Joel, Trace and Frank have been announced as guests at this year’s Dragon*Con, taking place Aug. 29-Sept. 1 in Atlanta. Check the convention’s web site for further information.

Update! We’ve also been informed that the entire Cinematic Titanic crew…Frank, Joel, Josh, Mary Jo and Trace…will be appearing at Archon 32 this Oct. 3-5 in St. Louis. Again, check the web site for more info.

First shown: 8/28/93
Opening: Deep frozen Crow
Invention exchange: Pork-orina, replacing Frank’s blood
Host segment 1: Subtle forms of hell
Host segment 2: The bots alter Joel’s face to look like Arch Hall Jr.
Host segment 3: Why ’60s sitcoms are run by single dads
End: Washing the movie off the bots, letter, Frank’s fluid change
Stinger: “Fake it.” “That’s what I’ve BEEN doing. Now I’m getting sick!”
(90 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)
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• We’re in a very good stretch of episodes here. Another winner, following close on the heels of last week’s gem. Great host segments, great inventions, great riffing. Shtemlo!
• What IS the real instrument that made that porkorina sound? Musicians? Help me out.
• This was one of the first episodes released on DVD by Rhino, in April of ’00.
• Then-current reference: While doing his Cryptkeeper impression, Crow mentions cable series “Dream On.”
Callbacks: “Glen was 50 feet tall!” (War of the Colossal Beast) “To Live Like the Hu-Man” (Robot Monsters) “Durn smoochers!” (Attack of the the Eye Creatures) “He tampered in God’s domain” (Bride of the Monster).
• Segment one, is another pithy, brilliant sketch, one that assumes a certain level of sophisitication on the part of its viewers. It’s classic MST3K.
• After having referenced “Last of the Mohicans” with the classic “Stay alive! Whatever may occur! I will find you!” line in the last episode, they go ahead and do it again…and then they do it again!
• The second segment, while not as witty, is a great example of the sort of Looney Tunes silliness they often did well.
• Crow is once again netless following the second segment, as he was in the previous episode.
• There is very little that needs to be said about this travesty of a movie, since it’s been thoroughly examined many times, but it’s worth saying again, as so many have before, that the scenes in the cave, with Roxy’s dad cheerfully suggesting she give in to Eegah’s romantic advances — particularly he horrifying shaving scene — are the very dictionary definition of icky.
• This is the episode that launched so many catchphrases, from “Stop saying ‘whee!’ Nobody says ‘whee!’” to “My tires are filled with water!” to “Watch out for snakes!” to “Shtemlo!”
• “Wha happa!” is used once again.
• Joel again invokes Gregg Toland, the cinematographer for “Citizen Kane,” because the shot shows a ceiling.
Arty reference: Keith Haring. [http://www.haring.com/]
Fave riff: “Sit down, pie face, it’s a long list.”

We are slowly unspooling all the stuff we got at Comic-Con. Here is a page of people in costumes that I shot…with my camera, though perhaps the other thing might have been more merciful…

One other note: The Episode Guide entry for this week will be delayed until this afternoon.

While Sampo was winging his way back home Sunday morning–or at least to Cincinnati–I stayed behind to attend the final semi-MST3K-related panel at Comic-Con: the live taping of “The Radio Adventures Of Dr. Floyd” featuring an appearance by Frank Conniff. Here’s my report.

Download it here. Here’s a sample.

I am the exhausted reporter whose flight got canceled last night and is now reporting to you from the business center of a rather nice hotel in Cincinnati (actually northern Kentucky)! Please give my best wishes to everybody!

I will try to post some more images and stuff when I finally get home, but right now I can offer a few stray thoughts from the road.

Before I get into anything else, I want to express, on behalf of Brian and myself, our sincere gratitude to all the cast members for their cordiality and solicitude in granting us access to areas where they were relaxing between press interviews, etc. Second, we’re not sure it’s possible to express enough gratitude to the Shout! Factory staff, who were, to a man and woman, impossibly helpful and sweet and generally awesome. These are people who GET this show, folks. We are delighted they have it. And of course we are also incredibly thankful to the RiffTrax/Legend Films crew, who bent over backwards to accommodate us. It was so great to finally meet guys like Eric and Conor and the rest of the team.

