Okay, I have been struggling with this all morning, and finally, painfully, managed to get it down to 15, eliminating some classics in the process.

In episode order:
CREEPY GIRL. Episode 204- Catalina Caper — For me, this is the song that really started it all. Sure, there were songs before this, but this one established the combination of Mike’s composing skils and Kevin’s lovely Irish tenor.

IF CHAUFFEURS RULED THE WORLD. Episode 206- Ring of Terror. — As a singer, Frank is a great comedian but he gives this one plenty of heart before Dr. F drops some scenery on him.

GODZILLA’S GENEALOGY BOP. Episode 213- Godzilla vs. Sea Monster. — Another one of those goofy/nerdy outings that mostly works because Joel, Trace and Kevin sell it.

SLOW THE PLOT DOWN. Episode: 314- Mighty Jack. — Maybe the best plot shanty ever.

PATRICK SWAYZE CHRISTMAS. Episode 321- Santa Claus Conquers The Martians. — Quickly becoming the standard Crow hoped it would be; brilliantly zany.

A DANGER TO OURSELF AND OTHERS. Episode 406- Attack of the Giant Leeches. — Wagnatz!

PANTS! Episode 410- Hercules Vs. The Moon Men. — One of those Joel songs were he seems a little crazed, which adds to the fun.

HIRED! Episode 423- Bride Of The Monster. — It would make no sense to anybody who had not seen the short that precedes it, but for those who have it’s an very observant parody.

TUBULAR BOOBULAR JOY. Episode 519- Outlaw. — Giddily naughty fun.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, IF THAT’S OKAY. Episode 521- Santa Claus. — A perennial favorite and a still-relevant skewering of political correctness.

ENDLESS FRANK. Episode: 523- Village Of The Giants. — Love Mike’s Paul Williams impression.

WHO WILL I KILL? Episode: 624- Sampson vs. The Vampire Women. — Trace gamely warbles a classic as Frank departs.

WHEN I HELD YOUR BRAIN IN MY ARMS. Episode: 807- Terror From The Year 5000. — Funny and nerdy at the same time. A gem.

WHEN LOVING LOVERS LOVE. Episode: 822- Overdrawn at the Memory Bank. — A great example of Bill and Mary Jo’s chemistry.

I WISH I WAS BACK IN OLD CANADA. Episode: 910- The Final Sacrifice. — A sensation when this episode debuted. Why did this song strike such a nerve?

Least favorite:
CELEBRITY SIBLINGS. Episode 311- It Conquered the World. — Thin premise stretched even thinner.

What’s your list look like?

First shown: 1/16/93
Opening: Family picture time on the SOL
Invention exchange: Snack-tion, unhappy meals
Host segment 1: The bots have some ideas for clown acts
Host segment 2: So, what’s a sampo?
Host segment 3: Gypsy’s one-woman show: “Gypsy Rose…Me!”
End: The bots are imprisoned wind, letter
Stinger: “What’s going to happen to us now!”
(81 votes, average: 4.51 out of 5)
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• As you might have guessed, this episode had a big effect on me. For a long time it was my all-time favorite. Up until this point, on the Prodigy MST3K boards I had just been “Chris in Phila.” The night this was shown (or maybe the next day, I forget), I officially announced that I was taking the handle Sampo, and I’ve had it ever since.
• How do robots spit? I know, I know…
• The unhappy meals are truly an evil invention. I love Dr. F’s Charles Nelson Reilly laugh as he describes them.
• Joel has to rein in the bots several of times on the short, but then comes out with “a rogue elephant snaps its tether and kills a cooley!” NOW who’s getting dark?
• The announcer says “pamalino horses.” The hell?
• The circus in the short is never named, but it’s the Clyde Beatty Circus.
• The acrobat is both Dag Hammarskjöld and Albert Speer. Both references are pretty out of the blue…
• As Daddy-O tells us, THE DAY THE EARTH FROZE (originally titled “Sampo” but cheesily renamed to trick American audiences into think it was sci-fi) was based on the Kalevala, the national epic of Finland. (As an aside, J.R.R. Tolkien was heavily influenced by the Kalevala, and his “Silmarillion” was originally begun as an attempt to create a sort of British Kalevala.)
• Russian director Alexsandr Ptushko is generally recognized as a brilliant filmmaker. He also directed two other movies that came to be MSTed, episode 505-THE MAGIC VOYAGE OF SINBAD (originally “Sadko” [Finnish for “Sinbad” – no, not really], which won the Silver Lion Award at the 1953 Venice Film Festival); and 617-THE SWORD AND THE DRAGON (originally “Ilya Muromets”). As Daddy-O notes: “Those three films are a rare exception for MST3K: big budget, great cinematography and beautifully made. Too bad some of their luster was dimmed by the hasty script and dubbing of their importing American producers.”
• The “Scandinavian sketch” is obviously drawn from their personal experiences. What I find amusing is how much those Minnesota accents sound like the accents of folks in the Northeastern corner of Pennsylvania. There’s probably a linquistic explanation.
• As I noted in 1993 when I introduced this episode on national TV during Turkey Day, the movie DOES explain what a sampo is. J&TB are just in mid-riff when the explanation comes. I wonder if they do that on purpose, just so they can do the “what’s a sampo?” sketch?
• Local riff: “Mini golf at Crosslake.” It’s still around.
• My copy is from the ‘94 Turkey Day, but I don’t know if it would be fair to do an “annoying commercial” item since this ran at the ungodly hour of 4 a.m. (Eastern and Pacific) so ALL the commercials are pretty low-rent and annoying. Art instruction schools, Sally Struthers asking if I want to make more money, stuff like that. Oh and I should note that in his introduction, Adam West mistakenly says that this is epsisode number 424.
• Callback: “I sing whenever I sing…”
• There are not one but two Ross Perot references in this episode. I guess it counts as “then-topical” but I would hope most people would remember who he is.
• Of course, one highlight is the classic “failure” song. Joel even gets up to dance!
• Jim gives a real tour de force in “Gypsy Rose ME!”
• Tom gently joshes fellow Minnosota entertainer Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion during the long, tedious harp attack.
• Fave riff: “Great wedding. You get half a buzz on and you’re sent home with a torch.”

