Space Mutiny: Demanding the Huge Basement Gets Furnished Or Else!

Thankfully I have something to watch when I eventually get tired of guarding children from monsters. As well as names for monsters!

Look You Upon My Haircut and Despair

I really enjoy old educational videos. It's a particular problem of mine. I should probably seek some form of professional help. But there is something about outdated pedagogy, horrible acting, and strange and upsetting haircuts that just make me happy. Like I said: it is certainly worthy of years of powerful therapeutic intervention.

I first discovered these educational films as a child in rural West Virginia. We were subjected to a ton of these. We generally watched them on old reel-to-reel machines that, while perfectly quaint additions to some steampunk themed party today, were simply cheap pieces of junk back then. (To be clear: they are cheap pieces of junk now too. Just cool cheap junk.)

I rediscovered them later in life when Mystery Science Theater 3000 started airing them before the shorter, more Roger Corman-y films they showed. I instantly recognized them- creepy, dull, but somehow very real. Like a horror villain. I couldn't get enough. Recently, Rifftrax began airing similar shorts, with a broader (and arguably even creepier) selection of films. Some of these newer ones seemed aimed at urban schools, which delighted me to no end. In part because it made me realize that the super white and suburban short films we saw as a kid were meant for us! Someone had thought through the process long enough to decide, "Oh these bland and terrible films are being sent to West By God Virginia. Make sure to make them PURE WHITE and even duller than usual. Those kids can't handle the truth."

With all the madness for technology in education and Web 2.0 nonsense in schools today, this kind of mass produced madness is probably lost forever. I kind of hope not, personally. I hope that I can bring it back into my classroom, if only for a day. I want kids to study it as a history lesson. My generation may have not been through war, kids. But we saw shag haircuts floating over horrible special effects. We were told about our bodies by afro-sporting white guys in jumpsuits. We learned that drugs were free and available at every school bus stop. Unfortunately, we also learned that those same drugs could make the shag haired freaks in jumpsuits go away...

And that, kids, is why we grew up to be the generation that created reality tv. Don't do drugs.

He Tried To Kill Me With A Forklift! Ole!

In honor of seeing the live Rifftrax event this Thursday!

John Agar Hates You Too

See?

Roger Corman Hates You

See?

Paint My Muscle Car Prune Colored!

One of my all time favorite Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes. And wonderfully quotable!
"Dammit, why aren't you old?"

Extreme Mellowness Advised

I am a huge fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and among the various episodes there are few as awesome as Riding With Death. The movie itself is a cobbled together monstrosity from two episodes of the 70s TV show "Gemini Man." I doubt that the title made any sense even in context, but "Riding With Death" is silly enough, I suppose. The movie paints a picture of the 70s as a dark horrible time, like an American bubonic plague of idiocy and horrible clothes. I understand that is fairly accurate. I only had to see a few brief years of the 70s, and I was spared. I'll take the worst episode of "Charles in Charge" over "Gemini Man," and so would you, I imagine.

I have watched this a million times. It's really easy to get into, and repeat viewings just make the various jokes better. Plus, we get the swine flu jokes in a new way now in 2009. I challenge anyone to find a more quotable episode of MST3K. Some of my favorites:

"Casey was pumping Buffalo for..."
"Pumping Buffalo?!"

"You're as elusive as Robert Denby!"

"I'm Ben Murphy!"

"Well, it's hardly worth it, but... Boo!"

"Shut up! Everybody shut up!"

"The defiant loads."

"Executive story consultant? Yes, I advise you to hire the most annoying cracker you can find, and slam together too incomprehensible stories."

"Any similarity to actual persons would be really sad."

Seriously, check this out. It will be fun. I promise.

Cinematic Titanic: Return of the Titans

Last night, the mighty Hercules and I got to see another performance of Cinematic Titanic. The movie was the awful and odd Dynamite Brothers, a 1974 blaxploitation kung fu type film. It was perfect and odd, and though I was a little bummed to be without J, Herc and I had a great time. I kept squeezing his thigh, just to keep in the spirit of the date theme from Friday. The experience was as awesome as Friday, I'm really glad I went to both nights. Tonight had a more engaged audience, and the CT crew responded well. There were a bunch of MST3K callbacks, a great spit take... A perfect night of theater, in other words.

Earlier in the day, the kids and J and I went to Pizza Pi to celebrate Pi Approximation Day. They have redone the whole place, and the menu is amazing. Any place that includes cinnamon rolls with vegan stuffed crust pizza is getting my money. All told, it was a terribly expensive weekend. But we rarely celebrate math or bad movies, so I consider it well worth it. Although I get the feeling that Jaime will use this as an argument against any money being spent ever again. I'll be trying to get an Ensure at 85 and J will protest, "You spent a hundred bucks on pizza and CInematic Titanic!" I'll counter, of course, "That was over fifty years ago! Super intelligent cyborgs didn't even rule us then, that was a different world!" But it won't work. I haven't won an argument in 17 years, I don't imagine the next fifty will be any different.

We had a really great weekend, and it really made me appreciate my situation. I love the city, with these kinds of events. I love my group of friends, who sent volumes of emails trying to find sitters for us. And of course having Herc and Sarah around to participate in the festivities makes it all the more fun. I'm really getting spoiled, with theater and vegan restaurants and the like. I also heard that the Pizza Pi people took over another vegan cafe, Wayward. Which means I will beg J for more money to have another restaurant trip over spring break! I'm not too confident of my success, but never give up!

(Until the cyborg overlords come. Then, we give up. They're mean!)

Cinematic Titanic: Seattle!

