It was nearly 20 years ago on a bright, sunny Saturday morning that I happened to be sitting in front of the TV when I inadvertently landed on the Comedy Channel. (Yes, that thing you kids call “Comedy Central” today is the result of the devastating Funny Wars between HA! and the Comedy Channel in the early 90s. Cable TV takes no prisoners, apparently.)
Anyway, it wasn’t long before I noticed that there were silhouettes blocking some of the action, such as it was, and that they were busy mocking the poor sap on the screen who happened to have a haircut so ridiculous that it could only be eclipsed by the bizarre fur Speedo hiding his junk. The silhouettes were, in short, those of Joel, Tom Servo and Crow having fun at the expense of a bit of cinematic detritus called Cave Dwellers. I was hooked.
So anyway, even though I’m sure that at some point you’ve been told that All Good Things Must Come to an End (the sort of maxim usually spouted by cranks and misanthropes who, as best I can tell, enjoy lowering children’s expectations and kicking puppies), it turns out not to be strictly true. In this case, even though MST3K has long since been sent upstate to a beautiful farm where it runs and plays with all the other cancelled shows, the fun still lives on. Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett are busy peddling Rifftrax, in which they engage in exactly the same sort of behavior that made me fall in love with them in the first place. Ahhhh.
Even better, they do live shows which are, for those of you who don’t happen to live in Mike, Kevin or Bill’s basement, simulcast through Fathom Events to a theater near you. The last live Rifftrax event was a thorough dissection of the studiously incompetent House on Haunted Hill, a movie complete with marionette skeletons and a plot so stultifyingly convoluted that in the end the movie just sort of stopped, rather than reaching any sort of conclusion. (To be fair, it must be noted that Vincent Price, urbane as ever, seemed to be a good sport about the entire affair.)
So anyway, true to the Dad’s off the Couch tagline, none of this has been timely or relevant to anything, other than to note that if you A: enjoy things, and B: are a nicer person than Hitler, you’ll probably groove on the Rifftrax thing. Go on, they’re waiting for you.
Keep circulating the tapes!
No comments:
Post a Comment