Well, yes, he is.
In the Amazing Colossal Episode Guide, Paul Chaplin says he actually learned something useful from a hygiene short the show riffed (“Keeping Clean and Neat” from episode 613).
Of it, he writes, “I especially appreciated the short’s recommendation that one should clip one’s toenails after taking a shower, because the nails are softer then.”
So what other useful gems have we learned from the shorts? Keeping a budget the Ben Franklin way? Telephones of the future will be all that AND a bag of chips? The truck farmer keeps us knee-deep in beta carotene throughout the winter?
I’d like to see a discussion about how shorts have contributed to better MSTie living.
For one thing, I learned never to make light of BOOIIIINNGGG! And it’s a lesson that has served me well.
I also think some of those budgeting ideas in “Money Talks” are pretty smart, even if an imaginary fat guy with gout is explaining them to me.
How about you?
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Well, “Assignment: Venezuela” and “Progress Island, U.S.A.” taught me more about Venezuela and Puerto Rico than I ever learned in school. “Century 21 Calling” taught me that the Seattle World’s Fair must’ve been a great place to visit and “Design for Dreaming” taught me that there were some really snazzy looking cars in the 1950’s.
And I learned from “Is This Love?” that Romulans believe in long engagements, while “Days of Our Years” and “Last Clear Chance” showed me that I’m in constant danger of getting horribly killed by everything in the world, and “Uncle Jim’s Dairy Farm” taught me nothing because I used to spend my summers working on a dairy farm.
A Date With Your Family was the very first thing friends used to recruit me, so from that short I learned that I loved this show.
Also, that emotions are for ethnic people.
Weenie roast, boys and girls, Weenie roast….
Never, ever drive with your butt cheeks!
Dammit, people, you’ve all cited the very things I was gonna say I’d learned from the shorts! Oh, wait…X is for existential dilemma…
I learned that Joel and company have a issue with short-term memory loss (“The Truck Farmer”). They comment on the truck where the beans were being collected (“Oh, the great Hank gets to work on the truck..”) and then toward the end of the short it’s “Has anyone seen a truck yet?”
I also learned that you can make a pig look good with talcum powder and that I’m eternally grateful that I never joined the 4-H or Future Farmers even if they do serve fried chicken (“A Day At the Fair”).
I learned that spending a summer on a farm is a great way to build up your biceps
so you won’t be humiliated in phys ed in the Fall.
Oh, and if you fall into the hay in the barn:
“WATCH OUT FOR SNAKES!”
People like you better if you’re pretty.
This is actually a very real thing for me. Sometimes I’ll be watching one of the more educational shorts that have actual information in there and I’ll be learning something and finding myself not paying attention to the riffs. That’s particularly true with Chicken of Tomorrow, where I did not know that baby chicks could survive days without food after they hatch. I think the shorts work better for me when there is more zany and absurd stuff going on or the subject matter is more ridiculous, like in Robot Rumpus or Rifftrax’s More Dangerous Than Dynamite.
I learned that High School Student Councils in the ’50s held their representatives to higher moral standards than the US government ever has.
Count me in as another viewer who learned a great deal about budgeting from “Money Talks”. It came along at just the right time, too, as I saw it for the first time right around a period in my life when I was having some severe financial troubles and was really worried about what I was going to do with my money.
I learned to look.
Why study industrial arts?
Because you’re bad at math.
I learned that Life After Death consists of B-actors on sparsely decorated soundstages suffused with dry ice fog micromanaging random and inexplicable aspects of people’s lives.
Oh, and skin sucks.
I learned that man is a feeling creature…. wait, that’s not a short!
I learned to have illegitimate children.
I also found out that Bob, although anal, is a better person than me. He’s got a new car and everything!
I learned that tweaking one’s nipples allows you to fly.
I learned that the fair is held on the fairgrounds.
“She-ing” is the correct pronunciation of skiing.
