian Murphy, Daniel Radcliffe, Elijah Wood, Jackie Chan, Jason Bateman, Jeff Goldblum, Johnny Depp, Owen Wilson, Patrick Stewart, Peter MacNicol, Richard Jenkins, Sam Neill, Tom Baker, Vince Vaughn, William Shatner

Actors, Voice: Billy West, Dan Castellaneta, Harry Shearer, John Kricfalusi, Mike Judge, Paul Frees, Rosearik Rikki Simons

Actresses, General: Carol Kane, Cate Blanchett, Chloë Grace Moretz, Christina Ricci, Cybill Shepherd, Helena Bonham Carter, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jodie Foster, Margot Robbie, Martha Plimpton, Mary-Louise Parker, Salma Hayek, Winona Ryder

Actress, Japan: Takako Tokiwa

Ad Campaigns: Apple: the "Hello, I'm a Mac." / "And I'm a PC." campaign Apple: the late 90s / early 2000s ads for the iMac, iBook, etc. narrated by Jeff Goldblum Burger King: the 2002 hidden-camera commercials for the "99-Cent BK Value Menu" where they would put a drive-thru menu board in some odd public location then have Adam Carolla talk on the intercom and heckle the people who came up to it California Department of Health Care Services Anti-Tobacco Media Campaign: especially the classic "'Mind if I smoke?' 'Care if I die?'" poster / billboard Gap: no, not the old "Fallll intooo the Gap!" , but rather the 1998 (?) ad that premiered the so-called "Matrix" Bullet Time effect, featuring khaki-clad twenty-somethings swing-dancing to Louis Prima's "Jump, Jive An' Wail" suddenly being frozen mid-jump as the camera panned around them Honda Element: the "road trip" ad (early 2000s) where they "got a little lost along the way" has some of the only truly realistic acting I've ever seen in a commercial — the lines "Once again, you're pointing here; he's pointing over there." and "247...!! Thank you!" always crack me up PowerBars: the old radio commercials where Tom Green would make a real-life crank-call to some business and ask if he could do something outrageous like rent a U-Haul trailer to tow behind his bicyle, saying it'll be okay because he's going to eat a Power Bar first truth: the anti-Tobacco-Industry commercials (e.g. "Shards O' Glass Freeze Pops")

Animals, extinct, invertebrates: Anomalocaris, Hallucigenia sparsa

Animals, extinct, mammals: Thylacine

Animals, non-extinct, wild, amphibians: Chinese giant salamander, Poison dart frog, Purple frog (AKA Pignose frog)

Animals, non-extinct, wild, birds: Corvidae (favorites in this family include the Common raven and the New Caledonian crow) Gruiformes (favorites in this order include the American coot, Crane, and some birds that may be reclassified under different orders after further genetic study, like the Sunbittern) Hummingbird Lyrebird New World vulture (favorites in this family include the Black vulture, Condor, and Turkey vulture) Palaeognathae (favorites in this infraclass are the Cassowary, Emu, Kiwi, and Rhea) Pelecaniformes (favorites in this order include the Heron, Ibis, and Spoonbill) Otidimorphae (favorites in this clade include the Bustard and Chestnut-breasted malkoha) Suliformes (favorites in this order are the Cormorant and Snakebird)

Animals, non-extinct, wild, fish, bony: Freshwater elephantfish, Garden eel, Glass catfish, Leafy seadragon, Mola mola, Moray eel, Porcupinefish

Animals, non-extinct, wild, fish, cartilaginous: Goblin shark, Hammerhead shark, Manta ray, Nurse shark, Sawfish, Whale shark

Animals, non-extinct, wild, invertebrates: Dragonflies and Damselflies (order Odonata) Gastropods (class Gastropoda: snails, slugs, nudibranchs, etc.) Japanese spider crab Jumping spider (family Salticidae, especially the peacock spiders) Mantis (wow, over 2,400 species in order Mantodea — I didn't even use to realize there was more than one) Mantis shrimp Moon jelly Octopus Velvet worms

Animals, non-extinct, wild, mammals, aerial & arboreal: Binturong Bonobo Flying fox (bat) Lemur (favorites include the Aye-aye, Ring-tailed lemur, Sifaka, etc.) Orangutan Philippine tarsier Tamarin (especially the Cotton-top tamarin and Emperor tamarin) Three-toed sloth