• One is the second of two “Star Trek: New Voyages” episodes, “To Serve All My Days” riffed by Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett. Download it here (where you can also see links to sites where you can download the movie. Free sample here.
(By the way, turns out Rifftrax can’t release these “Star Trek: New Voyages” riffs with the movie and the riffing on one track, like they wanted to, because the New Voyages people have a deal with Paramount…blah-blah-blah…I’ve already lost interest. Anyway, they’re regular Rifftrax now.)

• The other is “House of Wax” riffed by British writer and performer Matthew Elliott. Download it here. Free sample here. Buy the movie here.

If Chris Farley was alive, he could probably sue, but still, this interview with the CT crew is pretty funny…

Well, it’s a long holiday weekend and I was occupied most of yesterday, sorry. But we still have a couple of days to hash this out.

This one is going to be a tough one: Top 15 funniest shorts. The criterion here is the funnyness of the riffing. I tried to get a list down to 10 and just couldn’t do it, so it’s 15.

In order of apperance:
• SPEECH: USING YOUR VOICE — oh and you need a wire rack.
• CATCHING TROUBLE — Ross is no stranger to raping the land.
• MR. B NATURAL — Mom, Dad, please tell me you heard that!
• JUNIOR RODEO DAREDEVILS — And the crowd goes wild.
• JOHNNY AT THE FAIR — The drugs from the Chemical Wonderland start to kick in…
• CIRCUS ON ICE — Vomit sprays out in a beautiful technicolor dream…
• HERE COMES THE CIRCUS — And he’s still eating!
• LAST CLEAR CHANCE — Why don’t they look?
• DESIGN FOR DREAMING — This is a rebuttal to Roger and Me!
• A DATE WITH YOUR FAMILY — The less said about this, the better…
• WHY STUDY INDUSTRIAL ARTS? — I put them in my underwear…
• A YOUNG MAN’S FANCY — Alexander Phipps??!!
• SPEECH: PLATFORM POSTURE AND APPEARANCE — I will not do the knee test!
• A CASE OF SPRING FEVER — Oh and no redemption, either!
• ASSIGNMENT: VENEZUELA — I played it over in my mind–Narrow-wide, narrow-wide…

The email list for CT got a message last night offering a sneak peek of the next release. We are going to honor the spirit of that message and not provide any details until a general announcement is made next week…

…but WIRED doesn’t have the scruples we do.

UPDATE: Of course, it’s already up on YouTube and we’ve been given permission to post it:

It’s the theatrical version (not the expanded one).

Order it here.

Here’s a free sample:

In other Rifftrax news: RiffTrax and Legend Films will be on the floor of the Comic-Con, at Booth #3251.
And RiffTrax Live live will perform Saturday, July 26, at 7 and 9:30 p.m. at the Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave. in San Diego. Mike, Bill and Kevin will riff “Plan 9 From Outer Space.” Tickets go on sale Friday, May 30th.
Visit the Balboa Theatre website for more information.

