Mystery Science Theater 3000: C/D, S/D.

"Bad touch."
"Does this mean I like guys now?"
"I feel ill."
"Spanking time!"

http://www.mst3kinfo.com/satnews/catalog/Basement.htm
http://www.mst3kinfo.com/daddyo/images/mrb5.JPG

Keep in mind that the fidelity on these files is sometimes suprisingly good considering the size, and sometimes fairly bad, but even the worst files usually have more than enough detail for a person to get what's going on.

I'm hoping the DVD is a Santa Claus vs. The Martians/Santa Claus double fun pak. It is going to come out late 2003, after all.

Later I may want to say something about MST3K in light of Mark's venting on Zappa, but right now I want to go to Central Park and maybe the Malevich exhibit before it starts raining (again).

goooch....goooch....

This show got me through middle school.

(current space on home PC C-Drive abt 700meg, it are old and small)

"Santa Claus, you're coming with us!"
"You're coming to town."

Because I'm not funny. And neither are you.

Fave all time moment ever, from any episode -- this snippet from Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, delivered and timed JUST RIGHT:

MARTIAN: "What soft, and round, and you put it on the end of a stick --"

SERVO: "An elf?"

MARTIAN: "-- and green?"

SERVO: "Oh, a DEAD elf."

Chris Fujiwara (sounding a little prim), here.

Gamera Vs. Guiron is one of my most underrated favorites, with the Gamera song, Cornjob and the Zabriske Point ref. The "Hello/Thank You" scene with the mothers is my #1 funniest MST3K moment.

We both idly comment on stupidity of movie showing and the commentary from Joel + robots. Go back to reading book/half-watching.

15 minutes later - 'actually, this isn't that bad'

10 minutes later - we have both decided this is the best show ever created

I salute you!

I am still in fact missing Gamera Vs. Guiron, though happily I've seen it a number of times -- that along with Gamera Vs. Gaos, It Conquered the World and four season six entries are now the only things I'm missing from season two on...

ignoring realities of production? tedium?

I think Fujiwara scores some good points, but yes of course we must give no quarter to a fun-hater.

The show made me laugh but I can't love it.

(...when -- you want -- the flavor of bacon -- in a dip.)

The thing I like abt Fujiwara's thing (and yes I do realize what a humorless piece of writing it is [but bits make me laugh out loud so eh]) is that it's about giving a shit, about not letting something slide. He thinks the whole enterprise was deeply, offensively unfunny, and that seemed like a rare and valuable enough er perspective w/r/t ile & mst.

I have a strong affection for cranks and fuddy-duddies.

Now, railing about MST3K in its own style -- responding to it and heckling it -- that could be clever enough to be worth the time.

And when they *did* do that, as happened with the Little Golden Statuette thingummybob, it actually undercut a lot of the claims MST3K could make to somehow being a subversive force battling against whiteelephantHollywoodbullshit because the special arguably ended up being essentially more hype for the Oscars and the Hollywood machine.

IIRC, the central reason for Fujiwara's groaning and moaning about MST3K was due to the lack of respect they were giving to these oddly wonderful artifacts suitable for voyeuristic delectation. (Fujiwara once wrote up a list of the best movies of 1953 and included *Robot Monster* as his tenth best -- and seriously, the only reason I can imagine ANYONE doing that is to prove some banal point about hegemony and the canon blah blah blah FIGHT THE POWER!!! etc. As bad movies go, there are so many better ones, like *Monster A Go-Go* for starters) This is baloney on many levels. "MST3K involves people making fun of bad movies" is a good shorthand description of the show, but only that: most of the time, Best Brains aren't "making fun" of the movies (most of the riffs' humor are totally incidental to the badness of the film), nor are most of the films they riff on aren't really *bad.* A good chunk are, most are just utterly indifferent, and few are pretty good for what they are (say, the Lassie or Godzilla movies.), and a movie's badness is no guarantee of an episode's goodness. (I think *Monster A Go-Go* is probably the worst thing I've ever seen and most of the time BB was just struggling to say something, anything about it.) Most of the time I attribute BB's claims to a movie being bad as just a bunch of hyperbole for comedy's sake. (On the other hand, if *I* had to watch most movies with the kind of attentiveness *they* did in creating MST3K, I think most films would probably come up short, anyway.)

And ANYWAY, I knew a lot of hardcore MSTies who argued the 'essence' of the show wasn't the riffing but the relationship between Joel/Mike, the 'bots and the Mads.

xpost When I saw Cinematic Titanic live, Gruber was the opening act.

The Mary Jo watch-alongs are a delight, yes.

Kate, I don’t know about Kevin’s politics but Bill Corbett is very lefty, he’s even been on Chapo for what it’s worth.

I love Frank Conniff dearly but his Bluesky feed is pretty standard corny resistance lib.

I appreciate his enthusiasm at least.

Relatedly, Mary Jo and Chris, the guy behind the little effort hosting the Mads, doing unknown-to-them TV movies from the seventies once a month has been a fun delight; that totally is the in-the-moment reaction effort and it's low-key and easy-going in the best way.