Animals, non-extinct, wild, mammals, aquatic: Beluga whale (AKA Sea canary), Dolphin (favorite is the Amazon river dolphin), Platypus

Animals, non-extinct, wild, mammals, terrestrial: Cheetah, Echidna, Elephant, Elephant shrew, Giant anteater, Hyrax ('course, some species are arboreal rather than terrestrial), Okapi, Pangolin, Saiga, Tapir

Animals, non-extinct, wild, reptiles: Basilisk Chameleon Frill-necked lizard Gecko Komodo dragon Narrow-snouted Crocodilians (like the American crocodile, Freshwater crocodile (or "Freshie"), Gharial, Orinoco crocodile, Slender-snouted crocodile, and Smooth-fronted caiman) Western fence lizard (not particularly remarkable — just cute, and the easiest lizards to see around my area)

Artists, Illustrators: M.C. Escher (more to come)

Artists, Painters: those of the latter half of the 1800s and early 1900s employing a style of romantic photorealism, including John Collier, John William Waterhouse; Jules Joseph Lefebvre, William-Adolphe Bouguereau; several members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; etc.

Author: Roger Zelazny

Cheeses: extra-sharp cheddar, goat cheese, gorgonzola, Parmesan, Swiss

Colors: black (my #1), clear, fluorescents, grey, (matte) silver, white

Composers, Film: Alan Silvestri, Brad Fiedel, Danny Elfman, Howard Shore, James Horner, Jerry Goldsmith, John Barry, John Williams, Trevor Jones, Wendy Carlos (apparently I prefer composers with names 11 or so letters long)

Decades (for entertainment, fashion, and design): 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, early 1960s, 1980s

Directors, Animation: Dan Fraga, Don Bluth, John Kricfalusi, Mike Judge, Tex Avery

Directors, Anime: Hayao Miyazaki, Hideaki Anno, Katsuhiro Ōtomo

Directors, Live Action: Billy Bob Thornton, David Lynch, Edgar Wright, Ethan and Joel Coen, Herk Harvey, John Carpenter, Jordan Peele, Peter Jackson, Ron Howard, S. Craig Zahler, Sam Raimi, Spike Jonze, Steven Spielberg, Taika Waititi, Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton

Disney Character: Ludwig Von Drake

Dog Breed: dachshund

Fabric: cotton

Flowers: bird of paradise (my #1), honeysuckle (though I've recently learned that the Japanese honeysuckle, despite being widely planted in the U.S. as an ornamental, is actually a highly aggressive and resistant invasive species that overwhelms and destroys native plants en masse; oops)

Food, General: pasta

Food, Pizza, Frozen: Red Baron Classic Crust Four Cheese Pizza

Food, Vegetables: red cabbage

Food, Vegetables, Pickled, Brand: Mezzetta

Holiday: Halloween

Juices: 100% cranberry juice (e.g. from Lakewood Organic) almost any fruit juice that's not from concentrate, but especially: tangerine juice (e.g. Trader Joe's)

Mottos: "Carpe Diem", "Just Do It"

Movies, Animation: Finding Nemo, The Nightmare Before Christmas (my #2), The Secret Of NIMH (my #1)

Movies, Anime: Akira, Robot Carnival, Sen To Chihiro No Kamikakushi (AKA "Spirited Away"), Tonari No Totoro (AKA "My Neighbor Totoro")

Movies, Live Action: Aliens, Apollo 13, Bone Tomahawk, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (my #1), John Carpenter's The Thing, Joker, Jurassic Park, Napoleon Dynamite, Prometheus, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, The Dark Crystal, The Lord Of The Rings trilogy (favorite one is The Fellowship Of The Ring), The Return Of The Living Dead, Tron

Musical Artists: Bow Wow Wow, Depeche Mode, Front 242 (my #1), Kraftwerk, Love And Rockets, Nine Inch Nails, Oingo Boingo (my #2), Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Skinny Puppy, The Cure

