The Best of Times with MST3K

[Mighty Jack]

What was the most fun you've had with MST3K, what were your most perfect MST moments?

Mine...

1. New episodes, "It's MST3K day!"
Really, it's as simple as that. Looking forward to the show, driving home after work, ordering a pizza, or making tacos, whatever, and kicking back with a brand new episode. Man that was bliss.



2. Final Sacrifice
I've told this story elsewhere, basically, I had an unexpected watch party, as family members kept stopping by. Soon my small living room was filled with people and the sound of laughter. An extra-special part of that was my father was there. Dad loved comedy, but this was the only time we ever watched an episode together -- he had a big booming laugh, infectious laugh, so even with all of us gathered together, it was that sound you'd clearly hear. This is one of my fondest MST memories, and why (aside from it being a classic) this ep will always be special to me.

3. Manos
A charity named "Hands On Nashville" hosted a special event at the Belcourt Theater, they showed 2 hand-related MST3K episodes on the big screen (Manos & The Crawling Hand), plus your ticket got you free Mexican food and access to an open bar. What was interesting was how great Manos was... I mean I know it's iconic, but it was never was a Top 10er to me, but in that theater with those people, it was the best episode ever. I was laughing at riffs I never laughed at before, the positive energy was palpable. Great night!

4. The Beast of Yucca Flats
Another group watch, I get a call to bring over an MST ep, I asked which one, and he (my brother) says you pick it, I trust you. Okay, I'll bring over a favorite, but remember, you asked for it. I thought Yucca might defeat them but they laughed and laughed. Recently I was looking at a couple of MST3K rankings, Paste had Yucca at #188 (the hell?) another site put it at #84, this is my 3rd favorite episode so I was surprised it was rated so low by others. My brother and his family loved it too, though my bro was like "Where did they find that trash, what a rotten movie!" But funny, funny comedy came out of it.

[leeharveyosmond]

i didn't get into the show until around 2010/2011 so really discovering it for the first time and trying to track down every episode through the internet via multiple outlets (and eventually buying the box sets as they came out) was very exciting. watching an episode or two on netflix every couple of nights or so. memorizing the episodes. things like that. i don't think any one show stood out right away, it took me multiple viewings and eventually watching them in order when i could tell which shows i liked best and where they placed chronologically. (seasons 2 & 5-7 generally, also realizing that not too many fan favorites speak to me)

it's one of two major comedy shows i bonded with my dad over in these past 10 years. we went to all three shows joel hodgson did at the colonial theatre in phoenixville pa within a year or 2 and had a pretty great time. i was delighted that the "secret" episode he selected for the second show was the beatniks.

[glowgirl004]

I've been having a lot of fun during the pandemic, trying to watch an episode a week. I'm rediscovering favorites and getting to see some I've never seen before.

[crowschmo]

Just discovering the show for the first time. I saw an article about it in TV Guide one year when Joel was leaving and Mike was taking over. I thought, "Hey, I've never even heard of this show." It had a picture of Crow in the article. I didn't have Comedy Central yet and I was thinking, from the description in the article, like it sounded like a show I would enjoy so I was bummed I wasn't able to watch it.

My cable company had a free trial of Comedy Central some time after that and I thought, oh good, I'll finally be able to watch that show with that robot thingee.

Well. I loved it. It has become my favorite show of all time (along with Farscape - way to go Psy Figh with your cancelling of shows and whatnot, great decision making at that channel).

And since my introduction to this show, I've had fond memories of anticipating new episodes and having it cheer me up when life got me down. I "got" it. (And it got me).

[Mighty Jack]

Thanks for sharing - we've had so many little squabbles here of late, I thought it might be nice to reminisce, and talk about the good parts of being a fan of this show.

And I was looking around, trying to find an old add or newspaper clipping for that Manos showing, but came up empty. But I think more organizations should do things like that. There's nothing finer than a bunch of drunk, taco eating MSTies supporting a good cause.





honestly though, I stuck with root beer, I was only drunk on MST 

[jadenh]

I don't have many strong memories with MST3K. However, I always enjoy watching the show with my dad and my sister. She's a fan of the Japanese movies, like Fugitive Alien and Time of the Apes.

