Weasley's Guide to MST3K 5 Essential Episodes

Everyone who knows me knows I just love, love, love Mystery Science Theatre 3000.  The 90s cult show about a guy in space forced to watch bad movies with his robot palls.

It combined to  of my absolute favorite things vintage (in the form of cheesy old movies) and sci-fi, in one cute and quirky package.   In fact I'm so crazy about MST3K that for Weasley's 5th birthday one of his gifts was a Gizmonic jump suit like the one MST3K host Joel wears. 

Deb from Pug Possessed made it and she did an amazing job.  I decided Weasley's jumpsuit is the perfect segue way into an MST3K essential episodes post.  Now as you can see I have a lot of MST3K box sets:

and would you believe I don't even have all of them!  Some are really hard to find.  So it wasn't easy picking 5 essential episodes and these aren't even necessarily my favorites, they are just 5 I really like (this blog feature may have to be ongoing).  Here they are in no particular order:

1) Manos The Hand's Fate: The uninitiated bad movie viewer who asks the questions How bad can a movie really get? and How funny can a bad movie be?  Needs to watch this crazy thing.  It was made on a bet by an insurance and fertilizer sales man, he also plays father in the film.  I guess he won the best because the movie is pretty famous now..   The resulting film is completely incoherent and totally hilarious.  It also features a black toy poodle though he comes to a tragic end.

This episode also features the hilarious Chevrolet short, Hired!  Manos The Hands of Fate is available on Amazon for $12.99.

2) Cave Dwellers  This 1984 Italian fantasy film was featured in the first episode of the third season of MST3K.   It is a swords and sandals type film and a pretty dreadful rip off of Conan the Barbarian, but boy is it funny.  Along with a brain dead hero, a mute side kick, and heroine that looks like she is on the way to the mall, it features a snake that growls.  That alone makes it worth watching.  Here is Joel introducing the episode for a Turkey Day special he did in 2013.

Cave Dwellers is part of the volume 2 set of MST3K and is now horrifyingly expensive, but you can rent it from Amazon prime for a reasonable price.  Also Cave Dwellers is part two of a trilogy, yes there are three of these dreadful things, and part 1: Ator, The Fighting Eagle is now available on the Riff trax website.  It does not disappoint.


3) Laser Blast-This 1978 sci-fi film was aired during the 7th season of MST3K.  It has Roddy McDowell of Planet of the Apes fame in it and some seriously awful clay mation effects.  The bots and Mike make plenty of jokes about the fact that revered film critic Leonard Matlin gave this turkey two stars.   Mike also has a fun segment where he pretends to be Star Trek Voyager's Captain Janeway

Laser Blast is available as part of the MST3K 20th anniversary pack 
and it can be streamed on Netflix.

4) The Giant Gila Monster- This cheesy 1959 monster flick was shown during the shows 4th season.  Unsurprisingly there are a lot of giant (insert animal) movies shown on MST3K but this is my favorite.  The plot is typical 50s monster fodder, peppy teens are plagued by a giant Gila lizard (a very obviously normal sized Lizard walking past toy cars).  The songs and doofy dialogue make this a classic episode.

The Giant Gila monster is available as part of Volume 10.2 (now rare and pricey) or you can stream it on Netflix. 

5) Teenage Strangler-This 1968 teen murder mystery was aired during the shows 5th season.   Basically teenage couples are being viciously murdered and the prime suspect is Jimmy a high school student with an incredibly dweeby younger brother.  Then surprise!  It was the school janitor all along.  Hi-light's include the bots tricking Mike into wearing a pair of glasses that turn him into Mikey Jimmy's whiny younger brother from the movie:


  and Mike's hilarious closing song about janitors.

If you want a funny, silly, vintagey show you just cant  go wrong with MST3K it's like watching cheesy movies with your friends, if your friends where incredibly funny. 

Happy 5th Birthday Weasley!

I can't believe it my baby boy Weasley is 5!

Weasley is the first dog I got after starting blogging and it really reminds me of why I love blogging so much when I see the record of wonderful memories I have.  I almost can't read his welcome home post on my old blog Urban Hounds because I get so emotional seeing it, and really emotional seeing him with Tubby and Norbert.  Then I remember how incredibly lucky I am to share my life with these amazing creatures!  I'm truly blessed.  Five is certainly not old, but it's not exactly young either, and Weasley is now definitely a man pug!

Sadly the weather on Saturday and Sunday really didn't cooperate, cold, cold, cold!  So we couldn't go on any outings.  Instead Weasley enjoyed opening presents at home

He also got a cake.  I wasn't too happy about the pink frosting but it was the only one they had.  Weasley didn't seem to mind. 

Five is off to a good start we are hoping Weasley has a fabulous year!

 

Weasley's Crush on Wesley Crusher from Pug Notes

Just in time for Valentine's Day Weasley is breaking out one of his Christmas gifts.  A Star Trek The Next Generation Wesley Crusher inspired sweater by pug notes.

Now all he needs is a Valentine to send to Wesley:

 

We Met Santa!

This weekend we met Santa!

Sadly he didn't arrive in a cool 1950s car.  He was at the Staten Island Pet Smart.

First we visited Grandpa in Bay Ridge

We didn't bring Bob because we know he is not too crazy about his Uncle Rocco, not pictured, a puggle.  After visiting Grandpa we drove through Staten Island to see the big guy, sadly the NJ pet smart has stopped having a live Santa and our local pet store that used to do photos closed.  So Pet Smart it was, and it was packed!  The line wrapped around the store and I was reminded of my favorite Christmas Story, Santa Land Diaries by David Sedaris, if you haven't read or listened to it you must!   Here is the link to the transcript and recording.