Musical Artists, Local: Dead Man's Party

Musical Styles: Alternative Rock (mostly pre-Grunge), Classical, Electronica (including Electronic Dance, but not including the super-mainstream, diva-sings-a-love-ballad kind), Film Music, Industrial (my #1), New Wave, Punk, Ska, Swing, World

Musical Vocalist, Female: Siouxsie Sioux

Musical Vocalist, Male: Danny Elfman

National Cuisines: Indian, Italian, Japanese (my #1a, tied with Thai), Korean, Mexican, Thai (my #1b, tied with Japanese), Vietnamese

Nut: pistachio (botanically not a true nut, but "pistachio seed" just sounds weird)

Quote, By a Crank: "The academia created 1 day greenwich time is bastardly queer and dooms future youth and nature to a hell." –Gene Ray

Radio Stations, FM, Current: FM94/9 (KBZT), KCRW, KPCC, KUCI, KUSC

Radio Stations, FM, Past: Indie 103.1 (a KDLD/KDLE incarnation), MARS-FM (the best KDLD/KDLE incarnation), KMET, KROQ up through the mid '90s (my #1), KTWV during its original new age music era

Short Film Series: Our Gang / The Little Rascals, The Three Stooges

Sports: track & field, volleyball, watersports (e.g. SCUBA diving)

TV Networks, U.S.: Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, Food Network, HBO, PBS, Science Channel, SyFy (yes, most of SyFy[sic]'s programming sucks, especially their embarrassingly bad original movies, but I have to give them props for hosting MST3K after Comedy Central cancelled them, Destination Truth, Face Off, and a handful of others)

TV Series, Australia: The Crocodile Hunter

TV Series, Canada: Corner Gas, SCTV, The Kids in the Hall, The Tom Green Show (my #1), Trailer Park Boys (my #2), You Can't Do That On Television

TV/OAV Series, Japan, Anime: Ranma 1/2, Super Dimension Fortress Macross

TV Series, Japan, Live Action: Beautiful Life, Iron Chef, Long Love Letter: Hyōryu Kyōshitsu, Meguriai, Saigo No Koi, Trick, Tsuiseki (AKA The Chase — no link, as it surprisingly doesn't even have a Japanese Wikipedia page — a great Nippon Television news documentary show that aired in the '80s and '90s, and like other entries in this list, appeared with subtitles on local UHF channels' Japanese programming blocks in TV markets like L.A. / O.C., and in Hawaii, where the subtitling was done), Utsukushii Hito

TV Series, New Zealand: Under The Mountain

TV Series, U.K., Animation: Danger Mouse (1981; I haven't seen the reboot), The Ricky Gervais Show (my #1),

TV Series, U.K., Live Action: Doctor Who (my favorite Doctor being Tom Baker), Fawlty Towers, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Scrapheap Challenge, Spaced, Spitting Image, The Moaning of Life (and prior Karl Pilkington series), The Tomorrow People, Weird Creatures with Nick Baker (originally Nick Baker's Weird Creatures), Whose Line Is It Anyway?

TV Series, U.S., Animation: Beavis And Butt-Head, Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, Futurama, Invader ZIM (my #1), King Of The Hill, The Life & Times of Tim, The Ren & Stimpy Show, The Simpsons

TV Series, U.S., Anime: Robotech

TV Series, U.S., Live Action, Current: Expedition Unknown, Gold Rush, NOVA, Nature, Whose Line Is It Anyway?

TV Series, U.S., Live Action, Past: Face Off, Flight of the Conchords, Iron Chef America, Key & Peele, Max Headroom, Mystery Science Theater 3000 (my #1), MythBusters, Portlandia, Star Trek [The Original Series], Star Trek: The Next Generation, The X-Files, True Blood, Twin Peaks

TV Series: Favorite Episode: Mystery Science Theater 3000: Red Zone Cuba

TV Series: Favorite Episode: Star Trek [The Original Series]: The Tholian Web (wow, a 3rd-season episode, no less(!) — a personal thanks to all the TOS cancellation protest letter–writer archaeogeeks out there)

TV Series: Favorite Episode: Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Offspring

TV Series: Favorite Episode: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Trials and Tribble-ations

TV Series: Favorite Episode: Star Trek: Enterprise: Bound

TV Series: Favorite Episode: Star Trek: Voyager: Twisted

Weather: hot nights

Websites: Amazon, eBay, Google Verbatim Search, Internet Archive, RiffTrax, (English) Wikipedia, YouTube [also see my categorized Bookmarks page]