We do “the knee test” aka knee rotations at my martial arts classes, it’s easy to laugh at, but still, a legit warm-up for when you’re gonna kick Thai pads.
Although considerably less ugly, I’ve often found myself telling pedestrians that “The diagonal of an intersection triangle is the shortest route to the hospital.”
Corny, but effective. :)
I learned that anything you did in the 50s, as long as it didn’t upset any adults, was perfectly fine. So you could ravage the Everglades all you wanted, but try speaking up at dinner, and watch out!
Also, I learned to never point an acetylene torch at anyone’s eyes (let alone keep it there for seconds).
I also learned that Puerto Rico was, in fact, a complete and total fabrication of the Quinn/Martin Production Company. Gambling!
I took a welding class recently, and the safety video I had to watch wasn’t that much different from the “gentle pressure” one. Good advice, then and now.
The marriage one was silly, but had some good advice, especially about money (“it’s important to have more than enough to just get by”).
From all of the shorts, I learned that every woman loves being in the kitchen, and if she doesn’t, she just needs some fancy new appliances.
Things I learned from Rifftrax shorts:
Most insurance claims in construction work could be avoided if the machines weren’t geared to instantly go ape**** on whatever’s in the loader as soon as you turn the key.
In the fifties, if a mother of two children died, the elder daughter would take up all mothering responsibilities. (Presumably, if the elder child had been a son, but would have been given up for adoption.)
Porcupines would eat nothing but salt if they were allowed to!
For quality, freshness, and flavor, you can’t beat pork that was shipped across several states with the temperature control technology of 60 years past.
GIVE GEORGE SOME MORE BEANS
I learned the Barbara Ann Scott=grrrr!
And the Rifftrax shorts have been pretty educational. I’ve learned:
*That your typical high school has hundreds of kids who can’t read.
*That I may live in Laramie, Wyoming. Or in Charleston, South Carolina. Or in Tuscon, Arizona. Or in Philadelphia. Or in…
*That gas station attendants will gift you with alarm clocks if you show up at their station and act like a moron.
*That Bob Crane could drop by your short and babble half-coherent sentences about “patriotism” without creeping everybody out.
*That your typical newlywed has no clue how to cream the butter.
*That if I don’t understand what is being told, I should ask a question big and bold.
*That all of the prostitutes and strippers in Seaview dress like old pictures of your great-aunt.
*That if a dweeb in high trousers hangs out in front of a synagogue, he’s probably a Nazi-wannabe.
*That shrill little pipsqueaks could lay down the law about traffic safety and no one would think twice about obeying him.
*That Band Leader Kay Keiser just isn’t very bright.
*That most people need to be told by a disembodied voice that seatbelts are a good idea.
And there’s so much more…
I think of that diagonal intersection thing every weekday because that how I cross the street when I walk to work. It’s 6am so there’s no cars around but it still feels wrong because of that short.
I could have sworn we’ve done this one already. ?:-)
I have always said that people need to always ‘keep right’ while walking through halls or anywhere a lot of people are. It just makes sense that if you stay to the right, you’ll rarely walk into anybody, nor they into you.
Apparently this has always been taught, as evidenced from an old elementary school short I saw (I believe it might have been a rifftrax and not an mst3k short, but I can’t remember which).
I’m guessing I was probably taught this in elementary school as well, since we were shown many educational films in those days. It probably stayed somewhere deep in my subconcious and that’s why I had the belief in the first place.
It’s obviously been forgotten, because these days people wander aimlessly all over the place. It’s even become rare for people to obey clearly marked ‘in’ doors and ‘out’ doors in stores. I think that may be mainly because people can’t read very well either.
I think it should be a rule that if someone is coming out while you are going in to an ‘in’ door (or vice versa), it is okay to greet them with a very hard punch to the head.
Oh, and – trains are blameless, holy creatures.
