Joel Hodgson and the bots on KTMA in 1988

I accidentally discovered Mystery Science Theater 3000 during its initial run on local Twin Cities channel KTMA-23 in 1988. It was very strange—and very funny. Some guys seemed to be talking—cracking jokes—during some awful movie. You could see their silhouettes at the bottom of the screen.

This was in the early days of my relationship with my partner, Pat. We were the kind of couple who went to a Rocky & Bullwinkle film festival on our first date. This show was made for us. We were soon tuning in every Sunday night to watch it. It was the funniest thing we’d ever seen. We became members of the fan club.

But it didn’t last long. Before we knew it, the show was cancelled. As a thank-you to the fans, they put on a live show in 1989 at the Comedy Gallery in Minneapolis.

A photo of the audience at the Comedy Gallery event that appeared in the MST 3000 Satellite News, Vol. 1, No. 2. You can see me and Pat on the left.

The show was great and featured clips from the show’s pilot, plus cast members/writers Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, and Josh Weinstein performing their comedy acts. During a question and answer session near the end, Pat got to ask a silly question about the Tom Servo puppet. She wanted to know how the mouth (beak?) worked. It was kind of complicated. When it was over, we got to meet and shake hands with everyone on the show, and that was that—so it seemed.

Josh Weinstein, on the cover of the Minnesota Daily’s arts section, around the time he performed at the U of M’s student union.

Later that year, we saw Josh Weinstein do his stand-up act at the University of Minnesota student union (he was still an undergrad there), and at the end of it, he revealed that talks were ongoing with HBO to bring Mystery Science Theater to cable TV. Our hopes to see the show again were dashed, however. Our cable company carried HA!, but MST’s new home was on The Comedy Channel, which they didn’t carry.

We missed the first season, but by the second season, the two rival comedy channels merged to become Comedy Central, and—more importantly—we got to see our favorite show again. By this time, Josh was off the show, replaced by a new guy, Frank “TV’s Frank” Conniff. And this is were things get a little weird.

At the time, we were living in the Whittier neighborhood in South Minneapolis. MST was a national show, but it was produced out in a Minneapolis suburb, Eden Prairie. But some of the guys on the show must have lived in our neighborhood because we started seeing them. One day, while driving down Hennepin Avenue, we both did a double take—TV’s Frank was walking down the street. Maybe a week later, we saw him come out of our neighborhood convenience store. Another time, I went to my usual coffee shop, and Trace Beaulieu was behind me in line. This encounter was stranger still when I think about it: The woman who served us coffee was someone Pat and I knew, Kristen Pfaff, who would later become the bass player in Hole (Courtney Love’s band) and die of a drug overdose.

The most awkward encounter happened sometime around 1991 at Calhoun Square, a shopping mall in Minneapolis’s Uptown area. I spotted Joel Hodgson (wearing sunglasses) seated outside a restaurant near the bookstore we were headed for. I whispered to Pat, “It’s Joel.” She didn’t see him, and said aloud, “What? Where?” By now we had passed him and I whispered, “He’s right behind us.” He must have heard us, because when we looked he was looking back at us. We walked quickly into the bookstore. I pretended to look at some books. When I looked up, Hodgson was standing near the entrance, peering around the corner over his sunglasses, like he was spying on us. Pat had disappeared. I was so embarrassed, I didn’t look up again for a while. The whole thing was very weird and silly.

In 1992, we saw them all again, but this time as part of a live performance of Mystery Science Theater at the Uptown Theater. It was one thing to see it on television, but seeing it performed live with 600 other people was incredible. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard in my life. My face was so sore.

Me and Pat, visible in the background during a Comedy Central video interview outside the Uptown Theater in Minneapolis, waiting in line to see Mystery Science Theater Alive!

Tomorrow: How I almost became a designer for Mystery Science Theater.

In yesterday’s installment, I got into the unseemly details of my close encounters with the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000. This was nothing.

Best Brains, Inc. (BBI), the production company that made Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K), was located in an industrial park in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, a fact that Pat and I confirmed (surreptitiously) one Sunday afternoon in 1991. (I will neither confirm or deny that we peered into the windows.)

As a graphic designer, I was appalled by the design of the official MST3K fan newsletter, Satellite News (Formerly The Binding Polymer). It was obviously not done by a professional designer. I decided to offer my services—for free, even—to take on design and production of the newsletter. Once they saw what I could do, it would be a slam-dunk. To demonstrate, with the help of a few tapes of the show, an SX-70 camera, an HP ScanJet, Photoshop and Illustrator, and a PostScript laser printer, I did a set of mock “redesigns” of the newsletter. I sent them, along with a cover letter, to Best Brains at the end of October, 1991.

