My question to pose to the faithful: Which shorts, despite being excellent MST3K material, are actually informative or educational? I’ve got two choices. First, “Chicken of Tomorrow”–I didn’t know eggs were so complicated. And second, “Appreciating Your Parents”–it’s got a good message and a likable protagonist. (Actually decent short runner-up nominee: “Hired! Part 2.” A good lesson about developing employees that could still be made today without the elves flying around.)
I remember in the ACEG, Paul (I think) remarked on “Keeping Clean and Neat” (I think; can you tell I’ve mislaid my ACEG?) that he liked the advice about clipping your toenails after a shower, when they’re soft and easy to clip, something that had never occurred to him.
As for me, I gotta go with “Out of this World.” I never knew there was so much to being a bread delivery man!
What short(s) would you pick?
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“Johnny At The Fair”, and “Century 21 Calling”…
Having never been to a World’s Fair, I never realized how mind-numbingly, excruciatingly DULL they could be.
“Why study Industrial Arts?” – it contained some incredible stereotypes of the 1950s (“I’m not a communist!”) but its ideas were compelling.
“Design for Dreaming” isn’t really educational, but there’s so much fun, crazy stuff going on that I wouldn’t mind watching it without M&TB.
Otherwise, I’d have to agree that “Hired!” does seem to have some valuable sales advice that’s still useful today.
‘Days of Our Years’ taught me many, many things;
1. Never ride in the back of a pick up with a horney guy as the wheel man.
2. Always call in sick when I feel slightly ill or one of my e-mails may kill someone at the office.
3. Come up behind co-workers and apply ‘gentle pressure’ to avoid being blinded by a blow torch. However, this does not prevent EEO complaints by both men and women but I can see fine.
Seriously, the chicken film was informative as Sampo points out.
The Selling Wizard
Keeping Clean and Neat, totally.
Both shorts from Beast of Yucca Flats were pretty informative.
Money Talks! had good ideas for budgeting and saving money (even if the presentation was a little on the creepy side).
Progress Island certainly had lots of info about Puerto Rico.
“Are You Ready for Marriage?”. I never really knew how to deal with the “BOING!” in a relationship before.
Also, “Chicken of Tomorrow” was very colorful and informative.
On further reflection, “Assignment Venezuela” is probably my all-time most favorite, and it taught me a lot about:
1. Never assuming the width or narrowness of a lake in a foreign country.
2. Hiding out from your wife in Lagonias (“try and find me”).
3. Effective means of communicating with locals who speak another language (“BAG-O in CAR-O!!”).
4. How other people also use the phrase “work bench” to describe their marital bed.
5. NEVER assuming the width or narrowness of a lake in a foreign country (I had to repeat that one, since it was the main lesson of the film and since it was the main character’s major faux pas that cost him much credibility).
Seriously, though, I did Wikipedia the oil company in the film and found out that it was eventually merged into Citgo, which the Venezuelan government owns. That’s the only MST3K short that ever made me do further research.
“A Case of Spring Fever.”
I learned never to curse springs, lest I be visited by a sadistic coiled sprite with delusions of godhood.
“Are You Ready For Marriage?” seemes to be somewhat informative. I mean if you feel you and your lover are ready.
I choose Young Man’s Fancy. It’s sort of like an infomercial for kitchen appliances inserted into a ’50s tv show.
And that Judy girl cracks me up.
don’t forget about “boing” please.
and really, what is it and where did it go?
Four Words:
“Why don’t they look?”
Remember kids, the cop never said anything about doing intensely stupid things…..
“A Date With Your Family”–talk about only pleasant things at the dinner table or else Mom and Dad won’t love you anymore.
“Chicken of Tomorrow” really was the only short that had something to teach, at least in the realm of farm terminology (hey, I know what pullets and cockrels are now).
On the opposite end of the spectrum, you’ve got “Uncle Jim’s Dairy Farm” which pretty much consisted of: Cow = moo. Healthy grain, healthy food. Doggy play. Butter! Rope climb?
I must say that “The Selling Wizard” (aside from the rather sexist Selling Wizard-presumably there to amuse and titlate the salesmen or store owner viewers) was rather interesting and with insights into the nuts and bolts of store displaystheory and mechanics.
I’d say the combination of two shorts:
“R U Ready 4 Marriage” & “A Case Of Spring Fever” –
Never curse springs, else they may poke through your mattress while you sleep and cut you (this has actually happened to me!) or gouge your eye out while changing the flint in your lighter. Never mention guns to friends annoyed by you and, oh yes never make light of BOOIIING!
