Bridget seems to be resigned to the whole thing, and at least one Web site thinks the idea is awesome.
As we reach the middle of the month, you also may have noticed that, until this point, we have said nothing about it. One reason is that until and unless Mike checks into the hospital with malnutrition, his diet does not seem to be directly affecting his work, and we here at Satellite News are all about the work.
Another reason is that Mike has eschewed any sort of monitors or “Super Size Me”-style video diary, which, frankly, means that we have nothing but his word that he is actually doing this. (Ahem, not that we don’t believe Mike or anything.)
Still another reason is that I figured that when I DID post something about this, I knew the thread was going to be a long one that was going to take over the comments for a day or so, and I didn’t want to do it in the middle of the week.
So, have at it: Mike, bacon, nutrition, stupidity, publicity, deliciousness, crispiness and the whole darn thing. Discuss.
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eh…who cares?
Well, I’m a huge Mike fan, and I’d be interested to read an article or essay from him after the so-called experiment. Until then, I really don’t care. I agree with your assessment that it’s “all about the work”.
I’ve got dibs on his RiffTrax job.
God forbid, of course :wink:
I completely missed this story. Did Mike at least allow himself different types of bacon?
I’ve been following this since Day One, and if you’ve seen any of my comments on the RiffTrax Blog, it’s fairly obvious I’m completely amused by the whole thing and approve. (I post under OxfordProle over there.) First, I sincerely doubt this experiment is going to do any irreparable, serious harm to Mike’s health; I’m certainly not a doctor or a nutritionist, but from what I know of the human body, it’s fairly resilient to this type of behavior and and side-effects of a month-long, all-bacon diet are probably going to be minimal (perhaps some weight gain, elevated cholesterol, etc.) and reversible. We’re not too far removed from a time in history in which nutritional diets weren’t much more varied than Mike’s and folks certainly keel over after a month of high-protein, high-fat eating. And I’m not just talking about the Atkins craze! Boom!
Seriously, I don’t think this will hurt Mike, and if it started showing signs of doing so, I’m betting he’s smart enough to stop. I think we all know the whole thing is a fairly goofy bet and a PR stunt that perhaps has attracted far more attention than anyone over at RiffTrax guessed. Again, the production of good RiffTrax releases are really what’s important, and I’ve been very happy with their stuff this month. I personally think it’s made the RiffTrax Blog a lot more fun to visit: Mike’s a damn fine writer and the documentation of his journey and people’s responses to it make for good reading. I’m sure there are a lot of folks who are unbelievably sick of the whole thing (which I always thought would be the most likely negative outcome of this stunt), but I personally am not there yet, and even the Blog features stuff other than bacon, so there’s enough variety to keep us coming back, I think. So, after lots of rambling, I’m a fan of the thing. It makes me laugh, though I don’t envy Mike’s family, and I don’t much envy Mike: no matter how much a man loves bacon, it can’t be all that enticing to eat nothing but fistfuls of the stuff for 28 days.
On that loving, obsessive not: Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! :)
In 2007, Robert Llewllyn went an entire year without buying new things and wrote a book about it.
In 2009, Mike Nelson…ate bacon…for a month… Uh… Yeah.
Both are men I have a great respect for. One of them I imagine to be dead by the end of the month.
Ehrm… the word ‘didn’t’ was supposed to appear between ‘certainly’ and ‘keel over’ at the end of my first paragraph. I hope that wasn’t some kind of prophetic Freudian slip or anything. :)
Ummm you really have run out of things to talk about haven’t you.
Will tomato,bread and Mayo be added into the mix anytime soon?
Well, there’s plenty of bacon to go around with the passing of the economic stimulus bill. Plenty of pork heading to Caaalifornia.
MMM. Bacon! (Personally, I like mine with waffles.)
I’m curious, though, how an all-bacon diet will affect Mike’s migranes. I’ve seen studies about how MSG and high-fuctose corn syrup can worsen the headaches. Could salty smoked pork fat be a remedy?
I ended up buying a box of bacon to travel the journey in spirit (then my brother ate it – damn him), but that was quickly followed by one of my friends writing a eulogy for me.
