Nine Things That I Am Delighted Came Back in the 2010s

Back in the late 2000s when I was doing this blog, I would occasionally pepper my videogame blog articles with other entries related to geeky things that I also enjoyed. Continuing that, here are nine things that amazingly returned in the 2010s and my thoughts on them.

Midnight Oil

My favorite band  in the world broke up in 2002 after a decades-long career, and only reformed a few times after that to do special gigs here and there. Peter Garrett, the lead singer, went on the serve in the Australian government, and the other members kept busy with other projects. There was, for a very long time, no talk nor hope of a reunion, much less a reunion tour.

Cut to early 2016 when Peter Garrett cranked out a solo album, his time in the government done and seemingly really enthusiastic to get back into music.

Fans who hoped that this was a precursor to an Oils reunion were ecstatic the following year when not just a reunion was announced, but a massive worldwide tour, to my amazement. The first dates announced, however, put the nearest show to me as either Toronto or Chicago, so I was resigned to not getting to see them due to the sheer distance needed to travel. Late in the tour, however, new dates were added that included The House of Blues up in Cleveland, and thanks to my generous significant other, we got tickets to see the Oils in a small venue. Many of their shows on the Great Circle Tour were in large venues, but this club was smaller and we had great balcony seats with this view:

The nightmarish insanity of the times we live in were not passed by the band, calling out the corruption of the then current administration and Trump in particular. Peter Garrett also told the audience that they had stopped to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame where they found their band mentioned on a tiny plaque in one display. Not bitterness about their lack of recognition, but rather a shining light on the relevance of inclusion in the Hall, I think.

Of course the next hope was a new LP of new material from the band, but that did not come until late 2020 and in the form of a shorter album with multiple collaborations with other artists called The Makarrata Project":

Sadly, shortly after the album's release, bassist Bones Hillman passed away. Before his tragic passing, he apparently told the band to replace him and that the show must go on, because the cause is too important. Tour dates for a hopefully post-COVID 2021 in Australia were announced later.

Mystery Science Theater 3000

Rifftrax continues to carry the torch from the 2000s, moving past synched-up mp3s playing alongside your DVD to multiple releases of fully riffed movies. We caught a few of these in the 2010s that were done in a live theater somewhere and simulcast to theaters all over the country. They did Manos again, and a Kickstarter to do Starship Troopers! It was a reminder of seeing the premiere of Mystery Science Theater: The Movie live in a theater full of Misties back in the 1990s.

But a huge flood of Netflix cash swept through the vast backlog of properties left untouched by other studios, and MST3K was continued for its 11th and 12th seasons with a new cast of humans, but the same bots. The formula held and the cast was great, even bringing back some level of invention exchange.

While fickle-ass Netflix gave up after two seasons, the show will go on. Best of all, there are free (but not commercial free) channels on Pluto TV that run reruns of classic MST3K and Rifftrax episodes all day long. How cool is that? The audience for all of this is big enough to ensure lots of riffs for the foreseeable future.

The Tick

Third time's a charm? After a classic 1990s cartoon, a "Seinfeld with Superheroes" short live-action in the 2000s, the great streaming wave of cash swept through Amazon Prime in the late 2010s. With it, a contest was created for viewers to select their favorite pilot from d a bunch of entries. The winner was a pilot for a new live-action Tick series, made with modern special effects and for modern viewing sensibilities.

What I mean by that is that this is a much darker version of the Tick, still hilariously funny at times, but with characters rooted in some deep psychological shit. The reward for winning the pilot contest was a full season order, and they delivered, creating a fantastic story arc, lots of great secondary characters, and one of the best super-villains to hit any screen, the Terror played by Jackie Earl Haley.

A second season expanded on the various side characters and developed more lore of their crazy version of a world with superheroes. Amazon, having taken fickle lessons from Netflix, axed the show after that. It's too bad, too, as it was really one of the best superhero shows ever made for television, with a ton of potential had it been allowed to continue.

Maybe they will try again in a decade.

Hassle Castle

For much of my childhood, I dreamed of being a cartoonist, and had been drawing my own comics on a regular basis since I could remember. No shame in saying that they were not that great, because I was a kid just doing it for fun. Copiers and personal computers with printers were not that prevalent a thing in the late 1970s, and although my dad was a press room foreman at a real print shop, there was no technical way to make and sell multiple copies of my comics anyway.

