If you have owned any of the collections from Rhino or Shout, you may have noted, but perhaps rushed past, the introductory screen. This young lady has, among other things, made them an art form. She freely admits that her efforts may be perfect for our “Ward E” section.
So, as you enjoy her work, my question is: have you encountered a little corner of MST3K fandom that you would like to share? If you have, please do.
Also, keep those Discussion Thread suggestions coming to msampo at aol dot com.
) to help our users cope with "trolls" and other commenters whom they find annoying. Go to our
Cheese and Crackers. That is a lot of time and effort, for sure.
Regarding one MST3K obsessor:
Could either Sampo or Erhardt please block Eric J. from these boards?
His meanness, pettiness, and trolling have made this website unpleasant.
He has made discussions here veer off course to deal with his near doctoral dissertations of his proverbial navel gazing about his resentment, misogyny, and obsessiveness about whomever infuriates him, whether it’s one of the cast members of RiffTrax or MST3K, or certain members here.
Sometimes he just spouts gibberish to make a spectacle of himself.
This is MST3Kinfo.com, not “The Original Eric J. Ramblings” site.
Everyone else here is nice, cordial, and fun.
As someone who actually read past the header and NOTICED that the discussion was about the Shout disk menus (and odd but impressively thorough fan-dedications thereto):
I don’t think I’d actually seen the City Limits menu until now, before it got an exhibit. (Of course, not owning Box 36 might’ve had something to do with it, but…)
Frankly, some of the later cut-and-paste menus had been getting a little…puzzling, with non-quotes and odd “stories” that don’t tap much into the episode. And let’s not even get into “Agent from HARM”, which, like the episode, seemed more interested in the S8 Subplot.
Sort of like the way Pixar lost interest in doing those “outtake” end-credits after a while, after fans started expecting them and got too wrapped up in sub-fandoms of those over the movie.
Like motorcycle-warrior Tom & Crow, Shout should try changing the pitch lineup, and doing a few more stylized parody menus, on their next….er, on their next….aw, crap! :(
Wellllll….now that you mention it, I did see something the other day that was quite fan obsessive in my humble opinion.
Whilst tooling around the interwebs, I stumbled on a site that takes their love of the original MST3K perhaps a bit too far…as they seemingly have recreated it!
I couldn’t believe my eyes! Yet here was a show that seemingly had some sort of budget because it looked better than most fan videos and homages. Obviously though they were excited and perhaps a bit nervous because the riffing was kinda fast.
Still they somehow got some bigger names to appear on this fan project and even Joel himself appears to approve!
Now, this tribute isn’t my cup of tea really, as I enjoy the actual show, still you gotta give these plucky kids credit for trying their best.
Here’s their website if you’re interested: https://www.mst3k.com
P.S. I think they’ve got some nerve having their online store charge that much for pint glasses!
Hey Sampo, thanks so much for posting my blogger featuring the menu ensembles, as I call them. But my dear, I am female. Please note that in future since I cannot abide another hybrid alien invasion. I had to give up hiding around in corn fields but I have been successful in keeping myself from being abducted. Thank you so much for all you do!
The genuine niceness of MSTies at the Rifftrax broadcasts.
I have as much fun with friends I never of at the broadcasts as watching the broadcasts. During the 20th anniversary screening, before the actual show when they were running snippets of the music, the entire audience starting singing with the recording of Frank; “Nummiiee Mufffinnnnn……COCO BUTTERRRR!!!!!!!”
It was 15 minutes before one show when a girl asked me if I would watch her things while whe went to the bathroom. I said “SURE!” and she left and offered to watch my things if I had to go which I did. I was a stranger, I’m in my 60s while she was college age, but she trusted me enough because we were fans. I go to the viewings not only to watch but to enjoy a good laugh with friends I never met. So if you’re ever at a showing in Concord North Carolina, I’m the old guy with the grey beard with the black MST3K shirt singing “Nummiiee Muffinnnn…..COCO BUTTERRRR!!!!!”
I have more than 100 to go…
Hi spideyman, I’ve never been to one of those shows and when the original series was on for a whole decade, I never watched much TV then as now, but when it was on, I’d watch. So I was never really an involved fan but I loved the shows anyway. And the craftmanship. I get to talk with other fans in a proboards forum, I’m there under the moniker as “DiscoMoonMusic” and they’re really into the whole mst3k, as well.
I’ve been working on my blogs for quite some time. So it’s starting to really come into shape. It’s finding the time to do this. I have had some help from Dave Long who created the menus for the discs and Wyn Hilty of the Annotated site, whose help has been very valuable.
