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Weekend Discussion Thread: MST3K Viewing HabitsAlert reader Dan writes:
So what are your MST3K viewing habits? (And I’m always interested in discussion thread ideas, btw!) 179 Replies to “Weekend Discussion Thread: MST3K Viewing Habits”Commenting at Satellite News
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I should add that a while back I introduced MST3K to my family and it got incorporated into the Friday night pizza ritual. We would make pizza and watch something, and for the last 9 years, i would always bring an episode to watch and now it is a revered family tradition. My mom has a tendency to have a laughing jag at various points (I remember a memorable one during “Might Jack” and some other Japanese jems” and those moments are hard to beat. When my mom laughs until she is coughing and gasping for air, the world is a good and beautiful place. The right people will get it, indeed!
Friday nights after many vodka sandwiches.
Rainy Sunday mornings with coffee and our Yorkie on the couch…
For me, there are two ways to watch MST3K. The first is with a group of friends, which is my favorite way. It’s always better with more people.
The second, which I also enjoy greatly, is to watch approximately a quarter of an episode before bed. The host segments are good stopping points, and twenty minutes of MST3K is always enough to make me feel better about my day. Plus, this method allows one episode to be watched over the course of a week (Monday – Thursday). Eventually I’ll probably start doing this with CT and Rifftrax stuff, but I doubt they’ll hold quite the same charm.
Saturday morning is the best for me, something about kicking off a weekend with a smile, whether it be mst3k, 3 stooges, or back in my shall we say “cheech and chong” period of my life – pee wee’s playhouse
It’s not so much watching it as I fall asleep for me, but more that I prefer to watch it before bed. I don’t like watching h;af an episode and then dozing off.
We usually do an MST3k marathon on Thanksgiving and Christmas. We also usually watch an episode on the weekends as well when time permits.
I usually stream eps through YouTube on weekends, although they removed “Day the Earth Froze”, which is my favorite.
Damn You, YouTube!!!! :evil:
Here’s a discussion thread idea: Most Memorable and/or Violent Deaths in a MSTed Movie. My picks:
-The lab assistant from The Brain That Wouldn’t Die who gets his arm ripped off and smears a gallon of blood on the walls.
-The turncoat from Final Justice who gets a flare fired into his chest and subsquently catches fire.
-The idiotic driver from “Last Clear Chance” who thinks it’s a good idea to turn your head and wave while driving. Why don’t they look?
On occasion I will let an MST3k episode or Rifftrax be a backdrop as I take a nap. It makes for a great point of reference when I last remember Makonnen talking about the ‘good and the beautiful’ only to find the Solarite pushing down Sessom immediately after.
I find that MST3K is the perfect laundry companion. My partner likes the show, but not enough to have it on when we go to bed, so I make the time when I can, and laundry time’s perfect – I can usually get two episodes, if I let it pile up.
Oh – many people have been writing about wanting a servo statue from Shout Factory – maybe if we write them requesting that they maybe release “Tom Servo’s All Time Favorite Host Segments” on DVD they could use that as an excuse to make one?
I usually watch an episode on my computer as background noise as I do my homework.
I always turn on an episode before I go to sleep. My preferred episode has to be “Space Mutiny”. Something about it just soothes the soul.
ALways at night.. after Jeopardy and before falling asleep…well into falling asleep.
But I have “almost” every episode on dvd-r and the boxed versions,plus a few rhino singles (all but I accuse my parents). I end up watching an episode at least every day sometimes 2 or three.. cant get enough!
It’s always time for M-S-T-3-K!
Nearly every night, 15 or 20 minutes to help me fall asleep. Like, the amount of an episode between host segments.
And then, just as I’m doing now (“Prince of Space”), it’s the best background for laundry or ironing.
i like the mst3k
My wife doesn’t like MST3K (heathen) :lol:
So I always watch alone LATE on Friday or Saturday nights, or VERY early Saturday or Sunday mornings.
I started watching MST3K at the end of the SciFi years and I would always catch it early on Saturday mornings. I’m the ultimate anti-morning person, so you know that I love my MST3K.
Cabbage Patch Elvis (#36), yes, when I’ve dozed off during my lunchtime ep, the end theme music acts EXACTLY like an alarm clock…good call!
