Tagged: mst3k

Mystery Science Road Trip 3000

A little while ago Kent had a birthday, and Jen gave him the best present ever: VIP tickets to a Mystery Science Theater 3000 Live show. The date of the show finally rolled around, so we jumped in the Skelleymobile and headed off on a road trip.

Faithful blog readers will know that we like to use car trips as brainstorming time. Our open projects are dwindling in number as we complete novels and launch them into the world. In fact, out of our first three trilogies, we currently have only one book that’s unwritten, and it’s most of the way outlined already. The part of it that’s not nailed down yet involves a lot of moving parts that all need to mesh together just so, and “in a moving car while Kent pays attention to traffic” didn’t seem like the best environment for tackling it. Enter: the Ghost Novels!

Before this trip we had a few wisps of ideas for the way we want the supernatural to work in our newest story world. Now, after a couple of hours of discussion, we have a much clearer picture of the way our ghosts will work, and even the ghost of a plot (see what we did there?). At this point it’s more like two or three plotlings, some of which might work together and some of which contradict each other. A lot more conversation will be needed before we’re ready to start writing. But it felt good to explore a whole new universe, especially this one at Halloween time. We’re surrounded by spooky stories and it’s exciting to start to work on our own.

You know what else is exciting? Getting to have a conversation with Joel Hodgson (who is very nice! — he told Kent he asked a great question!), having our pictures taken on the Satellite of Love with Joel, Jonah, the Bots, and Pearl Forrester’s clone Synthia, and then watching a live riffing of a truly terrible movie.

Most exciting of all? Having a writing partner who shares your sense of humor.

MST3K

We were so excited to participate in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Kickstarter! We got swag, and emails from Joel, and everything! But now that the new episodes are available on Netflix, they’re something of a drain on our productivity. The urge to binge them all is strong, but we’ve been taking a somewhat slower approach so that we can savor each one, and to make them last. But now we’re almost done. Sniff.

Somewhat to our horror, we had each seen two of the movies in their non-MST form. We have a soft spot for Copenhagen, and so had actually watched Reptilicus on purpose. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Reptilicus is basically Godzilla in Denmark, and it’s the first movie tackled in the new season by Jonah and the bots.

Avalanche was the surprise. Jen and Kent have been married seemingly forever, and it’s hard to remember sometimes that we actually had separate childhoods. But we did! And those separate childhoods each included the viewing of the Mia Farrow/Rock Hudson classic Avalanche. Fate.

A few nights ago we finally reached the episode where we are listed in the credits, and it’s a doozy. Wizards of the Lost Kingdom 2, starring David Carradine for some reason. The fight choreography is stunningly inept, the “humor” even more so. Do yourselves a favor and watch it! Be sure to stay for the credits where you can pause it and see Rune Skelley’s name. I’m sure you’ll be almost as excited as we were!

But seriously, you should watch the whole series. It’s awesome!