I wanted to make another photo manip for my blog with Crow posing with C3P0 and Servo posing with R2D2 all standing next to the Satellite of Love with the Millennium Falcon docked on the top of it. But my vision, alas, was not possible since I don’t have photoshop and the manips you see on my blog are from 2005. Around that time. I did all those with windows PictureIt and Paint and a lot of splicing. So just as the menu ensembles are a lot of work, so were those!
Yes, Ward E! Sampo is right, you cannot turn back once there lol!
So many things that I could bring up — amazing cosplay, papering one’s wall with the little posters that come in the box sets, and so on. But I think I will sidestep this slightly to mention the not-quite-cult of Jackey Neyman Jones, who played little Debbie in Manos. I mean, in what world other than MST3K fandom could the child star of a horrible obscure movie make a name for herself FIFTY years later? She wrote a book about it (https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Up-Manos-Hands-Child/dp/1593939221), she appears at Comic Cons and other events, and so on. Best of all, while I can most certainly not claim her as an actual friend or acquaintance, she seems like a truly nice person who cares about her fans.
You shouldn’t be so hasty. He serves a useful purpose of sorts. Like Goofus in Highlights and other similar characters, he provides an example of how not to conduct yourself. So for all you kids out there, you should never emulate EricJ.
Here’s something along similar lines.
There’s a mysterious stranger here in southern coastal Maine who has an exquisite “MST3K” license plate. If you are out there somewhere, I’m the other, more anonymous, MSTie in town, the guy playing mandolin and third base . . .
My place of MST3K fandom (besides this wonderful website):
The “Faith’s Take” channel on YouTube.
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCLZMRy9IqmwBRLVRLKklMWw/playlists
This young woman is a fan of both MST3K (classic and new) and RiffTrax.
She posts reviews and lists of her favorite MST3K episodes and RiffTrax, sometimes with themes.
She’s bright, incisive, and funny, too.
Enjoy. :-)
Sitting Duck:
Eric J. isn’t a Goofus. He’s an attention seeking troll.
This website is one of the few that I can read and post with feeling and/or getting assaulted.
Except when Eric J. struts here.
If Sampo or Erhardt don’t want to block him, one of them can suspend him with a warning to stop his mean spiritedness and pettiness, or else.
And by giving him the attention he seeks, are you not contributing to the problem?
Back to the topic. I’ve always been a fan of those menu sketches on the Shout DVDs. The dedication needed to go through an episode to collect a bunch of disparate lines and stitch them together into something coherent is truly amazing.
I think I’m the only one who thought the riffing in Season 11 was the same pace as back in the day
Whoa! That is awesome! I didn’t know there was even a mock clip of them doing all that. Hilarious. Especially the part where Crow points out the language skills of one vs other. :D
Me too and that’s why I did the ensembles that I did, it was a bit difficult in some episodes to find all the lines and little sounds, and the Gamera collage was quite a task and not 100% complete either (as in the Zigra menu ensemble) but I put my sharp hearing to good use otherwise.
So, you generally feel “under fire” at almost every other website you post at, especially when they “assault” you with disagreements?
O-kayyy…? That would explain a few things. Obsessions, topic-appropriately enough, among them.
I love the IDEA of the menu sketches–Just that when there’s a true cult-classic quotable episode, and the sketch comes out as “Whoops, I dropped my pencil!” “Don’t bend over!” “Oh, I hate to shoot a butt like that…”, there’s that sense that the individual at Shout may have been doing this a bit too long. ;)
Eric J.:
Go to ew.com. See what the atmosphere is like there.
I recently praised the work of a well-known actress in the comments section.
Some jerk replied I should be sexually assaulted and shot in the face.
The moderators do nothing there, unless someone posts spoilers for a reality show.
Even though their alleged comments policy is “Keep it clean and don’t be mean.”
I wouldn’t wish that kind of assault on anyone.
Even you.
Kudos! to the subject of our WDT! From one obsessed fan to another, Excelsior!
I’m very sorry for going off-topic, but I just saw that today Oct 20, 2018, Tulsa played at Arkansas in college football. The final score was Tulsa 0, Arkansas 23. I shall watch Boggy Creek tonight.
Hooray!! They followed the cheerleaders plans and started winning!
Hi Eric, now that you mention it, some menus were kinda rushed, and the gentleman creating those wonderful menus is Dave Long. The reason why some may seem rushed or not that super is because he had to rush to meet deadlines and such. And I’m not sure but I think he also is the artist who created all those little movie posters that come with the dvd sets. So as you might imagine, he doesn’t get much sleep.
LOL I’m not into sports but here in Arkansas they are “hog” wild.
And kudos to all the people on YouTube who put together those great “best riffs of the episode” highlight reals: perfect for when you don’t have time to watch the whole thing but still need your MST fix. There’s a lot of other great stuff on YouTube, too: alternate stingers, top 5 lists, individual songs, “The Many Names of Dave Ryder”, “The Best of Mikey from Teenage Strangler”, etc. Most of the comments to these various vids are entertaining in their own right. So great to see MSTies use their obsessions for the common good!