I was the guy who used the phrase “live-blogging,” and that was, perhaps, wishful thinking on my part. We really didn’t have the equipment or the resources to really be “live-blogging.” It turned out to be sort of “intermittent blogging, whenever we could find an electrical outlet and find the wifi signal.” I apologize if any hopes were raised for more non-stop coverage. We will try to make it up in the next day or so with some retrospective info.

Comic-Con is HUGE. I’ve been to Dragon-Con a couple of times, and that’s massive, but this is like three or four Dragon-Cons. It’s outrageous, and frankly it’s really gotten too big. And, well, I hope this doesn’t come off as too uncharitable, but the cumulative B.O. of 150,000 geeks jammed into a relatively small exhibit space gets old pretty fast. Not that any of you I met individually were anything other than fragrant! It’s just the sort of ambient background funk I’m referring to. To which I should add that, as always, the MSTies I met were funny and fun and great to talk to.

The management of the Comic-Con pretty much fumbled the 20th Anniversary panel. We heard from a number of people who could not get in because the line (which began forming in the early afternoon, and also included would-be attendees to the Kevin Smith panel in an adjacent room) stretched down the hallway and down another hallway and at some point the organizers began turning people away. But ultimately there were empty seats in the back. Once again, as has happened at so many conventions, the organizers greatly underestimated the interest there would be in MST3K and put it in only a medium-sized room, then turned people away unnecessarily. I was really a mess.

One thought I wanted to pass along: It was, to me, startling to see this sea of pop culture vultures, most of whom, if you stopped them and asked, would say that they loved MST3K, brush by Mike or Joel without a second look. The rest of the cast, well, they might not be so recognizable (and I suspect they were just as glad of that) but it still was an amazing thing to see. One exception, however, seemed to be Frank. With that shock of familiar white hair, he, the others told us, was pretty much the only one being stopped in the hallways for autographs and photos. Story Trace told us: They were all headed somewhere and a lady sees Frank and cries out his name and asks if she can get a picture with him. Frank says yes, of course. Delighted, the lady gets out her camera and…hands it to Joel, completely failing to recognize him. True story. We were standing in the hallway with Joel right before the panel (and thereby hangs a tale as well) and I noted to him that I was a bit surprised that his presence wasn’t causing a scene. Nobody was even looking at him twice. Joel smiled and said “No, I walk freely among them.” At the end of a autograph session, Mike had stepped a few paces away from the RiffTrax booth and people were just brushing by him. I said something to the effect of: “I’m surprised you guys aren’t getting recognized more.” He just shrugged and said “Yeah, I don’t really care.”

We had the pleasure of at last meeting the mighty Tom Noel of the incredibly awesome MST3K Temple and it was great to chat with him for a while. We then repaired to a nearby restaurant to enjoy tasty edibles and chat some more before heading off to the live show. If for some insane reason you do not know of Tom’s amazing site (all the cast members do and said nice things to him about it), you must visit. Trust me. 

Sampo, Erhardt, and the mega-awesome Tom Noel

The live show was achingly funny. I walked out with a bad case of “laugh-stomach.” It’s a quantum jump from Mike’s already-hilarious solo DVD effort. I hope they release it at some point.

More tonight, or tomorrow.

Shout! Factory has provided us with a copy of the MST3K 20th Anniversary DVD promo reel. It has clips from cast interviews and the reunion panel, plus the official DVD announcement, including the first look at the episode cover art and the Crow figurine.

Here is the original MP4 file: MST3K 20th Anniversary DVD promo reel
Note: the sound is a bit low at the beginning, but gets louder during the panel footage. It also may not play on all players.

And thanks to reader MLD for providing us with a spiffy WMV version. He’s improved the sound to make it more even throughout: MST3K 20th Anniversary DVD promo reel

Oh, and here’s a shot of us with some guys we met at the Shout! Factory booth.

Well, the big event finally happened Friday night, and here’s our report.

Joel, Frank and Trace will be signing at the ShoutFactory booth at 4:30 p.m.

211- First Spaceship on Venus
706- Laserblast
904- Werewolf
1004- Future War

Incidentally, this counts as the weekend discussion thread.