One day in 1977 in the next town over, my parents and I stopped in a newsstand and I saw an actual self-published black and white comic book among all the regular national comic books and magazines:

I did say it was a black-and-white comic, but I colored in some of the cover with marker in my youthful lack of concern for future appreciation. The author was, as I suspected, a local adult person with not just the creative genius to come up with this horror-pun-minute classic, but with the means to publish and sell it. I picked up 3 more issues in 1978 but never followed up on it until decades later, with a Google search for the author.

It turns out David Lady went on to distinguish himself as a world famous sci-fi/horror movie mask collector and expert and maintains a Facebook group for fans of his work. He did not abandon Hassle Castle, though, and published 2 large volumes in the 2010s. One was available from a personal website which I think he took down in favor of his Facebook group, and another is still for sale on eBay.

I cannot recommend them enough. Great characters, silly stories, subtle commentary, and the best horror puns I've ever read.

Zima

Nostalgia washes through modern culture so prevalently now, but it's a double edged sword. I sometimes fear a future where everything is nostalgia reboots and remakes and nothing original blows us away. The 1990s are at their peak of nostalgia as the children and teens of that time have taken their place as adults with spending cash.

Zima, the refreshing malt beverage that swept through 1990s culture starting in 1994, was retired in the early 2000s. The brand was owned by Coors, however, who revived it for the summers of 2017 and 2018, seeking to cash in on sweet nostalgia taste. 

My own nostalgia comes from drinking Zima at the finest restaurant I ever worked at, with the coolest crew. We kicked ass as a top-10 fine dining restaurant during that time, and Zima was our colorless, odorless drink of choice during those long days. It drank easy and quick, went down smooth, and looked like 7Up if you poured it into the Styrofoam cup that sat on your station while you slaved on the grill all day. I was (and remain) not a great drinker, so Zima was safe for that working buzz/keep your shit together ratio required by the job.

During those two aforementioned modern summers, I drank Zima again, and was openly mocked by friends and family for it. A few we shared it with enjoyed it, and some recommended dropping Jolly Rancher candy in the bottle. In reality, I did not miss Zima when it was gone again (and I keep a 6-pack stashed in the garage). There was a weird aftertaste to this modern Zima which is not present in my preferred replacement, Smirnoff Ice Triple Black.

Arrested Development

This 2000s comedy classic returned with a new season on Netflix which was good, but confusing at first because of a warped chronology within the episodes of the season. Noting that awkwardness, the new season was reworked to be more chronologically straightforward. I have seen that season but not the other new season they added, but have come to realize that Arrested Development is a tough show to drop in and drop out of.

Not that it's a soap opera level of continuity to follow, it just flows better in a consistent binge-watching schedule rather than an episode here and and episode there. Nonetheless, the show and cast were still outrageously funny and the pace of the show whiplash-fast. I'm glad we got to see more of the Bluths and their wacky world.

TV Star Trek

Movie Star Trek in the 2010s consisted of Kelvin-timeline cast adventures that were mostly satisfying. Late in the decade, Star Trek was back where it really belongs, on television. The big media conglomerate that owns it is CBS Viacom, and when they wanted to start up their own subscription-based streaming service, they smartly tapped into the Star Trek well and got a bunch of Trekkers to subscribe to it for just one show.

Star Trek Discovery takes place on a ship from just a few years before The Original Series. This ship is a science vessel containing a very experimental new type of engine that immediately makes no sense seeing as it would change everything in some of the previous Star Trek shows where no such engine is ever talked about or known to exist. it would have really helped out the USS Voyager, for example.

Luckily, this discrepancy is fully explained by the end of the second season. While the show started out in a weird direction with weird Klingons, the characters and situations have really gelled, and some familiar faces from The Original Series have shown up to help set up their own spinoff. In fact, Discovery was joined by Picard in 2020, a series centered around an elderly old friend whose name is in the title. That show, too , became really enjoyable, and helps justify the CBS All Access subscription a lot more.

Beavis and Butt-Head

In 2011 Beavis and Butt-head returned to MTV for a season. While more of these two was welcome, it did not last long and Mike Judge moved on to other projects. Their 1990s antics translated well to the 2010s, and they even riffed on modern videos and reality shows as well in the new season.