Least Favorites

Actors, Comedy Writer-Performers: Andrew Dice Clay, Carrot Top, Chris Kattan, Denis Leary

Actors, General: Jason Statham, Vin Diesel (although he does a good job as Groot)

Ad Campaigns: Allstate Insurance: The campaign (officially "Allstate's Stand", apparently) where Dennis Haysbert is basically cast as the Voice of God bellowing at his quaking flock as to which insurance company they must use to remain in good graces. The worst are the ones where "the Holy Insurance Spirit" suddenly possesses, like, a hot blonde chick or someone, and she nauseatingly starts making Allstate pronouncements in Haysbert's basso profondo. It's worth noting here that I love the ads for Cree LED bulbs featuring Lance Reddick (the creepy Matthew Abaddon on LOST), which are arguably in the same "Big Black Voice of Authority" genre, the difference being that in those, they let the facts do the selling (and I can confirm they're telling the truth, my research and subsequent purchases having led to me being a very satisfied Cree LED bulb user for years now), rather than depending on pushy preachers and social brainwashing. (Throwing in a little humor doesn't hurt either, and on that note I do have to give Allstate props for their parallel "Mayhem" campaign created by the Leo Burnett ad agency, which is the only truly clever twist on that "I'm a [product]" advertising meme that Apple and TBWA\Chiat\Day originated, and so many poorly aped.) Billy Mays commercials and infomercials: Where Mays brays horribly about OxiClean, The Ding King, etc. Update, 2011: I can't believe Mays is even aurally attacking me from beyond the grave with some of these still being played multiple years after his death (due to hypertensive heart disease, cocaine, and other drugs — there's a non-shocker of a cause of death). Update, 2016: I've recently discovered the wealth of Billy Mays YouTube Poops created by YTP artists such as cs188, and because they're so funny, I've softened a bit on my aversion to Mays. Carl's Jr.: "How to eat meat", "If it doesn't get all over the place, it doesn't belong in your face", "Don't bother me, I'm eating", etc. "Crass, in-your-face celebrations of lunkheadedness", to quote a great O.C. Weekly article on the matter. (I'd like to credit the author, but the article I remember the phrase from predates the paper's web archive.) Mazda: "Zoom-Zoom", especially the "I see dead people"-inspired piercing kid whisper. McDonalds: The current-as-of-2003 radio commercials where calculatedly cheery faux chamber music tries to convince us that McDonalds is a sublime and sophisticated Gift from God, not a lowest-common-denominator assembly line burger dispensary. Nationwide Insurance: The current-as-of-2013 campaign with their horrible "In the Nation..." mind-control phrase, and a score comprising repetitive, stabbing, hamfisted chords at full volume from a bad, tinny, and slightly out-of-tune piano. (Will the escalating war of insurance companies to out-manipulate and out-irritate with their ads ever cease?) It's not even really music — they're basically using the piano as a noisemaker to command attention — piano as vuvuzela. ("Don't, don't. It's an ugly, ugly sound." –Franklin Mott, True Blood.) Amazingly, several other entities in the last few years have utilized these painful stabbing piano chords in their ad campaigns, the most recent example as of this writing being the Ad Council's supremely irritating (if well-intentioned) "learn to video chat to cross the digital divide" ad currently in absolutely relentless rotation (at least one commercial break of almost every show I watch, and often every commercial break) as of early 2014. (BTW, guys, how about spending less of your budget on insanely ubiquitous airtime and more of it on making appealing and/or varied ads for your campaign?) Old Navy: All of their oh-so-irritating ads. Even in recent (as of 2016) ads where they feature some of my favorite comedians, such as Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, or Amy Schumer, they manage to make them lame and unfunny. It's (mildly) ironic that Gap Inc., purveyors of one of my most favorite commercials, also owns this chain. Red Bull: The hideously obnoxious and grossly unfunny "Red Bull gives you wings" animations and their radio commercial brethren. Sit 'n Sleep [sic — should be 'n']: Their piercingly horrible "YOU'RE KILLING ME LARRY!" radio commercials, the TV commercials where they try to gross you into buying a new mattress because your current one must be infested with dust mites, their illogical "We'll beat anyone's advertised price or your mattress is free!" claim, etc. Video Professor: With the whining old fart begging you to "Try my product...!" (especially the original ones where he was much whinier).