About 80% of the consensus seems to be “Mike’s gonna die!” while the rest is either going “uh wtf” or “wooh bacon!” Since he’s gone half the month with no ill-effects – not to mention he’s intelligent enough to stop if something negative was happening – I don’t think death is coming to Mike anytime soon. Personally, I find this whole thing just a fun little experiment that became an internet oddity, and anyone who’s taking it too seriously needs to relax and just giggle along.
Still, I’ll be very happy for Bridget and their sons when this month is over with. Luckily he picked the shortest one of the year to do it.
It’s just a
showdiet, you should really just relax.I don’t get it. Exactly WHY is Mike doing this? This sort of weird, gimmicky silliness is why i’ve sort of given up on rifftrax. No matter how much bacon, CGI characters, and big budget hollywood movies you throw at me, i’m only looking to laugh…and Mike hasn’t done that in awhile. What the hell happened? :???:
I love bacon as much as the next guy (if that guy isn’t Mike, I guess), but I don’t think I’d do this kind of thing. Bacon is delicious, but I can’t imagine that it’d be very filling by itself. You’d have to eat a lot, which seems like a bad idea. On the other hand, if you ate enough to actually do you in, I’d imagine it would make you extremely tasty. I’m not cannibalistic by nature, but if it tastes like bacon, well…
I was going to say something like “This is the most bizarre, pointless, idiotic, feather-headed thing I could imagine anyone doing.” Then I realized I was eating a chicken, cheese and bacon Hot Pocket at the time.
So I guess what I’m saying is, …well,… never mind….
Hey, if Congress can live off ‘pork’…..
J/P=?
So exactly when did Mike become suicidal?
In all seriousness, the more you eat something, the more likely you are to develop an allergy to it. All I can say is good luck to Mike; he may end up battling off clogged arteries and anaphylactic shock (not to mention sheer boredom of eating the same thing over and over again).
“We’re not too far removed from a time in history in which nutritional diets weren’t much more varied than Mike’s”
Gotta disagree with this slightly… While historically, varied diets were rare, they wouldn’t have been all-meat diets. Meat has always been very expensive. The all-potato or all-turnip diet would have been much more common.
As for the health risks, my (totally uninformed) guess is that while the bacon itself probably isn’t all that bad for him (depending on the fat content), missing out on the vitamins and minerals he would have got from other sources would be more of a concern. Where’s he getting his vitamin C to ward off scurvy?
I wonder if he’s not also taking a multi-vitamin pill to balance out any deficiencies…
Bacon. Stupidity. Mike?
Sounds like the basis for the Joel/Mike host segment in episode 1001- Soultaker. Joel finds a fuel filter which Mike tried to patch with a piece of bacon.
He’s probably eating bacon in various forms, not just bacon itself.
Bacon juice, bacon eggs, bacon waffles, baconized bacon coated in bacon bits.
I’ve developed something I call The Savory Food Bacon Index. The theory being that bacon is the ultimate savory food (savory meaning not sweet or sour) rated 10 and every other savory food is a number on that scale somewhere below bacon. Iceberg lettuce, for instance, having no discernible flavor, would only be a .01. Corn chips would only be a 2, but with cheese they’d be a 5. And so on…
#19: In past centuries, many in the upper class had as much of an “all-meat diet” as possible, just to show they could. (Vegetables and grains are for the little people!) Not that this was good for them—gout was endemic—but nutrition wasn’t much of a science back then.
Picking a non-leap year February to do this is kind of cop-out, I think.
BACON!
BACON BACON BACON BACON!
ONLY ONE THING SMELLS LIKE BACON AND THAT BACONNNNNN!!!
It’s been done HERE, with the perfect comeback:
nobodyscores.loosenutstudio.com/index.php?id=430
Is this for Lent or something?
Well at least he’ll go down in geek history….
I dont see why he shouldnt. though i usualy cant eat more than four pieces of bacon without feeling sick.
But i would like to see a video diary of it.
and then rifftrax could riff it
in aperfect world
for next weeks discussion topic,my vote goes to favorite sleeper episode
Kevin Murphy site was just taken down. And I just bought his book..