Rumor is that in 2020, he is looking to bring back the duo for another season, possibly on Comedy Central. 

Jay and Silent Bob

Kevin Smith's View Askew connected movie universe ended with Clerks 2, sadly, but understandable as the director moved on to other projects. After a near-death heart attack and subsequent recovery, he went to the well one more time to make Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, where the characters rehash their trip to Hollywood from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back to stop a reboot of the movie they tried to stop before.

As with Clerks 2, though, this was not simply a rehash of old jokes and characters; no, this one had a lot to say about fatherhood, maturity, and of course Hollywood rebooting everything. Smith weaves all of that so well, even with the smallest moments featuring old characters whose own journeys brought them back to the world of Jay and Silent Bob. It was a heartwarming celebration of the silly joys of playing in that world and recognizing together that we've all gotten old, but that's ok.

Cinematic Titanic : The Oozing Skull

Last year saw a sort of revival of Mystery Science Theater 3000 on several fronts. There were the hilarious Rifftrax mp3 commentary tracks available for download, the four Film Crew releases, and the advent of whole episodes of the show popping up on YouTube.

Towards the end of the year it was announced that some of the original members of the cast, and its creators, were banding together to start their own movie - riffing troupe, calling itself Cinematic Titanic. Included in this group are Joel Hodgson, who created the show and hosted it during its first few years on Comedy Central, J. Elvis Weinstein (who played Tom Servo initially), Trace Beaulieu (the original Crow and the mad Dr. Clayton Forrester), Frank Coniff (TV's Frank), and Mary Jo Pehl(Pearl Forrester).

The first disk went on a sort of pre-order around Christmas, and it finally began arriving to rabid fans a few days ago. I got mine on Saturday and Monique and I sat down to watch it right away.

The presentation is in Shadowrama like MST 3K, which means that you see silhouettes of the cast while the movie plays in front of them. Instead of sitting in theater seats, though, the crew of Cinematic Titanic are arranged in tiered scaffolding on the bottom left and right corners. On the left, sitting at the bottom, is Mary Jo Pehl. Seated one tier above her is Joel, and standing (not sitting)above him is J. Elvis Weinstein, holding onto a railing. On the right is a similar arrangement with Frank Coniff seated and Trace Beaulieu standing above him with his own railing.

This works really well, with the two standing cast members using more body movements and sight gags. There are several other surprises as well, including a "cameo" where Dr. Stephen Hawking rolls out into view and states that if the brain transplant happening in the movie works, he's next. So wrong, but so funny.

Instead of the host segments (skits) from MST 3K, the Titanic crew has opted to simply stop the film at times, freezing the frame, and doing various fun things. It works well, as does the five-person team of riffers, and the Oozing Skull turns out to be a movie rife for riffs - evil doctors, an evil little person assistant, a scary-looking big deformed guy, girls tied up in dungeons, and of course the simple fact that the movie was shot in the 1970s.

The best testament I can give to the Oozing Skull is that it was so funny that it was over well before I expected. Right out of the chutes the Cinematic Titanic crew is firing on all cylinders and it feels like MST3K never went away. My only complaint was that I was mailed just a disk, with no DVD case or anything. Of course, I found a fan-made cover and printed it out and put the thing in my own case, but really, for sixteen dollars they could have made one themselves.

It's a minor geek-style complaint, though, and after seeing the Ooozing Skull I'm ready for more. Bring them on, Cinematic Titanic!

MST3K On My iPod !

So Monique got me an 80 Gig Video Ipod Classic Gizmo for Christmas, which I've been fooling around with ever since. My 1500 or so songs I already had in iTunes hardly put a dent in it, so I turned to video.

I cannot put my DVDs on the damn thing for some reason. Even the DVD of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix I got for Christmas, which included a digital version that I was able to put on my PC, well - that digital version can't go on there either.

Some research on the internet lead me to some shady sites where you can first rip your DVDs, which is illegal of course, then convert them to the iPod movie format, which is MPEG4 or something. I decided that I wasn't ready to venture into those dark arts just yet.