Anyway, I was relived we hadn't brought Bob because he would never have tolerated the line and there was a huge pet adoption event too, I was glad about that because we where able to make a donation.  The line was filled with cute dogs so it was fun.

My favorite was a tiny chihuahua puppy, you can barely see him on his mom's shoulder here:

I got to hold him and should have taken a photo then but I was seriously overwhelmed!  He was so tiny and cute.  He weighed 1.5 lbs and was 14 weeks old.  He made Tuvok look huge.  His mom said he should get to be between 3.5 and 4 lbs fully grown which is a healthy weight for a chihuahua, I've done research.  Why anyone on Earth would want an even smaller dog is beyond me but they do!  Someday I will have a chihuahua from a reputable Chihuahua club of America breeder.   

Anyway we finally reached the end of the line and there was Santa.  Santa was very nice but the photo elf was kind of rude.  

The pictures I too with my phone where better then the pet smart digital downloads and they didn't even give you a print out!  That really dissapointed me because I have all the old Santa photos with our past pets displayed in the house.  Here is a photo of our rescue pug Bingo form eight years ago.  We adopted him after moving to NJ.  He had cancer and was incontinent and had to use a stroller but he lived almost two years!  He was such a sweet old guy.

 I really wanted to be able to display Santa photos  of Weasley Fry and Tuvok on our mantle along with our old dogs.  Oh well. 

Happy Holidays!

Sci Fi Saturday: Halloween Costumes from Star Trek's Mirror Universe

Every year I look forward to the Halloween season for many reasons: candy, classic horror movies, pumpkins, gorgeous weather etc, but maybe my favorite aspect of October is the opportunity to dress up my dogs (I'm not so sure they love it, but they love the treats that come along with the dressing up.) In the past they have been the Three Musketeers:

 flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz:

and Teen Wolf Pug and Puggie Krueger

to name just a few.

This year I had no problem deciding on a costume theme.  As ever Star Trek fan knows it's our favorite franchises 50th anniversary.

So Star Trek costumes where a must, but I didn't just want plain old Star Trek uniforms for the dogs, being a crazy die hard trekkie I wanted something a little more special.  I decided I wanted the costumes to  be a tribute to one of my favorite episodes of the Original Series: Mirror, Mirror.

In this iconic episode the crew gets accidentally transported into an alternate universe, where everything is a bit different.  Instead of a peace loving ship of exploration, the Enterprise is a war ship and the Federation is working to take over the galaxy.  Characters who where friends are now mortal enemies and you move up the ranks by assassinating your superiors. So none of that is great,  BUT the uniforms in the Mirror universe are fab!  I'm in love with the gold lame

I decided it would be fun to dress Weasley, Fry, Ping and Mr. Tuvok up as Star Trek Mirror Universe characters.  (Note: Bob will have none of this costume nonsense.) Since I can't sew I turned to Deb of Pug Possessed to make the costumes and despite never having watched Star Trek she did an amazing job. Here posing alongside the Star Trek Book of Costumes are the pups in their stellar costumes:


Weasley, looking manly as Mirror Universe Captain Kirk:

Fry oozing intelligence as Mirror Universe Commander Spock:

seductive Ping as Mirror Universe Lieutenant  Uhura:

and finally,  Mr. Tuvok is dressed as a personal guard.  Personal guard's are the crewman in the episode who run around trying to stop their employer from being assassinated.  Perhaps part of Tuvok's confusion and discomfort in this costume stemmed from the fact that I didn't whether he was working for Weasley or Fry.  

The whole crew:

Aren't they adorable?  Deb did such a wonderful job on these costumes I just can't get over it.   The tragedy is that the pet Halloween event we usually attend was rained out and I have yet to find an alternative event in Jersey City.  We used to go to the party at our favorite pet store Canis Minor, but it's gone out of business.  So sadly the only place the pups have to wear these fabulous uniforms is in  our home!    I guess we will have to use the costumes again next year.   Live Long and Prosper!

Pug Club of New York at The Alice Austen House

This past Sunday was one of my favorite events of the year,   The Pug Dog Club of Greater New York's yearly meetup at the Alice Austen house on Staten Island.  Alice Austen was one of America's first female photographers and a pug lover.  

Alice with her pug Punch

Alice's devotion to the breed is the reason the club holds the yearly event at her home.  I first learned about it last year through Fry's breeder who is a member of the club.  It's amazing to see a crowd of pugs, and their owners, take over the lovely victorian property.

This year we brought Ping, Fry, Weasley and Mr. Tuvok (who was not the only non-pug dog in attendance.) I dressed them in their festive neck scrunchies from Deb of pug possessed and they looked great.  I'm biased but I think they where the cutest does there.

The weather was really nice and we spent most of the morning sitting on lawn chairs or the lawn and watching the dogs.

The lawn at the house is quite large for an urban area and the garden is really pretty. 

The house is right by the water, you can see Manhattan, so it stays pretty cool.

Pugs get hot though so there where lots of baby pools about.

None of our guys will go in them though.   

They did have lots of fun meeting other dogs and people.  I was particularly pleased to see Mr. Tuvok showing alot of confidence and having a great time.  Sometimes he can be a bit shy, or maybe he just seems that way next to super outgoing overly social pugs.

I was particularly happy to see Fry's breeder and she had his relatives with her.  The black pug is Fry's father and one of the fawns is his mom, I forgot which.

A lot of Fry's other relations where there since many of the attendees where dogs from his breeder.

It was a lovely and perfect day and I can;t wait to return next year.