From a couple Rifftrax shorts I learned how much children enjoy domestic violence (Santa Clause Punch and Judy). And Courtesy Counts a Lot taught me that there is no god, not a single one, just a devilish poorly animated void awaiting us all, with that horrible thing with the omelet around its neck poised to treat us to an eternity of unholy
(but courteous) torture. But at least I now know that witches can be thwarted with courtesy.
From Snow Thrills I learned that if you pronounce skiing as ‘she-ing’ you are full of skit.
And also that if you are going out with squishy Judy you better double bag it (possibly my favorite joke ever).
I learned that Santa shouldn’t have been too open about his feelings for poor Rudolph. I also learned that there is such a thing as beard completer and some people need it badly.
To avoid squishy girls that also have the reds.
im sooooo greatful ;-) for springs.
I learned that Ross Allen is an evil bastard who likes to torment small animals and hang around with his “boyfriend” Ted Husing and also Emo Phillips in a dress. I also learned that when girls are given engagement rings they have to take a 5 pound potty.
I learned the power of specialty breads
I learned that first you get the car, then you get the kitchen, then you get the woman.
Families don’t have daughters… they have maids!
I learned to appreciate my parents, although I was never courageous enough to find out what all the yelling was about…oh, wait, thats probably a good thing!
#76: We have, but I’m going to follow Farmland’s lead and move on to Rifftrax shorts:
1) The knuckles on your hand are a great way to remember the length of each month.
2) If eggs became sentient, they’ll all wear odd and meaningless felt icons.
3) It’s all right to date many girls before “going steady.” In fact, it’s preferred.
4) People once tied frogs to their bedsteads with string.
5) Owls can talk but quetzals can’t.
6) Once you have a baby, you can never draw cartoons again. Ever. And your husband isn’t allowed to go to law school.
7) Kids go crazy for Puccini, jazz, and old time kinetoscopes.
8) Wild lions ate all the kangaroos in America.
And many more…
I learned not to change a tire with my face.
If you give a man a break you will end up in the kitchen baking a cake.
A sun hat usually is just a sun hat.
Girls who undress in the shower are naughty, so naughty they are.
I learned that I never want the ghost of Ben Franklin to visit my bed room.
That organizing a Jr. Rodeo is a suitable punishment for any offense and on the same note: NEVER CROSS OLD-TIMER BILLY SLATER!
Also learned more than I ever cared to know about springs from the diabolical Coily and his doughy convert.
What I learned from short subjects:
1) The circus and ice are two bad things that go worse together.
2) There’s nothing more romantic than a gut-shot fawn.
3) When rubber bands suddenly spring out of sight it is a shocking phenomenon to teenagers thinking about marriage. “Where did it go!?!”
4) If a small child wanders away from his parents at a fair filled with a hundred thousand people he’ll have a great adventure on his own and only meet nice people. Don’t we wish.
5) Springs really are essential to virtually every aspect of life.
6) Mr.B Natural is a man, no, a woman, no a man, no, a woman…???
7) The main characters in a short about posture will win the contest in the short about who has the best posture.
8) Society had to be less litigious in the days of Junior Rodeo Daredevils or no one would have felt comfortable running that event. The potential for serious injury looks pretty intense every time I watch that short.
9) It used to be okay to abuse and torment animals however seemed necessary to wrangle them to sell to zoos.
I learned that despite what what I learned watching A Date With Your Family that people these days are on the whole far more uptight about lots of fun things….and learning to play the trumpet carries the serious risk of permanently damaging the tender psyche of the young.
I learned that studying industrial arts probably really IS a good thing. But I’d never tell my friends that.
I learned that unemotional conversation at dinner helps to ease digestion.
Puerto Rico? Don’t bother!
Folks, I thought we had done this one too, but I couldn’t find it in the list, so I went for it. And you guys have been so funny it was worth it.
This was a winner whether or not it has been done before. Thanks, Sampo!
Culture! You can find it….but not in Puerto Rico!