Instead, I found Zamzar, a free online file conversion site, which allows me to convert YouTube movies into that format. I've since begun loading up my iPod with embarassing music videos from the 80s, some Ultima X Odyssey movies (including my own), a full episode of the Boondocks, and a Mystery Science Theater 3000 short.


Pretty cool stuff! I still want to unload my Venture Brothers DVDs on the damn thing, though.

More MST3K Goodness

I'm winning the war for more Mystery Science Theater on three fronts now. You see, back in the heyday of the show in the mid 1990s, it was on Comedy Central all the time. At midnight, on Saturday mornings, and at other times. So I figured I had plenty of time to get myself organized and tape all the episodes.

I was wrong, and what I was left with, instead of a complete high-quality one-episode per tape with the commercials edited out collection of those episodes, was a poorly-organized hodgepodege of VHS tapes of varying picture and sound quality with tons of commercials.

As the nineties wound down, I did a little better, making sure to get all the Sci-Fi channel episodes on tape (again, though, not very well organized) during it's last three seasons which aired on that network. But after that, I was left to the random Rhino VHS and DVD releases, which were a bit pricey.

And the problem of no new MST3K being made persisted, too.

Now, all that has ended and I find myself with free access to some of the episodes I missed, some new movies via the Film Crew, and something I always wanted to see - riffing of current, big budget Hollywood movies via Rifftrax.

A Strange Convergence of Technologies
People are putting up old MST3K episodes on YouTube now. Each episode is broken into about ten parts due to the limitations of the format, but it isn't really a big hinderance to stop and select the next part. I don't want to watch them at my desk, though, as MST3K is very much a couch potato experience, so what was I to do?

Enter the Nintendo Wii Internet Browser. Unlike the wimpy DS browser, it has the capability to play YouTube movies. The problem is, of course, that the full screen presentation is a bit pixellated and blurry, but it's still quite watchable. I've already enjoyed several episodes this way, and have a list of a few more that I know are up on YouTube.

The Film Crew
Last week saw the release of the second Film Crew DVD, where the crew takes on the Peter Graves movie Killers From Space. It's just what any MSTie would expect from a black and white 50's movie with Peter Graves - atom bombs, stiff acting, and Biography references. It was actually so slow at times that I fell asleep, but overall still pretty funny.

The funniest part of the DVD is the bonus feature, called "Did You Know?", featuring Kevin Murphy talking about backmasking. He then presents the viewer with a small list of outtakes from the movie to choose from with each one having a different backmasked message. Those are funny enough, but I seriously recommend not selecting anything when Kevin prompts you to, for some real fun. I didn't catch that on my first viewing and it's easily the funniest part of the DVD.

Next month's Film Crew release is The Wild Women of Wongo. Just that title shows some promise.

Rifftrax
I had heard of Rifftrax when it was launched but ignored it because I did not have an Ipod. The service is basically downloadable mp3 files of Mike, sometimes with guest riffers Kevin, Bill, and others, riffing on movies. You put the mp3 on your player and synch it up with the movie and laugh your ass off. The files are only $2.99 each, and the best part is that they are made for modern Hollywood movies and even TV episodes, such as Star Trek VI, The Matrix, and the first two episodes of Grey's Anatomy.

Since I now have an Ipod I decided to test one out last week - Star Trek Generations. It was absolutely hilarious, with Mike and guest riffer Kevin just tearing into the movie ruthlessly. There was no mercy for Chekov or Data, and of course Shatner has always been an easy target for these guys. Even as big a fan of Star Trek as I am, I found myself just losing it over what they were saying. In fact, this was the first riffing in years that made me pull a noser (losing my beverage through my nose while unsuccessfully attempting to sneak a drink in between riffs).

While fans of the show have debated endlessly about the merits of Joel versus Mike or Comedy Central era versus Sci-Fi channel era, I've always said that it's the movie that they are riffing that makes an episode good or great. Some movies move so damn slow, and offer so few opportunities to get in good shots, that it's sometimes difficult to watch them, at least more than once.

But the movies they are doing with Rifftrax are pure gold. And for $2.99, it's quite a bargain.

So, for me personally, Mystery Science Theater is enjoying something of a revival. I suspect a lot of other fans of the show feel the same way, and are enjoying this new era of riffing as much as I am. When I met Mike Nelson back in 2005 and got his autograph, I pleaded with him to get back to the riffing, as Hollywoood was continuing to make really bad movies that deserved it. I guess he already knew that.

