By DANNY GALLAGHER

This week, "Super Size Me" premiers on DVD, a great documentary from first time director Morgan Spurlock who lived on McDonald's food for a month to explore the causes and effects of America's unhealthy infatuation with junk food and the dealers who push them.

It's great for a number of reasons. First of all, it's very funny, which will always be a big plus with me because making people laugh requires talent and it's a lot harder to do than it looks. If you're not laughing right now, you know what I mean...oh and you suck, too.

Most of all, it's very inspiring to know that someone can make such a huge difference in this world. Nearly six weeks after the film premiered to rave reviews at the Sundance Film Festival (where their motto is, "first, Park City, Utah, then the world!"), the McDonald's corporation announced they would eliminate their famous Super Size french fry and soft drink options. Granted, getting rid of the Super Size option won't curb people's appetites and the only way "Super Size Me" would directly stop the nation's obesity epidemic is if Blockbuster Video offered a free gastric bypass with every rental. But it's still a big step for such a small film.

It's even inspired me to take new measures to help my own cause - horrible movies that wouldn't look better if you screened them on Angelina Jolie's tight midriff. For the past week, instead of my regular meals, I went on a week long bad movie diet to show their true effects not just on the brain but the entire human body. I documented the week long ordeal even though at one point, my hands went so numb, I couldn't complete a full sentence on the computer or in sign language.

Am I crazy? Oh sure, but so is a month long McDonald's diet and look what that accomplished. My only consolation if I die is Ashton Kutcher might follow my lead.

Day 1 - It's a Sunday and even though there's no regular job for me to go to, I wake up early and eager to start my new bad movie diet. My stomach's crying out for the usual Sunday morning bacon and eggs but I manage to keep that craving down to a low grumbling by looking at the cover of Carrot Top's only movie to date, "Chairman of the Board." In fact, I feel like throwing up while I'm watching it. But since there's nothing in my stomach to throw up, I'm actually vomiting air, which was kind of funny to watch after awhile. I could lie on my back and keep a beach ball in the air for a good 10 minutes.

For lunch and dinner, I served up a double feature of Ed Wood movies - "Plan 9 from Outer Space" and "Glen or Glenda." They're bad movies, but they were made by a guy with a great love of movies who tried to do the best with what he had. Of course, about the only things he had were paper plates and fishing poles, which he used to simulate flying saucers so that should tell you something about how bad they are. All in all, the first day went by without any major hitches. My skin felt a little clammy, but I'm sure that's was just opening night jitters or something bleeding internally.

Day 2 - I tried to sit up after the alarm clock went off and I felt a sharp, stabbing pain in my stomach like someone jabbing me in the gut with a ballpoint pen. It lasted for about a minute until I was able to move again and crawl Army style into the bathroom. After about 30 minutes in the shower, I was back to my old self but seemed a little more listless than usual -- all this from one day of bad movie watching. Coincidence?!?

After pulling myself together, I sat down to a heaping double helping of Paul W.S. Anderson movies - the first "Resident Evil" and "Mortal Kombat" - for breakfast and lunch respectively. During the climatic scene between Liu Kang and Shang Tsung, the pain I felt when I woke up that morning came back and it lasted a lot longer. A friend said I should call a doctor just to make sure I wasn't damaging my body permanently, but he'd just try to talk me out of the diet.

Dinner featured a smorgasboard of Satan's second least entertaining sin -- unfunny movies based on old, unfunny TV shows. The stomach pains came back even bigger than before. It's like I had butterflies in my stomach and they're all packing switchblades. Of course, I had the same feeling when I saw "Leave It to Beaver" the first time, which quickly passed once the closing credits ran.

Day 3 - The morning passed without incident. In fact, it seemed just like any other morning. I woke up, sat at the side of my bed in a zombie like state, scratched appropriately, shuffled into the kitchen and made some toast. Then when I realized I was living off movies, I calmly grabbed a hammer and smashed the toaster into a cluttered pile of shrapnel.

For breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert, I watched a day long quadruple feature of John Travolta duds including "Lucky Numbers," "Battlefield Earth," "The Punisher" and an obscure crap movie classic, "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble." It's a made for TV movie from long ago about a boy born with a deficient immune system, which severely affects his acting abilities. It actually wasn't bad because it made me laugh, which is still entertaining even if it isn't intentional. Of course, the laughing made my stomach hurt again after a day without any pain whatsoever, which felt like the butterflies upgraded to Iraqi scud missiles.

Day 4 - For once, I couldn't think of a movie horrible enough to watch mainly because my head felt so dizzy that I couldn't even remember my own name for an hour. So I jumped on the Internet and picked a couple of stinkers I recognized from the Internet Movie Database's list of their 100 lowest rated films. Luckily, there was a Blockbuster across the street and only one my legs didn't work, so I hopped across the street and checked out a couple of videos that looked so old and dusty, they would've hugged me if they had arms.

Of course, I was still really woozy and didn't want to blow my endurance wad before the week was out, so I aimed towards the bottom of the list. I picked up "The Avengers," the dumb "Dumb and Dumber" sequel "Dumb and Dumberer" and "Mac and Me," a family movie from the 1980's that's a rip off of "E.T." in the same way Charles Keating ripped off the elderly.

