Since my Mystery Science Theater 3000 fanaticism kinda came full circle after meeting Joel Hodgson and the Cinematic Titanic crew last weekend, I've been dying to write a little about my history with the show. Very little. So, in lieu of my death, please enjoy the following reflection.

I first watched Mystery Science Theater 3000 in early 1995, but I was aware of both the show and its premise long before this. Back in the days before Internet access was widespread and common, this sort of thing happened a lot; you'd hear little bits about something weird/interesting from various sources, and would have to piece together some general sense of what it really was. What I did know intrigued me; the show was entirely about watching a man and robots watch movies; this premise alone can be pretty mind-blowing if you happen to be 13 and living in the mid-90s. So I tried as best as I could to watch the show, even though Comedy Central (where it aired at the time) was hard to find, and not the household name that South Park would make it a few years later. I even remember staying over my grandma's one weekend for the sole reason that her cable provider was giving her a free preview weekend of Comedy Central--but, alas, there was no Mystery Science Theater to be found. My grandma never found out my ulterior motives.

I ended up first seeing the show (by accident, really) in its short-lived syndicated format, The Mystery Science Theater Hour, which split normal episodes into two parts and added a framing device with Michael J. Nelson playing host Jack Perkins. It wasn't the best way to view the episodes, but it was really the only way for me at the time; and, in keeping with my old tradition of obsessively recording the shows I was obsessed with, I built up a small collection of episodes that I could rewatch at any point. So I did. A lot. And when our cable provider actually picked up Comedy Central in the Spring of 1996, it was like the Second Coming for me. Of course, I had no idea that the show was in the middle of a six-episode season and also on the brink of cancellation--once again, no Internet--so in my case, ignorance was bliss. Though I distinctly recall watching the final episode of the Comedy Central run (Laserblast) after coming home from a soccer game and being really confused about the host segments that surrounded the movie. And since I hadn't seen 2001: A Space Odyssey either (which said host segments parodied), I was doubly confused.

So the Spring of 1996 was probably not the best time to get into MST3K; the series was basically being treated like garbage by the network (if I recall, only one episode aired per week), and the MST3K movie never played anywhere near me, much to my great disappointment. It was around this time that I picked up The Amazing Colossal Episode Guide at a local Barnes and Noble and read it cover-to-cover about a dozen times. I really knew nothing of MST3K outside of what I had watched on TV, so the book revealed to me just how long the show had run--which was exciting because I had seen so little of it at that point--and answered some questions that most MST3K fans take for granted, like why Joel wasn't around for some (now most) of the episodes. I hadn't encountered any Mike episodes until Comedy Central entered our home, so you can understand my shock when I saw some stranger being held captive on the Satellite of Love.

Since this post is already getting long, I'll speed through the time when I was most obsessed with MST3K: high school. After getting the Internet and grabbing the hacker alias "bobservo" for my own--which you may notice I've kept to this day--I started using the Information Superhighway for what every young, teenage boy does in private: researching and creating embarrassing websites about a favorite TV show. [Side note: Based on my observations, the Internet was seemingly created to discuss both MST3K and The Simpsons.] I soon discovered that you could buy VHS tapes of the MST3K (recorded right from the TV, of course) from reputable traders on the Internet, so I basically spent the next four years doing just that. By the end of high school, I'd seen over 100 of the Comedy Central era episodes (across roughly 40 tapes), and had my very own cataloged collection of the newer seasons (8-10) from the few years MST3K ran on the Sci-Fi channel. I should also mention that this was the time I joined the MST3K Info Club (my member number is around 70k) and ordered most of the merchandise from their catalog. While cutting my grandma's lawn during the summer to earn money for--you guessed it--more MST3K tapes, I would always have my CD player blasting Clowns In the Sky, a compilation of songs from the show. No, I didn't have any sex in high school.

There's a lot more I could include in this post--and more that I want to include--but for the sake of brevity I'll try to wrap things up. The funny thing about my most obsessive MST3K period is that I knew absolutely no one else who liked the show or would watch it with me; even my closest friends found it boring or just flat-out stupid. In fact, I recall an incident when a friend of mine went into another room to watch Xena (Xena!) because I turned on MST3K. But today, all of my friends are aware of MST3K, and we normally watch some sort of MST3K-related product (including RiffTrax, Cinematic Titanic, etc.) for our semi-regular gatherings. Now is probably the best time to be into riff-based comedy; not only are the old episodes of MST3K easily available online (though illegally), the aforementioned side-projects of the MST3K crew are just as funny as the show was back in the 90s. The RiffTrax shorts in particular are some of the best (and cheapest) comedy you can find, even outside of the Internet.

I really wish I could go on more about Mystery Science Theater 3000, since I don't really think I've given a real sense of just how truly obsessed I've been with it over these past 15 years, but I think I've written enough for now. To this day, I'm still impressed by both the quality and challenging nature of MST3K's comedy (you really have to know stuff to get the best jokes), and I credit it, along with The Simpsons, for shaping my sensibilities most as a comedy writer--which is why it's a shame I didn't try to make this essay funny in any way whatsoever. But regardless of whether this obsessive fanboy post is entertaining or not, on Saturday night I left Cleveland with an Amazing Colossal Episode Guide full of signatures from people who probably had more of an influence on me than my parents.

But don't tell them that.