I do remember one time during a particularly lousy winter day, my husband decided it would be a nice time for a nap, so he wanted to put in an MST ep – he chose The Starfighters. Only problem was, we both got so caught up in it, & laughed so hard, we couldn’t fall asleep. Go figure.
And for the record, Sampo, I’d second all the discussion topics from The Toblerone Effect (#44), especially the dream box set & the most risque riff…some definite potential there!
I’d also add the Most Annoying Character (which has to be sharply differentiated from Worst Performance), and – a complicated but maybe fun topic – choosing five stingers to put together in a coherent manner, as if you were making a movie just out of stingers, and were providing the opening “scene.”
thread idea
Most Embarrassing mst3k viewing moment*For those of us who were little or unfortunate enough not to know about mst3k when it was on the air)
God, I feel like the bee girl from the Blind Melon video. I can’t sleep anymore without an episode on. But it has to be one I have seen alot and love like Prince of Space, Blood waters of Doctor Z, Pantis Mantis, or #1 for falling asleep EP. of all time INVASION OF THE NEPTUNE MEN! However I’ve noticed that sometimes the credit music wakes me up and when it does it just sounds heartbreaking, like my friends are going away forever. The feeling only lasts a second but it is seriuosly bittersweet.
Thread idea:
Stingers for non-MSTed movies.
When am I NOT watching it is more like it.
Its so awesome to see all these people who, just like me, use MST3K to help them get to sleep a night! I have been doing this ever since I was 13! (Gotta say, if you are looking for the ultimate ‘put you to sleep immediately episode’, you can’t go wrong with Hamlet.)
When I moved to Tokyo in 2005, I wasn’t able to bring my boxes and boxes of MST3K tapes with me, and the only episode that I had digitally was Jack Frost…and thus went to sleep every night for several months to the exact same episode…until a friend introduced me to the wonders of youtube. (That was 4 years ago, and have yet to watch Jack Frost since then…)
Recently I was back in the states for Christmas, and picked up a new 120 iPod…and then proceeded to put every.single.episode on it.
Unfortunately, everything that you have heard about the Japanese work day is true…14 hour days 6 days a week…but as long as I get my dose of MST3K on the train home at night, I feel rejuvinated and recharged.
I find that after a particulary hard day at work, episodes like ‘Prince of Space’ and ‘The Invasion of the Neptune Men’ hit the spot PERFECTLY.
Back when I was a kid, I used to have two TVs in my room. One for playing video games, and one for watching MST3K WHILE playing video games. Thanks to how far techonology has come…I am able to reenact that wherever I’m at, seeing as how I never go anywhere without my DS and my iPod.
And while it looks as if the majority of posts talk about using MST3K to get to sleep, I am sure I am not the only one who takes it to the next level and actually uses it as an alarm clock as well. I load the DVD into my computer, and then tell my computer to go to sleep at one time, and wake up at a time I specify. I set it to the time I would normally set my alarm clock to. When the computer wakes in the morning, it comes back on mid MST3K playback…give it a try next time!
I will be completely original and say that…nope can’t do it. I cannot fall asleep without something on TV; my mind races too fast and my thoughts keep me awake.
But with MST3K, my mind and body is listening to the show, and within minutes I am out like a light. It does not matter which episode it is though.
I’m a hospital doc, and when I’m on call and it isn’t too busy, I often pass the time watching an episode on YouTube. It’s actually a very calming thing for me on a stressful night!
Almost always at night when my wife and kids go to sleep. I’m getting ready to go watch the rest of “Boggy Creek II” from where I dozed off last night.
I’ve made .mp3’s out of a bunch of episodes so I can play them on my computer as I fall asleep instead of having the TV on. (I have them on my ipod too, for long drives or riding the exercise bike.) I catch more jokes listening to them this way.
I throw an episode in just about every night and i’m gone in about 10 minutes. So i’ll watch the same episode three or four nights in a row, starting further into the movie each night. My favorite part is waking up to the close music, thinking “bummer”–but realizing i still have 4-5 hours of sleep left before the alarm clock and i can start over.
I always put in Deathstalker on the night before an important day at work–don’t know, it just makes me feel better. (crow: “continue to follow me as you have for days and days”)
Great thread!
I work on my PC all day developing websites, updating databases, making flash animation ads and other web-related stuff. Watching MST3K in the background is the only thing that keeps me SANE when i’m stressing out about work … or lack of work, etc.
