Has that happened to you?
Got an idea for a WDT? Email me at msampo at aol dot com.
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Weekend Discussion Thread: Encountering Unexpected MSTiesAlert reader Sarah had an idea for a topic about reconnecting with an old friend/relative by discovering their shared love of our favorite cowtown puppet show. I’m going to expand it a bit and ask about discovering a MSTie in an unexpected situation. For example, I was interviewing a corporate executive about something completely unrelated and we got onto the topic of our hobbies. I told them about the site and suddenly we were talking Joel vs. Mike and RiffTrax and Cinematic Titanic. Amazing.
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Many years ago I was the sponsor for a high school Environmental Club. We had a Saturday road litter cleanup and I mentioned to a student named Erica that I was missing MST that morning. She burst forth with her fandom and said she had even had a letter read on air. Mike was fairly new at the SOL then and this Erica was madly in love with him! — Jay
Heck yeah just happened last night. Was wearing legacy beefy T-shirt out collecting petition signatures for GF (running for Township trustee)- guy comes to door- sees my shirt and says “wow, that is best show ever- how come it isn’t on anymore?”- He was the least likely person I sized up- him and wife spend endless hours grooming their lawn- it was totally cool. Seems he likes comic books and Star Trek and craft beer too.
On a recent Caribbean cruise I struck up a conversation with a man who was wearing a t shirt that was covered in the various names of Dave Ryder. I want that shirt.
I’m the one who suggested the topic this week! :-D In February my mom was in the hospital, and a cousin of ours we hadn’t seen in over a dozen years called out of the blue to talk to her. He’s a lot younger than me, but the first thing he said to me on the phone was how he was still watching MST on You Tube, and that he’d shown it to his girlfriend and they watch it all the time. It was amazing to get to talk to him, but I couldn’t believe he remembered about MST, let alone that he was still watching it!
A totally unrelated story: a couple of years ago, days before Joel hosted the revived Turkey Day online, I was getting out of my car at a Panera and some guy walked by and noticed my spaghetti ball sticker on my windshield. He pointed at it and said, “Oh my gosh, that’s the best show! Did you know they’re going to do another Turkey Day???” I never would have expected this guy to know MST, and it was completely out of the blue. I love having the sticker there as a little acid test :-)
I’ve been making some new friends over the past month or so, some of them fairly geeky in other things. Since we’re recently acquainted I’m still finding out a lot about them. One guy likes a lot of things like Magic the Gathering, retro gaming such as Atari 2600, and so on. I knew that much already, so he was already cool. Just yesterday I was watching The Final Sacrifice with my girlfriend, who is also a fan. She sent it out on Facebook what we were watching. This guy’s response was, “Mystery Science Theater 3000? Finally.” So this was just last night and I have to investigate it further, but I may have found me a new MSTie friend. Which would be great, because I don’t know that I’ve coincidentally run across anyone who was as rabid a fan as I am. Oh, I know people who liked it while it was still running, who would want to watch it again after I mentioned it to them, but I don’t know if I’ve met anyone who would call themselves “hardcore.” Still, one of these days I think it would be fun to gather people together and have us a sort of post-Turkey Day mini-marathon with some leftovers me and the lady couldn’t possibly finish on our own. (I’m assuming everybody would already have regular plans.) :D
A few years ago, I got my first job at a movie theater. While I was talking to another employee, he asked what kind of shows and movies I liked. I mentioned MST and he turned around and told a manager who loved the show too. The manager gave me a double high-five and exclaimed that I was his new favorite employee. (I thought as the new girl who has been here for 2 days that wasn’t true, but we quickly became friends and that statement became truth!). We would have some great conversations about the show. I would impress him by knowing each MST by their episode number. Good times for sure! :-)
Hasn’t happened yet. But anytime I’m out in a MST shirt I’m always hoping someone will say something.
I’m a police dispatcher, one of my motorcycle officers is a complete jerk. He doesn’t like me and I don’t like him. One day he came into my cubical and saw my Crow T. Robot screensaver. He freaked out, went on to tell me how much he loved the show. We kinda bonded, he’s still a jerk, but at least now he’s tolerable. And I’m sure I am to him.
Just last year we were hiring for an office assistant position, and as I was perusing resumes, I noticed that one of the applicant’s contact emails was hikeeba(random digits)@aol.com. Man, I was really looking forward to that interview, but our uberboss found something to dislike about him, so we didn’t even get that far.
