| SOL Post 53 | 11/23/00 |
| SOL Post 52 | 10/15/00 |
| SOL Post 51 | 09/15/00 |
S.O.L. POST
==========================================================================
Volume 52
http://www.msties.com/
October 2000
Formerly The MSTies Anonymous Newsletter: News for the Obscure Convergence
==========================================================================
EPISODE 321 TOPS RHINO POLLS!
In This Issue
From the Poobah
"Jenny For Your Thoughts" by Kismetgirl88@hotmail.com
"Random Commentary from a 'Bot" by rockerbot27@yahoo.com
"Better 'Bots and Satellites" by bgibron@yahoo.com
November MST3K Schedule on SFC
Classifieds 3000
Disclaimers
From the Poobah
Hooray for midterms! Instead of studying for them like I should be and am
sending this newsletter out to you fine fellow MSTies. As it stands now, my
authentic, animated replica of Crow T. Robot is on pace to be completed on the
weekend prior to Halloween, so those of you in the Colorado chapter of our
club might find me in my blue jumpsuit carrying the Golden Spider Duck to
local costume contests if not on campus, provided I finish on time. Also on
that Friday before Halloween is our monthly screening on the campus of CSU
in Fort Collins, CO. Be sure to join us on Friday, October 27th at 7 PM in the
Lory Student Center Theater for MST3K Horror featuring 424 Manos: the Hands of
Fate and "Plan 9 From Outer Space"! In the meantime, keep the faith, and wave
your freak flag high!
"Jenny For Your Thoughts" by Kismetgirl88@hotmail.com
It is October and Halloween, one my favorite time of the year. Sure, you
don't get out of school or receive any presents, but you get to dress up.
Some people might take this for granted saying, "What's the big deal?" On a
normal day, if someone dresses in bunny costume with flippers, they get
strange looks, but it's okay on Halloween. Of all the days in year, Halloween
is the strangest. Vampires, ghosts, and other strange things can walk the
street and nobody would give it a second thought. Dressing up is one of the
things I love to do, as a kid and even now. In fact, dressing up can help us
feel like kids again, or at least it does in my case. Halloween gives us an
excuse to wear those clothes we don't get to or are not normally allowed to.
Psychologists say people dress up like their inner-selves on Halloween. This
is true most of the time: that shy girl can dress up like a sexy vampire or
that weak guy can become a super hero. Anything and everything is acceptable.
Now if you're having trouble thinking up an idea for a Halloween costume,
then I have some for you. First, dust off that old MST3K costume you have from
the last convention or Halloween. Either that, or you can make a new MST3K
costume. Find other MSTies and have fun getting people who have never seen
show to guess what you are. One bit of advice: don't go as Mr. B Natural if
you're going anywhere downtown. Think before you put on that costume. If you
don't want anything to do with MST3K, then just dress as your favorite TV or
movie star. Get a white wig, moustache, and a bucket from KFC and go as the
Colonel. Put a frame around your face and go as a painting. Put a robe and
towel around your head and go as someone that just got out the shower. Or just
get a bunch of old costumes, mismatch them, and come up with something new.
This is fun because people will identify you as any number of different
things.
If you don't have time to make a costume, here are some cheap and easy
costumes. Get some old clothes and go as person from that time period. Get
some those leaves out of your backyard to put on an outfit and go as leaf
pile. Draw a big, black goatee and indented eyebrows and go as evil version of
yourself. Get really dirty and go as Pig Pen from Charlie Brown. Tease your
hair, spray it, and put socks, underwear, and other pieces of clothing on an
outfit and go as static cling. A plus with this costume: you can cling to
anyone you think is cute. Or tease your hair, spray it (yes again), and put a
yellow streak down your back and go as a coward. Or you could do same thing
and dress like cat, then you would be a scaredy-cat. Put your clothes on
inside out and mismatched, and go as someone who got dressed in the dark. Get
some of those glow-in-tne-dark stars, put them on a black outfit, and go as
the universe. Or do that and add a clock to become time and space.
These are just few ideas. Make some up on your own; just dress up and have
good time. Rent some scary movies if dressing up isn't your thing. Scare some
older kids, not the young ones. You know, the ones that egg houses and stuff.