What some of you may not realize is that Mike is living the Upper Midwestern dream. We love our greasy food, and Wisconsinites, at least, also really (really) love their alcohol. Mike is taking on what amounts to a crusade to show that our ideal far-northern lifestyle of rich food and booze is not so shameful and destructive as the rest of the country – and the media – would have us feel. (Did I mention that Wisconsin is a place where one can purchase a meal consisting of bratwurst on a toasted, buttered, non-whole-wheat bun, deep-fried cheese curds, funnel cake, and beer? *Without* getting disgusted looks from others nearby?)
Mike is, simply put, rebelling against the established social dogma that bacon is a horrible guilt-food. And getting a helluva lot of publicity for it . . . which just shows he knows how to pick a stunt that will grab people’s attention like a heart attack victim grabs his chest.
So, as someone who loves bacon and would eat way more of it if paranoid health concerns didn’t interfere, I applaud this particular concept (even if he weren’t doing it himself, I’d enjoy the idea), and hope simply that Mike doesn’t get sick of the delicious, mouthwatering crack-cocaine of meats that is bacon.
P.S.: People who don’t enjoy bacon are filthy, unAmerican Communists. Keep that in mind.
“Iceberg lettuce, for instance, having no discernible flavor”
What? Since when?
“He’s probably eating bacon in various forms, not just bacon itself.
Bacon juice, bacon eggs, bacon waffles, baconized bacon coated in bacon bits.”
I think you win the thread.
Mike chose the month with the least amount of days to try this project … what if he chose a month with a full 31 days ? Go for the record !
Is there any particular reason why Michael is doing this thing, is he mad, crazy, or simply gone insane?
Is he going to write a book about this stunt, that’s if he survives the month? I mean all that salty fat can’t be very good for the old ticker?
While we are on the subject of beacon, what brand?
#29
Infidel! Unbeliever!
Okay, so it has a hint of flavor. But it’s completely devoid of nutrition, so what’s really the point? Iceberg lettuce is right up there with cardboard for nutritional value.
I laugh at famous stars (Yes, Mike is a famous star to me, at least) when they endeavor something that has nothing to do with what made them famous in the first place, and assume that people are just going to line up to watch.
I’ve always maintained that one should stick to what made them popular, and stay with it.
I like Mike for his riffing of video, be it good video or bad, (but especially bad).
Thats what Mike needs to keep doing to hold my attention.
It’s like when I go to a RUSH concert and they play 2 hours of new crap and then ten lousy minutes of Working Man or 2112. That really pisses me off, because they became famous for those latter mentioned songs, but they want me to suffer through stuff that didn’t make famous in order to hear the stuff that DID make them famous.
I say stick to what made you famous, don’t despise it, and give to the people who like it.
I hope that made sense.
“#29
Infidel! Unbeliever!”
Well sure, but that has nothing to do with this subject.
“Okay, so it has a hint of flavor.”
I was actually surprised to realize how important it is for making stuff like tacos have their full flavor. Hence my comment. ‘Course, I sort of have hypersensitive taste buds.
“But it’s completely devoid of nutrition, so what’s really the point? Iceberg lettuce is right up there with cardboard for nutritional value.”
Yeah, it’s a little fiber and a bunch of water. Ironic that we spend so much fossil fuel shipping the stuff across the country – it’s mostly just transporting H2O. What a waste.
“I’ve always maintained that one should stick to what made them popular, and stay with it.”
So do I, but I think my view is broader than yours. I assume you’re thinking in the specific terms of riffing. But more generally, Mike’s career is built on amusing people, keeping them interested, engaged, entertained. For at least some people, me included, this current stunt is amusing and interesting. So ultimately, I am “lining up to watch” something that Mike has shown himself to be an able provider of.
In the end, though, it is just a fun little sideshow to the more important business of riffing.
Hope Mike has some medical insurance to pay for the heart attack/stroke he’s going to have in the near future eating all that saturated fat and cholesterol.
Wooooooo, Mike’s gonna wake and bake-n all month!!!
i agree with 29,if you dont like bacon ur a commun ist
Yeah, but years back, the songs that you want to hear now were the “extra stuff” to listeners then. By your logic, MST3k should have become nothing but repeats of the show with the peak ratings.
In order to create the good stuff, we need to have the urge to create. You can’t just switch that off just because you’ve created one thing people liked. You want to continue creating.
I think it’s incredibly self-centered to ask creators to turn off their creative instincts and just keep parroting the bits you like.