Jaime and I had a momentous night tonight: our first actual date in a long while. And it was a double date, high school style! Herc and Sarah came along for an evening with the Cinematic Titanic crew. It was an amazing time, a wonderful, riffable movie, Blood of the Vampire, and a great night out. I didn't take any photos, but Jaime looked absolutely stunning. Black dresses cannot be worn better than she wears them. We got to sit arm in arm, not worry about anything for a few hours, and laugh at a bad movie. Great times.

We had met the Cinematic Titanic cast the night before at a signing. They were great, real sports about the whole thing. For those who need the introduction, the crew of Cinematic Titanic are made up of a lot of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 writers and performers. They do the same thing, basically, which is make fun of, or "riff" to the bad movies. They have DVDs, but the real heart of it is the live show. I was overwhelmed by how great the atmosphere was, and how much fun it was to play along. Getting the feedback, and the improv, was a really fun element.

We're going tomorrow night, but unfortunately J can't go. We don't want to leave the kids for two nights. It won't be as good without her leaning on my arm. But then again, what is? I'm still really excited to go again. Even with my high expectations after tonight, I imagine we'll have a blast.

Herc has a fun little write up of the signing yesterday. I'll post a more detailed blog tomorrow. When I'm not distracted by a date with my wife and the joy at being near her, I'll have more energy and words for the actual event.

Father Success: Humor and Monsters

One of the oddest and most fun aspects of parenting is the ability to indoctrinate your children with your interests. I have passed a major hurdle in parenting this week, because my sone is now interested in Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Gamera.

Some highlights include Viri informing us that Gamera is made of turtle meat, his interest in Gamera because he helps little boys (at least one boy, according to the movie. One boy per movie.) and his insistence that the "shark monster" (Guiron) can be nice, and the movie makers got it wrong.

It often gets overlooked in discussions of parenting, but kids are really fun. All the big stuff is there too: they are a lot of work, they are challenging, they can be expensive, they teach you about love and truth. Yes, all true. But they are also funny, and the process of learning is hilarious to watch.

Taviri once pointed at something and said, "Ha ha ha. This." You can't write jokes that good.

My work week is getting into full swing, and I notice all of the frustration that sets in when I deal with the logistics of running a daycare. But the kids are amazing, and I am thankful that I found out how much I enjoy working with them. Five years ago I would have thought you were insane if you had told me that my calling was to deal with toddlers. Now I think this is the job I was made to do.

I have always intellectually appreciated the fact that we discover ourselves as we grow. To actually reflect on it is strange. I'm such a different person in many ways than I was last year. In many ways, the child is still there. I'm happy I had the presence of mind, or dumb luck, to listen when this opportunity presented itself. Now I know something about myself that I needed to understand to enjoy my work.

Real World, Working People

We have more snow in Seattle, which means work will be an issue tomorrow. I have to navigate scary roads and scarier drivers to get to the daycare, which is high on a hill in a northern suburb.

(If I write a fantasy novel about work, that's how it'll start: High on a hill, in a northern suburb, Castle Daycare loomed.)

We had meetings and interviews at work today, which was frustrating but had some fun moments. We hired a few new people who I hope will work out well. It reminds me again though how much I want to be in charge of my own business. The committee system for running a daycare is not functional for me. Philosophically I like it, but practically I just need to run it in a way that meshes with my thinking.

I spent the evening watching snow fall and watching a MST3K treatment of Gamera Vs. Guiron, which was great fun. Taviri was really into it. He wasn't sure why the giant turtle was flying, but he liked that it was nice.

I'm hoping to organize a more regular schedule for these blogs. It started as a personal diary, a random collection of things I found interesting or relevant. And that's mostly how it'll stay. But some things are going to have a regular appearance, such as the Sufi poetry post. As the quarter evolves and I discover how insane our schedule is, this will become more clear. As it evolves and people ask questions and express interests I may change how I'm doing. According to my google statistics, the only hit from search engines I've gotten is in response to the query "straight edge merman." So, I won't listen too carefully to the voices of the internet. That way, madness lies.

Get a Truck With Brakes!

Last night was a crazy one, a typical sick child insane evening. Taviri woke everyone up in the middle of the night vomiting and angry, and we had to clean and console and heal. I got the good end of the deal: me and Arkaedi holed up in the office with one of my favorite MST3Ks, "Space Children." She fell quickly asleep and I watched a fun film with strange children possessed by a benevolent space blob.

This movie has one of my favorite examples of poor communication in film history. There is a scene where the children have magically disabled a truck, and the driver starts to lose control. The passenger yells, "Stop it!" in an annoyed voice as the driver starts to crash. Not helpful, my friend.

Servo helpfully points out, "Next time get a truck with brakes!" This has become an oft repeated phrase between Jaime and I. We have observed that a lot of fights begin with a 'get a truck with brakes' statement. So many fights between couples start with frustration that is not totally warranted. When you get mad at someone for doing something accidently, or mostly out of their control, you don't really solve anything, just make them feel bad on top of the initial mistake. Sure, in hindsight there are things that could have been done differently, care could have been taken that maybe wasn't, but in the moment it seemed sensible. I warn my friends sometimes to think for a second before being angry. Holding my tongue before shouting 'get a truck with brakes' has saved me a ton of little arguments in my life.
It's odd where you get little life skills that serve a person well. Strange as it is, this silly movie gave me insight into communication that has yielded tangible results in my relationship with Jaime, and probably others. Sure I still sometimes make these statements, but I make an effort to think before I speak in a way I didn't before seeing the film.

(I'm particularly bad about after the fact "be carefuls," which are really only a passive aggressive "get a truck with brakes." I'm working on it.)

I haven't worked out how else a benevolent space blob can better my life, but if I do I'll write about it.

Seattle: Like a beautiful child...

For those who don't catch my lovely and talented colleague's blog little black star, this is a great video from the MST3k folks about the 1962 World's Fair in Seattle.



It's nice to see that the future has CONSTANT ORGAN MUSIC!