Unfortunately I have never found anyone else I know that ever watched the show. I guess the fans of the show like us on this site have to consider ourselves as having better taste than most of the population.
Years ago at a bar while I was wearing one of the spaghetti ball t-shirts a random girl said to me in passing. “Crow is best!”. I dated her. I’m ending the story there so I can finish on a high note :/
I volunteer at a summer church camp for kids. First year there, one of the pastors who is about my son’s age made an MST reference and he and I bonded over the show. His wife groaned, put her head in her hands, and said, “Now you’ve done it. He can talk about that show all day.” Not her kind of humor. Turned out one of the college-age counselors also loved MST3K, so for the rest of the week we three nerds kept shouting out show references to each other in passing.
Sometimes I see Pastor _____ at the Rifftrax shows. No one laughed more loudly at the “Jonah’s loser cousin” riff in Anaconda than he did.
I named my warrior in WoW ‘Servo’ after finding out the name also means “I protect” which works out for a warrior character. Had a guy in a city ask if I was a MST3K fan when he ran past me. In the millions of players that only happened once the last 10+ years.
Good bye!!!
A few months ago I attended my cousin’s wedding and saw one of my uncles in person for the first time in years. He’s very old-school in his tastes, loves mid-century jazz and comedy in the Laurel and Hardy vein. He has little use for most modern TV, so to my surprise I somehow caused him to admit to loving MST3k. He mentioned that his favorite episode is “Terror from the Year 5000”. When I mentioned one of my favorites is “The Final Sacrifice” he said his all-time favorite riff was from that episode. He invited me to guess it and after a moment I said: “I wonder if there’s beer on the sun?”
Correct on the first try! :-)
I’ve had two fortuitous occasions. One time I was wearing a “Torgo’s Pizza” shirt at the grocery store and out of the blue a store worker passed by and said “The Master would not approve!” which gave us just a few moments to laugh about our favorite riffs seeing as he was on the clock. The second was just a couple of weeks ago at Disney World, where I was wearing a shirt that said “MST3K JUNKIE” on the front, and as I went through the entrance, a Disney employee said “It’s great to see another MST fan!” which gave us a moment to call out our favorite riffs before I had to rush off to catch up to my family.
It’s always fun to meet random people like that, and it’s sort of like being part of a secret club or something.
My license plate frame for my car says “I’d rather be… watching MST3K” and I often wonder how many people see it and laugh, and how many see it and think “What the…”!
I walked in on some co-workers talking about various episodes they rented on netflix. Little did they know I owned every single episode at home in some capacity. To avoid the embarrassing “sorry, no you can’t borrow any of my DVDs” I didn’t mention it. But I did the superiority deep breath and smirk the whole time. MST3K noobs!! :p
I have a Tom Servo on the dash of my car. One day going through the checkpoint where I work, the cop remarked “nice Servo”. Even at secret gov. installations there are Msties.
I live in New England, so I keep waiting for someone to notice my “Castleton” shirt. I’m gonna think they’re a MSTie, they’re gonna think we went to school together.
My Texas license plate is “MST3K” (I’ve had it since 1996) and every once in awhile I’ll get a honk and thumbs-up. Not as often as the years are passing. It was especially neat when it was on my Mitsubishi 3000GT, which I called my Mitsubishi Science Theater 3000 GT. Now it is just on my Honda Accord, but if you see me in the DFW area, honk gently!
This happened a couple of years ago. I knew there were a few Michigan fans of mystery science theater, but I wasn’t sure just how many. I met The Bolem, Quite appropriately, at a movie theater. He was playing the house of the dead, quite expertly, I might add.
There are a few MST3K references on my model railroad, such as the Hotel Torgo in the town of Dos Manos. Every now and then someone on one of the model railroading forums will get the reference and comment on it.
You say goodbye, and I say hello. Hello, Hello. I don’t know why you say goodbye, I say hello
Wow, come to think of it, I’d have to go back to the ’90s to recall the days when I would occasionally encounter someone who was familiar with and liked the show. I turned people onto it when I could. Also recall my wife and her friend and I going to a midnight screening of the movie, that was a hoot, all those misties in one place! ha
However, these days, in my world, it’s just my thing. Like an old, late night friend (or early morning on weekends!) …or, sorta like comfort food, I s’pose.