Car: Scion xB

Colors: beige, brown, gold, navy blue, offwhite

Decades (for entertainment, fashion, and design): mid through late 1960s, 1970s [although there was still some cool stuff going on during this era, e.g. in modern architecture, some psychedelic art and music, the beginnings of punk and new wave, and some classic sci-fi and horror films like Star Wars, Dawn of the Dead, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Eraserhead, and ALIEN]

Directors, Live Action: Baz Luhrmann, John Waters, Michael Bay, Roger Corman

Fashions: bell bottoms, guys intentionally wearing their pants slung super-low so as to expose the top of their boxer shorts, the currently (2002-2003) all-the-rage jeans with just selected rectangular areas of the legs bleached

Food Name: Buffalo Chicken Kickers (from Domino's Pizza; thankfully discontinued in 2011)

Juices: beet and carrot (tied for #1), orange juice from concentrate (and from-concentrate juices in general)

Musical Styles: Conjunto (Mexican accordion music), Disco, Gospel, Opera (only some of the German stuff is even remotely tolerable for me), post-early-'60s (or so) Country, Rap (though there are a few pockets of the style I enjoy), R&B

Nut: Brazil nut

Podcasters: Joe Rogan

Weather: smog (if you can count that as weather), snow and ice

Pet Peeves

General

• Answering machines: businesses (sometimes even large ones) that are too cheap to buy one to put in outgoing-only mode to read off their operating hours, instead just letting the phone ring forever when they're closed
• Answering machines: digital ones that cut off your incoming message after some ridiculously low limit, like 15 or 30 seconds, and don't give you any warning about this (or an opportunity to re-record your message to fit) prior to disconnecting you
• Babies and kids that won't stop crying/screaming in public places (especially movie theaters), and their parents that do nothing about this
• Dogs that bark continuously for no good reason, and their owners that do nothing about this
• Forks with bent tines
• Graffiti: tagging type (art-type graffiti is cool, if it's not abusively placed; for instance, I've seen some great graffiti galleries while exploring drainage tunnels)
• Inconsiderate people
• Littering
• Made in China syndrome: the throwing away by so many U.S. businesses of not just their manufacturing ability, but all of the accumulated experience of decades of quality improvement work that went into the development of their brand, in favor of becoming yet another clearing house for products designed and built by random manufacturers in China and selected by lowest bid and the perceived ability for most of the run to last through the warranty period without needing service, though no longer than that, where it'd cost any more to manufacture
• Manipulative people
• Microwaves: people who routinely remove their food from communal ones partway through a cooking cycle and leave without hitting the Stop/Clear/Canel button, leaving the next user to be annoyed as hitting the keypad does nothing until that button is pressed
• Newsprint that rubs off on your fingers — on business trips to Japan I was impressed at how the ink on their (awkwardly long and narrow) newspapers wouldn't rub off even if you intentionally ground your fingers into it
• Recent naming trends for companies and products: mixing a positive-sounding English word root with an agrammatical ending (e.g. "Celebrant", "Guidant", "Thrivent" (full name: "Thrivent Financial for Lutherans" — I kid you not), or "Beneful"), taking a positive-sounding English word and chopping off part of it (e.g. "Cysive" or "Itanium"), and of course the overuse of an initial lowercase "e" or "i" (e.g. "eMachines" or "iCal")
• Smoking, especially cigars and pipes
• Sticker residue (does it really cost that much more for companies to label their products with stickers that come off cleanly?)
• Storage units (whether drawer units, CD storage, DVD storage, food cans...) not designed to partially interlock with themselves when stacking
• Trash cans with hinged side openings that have springs that are so strong that it's impossible to get your trash in without either leaving it partially wedged in the lid, or else having the lid touch your hand when it springs back
• Trash cans with pedal-operated lids not engineered to be able to withstand the quite moderate stresses of regularly opening and closing (an amazingly high percentage of them)
• Wasting time (especially when forced to do so by other people, e.g. when stuck behind slow walkers or drivers)