See you next month.
"Random Commentary from a 'Bot" by rockerbot27@yahoo.com
Ah, yes, the Halloween season, one of my favorite times of the year. I've
always been a big fan of the supernatural and what better way to celebrate
that by dressing up as one to get candy? But that was sarcasm. I was more
entertained on Friday the Thirteenth. I had rented the whole Friday the 13th
series and watched them in the apartment above our pharmacy into midnight. I
wondered if the 'bots on the SOL ever participated in this celebration of the
"dreaded" day. We never heard much of their Friday the 13th/Halloween
celebrations. I'm here to offer a guess.
During Joel's reign: I suppose he spent most of October trying to explain
Halloween to the terrible three. I suppose it would've gone a little like
this.
Joel: Well, you see, back on earth, kids will go out during Halloween night in
costumes and go around the neighborhood for candy at night.
Servo: Go around for neighborhood at night? Wouldn't the parents get worried?
I mean, they don't even want kids to sell their school fundraiser stuff
door to door.
Joel: Well, you see, it's a tradition. Every year the media would start hyping
it up and candy companies will start running double time producing candy
a metric ton a second. Then kids would get excited about it and talk
about which houses give the most candy and the other kids, in peer
pressure, would beg their parents until they let them go.
Crow: And the neighbors would actually give out the candy for free?
Joel: Yeah. You see, when you don't give out candy, you leave your porch off
so kids won't bother you. But sometimes, the older kids that are more
into pranks than the candy would toilet paper the house or throw
undesired items, preferably rotting vegetables, at the unknowing house.
So usually it's just for your own safety to give out candy if you're
home.
Crow: What would you dress up as?
Joel: Well, usually the most popular is B-Movie monsters...
Servo: Hey!
Joel: TV characters, superheroes, or just other junk. Right now I heard the
most popular miscellaneous costume is a hobo.
Servo: TV characters? Do you suppose anybody would dress up as us? Maybe
somebody would don a red jumpsuit?
Joel: Oh, I don't know.
Ah, fun. That would be kinda cute, knowing that with their obsession with
costume parties, they would dress up for Halloween and have a party. I don't
really know.
In Mike's time, things would've gone a little differently. The 'Bots, in
their Halloween experience would probably spend more time playing cruel tricks
on Mike or maybe making a haunted house in the Satellite to try to scare the
be jeepers out of him. Actually, they may do that with Joel too, but this is
all theory. The Mads may perform some awful experiment on them or Peal and the
gang may find themselves... Well, their castle is enough of a haunted house
and chances are if they found another one they may like it, with the exception
of Bobo clinging to the Brain Guy. It's kinda fun to think about it, anyway.
Well, gotta dash. My videos are overdue. This has been Lillian Dakota,
signing off.
"Better 'Bots and Satellites" by bgibron@yahoo.com
Vol. 3, Issue 3
Houses of the Unholy: Fear and Loathing in Fee Simple
There is a strange ritual that occurs every Saturday morning in the sin-
filled and gin-soaked alcoves of suburbia, a ritual more tawdry than any wife-
swapping drinks party or multi-cultural bin and purge water sports session. As
12-year-old scotch and 6-week-old leftovers are expelled from the body at the
speed of intestinal light, and Bloody Mary's and moribund sloshings of oat
bran are reingested, mom and pop, little brother and the girl dad keeps in the
basement for 'experimentation' all wander from the security of the family tomb
and venture out into the bright sunlight of the real world to try and
rediscover their Cro-Magnon tool builder roots. Places like Home Depot, Lowe's
and Frank's Fantabulous Futon Factory see herds of do it yourselfers and try
as I mighters and would be better off hiring a contractor and getting drunkers
floating their pristine aisles filled with cement valances and faux grass
carpeting in a mad dash towards the lock washers. For it is within these
hollowed halls of home improvement, these pantheons to plaster and temples to
templates that pre-heart attack father and post menopausal mother rediscover
their need to beat things, other than their children, with hammers and
crowbars.