[sol-survivor]

Back in the days before I got online (February 2001) I never knew when any episodes would be released commercially, and I didn't know any had been released except for MST3K:TM, which was the only official release I owned. Back then it was on VHS. One day I was browsing around in our local Sam Goody (at the time our mall even had two of them), and to my surprise I unexpectedly found four episodes on tape, just sitting there on the shelf waiting for me! I don't recall which ones they were other than one of them was The Beginning of the End, but I grabbed them and had a fun marathon that night. After that I would check both SG's whenever I went to the mall, and every now and then I was rewarded with a new tape. It was such a warm, glowy feeling whenever I found a new prize. I eventually got all the VHS releases except for The Amazing Colossal Man. After I got online I found Satellite News, learned about new releases, and got into tape-trading. A couple years after that I started on DVDs. Sam Goody is of course long gone, but there's still an independent music, gaming, and video store nearby that at least used to carry them. Since most places don't carry as many DVDs and Blu-rays as they used to and there hasn't been a new release in a long time I'm not sure if they would still carry them, but when they did I would go make a purchase on release day, which was how I got my copy of Volume 10. Later I just went ahead and started pre-ordering. Every time there was an announcement of a new release or a delivery it was like Christmas. When I first heard the official announcement about the move to the SciFi Channel I heard it on the news on the car radio with my late Mom driving us back from Green Bay (we toured Lambeau Field and the Packer Hall of Fame the summer before the Packers won the Super Bown!!! in 1997), and she almost drove off the highway when I started clapping and whooping. Good thing she didn't, because it was my car. I think the excitement about all those new discoveries and events and my subsequent enjoyment of them was what caused me to feel so let down by the reboot. Even my apathy about both revivals doesn't take away from the good feelings I had from before.

[foreign object]

Being in Canada, I never saw the show during it's run. I happened to be a fan of bad movies and when I saw the single "I Accuse My Parents" for sale at the store, I thought it might be interesting and what the heck, I bought it. Hooked. The exciting part for me was when a new Rhino set would be released and I watched 4 movies that I had never seen before! I learned about the show and it's lexicon with each successive set. I remember getting the Medved brothers Golden Turkey Awards books in the 80's and thinking how cool it would be to see all these bad movies and thanks to MST3K they covered quite a few and I will forever be indebted to the show for that.

MJ, cool to see Yucca Flats was ranked so high for you as I love the Coleman Francis trilogy and Final Sacrifice is a sentimental favorite for me as it was made in my neck of the woods.

[Diet Kolos]

Bit convoluted of a story.

I was first informally introduced to the show back around late 95 or early 96 when it was being syndicated to local TV stations.
My parents were up late one night with some friends over and they were laughing at the TV, I came out and watched a little bit with them because I couldn't sleep. I vaguely remembered a giant angry guy in a diaper talking to a woman. He gets up and leaves and then another voice says "He was sitting on a bush". Then I fell asleep. For years I thought it was something I had dreamed.

Fast forward to probably late 2000 or early 2001, my dad rents MST3K The Movie from Blockbuster. We watch it and I realize that my phantom memory was in fact a real thing. And I think it's hilarious of course so we start going to local Blockbusters to find some of the Rhino VHS releases. This lasts for a few months, and eventually I take a rented copy of Manos to a friend's house for a sleepover. We laugh it and watch, and he tells me that the show is still airing in re-runs on Sci-Fi on Saturday mornings.

Now, my parents never sprung for cable. And they weren't going to do it just to tape re-runs. But my dad's office had cable. So I convinced him to get up early on Saturday mornings from probably late 2001 to early 2003 and drive me to his office so we could watch and tape episodes in his office's conference room.

Currently Tom's Temple is down, otherwise I could give you the exact date, but the first episode we taped was, I believe, 810-Giant Spider Invasion. We went back one last time in early 2004 to watch the final airing of Screaming Skull.

THOSE are my best times with MST3K. Me, sitting on the floor of the conference room, my dad in a chair, watching a little 20-something inch tv every Saturday morning. I can still distinctly smell the leather chairs and his cheap office coffee.
The business shut down a few years later. He kept the land and the office for another decade, but had to sell recently. I had to say goodbye to that conference room that held a lot of good memories. Might've cried a little.

[Mighty Jack]

Great stories.

