Posted in friends, monsters, consumer culture, psychotronic, kitsch, humanism, Christianity, movies, retro, lowbrow, C. S. Lewis, C.S. Lewis, mst3k, mystery science theater 3000, comedy, satire on Dec 28th, 2008 No Comments »
Our tribute to Mystery Science Theater 3000 goes out with a bang as Lint delves into the mysteries of satire, pop culture, and that time Tom Servo sang to his pet turtle, Tibby, for a full five minutes. Meanwhile, Susan is having a baby — tomorrow! Yikes! That makes baby number four! Yikes! The current three already drive us crazy! Yikes! We shall have to change and become more stern and paternal and “draw the line” and no longer “put up with that crap” in our tiny (very tiny) maison - just to create some kind of groundwork for peace and quiet and mutual respect and less screaming! Yikes! Susan has suffered from post-partum complications in the past, but the meds are ready to go! Yikes! We are just a couple of crazy Catholics who actually paid serious attention to Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s big time letter about contraception linked here! Yikes! Which makes us crazy even among Catholics! Yikes! But if we had dissented because of Susan’s post-partum problems we wouldn’t have Sarah and Holly now! Yikes and double yikes! Please pray for us in our odd combination of seriousness and silliness! And blessings to all the members of Best Brains, Inc.
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Posted in monsters, consumer culture, The Spectacle, psychotronic, kitsch, humanism, movies, retro, lowbrow, Inklings, mst3k, mystery science theater 3000, comedy on Dec 11th, 2008 No Comments »
For many years, one of the great pleasures in life (in my life, at least) was watching Mystery Science Theater 3000. I remember one Thanksgiving, in particular, when they had a marathon of around thirty episodes. I was in fanboy heaven, scarfing down turkey and watching turkeys at the same time. Although some took offense at the jibes and riffs and such, I couldn’t help but enjoy Joel and the Bots, then Mike and the Bots, in their peculiarly painful dilemma: stuck on a satellite in space, forced to watch bad movies. It seemed a smaller version of our own dilemma, since Earth itself is a satellite in space, as it were, and we also are forced to imbibe so much inane, mind-numbing, soul-destroying stuff simply while driving to the grocery store: billboards, radio ads, road rash, the whole sense of swimming endlessly through a consumer culture which has drastically changed the human horizon. Sometimes, the best option is to poke fun at it all and thereby make it less omnipotent and omnipresent. With that in mind, here is part one of our two part tribute to Mystery Science Theater 3000. Thanks Joel, Mike and everybody else at Best Brains, Inc. (Of course, past episodes of the show are available in various dvd boxed sets and episodes unavailable in that form can be found online through various bootleggers making use of the “one collector to another” legal loophole. As they say, keep circulating the tapes!)
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Posted in Uncategorized, horror lit, horror flik, monsters, apologetics, reasons to believe, Stephen King, humanism, Christianity, horror, movies on Sep 16th, 2008 1 Comment »

This episode perplexes me. My intention was to try and explore Christian perspectives on suffering using The Mist as a sounding board — The Mist being a recent film adaptation of a Stephen King novella. Instead, I end up unpacking the religious “spin” to be found in the film, given religious weirdo Mrs. Carmody and humanist everyman hero David Drayton. I guess it’s difficult for me to talk about suffering when my family is having a tough time. Sort of like a sick man talking about nausea, or a man on a sailboat expounding on seasickness. Hmmmmm…. Anyhow, I’ll keep trying. CORRECTION: I said Nick Andros, a leader among the good guys in The Stand, was deaf and blind. That is incorrect. He is deaf and mute. He is blinded in one eye in the revised version of the book. My apologies - poor research on my part.
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