1. Hold on to your hat for this one. Trace and Joel, along with Firesign Theatre’s Phil Proctor and former-co-host-of-“Mr. Show”-turned-major-TV-star Bob Odenkirk, provided voice talents for an overdub of something called “A Belly Full of Anger,” which has to be seen to be believed. This apparently was done some time ago, but I just stumbled onto a mention of it on Twitter yesterday, so I may be the last to know about this. Here’s a trailer, which definitely captures the flavor. The voice work is awesome. The movie … well, I think I’ll just say that I think it’s over my head. You can rent or buy the thing at Amazon Instant here.
2. And, coming Jan. 31, “The Comic Galaxy of Mystery Science Theater 3000: Twelve Classic Episodes and the Movies They Lampoon” by Chris Morgan. For what it’s worth.
) to help our users cope with "trolls" and other commenters whom they find annoying. Go to our
I think I’ll miss the Chris Morgan book. When the synopsis repeats the oft erroenous origin of the show being cable access then that pretty much throws into doubt any other history it will purport to tell.
I’ll tell you that urban myth never fails to get me. Afterall look at the model for he show (every local horror host ever) and where were they from? Local over the air TV shows. Personally I can’t name anybody or anything that ever achieved fame starting out on cable access…
I’d heard about Belly Full Of Anger but thought it was out of print. Good to see it’s available digitally.
:yawn:
I too am leery about this book. For me, In the Peanut Gallery was mostly a tedious read where the essays were at best bland. More often, they were filled with the sort of smug pomposity you can only get from tenured academics. The worst of the lot was the one that wasn’t about MST3K but was the writer ranting about the space program that just happened to use a couple of episodes of MST3K to reinforce his point. The only pieces I found worth reading were the interview with Joel and Trace and Richard Sloane recounting his experiences directing Hobgoblins. Notice what those two have in common that the others don’t? That’s right, the material wasn’t provided by tenured academics. If I ever get around to posting a full review at Amazon, the title will likely be, “MST3K essays ought to be fun, but these guys suck the joy out of it.”
@ #2: While I can understand your reaction, critical discussions in and of themselves aren’t bad. Kenneth Hite’s Tour de Lovecraft is a critical examination of Lovecraft stories and is an entertaining read. However, Hite is not a tenured academic, so that may have some bearing.
Greetings,
This is Chris Morgan, author of the aforementioned book that has gotten such a sterling reception from the fan base thus far (and for the record, while I submitted a description of the book for the website, and I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, the phrase “local cable access show in Hopkins, Minnesota” was not in there. Not that I blame the publishers, and I could have always asked them to fix that. Also, I blame myself for using the phrase “cable access” to describe the look of the KTMA era. Also, this is a very long parenthetical aside).
However, I’m not hear to try and convince anybody not interested in the book to buy it, although I hope people do buy it because I need money to buy myself a solid gold house and a rocket car. I’m hear because, when I read this post on this site, it was news to me that the book was coming out January 31. So, I checked in with my publisher, and they told me that no date has been set, and that it could be before that, or after that. The publishers website says Spring/Summer 2015 for now, but they divide the year into two halves, Spring/Summer and Fall and blah blah blah. Anywho, the point is that you can indeed preorder the book, but don’t necessarily expect it on that exact date. Maybe order it directly from the publisher instead of Amazon too, if you don’t want to deal with anymore subterfuge and misinformation: http://www.mcfarlandbooks.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-9678-5
Thank you for your time, and I hope you buy and enjoy the book, and if you don’t, that you simply reply with an OK sign and an “It stinks!”
Chris
Glad to see you’re a good sport about it. It’s just that these academic treasies about various fandoms tend to read like a paper by an old timey anthropologist back from his trip to Darkest Africa. Seeing as how you have genuine interest in the material rather than being a clinical observer (or an Observer), I think I’ll give your book a chance.