The Film Crew's First Release

It's been a long, long time - September 12, 1999 to be exact - since Mystery Science Theater 3000 aired its last episode. There was no going back to the halcyon days of a man trapped in space with a few wisecracking robots riffing on movies, but now we have The Film Crew (the same guys, basically) doing it again for straight - to - DVD releases that capture the same humor and silliness of MST3K.

The premise is that they are three guys hired by media mogul Bob Honcho to make commentary tracks for every movie that doesn't have one. This first release by the Film Crew is Hollywood After Dark, a seedy and depressing black and white movie starring Rue McClanahan of Golden Girls fame as a reluctant stripper that falls prey to the "dark" part of Hollywood.

As with any given episode of MST3K, the comedy content of the Film Crew releases are going to be dependent on the movie itself, and Hollywood After Dark is one ripe tomato. Greasy characters, drab sets, and bad acting give the crew lots of fodder. And of course the presence of Rue McClanahan means lots of Golden Girls references.

There are only three points during the presentation where we see the crew - an introduction, a lunch break, and at the end, which is fine. The lunch break skit, a parody of a corporate lunch meeting, is a joke MST3K fans will recognize from the old days. We get it guys, "exploiting our core competencies" and other corporate drivel is silly. I hope whatever's served at future "lunch breaks" isn't MST3K leftovers.

Still, though, this release is a dream come true for MST3K fans, and was well worth the wait. It took me over two weeks to get my copy from Amazon.com, because they were apparently sold out or on back order when I made my order. I hope that's a good sign and that sales of this release went well, so that the project will continue for years to come.

There's a bonus skit called "Ode To Lunch", a poetry reading by Bill Corbett about the wonders of lunch, that's worth a brief chuckle. Speaking of bonuses, the DVD came with a little Film Crew patch (I mean patch as in cloth thing that you sew onto a garment, not a downloaded thing that allows game companies to release sloppy, unfinished product and fix it later), shaped like a movie ticket. Looking at the patch, it compels me to find a blue shirt like the film crew wears. Must resist...

The next releases from The Film Crew are Killers From Space (August 7) and Wild Women of Wongo (September 11), and I can't wait. Even if you've never watched MST3K, or watched it and didn't get it (there's no such thing as not liking it - to us MSTies, there's either loving it or not getting it), you should go out and buy yourself a copy of The Film Crew : Hollywod After Dark, and not just to see Rue McClanahan stripping, but rather to help boost sales so that I get more episodes. Thanks for your support.

We've Got Movie Sign !

The most hilarious television show ever made - perhaps the funniest thing ever created by humans in the history of comedy - was a show called Mystery Science Theater 3000. It ran for 10 years, from 1989 until its cancellation in 1999. It was the ultimate form of recycling in that they took and old, bad movie and made fun of it while it was showing, turning it into comedy gold.

I got the honor of meeting the show's head writer and star, Michael J. Nelson, back in 2005 after a live sketch show he did at the Shadowbox Cabaret here in Columbus, Ohio. I pleaded with him to bring the show back, since Hollywood was still churning out bad movies at an unprecedented rate. He told me that they can't bring it back because of rights issues, but that there was something very similar in the works with his fromer MST3K buddies in The Film Crew.

Fast forward to recently, when Mr. Nelson hooked up with Rifftrax, where he adds commentary tracks to movies, very similar to MST3K. Here's a sample of their commentary for Star Trek VI:



Spock! Spock! Spock!

Anyway, while this was all good, the real return of MST3K was yet to come. The Film Crew has announced that they are releasing DVDs of riffed movies, all in a very MST3k-ish premise, with entertainment mogul Bob Honcho sending movies to the three of them in their basement to comment on. There will even be sketches, too, just like MST3K. The first movie they are releasing, Hollywood After Dark, is set to come out in July, with three other ones following later this year.

The price is a bit steep - almost twenty dollars an episode - but if their skills are still as sharp as they were before, it'll be worth it. I never thought I'd see the return of MST3K in any form, so for myself and thousands of fans all over the world, this is great news.

Now, if only Joss Whedon would find someone to fund new episodes of Firefly, my life would be complete.