What was the movie/riff where Mike or
one of the bots said “Bacon, Bacon, Bacon!”?
Yeah, but bacon tastes gooood. Pork chops taste gooood.
@39
I’m pretty sure they said it in a bunch of episodes. It was from a popular commercial.
It’s a funny thing. There are at least a dozen varieties of bacon from all over the pig, plus other animals. I think Mike will make it ok but should allow for the soy bacon as well, if only for variety and to get the metal taste out of his mouth.
No that’s not what I’m saying at all.
I’m saying –
Stick with what got you there.
Not by repeating the good that got you there, but do more of what got you there. I like Mike riffing bad movies. If he is to remain good, he needs to riff bad movies.(not the same ones).
If Rush were to make the kind of music they made on their first 4 albums, they would reap huge benifits because that is the music that made them famous.
Riffing the shorts works because they are bad shorts. I will watch a rifftrax of a good movie, but the funniest ones are the bad movies.
That Fred Willard one is one of the best of rifftrax, and I only saw the clip.(I rented the damn thing abut couldnt figure out a way to save it, so I never watched it. Has that ever come out in a non-divx form, by the way? Anybody know? Cause I’ll buy it in a heartbeat).
I don’t give a crap at all about this bacon thing. I agree that eating the same of anything for too long is not good for you. It’s important to change your diet around every couple of days.
I think any of the suggestions for a weekend thread from the last weekend discussion would have been a better topic than this.
How about the time I got traded for manager Chuck Tanner?
Now there’s a thread!
I know a person who tried to live off of nothing but theater concession stand food for an entire week. Didn’t work out too well for him and he had to stop before he could finish. He wrote a book that mentioned this incident and he advised readers never to attempt such a thing, and his name was Kevin Murphy.
Mike, please! Don’t do it! You are Mike Nelson! Head writer of MST3K! Not a member of Jacka**.
This is completely asinine. What drives people to do stupid **** like this…?? Well, I hope he lives to tell about it at least.
” What drives people to do stupid **** like this…??”
Creativity? A sense of irony? The need to get people’s attention? The desire to amuse others? The desire to comment on social mores? Wanting to have an interesting, unusual experience? Any number of other relatively legitimate urges?
Hell, if you’re not amused, that’s that. But as to it just being demonstrably dumb? That’s pretty subjective. Sure it’s silly. But at least some folks also thing it’s pretty awesome.
Mmm . . . bacon . . .
Over at Rifftrax, they’ve been going on about the bacon thing for a long time now. Maybe I just never got it, but I never found it all that funny. And now a whole month of nothing but posts about bacon? Eh… It sort of embodies my frustration with Rifftrax these days. Sad to say.
39 & 41:
I believe the commercials were/are for Beggin’ Strips dog treats. Probably referenced in multiple experiments, but I only remember it from the pig-sled chase in “Jack Frost”.
I agree that this is a rather mundane, generic stunt for Mike to risk his health over. Reminds me of Michael Moore once saying he was going to lose 50-100 pounds by not eating anything that claimed to be low fat. I never heard what became of that, and I’ll probably immediately forget whatever becomes of this bacon thing unless it ends in tragedy for our favorite once-head-writer.
HOWEVER: Good weekend discussion thread, since it’s something current, there are only so many good topics to discuss in the long run, and last week’s topic was so overwhelming that a lot of us could use a break. Good call Sampo; ignore the complaints.
Bacon humor has become “ironic chic” in certain corners of the internet, and RIfftrax is only trying to get some click-throughs to their site, that is all.
Having said that, I’ve always placed the MST3k alumni and their humor a little higher, concept wise, and I’m sort of sad to see Mike trying to cash in on a silly internet gimmick. I guess back when MST3k ended, and for a while afterwards, everything Mike and the gang was producing (books, mainly) always seemed really ‘special’ and, again, “high-concept.” Overexposure was never an issue until recently. But I guess overexposure and this wealth of content is better than the alternative.
Now, having said that, I still love Mike, Rifftrax, Cinematic Titanic, and all the folks from both camps. Mike’s silly bacon jazz and all.
Bacon has been funny since at least “The Sunshine Boys” back in the 70s, Clint. And that Diet Coke with Bacon photoshop has to be, what, a decade old? It’s not some new Internet phenomenon.