Boings all around!
“Why Study Industrial Arts?” Even though it’s aimed at a 50’s audience, there’s some substance there about being self-reliant. As in fixing your own stuff rather than relying on someone else-or buying something new.
“Are You Ready for Marriage?”. Good advice once one gets past the dubious statistics (what’s the definition for “happiness” anyway?). The message is STILL valid: wait until you’ve matured, and have a job.
MONEY TALKS.
I’m deadly serious in that, as goofy as the presentation was, it gave tremendously good advice on how to handle your money. I took to heart the principle of “Planning your spending,” and “saving for a goal”. I don’t budget like Bob, though I did try briefly (it turned out to be true that “Bob is anal”) but I do have a visual picture of when and how things will be paid. Between that and my accounts payable experience, I think I haven’t been broke ever since. Thank you, Mr. Franklin, “for teaching us how to love again.”
CHEATING taught me that if you cheat, your teacher’s disembodied head will haunt you in the black, clock-filled nightmare that is your life.
I’d agree that “Progress Island, U.S.A.”, though now very dated in tone, is pretty informative about Puerto Rico. And “Out of the World” and “The Selling Wizard” do present some interesting information about salesmanship.
And “Catching Trouble” taught me that, once upon a time, some people thought animal cruelty was fun.
The only short that’s actually helped me improve is “Speech: Platform Posture and Appearance”. I may be biased by the fact that it’s attached to my favorite episode and have therefore seen it more than the others, but my voice is one of my few genuine talents, and improving my appearance while delivering a speech is therefore important to me. Granted, several elements need a little, um…translation to be made useful, but if you find the square root and add the “PEAR”, even the knee-test offers something worthwhile.
“Out of This World” does have some genuinely useful reminders for anyone in a service industry. Be nice, take time, presentation (both of yourself and the product) does matter. You do really notice the difference between, for instance, some cashiers in the Quickie Mart or the grocery store, and others.
St Rude @ 16. I actually learned from ‘Uncle Jims Dairy Farm’ that it is a necessity to wipe off all the cows udders with the same filthy rag in order to insure clean milk. The udder attachments are made of metal and therefore do not need to be cleaned.
I’ll go with “Money Talks!” Even though it’s goofy, there is actually some decent advice for kids on how to budget. And surprisingly little guilt and shame for the 1950’s; it emphasizes that it’s okay to indulge sometimes (“Never let it become too rigid!”). Shockingly, it actually advises common sense and independence.
I’m glad that someone else actually suggested this for a topic. It’s a good one.
Money Talks! does have good advice about creating a budget.
Keeping Neat and Clean is a good short about grooming habits.
Catching Trouble, while perhaps unwholesome from a modern perspective, is at least honest about how some animals were collected for the zoo.
I like the Hired short for not only it’s good advice for it’s time, but also for it’s history lesson. I didn’t know that salesmen pestered customers outside of the dealership and expected them to buy a new car every two years for the rest of their lives.
Why Study Industrial Arts was informative in a weird 50’s sort of way. (He’s a craftsman, not a killer!)
Also the short on Speech had some merit. It does make people aware of bad habits. Let’s be honest, it is annoying to be forced to listen to someone make a rambling, mumbling presentation. That short also reveals the most important part of making a speech. The need for a wire rack and plenty of lip and tongue action…
Definitely, Speech: Platform Posture. The Knee Test they teach is very useful. Whenever I have to give a speech, I start by making the Knee Test. It puts everyone at ease right away, and it’s much better than opening with a joke.
I was thinking just the other day that I need to take a lesson from “Hired Pt. 2”. Instead of becoming frustrated and short-tempered with my employees I should try harder to encourage better behavior and job performance.
I also never take springs for granted…EVER!
“Appreciating Your Parents” for sure. Dan’s right about it having a good message and a likable protagonist.
I know someone said “Young Man’s Fancy” as a joke… but a serious question… WHAT THE HELL WAS THE POINT OF THIS SHORT?????? I love it with all my heart, but I have never been able to wrap my head around why it was made. Was it meant to be some sort of entertainment? Was it to be informative about electricity? As Crow asks, “The point of this short is we should dabble in mushroom growing?” Was it a smaller part of a larger omnibus involving the characters of Judy, her brother Bob, and their lover Alexander Phipps?
Does anyone have an answer to this question?
