::A Geek in Korea::

Way back in the Internet days of old, when I wasn’t connected by a fat pipe of pure goodness, I used to use a service provider born from the depths of some evil nether region of the soul. Back then, the way I would spend my time would be to heckle movies online via chat rooms. This is how I ended up with my ‘Net moniker. I also became a huge Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan. I even chatted with the guy that maintained their official website. Now that’s some serious Geek cred.

Heckling movies "live" either by chat room or in the theater is a bit like an improv comedy, and also a performance art. Not everyone can do it well. I know I spoiled many, many a movie with friends talking during some important scene. I also remember a trip with a few friends to heckle a Godzilla movie in an empty theater that was way too much fun. Anyway, the idea was to heckle the new stuff that MST3k would never get the rights to show on air due to their expense.

When MST3k went off the air, I looked for alternatives. MSTing was acceptable for a cheap laugh, but most fan fiction is far too easy to make fun of anyway. I wrote a few, but didn’t nearly enjoy it as much as a live movie. It’s written but not "live", so all sense of timing is lost. Once I came to Korea I lost all ability to mock movies real time as I lacked the audience to appreciate it as well as a manner to watch what was being made fun of at the moment.

With the advent of podcasting, and Mike Nelson’s very own RiffTraxs, things are looking good. Download the RiffTrax for the $1.99 fee, which is essentially an alternate audio commentary, find the movie for rent or pull it from your collection, and sync it up. This avoids all those problematic "copyright laws" that prevented MST3k from heckling the best of the best. Now you can listen to commentaries from such cinematic classics as Roadhouse, The Fifth Element, or Plan 9 from Outer Space! During the movie, if things get out of sync they occasionally have a robot voice repeat lines from the movie to help you get everything back in time. Then there is Sharecrow, which seems to be made for this exact purpose, linking commentaries with DVD time codes to lock in sync. Future releases include Star Trek movies and guest appearances by former MST3k stars! It’s a steal for this price.

Little did I know there is an entire community of people offering up alternative comment tracks. It might be film nerds talking about movie trivia or someone trying to be funny. I don’t know who I’d listen to heckling a movie other than Mike Nelson, but it’s cool that the idea has caught on. Long ago I thought many a time of heckling a particularly bad movie in such a way, but without the means of organization, sync, and distribution, it wouldn’t have gotten very far.

I’m encouraging anyone to pick up a copy of Roadhouse and watching it with the RiffTrax. It’s got my MST3k fan seal of approval. Absolutely hysterical.