I generaly watch about 4 shows per week – no particular sequence. Sometimes it’s a GAMERA kinda week, other times it’s such a manic day that only the insanity of MANOS make the world make sense again.
Tons of scientific studies indicate that humor and laughter are associated with better serotonin levels, increased immune system response, and other physical-mental health benefits. So I consider my MST3K addiction to be part of an ‘active healthy lifestyle’.
Wow! Amazing how many people SLEEP to MST3K! That is weird but i’ve done it myself too.
Friday night is Misty night for me. I like to wind-up the week and let off the steam with a bowl of icecream and laughing my ass off silly to an episode of MST3K. Sometimes I do a different night, but it has to be at midnight, or the magic does doesn’t work for me nearly as well. I’m guessing it’s a mental block thing… a hold-over from when I fell in love with the show, watching it every night at midnight when it aired on Comedy Central. Even when the show went to Sci-Fi, I would end up taping it to view later at midnight for maximal effect. Regardless, I have the full catalog of DVDs dating back to when they were only coming out in singles, so I’m well stocked and tend to watch them in order of release, (because I’m kind of anal that way :mrgreen: ).
bad wolf… if you are still on this tread… here’s what i do.
just play the dvd and run a microphone from a computer and set it in front of the speaker and then you can put it on your iPod. this is what i do… works great.
secret agent super dragon
teenage strangler* awesome *
red zone cuba
i accuse my parents
all these are just audio and i listen to them while cleaning.
Much like everyone else I love watching an episode as I drift off to sleep. Around 1998, I started recording episodes through my stereo and put it on cassette and would listen to it with headphones as I fell asleep. It would always be an episode that I knew well and would know exactly what was going on with each riff.
Around 2003 I changed them to mp3’s and listened on my Dell jukebox, and now with my Ipod. Current loop for sleep is Catalina Caper, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, and my favorite, Riding with Death.
I do the same thing: I have a portable DVD player on my nightstand, and I pop in a MST3K episode, place it on auto-repeat, and fall asleep to it.
I may repeat the same episode for the entire week! :shock:
GregS
To keep the old Saturday MST3000 times going, I
watch one every Saturday (in order, but since
my video tape broke down months ago, only using
the dvds, up to a total of about 55-56 with the lateset boxed set release last month). I’m currently in Season 4 viewing.
Its amazing to see how many other fans enjoy falling asleep to the show like myself. I had to start picking episodes that didn’t have women screaming in it. Ruth’s screams from MST 3K the movie always wake me up. So thats why I love the generic 70s movies like Riding with Death, Codename Diamondhead, etc.
I will also, thanks to Google, watch a short or two while at work.
I’ve been a fan of MST since it’s inception but I grew away from it during season 7. Lately I’ve been watching an episode per week (I only own 3 boxed sets) so I’m not as a fanatic as the majority but viewing the show as a sleep inducer is kinda strange to me. But if I think about it, watching ‘Hamlet’ while in bed would knock me out fast!
Hmmm, out of the over 100 comments here no one does what my wife and I do when watching MST3K, so I’ll explain:
Once a month or so we have a “feast” in bed, where we enjoy Champagne (although lately we’ve switched to Riondo Prosecco, the finest cheap bubbly anyone can enjoy), smoked salmon (not lox, but the alder smoked stuff), cheeses, other delicacies with great desserts to boot. Hey, is it any wonder I’m fat? Anyway, we found it was great to watch something funny while we did this — alcohol helps with ANY comedy — and after we went through Ab Fab and Jeeves and Wooster we turned to the perfect feast companion — MST3K.
After that we found that MST3K goes with food, well, kind of like Riondo Prosecco. So we watch it with almost every meal (I have all the episodes streamed throughout the house on our various TVs, so we can watch any one we want at any time, although we nearly always follow strict rotation). Since we’ve retired and there’s just the two of us it’s like an extended family (although our best fun was when our daughter watched with us during MST3K’s run on Saturday morning’s breakfast).
As someone here said, MST3K is comfort food, which is why it goes with Real Food so well, and probably why people like to watch it right before bed. I’ve always said the key to the success of the show was not the idea, not even the riffing per se, but the good naturedness of the show. Even when making fun of some celebrity it was never mean (like Family Guy) — not that there’s anything wrong with that, but meanness is not something you want to go to sleep to.