You stole my license plate!…or beat me to it at least.
I’m from Dallas, and many, many years ago I tired to nab that plate but came up already taken.
Every year or two I’d try…but to no avail.
I did always wonder about the lucky person driving around with that plate.
In my darkest hours I’ve contemplated moving to a state based on that plate’s availability.
Well done!…and, also, Hikeeba!
Same exact outcome for me…have not had a chance encounter with an MST fan.
So I’ve come to the logical conclusion that the users on this site are figments of my imagination.
It makes me sad that none of you actually exist…I so wish you did…we’d take over the world…mocking everyone and everything in our path.
Welcome…won’t you?
Don’t Panic! Many of us inhabitants of Traal suffer the same plight.
Maybe when the reboot shows begin to air we’ll gain more recruits.
COME … to the dark side … :yes:
I had just come back from the Conventio-Con Expo-Fest-A-Rama II Electric Boogaloo after having seen a woman waving an Alaska “MST3K” plate.
I figured – Well, there aren’t that many drivers or cars in Alaska, so her odds were pretty good. Being from Texas, I didn’t expect to have a chance, so in addition to MST3K as my #1 choice, I included others that seemed more likely to not be chosen yet. Surprise!
Solipsism is it’s own reward.
I’m not sure if this qualifies, but this happened in 2012. I was in Orlando at that year’s “Star Wars” Celebration. I was waiting with other fans to get into a showing of the original movie. I remarked that, just a few days earlier, I’d been in a theater watching RT re-riff “Manos”. Another fan in line turned to me and said, “You lucky b*****d.”
I discovered that one of my coworkers was a friend of Joel when I saw a flyer in the hallway saying that my company was hosting the debut of Cinematic Titanic in our theater! I had no idea she knew him!. And at the huge turnout I discovered that just about everyone I worked with loved MST3K!
Ah yes, the night I saw ‘Lincoln’. That’s the only time I’ve randomly run into a MSTie as well, outside of a RT show. I don’t recall how the show came up, or what bobhoncho said his facebook page was, hence I failed to keep in touch. Sorry bob!
I guess this doesn’t count as random or unexpected because you WOULD expect a MSTie or two to work in a comic shop, but Kelly is the only fan I’ve met who’d been to a CT show and described the experience. We never talked about the show as much as our shared passion for picking the carcass of every local video store as it went under, but our fandom is one of the last places where anyone gives a crap about movies over a decade old, so that means almost as much. She was also a VHS-phile to the point that she didn’t feel like she was actually watching the movie if it was on DVD. Sadly, her comic shop closed too, and I haven’t seen her since. Never got around to seeing CT either. sigh.
LOL for a split second I thought you were using “Friend Of Joel” like some use “Friend Of Dorothy”!
I’m from a small town in Washington state. I’m attending WSU (Go Cougs!) and I’m in the Cougar Marching Band. During band camp this year, I really clicked with a girl in my section. I don’t remember how it came up, but she mentioned “Those old educational films where they’re like, ‘Suzy, you are disgusting! You should wash your hair at least once or twice a week'” or something to that extent. I said that was great and asked where she heard about these shorts. She’s like, “Well, my family and I watch this show called Mystery Science Theater 3000” and my eyes just lit up. We were totally fan-girling the rest of the day. Amazing experience and we still watch it together sometimes.
I’ve also had about five teachers who knew of and liked the show, one of which has DVDs.
Okay, are you guys ready for this?
Discovered the mortician was a MSTie while planning my grandmother’s funeral.
I went back to the funeral home with my bots so he could take a picture with them. In the funeral home.
I recently ran into him at another funeral and we were talking and cracking up about MST while people were mourning. We sort of didn’t realize we were that loud or inappropriate at first…
you are -sick- man! and so’s your mortician. (lol, the new schoolyard taunt!) i love it.
p.s. is “friend of dorothy” something like “friend of bill w.”? like, “pill-poppers anon” or something? (picturing “friend of judy garland” out of it…)
When I went to interview at Bookmans (“entertainment exchange” in AZ) over ten years ago, one interviewer asked “Are you into Godzilla movies?” I replied, “Kinda, but I’m really more of a Gamera fan.”
The other interviewer began singing, “Gamera is filled with meat!” I joined right in, naturally. I was hired! And I still work there.