First shown: 1/9/93
Opening: America is leaning on cheese!
Invention exchange: Action figure contest: Johnny Longtorso, non-violent action figures
Host segment 1: Gypsy “doesn’t get” Crow (or is it Tom?)
Host segment 2: Joel and Servo play keep away from Crow
Host segment 3: Examining “The Pina Colada Song”
End: Joel knights Happy King Servo and Sir Giggles von Laffsalot Crow
Stinger: Monster on the go-go
(94 votes, average: 4.37 out of 5)
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• A deservedly famous episode featuring a deservedly infamous short and movie. Plenty for them to work with here.
• How could such a horrible movie have happened? As Daddy-O tells us: Bill Rebane made some of the movie, but had run out of money before it was completed. Meanwhile Herschell Gordon Lewis was looking for a co-feature with his recently completed movie “Moonshine Mountain,” and he needed it quickly. “So he bought Rebane’s unfinished film, added a couple scenes with new dialogue, and presto…a movie with no continuity and no sense!”
• A hook falls off the peg board with a loud clang during the Mads’ invention exchange. They keep going. And there’s also a lovely crunch as Dr. F. steps toward the camera, right onto the blister packs on the floor.
• Trace is hilarious as he introduces the movie, giving us Dr. F at perhaps his most maniacal.
• Terrific riffing in the short, and Joel doesn’t even try to keep them from getting too dark. The highlight is the great “pink girls” song.
• What does “with a filbert nut” mean? Joel sounds a little like Red Skelton when he says it. Is it a reference to him?
• Segment 1 is rightly famous (it even inspired a shirt). If you wanted to introduce the personalities of all three robots to newbie, this would do it very well in just a few minutes.
• Does ANYbody know what that song Crow is singing (”hum-did-a-hee-hee…”) is from? It’s one of the unsolved mysteries of this show (along with what “it’s a hat party and mine is the grandest of all” comes from).
• Joel opens a can of “pop” (or as normal people call it, soda) in the theater! What a rebel!
• The workings of Tom’s hoverskirt are never explained in detail, but in segment two we see a new use demonstrated: sports!
• Is that a velcro ball Joel throws to Tom when they return to the theater? Still, it’s a pretty good toss.
• Then-topical riff: “Matthias Rust!”
• J&TB do a little of the Richard Kiel voice they did a LOT in the last episode.
• When the movie ends up in what looks very much like Chicago’s Lower Wacker Drive, they begin to rattle off some great Chicago references, including McCormick Place and the Arie Crown Theater.
• Fave riff: Narrator: There is one terrifying word in the world of nuclear physics. Tom: “Oops.”

Bill Corbett, Sampo and I were guests on Blonde Champagne Radio on Tuesday, May 20. The live call-in show was hosted by Mary Beth Ellis, author and msnbc.com contributor, who has written several MST3K-related articles over the past few years.

And before anyone writes to correct me on a comment I made during the show, I know a clip of “Schindler’s List” was never riffed by the MST3K crew. It was “Saving Private Ryan” I was thinking of.

Well, sorry for the delay. I got called away suddenly. All is well now.

Again, I got my list down to seven:

• 1001- SOULTAKER: Joel’s completes repairs on the SOL, says hi to Frank, and departs with some uplifting words to M&TB; in Castle Forrester, Bobo and Frank hit it off.– Mike and Joel, together at last, the combination is terrific. A landmark segment.
• 1005- BLOOD WATERS OF DR. Z: Mike becomes wedged in the bulkhead of Crow’s evil voiceover.–One of those segments that just comes from the pain of the movie. Hilarious.
• 1007- TRACK OF THE MOON BEAST: This week on Legends of Rock: The Band That Played “California Lady.”–Tbe Brains parody shows like “Behind the Music” and do a great job.
• 1008- FINAL JUSTICE: Having suffered through a really bad Joe Don Baker movie, Mike assumes it’s his turn to escape.–A great call back from five seasons before.
• 1009- HAMLET: Time once again to play “Alas Poor Who?”–In an episode disliked by many, a memorably witty segment.
• 1011- HORRORS OF SPIDER ISLAND: Mike is auditioning dancers, and Pearl, Brain Guy and Bobo try out.–Mary Jo is particularly funny in this great send up of a particular stupid moment in the movie.
• 1013- DIABOLIK: Mike, Crow and Servo, sharing a small apartment, settle in to watch a bad movie–our fond farewell. A very satisfying end.