By Sharc on August 21, 2009

Mystery Science Theater 3000Yesterday, I completely failed to see the Riff Trax Live movie event. We got all the way to the theater and discovered it was sold out, and being far too dumb  to buy tickets in advance, we were left in the lobby while a heard of excited fans rushed in to see the guys from Mystery Science Theater 3000 do a live mockery of Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Being a Mystery Science Theater guy used to be my dream job. Your workday is sitting with you friends and making jokes about bad movies. I’ve already got ten years experience in this field.

I used to sneak out of bed at midnight just to watch the latest episodes and hone my skills in case the opportunity arose.

Sadly, I have yet to contact the producers of Mystery Science Theater (now Riff Trax) to ask for this honor. But I did realize a number of terrible downsides to being “that Mystery Science Theater guy.”

  1. Your excuse for not seeing the bad romantic movies your wife/girlfriend wants to see. The old, “I’d rather spend my time on something artistic.” line falls flat when you just spent 8 hours re-watching This Island Earth.
  2. Your almost-friends will always nag you to go see the latest sci-fi and horror releases with them. At first you’ll just think they like your company, but five minutes in you’ll start hearing, “Hey, what do you think about that? Isn’t that funny? You should tell us why that’s funny? Isn’t this bad film rife for mockery? Do that thing where you put your finger up to the screen so it looks like your picking his nose! How can you resist? Come on man, I thought you were cool.”
  3. There are no options for a low key night with friends. Imagine coming home from a long day at work, and then all your friends are like, “Hey, let’s spend three hours doing exactly what you do at work!” I assume that all the Mystery Science Theater guys are board game aficionados for this reason.

Despite all that, I still got a tingle when Tinz discovered that the Riff Trax website allows you to submit your own riffs. My chance has come,and though I may not want to take it on full time, doing a riff track with my childhood heroes would be one of the greatest two hours of my life.