I’m going to do my best not to insult the many (dedicated) fans of Twilight who visit Geeks of Doom, but I will say that the only reason I watched the first movie was because there was a Rifftrax audio file available.

What’s Rifftrax you say?

It’s hilarious audio track featuring commentary of a recent movie. It’s also put together by the same guys who did Mystery Science Theater 3000 — the cult television program about a man and his robot sidekicks who are trapped on a space station by an evil scientist and forced to watch a selection of bad movies. Their commentary is what redeems those flicks.

While I’m not *saying* New Moon, which was released yesterday out on DVD and Blu-ray, is a horrible piece of garbage, there are people who feel this way. So, the Rifftrax team has released commentary for the film for those people. For a reasonable $3.99, it can transform that experience to one of pleasurable ridicule and laughter.

All the haters can say what they will about the Twilight franchise, but there’s one positive aspect about the whole phenomenon that can’t be denied — it’s prompted teenage girls to read more.

Young girls (and their moms) are not only picking up the Twilight books, but also literary classics like Wuthering Heights, and the series has sparked interest in the horror/fantasy genre in general, serving as a gateway to more books like Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire series (from which HBO’s True Blood is based) and more.

Twilight‘s also become helpful in the test prep department with Defining Twilight, a vocabulary workbook to help students prepare for tests like the SAT, ACT, GED, and SSAT.

Now, just released this week is the New Moon-inspired follow-up Defining New Moon, with over 700 vocabulary words and synonyms found on the SAT, ACT, GED, and SSAT tests.