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, apologetics, kitsch, movies, retro, lowbrow, C. S. Lewis, C.S. Lewis, mst3k, mystery science theater 3000, comedy on Dec 21st, 2008 2 Comments »

Welcome to part two of our tribute to Mystery Science Theater 3000 in happy acknowledgement of the show’s 20th anniversary (sorry for this week’s delay). The great debate continues between those who feel the show is cynical and those who feel the show is perhaps only slightly cynical and those who believe the show is just plain fun and those who… well, you get the idea. As a very distant girlfriend once said to me, “You LIKE to think, don’t you?” Boy, she had me pegged, didn’t she? So join me, your loyal servant and ever lovin’ pop-culture maven, as I LIKE to think about MST3K.
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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 kitsch, retro on Oct 27th, 2008 2 Comments »
Is it self-indulgent of me to post a promo that is over two minutes long? I can make a shorter version, but I love the song (from the Sixties cult film, Danger: Diabolik, which I’ve yet to see) and thought maybe you’d like to hear more of it once my gabbing was over. Please share your comments, critiques, etc. on whether this promo should actually be promulgated throughout the world, to distant lands where people are struggling to reconcile their love for God and for Ed Wood movies. At any rate, if you like it feel free to pepper it throughout your own podcast, blip playlist, etc.
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A listener kindly requested an alternative to the current m4a download for part two of the kitsch survey. So here it is. Meanwhile, I am working on part one of a Stephen King tribute which will also serve as a survey of suffering. Now, say that three times fast.
Also, I am using this post to update some settings at iTunes — so that the website link will take you to linthatcher.podbean.com. This will involve changing the upload settings, so those of you who are longtime listeners should update your iTunes subscription.
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