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Friday, October 24, 2014

Mystery Science Theater 3000 dvd signed by Joel


I showed off some cool Weezer stuff a couple weeks ago. Now I'm continuing my sporadic non-sports/non-cards show & tell with a signed dvd.

My all-time favorite TV show is a tie between The Simpsons and Mystery Science Theater 3000. From my teens and throughout my 20s, I had a ritual of watching an episode (or half an episode) every Sunday night before bed. It was like how I closed out the week. I don't do that anymore, but still put on an episode every so often. I've got every circulating episode, used to be on VHS, but now either on DVD or a digital file (I think they can all be found online without much trouble now, too). I won't go into explaining the show and its history here, but if you're unfamiliar with it, give its Wikipedia entry a quick peruse.

Back in Spring 2000, a guy I knew online told me he was working on a project with Joel Hodgson and broached the idea of getting his autograph for me. Needless to say, I jumped at the offer. A small batch of MST3K dvds had just been released by Rhino, with Eegah being the only Joel episode. And so that's the one he got and had signed for me.


Love it! It's one of my most cherished personal possessions. And yep, the autograph is properly on the paper sleeve, not the plastic case, with a nice metallic silver sharpie. Joel even personalized it, imploring me to stay free. I'd like to think I've done a good job of following that advice. Thanks, Joel, my spirit guide and lifecoach!

Joel is a tough signature to get, apparently; I can't find any autographs of his on eBay, either in the current or completed listings.

Eegah stars Richard Kiel (a huge giant of a man best known for playing Jaws in a couple James Bond films), alongside Arch Hall Jr. (the son of the director), and pretty lady Marilyn Manning. Looks like the whole thing is on YouTube:


Eegah is a good episode, but my favorite Richard Kiel movie to be given the MST3K treatment is The Human Duplicators. That one also seems to be on YouTube for your viewing pleasure:


Richard Kiel sadly passed away just last month. (It's impressive a guy that huge lived to 74!) He's got a few auto cards out there.. maybe I'll try to pick one up someday.

Anyways, this dvd is the only piece of MST3K memorabilia I own, unless you want to count a few unsigned dvds. Oh, and I've got the Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Amazing Colossal Episode Guide book somewhere too. I once had the Clowns In The Sky CD (songs from the show), but think I may have sold it when I moved out of state (edit: nope, still got it). I remember several years ago, they auctioned off hundreds of actual props from the show on eBay. This was back in my lean days, and I was only able to put in small bids on 2 or 3 not-really-significant items that I was quickly outbid on. Bummer.

But hey, I've got this awesome dvd personalized to me from the creator Joel Hodgson himself, so I feel good about that!



Anybody else out there a MSTie?

8 comments:

  1. I watch any and all episodes of MST3K I can find on YouTube. I missed that show as for most of my life during the show I didn't have a cable package that carried the channel.

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  2. Joel may have been just another face in a red jumpsuit, but that's a far more awesome signature than you could pull out of a pack of baseball cards. The first episode I saw was Rocketship X-M, and it had me laughing so hard I damn near fell off the couch... been a fan ever since (although it wasn't the same without Joel).

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  3. We have so much more in common than I thought. I'm positively obsessed with MST3K. I have the episode guide, the clowns in the sky soundtrack parts one and two, and I also have a picture signed by the whole cast and three original props from the show. One of them is Tom servos original head

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  4. Thanks for the comments, guys! And TJ, wow, sounds like you got some sweet MST3K stuff.. you should show it off on your blog sometime! I'd love to check it out.

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    1. Will do. Really enjoying the MST3K resurgence on the blogsphere lately...

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  5. Cool autograph. I'm sure my buddy would love to get his hands one this. Back in the day... he would sit around and watch this show. I know it has a huge following. But after watching the show several times, I never could get into it.

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