It is like a disease, this need to reduce to rubble and rebuild one's
sitting room in a Flemish frightmare fashion, complete with paisley covered
chaise lounge and about 8 gallons of Spackle. No matter how trendy, despite
what people in Milan, Paris and Detroit think, nothing good can ever come out
of a hint of silver paint and a large dollop of plumber's putty. There is
something wrong with one's desire to reupholster, an evil inherent in the
desire to create faux finishes and roll plastic wrap across freshly painted
mauve walls. While some cultures may value the ability to make imitation
Chinese tiles out of 120 year old wooden floors, using model airplane paints
and a few lessons in personal shame and flamboyance, one should really shy
away from the inkling towards animal print wall accents and a throw pillow
made from a bunch of cancelled checks.
And yet, like lemmings to the lawn care center, these d.i.y. dipsticks
continue their march toward fashion oblivion as they buy yards of purple pig
patterned prints and drape woolen sheep matting over computer tables and
declare it art, or some other word with 'art' in it. Take a ride down the road
of your own hometown and see if you don't spy some foppish fixer-upper running
a bead of caulk across an old broken down ironing board and calling it kitsch.
Watch a bedraggled house-frau, too busy during the week to feed her family a
meal that does not come from a nuclear power plants frozen food service, but
able to spend untold weekend hours gold leafing a plaster of Paris bust of
Winston Churchill to go with the personally distressed and rather depressing
oak china hutch that she has magically transformed into a bidet. And see if
you can't spy the children, oh the poor illiterate dears, as parental units
spray various and sundry chemical compounds all over themselves and their
rooms in an attempt to combine Dr. Seuss and Frank Lloyd Wright into a vision
of adolescent trauma a butt-load of future therapy could only hope to cure.
For you see, these cottage craftsmen, these weekend war-painters have got
it all wrong. There is something wonderful, neigh, brilliant about the rot of
decay and the angle of dilapidation. Instead of repairing an old homestead,
they should be letting it fall, like E. Usher's personal adobe, into a
crevasse, covering it with a tarp, and calling it the world's address. One
need look no further than the fanciful dwellings and desiccated domiciles of
some of the folks from MST3K to see that one can indeed be gothically chic,
and still not spend anything other than the $20 it costs for a tetanus shot at
the local clinic. "Better 'Bots and Satellites" has scanned the blueprints of
several episodic squatter-doms, and has come up with a few examples of what
residential make over miracles can occur with a whole lot of patience, and a
few eons of wind erosion and rain damage.
Hoping to recreate that ante-bellum, Southern belle gone to Hell, sure we
used to own slaves, but now only their ghosts haunt our plantation look for
your one room loft in the middle of the fish-packing district? Look no further
than the wonderful fright funhouse frequented by Eric and his mentally
confused bride Jenni in episode 912, Screaming Skull. Let's set the scene.
Amidst stoic columns and broad angular overhangs, a bland coat of whitewash
covers warped wooden walls. Windows, purporting to let light and air in, seem
instead to suck the living breath out of all that pass by. Ivy and bushes
seems to crawl, like sickness, along the façade in patterns that spell out
your fate in devilish pictograms. And that's just the outside. Thrown in a
duck pond with a tendency toward skull bobbing and you have a half-acre from
Hades, perfect for a leisurely lawn party, or a lynching.
A further glance around the gangrenous grounds finds another must have for
those about to rot; Mikey, a slimy and sinewy gardener who lives in the
hothouse just off the drowning pool, meaning that all of his bodily aromas and
funk have that just baked and humidified tinge to them. Nothing spells 'I
love Bauhaus (the band, not the house of style)' more than an unkempt drifter
type who looks likely to kill, if only he could figure out which end of the
knife goes in where. He adds that necessary sense of foreboding that only a
pair of stained workpants and the creepy scent of ammonia, mixed with vinegar
and Tiperillos can create. Just like when your Aunt Alicia comes over to
visit, permeating the air with a reek reminiscent of fish, feminine hygiene
spray and the 6 packs of Pall Malls she inhales through her human blowhole
like a nicotine dependant dolphin.
But it is the interior where this doom and gloom rooming housing really
owns up to its odiousness. Rooms are furnished with leaves, twigs, and
occasional human crania. Furniture is on the sparse side, leaving plenty of
space for running, sprinting, jogging, loping and otherwise getting the heck
out of the way of the plethora of spooks, spirits, and oily men that seem to
frequent its heinous halls. Like the setting for a Nine Inch Nails video as
envisioned by Marilyn Manson by way of the rotting corpse of B. Smith and
Martha Stewart, this house with haunted shrill truly lives up to the hoary old
cliché that home is where the heart is, as long as said blood pump has been
ripped from its victim's chest and lays beating on the putrid floorboards,
viscous and maroon blood spraying the walls in a pattern that interior
designers only hope of recreating with sponges, oatmeal and an over-inflated
sense of self...
Looking for something with a few more amenities and a little less menace?
Then try the wonderful way station of Dr. Eric Vornoff in 423 Bride of the
Monster. Only someone as decrepit and addicted to formaldehyde as Bela Lugosi
could call a place loaded with a cheesy cardboard lab, stock footage of an
octopus and hot and cold running (and I do mean 'running') Tor Johnson comfy
and cozy. Here, among the walls that don't quite sit straight or stable, and
rooms which seem more triangular (almost 'set like') than square, lives a
wrinkled old mummy with bony girl arms who stinks like an elephant's butt and
his hulky, bulky man servant, even though the floor plan looks like it could
accommodate neither. Tor's Lobo is constantly bouncing off the door jams and
window treatments like a lard filled pinball trapped in one of those Bally
table atrocities from 1965, where you light up all the midgets to get a chance
at hitting the Queen of Spades for a free turn.
Not that Dr. Vornoff is any better, living out his Nazi dream of a race of
super humans in a flophouse atmosphere more closely related to the
accommodations his cronies developed for their Jewish 'pals' than Wagnerian
halls of Valhalla his mini-mustached comrade was contemplating. Still, gotta
love the bi-valve in the basement. Nothing says 'home' quite like a squid in
the rumpus room. Kids giving you a hassle? Throw 'em to the octopus.
Houseguests overstaying their welcome? Give 'em a sample of the in-house
calamari platter. Computer printer has run out of ink? Hit old squidward up
for some personal gravy and complete that download of Cindy Margolis, complete
with accompanying scratch and sniff action.
But it's the location that makes Pueblo Lugosi so inviting. Located near a
river that looks like a stream and acts like a wading pool created from a
soiled oilcloth and a hose, there is literally seconds of pleasure one can
derive from a dip in the old swimming moist spot. The landscaping runs the
gamut from leaf-less oak to barren willow to balding poplar. To the north is
Mount Airy, or maybe Vornoff is just referring to his pet name for Lobo after
the hunky meats daily meal of cabbage, borsht and a double Clamato and vodka.
They do reside close to an avalanche prone hillside, with large, if rather
light looking boulders threatening to bruise your instep if they happen to
bowl you over. Oh yeah, there is also a terrific view of the local YWCA.
Still not sure what you want? Confused between modern and modest, high
class or white trash? Then look no further than the Field and Streaming
Videodromes of Dr. Ted Nelson and his wife, or the stockyard as personal
stockade of Nell and her redneck hick movie going beau in 704 Incredible
Melting Man. Here we have two differing living mentalities; one speaks to a
doctor's desire to have macramé and saltines within arms length, the other
suggesting that keeping incontinent livestock in one's home creates the most
interest wall treatments that a fey British interior decorator could only hope
to achieve. For Dr. Nelson and his significant other, life is just one diet
pill after sleeping aide after truss adjustment. For Nell, nothing beats a
little slap and tickle after a Jim Varney film festival and a smearing of
ketchup on the fortifications and doorknobs, just like them kinky folks in the
big city do.