Later that night, I got the biggest scare of my life since a drunken circus clown broke into my apartment. I started to get very rhythmic thumping chest pains so severe they woke me from my dream of being chased by a crowd of Dick Cheney zombies. To say the least, it scared me. I couldn't get back to sleep. I thought maybe I should get something light to eat and realized for the second time that I couldn't eat anything. Instead, I watched "Mac and Me" again as a midnight movie snack and passed out from the chest pains, which also counts as sleep.

Day 5 - I woke up around three in the afternoon in my favorite bean bag movie watching chair. I missed breakfast and lunch completely. Thank God. This bad movie diet is making me feel every kind of pain a human being can experience in their lifetime except I feel like I'm experiencing them all at once and the entire tube of Aspercreme I took wasn't working. It turns out it's not an oral medication. It also tasted like Casade.

I wanted to make up the movies I was supposed to watch but I felt too weak. Plus, I made some pretty bold choices this late in the game. The 2003 video game remake of "House of the Dead," "Baby Geniuses" and Dana Carvey's "Master of Disguise." I would've slapped myself in the head but I felt so weak, I was only able to fling my hand against my head with the part of my arm that stills worked and I ended up poking myself in the eye. I managed to get through all three of them back to back but not before calling my doctor who refused to treat me over the phone because he thought I was a crank caller.

Day 6 - I'm now beyond pain. I know the pain is there but I no longer feel it. In fact, for about a full ten minutes after I woke up, I thought I was floating. It was a little scary at first because I thought I died and was floating towards heaven (there's wishful thinking in action). When my eyes finally adjusted to the light, I realized if I was floating towards the ceiling, it would move towards me. Instead, it actually seemed to be moving away from me. Oh no, does this mean I was going to hell? All those jokes about Mother Teresa and the Gimp from "Pulp Fiction" would've caught up with me sooner or later.

As it turns out, I was actually falling off the bed at the time. I also banged my head on the bedside table and suffered a concussion that made my vision blurry and brighter. On the bright side, the heavy amount of bleeding I suffered from the gouge in my head was encouraging. I was worried my circulation stopped delivering blood to my brain two days ago.

To say this diet has taken a toll on my body would be the greatest understatement since Roger Ebert said Ashton Kutcher needed to be tied to a tree and put down like "Ol' Yeller" in his review of "My Boss's Daughter." I've lost nearly 20 pounds in a week, which normally would be great news but I'm too weak to get excited. In fact, if I jump up and down too fast, I poop my pants. Every time I breathe, it sounds like wind moving through a Coke bottle. My neighbors have actually asked me on several occasions to stop playing my flute so loud. When they realize it's me breathing, they apologize and turn away in disgust. My skin has also changed to the color of month old mustard.

But I didn't have it in me to stop the diet. I also lost the ability to make clear, well thought out decisions the day before, which I realized when I tried to make breakfast by putting the cat in the toaster. Today, I watched "Gigli" three times in a row for breakfast, lunch and dinner - a bold choice that almost killed me. Midway through the final screening, I actually puked up blood. It didn't bother me too much because I didn't the same thing the first time I saw it in the theater.

Day 7 - Finally, the last day is here. I only have to get through three more movies and it's back to living my normal, nutritious diet - McDonald's Value Meals and Little Debbie jelly rolls. This is a historic moment after experiencing nearly six full days of physical pain and near death experiences.

So despite my ailing health and dwindling status, I went all out and offered myself and my friends who showed up to support me a smorgasboard of some of the worst movies ever made. All the classic clunkers were there including some by some of Hollyweird's worst and, of course, a night long screening of the entire works of Ashton Kutcher. We sat in my tiny apartment in lawn and bean bag chairs, munched on popcorn and laughed out loud at the unbelievablely bad acting and dialogue and cracked more jokes at the screen than an episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" screening of Bill Clinton's grand jury testimony.

Surprisingly, I didn't feel uncomfortable once during our impromptu flop film fest. For the first time in nearly a week, I didn't feel like begging a friend to grab the heaviest object they could find and put me out of my misery. I didn't feel like dropping a bookcase on my foot or dipping my hand in raw meat and sticking it through the fence of my neighbor's yard where he keeps his rottweiler because I needed to do something to take my mind off the stomach pains. For once, I felt happy.

After all, that's why we go to the movies. It doesn't matter if it turns out to be the biggest stinker since the Pokemon franchise started making their own movies, friends make them better. They certainly made my week better.

The following day I woke up early, drove to the nearest Shoney's and bought the entire breakfast buffet to myself. I ate like a king with a penchant for sausage dipped in melted cheese. Sure there were a lot of angry people and some of the hungrier kids were crying, but screw them, I felt alive.

My visit to the doctor confirmed my fear that a lack of eating and a gluttonous intake of bad movies were the source of my pain. In the span of a week, I dropped around 24 pounds and suffered severe chest pains, kidney stones, poor circulation, extreme shortness of breath, clogged and infected sinuses, poor vision, hair loss and slight genital shrinkage. My sex life, however, remained the same because it can't get any lower than it is right now.

He was concerned about the last day when my condition seemed to improve. He was worried this might be a sign that my body was starting to fail, but reassured me I'd be OK because I had eaten some popcorn on the final day. I should've felt relieved, but I was angry. I ate something, that means I didn't complete the experiment! This is just great. After nearly dying, I blow it on the last day. Now what am I supposed to do? Start all over again?

Eh, screw the whole thing.

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©2004 by Danny Gallagher

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