In the not too distant future… a Turkey Day surprise!

My absolute favorite television show of all time is Mystery Science Theater 3000. I started watching it when I was in the 4th grade and it’s remained a pretty consistent part of my TV diet ever since. I continue watching MST3k despite the fact that no new episodes have been produced in over a decade – an old episode I’ve seen 30 times will often yield just as many laughs as anything made in the 201o’s.

That’s one of the reasons I was so excited to hear about the MST3k Kickstarter campaign. Joel Hodgson, creator of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and the original host, is bringing the show back with crowd funded support. The hope is to make a full season of 12 episodes of the new MST3k and I’ll be honest – I’ve already pledged my money to make that a reality. So far it seems the Kickstarter is a success, to the tune of over $3 million dollars. I’m hopeful the fundraising will get up to the required $5.5 million for that full season.

At any rate, MST3k and the Thanksgiving holiday have a long-running association thanks to Turkey Day, a somewhat annual marathon of episodes of the show. In my estimation, it’s the perfect show to leave on during your holiday festivities. You can watch whole episodes or you can drop in and out on them, picking up a spare joke here and there. In recent years, the Turkey Day marathon has moved online with a streaming component that has been curated by Joel himself. This year, with the big push for the Kickstarter campaign, Joel asked MSTies to send in fan art they could share.

I sent this drawing in I did a few years ago. I’ve been using it as my Facebook avatar for November:

Well, I woke up on Friday morning to find out Joel had posted my artwork up on Tumblr with some nice words about it!

You better believe that made my day… but I was also SUPER pleased to find that the folks in charge of the MST3k Kickstarter page used my artwork on the actual KS page!!!

It’s great. I feel like I’m, in a very small way, helping out a show that’s made me who I am today. Corny but true.

Hey! You should pledge some cash toward the return of Mystery Science Theater 3000 too! It’s a great show! Click on over at the very least to see my fan art emblazoning the lower left corner of the “Fan Mail is Back” banner!

A happy Thanksgiving/Turkey Day to all!

Ah yes, it’s that time of year… the bird is slowly cooking in the oven, oversized balloons of popular cartoon characters are bouncing down 34th Street, and I’m preparing to gorge on an entire day of Mystery Science Theater 3000 in honor of that greatest of geek holidays – Turkey Day.

Turkey Day was a regular fixture of my Thanksgivings growing up. I was a tremendous fan of MST3K and the prospect of having a whole day of it at my fingertips was incredible. The Turkey Day festivities fell to the wayside when the show moved to The SciFi Channel, but that’s never stopped me from programming my own Turkey Day from old VHS cassettes and more recently, online streaming options (including the online revival at MST3KTurkeyDay.com).

So, if you’ll indulge me, behind the cut are my Turkey Day plans. Wishing everyone a very happy and enjoyable Thanksgiving today!

Chalkboard Drawings: The “cancelled sci-fi television” edition

 

sketchbook: santa claus conquers the sketchbook

 

A few days ago I was watching Mystery Science Theater 3000‘s first Christmas episode, where Joel and the ‘bots watch Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. I doodled a little bit in my sketchbook while the flick was on and here are the results. I remember hearing rumors of an MST3K comic book years ago and I always wondered how that would have looked.

odds and ends

When I was a younger man, I would routinely write up “Best of” lists at the end of every year.

At best, this was a pleasant waste of time; at worst it was mental masturbation. About three people in the world cared what a teenaged Chris Pearce thought was the Best Album of 2001… but I enjoyed the process of my thoughts down in a cogent fashion. Of course, the younger me was also had far more opportunities to see movies, watch television, and listen to music. No one may have cared about my opinions, but at the very least, I felt they were decently informed.

The demands of being a husband, a parent, and of course an educator put the breaks on my old practice of seeing EVERY movie in theaters the minute it came out. Most years, I look at film critics’ Top Ten lists and have only a winking knowledge of half the movies, if I’m lucky.

All that is the long way around saying I will not be trying your patience any more than I usually do with a “Best of” list. If you’re interested in the stuff I’ve enjoyed in 2011, feel free to click back and look at the previous 52 “Odds and Ends” posts. I don’t leave many books/tv shows/movies uncommented upon if I’m liking it.

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Semester exams begin today for my students. While I plan on posting comics into the next week, they will in no way be about the administration or grading of exams, which was more than accurately portrayed in this comic two years ago:

…and that’s basically the next four days of classes. The only thing that might be slightly different this time is “music playing”. Now that I have that fancy Eno board, I’m tempted to project a movie on that big ol’ screen after the kids have vamoosed for the day. Something fun and festive… maybe the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

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I went on a bit of a comic book shopping spree this weekend and caught up with what Grant Morrison is doing on Action Comics.

I had skipped these issues when they initially hit stands, but as I had some cash to burn, I thought I’d check ’em out. Morrison’s rebuilt the Superman mythos from the ground up, casting Big Blue as a two-fisted crusader for the common man. Supes is, at various times in these issues, threatening slumlords, saving squatters, and pulling cats out of trees.

I thought the four issues I read were just OK. I’m certainly not thrilled with the seeming two month wait until this story resolves itself that Action Comics #4 promises. These comics weren’t made for me… but that in itself gives me some hope. My reserved reading of Action Comics stems from my long history with the character. I found I enjoyed the issues more when I thought of them as some kind of elaborate Elseworlds/Imaginary story, rather than being THE main continuity. I followed the Superman who wears read briefs outside his pants and has a pet dog with a cape for decades. It’s weird to think that character is gone from regular comic publishing right now.

At the same time, it’s cool that DC is doing something different, telling new kinds of stories. When you think about it that way, I’m not even sure if what they’re doing is different enough…