In this one motion picture we have all the do's and don't of habitat
enhancement. Some examples:
Still, it is important to note that, in the end, the only home not invaded
by a puss dripping and filthy human abscess is the Brady Bunch meets Friday
the 13th domicile of Dr. Nelson Riddle and his non-flatbread concerned
concubine. Unless you consider Gen. Perry, at which time you may have wished
the incredibly damp Steven West had mucked up your 'his and her' towel set,
not the dyspeptic and constipated man of the armed forces. Still, as Nell
waited for the inevitable and watched as the condiment covered commandeer came
at here in a onimonopeadiac manner of menace, she could rest assured that
amongst her urine soaked floors and walls and resin encrusted couches and
chair coverings, there was not a single sexed up old lady to be found.
So, still want to take a shot at re-papering the cabinet shelves or
painting over the bloodstains from last night's domestic situation? Well then,
be careful and heed the advice of "BB&S". Look at the hapless folk residing in
the Casa de Diablo Skull Escreamito. They tried everything to make a go of it,
from frilly frocks and army cots to armoires filled with bones, and at least
50% of the couple ended up in Mickey's personal frog filled Jacuzzi. Or what
of Lobo and Dr. V? Still hoping to make a go of it, even though the once
virile and now viral doctor is a quadriplegic with little or no use of his
limbs or organs, and just no good to Lobo once the annual Rainbow Pride
Festival comes around. Still, one can find the lumbering lothario fluffing
pillows and companions as he keeps up appearances while Eric the near dead
fills his colostomy bag.
Worse yet, you could be like Ted Nelson stripped of his medical degree when
the State Board discovered that 'aaddgka' was not really a valid diagnosis for
ringworm, and stuck with a logy wife who can't quite get over the fact that
her hyper-sexed octogenarian mammy was sucked like lemons while trying to pick
same by a man half her age and body mass. Better still to be Nell, hunkered
down in the corner of her home, bong in hand, trying to forget she ever
married a man who liked Foghat or ate Sweet Sue Chicken and Dumplings cold
from the can. As the smoke moves about her head, she envisions a den, filled
with oversized pillows and bean bag chairs, black light posters of Jimi
Hendrix and that really high dude saying 'stoned again' accenting the wire
cable roll end tables, lava and glitter lights shimmering in the purple haze.
But then the image of that inebriated cartoon mug melting into a pile of
goo flashes her back to the polluted linoleum floor she is now sitting on, and
she wonders, well, just how did she get here? How did she find herself in a
handyman's waking nightmare, foundation in need of de-cracking and roof (as
well as thighs) in need of re-shingling? Where is the imported leather coach
and black onyx entertainment unit, complete with quadraphonic stereo and
Magnavision video game system (with Pong!)? How did she find herself with a
half eaten husband lying next to a half eaten frozen potpie? Then she
remembers the bottle of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill wine and the Uriah Heap/
Van DerGraff Generator/ Moby Grape all day jam-a-thon at the Circle Pines
Motor Speedway. Time to flick the Bic, relax and float downstream. Come to
think of it, this place could do with a couple of plasticine porters. Or maybe
a looking glass sky.
November MST3K Schedule on SFC
North America
{All times are Eastern and tentative}
11/04/00 - 09:00 am - 1003 Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders
11/11/00 - 09:00 am - 0820 Space Mutiny
11/18/00 - 09:00 am - 0910 Final Sacrifice
11/25/00 - 09:00 am - PRE-EMPTED FOR "BIONIC EVER AFTER"
Classifieds 3000
[This space for rent. Free.]
Disclaimers
All material written by club members in this publication does not necessarily
reflect the views or opinions of the staff of MSTies Anonymous. Endorsement of
above publicized activities not operated by MSTies Anonymous should not be
implied. Published material is subject to editing only for spelling, grammar,
clarity, and formatting; other changes are not made without express written
consent of the author.
Mystery Science Theater 3000, its characters and situations are copyright 2000
Best Brains, Inc. This publication is not meant to infringe on any copyrights
held by Best Brains, the Sci-Fi Channel, or their employees.
"Gizmonics" and all related elements are copyright and trademark Joel Hodgson.
This publication is not meant to infringe on any copyrights held by him, so
please do not sue us.
© 2000 MSTies Anonymous
The Poobah mstanon@msties.com
Jet Jaguar kret0419@blue.UnivNorthCo.edu
Zen Psycho zenpsycho@yahoo.com
"What's in the pipe, Santa?"