Or an Ignore Button that actually works. The one here does not work once you leave the page, even if you don’t clear your cache etc. Other web sites have a working Ignore button and while I don’t understand the coding, surely someone could make it work here. At this point I would pay for it — I’m sick of a certain troll who has to ruin every single discussion. Want to talk about the latest Rifftrax? You know the troll will piss on it. Want to talk about Mary Jo or Bridget? Get ready for the misogyny, which I personally find extremely offensive. Seriously, Sampo, how many people have to be offended and/or leave your site for the troll to be banned?
A little corner of MST3K fandom that I like to share is Eternally Optimistic Reviews’s “Month of MST3K” although it turned out to be a lot more than a month, e.g.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa1GX1PirKs&t=50s
And several subsequent covering a range of topics like stingers, host segments, and which are the best movies movies given the MST treatment.
It comes from someone who didn’t watch it at first broadcast, so has a somewhat different sense of the show than someone who watched all the episodes in order from 101. She is someone who likes to dissect stories, so generally has good reasons why she has come to such conclusions. For example, why Manos is a great episode but not a good intro for a newbie.
Hi, yeah they had the same problem at some movie database site that sucks because it’s run by asshats who trolled thousands of people.
Anyway I doubt that would be a problem here but I agree that an Ignore Button should work systematically. I’m new here so I haven’t been involved in whatever this strange tiding is, but Mary Jo may play a silly evil character but in real life (according to what I’ve seen in interviews) she is one of the nicest people in the world. Just a sweetheart.
It’s all great stuff!
If you like your reviews long and detailed, Faith is going to be your cup of tea. I understand Commando Cody way more now than I ever did just from watching it.
Absolutely–Except I find the 10-15 min. “Highlight reels” are more perfect for folks who don’t watch the show and could use an MST3K fix:
On one of the movie discussion boards, folks will often mention watching one of the old Roger Corman or Robert L. Lippert epics without knowing the series or episode had ever existed…And if, for a rib, I like to point out that they weren’t the ONLY ones who found a need to heckle the movie, linking the fans’ YouTube highlight clip is a great way to give them a taste of what the movie got in the episode, without the Diehard MSTie’s belief that he must convert by the sword if he is to discuss the movie at all.
It’s the more dedicated fans who know the true essence of the show that it only takes a little of the series to hook new fans, and that you can win more new believers by giving them a few funny heckles out of nowhere, than by playing United Uber-Fanboy Army and shouting “Rowsdower!” in their faces.
If you need a free open source legitimate Photoshop replacement for your graphics use Gimp: https://www.gimp.org
Nackendara Teslar:
I wanted to make another photo manip for my blog with Crow posing with C3P0 and Servo posing with R2D2 all standing next to the Satellite of Love with the Millennium Falcon docked on the top of it. But my vision, alas, was not possible since I don’t have photoshop and the manips you see on my blog are from 2005. Around that time. I did all those with windows PictureIt and Paint and a lot of splicing. So just as the menu ensembles are a lot of work, so were those!
Yes, Ward E! Sampo is right, you cannot turn back once there lol!
I just came here to give you another “huzzah!” What you do is incredibly detailed and well-researched and also just a little bit crazy. Always a winning combo in my book!
Ah thank you!
The secret is, not much of a secret, but there are several factors that bring this. One is that I have very sharp hearing. I can hear little sounds that are buried in tracks and can usually separate over-imposed and dominant sounds like in music, and in speech. And since childhood I have studied languages, and their ancient beginnings so that made it possible to comprehend the human voice and sound no matter what part of the world. So I had this ability to fine tune my hearing and as always, whenever hiking and being out in nature, I’d listen. Just listening.
Two, at first viewing the box set I got and watched, I was thrilled at how the menus were done. So for a year or so, I’d get more of the Shout Factory boxed sets and watch the discs, and in the back of my mind I’d think and wonder if they somehow had a work sheet of where all the sounds and lines were in the menu from the episodes. At first I felt it would be a Herculean task if there wasn’t. I searched for any sign of such things. Nothing. Then I made up my mind, I’d do this. Who better than someone with my abilities? Hercules’ strength is part of my cosmic matter so, I decided I’d just go ahead with it.
Three, I’d have to watch some of the discs several times to pinpoint all the bits. But while this may sound tedious, I was actually much of the time sewing or cutting fabric or doing something else, the only thing I placed all my attention on for the 30th time of certain episodes was my listening to them playing on the TV in the background. I have a sewing room (office/nintendogame/booklibrary) so the TV sits next to my sewing machine. So I’d do work like that but all my hearing devoted to listening to just MST3K episodes and the menus. Tuning out the machine if I was doing stitches. In otherwords I was multitasking.