I was actually at a meeting the other week where I spotted someone doing the knee-test before getting up in front of everyone to speak. Freaky, I tell you.
“Why Study Industrial Arts?” – The fact that the students all look like Ed Gein’s cousins aside, the point of the film is pretty darn relevant, even today. Odds are most high school students aren’t going to be getting jobs as Historians, Mathematicians, English Professors or Professional Athletes – but they better know to change a lightbulb or how to work with their hands or Social Darwinism’s probably gonna get ’em.
I remember reading somewhere that “A Date With Your Family” was shown to High School students – who, understandably, were rolling in the aisles at not only the MST riffs, but just the general goofiness of the short. BUT, when all the heckling and guffawing were over, most of the teens recognized and understood that things really have changed in this country when it comes to how families interact with each other. Most kids can’t recall the last time they had dinner with the rest of their family, unless it was a major gift-giving holiday, of course. And the idea of actually talking to your parents about your day – instead of just texting them – is practically unheard of.
But for me, “General Hospital” was the short that had the greatest informative impact. Never, ever hit on your co-worker with your wife in the room, wait until their own sigificant-other is elsewhere and when you have them alone in the car with you. That and, of course, “booze heals.”
Haha, I thought I was the only one who found a few useful…
I know how to bathe myself (I hope after existing for eighteen years I do), but I found myself adopting some habits from the grooming shorts. It’s a bit horrifying on realization.
Chicken of Tomorrow is really interesting, and I echo the sentiment of “I had no idea eggs were so complicated”. It also was interesting to watch it alongside hatching chicks in an agriculture class.
I also think that Are You Ready For Marriage? has solid values, but it’s bogged in the fact that it’s the ’50s and rather cheesy. Beneath those, it seems to have a good message for us today, and that Cupid’s Checklist is actually a fairly good base to work off of. I remember pointing this out to my boyfriend and he kind of made a face at me. >>
I personally feel that ALL of the shorts done my MST3K were informative. Not all the information was USEFULL, but hey, that wasn’t one of the requirements. :wink:
I miss-spelled my own name. :shock:
I learned a lot from Gumby’s “Robot Rumpus”, especially about Gumbo’s internal genitalia.
I have to chime in and say that “Money Talks” is probably the most informative short. If more people had listened to Ben Franklin’s silhouette, we wouldn’t be in such a harsh recession right now.
I found “Century 21 Calling” informative. So many technologies common today in communication (call waiting, call forwarding, speed dial, etc.) had their genesis much earlier than I had ever thought. And the idea of using a punch card for speed dialing is quaint and charming.
I’m surprised that no one’s mentioned one of the most UNinformative shorts ever: “Once Upon a Honeymoon.” At the end, Crow comments “Wait! What the hell was that about?” On the other hand, it’s somewhat interesting, because it’s directed by Gower Champion (eight time Tony winner for such shows as “Hello, Dolly!” and “Bye Bye, Birdie”), and starts another Tony winner and the creator of the Doodletown Pipers. Even the hard-nosed boss in the short is noteworthy (he’s a founding member of SAG).
My votes for informative shorts:
-Spring Fever
-Are you ready for marriage?
-Hired (part II)
-Appreciating your parents
Although these are poorly acted (in most cases) and great fuel for the riffing, I DO find them somewhat interesting to watch.
“Good night and stay pink, soft and oily!”
Wisecracker
I’d say “Century 21 Calling” was incredibly informative. It taught me that the phone companies are still charging people exorbitant fees for common place simple technologies (like “call waiting” for example) that are at least fifty years old.
“The Home Economics Story” kind of gave me a window into my mother’s life. She was an early-’60s Home Ec major, and then a Home Ec teacher.
I imagine “Hired!” especially Part II, will be useful if I ever wake up one day and find myself a sales supervisor.
Then there are the eye-opening “food is a lot more complicated than I thought” shorts: the much-mentioned “The Chicken of Tomorrow,” and “The Truck Farmer.” The latter impresses on a modern viewer that, yes, there was a time when having fresh vegetables of all kinds year-round was a new thing.
(Incidentally, am I the only one who can’t really watch the sequence from “Chicken” where they show development through a series of opened eggs? Besides the contents being kind of gross, I can’t get over the idea that they’re basically dying as we watch.)
The “General Hospital” shorts give a look at the state-of-the-art of soap operas in 1963. All I can say is, housewives, retirees, shut-ins, and truants must have been truly starved for entertainment.
