Sometimes, when my co-authors (is that too fancy a title?) and I start writing one of those RADAR lists, we quickly discover we've written ourselves into a corner. You just never know. Occasionally, a list idea will seem very fertile and then, by item fifteen, you realize you've made a horrible mistake. To my recollection, only once did that result in RADAR completely scrapping our list, with us starting over fresh and scrambling to complete a new list before deadline. That failed list was "100 DVDs Still In Our Netflix Queue."

I have to take credit for this. I think it might have been my idea in the first place, and I was very confident we could come up with 100 great fake movie titles. Unfortunately, 100 great fake movie titles doesn't make for a particularly compelling list. There's no ballast, nothing to keep the list from drifting in several directions at once. For instance, it wasn't always easy to tell what genre each title belonged in, and that missing information made the jokes more puzzling than funny. And some of the jokes were just parodies of a format which, again, would have made no sense out of context. (Kind of like if you stumbled on a copy of The Onion having never read a newspaper in your life.) Also, when you come down to it, it really was just a list of 100 fake movie titles and, seriously, who cares?

However, looking back on the list I guess my work wasn't completely wasted. I am comforted in knowing it can be treated as a well I will occasionally return to when I am in need of a funny movie title.* I never saw the other writers' entries, though I wish I had, but here were a few from my list I really liked (organized by genre, because they have to be):

COMEDY
Let's Grab Some Tits!
The Black In-Laws
Snoop Dogg's House of Scrizzles (booooo!)
National Lampoon Presents Fingerin'

HORROR/SUSPENSE
White Blacula
Kill Me Once, Shame On You
The Axe Effect
Nude Creatures 2: The Fuckening
University of Slashachusetts (Amherst Campus)

ROMANTIC COMEDIES
Time for Something
Some Such Thing
Now That's More Like It!
I Object...to Love
You Have the Right to Remain Married

INDEPENDENT DRAMA
Whatevs.
Hannah Drinks a Latte
Even Shy People Eventually Do It

FOREIGN
Rape is No Big Deal
The Garden of Hitler
Café Au Lait: An Interracial Love Story

ACTION & ADVENTURE
Double Penetration, But Not That Kind
The Man Who Came Bullets
Dragonpuncher 3: The Battle for Karate Castle

FAMILY
Fribble McWillikers and the Huge-Mazing, Splend-tastic New-riffic McDonald's Breakfast Sandwich
Battery-Operated Toy Truck: The Motion Picture
Pudding Camp!
The Dizzy Wizard Who is Also an Allegory for Christ
The Enchanted Cupboard Full of Things that Sound Like Robin Williams and Rosie O'Donnell

SPECIAL INTEREST
Hip-Hop Hospital II: O.G.-GYN
SNL: The Terry Sweeney Years
Best of Fear Factor: The All-Rhino Dick Edition
Learn to Rap Like a Local Weatherman
The Garbage People of Ngabu
The Unbelievable Story of EMF
Oh, Great: Penguins Again

*I have a similar file on my computer dedicated solely to "character names." Sometimes these are real names I've heard, sometimes they're just weird combinations of words that sound like they could be a person's name. For instance, I was working on a freelance job recently and the subject of cruise ships came up. Someone in the meeting was talking about the specifics of cruise ship construction, and mentioned all of the various "hull coatings." That sounded like the perfect name for a tough, no-nonsense badlands sheriff. Someone who might be played by Tommy Lee Jones or Beau Bridges. I actually ended up using it recently in something I'd been working on for a while, replacing a character's original name--Sheriff Glenn Treetrap--with the even heftier Sheriff Hull Coatings. I wonder if many writers keep files like this, just filled with made-up names of people, books, films, or towns. I do hope you've enjoyed this week's episode of my long-running web text series, MY INCREDIBLE ARTISTIC PROCESS.