I'm watching Amazing Colossal Man now (and have War ready to go right after) - I got a new laugh, the Hospital Noir line, just because I hit film-noir pretty hard this year, watching one after another, and there really was some noirish lighting in that scene. Never paid attention to that in previous viewings - MST... you never know when something new will strike the funny bone.

Sad to hear that Tom's temple is down. I was reworking my top episodes list and looking at the pictures... I remember grabbing them from a site, can't remember the name, but it was just loaded with screencaps for each episode, now it's gone.

[Diet Kolos]

Yeah, someone took Tom's site address
It's happened before, but it looks permanent this time. He's working to get it back up at a .net address.

That's probably one of my other Best Time with MST3K...

The weekend of the Rifftrax MST3K Reunion back in June 2016. I bought a balcony ticket, flew up to Milwaukee and rented a car. I stayed at my aunt's house in the Twin Cities.
I didn't do any pre-planning with other MSTies, I was just going to lone wolf it.

I woke up early, like 8am, the day of the show and drove to Eden Prairie to the old studio, at that point an empty shell of a building. I looked around the whole empty building, looked in doors and windows. Found where the entrance to old studio was based on photos from Tom's website. Etc.

I was out front, taking one last picture before I continued on my way to breakfast or perhaps past the old KTMA studio when I see some cars parking down at the far end of the building and people milling around. So I walk down to the far end of the building, its a group of what looks to be nearly 20 people, some in MST shirts. I ask if they're looking for the old studio, they are, so I point them to the correct place on the building.
One of those people was Tom, I recognized him from the website, I introduce myself, I'd corresponded with him via email in prior years. He remembered who I was, and I ask what the deal with the group is. Well, some MSTies the day prior had decided to spend part of that day together reminiscing, etc. There was a podcast taped, a group photo was taken. Tom invited me to lunch at the Eden Prairie mall with the rest of the MSTies. I sat across from Tom and discussed we discussed MST minutiae for an hour or 2. It was great.
I still occasionally correspond with him. Nice guy. Probably the greatest living MSTie.

[wedestroymyths]

I don't know that I have any memories quite as specific as some of these lovely stories, I guess, in general, my favorite memories were just watching with groups of friends. But I guess everyone has those moments. So I've got a couple of others--

I was pretty unhappy my first couple of years at college. And I'd not spent a lot of time watching MST since early season 8, maybe? And I was kind of bummed and went up to the lounge in my dorm. I was the only one in there, and I was doing some channel surfing and landed on Soul Taker. I think it was a rerun? That whole time period is a bit hazy, but watching that ep felt like a warm hug from an old friend, and it inspired me to grab some of my tapes from home.

The next year, I was, again, pretty bummed in general, and just remember wrapped in blankets in bed, in the dark, watching a VHS tape of Tormented on an old console TV.

One other--I first saw MST over winter break when I was in 7th or 8th grade, and the same year, my dad had gotten my mom some kind of bread making machine for christmas. For the remainder of that winter break, I stayed up late watching MST and gluing together and painting battlemechs (I'd gotten a couple of the "Battletech "Clans" sets for Christams). Any time I smell yeasty baking bread or epoxy, I immediately think of the show. It was further cemented because we had a number of snow days that year. On the nights school was called for the following day, I'd stay up to watch. If we didn't know if school was cancelled until the morning, I'd wake up to see what treasure the vcr had caught the night before.

Like I said, I've had so much fun, so many times watching MST with friends. Something about those other moments, though feels really special.

[BilLumberg]

In anticipation of the gizmoplex, I wonder if anyone here would be interested in doing a group episode viewing online.

[hike'em'up]

with all the fine memories of having watched the show during its live run and everything involved in finding this show for myself and inviting it to influence the development of my own personal sense of humor (along with one other show especially dear to me), the ultimate enjoyment would be in purchasing as many episodes as i could (Rhino, Shout!, er bootleg) and then sharing them with my wife and later our nephew and ultimately our son - and this has obviously taken place over the course of quite a few years now

watching each of them taking to it and listening to them laugh, uninhibited - sometimes uncontrollably - and enjoying the show for themselves; expanding with them a source of comedy and jokes to reference whenever together and among each other; these have been the best times with MST3K

[jadenh]

I watched Laserblast with my family earlier today, and I think all of us really enjoyed it! Even if I didn't get all the jokes, hearing my dad laugh at all of them made me smile the whole way through. I think this experience cements it as one of my all time favorite episodes.