And finally, “Century 21 Calling.” AT&T may have been a big, ungainly monopoly with artificially high prices, but their R&D department was sure earning their paychecks.
I once had to write a paper on Public Speaking for a college class and I used the phrase “Think Tall” from short- “Speech, using your voice” (I think that was the name) anyway, I got a 4.0 on the paper.
#36 “I learned a lot from Gumby’s “Robot Rumpus”, especially about Gumbo’s internal genitalia.”
====================
And about how to drive any robots watching the short into years of intensive Adlerian therapy.
“What About Juvenile Delinquency?” from THE ATOMIC BRAIN.
Who knew that buzzcut-sporting gangs loved their Flash Gordon jacket patches so much and that there would be so many hours of zoning stuff at these town meetings?
I kid, I kid.
Out of all the shorts, I think I found myself paying attention to “The Truck Farmer” most of all.
I’d agree with “Out of This World.” Back in 1995 when that first aired I was working in the food service industry while in high school and picked up the tip about product placement and letting the logo show on whatever was on the shelf.
I then proceeded to turn every Pepsi and Mountain Dew in the refrigerator around at work to have the logo show through the glass. And my manager actually noticed it, too.
Yes, Sampo. That was Paul who made the positive comment about Keeping Clean and Neat.
A Date with Your Family, without any doubt. With a husband home from a tough day in the big city and a son newly entered into teenagedom, (and myself, tired from a long day making generic meat and 3-tiered cakes for dinner),it’s easy for the family dinnertime to degenerate into a seething cauldron of bickering and recriminations. A Date with Your Family taught me how to avoid that quite nicely, thank you.
Mr. B taught me to live in fear of lockers and ever picking up an instrument.
“Days of Our Years.” Remember, kids, GENTLE PRESSURE!
“Money Talks” was a big help for me too – I learned a lot about budgeting my finances and got a lot of good laughs out of it at the same time (“Son, you’re in deep to Mother and me…”).
“A Case Of Spring Fever” taught me that springs pretty much rule the world. We’d be reduced to cavemen if they disappeared.
“X Marks The Spot” taught me that God doesn’t care if you were a liar, an adulterer, a theif, etc. What really determines your eternal fate is your driving record.
“Snow Thrills” taught me that ‘skiing’ is actually pronounced ‘shiing’ (although I think thats still a bunch of skit).
“Speech: Using Your Voice”. What else? Use plenty of lip and tongue action. Helped me more ways than one (heh heh).
“The Home Economics Story” taught me that college was boring until the introduction of sex and drugs.
“Mr B. Natural” taught me where Michael Jackson got his musical career from (too soon?)
“Posture Pals” taught me that killing a plant is the best way to demonstrate good posture.
“Junior Rodeo Daredevils” taught me that Texas has no child endangerment laws.
“Johnny At The Fair” taught me that abandoning your child is not only okay, but encouraged.
“Circus On Ice” and “Here Comes The Circus” both taught me that circuses are joyless, evil places.
“Hired” taught me that you should listen to your dad, no matter if he swats at elves and wears napkins on his head.
“What To Do On A Date” taught me what a dweeb I was back in high school. No wonder girls avoided me.
“The Truck Farmer” taught me that every bite I take of my vegetables is stained with the blood of countless underpaid laborers.
“Body Care And Grooming” taught me that the human body is a disgusting, filthy thing covered in oil, sweat, dead skin, and bacteria.
“Cheating” taught me that nothing you do is wrong unless you get caught. Then your life is ruined forever.
“The Last Clear Chance” taught me that police officers are harbingers of death. If you see one, hide and hope his gaze does not fall upon you.
“Design For Dreaming” taught me that GM thought the party would never end.
“A Date With Your Family” taught me that I never want to have kids. EVER!
“Uncle Jim’s Dairy Farm” taught me that parents who leave their kids at farms over the summer should be thrown in prison.
“Young Man’s Fancy” taught me…um…uh…
What was “Young Man’s Fancy” about again?
“Keeping Clean And Neat” taught me there is a fine line between cleanliness and OCD.
“Out Of This World” taught me that the souls of bread delivery men are the most fought over souls between heaven and hell. Might be because bread is mentioned in the bible so much.
“The Days Of Our Years” taught me never to work for the railroad. Its full of clutzes, old feeble men and thousands of ways to die horribly.
“Assignment: Venezuela” taught me that Venezuela is our dear friend and things will always be good between our countries.
Yep.
Nothing will ever spoil the relationship.
Nothing.