Tag Archives: Mystery Science Theater 3000

Leftovers

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Thanksgiving is known for leftovers, so allow me to share a few with you.

Literal leftovers first. The smart celebrator expects to have leftover turkey and plans accordingly. At this point, we have it down to a science. On the day after Thanksgiving, we have cold turkey and use up the leftover gravy, stuffing, and any other sides that didn’t get done in on Thursday. Saturday is turkey sandwiches for dinner. The next week, turkey sandwiches for lunch. Any remaining turkey goes into the freezer with the bones for use in soup.

Those of you who don’t eat meat may not be aware that there is a religious war over the proper semi-liquid for a turkey sandwich. Below is a poll to see how many sides of the war my readership represents. We’ll check in on the poll results next week, and I’ll let you all know just how misguided you are.

Thanksgiving’s post mentioned plans to watch the Mystery Science Theater 3000 marathon. As it turned out, we never quite managed to turn on the marathon, so we fell back on our own collection of shows.

MST3K, for anyone who doesn’t know, was the show that popularized the concept of actors heckling a bad movie for the entertainment of all. Just as The Daily Show carried on under the guidance of Jon Stewart when original host Craig Kilborn left, MST3K had multiple leads. The show began in 1988 with creator Joel Hodgson in the leading role; he left in 1993, and Mike Nelson took over until the show’s end in 1999. Joel/Mike arguments continue to this day. Not to fan the flames of that war, it should be noted that Mike was the head writer for the show, meaning he was responsible for many of the jokes during Joel’s tenure.

We watched two shows, one each from the Joel and Mike eras. “Master Ninja I“, a “movie” created by splicing together two episodes of a short-lived TV show starring Lee Van Cleef, Tim Van Patten, and a gerbil, came from season 3. It’s perhaps best remembered for it’s contribution to musical culture: a stirring rendition of “Master Ninja Theme Song” by Joel and the Bots.

Season 6’s “Girls Town” is a stunning mish-mash of date rape, stalking, bad girls, and nuns starring Mamie Van Doren, Mel Torme, Paul Anka, and The Platters. Unfortunately, the MST3K version isn’t commercially available (the link leads to Amazon’s page for the VHS release of the original film), but if you’re OK with downloading a copy from the Internet, your effort will be rewarded. Mamie’s Van Dorens try to dominate the show, but Gigi Perreau’s crazed stalker Serafina steals the show, clearly scaring the heck out of Paul Anka who struggles in the role of Jimmy, the object of Serafina’s unnatural affection. The MST3K crew is in top form and the jokes fly furiously. This episode ranks high on my list as it even includes a Seattle Mariners joke.

Interestingly enough, Kaja, our own bad girl, seemed fascinated with Girls Town. She sat up with her eyes on the screen for most of the show; the other cats slept through it.

Finally, reports are coming in that this year’s expanded Black Friday was a resounding failure. Purchases were down almost 3% compared to last year. Analysts expect panic sales over the next few weeks as stores try to make up the shortfall.

I’m inclined to regard this as a good sign. Not that I think it will cause retailers to rethink this year’s “Black Thursday” approach that caused so much protest, but I do think it will result in next year’s starting even sooner.

“Wait,” I hear you ask. “Why is that a good thing?”

Simple. History shows us that retailers are blind to the notion of diminishing returns when it comes to advertising. Black Friday will stretch earlier and earlier until it takes over the entire month, smashes into Halloween, and collapses into disorganized mass mess indistinguishable from regular advertising.

And, as a special bonus, advertisers will be so busy pushing “Black November”, that they won’t have time to start the Christmas advertisements until December. Anything that saves us from a whole month of Christmas carols is an enormous win for our sanity.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

No, no, the other Thanksgiving. We’ve already talked about the baseball one.

Note that this post was written a couple of days ahead of time. That means two things: I can’t complain if you wait a couple of days to read it, and I can’t comment on anything wildly topical. If an asteroid hits the Earth this afternoon, causing earthquakes, tidal waves, and the end of civilization, I’ll be sure to post something snarky about it on Friday.

Anyway, I’ll bet you were all expecting me to commemorate the occasion with a long list of things I’m thankful for (“Thanks to Maggie for putting up with the inconveniences caused by my career change,” and so on.)

I could do that, and it would certainly fill my quota of words for the day, but let’s face it: nobody ever reads that sort of list. They either tl;dr it or just Ctrl-F it for their own name. If you’re not going to read it, I’m not going to spend my time writing it. Let’s talk about something else.

Thanksgiving in its modern form is an occasion devoted to laziness and the consumption of one of my favorite foods: turkey! How could it not be one of my favorite holidays? I know many of you reading this aren’t meat eaters, so I’ll spare you most of the potential rhapsodies over the joys of turkey-eating. I’ll also spare you the recipes, since we don’t actually have any. We do a simple roast of the bird without stuffing, most of the leftovers go for sandwiches, and the carcass goes for soup. (I will note that vegetarians — at least the honest ones* — have been known to acknowledge the fact that a roasting turkey smells delicious.)

* You know who you are…

toikeysThose of you who don’t live in the Bay Area may not realize that the wild turkey population has been growing in recent years. There’s a flock near our house, so I’ve been able to keep an eye on them. The wild birds refuse to let The Man push them around. They have definite issues with obeying traffic laws. They’ve figured out that cars will stop for them and create traffic jams by wandering across the road en masse, usually near the freeway on- and off-ramps.

As I was writing this, eleven turkeys strolled out of the parking circle a couple of doors down. They looked around, then set off slowly down the middle of the street in single file. About two minutes later, a group of four more birds came running out of the loop and took off down the street. Obviously they were embarrassed about running late for the expedition. Then, over the next few minutes, another half-dozen turkeys came running out of the loop one at a time. Each of them stopped at the sidewalk, looked around anxiously, and then strolled casually down the street, radiating an aura that said “Oh, I’ve been here the whole time. Just stopped to tie my shoe.”

Why did the turkey cross the road? Because if he stood in the middle, he’d get run over.

Ouch. Talk about your jokes falling flat.

Actually, the local turkeys’ favorite on-ramp is just a few turkey-sized steps away from a synagogue. With Thanksgiving falling in the middle of Hanukkah this year, it’s making for some unusual events. I’m pretty sure I saw a couple of turkeys playing with a dreidel yesterday, no doubt gambling for gold-foil wrapped crickets. This temple holds periodic “jewgrass” services* throughout the year, however there seems to be no truth to the rumor that a turkey will be invited to join the band tomorrow night. Rumors of turkey hams on the dinner table tonight, however, seem well-founded.

* No, I’m not making that up. Honestly. According to the temple’s website, jewgrass is “a lay-led singing Shabbat service [which] features an instrumental band made up of congregants”. There are not any recordings on the website; I’ll leave it up to you to decide if that’s fortunate or unfortunate.

Speaking of turkey hams… This piece was pre-written to allow me to take the day off. I intend to spend a large part of the day sprawled on the couch, wallowing in the intoxicating scent of roasting turkey, and watching the Mystery Science Theater 3000 marathon.

Oh, and Maggie? Thanks.