My mock “redesigns” of MST’s fan newsletter, Satellite News (Formerly The Binding Polymer), left to right, top to bottom: The original, as Business Week, as Scientific American, as Popular Science, as Popular Mechanics, as Byte, as Vanity Fair, as Utne Reader, and as The New York Post.

A day or so later, the phone rang. It was Jim Mallon, producer of MST3K! He wasn’t interested in me doing the newsletter, especially for free—that would taking advantage of me. But he loved the “redesigns” and they might have some work for me. He invited me down to the Best Brains offices to talk. I was very excited. Pat was very jealous.

The next day, I showed up at BBI, along with some samples of my work. There must have been some sort of mix up because I had to wait almost an hour. People kept coming up to me to ask if I had an appointment. While I was waiting, I could hear someone editing promo spots for the first of their yearly “Turkey Day” marathons.

At last, Jim Mallon appeared and started off by giving me a tour of the facilities. Along the way, I got to meet most of the people who worked on the show—Frank Conniff, Mike Nelson (who was head writer at the time), Trace Beaulieu, Kevin Murphy, tool master Jeff Maynard (the guy who made the props), Mary Jo Pehl, and Paul Chaplin. Joel Hodgson was out, and I had the impression that he wasn’t often in.

Among the things I saw on the tour:

• The writing room, which had big comfy couches and chairs, a small table with a Mac SE for transcribing ad libs, and a big-screen TV (not very big by modern standards, though).
• Writers’ offices—I remember Trace had the puppets from the KTMA incarnation of the show in his.
• The workshop, where all the props and stuff were made. Among the things I saw in the workshop was the big “Mystery Science Theater 3000” planet seen in the opening credits, which is about three feet tall, and was originally a prop from the Guthrie Theater, repurposed with a bit of hot glue and styrofoam. Also, multiple “trick” Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot puppets made for special effects, like when they needed Tom Servo’s head to blow up or something.
• The main production studio, a large warehouse-like room with the Satellite of Love “command deck” set on one end, and the “Deep 13” set off to one side. The “theater” area was opposite the S.O.L. set and consisted of the theater seat silhouettes (big cut-outs made of plywood) set in front of a large “green screen”. The performers would actually be watching the movie on a small TV monitor out of sight from the home audience. The S.O.L. set was actually raised up about three feet to make room for the performers who worked with puppets.

After the tour, I met with Jim, Trace, and Kevin, showing them some of my work. It seemed to go okay. They told me they were working on some tapes to sell to fans, the first of which was a collection of musical skits from the show called, “Play MST for Me.” I was suddenly in some sort of brainstorming session, and they kept looking at me, maybe hoping for me to be as funny as them. I felt a little ambushed. They were the funny guys. I was a designer. Given the situation, I saw myself (potentially) as what Michael Gross was to the National Lampoon. He never claimed to be a “funny” guy, but he knew how to use design to serve “funny”. In any case, I agreed to come up with some concepts, and I left feeling like I was starting a new page in my career.

When I got home, Kevin Murphy faxed me the copy for the package and I earnestly went to work, arriving at my first concept: Fairly straightforward type with a very long “funny” disclaimer, which I wrote. I faxed it over and waited. This didn’t go over very well—they weren’t expecting me to write copy. I considered what I wrote to be “dummy” text—that they would rewrite it. That didn’t matter, they didn’t like it.

I did a second concept: A parody of a cheesy, sentimental, as-seen-on-TV kind of shlocky record album cover—complete with swash headline type for the title. They didn’t like this one either. It was a design joke and I guess they didn’t get it.

I did a third concept: A record on a turntable, seen from above, with the letters of the title flying off the disc as it spins, a sort of slapstick approach. This one didn’t seem to grab them either, but I don’t remember why.

At this point, the project seemed to be stalled. I thought the ideas I sent them had potential, and could be developed further, but I wasn’t getting much feedback. It seemed almost as if they expected me to “wow” them with a fully-formed idea. I was expecting more back and forth. After a week went by, I called Jim Mallon to find out what was going on. He seemed surprised that I was calling—basically saying “don’t call us, we’ll call you”, and I never heard from them again.

One theory I have is that Trace Beaulieu had been doing all the “design” work, liked doing it, and wasn’t really interested in having anyone else do it. Or maybe they just didn’t like what I did. Or maybe I should have been more proactive, educating them about how to work with a designer. Who knows.

The important thing is, I got a personal tour of Best Brains. I think Pat is still jealous about that.

I don’t have any more MST3K stories to share, but I thought it would be fun to do “remastered” versions of my mock “redesign” covers that I sent to Best Brains. Without too much trouble (yeah, right), I was able to find all but one of the freeze-frames I shot with my Polaroid camera back in 1991 on the DVD collections of the show. (Yes, I have most of them. Are you surprised?) I had to work with my original Polaroid for the “Byte” cover. As a final touch, I added typical color schemes for each magazine. Maybe things would have turned out differently if they’d seen these in color…

Nah.

