Taking from the top!

A blog has to start somewhere. It must. So here we are.

Why blog? Every day, thousands of new blogs begin online, whether on BlogSpot or Wordpress or whatever. Somebody somewhere has something to say. Whether you’re in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan or Hotlanta, GA. Or, if you’re like me, in the land of ice cream, coffee and Camel’s Humps – Vermont.

The Green Mountain State has its bevy of writers, thanks to its rural location and site of many distinguished colleges. Per capita, Vermont might have the most successful writers living full-time than any other state. I am not one of them. Yet.
As a freelance writer, it’s a tough job finding publications in-state to publish your work. The competition is everywhere. But it can be done. With a book coming out this October, I may earn my way into a higher echelon. Or as the Dude once put it, it might bump me up into a higher tax bracket.

Regardless, this blog will be a way for me to write more. In writer’s workshops and classrooms, you always hear how you’re supposed to write every day, like practicing an instrument. It’s good advice of which I will try to adhere. Just to be sure, I doubt I’ll actually post something here once a day. But I can at least pretend to try.

As a lover of films and music, I plan to go through my vast collections and review them. I take for granted the music I listen to, the films I watch and the books I read. It’s time to delve a little deeper. I may sprinkle this blog with other random thoughts about life, travel, and weather (seriously).

So what’s up first? I’m tackling one of the greatest comedy television shows of all time: Mystery Science Theater 3000. All 299 episodes, or however many there are. It’s (almost) got nothing to do with Vermont, but I’m in need of some good laughs. And I love bad movies.


Started in the late 1980s by a group of Minnesota comedians, the show lasted 10 seasons on Comedy Central and, later, the Science Fiction Network (excuse me, SyFy). The premise: a hapless maintenance man is trapped in a satellite in space forced to watch bad movies by his mad scientist captors. The first “host,” Joel Robinson (played by prop-comic Joel Hodgson) builds robots out of spare parts to keep him company. Two of these – Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot – join him in the theater to endure the films. During the two-hour show, the three trade jokes, barbs and riffs at the films’ expense. To break up the movies, the show includes little comedy sketches featuring Joel (and later Mike Nelson, the second host), the robots and the mad scientists. Sometimes these bits enhanced the episodes, sometimes not.

When I first watched the show back in its heyday, what surprised me was the sharpness of the writing, which was consistently good to excellent. Not easy for a two-hour program. And the show aired at two important times in my life. Late, late at night during my awkward teen years in junior high and high school, and early in the morning during my hazy college days. In fact, I credit MST3K (as it’s known in shortened form) for shaping my sense of humor. Ever since I saw my first episode, it was like finally discovering what I considered really funny. Before then, everything was kind of lame. Gallagher-lame, if you will.

So I’m going to watch every episode. Every Ed Wood, Coleman Francis, Japanese Monster, Mad Scientist, Russian Fairytale, Delinquent Teenager, Space Creature, Hercules, Rowsdower and Manos film they ever did. From the first season until the tenth. I considered watching the “rehearsal” episodes that aired on a local Minneapolis UHF station in 1988 and ‘89, but I think I’ll stick with the nationally-released stuff. A lot of these episodes I’ve seen a number of times, but most will be either the first or second time viewing. Should be interesting. I think the show will hold up as well as I remember it.

I won’t post a MST3K review every day. For me, that’s impossible. I need to get outside on a regular basis and soak in the air. I live in Vermont, if you haven’t heard. I’ll probably post reviews of other shows, albums, books, and films during my Mystery Science marathon. And I’m going to try my hardest to get through all ten seasons.

And so the blog begins. Hopefully those that discover this will enjoy it. Just repeat to yourself, “it’s just a blog, I should really just relax.”