Both Joel and Mike were careful not to cross this line — the bots could get away with a little more as J and M could always bring them back, but in general the tone was so nice you felt like maybe even the folks getting riffed would enjoy it.
And, as others said, there is no bad time to watch MST3K, because it makes you feel good, and I think the above is the reason why. Yep, you laugh, but you also have a great deal of optimism about the human spirit. Can’t get enough of that (particularly now).
Since Mondays usually are a downer, every Monday after work I watch a MST3K while sipping wine. I’ve done this for so long (since about 2000 or 2001)than now Tuesdays are the new Mondays for me!
And here I thought I was the only one who did this.
Unless I’m really really tired on a given night, I’ll put on an episode that I’m very familiar with to fall asleep to.
There are still a good 2 dozen or so episodes that I have downloaded/on DVD that need watching, so I try to have them on on my computer while doing things at home. It often takes me 2-3 viewings of an episode to really have it down pat (1 viewing to learn the movie, another to really attach the riffs, and the rest to catch onto subtleties).
I usually go over to my friend Bob’s place on Sunday nights to watch MST3K from his collection. Last night we watched “Red Zone Cuba”. I also watch episodes from YouTube at night when I feel like it. I miss the Turkey Day Marathons where I first encountered MST3K.
Yet again, I’m glad that I’m not the only one who does this.
I’ve found that nothing gives me better dreams at night than to fall asleep to “Day the Earth Froze”. Having a multi-disc player is good, too, because you can put a few episodes and have them rotate at night. Wake up and can’t get back to sleep? Just roll over and watch “Pod People” for a bit.
I can’t watch MST3K while pedaling on my stationary bike. When I’m laughing so hard my legs get weak!
I did not read all the posts but I take it I am in the minority when I say I never fell asleep during an episode. Maybe it’s because I watch during every meal I have at home. Breakfast and dinner during the week. Breakfast, lunch and dinner on weekends. If I wake up with a face full of oatmeal then I will truly be a fan?
I also use MST3K to battle insomnia. If I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep, I pop in a DVD or tape and usually drift off to sleep within 10-20 minutes (or less). Maybe Shout Factory could boost sales by marketing it as a side effect-free sleep aid?
I usually watch an episode on a Sunday night, gives me a laugh before another work week begins.
The other time I like is Friday night, sometimes on a Friday I’ll pop in an episode, I usually watch the new CT’s on a Friday.
It is so interesting reading how other msties use the episodes. I always felt just a tiny bit guilty for having it on in the background and not really paying attention. But, it is soothing. Like mental comfort food. I usually watch one a day, doing other things, stopping when I know my fave riff is coming up, or my fave host segment. Ok, if you want to fall asleep, try this one: on most of the CT discs there is the endless sound of footsteps at the beginning – very, very soothing, I recommend it for any insominac.
When I go to bed I put on headphones as the wife drifts off to sleep and I start an MST. I do this every single night. Once I get tired, typically about an hour in, I turn off the TV but keep the headphones on, listening to the audio only through the DVD or VHS player as I drift off to sleep.
I have done this every night almost without fail for 9 years.
I watch one episode a week. Usually on Wed if the schedule permits (I first watched the Show every Wed nights on 48 GTW in Philadelphia). I watch them in order of the episode list. I own all the Rhino episodes. 4 or 5 I have on tape from their airing on 48 GTW and Scifi(all transfered to DVD. 9 episodes I downloaded from online (Episodes that more than likely WON’T be released on DVD,ie Space Travelers etc). I also have the first Shout box set. My Birthday is soon so I’m hoping someone will get the hint.
I’m a computer programmer. I can sit my cube 9+ hours without human contact and only taking breaks for bathroom and visiting the vendor machines.
While at work, I start up youtube and listen to mst3k. The 10 minute breaks are irritating but it helps in remind me of time passing. People at work ask me what make me laugh.
I, too, put them in at night to help lull myself into sleep. I find it clears the mind.
Castle Monster #84 – Screaming Skull, right?
I usually listen to an episode at work everyday while doing boring data entry. Thank you YouTube! Today it’s “The Castle of Fu Man Chu”. I tried to listen to my Cinematic Titanic DVDs, but I didn’t know the movies well enough and kept getting distracted. The Film Crew on Hulu works okay though.
back when it was on tv it was always wake up early and watch with my dad. nowadays when i get the dvds i save em and watch them whenever i visit with my dad. always a good time!