The Cinema - A Ratings System You Can Get Your Teeth Into

I am a founding member of a club called Cinema, Angling and Culinary Appreciation, or CACA.

The other members are my attorney, Thos.; Kurt from Oregon; Dr. Chuck; and my cousin Dan. Other emeritus members drift in and out.

We meet at my cabin in the Catskills, fish for trout all day, and in the evenings eat great bowls of gas-inducing stew from the slow cooker and watch the World's Worst Films.

After some argument we settled on a ratings system.

Kurt argued for the Tongue System - representing how far the tongue extends during vomiting. It was rejected for a) being unnecessarily disgusting and b) there's only so far a tongue can be extended anyway, and we didn't wish to get bogged down in measuring millimeters.

Various permutations of stars, bullets, outhouses were tried and found wanting, and then Kurt hit on the perfect image.

Readers, CACA presents the Coil System.

I am not going to attempt an exegesis of the Coil System here. It involves a player for the Buffalo Sabres hockey team and a long line for the port-o-potty at a picnic in Rochester, N.Y., and that's all I have to say.

One coil indicates a generally foul aesthetic but seriously lacking in one or more crucial components, be that nudity, blood, monsters, death in a highly unusual manner or some combination thereof; two and three coil films have the right elements but contain other flaws, such as plot or artistic ambition; a four-coiler is absolutely repulsive in every possible way.

And for those moments of nuance, we also have the half-coil:

SHAMELESS COMMERCIAL MATERIAL:

While watching CACA films I am always clad in proper attire, with the level of formality depending on the weather, my mood, and the relative dreadfulness of the cinematic entertainment on hand.

So let me take a moment here to plug men's shoes by Allen Edmonds: classic American styles, as worn by regular American men who tuck their shirts in and do not use the word "dude."

Made in the USA by regular American workers who rarely if ever use the word "dude," Allen Edmonds has the shoe for you. They even have some fashion-forward models that I personally would not wish to be seen wearing, even while dead in a ditch, but for you art-damaged types they might be appropriate.