Internet

• Animated GIFs and Flash ads (particularly those unbelievably asinine mortgage refinancing ads running rampant as of late 2006 with the loops of dancing goofballs in silhouette), especially Flash ones that don't allow you to stop the animation with the context menu (although thankfully Firefox now has extensions like Flash Control and Adblock Plus for keeping this annoyance at bay)
• Non-disableable fuzzy searches that don't give some kind of clear indication of which results match only with fuzziness
• Pop-up and pop-under ads
• Spam
• Web form messaging systems that fail to submit your message due to bugs or unnecessarily short session timeouts, and then when you hit Back or log back in, the system has lost everything you typed
• Web stores that tell you not to type any spaces or dashes in your credit card number, making it a lot harder to check that you typed it correctly — geez, guys, how bloody difficult would it be to write a routine to strip out the non-numeric characters??

Movies and TV

• Camera work that's intentionally amateurish, shakily framed to the point of being motion-sickness inducing, with lots and in-and-out zooms, to try to ram down your throat that what you're watching is gritty and real — as seen on TV shows like Homicide: Life on the Street and The Shield, or the laughably badly-shot battle sequence of G.I. Jane (Ridley Scott ought to know better)
• DVD Easter Eggs (there's nothing clever or fun about having to press up, down, left, and right from every menu selection to see if anything's hidden — if you've got cool special features, put 'em in the damn menus!)
• DVDs and Blu-rays with non-skippable studio logo animations, FBI warnings, etc.
• DVDs that disable the player's Audio button, making it a time-consuming pain to go re-watch with the main audio track something pointed out in a commentary track, since you have to navigate through all the menus before and afterward to switch the audio tracks around. Sometimes there's not even a Resume Play menu selection, just a Play (from beginning) selection, so you're forced to manually relocate where you were in the video after switching tracks. Same thing for the Subtitles button w.r.t. temporarily turning them on to make out an unintelligible phrase. (Blu-rays are often configured in this user-hostile way as well, but the ubiquitous Pop-Up Menu support on those makes it less of an issue.)
• Newscasters (at least in So. Cal.): the racial stereotyping — an older white male as the primary anchor, a Latino female as the secondary anchor, an Asian female as the field reporter, black males as weathermen and sportscasters...
• Newscasters (at least in So. Cal.): the ultra-aggressive (to the point of exaggeration) authentic pronunciation of La-TEE-no names while simultaneously murdering names and words from all other foreign languages
• Obviously fake CGI (which is still most of it, at least when it comes to CGI creatures and characters, even in the highest budget blockbuster films — so few productions live up to the standard of realism set by Jurassic Park way back in 1993)
• Obviously fake wire work (which accounts for a surprisingly high portion of it, even in movies whose effects are otherwise amazingly realistic)
• Pan & Scan movie prints (thankfully largely a thing of the past, finally, in this HD era, though it's not unusual for 2.35:1 movies shown on non-subscription TV channels to be in unletterboxed 16:9 with awful Pan & Scan)

Vehicles

• "Certified pre-owned" as a euphymism for "used" (coined or at least popularized by Toyota in the '90s, if I recall correctly). Even worse, the now pretty much universal practice of dropping the "pre-owned" and simply calling such cars (or other products, e.g. smartphones) "certified" — very Newspeak, that. In the 2000s, I also started to see some sellers use the acronym "CPO", without defining it.
• Deficient road signs
• "Factory Cash" (both the term and the concept)
• Headlights (generally aftermarket?) that are so blinding to other drivers that it's as if the drivers have their brights on at all times
• Novelty fake boat propellers on the backs of cars, whose chrome surfaces often shine directly in the eyes of the driver behind, acting like a sun-intensity strobe light as they spin
• People who modify or replace their mufflers to intentionally make their vehicles generate obscene, fight-or-flight-response-inducing, potentially hearing-damaging levels of noise pollution. Motorcyclists are the worst on this. And in California, at least, police are extremely ineffective at enforcing the noise pollution laws that are meant to control this.
• Spinning wheel covers (thankfully these imbecilic eyesores greatly declined in popularity over the course of the 2000 decade)

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Dan Harkless Page created: May 23, 2001 [Site Map]

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