Holidays are full of magic and charm.  It’s a time to celebrate with family or even better, your television set!!  In our home, nothing says holiday like the onslaught of marathons the networks throw at us every chance they get.  From Arbor Day Andy Griffith all nighters to FOX Family’s 25 Days of Christmas, there is a marathon for everyone.  I love ‘em, and without those lazy days on the couch, I’d never had known the joy of the Roloff’s or seen the dramatic horse drama of Wildfire. Wait, I think I might be making a case against marathons.

Anyhoo, make sure you’ve got plenty of leftovers this Thanksgiving weekend because the Syfy channel brings us four full days of movie madness!  (The madness part being the volume of ads we have to watch.)  On Thursday and Friday, the network is showcasing the adventures of one James Bond giving way to a weekend of monster mayhem Saturday morning.

It all starts at 8:00 a.m.

Turkey Day with the first Bond flick, Dr. No and continues past 5:00 a.m. on Black Friday.  So Stay up all night and you’re ready to shop, or, down a cup or twenty of coffee and get ready for eight more Bond spy-ventures starting at 8:00 a.m. again!  A total of 15 007 escapades in two days, with the great Daniel Craig Casino Royale playing twice.  I’m not sure, but that’s something like 82 martinis, 145 explosions, and a gaggle of pretty ladies!

Now that you’ve survived Oddjob, Goldfinger, and the freaky voodoo guy, get set for an onslaught of some of the silliest made for TV films ever produced.  Creature features explode off your HD tele with sequels to already mediocre films (Lake Placid 2 and Anaconda 3), giant beasts (Ice Spiders and Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus), and the infamous Monkey King movies.  Running 40 of the weekend’s 48 hours, Syfy assaults your mental taste buds with 19 creature features worthy of any video store’s bargain rental shelf.

If you can only tune in a little bit, I recommend Saturday where you can catch the reigning king of horror schlock, Mega Shark, take a quick X-Box break during Lake Placid‘s flaccid sequel and then catch the premier of Syfy’s latest original, Beyond Sherwood Forrest.  As the promo says, it’s “hood versus evil” with this new take on Robin of Loxley where the famed archer battles all manner of supernatural beasts.  Listen, that’s one of the best pitches I’ve heard from Syfy, so check it out at either 9:00 p.m. or 1:00 a.m., EST.  For a full schedule, check out their home page.

And if you’re really a glutton for punishment as well as turkey leftovers, there’s some classic Twilight Zone episodes running as a bumper overnight.  But you should probably get some sleep.  That is, outside the Z’s you’ll catch during the horrific 1999 version of Beowulf!

What’s fantastic about something like the Syfy marathon is how easy it is to let it be background noise.  For a lot of households, that might be football, but I like knowing I can pop in and out of a Bond flick.  I don’t know what it is about us men, but I suspect centuries have been lost to our combined James Bond viewing habits!  I can’t wait to zone out on the couch, do some online shopping and re-emerge Monday having spent some quality time with Uncle Sean Connery.