Then after I knew where all the bits were, I literally committed it to memory of what I’d seen/heard up to that point. All the episodes I had went though. This was before I decided to use my Movie Reviews blog to host all this so I just remembered where all the stuff was. Then I found to my delight that many of the menus and whole episodes were right there on YT, then I knew how I’d arrange it to simple entry after entry. And voila!
I had already been a mstie of sorts. I’ve always found the show to be so original and different while using movies already made and re-inventing them. These are the ideals and connections of human experience that’s right up my alley. As I have other blogs where I use songs that were already recorded and made my own songs of them. But all the poetry and the sci-fi thing I’m working on – that is all me. Anyway, I’m amazed at the hits my blog has gotten!
That Sampo really is Sampo and he helped bring me some of his abundant audience! I am humbled and so very grateful. What a great guy!
Not as impressive, but while I absolutely cannot pick out voices as well as you can (conversations in a crowded room just becomes white noise to me), I do have a preternatural ability to pick out cowbell in a song, even in noisy restaurants. More cowbell! I credit/blame Saturday Night Live.
Your process is very interesting. Thanks for sharing!
And welcome to the boards!
Thanks Bartcow for the welcome. I had read through here before in the past, but I could never keep up! So you can pick out cowbell? Is that like the actual cowbell that is used in a lot of folk and country songs of old? Is that the reference in your name?
You know, I can tune things out to where a crowded room becomes white noise too, but I can focus my hearing on individual conversations no matter how low they’re speaking and while some have suggested that I was born with the ability, I’d like to think I worked on it. At the very least, I honed a skill that I was born with. But yeah I have a very sharp ear.
Okay now you’ve gotten me curious, tell me more about this cowbell.
The cowbell as a percussion instrument. It’s in a lot of rock songs in the 70s and 80s as well, for some reason. I made a whole comp CD once of songs that featured cowbell. But I’m a music nerd, so it wasn’t that hard.
The name is actually a bit of an inside joke that’s way too boring for here, but to sate your curiosity, here it goes: I was walking through Wal-Mart with some friends in the late 90s when I was in my 20s. Saw a cute stuffed cow and started playing with it and doing a goofy voice going “Hi, my name is Bart. I’m a cow. Can we be friends?” Just being weird to amuse myself. The name “Bart” came out of thin air. I went back later and he was still there, so I bought him. Fast forward to the even later 90s when everybody needed an email and an online handle, and I wanted something that wasn’t already taken (hated having a bunch of random numbers after my name), and thus “bartcow” was born.
I still have him. He’s in my cubicle, in fact.
Also, I think I might have a touch of ADD or something, because even when I try to pick out voices in a crowd, I can’t seem to single them out, so it becomes this melange of words that my brain just can’t handle so it turns it to a roar so I don’t go insane. I just nod and smile a lot.
Okay now you have to tell me the playlist of the CD you made! I gotta know what songs had cowbell in them. As a music fan myself, I’m right there with you on storing any lists or trivia in my head. If you think the MST3K force is strong with me, you should see my ABBA collection and it predates MST3K by a decade. I was only a little kid in the 1970s and my life was dreary (in my situation) and when I first heard ABBA, man, I was hooked. I have a youtube channel that only has like 13 or 14 fanmade videos I’ve done but the majority, you can tell I’m a fan. And the programs I used to create the videos were standard and some of the videos aren’t that clear, it could all be much better but I lack the tools to make them professionally worthy. But such as it is, my channel is a collection of just what kind of creative juices flow in my head. I wonder if any of those songs have cowbell in them?
Oh, I gave all those cds to friends. Didn’t think to keep one for myself. Off the top of my head, I know Don’t Fear the Reaper (BOC), Daft Punk Is Playing at My House (LCD Soundsystem), Down on the Corner (CCR), Rock of Ages (Def Leppard), and Nightrain by Guns N Roses all have prominent cowbell. The LCD song even has a cowbell solo!
Don’t remember there being any Abba, but maybe I just haven’t heard it yet.
LOL I’m thinking ABBA never did. But being as how they did everything, every style and experimented a lot that maybe they did and there are a number of unreleased tracks that it would seem at least one of those unfinished/unreleased songs had used it. And really I was wondering if any of the songs (ABBA and other artists as well) I used for my TheMuze12 channel had used cowbell. They are The Day Before You Came, The Winner Takes It All, Slowly, If You Could Read My Mind, Where Is My Mind, Total Eclipse of the Heart, Si Demain and Dancing Queen.
There’s someone who keeps lists of all the movies and songs that feature a vocoder. I’ve seen those lists. It’s definitely exhaustive.
My list of cowbell songs is pretty much confined to Spike Jones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkq2ZMjC170
Oh goodie! It also comes with chickens!