― Ned Raggett

i wonder if they'll get around to watching "The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank"!

anyway this is what i love about... i mean to me a lot of the heritage of MST3K is in these boutique labels. it's not about putting down a film, it's about film being more than just the Good Films. people don't get why i spend so much time watching stuff that nobody else really cares about, and a lot of it is MST3K, the idea that someone would go out and purposely watch a movie like Sidehackers or The Dead Talk Back. It's something that I don't have to take too seriously (well, in the _edited for broadcast versions_... I do run into the same problem that Best Brains ran into with Sidehackers when watching these films, except compounded since most of us have various forms of severe trauma...)

where mst3k doesn't hold up for me most of all is that even if i put down joe don baker, call him a lunk, anything like that, i genuinely have no personal animus towards the man. that's something... i mean, maybe i'm a softie, but i see joe don baker, just like mike nelson, as a professional doing professional work. now, sometimes that work is fucking awful. looking this greasy, repulsive 70s film baker did, these days i'm less inclined to draw any conclusion that he personally is greasy and repulsive. i kinda do feel bad for the guy, and if he did hate the MST3K crew, i mean, i don't think it was unjustified. that's _far_ from all mst3k was about, and there's also a lot of love. this idea of someone who thinks 'cereal commercials were works handed down by gods'. i'm that way myself, but only, like, 1970s cereal commercials. quisp. sir grapefellow.

Even when I originally watched it back in the 90s a lot of humor in it was a bit dated--cultural references that people older than me would catch.

― Iza Duffus Hardy (President Keyes)

yeah, i was just re-watching "cosmic princess" this afternoon and they're making references to the banana splits and land of the lost, as long as "sing along with mitch". this was stuff for and by kids who grew up in the 70s, kids who had a thingmaker. to me a thingmaker was a mysterious ancient artifact. that's probably one of the reasons mst3k clicks with me as much as it does... i have this weird cultural obsession with the 70s. it's very very hard for me to have nostalgia for my own childhood. it's more comfortable for me to have nostalgia for things i missed out on. i'm tremendously nostalgic, for instance, for 1970s AM pop radio, dan ingram on WABC. that's the stuff that gives me warm, cozy feelings. i'm not at all nostalgic for '80s stuff the way so many people seem to be.

what i like is that the internet is a place where all kinds of people can do that kind of thing. honestly i think of mst3k as kind of an antecedent of twitch. i got friends who are fans of josh strife, who's a guy who streams on twitch and just says, like... talks about his ideas about how to be an emotionally healthy person. there are so many opportunities to hang out in a room with so many different kinds of people, and for some reason a lot of those people are shitty grifters, and at the same time lots of them are just fun people to hang out with. i don't stream on twitch because i can't be arsed to comply with copyright laws, but with friends, i'm trying to do that. i'll get on my streaming server, like i did last night, and say "hey i'm gonna stream My Name Called Bruce", and a couple of us will just have fun talking shit in the chat. it doesn't _have_ to be good or funny. it can just be, like in "cosmic princess", they just make a bunch of references to dairy queen. that _doesn't_ work as comedy on the same level that, i don't know, _community_ does, but it does mean i'm open to unexpected fun moments:

TITLE ON SCREEN: COSMIC PRINCESS
CROW: I've been called that before.
SERVO: You asked for it, though.

And how would the folks on the podcast Mike Nelson stepped down from take _that_ exchange, you know? I don't know. I do know that my display name on that server is now "Kate, Cosmic Princess".

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and yeah honestly? i do love frank's corny resistance lib thing, just because it goes so well with the rest of his personality. he's a corny older dude! of course his politics are gonna be corny!

Kate I think l you’d really like the Mary Jo Pehl Show, especially the monthly episode where she watches some early-70s TV (without watching it first) and she’s just delightful at riffing off the cuff and it’s very not snarky but warm and kind of affectionate. Try watching her riff on “Bad Ronald” a movie worthy of having been a classic MST episode: https://dumb-industries.com/the-mary-jo-pehl-show-clubhouse-plus/v/movie-jo-night-bad-ronald

def agree about being an 80s kid for whom the 70s will always be this fascinating world just beyond the last visible hill, even though it left all these visible marks on the world i actually inhabited. MST may reflect a similar thing - Gen X kids who grew up in a world when the 50s and even 60s were in endless rerun rotation, and yet profoundly odd and alien, both appealing and unsettling, etc.

like, Joel was born in 60, Mike in 64. their prime monoculture breakfast cereal years were The Long 1970s, if you will. MST's most fertile decades are the 50s and 60s - stuff they probably saw on late night TV but not as "new" pop culture. and part of the special sauce was that they didn't (only) make fun of the lol lame old corny stuff, they also appreciated it. maybe one reason the Joe Don Baker stuff lands differently is they actually did know him as a present-day name headlining bad movies while they were old enough to tell the difference... idk