For those of you who could care less about Mystery Science Whatever It Is, and wish I would post more design-related things, I apologize. Back to regular programming tomorrow.

My mock “redesigns” of MST’s fan newsletter, Satellite News (Formerly The Binding Polymer), left to right, top to bottom: The original, as Business Week, as Scientific American, as Popular Science, as Popular Mechanics, as Byte, as Vanity Fair, as Utne Reader, and as The New York Post.

This photo shows my first attempt to create type on a computer screen. It is from about 1980.

The computer is that tiny white horizontal shape in the lower left, a Sinclair ZX80, which I bought mail order for $200. It had a 1mhz processor, 1k of memory, and built-in BASIC. The display is an old black and white television (not included). Programs and data were stored on a cheap cassette recorder (also not included).

The “a” image on the screen was created by programming the computer to display several lines of space and “block” characters in a certain order (which I worked out beforehand on graph paper). This is about as basic as a BASIC program can get.

Unfortunately, it took a good share of the computer’s memory just to do this. I didn’t investigate it further.

Update: I remember now. The thing on top of the TV is the cheap cassette recorder I used to store data. Yet more details: The “table” is made from a piece of plywood (which I still have) and a Crumar electric piano stand (which was sold with the piano to a guy who is now in prison for murder). (Not that it matters.)

I was going through some old papers today and found this:

It’s a short article I wrote that appeared in the November 1967 issue of Town Views, the student newspaper at the elementary school I attended. I was 11 years old at the time.

As I recall, I heard about the interabang* from a newsletter my dad used to bring home from work. It was published by Falk, an industrial company that made forklifts or something. But always had interesting topics. I remember seeing M.C. Escher’s work for the first time in one issue.

Seeing this again I realized it’s probably the first type-related thing I ever wrote. I’m sure at the time I just thought it was interesting.

*This is an alternate and apparently older spelling that still appears in some dictionaries—usually it’s spelled “interrobang” today.

This entry is probably going to date me quite a bit. What I consider to be my first real computer was the Atari 400, which I bought in 1982. Around a year later, I got an Atari 800, mainly so I could type on a real keyboard. (The 400 had a cheaper “membrane” keyboard, which gave little tactile feedback. To make up for this, you would hear an audible “click” from the speaker. Not very different from modern touch-screen keyboards, now that I think of it.)

I still had both of them until about a year ago when I donated them to a local Atari dealer. Yes—they still exist! Not only that, one of the local Atari user groups that was around back in the early eighties (S.P.A.C.E.: Saint Paul Atari Computer Enthusiasts) still meets once a month less than a mile from my home!

Anyway, before I unloaded them, I took some photos. Here is the 400, with its membrane keyboard:

It sported a 1.79 Mhz 6502 processor, the same kind that was in the Apple II. Unlike the Apple II, it had a dedicated graphics processor and built-in sound chip, and four joystick ports, so it was a lot better for games. (A few years later, the guy who designed these computers designed the Amiga, which had a similar hardware concept.) Many programs (especially games) came on cartridges that you inserted into a slot under the access door on top. It had 16k of RAM, but I upgraded mine to 48k.

I also got a cassette “program recorder” so I could save and load files. I got the home computer bug really bad, so it wasn’t long before I upgraded to a floppy disk drive and then the Atari 800 model, which had a real keyboard, a composite video output for better picture, and a mostly useless second cartridge slot:

In spite of the fact that it had a real keyboard, it still did the fake “click” sound like the 400 from the speaker when you typed. This lead me to do my one and only hardware hack on it: I added a small switch underneath which cut out the speaker. If it got too annoying, I could switch off the sound.

These were the days before the internet and—really—almost everything we use computers for now. So, what did I use my Atari for? Mostly, I played games (Star Raiders was amazing, but also a lot of Defender, Joust, and some of the early Lucasfilm games) and typed in BASIC programs from computer magazines. I also wrote an article for a magazine on it once and did some “computer” illustrations that were published in real magazines. Learning about programming was the most useful thing about it in the long run—a very good thing to know when making fonts.

Just for fun, I took a photo of one of my current computers, a MacBook Air, next to the Atari 800:

The Air is about 1000 times as fast, has about 100,000 times as much RAM, can store as much data as 1.3 million Atari 88K disks, a built-in flat display with 21 times the pixel density, can display a million times as many colors, has high-speed wireless networking connected to millions of other computers around the world, can run for 10 hours on its built-in rechargeable battery, and is a tiny fraction of the 800’s size and weight, including the display. Not bad for 30 years progress. On the other hand, the Air is conceptually not very different from the first Mac I bought in 1984, a little over two years after I bought my Atari 400.