You realize that Gabe Kaplan can buy and sell all of us many times over.
Employee Aaron: “So, Mike, did you hear the rumor that Sam Raimi was offered The Hobbit movie? Imagine having to choose between that and the next Spider-Man film.”
Me: “Why choose? He can do both.”
Employee Aaron: “Both?”
Me: “Sure…Spidey can finally fight Mysterio in the next film (played by Bruce Campbell, natch) and in order to get ol’ webhead off his back, Mysterio uses his illusion casting powers to put Spider-Man in The Hobbit‘s story!”
Employee Aaron: “Um…”
Me: “Spider-Man would be in the part of Bilbo Baggins, and he’d have to act his way through the entire journey…you know, shooting goblins with his webbing, using his Spider-sense to evade Smaug’s fire-breath, and so on. It might get a bit tricky with the whole Gollum riddle thing…does Spidey’s costume have pockets? I don’t remember.”
Employee Aaron: “You were dropped on your head a lot as a kid, weren’t you?”
Yes, I know the Raimi/Hobbit thing is old news. And no, at no time did I actually say “ol’ webhead.”
I did, however, say at one point “I’ll give you a dollar if you’ll eat that.” Pal Dorian kicked in another two dollars. Three whole bucks for eating it, and still Employee Aaron wouldn’t do it. Hey, his loss.
“Eat what?” you ask? Well, why don’t you take your best guess and I’ll see if anyone comes close.
So I don’t know if you checked out the relaunched Mystery Science Theatre 3000 website, but its first animated cartoon starring the ‘bots is…well, I like the designs of the characters, anyway. Crow’s new voice is fine, Servo’s is kinda all over the map. It’s a shame the cartoon isn’t funny in the slightest. And, alas, I don’t have access to a computer that can play the mst3k.com-hosted Flash file for the cartoon without stuttering, so I had to resort to finding this soon-to-be-removed Youtube version.
Perhaps things will improve. The overall design is nice, now that they’ve fixed their initial resolution problems (some text was getting cropped off for some folks), and maybe after they work the kinks out, the cartoons may improve to “slightly amusing.” It’s just a shame that the mst3k.com site doesn’t appear to be doing what MST3K is essentially best-known for…riffing on bad movies. Ah, well.
And, in the Ouroboros department, we have a DIY-Rifftrax riffing of the first MST3K.com cartoon.
We never got a Jack Kirby Swamp Thing, as I mentioned the other day, but the Fractal Hall Journal does his best to fill the void (and throws in a tribute to Chris Sims’ recent tribulations). Well done, sir.
And now, for no good reason, my favorite Mad Magazine panel of all time…why Mr. Kotter must not graduate the Sweathogs (AKA the “Sweatslobs”) at all costs…in order to prevent this reign of terror: